nds is established by these very coralline
formations, which could only have attained their present elevation just
below the surface by the growth of thousands of years. As already
intimated, the land rises so abruptly from the bottom of the sea that
the water retains its dark-blue tint to within a short distance of the
shore, where it assumes a light-blue and bottle-green hue, with other
magic colors striking in their effect viewed beneath the clear morning
light and embossed with the rays of the glowing sun.

We were soon safely moored inside the harbor, where there is an average
depth of sixteen fathoms, and room for a hundred large vessels to find
anchorage at the same time. The wharves are spacious and most
substantially built, with ample depth alongside. Honolulu, which is
situated on the south side of the island, is the commercial port of the
whole group,--the half-way house, as it were, between North America and
Asia, California and the New World of Australasia.

The streets of the Anglo-Hawaiian capital are clean and all admirably
macadamized, the material employed for the purpose being coral, black
lava, stone, and sand. At night the thoroughfares are rendered nearly as
light as by day, through the liberal use of gas. One of the first things
to attract our attention after landing was a huge steam-rolling machine
at work upon the road-bed of one of the streets leading to the wharves.
The city, with its twenty thousand inhabitants more or less, has all the
belongings of modern civilization, such as churches, charitable
institutions, hospitals, schools, gas, electric lights, and the
telephone; yet it was forced upon the mind how brief the period that had
transpired since this was nearly a wilderness, peopled by a race of
cannibals, whose idolatrous superstitions involved frequent human
sacrifices. To-day nearly all the rising generation can read and write,
and the entire race are professed Christians. One fact especially
indicative of progress came to our knowledge; namely, that the
government expends fifty thousand dollars annually upon the local
schools. Could a stronger contrast be found than the aspect presented by
Honolulu when Captain Cook discovered these islands, in 1778, and that
of the Honolulu of 1888? In imagination we find ourself trying to look
forward to the close of another century, and surmising what may then be
the condition of these isolated spots of earth.

The original paganism of this peop