Golfing Round the World
Chapter XVI A Volcanic Round
Honolulu, on the island of Oahu in the Sandwich Islands, now called the Hawaiian islands and forming a territory of the United States of America, is claimed, quite justly, to be one of the most beautiful places in the world. My first view of it, however, was to some extent typical of what one must expect from American efficiency. I was on my way to the bathroom on the morning of our arrival, when, through one of the gangway ports, I saw the blank yellow wall of a huge shed running the full length of the quay to which we were moored.
Honolulu, of course, is one of the most important naval and mercantile ports in the Pacific. I ought to have realised this, but I had derived my ideas from musical comedy scenes of half clothed savages playing the ukulele and romantic tales of adventure in the South Seas, and once more the shattering of my most treasured illusions was almost painful.
The Hawaiian Islands send representatives to Congress and therefore have the doubtful privilege of being dry, in other respects they are most hospitable to foreigners. Now when a country is under the ban of prohibition, it inevitably arouses thirsty thoughts in the minds of even the most abstemious. The day of our arrival was hot and drouthy, so before leaving the ship, I selected an innocent and non-alcoholic apple from the dish of excellent fruit which was always placed in my state-room every night. It was a fine, healthy, good-sized specimen, but inconvenient to carry in a thin tropical coat, so I stowed it in my golf bag, and proceeded to disembark myself. At the foot of the gangway which led into a huge quayside warehouse stood an officer of the U.S.A. customs, who immediately rasped out "What is that bulge in your golf bag?".
I declared the nature of the import and was informed that no fruit could be landed in Hawaii and ordered to take it back to the ship. I fear I must have set at defiance the might and all pervasiveness of the American constitution for I hurled the offending pippin ...... into the dock.
I was now prepared to view Honolulu with equanimity, but on emerging from the mammoth shed I was confronted with skyscrapers in being and in embryo. All signs of native Hawaiian persons or things were as defunct as the Roman occupation of Britain. However the weather was absolutely perfect and proceeding on my way towards the Oahu Country Club I soon began to realise the charm and beauty of the island.
Serrated Peaks form the back ground, deep ravines and forests adorn the slopes. Red brown screes and boulders show up in strong contrast to the vivid green of the foliage. Birds of brilliant plumage and still more gorgeously hued flowers and shrubs delighted the eye, and twittered and bloomed from every garden.
Motoring over perfect roads we came to the club house which is a beautiful open wooden structure, festooned with smilax (or perhaps ficus) and pitched on one of the most desirable sites in the universe.
The golf course is maintained in perfect order like a bowling green and you find the Bermuda turf at its very best.
I imagine the highest point of the Oahu links must be at least a thousand feet above the lowest, and the trouble is that one seems to be always playing uphill so easily and quickly do you and the ball race down these generously wide emerald slopes. Eighteen holes of the very best with the turquoise waters of the Pacific far below, and the towering ridges of overhanging mountains all around you.
One round was strenuous enough and I abandoned golf for the beach of Waikiki. I availed myself of the electric car, on which, though open at the sides, no smoking was allowed: how they seem to revel in the word 'verboten'. From Honolulu it is a drive of some six miles along a superlative avenue of tall palms, almost as crowded with motor traffic as the Champs Elysees. On the way we passed the Old Royal Palace, a stately white square house, amid a grove of palms, with a golden statue of King Kamehameha standing gallantly in the forecourt.
I am told that there are still places among these beautiful islands, where one may find the old Hawaiian race living their primitive native life, but Honolulu itself has the appearance of being the most civilised place on earth, save for this barbarity of prohibited smokes and libations.
Waikiki beach is a place of infinite charm. Most of its denizens spend half their lives in the water, and no wonder. A warm tideless sea with a smooth swell rolling in over fine flat sand, shelving gently from the beach. I took out a surf board, a heavy pointed wooden plank about seven feet long by two broad and made for the line of surf about a quarter of a mile out. Surf-riding however, is a sport that requires skill and practice. The experts do it standing on their heads or balancing on their toes. I was content to navigate my plank over the small wavelets and float with a feeling of utter well being and watch the sun gently sinking in a clear horizon and turning the waters into gold and rubies, emerald and sapphire, turquoise and amethyst. It is worth while going across the world to its extremist edge just for the joy of bathing at Waikiki.
