REMINISCENCES OF THE SOUTH SEAS

BY

JOHN LAFARGE

Author of “The Higher Life in Art,” “Great Masters,” “One Hundred Masterpieces of Painting,” Etc.

WITH 48 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PAINTINGS AND DRAWINGS MADE BY THE AUTHOR IN 1890-91

Garden City New York
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1916


COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY THE CENTURY CO.

Copyright, 1912, by
Doubleday, Page & Company

All rights reserved, including that of
translation into foreign languages
including the Scandinavian

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

PREFATORY NOTE

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR

ILLUSTRATIONS IN BLACK AND WHITE

REMINISCENCES OF THE SOUTH SEAS

EN ROUTE

And then there was a pleasant club, with the usual hideous decoration, but very comfortable and with such a good table, and such a real one—meats that were meats, and fish that was fish, and fruits in quantity, and fruits are not fruits for pleasure unless they be in quantity; and good wine and champagne of a kind that is not ours; and a Mr. Cutler who took us there and talked of things he had done or would do, that were interesting, and the contrast between the smoothness of life there, and the apparent difficulties outside. I say apparent because many of them are based upon a feeling of indifference or “look out for yourself” in any event outside. Yes, the Union Club was a good waster of time. And then I am not yet well recovered at all from the strain of the beginning of the month; and I felt as if I had sea-legs and gait from the motion of the car. So that I shall say nothing of the great bay, nor its mountainsides, that look at this time as if they were nothing but those we have seen all along, but with the sea rolling in.

We got off on Saturday, not at noon as stated, but waiting for a couple of hours in dock, the little steamer filled with people and with very pretty girls, who, alas! were not to accompany us. But we have a circus troupe “à la Buffalo Bill”; an impresario with the nose and figure head of the “boy,” and his wife, or lady, the usual “variety blonde” to match, joining, like the telegraph, (through the seas and continent of America), furthest Australia and the Singing Hall of London. Long-haired cowboys see them off, one of them fair-haired and boyish and “sixty-two.” There are Indians, one long-haired, saturnine, and yet smiling, with the usual length of jaw and hair (so that his back runs up from his waist to his hat), who sits with some female, perhaps a dancer, and talks sentiment evidently, in his way, to my great delight—and hers, too, whatever she might say. They sit with one blanket around them, and he points gracefully, and puts things in her hair—and draws presents out of his pockets, wrapped up in paper, and puts them back to pull them out again. She sits against him, and smiles at him ironically, and laughs, and generally looks like a pretty cat lapping cream.

The cowboys meander about and go to the bar-room too frequently, especially one, a fair-haired one, who feels the first attack of sea-sickness, and sits with his head on his hand—and resents his comrades’ begging him to come below, telling them that they have mistaken the man he is, that he is a Pawnee medicine man, he is, and that he will wipe the floor with them; and then he subsides again—so that my expected row does not occur.

Then everybody subsides, even the cheerful young Englishmen and old Englishmen, and the middle-aged Englishmen, who pervade a good part of the ship and utter all their small stock of remarks with slowness and power. There are others—the teacher going back for her vacation, to the seminary at Hawaii—the young German I suspect of being an R.C. priest, and the Scotchman who has carefully talked for the last hour on the advantage of our system of “checking” baggage, which as he says allows you to go on without getting off at any station to see if the “guard” has the things all right. But as he remarks, for the hand luggage, a “mon” can take care of that himself, otherwise he would not be fit to take care of MONEY!!

