Many of the residents possess valuable libraries, and these,
with cabinets of minerals, volcanic specimens, shells, and coral,
with weapons, calabashes, ornaments, and cloth of native
manufacture, almost furnish a room in themselves. Some of the
volcanic specimens and the coral are of almost inestimable value, as
well as of exquisite beauty.
The gentlemen don't seem to have near so much occupation as the
ladies. There are two stores on the beach, and at these and at the
Court-house they aggregate, for lack of club-house and exchange.
Business is not here a synonym for hurry, and official duties are
light; so light, that in these morning hours I see the governor, the
sheriff, and the judge, with three other gentlemen, playing an
interminable croquet game on the Court-house lawn. They purvey
gossip for the ladies, and how much they invent, and how much they
only circulate can never be known!
There is a large native population in the village, along the beach,
and on the heights above the Wailuku River. Frame houses with
lattices, and grass houses with deep verandahs, peep out everywhere
from among the mangoes and bananas. The governess of Hawaii, the
Princess Keelikalani, has a house on the beach shaded by a large
umbrella-tree and a magnificent clump of bamboos, 70 feet in height.
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