THE REPUBLICAN-JOURNAL
Kilauea One of the
World's Famous Active Volcanoes — Famous Cliff of Nuuana
Pali-Shark Fishing
a Favorite Pastime
^end of the Volcano.
,v
By KATtfEUINK LOUISE SMITH
^ p j L L i the world was shot-Rod at
A d the earthquakes in TuU.o and
W I s a n t a Barbara, but few t \ tf • •.•ept scientists realize tuat the
whole Pacific area M'cnis d.-iuibi-a
In a minor way by the ,:,i|»ra of
.Mother Earth. The Hawaii National Park area was distinctly
changed at the same time that the
Toklo earthquake took place. The
Kilauea volcano in this park is
4,000 feet high and has been
called "the safety valve of the P a cific."
A few days before the Toklo
earthquake t h e fifty acres of molten
lava within the pit was within one
hundred feet of the rim, when
suddenly something unknown took
place—possibly in line with the
Japanese convulsion.—and all the
liquid contents drained away, to
later appear in fresh earthquake
cracks in a tropical forest eight
miles distant.
A Veritable Inferno
In another few months the pit
was filled nearly to the brim with
fifty acres of swirling lava dotted
with bubbling fountains.
Fiery
geysers of molten rock shot up one
h-undred and fifty feet and finally a
high, dome formed in the center of
the lake and as this collapsed it
was replaced by an enormous
whirlpool one hundred feet across
into which the lava swirled with a
roar t h a t shook the ground. Later,
the lava spouted like a roaring
geyser, its fiery spray reaching 200
feet high.
During the display persons were
prohibited from approaching the
pit but fully six thousand visitors
watched from outside the danger
zone. Now, the volcano is quiet
enough so t h a t in the last few
months fifty thousand people have
stood on t h e rim of the fire pit.
Scientists say t h e r e Is no danger
and in the last one hundred and
thirty years only one death has
been charged against Kilauea.
An Active "Volcano
Kilauea is approached from the
_E.ort of Hilo and after passing
through the P a r k entrance you
drive to the Kilauea "Volcano House,
situated on the outer walls of the and the beautiful lao valley. Kauai
great crater. It is a unique place has been called the garden island
and in its registers can be found because its seashore and mountain
the names' of Kings, Queens, ranges are covered with tropical
Princes and Presidents who have vegetation and flowers. Any one
written their impressions of the going to the National Park will dewonders. In front spreads three sire to see these islands as well as
thousand acres of glistening lava Kealakakua Bay, where Captain
which at various times has been Pook landed and afterwards met
red hot and in motion. There is a his death.
Crater Trail leading to the rim of
Honolulu, itself, and the island
the fire pit which winds over and of Oahu possess wonderful beauaround hundreds of queer lava for- ties. Perhaps the chief of these is
mations resembling animals and Nuuana Pali, a great cliff that exmonsters.
tends from the sea and that is not
The massive mountain called far from the city of Honolulu. It
Manna • Loa—Long Mountain—is is world renowned.
It narrows
also in the Park, but chief interest from a mile at the base to two
centers around Kilauea for here hundred feet at the top and the
are not alone volcanic wonders but view it affords has been called the
caves with wonderful formations finest in the world. There is a fine
and stalactites pendant from the roadway, a triumph of engineering
roof. There are deserts of volcanic skill, which leads to the top. As
ash from which pour cloud's of far as the eye can reach the white
steam and in which may be found surf dashes while on beyond are
the fossil footprints of the natives numerous small islands with varythat escaped from an eruption as ing shades of green on the mounfar back as 1790. In other sections tain sides.
near Mauna Loa can be found
It was due to an ambitious naevery variety of Hawaiian tree and tive chief that all these islands
shrub and the rare and beautiful were' classified under the general
sword plant found no where else name of Hawaii. He ruled on
in the world and which must be Hawaii island, conquered the other
preserved if the specie is not to islands, did away with their rulers
become extinct.
and made one kingdom of them.
