36 



HA WAIL 



[letter hi. 



and painted white, are almost like mile-stones along the coast, 

 far too large and too many for the notoriously dwindling popu- 

 lation. Ten miles from Hilo we came in sight of the first 

 sugar plantation, with its patches of yet brighter green, its 

 white boiling house and tall chimney stack ; then more churches, 

 more plantations, more gulches, more houses, and before ten 

 we steamed into Byron's, or as it is now called Hilo Bay. 



This is the paradise of Hawaii. What Honolulu attempts 

 to be, Hilo is without effort.' Its crescent-shaped bay, said to 

 be the most beautiful in the Pacific, is a semi-circle of about 

 two miles, with its farther extremity formed by Cocoanut 

 Island, a black lava islet on which this palm attains great per- 

 fection, and beyond it again a fringe of cocoanuts marks the 

 deep indentations of the shore. From this island to the north 

 point of the bay, there is a band of golden sand on which the 

 roar of the surf sounded thunderous and drowsy as it mingled 

 with the music of the living waters of the Waiakea and the 

 Wailuku, which after lashing the sides of the mountains which 

 give them birth, glide deep and fern-fringed into the ocean. 

 Native houses, half hidden by greenery, line the bay, and stud 

 the heights above the Wailuku, and near the landing some 

 white frame houses and three church spires above the wood 

 denote the foreign element. Hilo is unique. Its climate is 

 humid, and the long repose which it has enjoyed from rude 

 volcanic upheavals has mingled a great depth of vegetable 

 mould with the decomposed lava. Rich soil, rain, heat, sun- 

 shine, stimulate nature to vigorous efforts, and there is a 

 luxuriant prodigality of vegetation which leaves nothing un- 

 covered but the golden margin of the sea, and even that above 

 high -water-mark is green with the Convolvulus maritimus. So 

 dense is the wood that Hilo is rather suggested than seen. It 

 is only on shore that one becomes aware of its bewildering 

 variety of native and exotic trees and shrubs. From the sea 

 it looks one dense mass of greenery, in which the bright foliage 

 of the candle-nut relieves the glossy dark green of the bread- 

 fruit—a maze of preposterous bananas, out of which rise slender, 

 annulated trunks of palms giving their infinite grace to the 

 grove. And palms along the bay, almost among the surf, toss 

 their waving plumes in the sweet, soft breeze, not "palms in 

 exile," but children of a blessed isle where " never wind blows 

 loudly." Above Hilo, broad lands sweeping up cloudwards, 

 with their sugar cane, kalo, melons, pine-apples, and banana 

 groves suggest the boundless liberality of Nature. Woods and 