At night the Hawaiian boatmen play the ukulele and sing most agreeably in their native tongue, which is the most melodious of all languages. It contains but twelve letters, and no dentals or sibilants, and only half a gutteral. The names of the islands indicate its beauty, easy and gritless, Hawaii, Kaui, Maui, Oahu. What the substitutes for dear, darling, cherie and douce may be I do not know, but surely there is no more musical word for farewell than 'aloha' unless it be the Japanese good-night 'Saionara'.
The mountains of Oahu rise to about four thousand feet and form a graceful and imposing chain of peaks and ridges with steep ravines and forest covered slopes falling from sheer precipices down to the sea. The whole effect is that of harmonious contrasts of rugged grandeur like the Highlands of Scotland, and the softness and verdure of the Lake District.
Now I had often heard of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, the twin giant volcanoes of Hawaii, the largest island of the group, and as the atlas told me their height is nearly fourteen thousand feet, I had looked forward to a grander and more stupendous Oahu, but in fact Hawaii resembles nothing so much as a Siamese-twin mole hill. At first sight there is nothing imposing about this extraordinary island, except its mass, which certainly increases in impressiveness the more it is contemplated. Imagine a country about half the size of Wales consisting virtually of one large mound sloping evenly in all directions to the sea and you will have by no means a fantastic idea of this remarkable island.
After all the reasonable form which a volcano should take is that of a cone, and Hawaii possessing the two largest active volcanoes in the Pacific, or possibly the largest on this planet should not disappoint expectations in this respect. Nor does it, except for the extreme flatness of the cone.
We went to have a look at Kilauea which is not so much a mountain as part of the long slope of Mauna Loa. It stands about four thousand feet above the Pacific into which you feel you might roll a stone all the way down though it is some fifteen miles away at its nearest point. Kilauea is justly celebrated in that it possesses a crater which might do credit to the moon. It is said to be the largest active crater in the world and presents the appearance of a huge lake of solidified pitch. Steam or sulphur, or whatever it is that volcanoes breathe out is constantly rising in isolated jets from the innumerable cracks and fissurer on its surface, and in considerable mass volume from the heart of the crater which is a wide chasm about fifteen hundred feet deep and several hundred yards across.
The name of this great yawning pit is Halemaumau, (the House of Everlasting Fire). It reminds one vividly of some of Gustave Dore's pictures of the inferno of Dante. It had been quiescent for several years and in the main crater, which is something over four square miles in area, there are trees and shrubs growing near the gaunt cliffs, the whole crater being some five to six hundred feet below the surface of the surrounding country.
It is a strange coincidence which I trust will not be held against me that I am fated to visit all the sensational parts of the world more or less on the eve of their performances. I was in Jamaica a year before the terrific earthquake which wrecked Kingston. Christianssand in Norway was burnt to the ground just 12 months after I paid a brief flying visit between four thirty and seven o'clock one fine summer morning, and now four seasons have scarcely elapsed since I visited in turn Padang-Pandjang in Sumatra, Kyoto in Japan and this same Kilauea in Hawaii, where devastating earthquakes and volcanic eruptions have wrought their deadly havoc and even Vesuvius, Stromboli, and Etna at which I merely glanced have been boiling over and growing fiercely.
To return to Kilauea there are thrilling accounts of its active periods, how the whole of its vast basin was a sea of molten lava, while volumes of red flames rose thousands of feet into the air from the seething pit of Halemaumau, red flames by the light of which you could read a newspaper, while standing on the edge of the crater over two miles away. Quite apart from its uncanny weirdness and the climax of desolation which the crater presents, the surrounding plateau is full of beauty, covered as it is with luxuriant tropical forests, wherein grow giant tree ferns and the great white belladonna lily with blooms as large as a town crier's bell.
