Happily I was last,
and I don't think they saw me. Upa amused me very much on the way;
he insists that I am "a high chief." He said a good deal about
Queen Victoria, whose virtues seem well known here: "Good Queen
make good people," he said, "English very good!" He asked me how
many chiefs we had, and supposing him to mean hereditary peers, I
replied, over 500. "Too many, too many!" he answered emphatically--
"too much chief eat up people!" He asked me if all people were good
in England, and I was sorry to tell him that this was very far from
being the case. He was incredulous, or seemed so out of flattery,
and said, "You good Queen, you Bible long time, you good!" I was
surprised to find how much he knew of European politics, of the
liberation of Italy, and the Franco-German war. He expressed a most
orthodox horror of the Pope, who, he said, he knew from his Bible
was the "Beast!" He said, "I bring band and serenade for good Queen
sake," but this has not come off yet.
We straggled into Hilo just at dusk, thoroughly wet, jaded, and
satisfied, but half-starved, for the rain had converted that which
should have been our lunch into a brownish pulp of bread and
newspaper, and we had subsisted only on some half-ripe guavas.
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