ANOTHER ROUTE ACROSS THE PACIFIC. 45 



banks recall the Humber in Yorkshire. The port is crowded with foreign shipping: 

 great American steamships, the boats of the English P. and O. Company, those of the 

 French " Messageries," merchant steamers straight from London, Liverpool, and Glasgow, 

 and sailing vessels in numbers. In a picturesque point of view the place has little to 

 recommend it, but commercially it is a lively place, nine-tenths of the capital employed being 

 English, and the white population counting at least six Englishmen to all the rest of the 

 foreigners put together. There are three "concessions," i.e., tracts ceded by the Chinese to 

 the English, French, and Americans, for commercial purposes. Stone being scarce, these 

 concessions are fringed by enormous wooden wharves, slips, and piers, outside the warehouses, 

 depots, and stores. There are streets of well-filled shops, where everything is to be obtained 

 that could be bought in the Strand or Oxford Street. In this point of view, Hiibner tells 

 us, neither Yokohama nor any other European town in Asia, saving Calcutta and Bombay, can 

 bear a comparison with Shanghai. The Chinese do not adopt numerals for their shops and 

 warehouses, but use mottoes and descriptive titles, and the great English houses have adopted 

 the custom of the country. Messrs. Dent & Co. have for their nom de uiaison, " Precious and 

 Obliging/' while Messrs. Jardine & Co. are known, not as number 45, or what-not, but as 

 " Honest and Harmonious." 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE PACIFIC FERRY. ANOTHER ROUTE. 



The Hawaiian Islands King and Parliament Pleasant Honolulu A Government Hotel Honeysuckle-covered Theatre- 

 Productions of the Islands Grand Volcanoes Ravages of Lava Streams' and Earthquakes -Off to Fiji A Rapidly 

 Christianised People A Native Hut Dinner Kandavu The Bush Fruit-laden Canoes-Strange Ideas of Value- 

 New Zealand Its Features Intense English Feeling The New Zealand Company and its Iniquities -The 

 Maories Trollope's Testimony- Facts about Cannibalism A Chief on Bagpipes Australia Beauty of Sydney 

 Harbour Its Fortifications Volunteers Its War-fleet of One Handsome Melbourne Absence of Squalor No 

 Workhouses Required The Benevolent Asylums -Splendid Place for Working Men Cheapness of Meat, &c. 

 Wages in Town and Country Life in the Bush " Knocking Down One's Cheque "Gold, Coal, and Iron. 



A POPULAR route now to New Zealand and Australia is that via San Francisco, Honolulu, 

 and Fiji, the bulk of the voyage being usually over the quieter parts of the Pacific; it 

 takes the passenger, of course, through the tropics. 



Honolulu, the capital of the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands, is now a civilised and 

 pleasant city, while the natural attractions of the islands themselves are many and varied. 

 One need not now fear the fate of poor Captain Cook. Most of the natives, of whom there 

 are 50,000, are clothed in semi-European style : the men in coats and trousers of nankeen, 

 and the women more picturesquely clad in long robes fastened round the neck, and pretty 

 often of pink or some other bright dolour. There is a white population of some 10,000 souls 

 scattered over the islands, a large proportion of whom are English and American. 

 Honolulu is the Government centre and residence of Kins? Kalakau, who used to be 



O * 



called " Calico " in the United States, and who, in fact, is a very slightly tinted, 



