172 



HAWAII. 



[l ETTER XVIII. 



in many places, it is supposed that volcanic action ceased 

 earlier than on Maui or Hawaii. The shores are mostly fringed 

 with coral reefs, often half a mile in width, composed of 

 cemented coral fragments, shells, sand, and a growing species 

 of zoophyte. The ancient reefs are elevated thirty, forty, and 

 even too feet in some places, forming barriers which have 

 changed lagoons into solid ground. Honolulu was a bay or 

 lagoon, protected from the sea by a coral reef a mile wide ; but 

 the elevation of this reef twenty-five feet has furnished a site 

 for the capital, by converting the bay into a low but beautifully 

 situated plain. 



The mountainous range behind is a rocky wall with outlying 

 ridges, valleys of great size cutting the mountain to its core on 

 either side, until the culminating peaks of Waiolani and Kona- 

 huanui, 4000 feet above the sea, seem as if rent in twain to 

 form the Nuuanu Valley. The windward side of this range is 

 fertile, and is dotted over with rice and sugar plantations, but 

 the leeward side has not a trace of the redundancy of the tro- 

 pics, and this very barrenness gives a unique charm to the 

 exotic beauty of Honolulu. 



It is daily a fresh pleasure to stroll along the shady streets 

 and revel among palms and bananas, to see clusters of the 

 granadilla and night-blowing Cereus mixed with the double blue 

 pea, tumbling over walls and fences, while the vermilion flowers 

 of the Ponciana Regia, like spikes of red coral, and the flaring 

 magenta Bougainvillea (which is not a flower at all, but an auda- 

 cious freak of terminal leaves) light up the shade, and the pur- 

 ple-leaved Dracaena which we grow in pots for dinner-table 

 ornament, is as common as a weed. 



Besides this hotel, and the handsome but exaggerated and 

 inappropriate Government buildings not yet finished, there- are 

 few " imposing edifices" here. The tasteful but temporary 

 English Cathedral, the Kaiwaiaho Church, diminished once to 

 suit a dwindled population, but already too large again ; the 

 prison, a clean, roomy building, empty in the daytime, because 

 the convicts are sent out to labour on roads and public works ; 

 the Queen's Hospital for Curables, for which Queen Emma and 

 her husband became mendicants in Honolulu ; the Court 

 House, a staring, unshaded building ; and the Iolani Palace, 

 almost exhaust the category. Of this last, little can be said, 

 except that it is appropriate and proportioned to a kingdom of 

 56,000 souls, which is more than can be said of the income of 

 the king, the salaries of the ministers, and some other things. 



