Page:Tales-of-Banks-Peninsula Jacobson 2ed 1893 cropped.pdf/120

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Early Days.
113

feats of horsemanship, such as throwing the lasso, and picking up a coin while going at full gallop, but are surf-board riders, an art which it has been said to be impossible tor foreigners to acquire.

“The natives on Niihau and in this part of Kauai call Mrs. Sinclair ‘Mamma.’ Their rent seems to consist in giving one or more days’ service in a month, so it is a revival of the old feudality. In order to patronise native labor, my hosts dispensed with a Chinese, and employ a native cook, and native women come in and profess to do some of the house-work, but it is a very troublesome arrangement, and ends in the ladies doing all the finer cooking, and superintending the coarser, setting the table, trimming the lamps, cutting out and ‘fixing’ all the needlework, besides planning the indoor and outdoor work which the natives are supposed to do. Having related their proficiency in domestic duties, I must add they are splendid horsewomen, one of them an excellent shot, and the other has enough practical knowledge of seamanship, as well as navigation, to enable her to take a ship round the world! It is a busy life, owing to the large number of natives daily employed, and the necessity of looking after the lunas, or overseers. Dr. Smith, at Koloa, twenty-two miles off, is the only doctor on the island, and the natives resort to this house in great numbers for advice and medicine in their many ailments. It is much such a life as people lead at Raasay, Applecross, or some other remote Highland place, only that people who come to visit here, unless they ride twenty-two miles, must come to the coast in the Jenny, instead of being conveyed by one of David Hutcheson’s luxurious steamers. If the Clansman were ‘put on,’ probably the great house would not contain the strangers who would arrive.”