An old palace, the remains of a fort, a custom-house,
and a native church are the most conspicuous buildings. The stores
and dwellings of the foreign residents are scattered along the
shore, and the light frame house, with its green verandah, buried
amid gorgeous exotics and shaded by candlenut and breadfruit, looks
as seemly and in keeping as in far-off Massachusetts, under hickory
and elm. The grass houses of the natives cluster along the waters'
edge, or in lanes dark with mangoes and bananas, and fragrant with
gardenia fringing the cane-fields. These, with adobe houses and
walls, the flush of the soil, the gaudy dresses of the natives, the
masses of brilliant exotics, the intense blue of the sea, and the
dry blaze of the tropical heat, give a decided individuality to the
capital of Maui. The heat of Lahaina is a dry, robust, bracing,
joyous heat. The mercury stood at 80 degrees, the usual temperature
of the "flare" or sea level on the leeward side of the islands; but
I strolled through the cane-fields and along the glaring beach
without suffering the least inconvenience from the sun, and found
the unusual precaution of a white umbrella perfectly needless.
The beach is formed of pure white broken coral; the sea is blue with
the calm, pure blue of turquoise, but crystalline in its purity, and
breaks for ever over the environing coral reef with a low deep
music.
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