There is not much hope of increasing the revenue from new and still untouched sources, for there are but few such.
The taxable industries and wealth of the Islands can not be very greatly increased.

Finding yourself in a tropical country, with a charming and equable climate, and with abundant rains, you are apt to think that, given only a little soil, many things would grow and could be profitably raised.
It is one of the surprises of a visitor to the Hawaiian group to discover that in reality very few products succeed here.
Coffee was largely planted, and promised to become a staple of the Islands; but a blight attacked the trees and proved so incurable that the best plantations were dug up and turned into sugar; and the export of coffee, which has been very variable, but which rose to 415,000 pounds in 1870, fell to 47,000 pounds in the next year, and to 39,276 pounds in 1872.
Sea-island cotton would yield excellent crops if it were not that a caterpillar devours the young plants, so that its culture has almost ceased.

Only 10,000 pounds were exported in 1872.

The orange thrives in so few localities on the Islands that it is not an article of commerce: only two boxes were exported last year, though San Francisco brings this fruit from Otaheite by a voyage of thirty days.

A burr worse than any found in California discourages the sheep-raiser in some of the Islands.