The Catholics lead as pure and irreproachable lives as their Protestant brethren—without perhaps the comforts—and are rapidly making proselytes; their religion teaching forgiveness and absolution, being more in accordance with the backsliding sins of the natives, who meet with no appeal from the more austere puritanism of the Protestants.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Vide Report to the Hawaiian Legislature of 1848, by R. C. Wyllie, Minister of Foreign Relations.
[6] Bingham, page 609.
CHAPTER XLIII.
After a delightful visit spent at Lahaina, late one afternoon, we bade adieu to Maui, and steering between Lanai and Molokai, by daylight the following morning we had passed Diamond Point, and let run our anchor at a great depth of water, a mile or more outside the Oahu reef, the frigate's draught being too large to allow her to enter within the smooth and well-protected arms of the port.
We were in Honolulu—the Ismir of Polynesia—a little thriving city of nearly eight thousand people, and its situation one of the prettiest in the world. It lies spread about at the base of the beautiful valley of Nuaana, upon a very gentle slope down to the verge of the harbor. On either hand the shores are fringed with cocoanuts, and all around, up hill and vale, save the burnt sides of the Devil's Punch-bowl and Point Diamond, is laid the deepest, densest verdure, as if it had been actually poured down from the heights above, in liquid floods of foliage, until there was not a spot on the leafy waves where another green branch could find a lurking place!
Honolulu is a town of strangers, with shops, stores, and warehouses; handsome dwellings with verandas and piazzas; pleasantly shaded cottages of elegant modern build, with grass and flowers; and nice little straw huts, in clusters by themselves, for bachelors, all very cool; then the unpaved streets are filled with dust, and natives wander about, in bright-colored, loosely-fitting garments, looking forlorn, diseased, and miserable, living, no one cares how or where; sleeping in the most loathsome abodes of wretchedness, and vilest dens of vice; in all save absolute want or destitution, far below, in the moral scale, the worst hovels of iniquity in the great cities of the Old World! But we have no time to waste upon morals. Presently a low four-wheeled vehicle rattles along—there are many of them—drawn by Kanaka cab-horses; very kind and humanizing it is too, for the beasts are tame, never kick, not given to prove restive, or run away, at least with the coach! I often speculated mentally if the fair women when taking an airing ever blushed for their cattle; and when I saw a pious missionary lady trotting gaily by, I wondered if she had ever seen or read a "High-heeled Shoe for a Limping Sinner"—most probably not. And then within those charming cottages I spoke of, there are lovely women from far, far over the seas—oh, beautiful was one!—who make music and dancing, and most agreeable society, and hand around delicious tea fresh from the Celestials, and piquant lemonade—eschewing vinous compounds—while the sweet perfume of the lime-trees is present to eye and sense, and all pleasantly commingled with innocent sips of scandal.