HAWAIIAN HOTEL, HONOLULU, Jan. 26th.
Yesterday morning at 6.30 I was aroused by the news that "The
Islands" were in sight. Oahu in the distance, a group of grey,
barren peaks rising verdureless out of the lonely sea, was not an
exception to the rule that the first sight of land is a
disappointment. Owing to the clear atmosphere, we seemed only five
miles off, but in reality we were twenty, and the land improved as
we neared it. It was the fiercest day we had had, the deck was
almost too hot to stand upon, the sea and sky were both
magnificently blue, and the unveiled sun turned every minute ripple
into a diamond flash. As we approached, the island changed its
character. There were lofty peaks, truly--grey and red, sun-
scorched and wind-bleached, glowing here and there with traces of
their fiery origin; but they were cleft by deep chasms and ravines
of cool shadow and entrancing green, and falling water streaked
their sides--a most welcome vision after eleven months of the desert
sea and the dusty browns of Australia and New Zealand. Nearer yet,
and the coast line came into sight, fringed by the feathery cocoanut
tree of the tropics, and marked by a long line of surf. The grand
promontory of Diamond Head, its fiery sides now softened by a haze
of green, terminated the wavy line of palms; then the Punchbowl, a
very perfect extinct crater, brilliant with every shade of red
volcanic ash, blazed against the green skirts of the mountains. We
were close to the coral reef before the cry, "There's Honolulu!"
made us aware of the proximity of the capital of the island kingdom,
and then, indeed, its existence had almost to be taken upon trust,
for besides the lovely wooden and grass huts, with deep verandahs,
which nestled under palms and bananas on soft green sward, margined
by the bright sea sand, only two church spires and a few grey roofs
appeared above the trees.
We were just outside the reef, and near enough to hear that deep
sound of the surf which, through the ever serene summer years
girdles the Hawaiian Islands with perpetual thunder, before the
pilot glided alongside, bringing the news which Mark Twain had
prepared us to receive with interest, that "Prince Bill" had been
unanimously elected to the throne. The surf ran white and pure over
the environing coral reef, and as we passed through the narrow
channel, we almost saw the coral forests deep down under the
Nevada's keel; the coral fishers plied their graceful trade; canoes
with outriggers rode the combers, and glided with inconceivable
rapidity round our ship; amphibious brown beings sported in the
transparent waves; and within the reef lay a calm surface of water
of a wonderful blue, entered by a narrow, intricate passage of the
deepest indigo. And beyond the reef and beyond the blue, nestling
among cocoanut trees and bananas, umbrella trees and breadfruits,
oranges, mangoes, hibiscus, algaroba, and passion-flowers, almost
hidden in the deep, dense greenery, was Honolulu. Bright blossom of
a summer sea! Fair Paradise of the Pacific!
Inside the reef the magnificent iron-clad California (the flag-ship)
and another huge American war vessel, the Benicia, are moored in
line with the British corvette Scout, within 200 yards of the shore;
and their boats were constantly passing and re-passing, among
countless canoes filled with natives. Two coasting schooners were
just leaving the harbour, and the inter-island steamer Kilauea, with
her deck crowded with natives, was just coming in. By noon the
great decrepit Nevada, which has no wharf at which she can lie in
sleepy New Zealand, was moored alongside a very respectable one in
this enterprising little Hawaiian capital.