Various Attractions Of Hawaiian Then, Captain Cook came. Later
Group
the missionaries worked among
Though Honolulu and Hilo and the natives and as it became evithe islands on which they are sit- dent a better form of government
uated are the best known of the was needed diplomatic negotiations
Hawaiian group, for there are eight with the United States 'were entered
main islands, every island has its into and many Hawaiians rejoiced
attractions. The island of Maui when the Stars and Stripes floated
has many picturesque mountains Instead Of the Hawaiian flag.
,.
Center Of Trade
Hawaii has always been a convenient place for trans-shipment
and so its business activity has kept
these islands before the commercial world ever since sandalwood
was the chief medium of exchange.
AVhales. laid the foundation of
many a fortune but now the chief
, export is sugar though the pineapple industry is a close second.
Several steamship lines touch at
the islands and United States
Transports call. Some American
sailing vessels carry lumber, railroad t'.es and other freight between
the islands and the United States.
Some go to San Francisco, others
go to New York by way of the
P a n a m a Canal, and a few boats go
by way of Magellan Straits.
Hawaii is up-to-.da*te. The best
and newest things from other countries are imported and some business houses have been in .existence
for a hundred years. Social life is
delightful in many respects and the
presence of the army officers and
their wives add to (he enjoyment.
There are a number of interesting
things that one discovers in Hawaii.
As an illustration the natives claim
there are no snakes, reptiles or
insects more dangerous than a wasp
and there are no common poisonous
plants like the poison oak and ivy.
When you get there you find out
that the islands are an all-the-year
round resort a n d ' they are so delightful both winter and summer
that Mark Twain proclaimed them
"the land of all the world that
haunts sleeping or waking." The
people who live there say the samct
and they can impart the information in English, Japanese, Chinese,
Portuguese or Spanish as the case
may be.
Outdoor Snoj'ts
These hospitable islanders keep
their doors always open and over
the lintels is the word "Aloha,"
which mean "weleomp." Outdoor
life i ^ t h e chief attraction and be-
caxtse of this there are some unique
and remarkable sports. At (he famous bathing beach of "Waikalci
surf boating and surf riding arc
seen in [heir perfection. The beach
is free from irregularities and there
are no under-tow conditions so
that the bathers can stand on the
surf boards, dash shoreward, and
remain on top of the highest waves.
Tears are spent in acquiring proficiency. . A coral reef at this place
keeps the s:a free from.sharks but
they abound in other waters and
shark fishing is another favorite
pastime. Hawaiians have enthused
strangers so that largo parties go
in for the sport. Seated in gasoline
launches they cautiously approach
the quarry and quick as a flash the
harpoo7i is either thrown into the
back of the shark or he is induced
to snap at a hook. A spice of
danger makes the sport all the
more fascinating and this is frequently afforded when the fish tows
the boat some distance before he
is killed. Preparations for a shark
parly are made some, days in advance • by anchoring an animal's
carcass off. the shore so that the
smell will lure the sharks to their
doom.
I t surprises many to learn that
the islands are not^a possession of
the United States, but as a matter
of fact they, banded together, are
a full-fledged territory. Hawaii and
Alaska are now the only two territories left. One could enumerate
many surprises in Hawaii from libli
that are colored to tobogganing
down mountains on ti leaves. And
the legends are equally fascinating.
From the archives of old Hawaiian
newspapers one can glean many
interesting stories of the early beliefs before the advent of the missionaries in 1820.
Legend OX Pclc And K a m a J?usa
These were then the Sandwich
Inlands and prominent among the
legends are some connected -with,
the volcanoes of the Hawaiian National Park. The natives believe
implicitly in them. When the white
persons have feared that lava from,
the craters might flow toward the
sea and destroy the seaport towns,
the natives rest secure in an ancient
legendary agreement made by Pele
the goddess of the volcanoes and
the Hawaiian pig god. Kama Pusa.