But the weather is disappointing, very cold (so that ulsters are convenient), dark and grey, and there is a heavy coast sea, which I didn’t like until yesterday, since when it has been warm, and we have had blue sky in large patches through rents in the violet silveriness of the clouds. It is the exquisite clearness of the blue of the Pacific, a butterfly blue, laid on as it were between the clouds, and shading down to white faintness in the far distance, where the haze of ocean covers up the turquoise. The sea has the blue for a long time, but dark and reflecting the grey sky. This morning (Thursday) it has been blue like a sapphire, dark to look at except near by, but when you look down to it, and see it framed in the openings of the windows or the gangways, blue light pours out of it, and I realize that my blue sketches of four years ago are no exaggeration. When the clouds open somewhat, the blue light pours down and makes the shadows of the clouds violet, except when this fog against the warm sky looks red and rosy. Even the shadows of the blue sea look at moments reddish, when they reflect the opposite grey cloud. But we are not yet quite in the sun seas—this is not the season yet nor the place. There is all the time a veil of cloud, a veil so heavy as to make great cumulus clouds bunch out in extreme modelling. But when it is grey, all in silver—there is a light—a lilac grey, a silver, not known to the other side; and it is only when the distant smoke of the steamer goes over the grey clouds that I realize that they become like those of the north Atlantic.

This is Thursday afternoon. On Saturday at dawn, or before it, we shall sight at first the island of Molokai, the leper’s island, where Father Damien lived, then Oahu and its capes and Honolulu.

Friday, 29th August.

Last night the sun set in those silver tones that I associate with the Pacific and with Japan. The horizon was enclosed everywhere, but through it every here and there the pink and rose of sunset came out and in the east lit up the highest of the clouds in every variety of pink and lilac and purple and rose, shut in with grey. But the moon, “O Tsuki San,” had her turn—then I realized where we were. All was so dark that the horizon was quite veiled, but the light of the moon, in its full, and high up, poured down on what seemed a wall-embroidery of molten silver slanting to the horizon. Itself was partly wrapped in clouds or veils or wraps like those that protect some big jewel, and when unveiled or partly covered, it had the roundness—the nearness of some great crystal “with white fire laden.” The clearness was so great at places open through the clouds, that I thought I could see Jupiter’s satellites, and decided it was he by this additional glitter. There is no way of telling you all that the moon did, for she seemed to arrange the clouds, to place them about her or drive them away, to veil herself with one hand of cloud. It was like a great heavenly play—and played in such lovely air! If I could write on for pages I could only say that I had no idea of what the moon could be, nor of the persistence of colour that she could hold in all the silveriness.

When I went to bed, blue light poured in by reflection from the waves that had looked dark and colourless from the deck. It was the same contrast as by daylight, when the dark sea, isolated from the sky, takes a blue like Oriental satin, and is fired with light.

To-night again the moon gave a play—no longer in the great pomp of a simple spread of silver forms of cloud, but like an opera of colour and shadow, far in front of it, hung at times, a cloud so dense as to seem as dark as our bulwarks or “roofing”—but usually a cloud of blue, perhaps by contrast with the warmth of the clouds behind, all lit up and modelled and graded tier on tier. No Rembrandt could have more indication of grading and of dark than these clouds had in reality. No possible palette could approximate the degrees of dark and of light, for the moon, when she uncovered entirely, was the same transparent silver vase out of which poured light. It seemed impossible—the electric light alongside of us was no brighter apparently than the bright markings of the light on the deck, on the edges of the bulwarks, and on the brass of the railings. Imagine the electric light, in say our Fifth Avenue, really turned on everything around you. It is a stupid simile, but I wish you to believe in what I am saying. I took a coloured print into the moonlight to try, and could make out the colours—fairly of course—moonily, but there they were all, all but the violet. We could read, poorly, but we could read. But this is not the point, it is that we could see far away to the moon, and that it made a centre of light for every dark, for every half-tint, curtain upon curtain hung in front of it—all the foregrounds of sky you could wish for in that possibility of fog cloud.

Never shall I think again of the moon as a pale imitation. Of course its representation began when the sun was gone. Why it was like a sun one could look at without wincing, and canopied itself with colours that did not imitate, but were merely the iridescent spectrum that belongs to the great sun. These colours, by their arrangement in the prismatic sequence seemed to make more light, to arrange it and dispose it, as if art was recalling nature. All this must seem unintelligible. It would to me if I dared reread it. But this is at least what we came for—the moon and the Pacific.