We looked down from the towering deck on a crowd of two or three
thousand people--whites, Kanakas, Chinamen--and hundreds of them at
once made their way on board, and streamed over the ship, talking,
laughing, and remarking upon us in a language which seemed without
backbone. Such rich brown men and women they were, with wavy,
shining black hair, large, brown, lustrous eyes, and rows of perfect
teeth like ivory. Everyone was smiling. The forms of the women
seem to be inclined towards obesity, but their drapery, which
consists of a sleeved garment which falls in ample and unconfined
folds from their shoulders to their feet, partly conceals this
defect, which is here regarded as a beauty. Some of these dresses
were black, but many of those worn by the younger women were of pure
white, crimson, yellow, scarlet, blue, or light green. The men
displayed their lithe, graceful figures to the best advantage in
white trousers and gay Garibaldi shirts. A few of the women wore
coloured handkerchiefs twined round their hair, but generally both
men and women wore straw hats, which the men set jauntily on one
side of their heads, and aggravated their appearance yet more by
bandana handkerchiefs of rich bright colours round their necks,
knotted loosely on the left side, with a grace to which, I think, no
Anglo-Saxon dandy could attain. Without an exception the men and
women wore wreaths and garlands of flowers, carmine, orange, or pure
white, twined round their hats, and thrown carelessly round their
necks, flowers unknown to me, but redolent of the tropics in
fragrance and colour. Many of the young beauties wore the gorgeous
blossom of the red hibiscus among their abundant, unconfined, black
hair, and many, besides the garlands, wore festoons of a sweet-
scented vine, or of an exquisitely beautiful fern, knotted behind
and hanging half-way down their dresses. These adornments of
natural flowers are most attractive. Chinamen, all alike, very
yellow, with almond-shaped eyes, youthful, hairless faces, long
pigtails, spotlessly clean clothes, and an expression of mingled
cunning and simplicity, "foreigners," half-whites, a few negroes,
and a very few dark-skinned Polynesians from the far-off South Seas,
made up the rest of the rainbow-tinted crowd.
The "foreign" ladies, who were there in great numbers, generally
wore simple light prints or muslins, and white straw hats, and many
of them so far conformed to native custom as to wear natural flowers
round their hats and throats. But where were the hard, angular,
careworn, sallow, passionate faces of men and women, such as form
the majority of every crowd at home, as well as in America, and
Australia? The conditions of life must surely be easier here, and
people must have found rest from some of its burdensome
conventionalities. The foreign ladies, in their simple, tasteful,
fresh attire, innocent of the humpings and bunchings, the
monstrosities and deformities of ultra-fashionable bad taste, beamed
with cheerfulness, friendliness, and kindliness. Men and women
looked as easy, contented, and happy as if care never came near
them. I never saw such healthy, bright complexions as among the
women, or such "sparkling smiles," or such a diffusion of feminine
grace and graciousness anywhere.
Outside this motley, genial, picturesque crowd about 200 saddled
horses were standing, each with the Mexican saddle, with its
lassoing horn in front, high peak behind, immense wooden stirrups,
with great leathern guards, silver or brass bosses, and coloured
saddle-cloths. The saddles were the only element of the picturesque
that these Hawaiian steeds possessed. They were sorry, lean,
undersized beasts, looking in general as if the emergencies of life
left them little time for eating or sleeping. They stood calmly in
the broiling sun, heavy-headed and heavy-hearted, with flabby ears
and pendulous lower lips, limp and rawboned, a doleful type of the
"creation which groaneth and travaileth in misery." All these
belonged to the natives, who are passionately fond of riding. Every
now and then a flower-wreathed Hawaiian woman, in her full radiant
garment, sprang on one of these animals astride, and dashed along
the road at full gallop, sitting on her horse as square and easy as
a hussar. In the crowd and outside of it, and everywhere, there
were piles of fruit for sale--oranges and guavas, strawberries,
papayas, bananas (green and golden), cocoanuts, and other rich,
fantastic productions of a prolific climate, where nature gives of
her wealth the whole year round. Strange fishes, strange in shape
and colour, crimson, blue, orange, rose, gold, such fishes as flash
like living light through the coral groves of these enchanted seas,
were there for sale, and coral divers were there with their
treasures--branch coral, as white as snow, each perfect specimen
weighing from eight to twenty pounds. But no one pushed his wares
for sale--we were at liberty to look and admire, and pass on
unmolested. No vexatious restrictions obstructed our landing. A
sum of two dollars for the support of the Queen's Hospital is levied
on each passenger, and the examination of ordinary luggage, if it
exists, is a mere form. From the demeanour of the crowd it was at
once apparent that the conditions of conquerors and conquered do not
exist. On the contrary, many of the foreigners there were subjects
of a Hawaiian king, a reversal of the ordinary relations between a
white and a coloured race which it is not easy yet to appreciate.