In a terrible fight hundreds of
years ago between these powerful
legendary heroes peace was obtained by Kama. Pusa promising
that lava should never flow through
the towns to the sea and the natives think the god has kept his
word.
The natives are stalwart and
healthy. They are natural musicians and always call their country "Hah-vy-ee," giving the vowels
in the word full value. F a r enough
south to escape frost and far
enough north to escape tropical
heat, Hawaii has a mild, even climate which is the envy of all
travelers.
Thus weather has much to do
with the activities of the insect,
helping or discouraging.
This
year, as already said, was a bad
one for the weevil. But, luckily
for us, it has many enemies, in the
absence of which it would become
an unconquerable pest, making it
hopeless to try to raise cotton.
These enemies are other insects,
most of them tiny parasitic flies
which lay their eggs in the bodies
of the weevil grubs. Out of the
eg-gs are hatched maggots, which
devour the grubs.
Thr- boll weevil has bcconi')
within recent years t^o serious ^n
economic menace that the Bureau
of Entomoiogy has been obliged to
devote a vast deal of study to the
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The Bug That Makes Most of Our Clothing
Cost So Much—Means Have Been Found
For Putting a Stop To Its Depredations
To a Great Extent At Least - The
Cotton As a Food Plant.
^I-IE cotton-boll weevilByis JKENJE
get- find
that the pestiferous bug, this
BAGELE
ting licked,
year, ate enough cotton to make
•There is no doubt about it. seven hundred million dresses. If
1
The government Bureau of there are forty million women in
-Entomology says so.
the United States (disregarding fe, Economically speaking, * it is male children), that would mean
news the importance of which can more than seventeen dresses for
hardly be overestimated. F o r cot- every one of them.
ton clothes the world; we produce
It should be explained that the
four-fifths of all that is grown on
the earth, and the price of every relatively small damage done by
garment, sheet, handkerchief, or the boll weevil this year was not
other article of that material is due chiefly to the new means
considerably higher today than it adopted for fighting it. Weather
would be if that devouring bug was against the insect. There was
Iiad not invaded the United States. a long dry spell in summer with
This year the weevil ate about bright sunshine, conditions whiph
1,400,000 bales of cotton. Only that hinder its breeding and developmuch, as against nearly three times ment.
But the n"w scheme is doing efthat quantity in 1923. Eut think
fective
and
steadily-progressive
what it means.
A bale of cotton weighs GOO work. It is slowly but surely wippounds. One pound will make three ing out the pest. Already over exsquare yards of cotton cloth. Thus tensive areas in the South it has
a single bale may be considered to added from 500 to 1,000 pounds of
cotton per acre to the crop gathrepresent 1,500 yards.
Multiply that by 1,400,000, and ered.
The secret lies in calcium aryou find that in 1025 the weevil
destroyed enough cotton to make senate, which, powdered and mixed
over two billion square yards of with 100 times its volume of ordicloth. That much cloth in one nary road dust, is distributed over
piece would cover more than half the cotton plants by horse-drawn
the State of Khode Island.
It machines employing blowers that
-would, if spread out, cover nearly discharge the stuff in clouds of
six hundred and eighty square finely-divid,ed particles.
By this means every plant is
miles!
coated with the poison dust, which
700,000,000 Dresses
sticks, the work being done at
Three square yards of cotton night, when the- air is calm and
cloth will make a woman's dress. the plants moist. Every stalk and
One bale of the raw stuff, there- leaf, every bud and boll, receives
fore, .would furnish material for its dose.
fifteen hundred dresses. Do that
Fatal to the bug when it starts
multiplication over again, and you to fMd. St «iilckiy curls up and
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dies. Mot all are killed, but a
great majority succumb, so that the
farmer is enabled to gather a full
crop.
Flying Machines On The Job
The most successful method of
distributing the poison dust, however, is by airplanes. This idea was
developed
through
experiments
made by the Bureau of Entomology.
