So, edging comfortably along, we gradually neared the Sandwich Islands without having seen a single spout worth watching since the tragedy.  At last the lofty summits of the island mountains hove in sight, and presently we came to an anchor in that paradise of whalers, missionaries, and amateur statesmen—­ Honolulu.  As it is as well known to most reading people as our own ports—­better perhaps—­I shall not attempt to describe it, or pit myself against the able writers who have made it so familiar.  Yet to me it was a new world.  All things were so strange, so delightful, especially the lovable, lazy, fascinating Kanakas, who could be so limply happy over a dish of poe, or a green cocoa-nut, or even a lounge in the sun, that it seemed an outrage to expect them to work.  In their sports they could be energetic enough.  I do not know of any more delightful sight than to watch them bathing in the tremendous surf, simply intoxicated with the joy of living, as unconscious of danger as if swinging in a hammock while riding triumphantly upon the foaming summit of an incoming breaker twenty feet high, or plunging with a cataract over the dizzy edge of its cliff, swallowed up in the hissing vortex below, only to reappear with a scream of riotous laughter in the quiet eddy beyond.

As far as I could judge, they were the happiest of people, literally taking no thought for the morrow, and content with the barest necessaries of life, so long as they were free and the sun shone brightly.  We had many opportunities of cultivating their acquaintance, for the captain allowed us much liberty, quite one-half of the crew and officers being ashore most of the time.  Of course, the majority spent all their spare time in the purlieus of the town, which, like all such places anywhere, were foul and filthy enough; but that was their own faults.  I have often wondered much to see men, who on board ship were the pink of cleanliness and neatness, fastidious to a fault in all they did, come ashore and huddle in the most horrible of kennels, among the very dregs and greaves of the ’long-shore district.  It certainly wants a great deal of explanation; but I suppose the most potent reason is, that sailors, as a class, never learn to enjoy themselves rationally.  They are also morbidly suspicions of being taken in hand by anybody who would show them anything worth seeing, preferring to be led by the human sharks that infest all seaports into ways of strange nastiness, and so expensive withal that one night of such wallowing often costs them more than a month’s sane recreation and good food would.  All honour to the devoted men and women who labour in our seaports for the moral and material benefit of the sailor, passing their lives amidst sights and sounds shocking and sickening to the last degree, reviled, unthanked, unpaid.  Few are the missionaries abroad whose lot is so hard as theirs.