FROM THE GOLDEN GATE TO FIJI, ^ 



told the treaty was made in haste ; it will probably be repented 

 at leisure. 



The climate is one of the loveliest on earth. It is almost 

 absolutely equable, and a man may take his choice between 

 broiling all the year round on the sea-level on the leeward side 

 of the islands at a temperature of eighty degrees, and enjoying 

 the charms of a fireside at an altitude where there is frost every 

 night of the year. There is no sickly season, and there are no 

 local diseases. The trade-winds blow for nine months of the 

 year, and on the windward coasts there is abundance of rain, 

 and a perennial luxuriance of vegetation. 



The native population is rapidly on the decline, nor as far as 

 I could learn is any adequate explanation offered of the fact. 

 Captain Cook gave his estimate at 400,000 ; so there has been 

 a terrible falling off. There is a capital hotel in Honolulu, 

 called the Hawaiian, where we had a first-class dinner at the 

 termination of a tiring sight-seeing day. After some twenty- 

 six hours in the pleasant harbour of Honolulu, we returned to 

 our old amusements of lounging, smoking, and gossip. The 

 Pacific deserved its name. We had smooth seas, warm suns 

 and fresh breezes all the way, and the evenings were dis- 

 tinguished by some most gorgeous sunsets, one of which was 

 combined with the mirage of a city, perfect in nearly all its 

 details of trees, houses, and waterfalls. The same night, when 

 it was quite dark (there is no twilight in the Pacific), a most 

 brilliant meteor passed directly over our quarter. 



About thirteen degrees south we met the homeward-bound 

 mail steamer, the City rf New York, and, in a sea like glass, 

 exchanged letters thus a letter of mine, posted, so to speak, 

 nearly 1000 miles south of the equator, and 170 W. long., 

 reached friends at Hampstead, London, in thirty-seven days 

 going of course via San Francisco and New York 



