237 



cocoaniit palms, which in pictures give the necessary touch of 

 tropicalness. 



In the first days there is recognized the beauty of the hills, 

 but they are not quite as high as one ha,d expected — not really 

 mountains, on the island upon which is Honolulu; and one 

 misses a wealth of garden flowers. There are no roses, a Jap- 

 anese beetle having destroyed them all some years ago and 

 successfully prevented their culture since, and the few flowers 

 raised in gardens — as petunias, geraniums, and nasturtiums — 

 seem no more flourishing than in the Eastern States. The 

 banana is stunning but scraggly, and its big leaves have be- 

 come familiar in California. The graceful pepper tree is not 

 as beautiful here as on the coast ; the orange and lemon trees 

 are hardly as good, and for the common date and fan-leave,d 

 palm one had no need to cross two thousand miles of ocean. 

 The whole efifect is not, in short, the sum of many additions — 

 California plus and plus — and in the first recognition of its 

 algebraic character, that there are deductions to be made, one 

 does feel a little pang of disappointment. 



By degrees, however, one turns from subtractions to addi- 

 tions. There is here the wonderful royal palm, its great white 

 trunk making it the most architectural of all God's trees, so that a 

 row of the royal palms is a natural colonnade ; there is the ever 

 picturesque cocoanut palm, its long stem shooting off on 

 grotesque curves, like a sky-rocket; there is the far-spreading, 

 hospitable banyan of childhood's picture books ; there is the 

 Poinciana regia, or flame tree — in February a leafless skeleton 

 rattling long and ugly seedpods, but to be gorgeous later on ; 

 there is the marvelous traveler's palm, the useful algaroba, and 

 such vines and hedges ! Waste and nearly stagnant pond's are 

 covered with the lotus and with lilies, white and blue ; and 

 elsewhere rice fields paint the landscape with their peculiarly 

 fresh green ; and the sugar cane waves in the wind, like a corn 

 field yellowish green. Up on the mountain — on Tantalus — one 

 gets among the tree ferns and the wonderful giant vines, and 

 knows at last that the north temperate zone is, indeed, far 

 away. 



As for the algaroba, it is much the commonest tree on the 

 islands and much the most useful. But it is not a native, and 

 the mother tree of all the countless brood can still be seen — 

 with suitable label — on one of the principal streets of Hono- 