The plane is equipped with a tank
that holds some hundreds of
pounds of the calcium arsenate
mixture. As it flies over the cotton
fields, at a height of fifty to 100
feet, the poison dust is emitted
downward through a hopper, and
the blast of air from the propeller
drives it in clouds far and wide.
It is really most interesting. For
upon the success of this poisondusting :scheme depends in large
measure the future of cottongrowing in this country. And, unquestionably, it is doing the work.
The boll weevil is beginning to be.
beaterIts effectiveness will become
more manifest when the cottongrowers have had time to become
educated in the new method. As
yet they are only beginning to
learn. As they become more skilled
in the use of the poison, they will
get better results.
In the meantime the government
Bureau of Chemistry is experimenting on another line, hoping to "get"
the boll weevil by a means that
seems .hilghly ingenious.
Apparently the insect is attracted to the cotton plant by its sense
of smell. The Bureau of Chemistry
has extracted from the plant its
essential odoriferous substance. If
this substance can be artificially
made by synthesis in large quantity
and cheaiply enough, it can be used
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borhood of Vera Cruz, it tackled
cultivated cotton fields and proceeded to work such havoc that
many growers abandoned t h a t industry. Its spread was alarmingly
rapid, and, extending its range
northward, it crossed over into the
United States in 1892, near Brownsville, Texas. A big river—the Rio
Grande in this case—is no barrier
to an enterprising and predatory
bug.
Two years later it liad fairly
established itself in Texas, -where
it found itself in a boll-weevil
paradise, a whole State growing its
chosen food, and growing it in just
the way to promote to the utmost
limit the bug's extraordinary powers of multiplication. I n ' a decade
its average annual spread was
5,640 square miles. From 1901 to
1911 its annual gain of territory
occupied averaged 26,880 square
miles. In 191G it acquired an additional 71,800 square miles. At
the present time more than 600,000
square miles are infested by the
insect, or nearly nine-tenths of our
entire cotton-growing area.
Manner Of Its Reproduction
To look at, it is not much of a
bug. Yet it is man's most de-struptive insect enemy.
A tiny
beetle, only one-fourth of an inch
in length, with a long snout. The
female, when she gets ready to lay,
bores a hole in the cotton-bud or
cotton-boll, and deposits her eggs
inside. Thereby she makes sure
of a ready-at-hand food supply for
her offspring. From the eggs, a
few days later, are liatched minute'
grubs, which feed on the interior
of the boll or the bud, destroying
it.
, •
It is more than ordinarily inters
eating to consider that cotton, if it
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as bait to draw the weevils away
from the cotton plants. Success in
this endeavor has not yet been attained, but experts are working on
the problem in the laboratory.
Cotton Its Sole Diet
The boll weevil is able to subsist
on only one kind of plant. If during a single year no cotton were
grown in this country, the insect,
in the United States, would be
wiped entirely out of existence. It
might be well worth while to try
that, were it not for certain considerations which make It obviously
impracticable.
Of course, if this were done, the
price of cotton would soar to an
amazing height, and all goods made
of it would become almost impossibly dear. But that is not the
main point. The chief difficulty
lies in the fact that, with prohibition of planting established by law,
cotton would nevertheless be secretly grown in out-of-the-way
places, which, serving as nurseries
for the weevil, would give the insect
quick opportunity to spread when
the embargo was'removed.
If this were not enough, there is
the further consideration that the
bug, even though entirely exterminated in the United States, would
soon invade our territory anew
from Mexico. That was where it
came from originally, being native
to the highlands of that country,
where, a species, of no economic
importance to start with, it fed on
wild cotton.
Not until the early forties did it
excite any particular notice. Appearing in numbers in the neigh-
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were not cultivated at all for its
precious fiber, would be largely
grown for food. Indeed, it is one
of our most important food plants,
although its value as such has been
recognized only within
recent
years.
