this hotel. You will feel sorry for Messrs. Harris and Smith, who were for
many years two of the ablest members of the Hawaiian cabinet, but you will
feel grateful for their enterprise also, when you hear that before this
hotel was completed--that is to say, until 1871--a stranger landing in
Honolulu had either to throw himself on the hospitality of the citizens,
take his lodgings in the Sailors' Home, or go back to his ship. It is not
often that cabinet ministers fall in so good a cause, or incur the public
displeasure for an act which adds so much to the comfort of mankind.

The mercury ranges between 68° and 81° in the winter months and
between 75° and 86° during the summer, in Honolulu. The mornings are
often a little overcast until about half-past nine, when it clears
away bright. The hottest part of the day is before noon. The
trade-wind usually blows, and when it does it is always cool; with a
south wind; it is sometimes sultry, though the heat is never nearly so
oppressive as in July and August in New York. In fact, a New Yorker
whom I met in the Islands in August congratulated himself as much on
having escaped the New York summer as others did on having avoided the
winter.

The nights are cool enough for sound rest, but not cold.

It is not by any means a torrid climate, and it has, perhaps, the
fewest daily extremes of any pleasant climate in the world. For
instance, the mercury ranged in January between 69° at 7 A.M., 75-1/2°
at 2 P.M., and 71-1/2° at 10 P.M. The highest temperature in that month
was 78°, and the lowest 68°. December and January are usually the
coolest months in the year at Honolulu, but the variation is extremely
slight for the whole year, the maximum of the warmest day in July
(still at Honolulu) being only 86°, and this at noon, and the lowest