LETTER XVIII.] 



A PERFECT CLIMATE, 



It is a charming town, and the society is delightful. I wish I 

 were well enough to enjoy it. 



For people in the early stages of consumption this climate is 

 perfect, owing to its equability, as also for bronchial affections. 

 Unlike the health resorts of the Mediterranean, Algeria, Ma- 

 deira, and Florida, where great summer heats or an unhealthy 

 season compel half-cured invalids to depart in the spring, to 

 return the next winter with fresh colds to begin the half-cure 

 process again, people can live here until they are completely 

 cured, as the climate is never unhealthy, and never too hot. 

 Though the regular trades, which blow for nine months of the 

 year, have not yet set in, and the mercury stands at 8o°, there 

 is no sultriness ; a sea breeze and a mountain breeze fan the 

 town, and the purple nights, when the stars hang out like 

 lamps, and the moon gives a light which is almost golden, are 

 cool and delicious. Roughly computed, the annual mean 

 temperature is 75 55', with a divergence in either direction 01 

 only 7 55'. As a general rule the temperature is cooler by four 

 degrees for every thousand feet of altitude, so that people can 

 choose their climate to suit themselves without leaving the 

 islands. 



I am gradually learning a little of the topography of this 

 island and of Honolulu, but the last is very intricate. The ap- 

 pearance of Oahu from the sea is deceptive. It looks hardly 

 larger than Arran, but it is really forty-six miles long by twenty- 

 five broad, and is 530 square miles in extent. Diamond Hill, 

 or Leahi, is the most prominent object south of the town, be- 

 yond the palm groves of Waikiki. It is red and arid, except 

 when, as now, it is verdure-tinged by recent rains. Its height 

 is 760 feet, and its crater nearly as deep, but its cone is rapidly 

 diminishing. Some years ago, when the enormous quantity oi 

 thirty-six inches of rain fell in one week, the degradation of 

 both exterior and interior was something incredible, and the 

 same process is being carried on slowly or rapidly at all times. 

 The Punchbowl, immediately behind Honolulu, is a crater of 

 the same kind, but of yet more brilliant colouring : so red is it 

 indeed, that one might suppose that its fires had just died out. 

 In 1786 an observer noted it as being composed of high peaks ; 

 but atmospheric influences have reduced it to the appearance of 

 a single wasting tufa cone, similar to those which stud the 

 northern slopes of Mauna Kea. There are a number of shore 

 craters on the island, and six groups of tufa cones, but from 

 the disintegration of the lava, and the great depth of the soil 



