with our handkerchiefs. Fortunately a favouring wind lifted the heavy vapour and carried it away, and the scene that revealed itself was indescribable. Before us stretched a sheet of molten lava one thousand feet in length and six hundred in width, the surface covered with a greyish film, which was crossed with a thousand white-hot seams; from these leaped innumerable flames, waving and bending and dancing like goblin torches. Near the centre rose and fell two mighty fountains of fire fully forty feet in height, leaping into the air and subsiding with a terrific roar. The mass was comparatively still near where we stood, but now and then the grey surface would wrinkle ominously, lift slowly, and sink, with little jets of smoke breaking out here and there. It was a grim intimation that it was a calm not to be trusted a reminder that

the molten mass might at any moment stream over the margin upon which we had a precarious foothold, and over which, indeed, through field-glasses, we saw the grey, smoky cascade pouring the next morning.

While we were watching the tremendous spectacle our Hawaiian guides were unconcernedly making what they called "specimens," dipping coins into the lava from the point of a cleft stick, which smoked and burned in the process.

The awful lake was never calm for a moment; the white-hot seams in the bubbling mass opened and

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closed, the flames leaped up and died away and leaped up again like flaring flambeaux, and over all shone the fierce light of the two appalling geysers. It was little wonder that the natives formerly believed that it was inhabited by Pelé, the most cruel of their deities, whose wrath could be propitiated only by frequent offerings of living sacrifices. We stood watching the impressive spectacle in silence, fascinated by its unearthly grandeur, until a guide reminded us that it was growing late, and that we must retrace our path across the lava before nightfall. We walked back to the ruined hut, remounted our horses, and returned to the cliff, up which the horses carried us in safety. Evening was closing in, stormy clouds floated across the sky, and over the scene of desolation below us, the rising mist and smoke and the glow of the lake of fire, hung the pale horn of the crescent moon.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE

SOCIAL LIFE.

HE excellence of the servants, the perfection of the climate, the absence of many of the ills against which house-keepers wage ceaseless war in England and the United States, as well as of the varied amusements which are offered the public in American and European cities, have brought the art of entertaining, as it is understood in Honolulu, very nearly to perfection. People have been thrown upon their own resources, and, there being neither theatre nor opera to distract their attention, have made their dinners and luncheons and picnics a compensating substitute.

The reciprocity treaty with the United States, which has been already mentioned, and which, it will be remembered, was negotiated in 1876, revolutionised the commercial and social status of the Islands. Up to that time, while there was no oppressive poverty, neither was there any very great wealth, except among a few of the highest chiefs and chiefesses; and their possessions were mostly

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in land, much of it uncultivated, so that they had no great excess of ready money, and lived simply and unostentatiously.

When Mark Twain visited the Islands in 1866, Honolulu contained, as he states, "between twelve and fifteen thousand inhabitants." He found “a place of contrasts, with dwellings built of straw, adobe, and cream-coloured coral cut into oblong blocks and laid in cement; also a great number of neat white cottages with green window-shutters." There were none of the "flat front yards like billiardtables with iron fences around them," such as he had seen in San Francisco. "I saw these houses," he writes, "surrounded by ample yards, and shaded by tall trees, through whose dense foliage the sun could scarcely penetrate . . . huge-bodied, widespreading forest trees, with strange names and strange appearance trees that cast a shadow like a thunder-cloud, and were able to stand alone without being tied to green poles. In place of fish wriggling around in glass globes, assuming countless shades of distortion through the magnifying and diminishing quality of their prison, I saw cats-Tom cats, Mary Ann cats, long-tailed cats, bob-tailed cats, wall-eyed cats, cross-eyed cats, grey cats, black cats, white cats, yellow cats, striped cats, spotted cats, tame cats, wild cats, singed cats, individual cats, groups of cats, platoons of cats, companies of cats, regiments of cats, armies of cats, multitudes of cats,

millions of cats, and all of them sleek, fat, lazy, and sound asleep. I looked on a multitude of people, some white, in white coats, vests, pantaloons, and even white-cloth shoes, made snowy daily with chalk laid on every morning; but the majority of the people were almost as dark as negroes, women with comely features, fine dark eyes, and rounded forms, inclining to the voluptuous, and clad in a single bright-red or white garment that fell free and unconfined from shoulder to heel, long black hair falling loose and encircled with wreaths of natural flowers of a brilliant carmine tint; plenty of dark men in various costumes and some with nothing on but a battered stove-pipe hat, tilted on the nose, and a very scant breech-cloth; certain smoke-dried children were clad in nothing but sunshine a very neat-fitting and picturesque apparel indeed."

The changes that have taken place since this was written have been remarkable. A city with tramlines, electric lights, water-works, police, well-filled shops, with handsome residences and villas, has entirely effaced the old town of thirty years ago. The native in his silk hat and breech-cloth has been gathered to his fathers long ago, and the single red garment of the women has been abandoned for the be-flounced, modernised holoku, or, worse still, for fashionable gowns and French corsets. The children who were primitively clothed in sunshine have grown up, and, after having been taught in the