Two of my fellow-passengers, who were going on to San Francisco,
were anxious that I should accompany them to the Pali, the great
excursion from Honolulu; and leaving Mr. M--- to make all
arrangements for the Dexters and myself, we hired a buggy, destitute
of any peculiarity but a native driver, who spoke nothing but
Hawaiian, and left the ship. This place is quite unique. It is
said that 15,000 people are buried away in these low-browed, shadowy
houses, under the glossy, dark-leaved trees, but except in one or
two streets of miscellaneous, old-fashioned looking stores, arranged
with a distinct leaning towards native tastes, it looks like a large
village, or rather like an aggregate of villages. As we drove
through the town we could only see our immediate surroundings, but
each had a new fascination. We drove along roads with over-arching
trees, through whose dense leafage the noon sunshine only trickled
in dancing, broken lights; umbrella trees, caoutchouc, bamboo,
mango, orange, breadfruit, candlenut, monkey pod, date and coco
palms, alligator pears, "prides" of Barbary, India, and Peru, and
huge-leaved, wide-spreading trees, exotics from the South Seas, many
of them rich in parasitic ferns, and others blazing with bright,
fantastic blossoms. The air was heavy with odours of gardenia,
tuberose, oleanders, roses, lilies, and the great white trumpet-
flower, and myriads of others whose names I do not know, and
verandahs were festooned with a gorgeous trailer with magenta
blossoms, passion-flowers, and a vine with masses of trumpet-shaped,
yellow, waxy flowers. The delicate tamarind and the feathery
algaroba intermingled their fragile grace with the dark, shiny
foliage of the South Sea exotics, and the deep red, solitary flowers
of the hibiscus rioted among dear familiar fuschias and geraniums,
which here attain the height and size of large rhododendrons.
Few of the new trees surprised me more than the papaya. It is a
perfect gem of tropical vegetation. It has a soft, indented stem,
which runs up quite straight to a height of from 15 to 30 feet, and
is crowned by a profusion of large, deeply indented leaves, with
long foot-stalks, and among, as well as considerably below these,
are the flowers or the fruit, in all stages of development. This,
when ripe, is bright yellow, and the size of a musk melon. Clumps
of bananas, the first sight of which, like that of the palm,
constitutes a new experience, shaded the native houses with their
wonderful leaves, broad and deep green, from five to ten feet long.
The breadfruit is a superb tree, about 60 feet high, with deep
green, shining leaves, a foot broad, sharply and symmetrically cut,
worthy, from their exceeding beauty of form, to take the place of
the acanthus in architectural ornament, and throwing their pale
green fruit into delicate contrast. All these, with the exquisite
rose apple, with a deep red tinge in its young leaves, the fan palm,
the chirimoya, and numberless others, and the slender shafts of the
coco palms rising high above them, with their waving plumes and
perpetual fruitage, were a perfect festival of beauty.
In the deep shade of this perennial greenery the people dwell. The
foreign houses show a very various individuality. The peculiarity
in which all seem to share is, that everything is decorated and
festooned with flowering trailers. It is often difficult to tell
what the architecture is, or what is house and what is vegetation;
for all angles, and lattices, and balustrades, and verandahs are
hidden by jessamine or passion-flowers, or the gorgeous flame-like
Bougainvillea. Many of the dwellings straggle over the ground
without an upper story, and have very deep verandahs, through which
I caught glimpses of cool, shady rooms, with matted floors. Some
look as if they had been transported from the old-fashioned villages
of the Connecticut Valley, with their clap-board fronts painted
white and jalousies painted green; but then the deep verandah in
which families lead an open-air life has been added, and the
chimneys have been omitted, and the New England severity and
angularity are toned down and draped out of sight by these festoons
of large-leaved, bright-blossomed, tropical climbing plants.
Besides the frame houses there are houses built of blocks of a
cream-coloured coral conglomerate laid in cement, of adobe, or large
sun-baked bricks, plastered; houses of grass and bamboo; houses on
the ground and houses raised on posts; but nothing looks prosaic,
commonplace, or mean, for the glow and luxuriance of the tropics
rest on all. Each house has a large garden or "yard," with lawns of
bright perennial greens and banks of blazing, many-tinted flowers,
and lines of Dracaena, and other foliage plants, with their great
purple or crimson leaves, and clumps of marvellous lilies,
gladiolas, ginger, and many plants unknown to me. Fences and walls
are altogether buried by passion-flowers, the night-blowing Cereus,
and the tropaeolum, mixed with geraniums, fuchsia, and jessamine,
which cluster and entangle over them in indescribable profusion. A
soft air moves through the upper branches, and the drip of water
from miniature fountains falls musically on the perfumed air. This
is midwinter! The summer, they say, is thermometrically hotter, but
practically cooler, because of the regular trades which set in in
April, but now, with the shaded thermometer at 80 degrees and the
sky without clouds, the heat is not oppressive.
