LETTER XIX.] 



HONOLULU MARKET. 



decided jerk of the Englishwoman, the stately glide of the 

 Spaniard, or the stealthiness of the squaw j and I should know 

 a Hawaiian woman by it in any part of the world. A majestic 

 wahine with small, bare feet, a grand, swinging, deliberate gait, 

 hibiscus blossoms in her flowing hair, and a le of yellow flowers 

 falling over her hoioku, marching through these streets, has a 

 tragic grandeur of appearance, which makes the diminutive, 

 fair-skinned haole, tottering along hesitatingly in high-heeled 

 shoes, look grotesque by comparison. 



On Saturday, our kind host took Mrs. D. and myself to the 

 market, where we saw the natives in all their glory. The 

 women, in squads of a dozen at a time, their Pa-us streaming 

 behind them, were cantering up and down the streets, and men 

 and women were thronging into the market-place ; a brilliant, 

 laughing, joking crowd, their jaunty hats trimmed with fresh 

 flowers, and his of the crimson ohia and orange lauhala falling 

 over their costumes, which were white, green, black, scarlet, 

 blue, and every other colour that can be dyed or imagined. 

 The market is a straggling, open srjace, with a number of 

 shabby stalls partially surrounding it, but really we could not 

 see the place for the people. There must have been 2000 

 there. 



Some of the stalls were piled up with wonderful fish, crimson, 

 green, rose, blue, opaline — fish that have spent their lives in 

 coral groves under the warm, bright water. Some of them had 

 wonderful shapes too, and there was one that riveted my atten- 

 tion and fascinated me. It was, I thought at first, a heap, 

 composed of a dog fish, some limpets, and a multitude of water 

 snakes, and other abominable forms ; but my eyes slowly in- 

 formed me of the fact, which I took in reluctantly and with 

 extreme disgust, that the whole formed one living monster, a 

 revolting compound of a large paunch with eyes, and a multi- 

 tude of nervy, snaky, out-reaching, twining, grasping, tentacular 

 arms, several feet in length, I should think, if extended, but 

 then lying in a crowded undulating heap ; the creature was 

 dying, and the iridescence was passing over what seemed to be 

 its body in waves of colour, such as glorify the last hour of the 

 dolphin. But not the colours of the rainbow could glorify this 

 hideous, abominable form, which ought to be left to riot in 

 ocean depths, with its loathsome kindred. You have read " Les 

 Travailhiirs dn Mer," and can imagine with what feelings I 

 looked upon a living Devil-fish ! The monster is much esteemed 

 by the natives as an article of food, and indeed is generally 



