LETTER XXX.] 



DREAMLAND. 



279 



Uilama and Prince, who they will bring, who they will take, 

 and how long their respective passages will be. A certain 

 amount of local gossip is also hashed up at each meal, and 

 every stranger who has travelled through Hawaii for the last 

 ten years is picked to pieces and worn threadbare, and his 

 purse, weight, entertainers, and habits are thoroughly can- 

 vassed. On whatever subject the conversation begins it 

 always ends in dollars ; but even that most stimulating of 

 all topics only arouses a languid interest among my fellow 

 dreamers. I spend most of my time in riding in the forests, 

 or along the bridle path which trails along the height, 

 among grass and frame-houses, almost smothered by trees and 

 trailers. 



Many of these are inhabited by white men, who, having 

 drifted to these shores, have married native women, and are 

 .rearing a dusky race, of children who speak the maternal 

 tongue only, and grow up with native habits. Some of these 

 men came for health, others landed from whalers, but of all it 

 is true that, infatuated by the ease and lusciousness of this 

 languid region, 



f< They sat them down upon the yellow sand, 

 Between the sun and moon upon the shore ; 



And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland, 

 . . . . ; but evermore 



Most weary seem'd the sea, weary the oar, 

 Weary the wandering fields of barren foam. 



Then some one said, ' We will return no more.' " 



They have enough and more, and a life free from toil, but the 

 obvious tendency of these marriages is to sink the white man 

 to the level of native feelings and habits. 



There are two or three educated residents, and there is a 

 small English church with daily service, conducted by a resi- 

 dent clergyman. 



The beauty of this part of Kona is wonderful. The in- 

 terminable forest is richer and greener than anything I have 

 yet seen, but penetrable only by narrow tracks which have been 

 made for hauling timber. The trees are so dense, and so 

 matted together with trailers, that no ray of noon-day sun 

 brightens the moist tangle of exquisite mosses and ferns which 

 covers the ground. Yams with their burnished leaves, and 

 the Polypodium spectrum, wind round every tree stem, and 

 the heavy ie, which here attains gigantic proportions, links the 

 tops of the tallest trees together by its knotted coils. Hot- 



