-arched that thread of cultivation.

A little farther, we strung in single file through the hot crypt, our
horses munching grass, their riders chewing unpalatable gum collected
from a tree. Next the wood opened, and we issued forth again into the
day on the precipitous broadside of the isle. A village was before us: a
Catholic church and perhaps a dozen scattered houses, some of grass in
the old island fashion, others spick-and-span with outside stair and
balcony and trellis, and white paint and green, in the more modern
taste. One arrested my attention; it stood on the immediate verge of a
deep precipice: two stories high, with double balconies, painted white,
and showing by my count fifteen windows. "There is a fine house," said
I. "Outside," returned the schoolmaster drily. "That is the way with
natives; they spend money on the outside. Let us go there: you will find
they live in the verandah and have no furniture." We were made welcome,
sure enough, on the verandah; and in the lower room, which I entered,
there was not a chair or table; only mats on the floor, and photographs
and lithographs upon the wall. The house was an eidolon, designed to
gladden the eye and enlarge the heart of the proprietor returning from
Hookena; and its fifteen windows were only to be numbered from without.
Doubtless that owner had attained his end; for I observed, when we were
home again at Hookena, and Nahinu was describing our itinerary to his
wife, he mentioned we had baited at Ka-hale-nui--"the great house."

The photographs were of the royal family; that goes without saying in
Hawaii; of the two lithographs, made in San Francisco, one I knew at the
first sight for General Garfield: the second tempted and tantalised me;
it could not be, I thought--and yet it must; it was this dubiety which
carried me across the threshold; and behold! It was indeed the Duke of
Thunder, his name printed under his effigies in the Hawaiianised form of
_Nelesona_. I thought it a fine instance of fame that his features and
his empty sleeve should have been drawn on stone in San Fransisco, which
was a lone Mexican mission while he lived; and lettered for a market in
those islands, which were not yet united under Kamehameha when he died.
And then I had a cold fit, and wondered after all if these good folk
knew anything of the man's world-shaking deeds and gunpowder weaknesses,
or if he was to them a "bare appellation" and a face on stone; and
turning to the s