LETTER VII.] 



HILO HOMES. 



65 



knd it takes little to make them so in this climate. One novel 

 fashion is to decorate the walls with festoons of the beautiful 

 Microlepia tenuifolia, which are renewed as soon as they fade, 

 jand every room is adorned with a profusion of bouquets, which 

 [are easily obtained where flowers bloom all the year. Many 

 of the residents possess valuable libraries, and these, with 

 cabinets of minerals, volcanic specimens, shells, and coral, with 

 [weapons, calabashes, ornaments, and cloth of native manu- 

 facture, almost furnish a room in themselves. Some of the 

 volcanic specimens and the coral are of almost inestimable 

 value, as well as of exquisite beauty. 



The gentlemen don't seem to have near so much occupation 

 as the ladies. There are two stores on the beach, and at these 

 and at the Court-house they congregate, for lack of club-house 

 and exchange. Business is not here a synonym for hurry, and 

 'official duties are light ; so light, that in these morning hours 

 I see the governor, sheriff, and judge, with three other gentle- 

 men, playing an interminable croquet game on the Court- 

 house lawn. They purvey gossip for the ladies, and how 

 much they invent, and how much they only circulate, can never 

 be known ! 



• There is a large native population in the village, along the 

 beach, and on the heights above the Wailuku River. Frame 

 houses with lattices, and grass houses with deep verandahs, 

 peep out everywhere from among the mangoes and bananas. 

 The governess of Hawaii, the Princess Keelikolani, has a house 

 on the beach shaded by a large umbrella-tree and a magnificent 

 clump of bamboos, 70 feet in height. The native life with 

 which one comes constantly in contact, is very interesting. 



The men do whatever hard work is done in cultivating the 

 kalo patches and pounding the kalo. This kalo, the Arum 

 esculentum, forms the national diet. A Hawaiian could not 

 exist without his calabash of poi. The root is an object of the 

 tenderest solicitude, from the day it is planted until the hour 

 1 when it is lovingly eaten. The eating oipoi seems a ceremony 

 of profound meaning; it is like the eating salt with an Arab, 

 or a Masonic sign. The kalo root is an ovate oblong, as bulky 

 as a Californian beet, and it has large leaves, shaped like a 

 broad arrow, of a singularly bright green. The best kinds 

 grow entirely in water. The patch is embanked and frequently 

 inundated, and each plant grows on a small hillock of puddled 

 earth. The cutting from which it grows is simply the top of 

 the plant, with a little of the tuber. The men stand up to 