The mixture of the neat grass houses of the natives with the more
elaborate homes of the foreign residents has a very pleasant look.
The "aborigines" have not been crowded out of sight, or into a
special "quarter." We saw many groups of them sitting under the
trees outside their houses, each group with a mat in the centre,
with calabashes upon it containing poi, the national Hawaiian dish,
a fermented paste made from the root of the kalo, or arum
esculentum. As we emerged on the broad road which leads up the
Nuuanu Valley to the mountains, we saw many patches of this kalo, a
very handsome tropical plant, with large leaves of a bright tender
green. Each plant was growing on a small hillock, with water round
it. There were beautiful vegetable gardens also, in which Chinamen
raise for sale not only melons, pineapples, sweet potatoes, and
other edibles of hot climates, but the familiar fruits and
vegetables of the temperate zones. In patches of surpassing
neatness, there were strawberries, which are ripe here all the year,
peas, carrots, turnips, asparagus, lettuce, and celery. I saw no
other plants or trees which grow at home, but recognized as hardly
less familiar growths the Victorian Eucalyptus, which has not had
time to become gaunt and straggling, the Norfolk Island pine, which
grows superbly here, and the handsome Moreton Bay fig. But the
chief feature of this road is the number of residences; I had almost
written of pretentious residences, but the term would be a base
slander, as I have jumped to the conclusion that the twin
vulgarities of ostentation and pretence have no place here. But
certainly for a mile and a half or more there are many very
comfortable-looking dwellings, very attractive to the eye, with an
ease and imperturbable serenity of demeanour as if they had nothing
to fear from heat, cold, wind, or criticism. Their architecture is
absolutely unostentatious, and their one beauty is that they are
embowered among trailers, shadowed by superb exotics, and surrounded
by banks of flowers, while the stately cocoanut, the banana, and the
candlenut, the aborigines of Oahu, are nowhere displaced. One house
with extensive grounds, a perfect wilderness of vegetation, was
pointed out as the summer palace of Queen Emma, or Kaleleonalani,
widow of Kamehameha IV., who visited England a few years ago, and
the finest garden of all was that of a much respected Chinese
merchant, named Afong. Oahu, at least on this leeward side, is not
tropical looking, and all this tropical variety and luxuriance which
delight the eye result from foreign enthusiasm and love of beauty
and shade.
When we ascended above the scattered dwellings and had passed the
tasteful mausoleum, with two tall Kahilis, {28} or feather plumes,
at the door of the tomb in which the last of the Kamehamehas
received Christian burial, the glossy, redundant, arborescent
vegetation ceased. At that height a shower of rain falls on nearly
every day in the year, and the result is a green sward which England
can hardly rival, a perfect sea of verdure, darkened in the valley
and more than half way up the hill sides by the foliage of the
yellow-blossomed and almost impenetrable hibiscus, brightened here
and there by the pea-green candlenut. Streamlets leap from crags
and ripple along the roadside, every rock and stone is hidden by
moist-looking ferns, as aerial and delicate as marabout feathers,
and when the windings of the valley and the projecting spurs of
mountains shut out all indications of Honolulu, in the cool green
loneliness one could image oneself in the temperate zones. The
peculiarity of the scenery is, that the hills, which rise to a
height of about 4,000 feet, are wall-like ridges of grey or coloured
rock, rising precipitously out of the trees and grass, and that
these walls are broken up into pinnacles and needles. At the Pali
(wall-like precipice), the summit of the ascent of 1,000 feet, we
left our buggy, and passing through a gash in the rock the
celebrated view burst on us with overwhelming effect. Immense
masses of black and ferruginous volcanic rock, hundreds of feet in
nearly perpendicular height, formed the pali on either side, and the
ridge extended northwards for many miles, presenting a lofty, abrupt
mass of grey rock broken into fantastic pinnacles, which seemed to
pierce the sky. A broad, umbrageous mass of green clothed the lower
buttresses, and fringed itself away in clusters of coco palms on a
garden-like stretch below, green with grass and sugar-cane, and
dotted with white houses, each with its palm and banana grove, and
varied by eminences which looked like long extinct tufa cones.
