It is to be remarked of the Hawaiian Islands that they did not possess the original riches of timber that distinguished the West Indies, especially Cuba, where Columbus found four varieties of oranges.  One of the features of Hawaiian forestry is the Royal Palm, but it was not indigenous to the islands.  The oldest of the stately royalists is not of forty years’ growth, and yet they add surprising grace to many scenes, and each year will increase their height and enhance their beauty.

Hawaiians will be saved from extinction by miscegenation.  There will be no harm done these feeble people by the shelter of the flag of the great republic.  The old superstitions prevail among them to an extent greater than is generally understood.  I had the privilege of visiting an American home, the background of which was a rugged mountain that looked like a gigantic picture setting forth the features of a volcanic world.  Far up the steep is a cave in which the bones of many of the old savages were deposited in the days of civil war and inhuman sacrifices.  The entrance was long ago—­in the days the Hawaii people describe as “Before the Missionaries.”  The hole going to the holy cavern was closed, but there is still pious watching over the place of bones, and if there are climbers of the mountain not to be trusted with the solemn secrets of ancient times, they are stalked by furtive watchmen of the consecrated bones, and no doubt the ever alert sentinels would resist violation of the sepulchre in the rocks; and the natives are careful to scatter their special knowledge that the spot is haunted by supernatural shapes and powers.  The Americans living in the midst of these mysteries are rather proud of the ghosts they never see, but have to put up with the haunting guard still ministering to the gods that dwelt in the shrines where the shadows of extinct volcanoes fall, long before the masterful missionaries planted their first steps in the high places.

After twenty-two days’ steaming from San Francisco—­Queen’s Hospital time not counted—­we were directly south of China’s Yellow Sea, and within a few hours of sighting the isle of Luzon.

Only at Honolulu, all the way from San Francisco, was there a sail or a smoke not of a vessel of the Philippine expedition.  All the long days and nights the eye swept the horizon for companionship, finding only that of our associates in adventure, and very little of them.  Even the birds seem to shrink from the heart of the watery world spread between America and Asia; and the monsters of the deep are absent.  One day, about a thousand miles from California, a story spread of a porpoise at play, but the lonely creature passed astern like a bubble.  Bryant sang of the water fowl that flew from zone to zone, guided in certain flight on the long way over which our steps are led aright, but the Pacific zones are too broad for even winged wanderers.  The fish that swarm on our coast do not seem to find