There are very few foreigners, and they appear on the whole a good
set, and very friendly among each other. Many of them are actively
interested in promoting the improvement of the natives, but it is
uphill work, and ill-rewarded, at least on earth. The four sugar
plantations employ a good deal of Chinese labour, and I fear that
the Chinamen are stealthily tempting the Hawaiians to smoke opium.
All the world over, however far behind aborigines are in the useful
arts, they exercise a singular ingenuity in devising means for
intoxicating and stupifying themselves. On these islands
distillation is illegal, and a foreigner is liable to conviction and
punishment for giving spirits to a native Hawaiian, yet the natives
contrive to distil very intoxicating drinks, specially from the root
of the ti tree, and as the spirit is unrectified it is both fiery
and unwholesome. Licences to sell spirits are confined to the
capital. In spite of the notoriously bad effect of alcohol in the
tropics, people drink hard, and the number of deaths which can be
distinctly traced to spirit drinking is quite startling.
The prohibition on selling liquor to natives is the subject of
incessant discussions and "interpellations" in the national
legislature.
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