arising from the whale fishery and its position in the Pacific as a central depôt for whale ships, and the new and more enduring benefits to be received as the warehouse of the sugar-plantations. The business it enjoyed with the whalers has failed almost entirely, and the business it will do for the planters has hardly been felt as yet; so between the two the town is like the ass between the bundles of hay in the fable. It is among the most beautiful and sluggish, unenterprising cities of the world. Sometimes it is cut off from the rest of the world for a month at a time. Ships pass on their way to China, but they do not care to lose the trade-winds by touching, and then the stagnation becomes awful. The weekly papers are filled with profound speculations as to what has become of the monthly packet. The literature of the month is exhausted; there is little to interest in the daily routine of life. The merchants, with nothing to do, meet on the shady side of the streets to smoke their pipes, while the natives drone in the sunshine. Such places are greatly given to scandal and gossip where each man knows all the affairs of his neighbors.

Then woe to the unlucky traveler who has completed his tour and is compelled to wait a China-bound vessel to be once more in motion,-a ship always expected, daily reported, and rarely touching. They see "lights out at sea," and speculate interminably, always sure that it is the "only chance." When at last a ship appears all is excitement for a day or two, and then the citizens slide back into their old habits of brushing off flies and indulging in long meditations to wake up at the next arrival a month later.

Some unfortunates have remained waiting, watching for two months, and taken passage at last to San Francisco in despair, retracing two thousand miles of their journey. Such was the ill-fortune of Mr. Dana, who wrote "Two Years Before the Mast."

THE PAHRI.

By far the most interesting sight to the stranger at Honolulu is the precipice at the head of Nuaanu Valley, called "the Pahri, or Jumpingoff Place." It is but a short horse-back ride from the town, from which, indeed, it is plainly seen. The road leads out through the Nuaanu Valley, gradually rising between beautiful villas hidden in kukui or candle-nut trees and cocoa palms, and between patches of kalo, rice, and sugar cane. The kalo patches are peculiar to the islands and China, the irrigated pits especially belonging to the Nuaanu Valley. A little stream running through it is used to irrigate acre after acre of kalopits as they descend, like terraces of table land, from the head of the valley towards the sea. Few of them contain more than two acres of land, and, as they lie adjacent, walls of turf with foot-paths upon them are thrown up between the pits. The kalo is planted in hills like maize, and the stalks and roots being under water, the broad flat leaves are thrown out like those of the lotus, although in shape they resemble those of the rhubarb or pie-plant. One of these pits will support a native family; every part-root, stalk, and leaf being edible. Baked, the root is superior to the sweet potato and bread-fruit; ground and fermented it is used as poi by all the natives of Hawaii, and constitutes the national food; while from the leaves cooked as spinich is made one of the most piquant and wholesome dishes to be had in any country. It is the most nourish

ing and prolific vegetable known, and is grown so cheaply that with twenty-five cents worth of poi a native can subsist for ten days, which is a rate of expenditure one-third less than that of the Chinese coolie, who has the reputation of living on less than any other human being. A kalopit forty feet square will support a man for a year, the fruit ripening at all seasons.

The kalo lands are most numerous at the foot of the valley where the soil is richest and more thoroughly moistened with the drainings from the hills. Leaving them behind, we find that as we rise the view of the town and bay increases in beauty with every step of ascent. Mountains rise on either hand to the height of two thousand feet, with spurs or buttresses branching off to the valley. All these are covered with small shrubs and ferns, and here and there a waterfall or a single thread of water trickles over their sides.

A single conical hill, with its slightly depressed crater called the Punchbowl, stands to the right of the valley, and just in front of us is thre clear outline of the Pahri, seemingly less than a mile away. Turning, the prospect embraces almost every kind of tropical scenery to be viewed in the islands; the ocean, surf, and beach with its fringe of cocoa-palms; the arid plains at the base of volcanoes where the work of decomposition has barely commenced, and the fertile valleys where water or the hand of man has crumbled the lava-rock into a rich black soil; the volcanoes themselves now extinct, but showing in the bold outlines and the desolation near their summits the fearful work of fire; and last, but not least, the cheerful dwellings of civilized man-a city hidden among trees. By our very side, in the foreground of the picture to make it complete, stands a native hut, like a relic of the past, its grass-thatched sides and roof telling of a semi-barbarism that forty years of christianity have not entirely effaced.

