much ruthless destruction of human life united the island
sovereignties in his own person, routed the forces of the King of
Oahu in the Nuuanu Valley, and drove them in hundreds up the
precipice, from which they leaped in despair and madness, and their
bones lie bleaching 800 feet below.

The drive back here was delightful, from the wintry height, where I
must confess that we shivered, to the slumbrous calm of an endless
summer, the glorious tropical trees, the distant view of cool chasm-
like valleys, with Honolulu sleeping in perpetual shade, and the
still blue ocean, without a single sail to disturb its profound
solitude. Saturday afternoon is a gala-day here, and the broad road
was so thronged with brilliant equestrians, that I thought we should
be ridden over by the reckless laughing rout. There were hundreds
of native horsemen and horsewomen, many of them doubtless on the
dejected quadrupeds I saw at the wharf, but a judicious application
of long rowelled Mexican spurs, and a degree of emulation, caused
these animals to tear along at full gallop. The women seemed
perfectly at home in their gay, brass-bossed, high peaked saddles,
flying along astride, barefooted, with their orange and scarlet
riding dresses streaming on each side beyond their horses' tails, a
bright kaleidoscopic flash of bright eyes, white teeth, shining
hair, garlands of flowers and many-coloured dresses; while the men
were hardly less gay, with fresh flowers round their jaunty hats,
and the vermilion-coloured blossoms of the Ohia round their brown
throats. Sometimes a troop of twenty of these free-and-easy female
riders went by at a time, a graceful and exciting spectacle, with a
running accompaniment of vociferation and laughter. Among these we
met several of the Nevada's officers, riding in the stiff, wooden
style which Anglo-Saxons love, and a horde of jolly British sailors