To-morrow morning, Honolulu.

There was the profile of Oahu at seven this morning. Earlier, Molokai was a long cloud on our port. Now Oahu becomes clearer, and is distinctly violet or plum colour. The sea in front of it is blue, and dashed with white foam. Above, the clouds are in the more delicate greys and violets, and far up is a little rift of blue. To the right a large white triangular patch—an extinct volcano cone. Near the base of the mountains all is mist.

It is now 7:30. Birds, swallows, and sea-mews meet us; the swallows came early this morning. But until yesterday, for two days, there was no life except the flying fish.

We are very close, so close that I cannot draw except in panorama. All looks like cinders as we go on. Lovely cloud effects on the hills—rainbows—and the furthest edge of everything in this promontory daring all.

Then, as we round this, with our first turn perhaps since we left, we can see more mountains and hills—for the first time, right on the blue sea, a fringe of green (not yellowish)—the first time I have seen a fringe of green to deep blue sea.

Later we see beneath the great hills or mountains, that look like cinders, green bushes of trees, and houses looking pretty enough and cool—but we are still far off—and then behind this grey mountain with fringe of green we begin to feel Honolulu.

Big mountains, green valleys and slopes far back, a fringe of trees, some large buildings, a steamer’s smoke from some place, here and there masts—all this spread for miles, like an edging. As the space unfolds we see an immensely long beach (Waikiki) running at the base of the hills around a bay, and far off in the haze many masts. “White water” edges the sea everywhere, even before the line of ships. The water has calmed on which we now slip. There is no motion to it; no more, apparently, than would make a fringe of foam to a lake. A narrow channel in the surf, and we see the shipping and the port: steamships and sailing vessels, an English and an American warship, and we are in, and I am interrupted for the keys of the trunks.

HONOLULU

like gauze over the palms, then sank away into the space shining far off—a little darker now than the sky, and warm and rather red in colour.

Meanwhile, the palm branches tossed up and down in the intermittent gale which blew from behind us in the great hills. The landscape was all below us, lying at the very foot of the palms which edge the hill upon which we are. Across the grass the moonlight came sometimes, as if a lamp had suddenly been brought in—and the colour of the half-yellow grass, which was not lost in the moonlight, urged on this delusion. Even the violet of the two pillars of palm and its silveriness were strong enough to make greener the colour of the sky.

When I walked out behind the house the hills were covered with cloud—I say covered, but rather the cloud rested upon them, and poured up into the sky, in large masses of white; the moon shining through most of the time, out of an opening more blue than the blue sky, itself an opaline circle of greenish blue light, with variant iridescent redness in the cloud edges. Against it the heavy trees looked as dark as green can be, and now and again the branches of other palms were like waves of grass against this dark, or against the sky all shining and brilliant. Occasionally it rained, as it did in the afternoon; the edges of the great cloud blew upon us like a little sprinkle of wet dust, and later, as it came thicker, the rustle of the palms was increased by the rustle of the rain. The grass of the hills shone as with moisture, but the grass outside, near us, was so dry that the hand put down to it felt no wet.

And I went off to bed under mosquito nettings, in a room that smelt of sandalwood, to sleep late and feel the gusts of wind blow through the open windows, and to think that it rained because I heard the palms.

Yesterday it rained very often. As we landed, the rain had begun, and the air was difficult to breathe with the quantity of moisture. All was wet, underfoot, though the wet, by the afternoon, had dried in this volcanic soil. We had been taken up to the home of Mr. Smith, Judge Hartwell’s brother-in-law, and decided at once upon going to housekeeping, for which we had to drive into town quite late; and we made out of our business a form of skylarking, I think to the astonishment of our guide and friend, who may have thought that persons who had been able to discuss seriously in the afternoon with himself and a member of the former cabinet, Mr. Thurston, the question of the sugar tariff, and its relation to the Force bill and the position of Mr. Blaine and of the Pennsylvania senators, should not be people to waste their minds on the dress of Hawaiian girls and the fashion of wearing flowers about the neck.

