here is scarcely any. Thus an invalid may get at will either a dry
or moist climate, and this often by moving but a few miles. Not only is
it true that at Hilo it sometimes rains for a month at a time, while at
Lahaina they have a shower only about once in eighteen months; but you may
_see_ it rain every day from the hotel piazza in Honolulu, though you get
not a drop in the city itself; for in the Nuanu and Manoa valleys there
are showers every day in the year--the droppings of fragments of clouds
which have been blown over the mountain summits; and if you cross the Pali
to go the windward side of the island, though you set out from Honolulu
amidst brilliant sunshine which will endure there all day unchanged, you
will not ride three miles without needing a mackintosh. But the residents,
knowing that during the greater part of the year the showers are light and
of brief duration, take no precautions against them; and indeed an island
shower seems to be harmless to any one but an invalid, for it is not a
climate in which one easily "takes cold."

The very slight changes in temperature between day and night make the
climate agreeable, and I think useful, to persons in tender health. But I
do not believe it can be safely recommended for all cases of consumption.
If the patient has the disease fully developed, and if it has been
caused by lack of nutrition, I should think the island air likely to be
insufficiently bracing. For persons who have "weak lungs" merely, but no
actual disease, it is probably a good and perfectly safe climate; and if
sea-bathing is part of your physician's prescription, it can, as I said
before, be enjoyed in perfection here by the tenderest body all the year
round.

[Illustration: GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS, HONOLULU.]

Honolulu, being the capital of the kingdom, contains the government
offices; and you will perhaps be surprised, as I was, to find an excellent
public hospital, a reform school, and other proper and well-managed
charities. When you have visited these and some of the numerous schools
and the native churches, and have driven or ridden to Waikiki for a
sea-bath, and have seen the Nuanu Valley and the precipice called the
Pali, if you are American, and familiar with New England, it will be
revealed to you that the reason why all the country looks so familiar
to you is that it is really a very accurate reproduction of New
England country scenery. The white frame houses with green blinds, the