SANDWICH ISLANDS. 
59 
round to the river in the ship; and when the ladies were 
first seen in London they were dressed in very strange 
habiliments. The queen wore trousers and a long bed¬ 
gown of coloured velveteen, and her friend Kuinee or Li- 
liali, the wife of Boki, had on something of the same kind. 
They were playing whist with a pack of very dirty cards, 
complaining bitterly of the cold, and were, upon the whole, 
in a state as far removed as possible from regal dignity. 
The first object was of course to provide dresses suitable 
to the climate, and also to the condition of the wearers; 
and it was impossible for any persons to be more tractable, 
or adapt themselves with more good temper to the usages 
of this country, than the whole party. The decorum of 
their behaviour was admirable during their residence in the 
hotel. Not one instance occurred of their overstepping the 
bounds of decency or civility in their intercourse with the 
different persons appointed to wait on them ; not a suspicion 
that any one of the chiefs had offered the slightest insult to 
any woman ; nor was there any of that gluttony and drunken¬ 
ness with which those Islanders, and especially the king, 
have been wantonly charged by some who ought to have 
known better*. It is true that, unaccustomed to our 
* Perhaps the best proof of this is, that the charge at Osborne’s, during 
their residence there, amounted to no greater an average than seventeen shil- 
i 2 
