letter ii.] THE NUUANU VALLEY. 19 



more elaborate homes of the foreign residents has a very- 

 pleasant look. The " aborigines " have not been crowded out 

 of sight, or into a special " quarter." We saw many groups of 

 them sitting under the trees outside their houses, each group 

 with a mat in the centre, with calabashes upon it containing 

 poi, the national Hawaiian dish, a fermented paste made from 

 the root of the kalo, or arum esadentum. As we emerged on 

 the broad road which leads up the Nuuanu Valley to the 

 mountains, we saw many patches of this kalo, a very handsome 

 tropical plant, with large leaves of a bright tender green. 

 Each plant was growing on a small hillock, with water round 

 it. There were beautiful vegetable gardens also, in which 

 Chinamen raise for sale not only melons, pineapples, sweet 

 potatoes, and other edibles of hot climates, but the familiar 

 fruits and vegetables of the temperate zones. In patches of 

 surpassing neatness, there were strawberries, which are ripe 

 here all the year, peas, carrots, turnips, asparagus, lettuce, and 

 celery. I saw no other plants or trees which grow at home, 

 but recognized as hardly less familiar growths the Victorian 

 Eucalyptus, which has not had time to become gaunt and 

 straggling, the Norfolk Island pine, which grows superbly 

 here, and the handsome Moreton Bay fig. But the chief 

 feature of this road is the number of residences ; I had almost 

 written of pretentious residences, but the term would be a base 

 slander, as I have jumped to the conclusion that the twin 

 wilgarities of ostentation and pretence have no place here. 

 But certainly for a mile and a half or more there are many 

 very comfortable-looking dwellings, very attractive to the eye, 

 with an ease and imperturbable serenity of demeanour as if 

 they had nothing to fear from heat, cold, wind, or criticism. 

 Their architecture is absolutely unostentatious, and their one 

 beauty is that they are embowered among trailers, shadowed 

 by superb exotics, and surrounded by banks of flowers, while 

 the stately cocoanut, the banana, and the candlenut, the 

 aborigines of Oahu, are nowhere displaced. One house with 

 extensive grounds, a perfect wilderness of vegetation, was 

 pointed out as the summer palace of Queen Emma, or Kale- 

 eonalani, widow of Kamehameha IV., who visited England a 

 few years ago, and the finest garden of all as that of a much 

 respected Chinese merchant, named Afong. Oahu, at least on 

 this leeward side, is not tropical looking, and all this tropical 

 variety and luxuriance which delight the eye result from 

 foreign enthusiasm and love of beauty and shade. 



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