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a protectorate and the refusal of the United States on the ground that the relations of Hawaii with the United States were sufficient for its protection; and what was termed "the continuous policy of exclusion" from 1820 to 1893 of all foreign influence save that of the United States was also pointed out. It was shown that the ultimate negotiation of an annexation treaty was inevitable, and under such circumstances "a consummation, not a change." The organic and administrative details were to be left to the judgment of Congress, and the document closed with an expression of the belief that the duty of the United States would be performed with "the largest regard for the interests of this rich insular domain, and for the welfare of the inhabitants thereof."

This, in brief, is the history of the relations of the two countries within the past two decades. All that Hawaii possesses of civilisation, of religion, of law, and of education is of purely American origin.

Whatever may be the ultimate decision of Congress (which may or may not be known before this is printed), to those who are familiar with Hawaii, with the characteristics of the natives, decimated and corrupted as they have been by disease, by the vices. which contact with civilisation has engendered, their improvidence and inability to govern, there are but three alternatives-the anarchy of chronic revolution,

AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE.

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the abandonment of the Islands by Europeans and Americans, or their permanent absorption by some stronger and stable power. Whether this is destined to be Japan, England, or the United States time and legislation will decide.

LONDON, December 1897.

M. H. K.

HAWAII AND A REVOLUTION.

CHAPTER I.

THE FIRST IMPULSE.

N 1892, in the course of a conversation with a

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friend who had recently returned from the Hawaiian Islands, it was remarked that a revolution, with a demand for annexation to the United States, was impending. At the time of his visit there was apparent tranquillity; but those who were capable of forecasting the future, basing their prophecies upon past history, were of the opinion that the crisis might come at any moment. The people might go to bed at night, and in the morning wake to confront revolution and anarchy and find themselves without a government.

So far as it was destined to influence my personal movements within the four years that followed, the speech was a momentous one. It meant thousands of miles of travel by land and sea, hours and days

and weeks of arduous and responsible toil, conferences with personages in exalted places, interviews with heads of governments, and, mingled with these rapid changes of time and place, harrowing anxiety and racking and protracted physical pain. It will be impossible to write of it impersonally, so indulgence must be craved for the recurrence of the personal pronoun.

With the natural instinct of a "newspaper woman' -which is the preferred American substitute for the more polite English term "lady journalist "—I was immediately inspired with an ardent desire to be present when the crisis came. This was not the gratification of a nature disposed to bloodshed and violence, but the realisation of the professional opportunity to be the one special correspondent in the field. With this was a more creditable desire to witness the actual making of history, the evolution of a people from a semi-barbarous monarchy to a state of intelligent and rational self-government.

My friend took his leave, and forgot all about his speech. For more than a year I brooded over it, and never ceased to plan and devise ways and means of carrying my plans into effect. To be there prior to prospective revolution, and so able to give an accurate résumé of the causes which led to it, or, better still, at the time, became the only thing in life worth

living for. It might have seemed an altogether hopeless ambition to a woman of very limited

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