But the ride was full of enjoyment and novelty. Honolulu streets are amusing. The blocks of houses are tropical, with most reasonable lowness, and are of cement in facings; and the great number of Chinese shops and of Chinese, with some pretty Chinese girl faces and children’s faces, enliven the streets. And there are so many horses, small, with much mustang blood and good action and good heads, and ridden freely—too freely, for we saw a labourer ridden down by some cowboyish fellow. Hawaiian women rode about in their divided skirts; they had, as well as many of the men, flowers around their waists and their necks, and among their delights, peacock-feather bands around their hats. Many of them were pretty, I thought, with animated faces, talking to mild and fierce men of similar adornments. And as I said, there was much Chinese, and dresses of much colour—for men and women—and trees with flowers, like the Bougainvillia purplish rose coloured; grey palm trunks, and many plants of big leaves like the banana; yellow limes, and fiercely green acacias.

At any rate it was fun; we stopped and bought mangoes and oranges from natives who smiled or grinned at us. The air grew delicious with the wind that took away the oppression of the dampness, (we have about 80 to 83 degrees), so that if this be tropical, it is easy to bear, and the vast feeling of air and space gives a charm even to the heat.

I walked about this morning toward the hills, of which the near ones are covered with grass of a velvet grey in the light, and dun colour in the shade; but behind, the higher hills are purple and lost in the base of the cloud that has never ceased to turret them. After a while the sense of blue air became intense.

Tuesday.

We sat up again and waited for the moon to rise, and watched her light drown the brilliancy of the stars and of the milky way. Jupiter shone like diamonds, and Venus was like a glittering moon herself; and beneath her in the ocean a wide tremulousness of light broke the great belt of water with a shine that anywhere else might have done for the reflection of the moon. The great palms threw up their arms into a coloured sky not quite violet nor quite green; the gale blew again from the mountains with the same intensity; the great cloud hung again up to the same point in the heaven until the moon began to beat its edges down, and break them and send them in blots of white and dark into the western sky. Then, at length, she came out again to sink behind the advancing cloud, which again broke, over and over again, and through the trees behind us and over the hills hung in a mass of violet grey. The wind blew more and more violently, but never any colder; always as if at the beginning of a storm, not as if any more than a long gust. And when the moon was free in the upper sky, and the cloud rested in its accustomed place, above the hills, we walked out into the open spaces to see the clouds lie in white masses of snow piled up, and above them to the north, the sky of an indefinite purple, terrible in its depth of uncertainty of colour, with no break, no cloud whatever.

Wednesday night we had rain, though only above us. Occasionally the clouds gained over in the southwest before us, but not entirely, and for a time the horizon of the sea was dusty and a little uncertain, but never at any moment did we fail to see the stars before us and the clear light of the sky. But we had to say good-bye to the moon. She will rise now so late that for us who are getting tired with a little more movement, there is impatience at having to watch; and, besides, the mosquitoes pour about us in swarms, unless we remain outdoors in the continual gusty surge of wind that makes us more and more sleepy.

Now the sky in the night becomes more purple and more violet as we look toward the south, instead of holding delicate blue-green, that promised the moon; and around Venus, until her setting, there is an area of light in this violet; and below her the sea is bright as if with a moon, and all the stars toward the south are brilliant and fiery.

Friday.

