A farmer on Maui told me he had sent twenty bags of potatoes to Honolulu, and so overstocked the market that he got back only the price of his bags.

Eggs and all other perishable products, for the same reason, vary much in price, and are at times high-priced and hardly attainable.

It will not do for the farmer to raise much for sale.

The population is not only divided among different and distant islands, but it consists for much the largest part of people who live sufficiently well on taro, sweet-potatoes, fish, pork, and beef--all articles which they raise for themselves, and which they get by labor and against disadvantages which few white farmers would encounter.
For instance, the Puna coast of Hawaii is a district where for thirty miles there is so little fresh water to be found that travelers must bring their own supplies in bottles; and Dr.Coan told me that in former days the people, knowing that he could not drink the brackish stuff which satisfied them, used to collect fresh water for his use when he made the missionary tour, from the drippings of dew in caves.

Wells are here out of the question, for there is no soil except a little decomposed lava, and the lava lets through all the water which comes from rains.