[Found under: “EHIKU MAKAHIKI I NA AINA E!”]

Pertaining to Savannah and its nature.—In the early morning of the 7th of Mar. 1877, as the calm of night took flight, and the rays of the sun began to spread its beautiful light made faint by the spreading mist.

I heard the voice, “There is land ahead of us,” from one of the sailors who climbed up the foremast of our ship to see. A few hours later, land was clearly visible; it was not the continent, but the small island Hilitona [Hilton Head Island], 41 miles from Savannah toward the north east; we passed the island behind and made our way toward Savannah.

When it was almost 4 p.m. in the evening, the brig [? kuna pailata] Nellie Rogers number 7 docked there, this ship is like our ships [“seafaring gulls,” nene aukai] of times past. One of the pilots served as a guide for us before the darkness hid the light of the sun; we anchored close to Castle Bluff [Papu Bluff], two miles from town at  noon the next day, and we docked at pier 7, at the bottom of Halifax street. We relaxed from the long trip across the Atlantic; although the work of the ship remained; the main cargo of the ships here is lumber.

The town of Savannah was built on the west of the river of the same name, almost twenty miles from the river mouth; the east side of the river is the lower border of the state South Carolina; toward the west of the river is the state of Georgia. Savannah is twice as big as our capital; it is boggy and narrow like ours that is not swept, so too is it there.

It is cold in the winter and scorching in the summer. Whites and blacks make up the people of this town, Georgia was a state that enslaved the blacks before the south lost in the civil war; slavery by the people of the south was abolished, and there was equality between the whites and blacks. At some hotels there, blacks cannot enter. At some barbers, the hair of blacks will not be cut even if he paid a hundred dollars.

This is the most vile of things, to liken one with a soul to an animal, but it is my hope that we will not become like them in the future.

[This is an excerpt from the account by Joseph H. Kawelo, about his travels outside of Hawaii over the span of seven years. It runs in the Ko Hawaii Pae Aina from 10/30/1880 to 2/19/1881. This is one of the many things in the newspapers that I really one day want to read in its entirety!]

(Ko Hawaii Pae Aina, 1/8/1881, p. 1)

Ko Hawaii Pae Aina, Buke IV, Helu 2, Aoao 1. Ianuari 8, 1881.