Yesterday we drove up the valley. We ourselves are on a bank or projection into it, though the rocks rise to our left as we look northeast, which is the trend of the valley. Honolulu is below us, spread by the sea, and the valley goes up from it as do others; to the north and east there is a wide fringe or space by the sea, which is as a big slope, and into it these valleys open, so that, as we look back on our drive, that narrows more, we see the scene opening more and more and further and further below us, Honolulu and its plain or lower slope shining in light, with the sea beyond it, the surf breaking away out from its shore, and the sea spreading over the sand in a faint wash of greener colour; further out a purple line of reef below the water, and then the waveless blue of distance. All is light; even the converging hills—hills coming together in the perspective, like stage wings, but opening out in reality—even the hills seem transparent with light. The valley side rises generally, but our view is occasionally interrupted by divisions of higher land, slopes from the mountainsides that run across. And so we go for five miles. The hills and mountains, for they are high, are steep and pointed and covered with green. Here and there black marks indicate the volcanic rock; a cascade comes down the apparently perpendicular side of the rock, like a snake twisting; making a movement like a throbbing, for there is no leap, it merely glides down the wall. Then suddenly the road rises still more, and we come to a bank before us where the road turns; and over the bank we see distance, and green hills like a plain under us, and red roads through the multitudinous green, and far away a promontory out to sea, silver and grey, for the vegetation has suddenly stopped there, and there is nothing but the nameless aridity of mountains standing out to sea, in a fairyland of blue and white surf, and sand between white and yellow, and a warm emerald of shallow waves near the shore. We are on the famous Pali, thirteen hundred feet above the hills below us. Pack mules grope down the path, and a carriage held back by two riders on horseback goes down the precipitous winding road. There is shouting and clicking of stirrups and spurs and bridles, the plunges of the horses and sudden throwing back of the men, all in a gale of heavy wind, make me feel in this smallness even in animals the size and space before me. As we go down the road a little, we see, looking up, the great cliffs of the Pali to which we have driven. It makes a great cliff of walls opposite to the sea, (over which we have broken), and to the west it stretches in shadow, and in the west we see the marking lost in shade of unnamable tones, as the green precipice casts its shade across the foothills and slopes for a vast space, (it is two thousand feet high), looking as if it had been some great sea-cliff once, and the sea had once formed the spaces now green, and undulating with hill and valley. But the great Pali has probably been one side of the stupendous wall of a great crater, now partly under the sea, and the grey mountain far off to sea has been the central cone of this ancient circle.

September 6th.

We had to-day a very Hawaiian afternoon; we tasted of the delights—perhaps it would be better to say the comforts—of poi; eaten with relishes, squid and salt fish, and fish baked in ti leaves, and also of some introduced things, such as the guava, which is spooned out from its rind. But all this is known to you. And this was two-fingered poi. When fully stiff it is one-fingered, the three-fingered being effeminate, and coming to-day more in use with general degeneracy. And we see later old poi-dishes with an edge running in, upon which to wipe the finger or fingers. And as the talk went on, turning always more or less to ancient habits and traditions, we heard much more than I can remember. As a shuttle through the web of the conversation ran the personality of the King; interesting, in many ways, because of his race, and of its exact relation to the pure race, and of his caring for the old traditions and probably superstitions. He collects, or has collected; but is little addicted to the civilized habits of curators of museums, and is fond of arranging his remains and fragments, placing them and setting them occasionally in gold, and remaking old idols which are fragmentary, not without surmises of his taking more than an outside scientific or artistic interest in them. And no wonder! there must remain every reason of inheritance in mind. The christianizing of the native mind can be represented by the supposition of an acceptance of a Jehovah who ruled in great matters, and over the soul, but whose attention was not directed to little things; so that there might be essences that controlled ordinary life, good to invoke in time of danger, and for usual help, at any rate of good omen, or to be propitiated for fear of harm. And so often the native in great distress, as when death threatens, resorts to old forms, as invalids all over the world look to remedies out of the regular way—the good woman’s doctorings and the help of the quack, who may not perhaps be all out in some matters. And so it is possible to hear that this personage has rebuilt a heiau or temple—a fishing temple of propitiation near his summer residence, upon the old lines of the former one;—and to listen to the singular anecdote, which gives him as consulting an old crone when age is on her in the full of a hundred, and who remembered the erection of the old temple now destroyed. When consulted by us she was still able to work, though so very old, and was found seated under some hut or shelter, scraping twigs for mats, with a sharp-edged shell, as she had done when a child of ten. Much could not be obtained from her, as she had no consecutive thread of talk, but she was able to show where the cornerstone of the old temple lay, and beneath it the bones of the human being sacrificed as a propitiatory and necessary part of the foundation—a habit and tradition common to all races, as we know. The King could not, of course, sacrifice a human being to-day, so that a pig was the propitiation, and the new heiau is built. The first offering from fishing is thrown there and success established.

