In your journeys to the different islands you need to take with you, as part of your baggage, saddle and bridle, and all the furniture of a horse.  You can hire or buy a horse anywhere very cheaply; but saddles are often unattainable, and always difficult to either borrow or hire.  “You might as well travel here without your boots as without your saddle,” said a friend to me; and I found it literally true, not only for strangers, but for residents as well.  Thus you may notice that the little steamer’s hold, as she leaves Honolulu, contains but few trunks; but is crowded with a considerable collection of saddles and saddle-bags, the latter the most convenient receptacles for your change of clothing.

Riding on Hawaii is often tiresome, even to one accustomed to the saddle, by reason of the slow pace at which you are compelled to move.  Wherever you stop, for lunch or for the night, if there are native people near, you will be greatly refreshed by the application of what they call “lomi-lomi.”  Almost everywhere you will find some one skillful in this peculiar and, to tired muscles, delightful and refreshing treatment.

To be lomi-lomied, you lie down upon a mat, loosening your clothing, or undressing for the night if you prefer.  The less clothing you have on the more perfectly the operation can be performed.  To you thereupon comes a stout native, with soft, fleshy hands but a strong grip, and, beginning with your head and working down slowly over the whole body, seizes and squeezes with a quite peculiar art every tired muscle, working and kneading with indefatigable patience, until in half an hour, whereas you were sore and weary and worn-out, you find yourself fresh, all soreness and weariness absolutely and entirely removed, and mind and body soothed to a healthful and refreshing sleep.

The lomi-lomi is used not only by the natives, but among almost all the foreign residents; and not merely to procure relief from weariness consequent on overexertion, but to cure headache, to relieve the aching of neuralgic or rheumatic pains, and, by the luxurious, as one of the pleasures of life.  I have known it to relieve violent headache in a very short time.  The old chiefs used to keep skillful lomi-lomi men and women in their retinues; and the late king, who was for some years too stout to take exercise, and was yet a gross feeder, had himself lomi-lomied after every meal, as a means of helping his digestion.

It is a device for relieving pain or weariness which seems to have no injurious reaction and no drawback but one—­it is said to fatten the subjects of it.

[Illustration:  LAHAINA, ISLAND OF MAUI.]

CHAPTER III.

MAUI, AND THE SUGAR CULTURE.

Maui lies between Oahu and Hawaii, and is somewhat larger than the first-named island.  It contains the most considerable sugar-plantations, and yields more of this product than any one of the other islands.  It is notable also for possessing the mountain of Haleakala, an extinct volcano ten thousand feet high, which has the largest crater in the world—­a monstrous pit, thirty miles in circumference, and two thousand feet deep.