aromatic scent, and there are plenty of lounging-chairs on the
verandah, where people sit and receive their intimate friends. The
result of the construction of the hotel is that a breeze whispers
through it by day and night.

Everywhere, only pleasant objects meet the eye. One can sit all day
on the back verandah, watching the play of light and colour on the
mountains and the deep blue green of the Nuuanu Valley, where
showers, sunshine, and rainbows make perpetual variety. The great
dining-room is delicious. It has no curtains, and its decorations
are cool and pale. Its windows look upon tropical trees in one
direction, and up to the cool mountains in the other. Piles of
bananas, guavas, limes, and oranges, decorate the tables at each
meal, and strange vegetables, fish, and fruits vary the otherwise
stereotyped American hotel fare. There are no female domestics.
The host is a German, the manager an American, the steward an
Hawaiian, and the servants are all Chinamen in spotless white linen,
with pigtails coiled round their heads, and an air of superabundant
good-nature. They know very little English, and make most absurd
mistakes, but they are cordial, smiling, and obliging, and look cool
and clean. The hotel seems the great public resort of Honolulu, the
centre of stir--club-house, exchange and drawing-room in one. Its
wide corridors and verandahs are lively with English and American
naval uniforms, several planters' families are here for the season;
and with health seekers from California, resident boarders, whaling
captains, tourists from the British Pacific Colonies, and a stream
of townspeople always percolating through the corridors and
verandahs, it seems as lively and free-and-easy as a place can be,
pervaded by the kindliness and bonhomie which form an important item
in my first impressions of the islands. The hotel was lately built