VISIT TO HONOLULU. 211 



ports — better, perhaps — I shall not attempt to describe 

 it, or pit myself against the able writers who have made 

 it so familiar: Yet to me it was a new world. All things 

 were so strange, so delightful, especially the lovable, 

 lazy, fascinating Kanakas, who could be so limply happy 

 over a dish of poe, or a green cocoa-nut, or even a 

 lounge in the sun, that it seemed an outrage to expect 

 them to work. In their sports they could be energetic 

 enough. I do not know of any more delightful sight 

 than to watch them bathing in the tremendous surf, 

 simply intoxicated with the joy of living, as unconscious 

 of danger as if swinging in a hammock while riding 

 triumphantly upon the foaming summit of an incoming 

 breaker twenty feet high, or plunging with a cataract 

 over the dizzy edge of its cliff, swallowed up in the 

 hissing vortex below, only to reappear with a scream of 

 riotous laughter in the quiet eddy beyond. 



As far as I could judge, they were the happiest of 

 people, literally taking no thought for the morrow, and 

 content with the barest necessaries of life, so long as they 

 were free and the sun shone brightly. We had many op- 

 portunities of cultivating their acquaintance, for the cap- 

 tain allowed us much liberty, quite one-half of the crew 

 and officers being ashore most of the time. Of course, 

 the majority spent all their spare time in the purlieus 

 of the town, which, like all such places anywhere, were 

 foul and filthy enough ; but that was their own faults. 

 I have often wondered much to see men, who on board 

 ship were the pink of cleanliness and neatness, fastidious 

 to a fault in all they did, come ashore and huddle in the 

 most horrible of kennels, among the very dregs and 

 greaves of the 'long-shore district. It certainly wants a 

 great deal of explanation ; but I suppose the most potent 



