Hordern House

BATES, George Washington, in fact William BAKER Sandwich Island Notes. By a Häolé. New York, Harper & Brothers 1854

Duodecimo, frontispiece portrait of Alexander Liholiho, and 21 steel-engraved plates and vignettes of Hawaii; a little scattered foxing, else a good copy in original brown blind-stamped cloth.

An excellent copy of this famous memoir of Hawaii by a "Häolé" or outsider, which gives a thorough and considered account of the islands based on travels there in the early 1850s. Bates urged annexation by the United States.

'A lively and often quoted travel narrative on Hawaii at mid-century. Bates arrived in Honolulu from San Francisco on the clipper ship Sovereign of the Seas, January 15, 1853, in the capacity of roving correspondent for a San Francisco newspaper. He begins with a generous description of the town, its palace, public buildings, and churches, and includes observations on sights that others ignored... Haole, a Hawaiian word meaning a foreigner, was a pseudonym used by George Washington Bates, the name under which this book is generally catalogued. That however was not the author's real name, as is revealed by an article in the Polynesian, August 19, 1854: "In the King's County Court, William Baker, alias Washington Bates, formerly a Baptist minister, and more recently a missionary in California, and a traveller and lecturer in the Sandwich Islands, was arraigned on an indictment for bigamy"...' (Forbes).
Forbes, 'Hawaiian National Bibliography', 1996; 'Hawaii One Hundred', 72; Hill, p. 18; Judd, 14.

$A875

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