It might reasonably be assumed, that in this wild and exhilarating region, I should enjoy a holiday from golf: but the fact was far otherwise as the following account culled from the EMPRESS, the Daily Mail of the "Imperatrice" will quite sufficiently testify :-
"When George H. Jager of Gerrard Cross, Eng., who has been golfing his way round the world, drove on to the green near Volcano House, the spectators gaped in admiration. He drove straight and true. Then to the amazement of all, he sprinted across the green, was seen to give his club another lusty swing and immediately disappear into a rain cloud and a drove of horses. A few seconds later the horses came galloping towards the club house, Mr Jager well up among them. He passed the ninth hole considerably in the lead. Thus had he evolutionized the gentle game of golf during his world whirl."To comment on this egregious paragraph is of course superfluous, but I fancy there was an element of truth in it. I remember that horses and the steam from the cracks in the ground: I recollect getting a most useful three at the first hole on this extraordinary nine whole course of tolerable meadow turf dotted with boulders and short scrubby trees, and I have dim memory of running very fast from hole to hole. But then, why not? At four thousand feet one does run and jump and skip about like a Martian, and again, I was in real haste to return within reasonable distance of a motor car, for we were thirty miles from the "Imperatrice" which was due to sale at five o'clock, and this little venture at volcanic golf took place a long while after lunch.
I should have liked to have lingered in these beautiful islands, where the sun tans even the white men to a becoming shade of copper brown. I saw bathers at Waikiki of unimpeachable white origin, whose skins were indistinguishable from those of the dark Filipinos or Malays, presumably the pigmentary effect of perennial tropic sunshine.
Honolulu is almost as cosmopolitan as Shanghai, my caddie was a Portuguese and I had my hair cut by a Jap, a rather unnerving experience for like myself he was monolingual and we had a grave misunderstanding as to the type of cut. There was none of the 'how will you have it' business, he got straight to work and before I could stop him, he had clipped my head almost bare save for a Franciscan tonsure. I was very distressed about it and only partly reassured when my friends told me I should be in the fashion among the dudes of Oregon and Arizona.
As a rule the Japanese are great linguists. I witnessed a game of billiards in Peking between a vivacious member of this versatile race and a European who might have been anything from a Chicago Irishman to an Ambassador. They conversed in Japanese for confidential purposes, in French for the benefit of a friend who accompanied them, in Chinese when they desired to address the marker, while their running comments on the game were made in fluent English.
While one would like to think of the Sandwich Islands as they were in their pristine blessedness when discovered by Captain Cook, it is a little difficult to summon up the visions of the past, now that cultivation and commerce have developed them into one of the wealthiest communities on earth. Moreover Honolulu is one of the most favoured playgrounds of the American millionnaire and roads and railways and some twenty four thousamd motor cars to say nothing of newspapers with fifty two pages to the issue, which blare forth their headlines in letters four inches high by one inch broad, are apt to destroy the most carefully nurtured illusions.
In spite of its modernity however, the Hawaiians that still remain preserve some of their original simplicity and prowess. I have never seen such a marvellous exhibition of diving and swimming and climbing as was given in an entirely impromptu performance by some twenty or thirty of these debonair smiling Honoluluans, on the departure of the "Imperatrice". As we slowly steamed away from the Quayside towards the entrance to the harbour these magnificent brown skinned athletes seemed suddenly to appear in the water, swimming around the vessel. As the great hawsers were cast off the bollards, they seized the ends and swarmed up to our decks, then clambered up the stanchions on to the boat deck. Momentarily we saw them poise gracefully on a ship's boat or a ventilator, then swoop down like darts into the water fifty feet below.
Time after time this amazing dive was repeated while their mates in the water shouted and laughed and caught or dived for coins thrown by the passengers. A number of the latter had been presented with leis (garlands of flowers) according to the Hawaiian custom of farewell, and these were also thrown down to the swimmers who raced after them and made them into coronets for their black mop-like heads.
As a display of grace, strength and fearless elan I have never seen its equal, and like true artists they were completely at ease going through their performance with zest and obvious enjoyment.