William Lowthian Green

He worked for his father’s company in Liverpool and as part of that sailed to Buenos Ayres.  He then joined the rush to California to try his luck finding gold (some of his friends were fortunate, there.)  He wasn’t.

Green’s health failed after some time in the goldfields and in 1850 he determined to go to China – he ended up in Honolulu and worked for Janion, Green & Co. But Green’s passion was not business, social or political. He “was fixed upon the working out of the geological theory of the conformation of the earth's crust.”

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Kahikinui

“The district that resembles Kahiki (Tahiti,) is to Kahiki-nui (Great Tahiti,) the district which is said to be made silvery by the winds (descriptive of the winds bearing salty sea-spray from the ocean.)”  Some archaeologists and historians believe the first Polynesians to arrive at Hawaiʻi came ashore at Kahikinui (Maui;) the place name illustrates the historical ties between Kahikinui (Great Tahiti) and the islands of Tahiti.

Kahikinui was arid along the coast but well-forested above the cloud line. Fishing was good along its rugged shores. Hawaiians lived in isolated communities on the broken lava, scattered from one end of the district to the other close to the sea or slightly inland, wherever potable water was found in a brackish well or a submarine spring offshore.  The ocean off Kahikinui is a wealth of marine resources.

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Kahikolu

Kahikolu means three in one, or the trinity. In 1852, Reverend John D Paris started to build Kahikolu (and completed in 1855.)  It is made of lava rock (with 35-inch thick walls; heavy timbers were dragged from the forest, and the koa shingles and lumber for pulpit and pews were brought from the koa forest a number of miles up the mountain side. It still stands above Nāpoʻopoʻo.

Kahikolu Church was the Mother Church for the South Kona area; however, the church was abandoned in 1953.  The congregation later reorganized and repaired the church and in August 1984, Kahikolu Church re-opened its doors.  (Kahikolu is one of two surviving stone churches on Hawaiʻi.)  On August 15, 1993, Henry ʻŌpūkahaʻia’s remains were returned to Hawai‘i from Cornwall and laid in a vault facing the ocean at Kahikolu Church.

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Images Of Old Hawaii

As some of you might suspect, I have been experimenting with the distribution of these posts over the past month.

I am still doing the daily posts and one notable change is that the albums and full stories are at ImagesOfOldHawaii.com .  (You can always go directly there to get them.)

In addition, summaries are posted on Facebook, Blogger, Google+ and LinkedIn (with a tweet going out on Twitter, as well.)

If you missed some posts in the past month, you can go to ImagesOfOldHawaii.com and catch up (there have been some pretty cool stories.)

We are working on another experiment to automate the postings (it used to take me about an hour each morning to post all the images and stories on the various sites – we have reduced the time, but are looking at another approach.)

In addition, to make sure you don’t miss a post, we have started a mailing list that will automatically notify you if a new story has been posted.

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Thanks for following.

Peter.

Kauai’s South Shore

“The history of Kōloa is in many ways Hawai‘i’s history in microcosm.”  (Wilcox, Kauai Album)  The native Hawaiians along the Kōloa shore were the first to see the white man in Hawaiʻi.  It was in 1778, along Kauai’s South Shore, that Captain James Cook first traveled, landed and made "contact".

One of the first exports from Hawaiʻi was sandalwood trees; Hawai‘i’s whaling era began in 1819 and replaced the sandalwood trade.  In 1835, the first commercially-viable sugar plantation was started in Hawaiʻi at Kōloa.  When Hawaiʻi became a US territory, tourism boomed, hotels blossomed.  Kōloa-Poʻipū hosts an organized, supportive Poʻipū Beach Resort Association.

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The Macfarlanes

Henry (Harry) and Eliza Macfarlane settled in Hawaii at Waikiki in 1846, coming from Scotland by way of Australia.  One lasting legacy at their Kaluaokau home is the banyan tree Henry and Eliza planted – we now more commonly refer to the former home site as the International Market Place. Among other things, the Macfarlanes owned and operated hotels (in Honolulu and Waikiki.)

George Macfarlane was Chamberlain (attending to the personal needs of the King) and Private Secretary to King Kalākaua (and served as the medium of communication between the King and his Ministers.)  Son Clarence was a competitive sailor; he invited West Coast sailors to race to the Hawaiian Islands from San Francisco (the starting point was moved to Los Angeles, due to the 1909 San Francisco earthquake – we now call it the Transpacific Yacht Race (TransPac.)

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The Perfect Nut

In 1857, German-Australian botanist Ferdinand von Mueller gave the genus of this plant the scientific name Macadamia – named after von Mueller’s friend Dr John Macadam, a noted scientist and secretary to the Philosophical Institute of Australia.  Macadam is also associated with Australian Rules Football and the first-ever lecture at the Melbourne University Medical School (he went on to become Professor of Theoretical and Practical Chemistry at Melbourne University in 1865.)

Macadamia seeds were first imported into Hawaiʻi in 1882 by William Purvis; he planted them in Kapulena on the Hāmākua Coast. (Purvis is also notable for importing the mongoose – to rid his Hāmākua sugar plantation of rats.)  Later (1892,) Robert and Edward Jordan planted the trees at the former's home in Nuʻuanu on Wyllie Street in Honolulu.  This introduction became the source of the principal commercial varieties cultivated in Hawaiʻi.    Horticulturalist Luther Burbank is credited with calling macadamias the ‘perfect nut.’

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