The first hint that you have reached the Pahri probably is that your hat is blown away. The mountains form here a funnel, as it were, through which the trade-winds sweep with incredible force. They quite take the breath away, and no one who has stood on that superb height, glancing over the country below, will fail to acknowledge that the first glimpse was taken with breathless interest.

The precipice is about eleven hundred feet above the country below, and probably two thousand feet above the sea, which is visible about eight miles away. The descent is absolute; no turnings and little hills like steps to break it, but from the rock your horse is standing on, the native huts at your very feet seem far away and dwarfed by distance. The plain below is bounded by a vast amphitheatre, the sides of some gigantic crater on the rim of which is the Pahri. Its diameter probably exceeds twenty miles, possibly twenty-five-it is of little consequence which, for when looking from such a height the mind is satisfied; it is enough that the eye has full sweep for miles on either side.

The rim of this amphitheatre is by no means regular; peaks that would form respectable mountains rise from it, and the outline as seen against the sky has all the ruggedness of a mountain-chain; but the walls are as straight and uniform as if placed by design. They are supported by the familiar lava-buttresses and are quite bare of vegetation. Many conjecture that at some former period the sea played against these grand old buttresses, and, driven by the fierce trade-winds, it has hollowed out

this vast amphitheatre. Even without this conjecture, which is plausible, the shape of other craters and their character will readily explain all the phenomena of the Phari.

The country enclosed by these walls looks as if it might be the garden of Oahu, the grass and the trees are so green and the patches of lava rock so few. Two or three extinct cones rise between the Pahri and the sea; their sides are covered with verdure, and the level land, watered by the showers that fall frequently on the windward side of the mountains, ought to be very rich. It is quite possible that the winds blow too fiercely along the coast to admit of sugar-planting in parts of this valley, for sand-dunes of considerable size are plainly visible from the hill; but if this proves not to be the case, no doubt in time this will be one of the most fertile cane-growing valleys of Oahu. One sign of the native thrift of former times, showing that it has supported a large population, is the number and size of the fish-ponds that line the sea coast as far as the eye can reach. To be seen at all at a distance of eight or ten miles they can be of no mean dimensions, indeed many of them are made by stretching side-walls to the coral reef that skirts the shore. Kameha-meha the Great enclosed whole bays a mile across for his private fish-ponds, and to this day a large fish-pond is the pride of the Kanaka.

What a change has come over these islands since their discovery by the white man! On every side we see traces of a dense population of which the present is but a remnant. Nuaanu Valley was occupied and cultivated almost to the Pahri, and standing there we look down upon the work of past generations.

The causes of this sad decline are but too familiar, the poor Kanaka being no exception among the nations who have illustrated the laws attending the meeting of all nations of the western world with men of the Caucasian race. The decline of the Hawaiians began even before the first attempt to civilize them, in the fierceness of their wars and savage cruelty to prisoners where any were taken. This very Pahri was the scene of a battle which might take its place in Greek or Roman story. It was in the time of Kameha-meha the Great, a savage Alexander who, beginning at Hawaii, conquered all the kings of all the neighboring islands; in short, the whole world as known in bis island empire.

It was not done without terrible struggles, for the people of Maui and Oahu, led on by heroic kings, fought like Spartans, preferring death to defeat. On Oahu the fight began on the beach of Honolulu and continued a long summer's day in the Nuaanu Valley. Step by step the invaders drove the King of Oahu backwards towards the terrible Pahri. He knew to what that backward course was leading him, and with his followers fought in the courage of despair. It was all of no avail,--the Hawaiians were too strong for them. Conquerors of Maui and Lanai, they could not be withstood in the flush of victory, and grimly the warriors of Oahu approached the frightful precipice. Driven together like sheep in the narrow pass there was not even a chance of escape, and although many of them dragged their foemen over the cliff, none were able to elude the savage fury of the victors. Tradition speaks of over a thousand warriors who perished at the foot of the Pahri.

CONGRESS AND THE CURRENCY.

C. H. C.

In his report to Congress, December 9, 1861, Secretary CHASE says: "It is too clear to be reasonably disputed that Congress, under its constitutional powers to lay taxes, to regulate commerce, and to regulate the value of coin, possesses ample authority to control the credit circulation which enters so largely into the transactions of commerce and affects in so many ways the value of coin."