Another pig comes in a more curious and fantastic way, and forms part of a possible picture, conjured up in the story. For some old priest or kahuna assured the King, anxious to discover the remains of the great Kamehameha, that they could be traced by divination. The pig, filled with the spirit (ahu), was let loose, and an old priest and less old but heavy chieftain careered after him, until the animal passed, and began to circle about in convulsions. Then they dug and lo! a skull, which the King now keeps as the remains of the great head of the sovereignty, from whom his predecessors were descended, as was, for example, the wife of our Mr. Bishop the banker—for the present King is not of that lofty strain. This difficulty of finding what was left of the great tyrant and hero was owing to the Hawaiian (and Polynesian), habit of hiding the remains of the great; sometimes even they were eaten; the people were not cannibals—they did not kill to eat, but it was necessary to protect the remains from insult. No one would wish to have his chief’s bones serve for fishhooks, nor to make arrowheads to shoot mice with, nor I suppose even to make ornamental circles in the sticks of the kahili, the beautiful plumed stick of honour, originally a fly-brush, I suppose (like the old Egyptian fan), which was the attribute of power, and which is still carried about royalty, or stands at their coffin or place of burial. Consequently every precaution was taken to hide the bones, which were tied together and put in some inaccessible secret place.

Another kahuna or priest told the King how to have access to the terrible hiding-place where were deposited the remains of some chief that Kalakaua wished to have, to give them finally some resting-place of honour. The only way to get at this cavern was by diving and when he did so he came up into a cavern, where he found them, and also large statues of idols and other remains. But the place was haunted, and not for the whole of the Islands would the King again undertake such a journey. Nor should I, even if I swam well enough. Can you imagine making a hit-or-miss entrance through the surf into some narrow hole, from which one would emerge into hollow and drier darkness; and then to have to make light and grope about for things in themselves of a spooky and doubtful influence—and things that should resent the hand of the intruder!

For it is even hinted that many of the present tombs in the royal mausoleum are empty or not authentically filled; for instance, King Lunalilo is certainly not there. In old days some devoted friend of the chief’s would have hunted about and found some man looking like him, and then would have incontinently massacred the more vulgar Dromio, would have left his body in the place of the chief’s, and hidden the honoured remains from all but most sacred knowledge, that around the priest, the depository of holy mysteries, all power might cling. Power of priests: power to designate who should die—killing the chief’s friend or supporters if it were advisable to weaken him.

With their privilege of designating victims the power of the priests must have reached into the province of politics, for a king’s or chief’s men, precious to him but dangerous to enemies, might be chosen at any moment so as to weaken him. The men of the priest could be saved from such a terror. The man to die might be put an end to as he entered the temple by a blow from behind with a club or stone, or his back might be broken, in a dexterous way known of old, or his neck might be twisted so as to break the spine. The death at least was made as painless as possible.

