It seems that we are to know many homes in Hawaii Nei. Now it is with Mr. and Mrs. Thurston, who have lifted us, bag and baggage, from the August fervency of Waikiki to a cooler site within the “first shower” level of Nuuanu. Here, at the end of a short side street, their roomy house[[8]] juts from the lip of a ravine worn by a tumultuous watercourse from the Koolau Mountains. And here, on the edge of the city, from the windows, we can see, across fertile plains broken with green hillocks, the blue, velvet masses of the Waianae Range, and, below, can pick out Pearl Lochs and the silvered surf-line of the coast around to Honolulu Harbor.
(1) Prince Cupid. (2) Original “Monument.” (3) The Prince’s Canoe. (4) At Keauhou, Preparing the Feast. (5) Jack at Cook Monument. (6) King Kalakaua and Robert Louis Stevenson. (7) Kealakekua Bay—Captain Cook Monument at +.
At table, on a broad lanai, morning, noon and night, can be observed the life of the port, the movement of ships to and from the storied harbors of all the world. One cannot rave too earnestly over this lanai existence, in the ideal climate of Hawaii. Jack, at work, must needs sit with back resolute against the distracting windows that set him dreaming of the future of the Snark.
We are accorded the perfect entertainment of freedom to come and go at our own sweet will, which is the way of the land. At meals, and afterward lounging in hanging-couches and great reclining chairs, we listen rapt to Kakina’s memories of the old regime, from his missionary childhood on through the variable fortunes of the doomed monarchies, in which he bore his important part. And he, wisely reticent except with those he knows are deeply appreciative of the romance and tragedy of the Hawaiian race and dynasties, delves into his mine of information with never a relaxing of attention from us.
Of a late afternoon, Mrs. Thurston and I drive down palmy Nuuanu avenue into the architectural jumble of the business center, picturesque despite its unbeautiful buildings, what of foreign shops and faces and costumes. Here we abstract her husband from the Advertiser editorial sanctum, and Jack from the barber’s shop; afterward driving for an hour in the bewilder of wandering hibiscus byways and narrow streets, where hide, in a riot of foliage, the most exquisite old cottages of both native and foreign citizens. Thus we become acquainted with the city known and loved until death by travelers like Isabella Bird, whose book still holds place, with me, as the sweetest interpretation of the Hawaii we have so far seen.
One evening we left behind the homes that stray over the lower slopes of the purple-rosy, time-worn crater of Punch Bowl, Puowaina; wound up past the Portuguese settlement that hangs, overgrown with gayest flowers, on haphazard rock terraces, and ascended through a luxuriant growth of blossoming, fruiting cactus, to the height of five hundred feet, where we stood at the mouth of the perfect crater basin that had suggested the name of Punch Bowl. This cone, blown out by a comparatively recent, final upheaval between the spurs of the older peaks and the Pacific, standing isolated as it does, we now realize should be visited early in one’s sojourn in Honolulu, for it is a remarkable point from which to orient oneself to the city’s topography. And lo, a white speck on the water-front, we could make out the Snark, moored opposite a leviathan black freighter. From the mauka edge of the Bowl we looked up Pauoa, one of the wooded vales that rend Honolulu’s lofty background, flanked with sharp green ridges.
For the present, although we miss the convenient swimming of Waikiki, welcome indeed is this chance to acquaint ourselves with other phases of this Paradise at the cross-roads of the Pacific.
August 4.
“Mate, you know, or I think you know, how little figure fame cuts with me, except in so far as it brings you and me the worth-while things—the free air and earth, sky and sea, and the opportunities of knowing worth-while people.” Thus Jack, descanting upon some of the rare privileges that money cannot buy but which his work has earned him in all self-respect. This leads to the observation that in this community composed of groups of the closest aristocracies in the world, bar none, to quote Jack’s sober judgment, mere wealth cannot buy the favor of their hospitality. It is a well-recommended tourist who ever sees behind into the kamaaina social atmosphere of Honolulu. And of all the exclusive spirit manifested by the kamaainas, none is more difficult to conquer than that of the elder Hawaiian and part-Hawaiian families.