The Spell of the Hawaiian Islands and the PhilippinesAnderson, Isabel
History
The Spell of the Hawaiian Islands and the Philippines
Anderson, Isabel
Hawaii; Philippines
At that time the Islands formed an independent republic, under Sanford
B. Dole as President, the son of Rev. Daniel Dole, one of the early
missionaries. He was educated at Punahou, meaning new spring, now called
Oahu College, and at Williams College in the States. He came to Boston
to study law, and was admitted to the bar. But Hawaii called him, as if
with a forecast of the need she would have of his services in later
days, and he went back to Oahu, where he took high rank among the
lawyers in the land of his birth, and became judge of the Supreme Court.
After the direct line of Kamehameha sovereigns became extinct, and the
easy-going rule of their successors culminated in the high-handed
attempt of Queen Liliuokalani to restore the ancient rites and also to
turn the island into a Monte Carlo, Judge Dole was the one man who
understood both parties and had the confidence of both, and he was the
unanimous choice of the best element of the population for president.
[Illustration: HON. SANFORD B. DOLE.]
Of course we visited the buildings and localities in Honolulu that were
of interest because of their connection with the existing government or
their history in the past. The Executive Building--the old palace, built
by King Kalakaua and finished in the finest native woods--and the Court
House, which was the Government Building in the days of the kings; the
big Kawaiahao Church, built of coral blocks in 1842, and the Queen's
Hospital, all are in the city, but they have often been described, so I
pass them by with only this mention. The first frame house ever erected
in the Islands deserves a word, as it was sent out from Boston for the
missionaries. It had two stories, and in the early days its tiny rooms
were made to shelter four mission families and twenty-two native
children, who were their pupils.
Oahu College, too, interested us. It was built on the land given by
Chief Boki to Hiram Bingham, one of the earliest missionaries, who
donated it to his coworkers as a site for a school for missionary
children. The buildings stand in a beautiful park of ninety acres, in
which are superb royal palms and the finest algaroba trees in Honolulu.
Long ago, in the days of the rush for gold to California, boys were sent
there for an education from the Pacific Coast.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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