The mountainous range behind is a rocky wall with outlying ridges,
valleys of great size cutting the mountain to its core on either
side, until the culminating peaks of Waiolani and Konahuanui, 4000
feet above the sea, seem as if rent in twain to form the Nuuanu
Valley. The windward side of this range is fertile, and is dotted
over with rice and sugar plantations, but the leeward side has not a
trace of the redundancy of the tropics, and this very barrenness
gives a unique charm to the exotic beauty of Honolulu.
To me it is daily a fresh pleasure to stroll along the shady streets
and revel among palms and bananas, to see clusters of the granadilla
and night-blowing cereus mixed with the double blue pea, tumbling
over walls and fences, while the vermilion flowers of the Erythrina
umbrosa, like spikes of red coral, and the flaring magenta
Bougainvillea (which is not a flower at all, but an audacious freak
of terminal leaves) light up the shade, and the purple-leaved
Dracaena which we grow in pots for dinner-table ornament, is as
common as a weed.
Besides this hotel, and the handsome but exaggerated and
inappropriate Government buildings not yet finished, there are few
"imposing edifices" here.
Pages:
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314