I 3 2 



HA WAIL 



[LETTER XIII. 



of hookupu was revived, and it has been a most interesting; 

 spectacle. I don't think I ever enjoyed sight-seeing so much. 

 The weather has been splendid, which was most fortunate, for: 

 many of the natives came in from distances of from sixty to! 

 eighty miles. From early daylight they trooped in on their 

 half broken steeds, and by ten o'clock there were fully a thou- 

 sand horses tethered on the grass by the sea. Almost every 

 house displayed flags, and the court-house, where the reception' 

 was to take place, was most tastefully decorated. It is a very 

 pretty two-storied frame building, with deep double verandahs, 

 and stands on a large lawn of fine mainienie grass,* with roads 

 on three sides. Long before ten, crowds had gathered outside! 

 the low walls of the lawn, natives and foreigners galloped in all 

 directions, boats and canoes enlivened the bay, bands played, 

 and the foreigners, on this occasion rather a disregarded 

 minority, assembled in holiday dress in the upper verandah of 

 the court-house. Hawaiian flags on tall bamboos decorated i 

 the little gateways which gave admission to the lawn, an 

 enormous standard on the government flagstaff could be seen 

 for miles, and the stars and stripes waved from the neighbouring j 

 plantations and from several houses in Hilo. At ten punctually, 

 Lunalilo, Governor Lyman, the sheriff of Hawaii, the royal, 

 chamberlain, and the adjutant-general, walked up to the court-' 

 house, and the king took his place, standing in the lower 

 verandah with his suite about him. All the foreigners were 

 either on the upper balcony, or on the stairs leading to it, on 

 which, to get the best possible view of the spectacle, I stood ' 

 for three mortal hours. The attendant gentlemen were well 

 dressed, but wore " shocking bad hats ; " and the king wore a 

 sort of shooting suit, a short brown cut-away coat, an ash- 

 coloured waistcoat and ash-coloured trousers with a blue stripe. 

 He stood bareheaded. He dressed in this style in order that the 

 natives might attend the reception in every day dress, and not 

 run, the risk of spoiling their best clothes by Hilo torrents. 

 The dress of the king and his attendants was almost concealed 

 by wreaths of ohia blossoms and festoons of maile, some of 

 them two yards long, which had been thrown over them, and 

 which bestowed a fantastic glamour on the otherwise prosaic 

 inelegance of their European dress. But indeed the spectacle, 

 as a whole, was altogether poetical, as it w r as an ebullition of' 

 natural, national, human feeling, in which the heart had the 



* Cynodon Dactylon (?) 