The nation is under obligations to Mr. CHASE for his clear and unqualified assertion of the authority of Congress in this matter. There can be no doubt of the authority, but it has needed authoritative assertion; it is self-evident; without it there can be no adequate sovereignty in the government; no way of commanding or of protecting the resources of the nation. A currency of debt made by corporations, the creatures of State legislation, who make the more profit the more they issue, will infallibly cause the mixed currency to exceed the natural volume at which money maintains its normal value. It will strip the nation of coin by depreciating its value and making it cheaper than merchandise to the exporter, and thus control the general imports and exports of merchandise in spite of the government. It will determine whether money shall be imported or exported; whether commerce shall be active or depressed; whether men shall pay their debts or be plunged into insolvency; and defeat the very purposes of society and government by impairing the obligation of contracts, rendering property insecure, and individuals poor and wretched. It becomes, in spite of the indisputable constitutional powers of Congress, the disturber of commerce and of the value of money by destroying all regulation, obstructing the operation of the natural laws of trade, expelling capital in pure loss, and crippling the power of the government to provide for the common defence and general welfare.

But the constitutional powers here rightly claimed by Secretary CHASE have no necessary connection with, or relation to, banking; they grant no authority to the national government to enter into the banking business, or to authorize individuals to enter into it; nor do they grant any authority to interfere with banking under State law. They have nothing to do with banking, but everything to do with currency making; because currency making interferes with the regulation of commerce, with the value of money, and with the chief ends of national government. Unquestionably they give to Congress full control of the currency throughout the United States. This is the point to which the attention of Congress should be earnestly directed.

When the obvious distinction between banking and currency making shall be comprehended in Congress there will be an end of the prattle about the interference of the national government with State rights in the matter of banking, for it is not banking that is interfered with in controlling the national currency. No matter how or when the business of creating currency was assumed by banks, it is not banking, but a function of national sovereignty with which the States have no rightful or consti

tutional concern whatever. There is, therefore, no necessary collision between the State and national governments in reference to it, and Congress has as plain a right to suppress it as to suppress the levying of duties on imports by the State authorities.

Banking is dealing in money and loanable capital. Currency making is producing money, and credits to pass for money, whether inscribed in book account, and circulated by checks, or certified and circulated in bank or government notes. We are not now considering the right or expediency on the part of the government of circulating its debt as currency, which may well be doubted. Every thing belonging to a running cash account is alike currency, embracing, of course, every item debited to the cash account of every trader, bank, banker, or government. Under an exclusively metallic or money currency it is obvious that every such item would be money, or covered dollar for dollar by money on deposit, and circulated in certificates of deposit or in checks. But the term "deposit," applied to a mere bank credit payable on demand, without money in reserve against it, is, in plain Saxon, a lie. The French term account current," applied to the bank credit, is more honest and more appropriate, although a fiction still so far as it exceeds the money in bank, and is subject to check at sight.

The State governments may very properly authorize corporate banking to any extent they please; but no constitutional power remains with them to authorize the creation of currency in any form whatever; and there is no more reason why bankers should issue fictitious credits, whether in hand-books under the name of "deposit," or in notes, than that an insurance office, or a trust company, or pawnbroker, or any individual trader should do the same thing. Whenever a bank discounts a bill or security that forms the fund out of which it is itself discounted, the transaction is not banking but currency making; and it is a cheat, for there is no such value in existence as such currency pretends to be or to represent. It is simply a fictitious credit, and it makes not a particle of difference in principle or effect whether the credit thus created is circulated in checks, or notes, or in money itself. For instance, suppose A obtains a credit of this character from his bank for $10,000; he has then $10,000 of theoretical "money" more than he had before at the debit of his cash account, and the bank holds so much the more of theoretical "deposit." If he draws the whole sum in specie, the net liabilities of the bank contain the augmentation, its assets and liabilities being reduced alike—and, unless the specie is exported, the volume of national currency also contains the augmentation of $10,000; it will appear probably on deposit in other banks. If this check is answered in bank notes, the effect will be the same; the deposit will appear in other banks; or, if he merely passes his check to another bank, it goes to somebody's credit there as an additional deposit. In any event but that of exporting the coin the national currency is augmented; and if the bank currency be convertible at par, the local value of money is degraded $10,000 by the fictitious deposit, whether it appear in the accounts of banks or in the hands of the people or the government.

"The term money, with respect to the civilized commercial world, means gold and silver; with respect to any particular nation, it means that nation's current coin." -Torrens on the Production of Wealth. London, 1821. Page 305.