LETTER XXI. 



The Charms of Kauai — Kaluna the Second — A Patriarchal Establishment 

 — A Family Romance — A Typical Canon — The Blessing of Plenty. 



Makaueli, Kauai. 



After my letters from Hawaii, and their narratives of 

 volcanoes, freshets, and out of the world valleys, you will think 

 my present letters dull, so I must begin this one pleasantly, 

 by telling you that though I have no stirring adventures to 

 relate, I am enjoying myself and improving again in health, 

 and that the people are hospitable, genial, and cultivated, and 

 that Kauai, though altogether different from Hawaii, has an 

 extreme beauty altogether its own, which wins one's love, though 

 it does not startle one into admiration like that of the Hawaiian 

 gulches. Is it because that, though the magic of novelty is 

 over it, there is a perpetual undercurrent of home resemblance ? 

 The dash of its musical waters might be in Cumberland ; its 

 swelling uplands, with their clumps of tree, might be in Kent ; 

 and then again, steep, broken, wooded ridges, with glades of 

 grass, suggest the Val Moutiers ; and broader sweeps of moun- 

 tain outline, the finest scenery of the Alleghanies. 



But yet the very things which have a certain tenderness of 

 familiarity, are in a foreign setting. The great expanse of 

 restful sea, so faintly blue all day, and so faintly red in the late 

 afternoon, is like no other ocean in its unutterable peace ; and 

 this joyous, riotous trade-wind, which rustles the trees all day, 

 and falls asleep at night, and cools the air, seems to come from 

 some widely different laboratory than that in which our vicious 

 east winds, and damp west winds, and piercing north winds, 

 and suffocating south winds are concocted. Here one cannot 

 ride "into the teeth of a north-easter," for such the trade-wind 

 really is, without feeling at once invigorated, and wrapped in 



