Ones About

Two New Ones About Hawaii

If the story presented in Richard A. Pierce’s book “Russia’s Hawaiian Adventure, 1815-1817” had had a different outcome, it is pretty safe to say that Dr. A. Grove Day would not have gathered together any “Stories of Hawaii” by Jack London.

These books on the islands at the top end of the Polynesian triangle happened to reach “PlM’s” reviewing desk together.

THE first book—or, rather, collec tion of previously unpublished documents—reveals the little known story of how George Anton Schaffer, a German surgeon working for the Russian-American Company, got a foothold in the Hawaiian archipelago 150 years ago which could easily have led to political control there today by the Russians.

In 1815, Schaffer was sent to Hawaii from Alaska to regain possession of the cargo of a Russian- American Company ship which had been wrecked on the island of Kauai.

This island was ruled by Kaumualii, a rival of the famous Kamehameha, who eventually be came “king” of the whole Hawaiian group.

Antagonism

Schaffer went first to Hawaii (the largest island in the group) and then to Oahu (site of Honolulu), arousing in the course of his travels the suspicions of Kamehameha and the antagonism of the American shipmasters, who didn’t want any foreigners horning in on their trad ing arrangements.

On Kaui, however, Schaffer got a friendly welcome from Kaumualii, who said he would swear allegiance to Russia if the Russians would help him otherthrow Kamehameha and get control of the other islands.

Although he had no authority to come to such terms, Schaffer accepted Kaumualii’s offer and thereby obtained some land grants and trad ing monopolies.

But not long after he had laid out some plantations and built a fort or two, Kaumualii was frightened into throwing Schaffer out by an American rumour that the United States had declared war on Russia, Most of the documents in Pierce’s book were copied in St. Petersburg

about 90 years ago, but it was not until fairly recently that they were all translated into English.

Pierce, by the way, is a member of the Department of History at Queen’s University, Canada, and is the author of Russian Central Asia, 1867-1917: A Study in Colonial Rule.

(Russia’S Hawaiian Adventure,

1815-1817. University of California Press, Berkeley 4, California. $5.50.) DR. DAY, the editor of Jack London’s Stories of Hawaii, is Professor of English at the Uni versity of Hawaii and an old hand at compiling anthologies and turn ing out books on the Pacific.

His excuse (anthologists should

always have excuses) for his latest effort is that although London wrote some of his best stories about Hawaii, these are often overlooked by his readers.

The main reason for this, of course—although Dr. Day does not say so—is that many of London’s 50 or so books have not been re printed for years, so they are not readily available to the general reader.

London’s stories on Hawaii were the result of two visits to that archipelago—the first one in the Snark in 1907, and the second in less adventurous circumstances in 1915-16. (STORIES OF HAWAII. Appleton- Century, New York. $4.95.)