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1894.]

MOSQUITOS.

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is the serpent in this paradise. duced at Lahina, on the island of Maui, in 1826, by the Wellington, which brought them in her watercasks from Mexico. A friend who told me the story had heard Dr. Judd relate his experience at the time of their advent into Honolulu. They came at night in a blinding cloud, bloodthirsty and rapacious, stinging frightfully. Half the night he sat up fanning his wife, while she stood guard over him the remainder of the night, and in this way they lived until nets could be procured from China. have never seen them in such numbers anywhere else. Beds are supplied with nets, but strangely enough the windows are not screened, as they are screened even against flies throughout the United States. They are objected to because it is thought they exclude the air, yet it is never so hot in the Islands as it is in the United States in the months of July, August, and September. The mosquitos are especially vicious in their attacks upon new-comers; they appear to prefer them to old residents, whose blood is probably thinner. I was always forced to go to my room and take refuge behind the nets, and dining out was a painful ordeal, unless one wore thick boots and stockings, that their sharp sting could not penetrate. They gathered around one's head in clouds as soon as the sun set, and it was difficult to keep from inhaling them into the mouth. They are much worse when the south wind blows, and buhac, a Chinese

drug, is then burned; it stupefies them, and they drop on the floor, and are swept up and destroyed. They breed prodigiously in the rice fields, and in the little irrigating canals which the Chinese gardeners construct through their banana groves; and no means of preventing their increase has yet been discovered.

There are no reptiles in Hawaii, this group, with all the South Sea islands, being in this respect unlike the West Indies, where the fer de lance and other deadly species abound. Another stupid meddler very nearly brought about a calamity, which fortunately was averted. He returned from India with a boxful of what he supposed to be harmless house-snakes, intended to destroy rats, which, when they had been out at sea several days, displayed the unmistakable marks of pythons. When their identity was fully established they were tossed overboard, and no experiment of the kind has since been attempted. There are very few birds except on the islands of Kauai and Hawaii, where the oo (Acrulocercus nobilis) and the mamo (Drepanis pacifica) are found — the honey-suckers which yield the precious yellow feathers from which the royal mantles were made.

The ubiquitous English sparrow has made himself at home in Honolulu, with the pigeon, the German dove, and the mynah, which has been brought from India. The latter is fearless and impudent, riding

1894.]

BIRDS.

311

about the fields upon the backs of pigs and cattle, and stealing whatever it can find and carry off. The superintendent of a mill told me that there was, in the building over which he had supervision, a room which had been closed for several months. When they finally opened it, they found a great heap of rubbish in the centre of the floor, for which no one could account until a hole in the roof was discovered, through which it was realised immediately that the mynahs had entered, bringing frequent additions to their hoarded stealings. Rags, string, paper, handkerchiefs, bits of lace and ribbon, were found in the heap, which had been growing steadily during the entire time that the room had been closed.

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HAWA

CHAPTER XXV.

THE PASSING OF THE NATIVE.

AWAII is a veritable land of the lotus-eater. After a few days one is content to drift along indifferent to the realities of life, and to what in the exacting temperate zone we call "duty." The climate explains a great deal in native character that has defied the Christianising of half a century, and yet finds solace in certain rites and ceremonies, surreptitiously performed, which are a very marked contrast with the belief in abstract virtue, as it is embodied in orthodoxy. Flowers, music, ease, enough to eat these seem to be the essentials of

life among the Hawaiians. As a people they are physically attractive. Many of them are tall, vigorous, well proportioned, with a freedom and grace which are the result of loose and simple clothing and of life spent almost wholly in the open air. They have dark skin, silken, jet-black hair, flashing black eyes, with long lashes, rather thick lips, and teeth of dazzling whiteness. They are a most amiable and light-hearted people, the embodiment

1894.]

NATURAL AFFECTION.

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of generosity, cheerfulness, and hospitality. The latter trait I have already noted; what is theirs is yours, freely and without reservation. If a native is hungry, he does not even ask food of his neighbour, but enters his house, and the calabash of poi is at his service the common supply of all who come. Clothing is borrowed in the same manner, and it would be despicable meanness so much as to hint that a return, even though delayed, is expected.

I had a very touching example of their affection. I had accompanied Mrs. H-, the ex-Queen's chief lady-in-waiting, to an entertainment given at the Kawaiahao Church. We occupied one of the elevated pews in the rear which had been set apart for the ladies of the Court. Near us were seated many of the Hawaiian friends of Mrs. H——. At the conclusion of the programme she introduced me. to several of them, explaining that I was Admiral Brown's sister.

"Not sister," I corrected, "but cousin."

"We have no word 'cousin' in the Hawaiian language" (she had been speaking in Hawaiian to her friends, many of whom could not speak English); "our only terms are 'mother' and 'sister;' we do not recognise the relationship of cousin."

It requires very little to support life here. There is no winter that demands outlay for fuel, heavy clothing, and meat, which are so expensive and so necessary in colder climates; cotton trousers and

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