did not hear distinctly, and he disappeared and presently returned with the sceptre and King Kalakaua's sword in its jewelled scabbard. The young man was a native, and I fancied that there was an expression of stern disapproval on his handsome face when he surrendered the sceptre to me. I did not see him smile, and his gravity was melancholy. Not being of the Kamehamehas, as I have said, there had been some lack of sympathy for the ex-Queen; but the Hawaiians loved their country passionately, and these were its signs and symbols, spread out to the view of people to whom they had only an abstract interest, and in which one could feel only, perhaps, a passing curiosity.

When the coronets had been returned to the leather case and the sceptre removed, the combination lock of the safe was unfastened, and case after case of jewelled decorations were shown us. On each was the letter "K," surmounted by the Hawaiian coronet - the royal cipher. From Russia there was a dazzling star of diamonds; another from Austria; the gold cordon of St. Michael and St. George; the cordon of the order instituted by Kalakaua himself -a necklace of gold, the links interspersed with Hawaiian crowns. From Pius IX. there was another star, this of silver, with jewels set in enamel, bearing the legend around the rim in enamel letters, "Virtuti et merito." This constituted the entire collection, which reverted to the Provisional Govern

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ment, and was held by it in custody and carefully preserved.

We thanked Colonel Robertson and Lieutenant Laird and passed out of the portico, the young Hawaiian secretary amongst us. Perhaps if the young Hawaiian could have realised as he may in the future how sincerely we, and I believe Americans generally, hoped that whatever might happen should be ordained for the welfare of the people, the cloud upon his brow would have been less heavy and the fear within his heart dispelled. The Government of the United States had never dealt unjustly with the people of its acquired territory. It was hardly probable that an exception would be made in the case of Hawaii, should annexation become an established fact. The crowns and jewels, the sceptre and the feathered mantles, would no more have been taken forcibly from the people of the Islands than would the colonial relics of Massachusetts have been removed from the Boston Museum to Washington. They belonged to the country, and there they would remain.

As I drove down the main avenue to the gates the awkward squad of the volunteer troops was being drilled; they wore no uniform, and in their cotton. shirts, trousers, and straw hats looked like a contingent of South American volunteers.

By a singular coincidence it was the 4th of March, noon, in Honolulu, and I reflected that, far away in

Washington, President Cleveland had taken the oath of office, and the inauguration services were over hours ago. The new administration, at whose hands Hawaii was destined to suffer much, had assumed control of political affairs in the United States. How much depended upon the justice and the wisdom of that administration all realised even then; but what was destined to befall no one could have imagined.

On Saturday evening, after this memorable visit to the Palace, I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Francis Gay, who is the largest wool-grower in the Hawaiian Islands. Mr. Gay was a Scotchman, and was a member of the Legislature, familiar, as are all old residents, with the political situation past and present. When Mrs. Bishop was in Hawaii in 1873 she visited their estate on the island of Kauai, and gave a most interesting account of the family, whose head was named Sinclair. They were of the best, sturdy stock, and came from Scotland to New Zealand. After their arrival in New Zealand Mrs. Sinclair's husband was drowned, and she herself assumed control of the estate, which she retained up to the time of her death a few years ago. She was a woman of great intellectual and moral force, a student, a reader, requiring like application from all her children and grandchildren, and was a financier of marked ability. She would never consent to the separation of her family, and when they outgrew the

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limits of their New Zealand estate it was sold, and the indomitable woman embarked her possessions. and her descendants upon a ship which they owned, and cruised through the Pacific in search of a new home. They first went to Oregon; but as, Mr. Gay told me, the laws of the territory would not permit them to purchase a tract sufficiently large they returned to the Hawaiian Islands, at which they touched, and where some of the family had been temporarily left. King Kamehameha, recognising their value as an accession to his people, offered them the entire island of Niihau at a very moderate price. The island, of seventy thousand acres, affords good pasturage for twenty thousand sheep, and is managed by overseers, the family having their residence on the adjacent island of Kauai, putting up wooden houses which they had brought with them. Mrs. Bishop relates that Mrs. Sinclair was called "Mama" by the natives, who gave their services once a month as an equivalent for rent. Here they have lived, remote from the world, in this land of eternal summer, embowered in flowers and the tropical vegetation about them, in the midst of their books, enjoying the comfort and luxury of an ideal if somewhat solitary life. Mrs. Sinclair, the venerated head of the household, was described by Mrs. Bishop as a lady of the old Scotch type; very talented, bright, humorous, charming, with a definite character which impressed itself upon everybody;

beautiful in her old age; "disdaining that servile conformity to prevailing fashion which makes so many old people at once ugly and contemptible; speaking English with a slight, old-fashioned Scotch accent, which gives naïveté to everything she says, up to the latest novelty in theology and politics; devoted to her children and grandchildren, the life of the family, and, though upwards of seventy, the first to rise and the last to retire in the house. She was away when I arrived," Mrs. Bishop continues, "but some days after rode up to the house in a large, drawn silk bonnet, which she rarely lays aside, as light in her figure and step as a young girl, looking as if she had walked out of an old picture or one of Dean Ramsay's books."

Although more than fourteen years had elapsed since Mrs. Bishop's visit, and the venerable woman had gone to her reward, the family remained unbroken, and its members were everywhere recognised and respected as people of superior character and attainment. Mr. Gay, the grandson whom I met, was a man in middle life, with a voice, countenance, and manner of great mildness, frank, unaffected, and straightforward in his conversation. He gave me an invitation to visit the family on Kauai, but this, with others of a similar nature, much to my regret, had to be declined, both on account of continued lameness and the unsettled state of affairs, not knowing what might happen at any moment, which