Hawaii

A hundred and fifty years ago, Capt. James Cook, British seadog, who had sailed the Pacific from the Antarctic and the South Sea Islands to Alaska, anchored his good ship Resolution in Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii. There was joy among the natives, for the Great White God and his crew of Demi-Gods had come at last. In the shade of the ohia-lehuas, the priests chewed the meat of coconuts. Then they removed the juice from their mouths and rubbed it on the face and arms of Capt. Cook. He was fed with the flesh of sacrificed animals, washed down by the remains of the juice. Every day there were new ceremonies, until Capt. Cook sailed away several weeks later. One of his crew had died; the Hawaiians thought that rather peculiar, but otherwise they were satisfied with the visit of the Great White God.

When Capt. Cook returned a week later, they were already convinced that he was no god. Trouble brewed. Early one morning, Capt. Cook and his men tried to capture the king as hostage for a stolen cutter; the natives attacked, stabbed Capt. Cook. . . . Years later, the breastbone of Capt. Cook was found among the sacred relics of one Hawaiian clan.

It was the coming and not the going of Capt. Cook that the U. S. territory of Hawaii prepared to celebrate last week. Grass huts were built on Waikiki beach, Honolulu, to show how the natives lived 150 years ago when white man first gazed upon them.* The peaceful tasks of weaving lauhala mats, pounding poi, fashioning tapa cloth were conspicuous in the pageant.

Governor Wallace Rider Farrington welcomed many a bigwig from Great Britain and the U.S. to his now contented islands, where the natives ride the waves with surf boards and where the weather is so good that nobody needs to write about it. Japanese make up the largest population group, but business is chiefly in the hands of people from the U. S.

Symbolic, indeed, is the giant pineapple, 64 feet high, made of steel, containing 100,000 gallons of water, which supplies the automatic sprinkler system of the largest fruit canning factory in the world-- the James D. Dole's Hawaiian Pineapple Co. Mr. Dole is perhaps the richest resident of Hawaii and its most ardent publicist. Another famed Dole, the late Sanford Ballard (TIME, June 21, 1926), was responsible for stirring up the revolution which ousted Queen Liliuokalani, was the first and only President of Hawaii (1894-1900), was a leader in getting the U. S. to annex the islands.

Who's Who of Hawaii would not omit Riley H. Allen, editor of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin; Frank Atherton, banker, sugar and shipping man; Alexander Budge, director in pineapple, sugar, shipping and hotel firms.

* Unless the Spaniard Gaetano, who is thought to have sighted the Islands in 1555, touched on the Hawaiian shore.