A Womans Impression of the Philippines | Page 6

were
distinguished by flower wreaths in lieu of hat bands. Here and there
Chinese women loafed about, wearing trousers of a kind of black
oilcloth, and leading Chinese babies dressed in more colors than
Joseph's coat--grass-green, black, azure, and rose. In the background
several army wagons were filled with officers in uniform and with
white-clad American women.
We schoolteachers lost no time when the boat was once tied up at the
dock, for it was given out that some trifling repairs were to be made to
the boat's engines and that we should sail the next day. We sailed, in
point of fact, just ten days later, for the engines had to be taken down to
be repaired. As the notice of departure within twenty-four hours was
pasted up every day afresh, it held our enthusiasm for sight-seeing at a
feverish pitch.

CHAPTER III
Our Ten Days' Sightseeing
The Fish Market--We Are Treated to Poi--We Visit the
Stores--Hawaiian Curiosities--The Southern Cross--Our Trip to the
Dreadful Pali--The Rescue--The Flowers and Trees of Honolulu--The
Mango Tree and Its Fruit.

My first impressions of Honolulu were disappointing. I had been, in my
childhood, a fascinated peruser of Mark Twain's "Roughing It," and his
picture of Honolulu--or rather my picture formed from his description
of it--demanded something novel in foliage and architecture, and a
great acreage of tropical vegetation. What we really found was a
modern American city with straight streets, close-clipped lawns, and
frame houses of various styles of architecture leaning chiefly to the
gingerbread, and with a business centre very much like that of a
Western town. Only after three or four days did the charm and
individuality of Honolulu make themselves felt.
To leave the dock, we had to pass through the fish market, which
looked like any other fish market, but seemed to smell worse. When we
looked at the fish, however, we almost forgot the odors, for they were
as many tinted as a rainbow. Coral red, silver, blue, blue shot with
purple, they seemed to tell of sun-kissed haunts under wind-ruffled
surfaces or of dusky caves within the underworld of branching coral. It
is hard to be sentimental about fish, but for the space of two minutes
and a half we quite mooned over the beauty fish of Honolulu.
Leaving the market, we came upon a ley woman who wanted to throw a
heavy wreath of scented flowers about the neck of each of us at a
consideration of twenty cents per capita. She was a fat old woman who
used many alluring gestures and grinned coquettishly; but we were
adamant to her pleadings, and seeing a street car jingling toward
us--one of the bobtailed mule variety--we left her to try her wiles on a
fresh group from our boat, and hailed the street car. As we entered, one
passenger remarked audibly to another, "I see another transport is in,"
which speech lowered my spirits fifty degrees. I hate to be so obvious.
Under that nightmare of threatened departure we went flying from
place to place. In the first store which we entered we were treated to
_poi_--a dish always offered to the stranger as a mark of
hospitality--and partook of it in the national manner; that is, we stuck
our forefingers in the poi, and each then sucked her own digit. Poi is
made from taro root, and tastes mouldy. It is exceedingly
nasty--nobody would want two dips.

The stores were just like those of the United States, and the only
commercial novelties which we discovered were chains made of
exquisitely tinted shells, which came from somewhere down in the
South Seas, and other chains made of coral and of a berry which is hard
and red and looks like coral. At the Bishop Museum, however, we
found an interesting collection of Malaysian curios and products--birds,
beasts, fishes, weapons, dress, and domestic utensils. Among the dress
exhibits were cloaks made of yellow feathers, quite priceless (I forget
how many thousand birds were killed to make each cloak); and among
the household utensils were wooden bowls inlaid with human teeth. It
was a humorous conceit on the part of former Hawaiian kings thus to
compliment a defunct enemy.
There was a dance that night at the Hawaiian Hotel in honor of our
passengers, most of whom attended, leaving me almost a solitary
passenger aboard. Those happy sinners from Radcliffe went off in their
best frocks. I lay in a steamer chair on the afterdeck, scanning the
heavens for the Southern Cross. I counted, as nearly as I can remember,
about eight arrangements of stars that might have been said to resemble
crosses. Not one of them was it, however. Later, I made acquaintance
with the Cross, and I must say it has been much overrated by
adjective-burdened literature. It