for a ridiculously low price, and
taking their wooden houses with them, established themselves for
seven years. It is truly isolated, both by a heavy surf and a
disagreeable sea-passage, and they afterwards bought this beautiful
and extensive property, made a road, and built the house. Only the
second son and his wife live now on Niihau, where they are the only
white residents among 350 natives. It has an area of 70,000 acres,
and could sustain a far larger number of sheep than the 20,000 now
upon it. It is said that the transfer of the island involved some
hardships, owing to a number of the natives having neglected to
legalise their claims to their kuleanas, but the present possessors
have made themselves thoroughly acquainted with the language, and
take the warmest interest in the island population. Niihau is
famous for its very fine mats, and for necklaces of shells six yards
long, as well as for the extreme beauty and variety of the shells
which are found there.
The household here consists first and foremost of its head, Mrs. ---
, a lady of the old Scotch type, very talented, bright, humorous,
charming, with a definite character which impresses its force upon
everybody; beautiful in her old age, disdaining that servile
conformity to prevailing fashion which makes many old people at once
ugly and contemptible: speaking English with a slight, old-
fashioned, refined Scotch accent, which gives naivete to everything
she says, up to the latest novelty in theology and politics:
devoted to her children and grandchildren, the life of the family,
and though upwards of seventy, the first to rise, and the last to
retire in the house.
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