The real kahunas are extinct, but have many pretended successors. The King himself claims to be kahuna more or less. He claims to have a cure for leprosy. I hear too that a leper is kept at the palace, and another at the boat house, for experiments, but of course of that I know nothing—no more than of anything else. The boat house is the place where the King gives luuaus, Hawaiian dinner parties, and when the hula is danced there are well-known dancers who come or are retained or sent for. They are in the photographs much dressed and rather ugly, and some have very thick legs, monstrous to the European eye, but I suppose that talent is not always found in the pretty shapes. Some good people (from Minnesota), lately expressed a wish to see these dances, and the King, who is apparently a very courteous person, kindly consented to help them, and invited them then and there to dinner. They came to an excellent dinner, and saw the hula danced. They were informed by the King that the custom was to give some gratuity to the artist; so that money was thrown into a dish, the King giving two dollars, and the others the same. When the collection at the end was taken up after each dance (my informants giving some seven dollars apiece) and presented as by etiquette to his majesty, he retained the mass, giving one dollar and a half to each dancer as their proper proportion. This reminds me of Oriental tradition, and is probably quite consistent with a certain liberality, the Hawaiian instinct, especially with the chiefs, being toward generous giving; so much so that many have become impoverished from this and other forms of improvidence, in the days of the change to civilization, when they owned a good deal that gradually passed into the hands of those who held the mortgages.

Mrs. Dominis, the heir apparent (now the Queen), keeps also some tenderness for superstitions and beliefs of the past, and I am told (but not by so sure a person), that she sacrificed some time ago to Pele, the goddess of the volcano, some pigs and hens, which were thrown into the fire of lava. At present the account is vague and mixed to me, but I think of it as connected with some illness of one of the late princesses, for whom also came a portent of certain fish appearing in quantity, a presage of death to great chiefs. Naturally one listens to any gossip referring to the reversion of the race to any former habits, and this I give you only for this reason.

One little touch, however, with the common people, is pretty, just what happens anywhere, and that is the fondness for lying low, if I may so put it; the using of the underneath of their houses (which is one way), the cellar, or rather open space under houses, becoming, low as it is, the residence, and the house itself being kept with its furniture and carpets, only as a sort of show; matting being laid down on the earth below, and the whole affair made comfortable in savage fashion. Here all live together. Somebody was telling us how, in a trip somewhere, they had found a family who were living under their house, and who gave them their own unused room with a big four-post bedstead. And in the morning a strange rustle aroused them. It was the native couple struggling to escape unnoticed from beneath the bed, under which they had passed the night.

And also there is a peculiar use of objects which we hide, and which are placed usually at the doorstep. I have seen them carried with great care through the streets, and at my first purchases in a Chinese shop I noticed the discussion of some natives upon the adornment of these utensils which they had come to buy.

The old-fashioned house has passed away; hardly any one has now the knowledge of how to build it. It was well suited to its use and made with great care. It had a thatched roof which was made of bundles tied with hibiscus bark and carefully disposed, and this whole house had to be built according to rite, or it could not be lived in. The main archway, or one made by say the pillars and lintel and crossbeam, had to be of one wood, and so forth. The floor was made of stones, laid together in different layers, growing smaller and smaller, upon which mats were placed, one over the other; which also could be made very fine, and which are excellent to sleep on, being very cool.

I was much struck by the shape of some skulls of natives showing a peculiar tent or roof shape of head, and extreme squareness of jaw. The heads are fine, very often, and the type massive. Man and woman tend to fat apparently, if one may judge of the average types one sees, but then they are seen in the street or in houses and perhaps well fed. Some of the young women or girls have great delicacy of expression, and the line of the jaw and chin separating from the throat is graceful and refined. There is a pretty tendency, owing to thickness of lip, apparently, to a shortness of the curve above, that gives a little disdainful look quite imposing in some of the older and uglier women, when they are not too fat. The men look like gentle bandits. But there is a certain sullen look in a great many that is unsatisfactory, and has grown, I suppose. They probably need firm hands to govern them; and are certainly not satisfied now; whether stirred on by agitators or by any real grievance, I of course can’t know. In old times they sent away to faraway islands for chiefs and rulers. From Samoa and Tahiti rulers came, some whose names are known, for over this vast space the war canoes went, two thousand miles and more, and the places of their departure and arrival bore names indicating their distant relationship. But some places or islands are missing to-day, which apparently once rose above the surface, and now are shoals perhaps. One of their rulers, a sort of demigod, who sailed away one day promising to return in coming years, they took Cook to be when he appeared, and they called him Lono. And years before him some Spaniards were left behind, in the hit-or-miss sailing of early days, and have left certain signs, it is said, in languages and other things.

