The Hawaiian Archipelago | Page 9

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