he name.
It is one of the few spots upon earth where one can almost, to use a
slang phrase, "touch the button" and obtain any kind of weather he
desires. Mark Twain's suggestion to those who go to these islands to
find a congenial clime is about as practical as it is humorous--"Select
your climate, mark your thermometer at the temperature desired, and
climb until the mercury stops there." Everyone who visits Hawaii is
charmed with the country, and never forgets its novelty, stupendous and
delightful scenery, clear atmosphere, gorgeous sunlight, and profusion
of fruits and flowers.

"No alien land in all the world," writes Mr. Clemens, "could so
longingly and beseechingly haunt me, sleeping and waking, through half a
life-time, as that has done. Other things leave me, but that abides.
Other things change, but that remains the same. For me its balmy airs
are always blowing; its summer seas flash in the sun; the pulsing of its
surf beats in my ear; I can see its garlanded crags, its leaping
cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore, its remote summits
floating like islands above the cloud rack; I can feel the spirit of its
woodland solitudes; I can hear the splash of its brooks; in my nostrils
still lives the breath of flowers that perished twenty years ago."

DISCOVERY AND LOCATION.

Captain Cook discovered the islands in January, 1778, and named them the
Sandwich Islands, after Lord Sandwich; but the native name, Hawaii, is
more generally used. There is good evidence that Juan Gaetano, in the
year 1555--223 years before Cook's visit--landed upon their shores. Old
Spanish charts and the traditions of the natives bear out this theory,
but they were not made known to the world until Cook visited them. It is
popularly believed that the original inhabitants of Hawaii came from New
Zealand, though that island is some 4,000 miles southwest of them. The
physical appearance of the people is very similar, and their languages
are so much alike that a native Hawaiian and a native New Zealander,
meeting for the first time, can carry on a conversation. Their ideas of
the Deity and some of their religious customs are nearly the same. That
the islands have been peopled for a long time is proven by the fact that
human bones are found under lava beds and coral reefs where geologists
declare they have lain for at least thirteen hundred years.

There are eight inhabited islands in the archipelago, Hawaii, Maui,
Kahoolawi, Lanai,