Beyond this enchanted region stretched the coral reef, with its
white wavy line of endless surf, and the broad blue Pacific, ruffled
by a breeze whose icy freshness chilled us where we stood. Narrow
streaks on the landscape, every now and then disappearing behind
intervening hills, indicated bridle tracks connected with a
frightfully steep and rough zigzag path cut out of the face of the
cliff on our right. I could not go down this on foot without a
sense of insecurity, but mounted natives driving loaded horses
descended with perfect impunity into the dreamland below.
This pali is the scene of one of the historic tragedies of this
island. Kamehameha the Conqueror, who after fierce fighting and
much ruthless destruction of human life united the island
sovereignties in his own person, routed the forces of the King of
Oahu in the Nuuanu Valley, and drove them in hundreds up the
precipice, from which they leaped in despair and madness, and their
bones lie bleaching 800 feet below.
The drive back here was delightful, from the wintry height, where I
must confess that we shivered, to the slumbrous calm of an endless
summer, the glorious tropical trees, the distant view of cool chasm-
like valleys, with Honolulu sleeping in perpetual shade, and the
still blue ocean, without a single sail to disturb its profound
solitude. Saturday afternoon is a gala-day here, and the broad road
was so thronged with brilliant equestrians, that I thought we should
be ridden over by the reckless laughing rout. There were hundreds
of native horsemen and horsewomen, many of them doubtless on the
dejected quadrupeds I saw at the wharf, but a judicious application
of long rowelled Mexican spurs, and a degree of emulation, caused
these animals to tear along at full gallop. The women seemed
perfectly at home in their gay, brass-bossed, high peaked saddles,
flying along astride, barefooted, with their orange and scarlet
riding dresses streaming on each side beyond their horses' tails, a
bright kaleidoscopic flash of bright eyes, white teeth, shining
hair, garlands of flowers and many-coloured dresses; while the men
were hardly less gay, with fresh flowers round their jaunty hats,
and the vermilion-coloured blossoms of the Ohia round their brown
throats. Sometimes a troop of twenty of these free-and-easy female
riders went by at a time, a graceful and exciting spectacle, with a
running accompaniment of vociferation and laughter. Among these we
met several of the Nevada's officers, riding in the stiff, wooden
style which Anglo-Saxons love, and a horde of jolly British sailors
from H.M.S. Scout, rushing helter skelter, colliding with everybody,
bestriding their horses as they would a topsail-yard, hanging on to
manes and lassoing horns, and enjoying themselves thoroughly. In
the shady tortuous streets we met hundreds more of native riders,
clashing at full gallop without fear of the police. Many of the
women were in flowing riding-dresses of pure white, over which their
unbound hair, and wreaths of carmine-tinted flowers fell most
picturesquely.
All this time I had not seen our domicile, and when our drive ended
under the quivering shadow of large tamarind and algaroba trees, in
front of a long, stone, two-storied house with two deep verandahs
festooned with clematis and passion flowers, and a shady lawn in
front, I felt as if in this fairy land anything might be expected.
This is the perfection of an hotel. Hospitality seems to take
possession of and appropriate one as soon as one enters its never-
closed door, which is on the lower verandah. There is a basement,
in which there are a good many bedrooms, the bar, and billiard-room.
This is entered from the garden, under two semicircular flights of
stairs which lead to the front entrance, a wide corridor conducting
to the back entrance. This is crossed by another running the whole
length, which opens into a very large many-windowed dining-room
which occupies the whole width of the hotel. On the same level
there is a large parlour, with French windows opening on the
verandah. Upstairs there are two similar corridors on which all the
bedrooms open, and each room has one or more French windows opening
on the verandah, with doors as well, made like German shutters, to
close instead of the windows, ensuring at once privacy and coolness.
The rooms are tastefully furnished with varnished pine with a strong
aromatic scent, and there are plenty of lounging-chairs on the
verandah, where people sit and receive their intimate friends. The
result of the construction of the hotel is that a breeze whispers
through it by day and night.
