lage, with its neat white houses, its warehouses of brick and stone along the water's edge, and here and there a flag-staff with the Hawaiian, or, it may be the American flag displaved; and, let it be said, more frequently the latter than the former. The delusion is almost complete until the ship is moored to the wharf; only the singular mountains, bearing marks of fire, and the tropical cocoa-palms are there to break the charm; but on landing it is soon dispelled by the strange words of the darkbrown natives, their aloha of welcome, and the sight of a grass hut here and there among the houses of the foreign residents. Still, after a residence of several weeks, it is difficult to conceive of it as a Kanaka city, for an acquaintance with the listlessness and want of enterprise entering so largely into native character constantly reminds the stranger that the American-built houses and the comforts they contain are the results of foreign, not of native thrift and skill. True, the king and the nobles, as well as some of the most intelligent and industrious among the natives, possess similar houses, well furnished with most of the comforts of civilized life, but the great mass of the people are not capable of the continued effort necessary to procure them.

To tell the truth, as it was told me by one who visited it in 1840 with the United States Exploring Expedition, "Honolulu is an American colony, sir, quite an American town, sir." If this was true then it is much more so now from the gradual decrease of the native element and increase in the number of American residents since the opening of California No doubt the English residents, especially since England has appointed a bishop for the islands, would take umbrage at such an assumption; but it is nevertheless true, the amount of English capital, trade and interests bearing but a very small proportion to those of America.

Excepting the churches, Honolulu can boast few public buildings. The palace of the king can be seen only by those honored by a presentation at court; the Custom-house and Court-house are stone buildings of no pretension whatever; the Queen's Hospital, at a short distance from the town, is not a very large or very elegant structure, while the Hawaiian theatre is an old, tumble-down affair, apparently given over to the rats and centipedes. The public offices, as they are termed, on Fort-street, are very unpretending wooden buildings, painted a Quaker drab and half hidden by a high wooden fence of an unexceptionable brown color. A Quaker congregation would be quite at home on the premises, notwithstanding the ominous sign-board, "Department of Foreign Affairs and of War"-which last bureau is a pleasing little fiction of the Hawaüan officials harming no one. The churches are, in reality, the most important and interesting of the public buildings. Of course the stone church, so conspicuous from the sea, is chief among them, gathering a congregation of some 3,000 natives on the Sabbath, and being the great town hall or "tabernacle" in which all public meetings or concerts are held during the week. Built, as it was, entirely by native contributions and mainly by native skill, it will be the monument of this people when the causes which are wasting them away shall have worked out their inevitable result, and the nation is extinct.

Although this end is seen approaching, the church is yet well filled on the Sabbath, and the services, conducted in the Hawaiian language, have many devout attendants who do not lose a single word of all that is told them from the pulpit. It would be well if their quiet and attentive de

meanor could be transplanted to some of our own churches at home where the sleepers outnumber the hearers.

Besides the native church the Congregationalists have a chapel where regular services are held in English, and there is a seamen's chapel which, in the times of whaling, has often been crowded with sailors.

The Roman Catholics have a handsome, well-built cathedral on Fortstreet which is quite largely attended by natives, whose love of finery overmasters their religious teaching; and the English Puseyites or Reformed-Catholics as they prefer to be called in Honolulu, have a small chapel and a smaller congregation at the entrance to Nuaanu Valley. They propose, however, to erect a large and suitable building for the new bishop.

In a small place like Honolulu the rivalry between these various sects soon becomes bitter, and just at present a strong mixture of political interests with those of the English Church affected by the advocates of the New Establishment, has given rise to more sharp feeling than has existed for some time past. The late king seemed disposed to unite church and state after the manner of Great Britain, and having sent to England for an Episcopal clergyman and received a bishop, he gave him a standing and position at court as Lord Bishop of the Isles, which has almost turned the head of the reverend gentleman. Much political capital is made of this, and the certainty, within a few years, of the Hawaiian dynasty becoming extinct, together with the advantage to be derived by either nation of possessing superior political influence at that time, when the islands will fall either to the United States or Great Britain, gives much interest to the matter, and in the minds of the people of foreign birth in the islands makes the slightest change in affairs appear a matter of stupendous importance to both countries. To hear some of them it would be supposed that the eyes of the whole world were upon the honorable gentlemen representing the great nations at the Hawaiian court, and that the slightest difference of opinion between them was an affair of national importance. Little questions of etiquette assume in their eyes a national importance. For instance: a prodigious sensation was made last May (1863), by the refusal of the American minister to hoist the stars and stripes on the Queen's birthday—a pretty piece of discourtesy, the more marked since the day was made a public holiday, and the foreign consuls all hoisted their flags. Englishmen waxed indignant at the slight to the Queen, as they called it, and could not be pacified. It turned out that the minister had deemed this course necessary for the honor of his country, since Washington's birthday had not been observed at the British embassy. In such silly controversies time passes at a court where there is little to do. It is proper to remark that the gentleman now representing the United States at Honolulu had not at that time entered upon his official duties, and that strange stories of the incompetency of his predecessor were afloat.

