“The morning of the tremendous catastrophe probably dawned upon the usual restless crowd of gold-getters intent upon their several avocations.  The streets were filled with the expanded figures of gayly dressed women, acknowledging with coy glances the respectful salutations of beaux as they gracefully raised their remarkable cylindrical head-coverings, a model of which is still preserved in the Honolulu Museum.  The brokers had gathered at their respective temples.  The shopmen were exhibiting their goods.  The idlers, or ’Bummers,’—­a term applied to designate an aristocratic, privileged class who enjoyed immunities from labor, and from whom a majority of the rulers are chosen,—­were listlessly regarding the promenaders from the street-corners or the doors of their bibulous temples.  A slight premonitory thrill runs through the city.  The busy life of this restless microcosm is arrested.  The shopkeeper pauses as he elevates the goods to bring them into a favorable light, and the glib professional recommendation sticks on his tongue.  In the drinking-saloon the glass is checked half-way to the lips; on the streets the promenaders pause.  Another thrill, and the city begins to go down, a few of the more persistent topers tossing off their liquor at the same moment.  Beyond a terrible sensation of nausea, the crowds who now throng the streets do not realize the extent of the catastrophe.  The waters of the bay recede at first from the centre of depression, assuming a concave shape, the outer edge of the circle towering many thousand feet above the city.  Another convulsion, and the water instantly resumes its level.  The city is smoothly ingulfed nine thousand feet below, and the regular swell of the Pacific calmly rolls over it.  Terrible,” says Schwappelfurt, in conclusion, “as the calamity must have been, in direct relation to the individuals immediately concerned therein, we cannot but admire its artistic management; the division of the catastrophe into three periods, the completeness of the cataclysms, and the rare combination of sincerity of intention with felicity of execution.”

A NIGHT AT WINGDAM.

I had been stage-ridden and bewildered all day, and when we swept down with the darkness into the Arcadian hamlet of “Wingdam,” I resolved to go no farther, and rolled out in a gloomy and dyspeptic state.  The effects of a mysterious pie, and some sweetened carbonic acid known to the proprietor of the “Half-Way House” as “lemming sody,” still oppressed me.  Even the facetiae of the gallant expressman who knew everybody’s Christian name along the route, who rained letters, newspapers, and bundles from the top of the stage, whose legs frequently appeared in frightful proximity to the wheels, who got on and off while we were going at full speed, whose gallantry, energy, and superior knowledge of travel crushed all us other passengers to envious silence, and who just then was talking with several persons and manifestly doing something else at the same time,—­even this had failed to interest me.  So I stood gloomily, clutching my shawl and carpet-bag, and watched the stage roll away, taking a parting look at the gallant expressman as he hung on the top rail with one leg, and lit his cigar from the pipe of a running footman.  I then turned toward the Wingdam Temperance Hotel.