For their great voyages the Hawaiians had a knowledge of the winds and of many stars, six hundred of which bore names.

Wednesday night, September 11th.

To-night it blows again from over the Pali and mountains, the first time since Sunday. We have had a south wind, which has slowly come round with rain, back to its old station. We have painted at the Pali, during the south wind, for it did not then blow against us, and I was able to sketch without the extreme difficulty that I had feared. We drove up Monday afternoon in the great heat, clouds hanging over the valley rather low, so that I feared that we should be covered. Their shadows hung along the walls of the hills, and made dark circles around the great spots of sunlight. All varieties of green were around us, in the foliage and the plants, and the green of the slopes and mountains. We came up, as before, to the edge of the Pali, suddenly, all before us a blaze of green, and looked over. No more astounding spread of colour could be thought of. The blue was intense enough when we saw it against the green bank before us, imprisoned between that and the warm low cloud, but it was still more astounding, opening to the furthest horizon, gradually through every shade to a faint green edge, blotted in with white clouds, bluish, with bluish shadows, and far away a long, interminable line of cloud in a violet band (because in shadow, broken above and below with silvery projections). The sea bluer yet than the sky, spotted with green in the shoals, and with white in the surf, the headland of Mokapu stretched out in brilliant grey unnamable; the sand also of no possible colour; the last range of hills tawny grey, like a panther-skin, warmed here and there with yellow and with green; a brilliant oasis of green in centre, like the green of a peacock. Then near us the intense feathery green of great hills and the billowy valley, all of one tone, one unbroken green, as if covered with a drapery, and the same green reflecting the blue above. Now and then red lines of road, red as vermilion, not only because of red earth, but because the green vegetation is so deep by contrast; and all this in partial shadow, except the great distance and the silvery promontory. And later, far off, half the ocean in absolute calm, repeating the high clouds of the distance, and their shadows and lights. It was violent as a whole, but delicate and refined almost to coldness.

Here I had the misfortune to find that the usual trick of bad work and poor paper in my blocks would prevent my making any adequate record. (I say adequate—what I mean is plausible.) But we both sat and worked until sunset and after hours, each not daring to look at anything but in one direction, there was so much to prevent one’s doing anything. And at the last moment I went down part of the road toward the base, to see the entire distance lost as in a dream, great long streamers of mist apparently blowing away from the face of the Pali. And we returned in the afterglow, which now that the moon has left us, keeps the whole sky and landscape in tones like those of some old picture clear and apparently distinct, but intensely coloured, however colourless it may seem, for we have no names for tones—so coloured that the lamp-light, inside the room where I am, seems no warmer than the twilight without, as if they were painted together, as in one picture the sky is merely a beautiful background.

Then comes, alas! the great hum of the mosquito, if we are in the wind, and we have to resort to burning powders if we do not sit in the draught that blows them away.

Day after to-morrow we shall go to Hawaii in the steamer Hall, land on the south coast, go to the volcano Kilauea and down from there to Hilo. This afternoon we have heard talk of the situation politically, of the wrongdoing of demagogues; and also we have seen one of the extraordinary yellow and red capes that the chiefs wore, made of small rare feathers, and each little tuft sewed on to plaited fibres and also a lei or neck-wreath of the same bird feathers, with the addition of some soft green ones, in divisions all very rare and valuable; and a beautiful wooden polished spittoon with handle of some exquisite wood light and dark, which has served to preserve the exuviæ of some chief from the great danger of capture for incantation or working harm through sorcery.