[Illustration:  Queen’s hospital, Honolulu.]

Then there are native schools, elementary and academic, where you will see the young Hawaiian at his studies, and learn to appreciate the industry and thoroughness with which education is carried on all over these islands.  You will see also curious evidence of the mixture of races here; for on the benches sit, and in the classes recite, Hawaiian, Chinese, Portuguese, half white and half Chinese children; and the little pig-tailed Celestial reads out of his primer quite as well as any.

[Illustration:  Native school-house in Honolulu.]

In the girls’ schools you will see an occasional pretty face, but fewer than I expected to see; and to my eyes the Hawaiian girl is rarely very attractive.  Among the middle-aged women, however, you often meet with fine heads and large, expressive features.  The women have not unfrequently a majesty of carriage and a tragic intensity of features and expression which are quite remarkable.  Their loose dress gives grace as well as dignity to their movements, and whoever invented it for them deserves more credit than he has received.  It is a little startling at first to see women walking about in what, to our perverted tastes, look like calico or black stuff night-gowns; but the dress grows on you as you become accustomed to it; it lends itself readily to bright ornamentation; it is eminently fit for the climate; and a stately Hawaiian dame, marching through the street in black holaku—­as the dress is called—­with a long necklace, or le, of bright scarlet or brilliant yellow flowers, bare and untrammeled feet, and flowing hair, surmounted often by a low-crowned felt hat, compares very favorably with a high-heeled, wasp-waisted, absurdly-bonneted, fashionable white lady.

[Illustration:  Cocoa-nut grove, and residence of the late king Kamehameha V., At Waikiki, Oahu.]

As you travel through the country, you see not unfrequently one of the tall, majestic, large women, who were formerly, it is said by old residents, more numerous than now.  I have been assured by several persons that the race has dwindled in the last half century; and all old residents speak with admiration of the great stature and fine forms of the chiefs and their wives in the early days.  It does not appear that these chiefs were a distinct race, but they were despotic rulers of the common people; and their greater stature is attributed by those who should know to their being nourished on better food, and to easier circumstances and more favorable surroundings.