You will see that while the Hawaiians have so rapidly decreased that all over the Islands you notice, in waste fields and desolate house places, the marks of this loss, foreigners have not been attracted to fill up their places.

And this in spite of the facts that the climate is mild and healthful, the price of living cheap, the Government liberal, the taxes low, and life and property as secure as in any part of the world.

One would think that a country which offers all these advantages must be a paradise for poor men; and I do not wonder that in the United States there is frequent talk of "annexing the Islands." But, in fact, they offer no advantages, aside from those I have named, to white settlers, and they have such serious natural disabilities as will always--or, at least, for the next two or three millions of years--repel our American people, and all other white settlers.
In the first place, there is very little of what we call agricultural land on the Islands.

They are only mountains rising from the sea, with extremely little alluvial bottom, and that usually cut up by torrents, and water-washed into gulches, until it is difficult in many parts to find a fair field of even fifty acres.

From these narrow bottoms, where they exist, you look into deep gorges or valleys, out of which issue the streams which force their way through the lower fields into the sea.
These valleys are never extensive, and are always very much broken and contracted.