An Hawaiian.
I noticed, too, that there were very few trunks and portmanteaus,
but that the after end of the saloon was heaped with Mexican saddles
and saddlebags, which I learned too late were the essential gear of
every traveller on Hawaii.
At five this morning we were at anchor in the roads of Lahaina, the
chief village on the mountainous island of Maui. This place is very
beautiful from the sea, for beyond the blue water and the foamy reef
the eye rests gratefully on a picturesque collection of low, one-
storied, thatched houses, many of frame, painted white; others of
grass, but all with deep, cool verandahs, half hidden among palms,
bananas, kukuis, breadfruit, and mangoes, dark groves against gentle
slopes behind, covered with sugar-cane of a bright pea-green. It is
but a narrow strip of land between the ocean and the red, flaring,
almost inaccessible, Maui hills, which here rise abruptly to a
height of 6,000 feet, pinnacled, chasmed, buttressed, and almost
verdureless, except in a few deep clefts, green and cool with ferns
and candlenut trees, and moist with falling water. Lahaina looked
intensely tropical in the roseflush of the early morning, a dream of
some bright southern isle, too surely to pass away.
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