The people are as genial as their own sunny skies, and in
more frigid regions I shall never sigh for the last without longing
for the first. . . . .
up to here
S.S. COSTA RICA. August 7th.
We sailed for San Francisco early this afternoon. Everything looked
the same as when I landed in January, except that many of the then
strange faces among the radiant crowd are now the faces of friends,
that I know nearly everyone by sight, and that the pathos of
farewell blended with every look and word. The air still rang with
laughter and alohas, and the rippling music of the Hawaiian tongue;
bananas and pineapples were still piled in fragrant heaps; the
drifts of surf rolled in, as then, over the barrier reef, canoes
with outriggers still poised themselves on the blue water; the coral
divers still plied their graceful trade, and the lazy ripples still
flashed in light along the palm-fringed shore. The head-ropes were
let go, we steamed through the violet channel into the broad
Pacific, Lunalilo, who came out so far with Chief Justice Allen,
returned to the shore, and when his kindly aloha was spoken, the
last link with the islands was severed, and half an hour later
Honolulu was out of sight.
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