I suppose the trick is in the skill of the oarsmen in holding the boat on the pitch of the billow so that in its rush it takes you with it.  The native boys do the feat standing on a plank.  I was tempted to try this myself, but of course made a comical failure.

One of my pleasant surprises in Honolulu—­one that gave the touch of nature which made me feel less a stranger there—­was learning that the European skylark had been introduced and was thriving on the grassy slopes back of the city.  The mina, a species of starling from India as large as our robin and rather showily dressed, with a loud, strident voice, I had seen and heard everywhere both in town and country, but he was a stranger and did not appeal to me.  But the thought of the skylark brought Shelley and Wordsworth, and English downs and meadows, near to me at once, and I was eager to hear it.  So early one morning we left the Pleasanton, our tarrying-place, and climbed the long, pastoral slope above the city, where cattle and horses were grazing, and listened for this minstrel from the motherland.  We had not long to wait.  Sure enough, not far from us there sprang from the turf Shelley’s bird, and went climbing his invisible spiral toward the sky, pouring out those hurried, ecstatic notes, just as I had heard him above the South Downs of England.  It was a moment of keen delight to me.  The bird soared and hovered, drifting about, as it were, before the impetuous current of his song, with all the joy and abandon with which the poets have credited him.  It was like a bit of English literature vocal in the air there above these alien scenes.  Presently another went up, and then another, and still another, the singers behaving in every respect as they do by the Avon and the Tweed, and for a moment I seemed to be breathing the air that Wordsworth and Shelley breathed.

If our excursion had taken us only to the island of Oahu and its beautiful city, it would have been eminently worth while, but the last week in May we took what is called the inter-island trip, a six days’ voyage among the various islands, when we visited the great extinct crater of Haleakala on Maui, and the active volcano Kilauea on Hawaii.  It is a voyage over several rough channels in a small steamer, and my friends said, “If you have not yet paid tribute to Neptune, you will pay it now.”  But I did not.  My companions were prostrated, but I see Neptune respects age, and my slumbers were undisturbed.  A wireless message had gone to Mr. Aiken, on the island of Maui, to meet us with his automobile in the morning at the landing at Kahului.  We were taken to the shore on a lighter, along with the horses and cargo, and there found our new friend awaiting us.

The great mountain of Haleakala rose up in a long line against the sky on the left, and the deeply eroded and canyoned mountains of the older, or west, end of the island on our right.  Toward the latter our guide took us.  It was a pleasant spin along the good roads, in the fresh morning air, near the beach, to Wailuku, the shire town of the island, two or three miles distant.  Here we were most hospitably entertained in the home of Mr. Penhallow, the director of a large sugar plantation.