Chapter LXIII

On a certain bright morning the Islands hove in sight, lying low on the
lonely sea, and everybody climbed to the upper deck to look. After two
thousand miles of watery solitude the vision was a welcome one. As we
approached, the imposing promontory of Diamond Head rose up out of the
ocean its rugged front softened by the hazy distance, and presently the
details of the land began to make themselves manifest: first the line of
beach; then the plumed coacoanut trees of the tropics; then cabins of the
natives; then the white town of Honolulu, said to contain between twelve
and fifteen thousand inhabitants spread over a dead level; with streets
from twenty to thirty feet wide, solid and level as a floor, most of them
straight as a line and few as crooked as a corkscrew.

The further I traveled through the town the better I liked it. Every
step revealed a new contrast--disclosed something I was unaccustomed to.
In place of the grand mud-colored brown fronts of San Francisco, I saw
dwellings built of straw, adobies, and cream-colored pebble-and-shell-
conglomerated coral, cut into oblong blocks and laid in cement; also a
great number of neat white cottages, with green window-shutters; in place
of front yards like billiard-tables with iron fences around them, I saw
these homes surrounded by ample yards, thickly clad with green grass, and
shaded by tall trees, through whose dense foliage the sun could scarcely
penetrate; in place of the customary geranium, calla lily, etc.,
languishing in dust and general debility, I saw luxurious banks and
thickets of flowers, fresh as a meadow after a rain, and glowing with the
richest dyes; in place of the dingy horrors of San Francisco's pleasure
grove, the "Willows," I saw huge-bodied, wide-spreading forest trees,
with strange names and stranger appearance--trees that cast a shadow like
a thunder-cloud, and were able to stand alone without being tied to green
poles; in place of gold fish, wiggling around in glass globes, assuming
countless shades and degrees of distortion through the magnifying and
diminishing qualities of their transparent prison houses, I saw cats--
Tom-cats, Mary Ann cats, long-tailed cats, bob-tailed cats, blind cats,
one-eyed cats, wall-eyed cats, cross-eyed cats, gray cats, black cats,
white cats, yellow cats, striped cats, spotted cats, tame cats, wild
cats, singed cats, individual cats, groups of cats, platoons of cats,
companies of cats, regiments of cats, armies of cats, multitudes of cats,
millions of cats, and all of them sleek, fat, lazy and sound asleep.
I looked on a multitude of people, some white, in white coats, vests,
pantaloons, even white cloth shoes, made snowy with chalk duly laid on
every morning; but the majority of the people were almost as dark as
negroes--women with comely