On a certain bright morning the Islands hove in sight, lying
low on the lonely sea, and everybody climbed to the upper deck to
look. After two thousand miles of watery solitude the vision was
a welcome one. As we approached, the imposing promontory of
Diamond Head rose up out of the ocean its rugged front softened
by the hazy distance, and presently the details of the land began
to make themselves manifest: first the line of beach; then the
plumed coacoanut trees of the tropics; then cabins of the
natives; then the white town of Honolulu, said to contain between
twelve and fifteen thousand inhabitants spread over a dead level;
with streets from twenty to thirty feet wide, solid and level as
a floor, most of them straight as a line and few as crooked as a
corkscrew.
The further I traveled through the town the better I liked it.
Every step revealed a new contrast—disclosed something I was
unaccustomed to. In place of the grand mud-colored brown fronts
of San Francisco, I saw dwellings built of straw, adobies, and
cream-colored pebble-and-shell-conglomerated coral, cut into
oblong blocks and laid in cement; also a great number of neat
white cottages, with green window-shutters; in place of front
yards like billiard-tables with iron fences around them, I saw
these homes surrounded by ample yards, thickly clad with green
grass, and shaded by tall trees, through whose dense foliage the
sun could scarcely penetrate; in place of the customary geranium,
calla lily, etc., languishing in dust and general debility, I saw
luxurious banks and thickets of flowers, fresh as a meadow after
a rain, and glowing with the richest dyes; in place of the dingy
horrors of San Francisco’s pleasure grove, the “Willows,” I saw
huge-bodied, wide-spreading forest trees, with strange names and
stranger appearance—trees that cast a shadow like a
thunder-cloud, and were able to stand alone without being tied to
green poles; in place of gold fish, wiggling around in glass
globes, assuming countless shades and degrees of distortion
through the magnifying and diminishing qualities of their
transparent prison houses, I saw cats—Tom-cats, Mary Ann cats,
long-tailed cats, bob-tailed cats, blind cats, one-eyed cats,
wall-eyed cats, cross-eyed cats, gray cats, black cats, white
cats, yellow cats, striped cats, spotted cats, tame cats, wild
cats, singed cats, individual cats, groups of cats, platoons of
cats, companies of cats, regiments of cats, armies of cats,
multitudes of cats, millions of cats, and all of them sleek, fat,
lazy and sound asleep. I looked on a multitude of people, some
white, in white coats, vests, pantaloons, even white cloth shoes,
made snowy with chalk duly laid on every morning; but the
majority of the people were almost as dark as negroes—women with
comely features, fine black eyes, rounded forms, inclining to the
voluptuous, clad in a single bright red or white garment that
fell free and unconfined from shoulder to heel, long black hair
falling loose, gypsy hats, encircled with wreaths of natural
flowers of a brilliant carmine tint; plenty of dark men in
various costumes, and some with nothing on but a battered
stove-pipe hat tilted on the nose, and a very scant
breech-clout;—certain smoke-dried children were clothed in
nothing but sunshine—a very neat fitting and picturesque apparel
indeed.
In place of roughs and rowdies staring and blackguarding on
the corners, I saw long-haired, saddle-colored Sandwich Island
maidens sitting on the ground in the shade of corner houses,
gazing indolently at whatever or whoever happened along; instead
of wretched cobble-stone pavements, I walked on a firm foundation
of coral, built up from the bottom of the sea by the absurd but
persevering insect of that name, with a light layer of lava and
cinders overlying the coral, belched up out of fathomless
perdition long ago through the seared and blackened crater that
stands dead and harmless in the distance now; instead of cramped
and crowded street-cars, I met dusky native women sweeping by,
free as the wind, on fleet horses and astride, with gaudy
riding-sashes, streaming like banners behind them; instead of the
combined stenches of Chinadom and Brannan street
slaughter-houses, I breathed the balmy fragrance of jessamine,
oleander, and the Pride of India; in place of the hurry and
bustle and noisy confusion of San Francisco, I moved in the midst
of a Summer calm as tranquil as dawn in the Garden of Eden; in
place of the Golden City’s skirting sand hills and the placid
bay, I saw on the one side a frame-work of tall, precipitous
mountains close at hand, clad in refreshing green, and cleft by
deep, cool, chasm-like valleys—and in front the grand sweep of
the ocean; a brilliant, transparent green near the shore, bound
and bordered by a long white line of foamy spray dashing against
the reef, and further out the dead blue water of the deep sea,
flecked with “white caps,” and in the far horizon a single,
lonely sail—a mere accent-mark to emphasize a slumberous calm
and a solitude that were without sound or limit. When the sun
sunk down—the one intruder from other realms and persistent in
suggestions of them—it was tranced luxury to sit in the perfumed
air and forget that there was any world but these enchanted
islands.
It was such ecstacy to dream, and dream—till you got a
bite. A scorpion bite. Then the first duty was to get up out of the
grass and kill the scorpion; and the next to bathe the bitten
place with alcohol or brandy; and the next to resolve to keep out
of the grass in future. Then came an adjournment to the
bed-chamber and the pastime of writing up the day’s journal with
one hand and the destruction of mosquitoes with the other—a
whole community of them at a slap. Then, observing an enemy
approaching,—a hairy tarantula on stilts—why not set the
spittoon on him? It is done, and the projecting ends of his paws
give a luminous idea of the magnitude of his reach. Then to bed
and become a promenade for a centipede with forty-two legs on a
side and every foot hot enough to burn a hole through a raw-hide.
More soaking with alcohol, and a resolution to examine the bed
before entering it, in future. Then wait, and suffer, till all
the mosquitoes in the neighborhood have crawled in under the bar,
then slip out quickly, shut them in and sleep peacefully on the
floor till morning. Meantime it is comforting to curse the
tropics in occasional wakeful intervals.
We had an abundance of fruit in Honolulu, of course. Oranges,
pine-apples, bananas, strawberries, lemons, limes, mangoes,
guavas, melons, and a rare and curious luxury called the
chirimoya, which is deliciousness itself. Then there is the
tamarind. I thought tamarinds were made to eat, but that was
probably not the idea. I ate several, and it seemed to me that
they were rather sour that year. They pursed up my lips, till
they resembled the stem-end of a tomato, and I had to take my
sustenance through a quill for twenty-four hours.
They sharpened my teeth till I could have shaved with them,
and gave them a “wire edge” that I was afraid would stay; but a
citizen said “no, it will come off when the enamel does”—which
was comforting, at any rate. I found, afterward, that only
strangers eat tamarinds—but they only eat them once.