Everywhere, only pleasant objects meet the eye. One can sit all day
on the back verandah, watching the play of light and colour on the
mountains and the deep blue green of the Nuuanu Valley, where
showers, sunshine, and rainbows make perpetual variety. The great
dining-room is delicious. It has no curtains, and its decorations
are cool and pale. Its windows look upon tropical trees in one
direction, and up to the cool mountains in the other. Piles of
bananas, guavas, limes, and oranges, decorate the tables at each
meal, and strange vegetables, fish, and fruits vary the otherwise
stereotyped American hotel fare. There are no female domestics.
The host is a German, the manager an American, the steward an
Hawaiian, and the servants are all Chinamen in spotless white linen,
with pigtails coiled round their heads, and an air of superabundant
good-nature. They know very little English, and make most absurd
mistakes, but they are cordial, smiling, and obliging, and look cool
and clean. The hotel seems the great public resort of Honolulu, the
centre of stir--club-house, exchange and drawing-room in one. Its
wide corridors and verandahs are lively with English and American
naval uniforms, several planters' families are here for the season;
and with health seekers from California, resident boarders, whaling
captains, tourists from the British Pacific Colonies, and a stream
of townspeople always percolating through the corridors and
verandahs, it seems as lively and free-and-easy as a place can be,
pervaded by the kindliness and bonhomie which form an important item
in my first impressions of the islands. The hotel was lately built
by government at a cost of $120,000, a sum which forms a
considerable part of that token of an advanced civilization, a
National Debt. The minister whose scheme it was seems to be
severely censured on account of it, but undoubtedly it brings
strangers and their money into the kingdom, who would have avoided
it had they been obliged as formerly to cast themselves on the
hospitality of the residents. The present proprietor has it rent-
free for a term of years, but I fear that it is not likely to prove
a successful speculation either for him or the government. I
dislike health resorts, and abhor this kind of life, but for those
who like both, I cannot imagine a more fascinating residence. The
charges are $15 a week, or $3 a day, but such a kindly, open-handed
system prevails that I am not conscious that I am paying anything!
This sum includes hot and cold plunge baths ad libitum, justly
regarded as a necessity in this climate.
Dr. McGrew has hope that our invalid will rally in this healing,
equable atmosphere. Our kind fellow-passengers are here, and take
turns in watching and fanning him. Through the half-closed
jalousies we see breadfruit trees, delicate tamarinds and algarobas,
fan-palms, date-palms and bananas, and the deep blue Pacific gleams
here and there through the plumage of the cocoanut trees. A soft
breeze, scented with a slight aromatic odour, wanders in at every
opening, bringing with it, mellowed by distance, the hum and clatter
of the busy cicada. The nights are glorious, and so absolutely
still, that even the feathery foliage of the algaroba is at rest.
The stars seem to hang among the trees like lamps, and the crescent
moon gives more light than the full moon at home. The evening of
the day we landed, parties of officers and ladies mounted at the
door, and with much mirth disappeared on moonlight rides, and the
white robes of flower-crowned girls gleamed among the trees, as
groups of natives went by speaking a language which sounded more
like the rippling of water than human speech. Soft music came from
the ironclads in the harbour, and from the royal band at the king's
palace, and a rich fragrance of dewy blossoms filled the delicious
air. These are indeed the "isles of Eden," the "sun lands," musical
with beauty. They seem to welcome us to their enchanted shores.
Everything is new but nothing strange; for as I enjoyed the purple
night, I remembered that I had seen such islands in dreams in the
cold gray North. "How sweet," I thought it would be, thus to hear
far off, the low sweet murmur of the "sparkling brine," to rest, and
"Ever to seem
Falling asleep in a half-dream."
A half-dream only, for one would not wish to be quite asleep and
lose the consciousness of this delicious outer world. So I thought
one moment. The next I heard a droning, humming sound, which
certainly was not the surf upon the reef. It came nearer--there
could be no mistake. I felt a stab, and found myself the centre of
a swarm of droning, stabbing, malignant mosquitoes. No, even this
is not paradise! I am ashamed to say that on my first night in
Honolulu I sought an early refuge from this intolerable infliction,
in profound and prosaic sleep behind mosquito curtains.
I.L.B.