the house and examined the other through a window on the other side.  He said it was the neatest match he had ever seen, and paid for the horses on the spot.  Whereupon the Kanaka departed to join his brother in the country.  The fellow had shamefully swindled L. There was only one “match” horse, and he had examined his starboard side through one window and his port side through another!  I decline to believe this story, but I give it because it is worth something as a fanciful illustration of a fixed fact—­namely, that the Kanaka horse-jockey is fertile in invention and elastic in conscience.

You can buy a pretty good horse for forty or fifty dollars, and a good enough horse for all practical purposes for two dollars and a half.  I estimate “Oahu” to be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty-five cents.  A good deal better animal than he is was sold here day before yesterday for a dollar and seventy-five cents, and sold again to-day for two dollars and twenty-five cents; Williams bought a handsome and lively little pony yesterday for ten dollars; and about the best common horse on the island (and he is a really good one) sold yesterday, with Mexican saddle and bridle, for seventy dollars—­a horse which is well and widely known, and greatly respected for his speed, good disposition and everlasting bottom.

You give your horse a little grain once a day; it comes from San Francisco, and is worth about two cents a pound; and you give him as much hay as he wants; it is cut and brought to the market by natives, and is not very good it is baled into long, round bundles, about the size of a large man; one of them is stuck by the middle on each end of a six foot pole, and the Kanaka shoulders the pole and walks about the streets between the upright bales in search of customers.  These hay bales, thus carried, have a general resemblance to a colossal capital ‘H.’

The hay-bundles cost twenty-five cents apiece, and one will last a horse about a day.  You can get a horse for a song, a week’s hay for another song, and you can turn your animal loose among the luxuriant grass in your neighbor’s broad front yard without a song at all—­you do it at midnight, and stable the beast again before morning.  You have been at no expense thus far, but when you come to buy a saddle and bridle they will cost you from twenty to thirty-five dollars.  You can hire a horse, saddle and bridle at from seven to ten dollars a week, and the owner will take care of them at his own expense.

It is time to close this day’s record—­bed time.  As I prepare for sleep, a rich voice rises out of the still night, and, far as this ocean rock is toward the ends of the earth, I recognize a familiar home air.  But the words seem somewhat out of joint: 

“Waikiki lantoni oe Kaa hooly hooly wawhoo.”

Translated, that means “When we were marching through Georgia.”

CHAPTER LXVI.