especially with a large number of fine-looking, clear olive-colored boys and girls. Mr. Forbes interpreted to them my aloha, and a few words of congratulation and counsel. How we would like to introduce them, with their Hawaiian skin and costume, and bright eyes, to a Sabbath school in London or New York! They are merry as boys any where now; for in this mild climate nature, in spite of neglect, and dirt, and ill-feeding, will have children happy as long as they can live. Would that they could hold their joyousness always.

My weary soul they seem to soothe,
And, redolent of joy and youth,
To breathe a second spring.

Different as childhood here is from childhood in England or America, yet I often think of passages in Gray's Ode on a Prospect of Eton College, when I see a troop of Hawaiian boys and girls rush out of school, whooping and laughing, and down to the sea to play and bathe.

Gay hope is theirs, by fancy fed,

Less pleasing when possess'd;
The tear forgot as soon as shed,
The sunshine of the breast.
Their's buxom health, of rosy hue;
Wild wit, invention ever new,

And lively cheer of vigor born;
The thoughtless day, the easy night,
The spirits pure, the slumbers light,
That fly the approach of morn.

Alas! regardless of their doom,
The little victims play;

No sense have they of ills to come,
No care beyond to-day.

HAWAIIAN

HOSPITALITY.

229

Yet see how all around them wait,
The ministers of human fate,

And black misfortune's baleful train.
Ah! show them where in ambush stand,

To seize their prey, the murderous band.
Ah! tell them, they are men.

The natives entertained us with true Hawaiian hospitality, giving up for our own use one ample house, whose owners were not at all to blame for the fleas and cockroaches that disputed our possession, by right of pre-emption or pre-occupancy, like a squatter in the West. In the evening they went, literally, the "whole hog," burning off his bristles by fire, stuffing him with red-hot stones, and then clapping him into their oven all buried and swaddled with ki leaf. A while after, the porker was brought in smoking, with all his natural juices, on a large wooden tray, much, probably, like the Israelites' kneading-troughs, which they bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders when they went up out of Egypt. The head and some other parts were forthwith severed, and served up to the men that came with us. They presented a singular, gipsy-like spectacle while eating round a fire in an out-house, of which one end was exposed, and showed them in the reflected fire-light like a company of banditti feasting after a foray, or a party of the vagabond tribe described by Cowper in the skirts of a wild wood in "Merrie England:"

A kettle, slung

Between two poles upon a stick transverse,
Receives their morsel-flesh obscene of dog,
Or vermin, or, at best, of cock purloin'd
From his accustom'd haunt. Hard-faring race!

They pick their fuel out of every hedge,

Which, kindled with dry leaves, just saves unquench'd

The spark of life. The sportive wind blows wide
Their fluttering rags, and shows a tawny skin,
The vellum of the pedigree they claim.

This barbecue was followed by a Hawaiian hymn and prayer, after which we bivouacked, and composed ourselves all together for the night, so far as a constant fight with fleas, roaches, musquitoes, and musquito hawks comports with composedness.

We embarked, on our return, by friendly morning star-light, and, by dint of paddles and land breezes, reached Kealakekua by eight o'clock, hardly bested, and hungry. A native dove repeatedly for coral where the water was fifteen or twenty feet deep, and so clear and still that he could be seen below dislodging the coral, or indistinctly creeping along upon all fours on the bottom, like some great marine quadruped. He brought up a number of pieces of brain-coral, that were of a beautiful carnation tinge when first taken from the water; others of the horned and branching, and some red and yellow, and also a number of sea hedgehogs (echini), full of little spiculæ, and several anomalous creatures covered all over with red blunt horns, that used to be employed in the South Seas for slate pencils. Others were armed with a great many long, sharp, needle-like spines, each of which seemed endued with the power of motion.

Almost every body has dreamed some time or other, like Clarence, of being in the heart of the deep, and seeing

Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearls,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,

All scatter'd in the bottom of the sea;