Queen Victoria, whose virtues seem well known here: "Good Queen
make good people," he said, "English very good!" He asked me how
many chiefs we had, and supposing him to mean hereditary peers, I
replied, over 500. "Too many, too many!" he answered emphatically--
"too much chief eat up people!" He asked me if all people were good
in England, and I was sorry to tell him that this was very far from
being the case. He was incredulous, or seemed so out of flattery,
and said, "You good Queen, you Bible long time, you good!" I was
surprised to find how much he knew of European politics, of the
liberation of Italy, and the Franco-German war. He expressed a most
orthodox horror of the Pope, who, he said, he knew from his Bible
was the "Beast!" He said, "I bring band and serenade for good Queen
sake," but this has not come off yet.

We straggled into Hilo just at dusk, thoroughly wet, jaded, and
satisfied, but half-starved, for the rain had converted that which
should have been our lunch into a brownish pulp of bread and
newspaper, and we had subsisted only on some half-ripe guavas.
After the black desolation of Kilauea, I realized more fully the
beauty of Hilo, as it appeared in the gloaming. The rain had
ceased, cool breezes rustled through the palm-groves and sighed
through the funereal foliage of the pandanus. Under thick canopies
of the glossy breadfruit and banana, groups of natives were twining
garlands of roses and ohia blossoms. The lights of happy foreign
homes flashed from under verandahs festooned with passion-flowers,
and the low chant, to me nearly intolerable, but which the natives
love, mingled with the ceaseless moaning of the surf and the sighing
of the breeze through the trees, and a heavy fragrance, unlike the
faint sweet odours of the north, filled the evening air. It was
delicious.