The air was damp and soft and sweet, reminding me of an April day at home when the apple blossoms were in bloom, the gentle trade winds blowing across the Pacific and passing onwards to other islands whereof they knew.

Near the house was a bungalow a long, low building, the roofs sloping on the sides from an elevation in the centre. It was provided with a lanai. The floor of the main apartment was covered with matting, and it was very simply furnished, to secure coolness and space.

The bungalow showed evidences of the Revolution, and was crowded with relics of Hawaiian royalty, evidently hastily gathered together-feather coronets, shell necklaces, pieces of furniture, and in a large box was one of the celebrated feather mantles like those worn by the nobles. Then the portraits were pointed out of the Princess Like-Like, the mother of the heir-apparent, and of the Princess Kaiulani herself. The mother had a pleasing face of the native type, while the portrait of the Princess Kaiulani showed her to be a very handsome girl, with large, dark eyes and the more regular features of the Caucasian race, inherited from her father. There was one pretty picture of the young girl sitting in the garden under a tree; another which was painted at the age of twelve; and another, the most interesting of the collection, in Japanese dress.

1893.]

RAPID GROWTH OF TREES.

107

"When will your daughter return to the Islands?" I asked the father.

"Not until she has completed her studies," he replied. "This is some of her work," he said, pointing at two little copies in oil; they were specimens of her first painting. "That is a later work," and he showed me a copy of Landseer's 'Challenge," taking evident pride in this latter specimen of the young Princess's skill. Truth compels me to state that the pictures had no more merit than other examples of the work of royalty which I have seen since in other countries.

After exhausting the interests of the bungalow my host walked through the lovely grounds with me to show his cocoanut trees, which were bearing profusely.

"When I bought this place a few years ago," he said, "there was nothing here. I have planted everything myself, and have seen it come to maturity."

It seemed incredible, for the trees that towered above us, throwing their cool, dim shade down across the long avenue, might have been of a century's growth. He stopped to show me some fine specimens of the croton. This curious plant is almost numberless in its varieties, both in the colour of its foliage and the shape of the leaf. It is yellow, green, dark maroon, crimson, and mottled yellow and green. The leaves on some are ovate, and others are a

perfect lanceolate. plants would send out a shoot differing in colour and form from the foliage of the shrub. This, broken off and planted, produced an entire shrub of its own kind.

My host told me that frequently

"I am very much interested in their propagation," he said, "and I have already forty varieties."

A peculiar purple black bumble bee flew past — not at all like our brown bee, with its fuzzy body and its dark velvety stripes. This was a metalliclooking insect, with a vicious way of darting about. I was told that it was a great pest, from its habit of boring into wood, and that the heaviest timber was frequently honey-combed by it and destroyed. It had been imported into the country in cedar brought from Oregon.

CHAPTER VII.

AN OSTRICH FARM.

THE

HROUGH the kindness of Mrs. C. A. Brown I had the pleasure of visiting an ostrich farm, where a resident of Honolulu was experimenting in raising ostrich feathers for the market. The industry was yet in its infancy, but it will doubtless be a success. Everything thrives in this wonderful climate except frogs, snakes, and a natural enemy to the mosquito. As we drove along the fine road to Waikiki we passed the park with its many verdant islands, the neat gardens of the Chinese, the vegetable beds separated by narrow canals of flowing water. Along the roadside at intervals, on the outskirts of the city, were Chinese shops, the proprietors at the doors, usually caressing a child picturesquely clad in white drawers, a green undershirt, a little scarlet cap and jacket, as impassive and outwardly emotionless as its parent. I also saw two Hawaiian firemen mending a hydrant in the streets; they were barefooted, clad in blue cotton trousers and scarlet shirts; one was hatless, but he wore, instead of the usual

head-covering, a gay wreath of scarlet hibiscus ; the other retained his hat, but he had concealed the crown, except the top of it, with a wreath of orange marigolds. The vision of a Chicago or a London fireman similarly decorated makes one smile; here it seemed eminently fitting.

The ostrich farmer received us kindly, having evidently grown accustomed to tourists and their teasing, if not foolish, questions. He had grown patient under affliction. In a paddock near the road were a dozen birds, two years old, standing herded together in the shade of the algaroba trees. They were probably six feet in height, with grey, furry necks, which they writhed and twisted like serpents. Their fuzzy heads seemed ridiculously small in proportion to their size, with so much of the available space devoted to mouth and eyes: as the owner quietly observed, "there was n't much room left for brains." The eyes of these young birds reminded me, in their colour, size, and softness, of the eyes of a heifer- the softness being contradicted by the powerful hoof, like that of a camel, ending in a terrible claw, and a savage, muscular leg that could disembowel a man at a stroke. The birds yawned a great deal, and in the operation the head seemed almost to part in two. They had altogether the most bored and indifferent air I have ever seen outside of a London drawing-room at the end of the season. The little covering of