eautiful
valley stretches away from the town far back among the lofty hills.

The steamer glides at half speed through the narrow channel in the coral
reef which makes the natural breakwater of the harbor. This channel is
carefully buoyed on either side, and at night safety-lamps are placed
upon each of these little floating beacons, so that a steamship can find
her way in even after nightfall. Though the volcanic origin of the land
is plain, it is not the sole cause of these reefs and islands appearing
thus in mid-ocean. Upon the flanks of the upheaval the little coral
animal, with tireless industry, rears its amazing structure, until it
reaches the surface of the waves as a reef, more or less contiguous to
the shore, and to which ages finally serve to join it. The tiny creature
delegated by Providence to build these reefs dies on exposure to the
air, its work being then completed. The far-reaching antiquity of the
islands is established by these very coralline formations, which could
only have attained their present elevation, just below the surface of
the surrounding sea, by the growth of thousands of years. This coral
formation on the shores of the Hawaiian group is not peculiar to these
islands, but is found to exist in connection with nearly all of those
existing in the Pacific Ocean.

The lighthouse, placed on the inner side of the coral reef, is a
structure not quite thirty feet in height. After reaching the inside of
the harbor of Honolulu, the anchorage is safe and sheltered, with ample
room for a hundred large vessels at the same time, the average depth of
water being some sixteen fathoms. The wharves are spacious and
substantial, built with broad, high coverings to protect laborers from
the heat of a tropical sun. Honolulu is the commercial port of the whole
group of islands,--the half-way house, as it were, between North America
and Asia,--California and the new world of Australasia.

CHAPTER II.

Upon landing at Honolulu we find ourselves in a city of some twenty
thousand inhabitants, presenting all the modern belongings of a
metropolis of the nineteenth century, such as schools, churches,
hospitals, charitable institutions, gas, electric lights, and the
telephone. Nearly all of the rising generation can read and write, and
the entire population are professed Christians. Great is the contrast in
every respect between these islands as discovered by Captain Cook in
1778, and their present conditi