From Sword to Share; or, a Fortune in Five Years
at Hawaii. By Captain H. Whalley Nicholson. (W. H. Allen and Co.) —A gentleman
• who has devoted himself to the use of the "sword " and the " share "
• may be excused for not being very skilful in the use of the pen. Captain Nicholson's style is indeed of the strangest, the most difficult thing to excuse in it being the attempts at humour. Still, his book is full of facts, curiously mixed together, indeed, and not always exact . (surely, the annual consumption of rice in the Sandwich Islands cannot be "four hundred million pounds," p. 143, giving about twenty pounds per day for every man, woman, and child), but not withont their value. It is a long time before we are allowed to reach "the fortune in five years;" when we do, the prospect is satisfactory. The money is to be made by sugar, which is a rapidly increasing article Of export. The amount has grown from less than a million pounds five-and-twenty years ago, to about sixty millions in 1880. The financial results of sugar-planting may be thus stated. You go out with £1,300, and you come back in five years (if your desires are satisfied with a modest competency) with £7,000.
Previous page