Cottonseed flour was first made
in 1909. Bread made of it is
wholesome, palatable, and very nutritious. In effect it is bread and
meat combined, one might say, inas much as it contains, three times
as much protein (the stuff that
goes to make muscle and blood)
as lean beefsteak.
I t is rather
dark in color, somewhat resembling graham bread in appearance.
Lard And Butter F r o m Cotton Seed
Cottonseed is today an important
by-product of the cotton crop. In
total quantity, it amounts to about
5,000,000 tons. Inasmuch as only
orfe-fifth of it is needed for planting, there, are 4,000,000 tons left
over for food uses.
Nearly all of it is pressed for oil,,
w-hich is one of the best of edible
oils. The ordinary grade of refined
cottonseed oil is known as "prime
summer yellow," and from it are
made "winter oils," which are so
called • because they remain fluid
a n d ' limpid' in freezing weather.
Summer oil congeals at low temperatures.
The yellow summer oil is bleached
and combined with refined tallow
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in the manufacture of what are
known in the trade as "lard compounds." Thirty per cent, of the
cottonseed oil now produced in the
United States is bought by packing houses and used for making
"hogless lard."
A super-refined grade of cottonseed oil is utilized in the manufacture of artificial butter. I t looks
and tastes so much like the dairy
product that most people cannot
tell the difference. The oil being
yellow, it gives to the butter a natural color.
Much of our cottonseed oil was
formerly used for making soap, but
now, owing to the growing demand
for it as food, it has become too
expensive. In Mexico, however, immense quantities of it are converted
into soaps, toilet and' laundry,
which we import largely.
Influence. Of The Weather
Hot sun hinders the breeding
and development of the boll Weevils; so likewise does severe cold.
A mild winter followed by a rainy
and cloudy summer favors their
multiplication. When late autumn
arrives, they seek shelter in haystacks, in hedges, in field litter, or
even in the Spanish moss that
dangles from ^rees. An ordinary
winter will kill a great majority of
them, but there are always enough
survivors to start, breeding in the
spring.
problem, even establishing experimental outdoor cages on a lai'Ke
scale, wherein cotton was grown
and the insect bred under all sorts,
of conditions. Mechanical devices
innumerable for destroying the
pest have been patented. But until
now no method of fighting it has
proved at all successful.
All kinds of poisons were tried
before it was ascertained that the
proper lethal stun! was calcium
arsenate, which is a mixture of
arsenic and lime. It does the business.
Cotton Goods Should Be Cheaper
The experts of the Bureau of-Entomology made t h a t disco very, and
it was they who developed the
method of using the poison, by distributing it in clouds over the fields.
It was they who h i t upon the idea
of employing airplanes for the purpose, and who invented the requisite mechanism.
In effect, the cure for the mischief seems to have been found.
The boll weevil has got to go. It
is expected that, as years go on,
the damage done by the insect-will
be steadily reduced, until at length
it is brought practically under control. When that is accomplished,
we shall have cheaper cotton, and
all things made of it will cojme
down in price. "We shall have
beaten the bug, and its defeat will
put money into our pockets.
A CLEW IS A THREAD
In reading newspapers and books
'the word "clew" is often met up
with, but there are probably few
of us who realize where this word
came from and why it is used in connection with efforts to solve a
mystery. Tracing the word back to
its source discloses that it came
from an old Anglo-Saxon word
"cleowen," meaning "a ball of
thread." When it came into use in
the English language, in t h e form
of "clew," its first meaning was. a
ball of thread or the thread itself.
With this as a starting point the
word was adopted for the purpose
of denoting "that which guides oxdirects a person in anything, of a
doubtful or intricate nature, or.
gives a hint leading to the solution
of a mystery." In other words a
clew came to be looked - upon as a
thread leading in the direction in
which a detective or the police
should go in order to locate important facts bearing ox the question with which they are interested.