HOLIDAYS IN HAWAII 



vast deep, and one can fancy how that huge pot must 

 have boiled back in Tertiary times, when the red-hot 

 lava of which they are mainly built up was poured 

 from the interior of the globe. 



Softer and more balmy grew the air every day, 

 more and more placid and richly tinted grew the 

 sea, till, on the morning of the sixth day, we saw 

 ahead of us, low on the horizon, the dim outlines 

 of the mountains of Molokai. The island of Oahu, 

 upon which Honolulu is situated, was soon in sight. 

 It was not long before we saw Diamond Head, a vast 

 crater bowl, eight hundred feet high on its ocean 

 side, and half a mile across, sitting there upon the 

 shore like some huge, strange work of man's hand, 

 running back through the hills with a level rim, and 

 seaward with a sloping base, brown and ribbed, and 

 in every way unique and striking. 



We were approaching a land the child of tropic 

 seas and volcanic lava, and many of the features were 

 new and strange to us. The mountains looked fa- 

 miliar in outline, but the colors of the landscape, the 

 soft lilacs, greens, and browns, and the whole atmo- 

 sphere of the scene, were unlike anything we had 

 ever before seen. And Diamond Head, what a fea- 

 ture it was! Had it only had a head, one could 

 easily have seen in it a suggestion of a couchant 

 lion, bony, huge, and taw^ny, looking seaward, and 

 guarding the harbor of Honolulu which lies just 

 behind it. Into this harbor, in the soft morning air, 



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