In this connection it is impossible to avoid mentioning the close bonds which unite foreign residents at Honolulu to their native countries, however long absent and isolated the individual may have been. The oldest missionary turns to the United States as home, although he may long since have dismissed all hope of returning thither, and the children of missionaries, born and brought up on the islands, have as absorbing an interest in the great struggle now progressing in the States as any boy

in New York or Kentucky, and are quite as well informed of its nature and progress. We have Hawaiian citizens in our national army who are followed with lively interest by friends and relatives in this little kingdom of the Pacific. This failure on the part of residents to identify themselves heart and son with the land of their adoption marks the difference between a rising nation and a feeble one. New York city alone receives as many emigrants in a single month,-often in a single week, as would outnumber the entire population of the Sandwich Islands. They come from out all nations under Heaven. In a few years their nationality is lost; they are swallowed up in the great sea of American citizenship; but in these islands the few hundreds of foreigners who from time to time have settled there have been a peculiar people, superior to and separated from the natives, and while the latter are melting away the former, maintaining their distinct and commanding position, are destined in the end to become the sole inhabitants of the group. It is true that many among these foreigners marry native wives and take the oath of citizenship, but this does not alter their relative position. Their wives are elevated by the alliance, and their children are educated as whites, rising above the people in thought and associations. Some of these children are so nearly white that it would be impossible

to detect the shade of native blood.

It is this clearly defined line between the native and foreign population, and the gradual diminution of the former by natural causes, which marks the certainty that in a few years even the shadow of power will have left this people. It only remains with them now by sufferance, for in reality the foreigners possess most of the political power and money capital of the group. Any sudden development of the sugar interest would so much increase the white population as to make them sole owners of the soil, as they are now to a very large extent. Then any serious attempt by the king and chiefs to legislate against their interests would speedily lead to a revolution, by which the whites would become in name as they are now in reality, the leading power in the Sandwich Islands.

During the last three years the sugar interests have increased so largely, and it has been so well proved that the business will pay large profits notwithstanding the failure of several enterprises through ignorance and lack of capital, that it may be considered a matter of great probability-almost of certainty-that the next five years will see a inarvellous change in the standing and prospects of the country. Honolulu hitherto has been known only as a port of call where our whaleships have touched twice a year for supplies. Soon it will be a great export mart for sugar, and possibly for coffee. With less outlay of labor the rich lava soil of Hawaii and Kauai will produce larger crops of sugar than any other land in the world, not even excepting the rich cane-lands of Cuba. The great wants are capital and skilled labor. Native labor is abundant enough and cheap enough, but totally inadequate for the cultivation of the islands on a large scale. Capital is scarce, and the place so remote that it is not easily attracted thither; but for sugar planting it is increasing. With ample capital and improved machinery the sugar culture will soon become the great industry of the islands, and a source of wealth to all who engage in it bringing skill and energy to the work.

Honolulu at present is in a transition state between the prosperity

arising from the whale fishery and its position in the Pacific as a central depôt for whale ships, and the new and more enduring benefits to be received as the warehouse of the sugar-plantations. The business it enjoyed with the whalers has failed almost entirely, and the business it will do for the planters has hardly been felt as yet; so between the two the town is like the ass between the bundles of hay in the fable. It is among the most beautiful and sluggish, unenterprising cities of the world. Sometimes it is cut off from the rest of the world for a month at a time. Ships pass on their way to China, but they do not care to lose the trade-winds by touching, and then the stagnation becomes awful. The weekly papers are filled with profound speculations as to what has become of the monthly packet. The literature of the month is exhausted; there is little to interest in the daily routine of life. The merchants, with nothing to do, meet on the shady side of the streets to smoke their pipes, while the natives drone in the sunshine. Such places are greatly given to scandal and gossip where each man knows all the affairs of his neighbors.

