LETTER XIX. 



Hawaiian Women — The Honolulu Market — Annexation and Reciprocity 

 — A Probable Future — The "Rolling Moses." 



Hawaiian Hotel, Honolulu. 



My latest news of you is five months old, and though I have 

 not the slightest expectation that I shall hear from you, I go up 

 to the roof to look out for the " Rolling Moses with more 

 impatience and anxiety than those whose business journeys are 

 being delayed by her non-arrival. If such an unlikely thing 

 were to happen as that she were to bring a letter, I should be 

 much tempted to stay five months longer on the islands rather 

 than- try the climate of Colorado, for I have come to feel at 

 home, people are so very genial, and suggest so many plans for 

 my future enjoyment, the islands in their physical and social 

 aspects are so novel and interesting, and the climate is unrival- 

 led and restorative. 



Honolulu has not yet lost the charm of novelty for me. I 

 am never satiated with its exotic beauties, and the sight of a 

 kaleidoscopic whirl of native riders is always fascinating. The 

 passion for riding, in a people who only learned equitation in 

 the last generation, is most curious. It is very curious, too, to 

 see women incessantly enjoying and amusing themselves in 

 riding, swimming, and making his. They have few home ties 

 in the shape of children, and I fear make them fewer still by 

 neglecting them for the sake of riding and frolic, and man 

 seems rather the helpmeet than the " oppressor " of woman ; 

 though I believe that the women have abandoned that right of 

 choosing their husbands, which, it is said, that they exercised 

 in the old days. Used to the down-trodden look and harassed, 

 care-worn faces of the over-worked women of the same class at 

 home and in the colonies, the laughing, careless faces of the 

 Hawaiian women have the effect upon me of a perpetual marvel. 

 Eut the expression generally has little of the courteousness, 



