Back to the Classics #7

I read this book for the 2019 Back to the Classics Reading Challenge.

Classic from Africa, Asia, or Oceania. In 1979, I travelled with other college students to Japan on an exchange program that was to give me a course in life. Anyway, we had a multi-hour layover in Honolulu. We were met the by the relatives of one of our group, a Japanese-American guy. They provided a big picnic. I especially remember not only the pineapple (fresh, I discovered, is way better than canned – hey, I was young) but also the cheerful hosts. I’ve always had a fond memory of Hawaiians.

Six Months in the Sandwich Islands – Isabella Bird

This 1875 travel narrative was among the first of Bird's books, her first big project and success after The Englishwoman in America (1856). Based on letters to her sister Henrietta, her stories about her seven-month stay are written in an enthusiastic tone.

A good botanist, Bird was quite taken by lushness of the tropical forest and all its wonderful flora. She writes about flowers and ferns with a sparkle not often found in her other narratives. A good geologist, her stories of visiting volcanos Mount Loa and Mount Kilauea are exciting, even if a little long, as she herself admits. 

She’s also something of an anthropologist of the participant-observer school. Staying with friends at Puna, near the end of the book, she lollygags with friends, saying “I developed a capacity for doing nothing, which horrified me….” In another passages she says of the locals:

But the more I see of them the more impressed I am with their carelessness and love of pleasure, their lack of ambition and a sense of responsibility, and the time which they spend in doing nothing but talking and singing as they bask in the sun, though spasmodically and under excitement they are capable of tremendous exertions in canoeing, surf-riding, and lassoing cattle.

These letters, often in the present tense, give a nice “here and now” feeling to the book.

I’ve spent much time with Miss Bird on the road. See Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (1879) and Among the Tibetans (1894). I would recommend those, however, only to readers with a strong or scholarly interest in the countries covered, old-time travel narratives or Victorian lady travelers. But I’d suggest Six Months in the Sandwich Islands to any serious reader into Hawaii or Oceania.