The Hawaiian Archipelago | Page 8

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