We arrived at Honolulu during the night, and, the steward afterwards
said, spent the second half of it "prancing" up and down outside the
bar, waiting for the dawn. A suspicion that the staid _Buford_ could
prance anywhere would have brought me out of bed. I did rise once
on my elbow in response to an excited whisper from the upper berth,
in time to see a dazzle of electric lights swing into view through
the porthole and vanish as the vessel dipped.
I dressed in time to catch the last of the sunrise, but when I went on
deck, found that nearly half the passengers had been more enterprising
than I. We were at anchor in the outer harbor, and Honolulu lay before
us in all the enchantment of a first tropical vision. A mountain of
pinky-brown volcanic soil--they call it Diamond Head--ran out into
the sea on the right, and, between it and another hill which looks
like an extinct crater and is called the Punch Bowl, a beach curved
inward in a shining line of surf and sand. Back of this line lay some
two or three miles of foreshore, covered with palm-trees and glossy
tropical vegetation, from which peeped out the roofs and towers of the
residence portion of the city. There were mountains behind the town,
jagged sierra-like peaks with clefts and gorges between. They were
terraced half-way up the sides and were covered with the light green
of crops and the deeper green of forests.
Pages:
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27