Anna Dole, the Judge’s wife, is a forceful, stately woman of gracious manner, with handsome eyes rendered more striking by her shining white hair and snowy garb—a diaphanous holoku of sheerest linen and rare lace.
And groaning board is just what it was, from alligator pears and big spicy Isabella grapes, papaias, luscious Smyrna figs, mangoes, pineapples, and “sour-sop,” a curious and pleasant fruit, of the consistency of cotton or marshmallow, and of a taste that might be described as a mixture of sweet lemonade and crushed strawberries.
Also we sampled our first breadfruit, roasted over coals, although not at its best in this season. I concluded that upon closer acquaintance I should like it as well as taro or sweet potatoes, for it resembles both potato and bread, broken open and steaming its soft shellful of tender meat, of the consistency of moist potato. The breadfruit has no seeds, being propagated by suckers.
But this exotic menu was not the half. We were expected to partake, and more than once, of accustomed as well as extraordinary breakfast dishes—eggs in variety, crisp bacon, and delicious Kona coffee from Leeward Hawaii—and, as if to bind us irrevocably to New England tradition, brown-bread and baked pork and beans!
This leisurely breakfasting was done to the animated conversation of two of the most representative of kamaainas, who talked unreservedly of their vivid years and their ambitions for the future of the Islands. Always and ever we note how devoted seem the “big” men of the Territory, old and young alike, above personal aggrandizement, to the interests of Hawaii. It looks to be an example of a benevolent patriarchy.
Following this matin banquet, which, it scarce need be urged, one should approach after a fast, we reclined about the awninged lanai, talking or listening to the phonographic voices of the world’s great singers, the while a high tide, driven by the warm Kona wind, broke upon coral retaining walls in a rhythmic obligato.
“The Doctorage,” Holualoa, Hawaii, August 21.
Long ago, when the building and purpose of the Snark were first reported in the press, Dr. E. S. Goodhue, brother of our noble Dr. Will Goodhue on Molokai wrote to Jack, bidding us welcome when we should put in at Kailua, in the Kona District of the west coast of Hawaii. And here we are, surrounded with the loving-kindness of his family, in their home nestled a thousand feet up the side of Hualalai, “Child of the Sun,” a lesser peak on this surpassing isle of mounts—merely eight thousand feet in height, and an active volcano within the century.
There was a touching gathering of Honolulu acquaintance on the 15th, to bid the Snark Godspeed for the Southern Seas, by way of Kailua and Hilo on Hawaii. Piled to the eyes with sumptuous leis, we waved farewell while the little white yacht, under power, moved out in response to the new skipper’s low, decisive commands. She was a very different craft, or so we thought, from the floating wreck that, praying to be unnoticed of yachtsmen, slipped by the same harbor four months earlier.
With the exception of Nelson, a Scandinavian deep-water sailor, we all fell seasick in the rough channel. Next day, with a dead calm of which we had been warned, in Auau Channel between Maui and the low island of Lanai, the big engine was started, with high hopes of reaching Kailua by nightfall. But auwe! Something went immediately wrong, despite the months of expensive repair.