Then woe to the unlucky traveler who has completed his tour and is compelled to wait a China-bound vessel to be once more in motion,-a ship always expected, daily reported, and rarely touching. They see "lights out at sea," and speculate interminably, always sure that it is the "only chance." When at last a ship appears all is excitement for a day or two, and then the citizens slide back into their old habits of brushing off flies and indulging in long meditations to wake up at the next arrival a month later.

Some unfortunates have remained waiting, watching for two months, and taken passage at last to San Francisco in despair, retracing two thousand miles of their journey. Such was the ill-fortune of Mr. Dana, who wrote "Two Years Before the Mast."

THE PAHRI.

By far the most interesting sight to the stranger at Honolulu is the precipice at the head of Nuaanu Valley, called "the Pahri, or Jumpingoff Place." It is but a short horse-back ride from the town, from which, indeed, it is plainly seen. The road leads out through the Nuaanu Valley, gradually rising between beautiful villas hidden in kukui or candle-nut trees and cocoa palms, and between patches of kalo, rice, and sugar cane. The kalo patches are peculiar to the islands and China, the irrigated pits especially belonging to the Nuaanu Valley. A little stream running through it is used to irrigate acre after acre of kalopits as they descend, like terraces of table land, from the head of the valley towards the sea. Few of them contain more than two acres of land, and, as they lie adjacent, walls of turf with foot-paths upon them are thrown up between the pits. The kalo is planted in hills like maize, and the stalks and roots being under water, the broad flat leaves are thrown out like those of the lotus, although in shape they resemble those of the rhubarb or pie-plant. One of these pits will support a native family; every part-root, stalk, and leaf being edible. Baked, the root is superior to the sweet potato and bread-fruit; ground and fermented it is used as poi by all the natives of Hawaii, and constitutes the national food; while from the leaves cooked as spinich is made one of the most piquant and wholesome dishes to be had in any country. It is the most nourish

ing and prolific vegetable known, and is grown so cheaply that with twenty-five cents worth of poi a native can subsist for ten days, which is a rate of expenditure one-third less than that of the Chinese coolie, who has the reputation of living on less than any other human being. A kalopit forty feet square will support a man for a year, the fruit ripening at all seasons.

The kalo lands are most numerous at the foot of the valley where the soil is richest and more thoroughly moistened with the drainings from the hills. Leaving them behind, we find that as we rise the view of the town and bay increases in beauty with every step of ascent. Mountains rise on either hand to the height of two thousand feet, with spurs or buttresses branching off to the valley. All these are covered with small shrubs and ferns, and here and there a waterfall or a single thread of water trickles over their sides.

A single conical hill, with its slightly depressed crater called the Punchbowl, stands to the right of the valley, and just in front of us is the clear outline of the Pahri, seemingly less than a mile away. Turning, the prospect embraces almost every kind of tropical scenery to be viewed in the islands; the ocean, surf, and beach with its fringe of cocoa-palms; the arid plains at the base of volcanoes where the work of decomposition has barely commenced, and the fertile valleys where water or the hand of man has crumbled the lava-rock into a rich black soil; the volcanoes themselves now extinct, but showing in the bold outlines and the desolation near their summits the fearful work of fire; and last, but not least, the cheerful dwellings of civilized man-a city hidden among trees. By our very side, in the foreground of the picture to make it complete, stands a native hut, like a relic of the past, its grass-thatched sides and roof telling of a semi-barbarism that forty years of christianity have not entirely effaced.

The first hint that you have reached the Pahri probably is that your hat is blown away. The mountains form here a funnel, as it were, through which the trade-winds sweep with incredible force. They quite take the breath away, and no one who has stood on that superb height, glancing over the country below, will fail to acknowledge that the first glimpse was taken with breathless interest.

The precipice is about eleven hundred feet above the country below, and probably two thousand feet above the sea, which is visible about eight miles away. The descent is absolute; no turnings and little hills like steps to break it, but from the rock your horse is standing on, the native huts at your very feet seem far away and dwarfed by distance. The plain below is bounded by a vast amphitheatre, the sides of some gigantic crater on the rim of which is the Pahri. Its diameter probably exceeds twenty miles, possibly twenty-five-it is of little consequence which, for when looking from such a height the mind is satisfied; it is enough that the eye has full sweep for miles on either side.

The rim of this amphitheatre is by no means regular; peaks that would form respectable mountains rise from it, and the outline as seen against the sky has all the ruggedness of a mountain-chain; but the walls are as straight and uniform as if placed by design. They are supported by the familiar lava-buttresses and are quite bare of vegetation. Many conjecture that at some former period the sea played against these grand old buttresses, and, driven by the fierce trade-winds, it has hollowed out