a deadly struggle; but in these days of
enlightenment, when the field is so ample, why not throw wide open the
gate to all laborers in the cause of philanthropy, where no harm can
arise, and great good may follow?

The Catholics lead as pure and irreproachable lives as their Protestant
brethren--without perhaps the comforts--and are rapidly making
proselytes; their religion teaching forgiveness and absolution, being
more in accordance with the backsliding sins of the natives, who meet
with no appeal from the more austere puritanism of the Protestants.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Vide Report to the Hawaiian Legislature of 1848, by R. C. Wyllie,
Minister of Foreign Relations.

[6] Bingham, page 609.

CHAPTER XLIII.

After a delightful visit spent at Lahaina, late one afternoon, we bade
adieu to Maui, and steering between Lanai and Molokai, by daylight the
following morning we had passed Diamond Point, and let run our anchor at
a great depth of water, a mile or more outside the Oahu reef, the
frigate's draught being too large to allow her to enter within the
smooth and well-protected arms of the port.

We were in Honolulu--the Ismir of Polynesia--a little thriving city of
nearly eight thousand people, and its situation one of the prettiest in
the world. It lies spread about at the base of the beautiful valley of
Nuaana, upon a very gentle slope down to the verge of the harbor. On
either hand the shores are fringed with cocoanuts, and all around, up
hill and vale, save the burnt sides of the Devil's Punch-bowl and Point
Diamond, is laid the deepest, densest verdure, as if it had been
actually poured down from the heights above, in liquid floods of
foliage, until there was not a spot on the leafy waves where another
green branch could find a lurking place!

Honolulu is a town of strangers, with shops, stores, and warehouses;
handsome dwellings with verandas and piazzas; pleasantly shaded cottages
of elegant modern build, with grass and flowers; and nice little straw
huts, in clusters by themselves, for bachelors, all very cool; then the
unpaved streets are filled with dust, and natives wander about, in
bright-colored, loosely-fitting garments, looking forlorn, diseased, and
miserable, living, no one cares how or where; sleeping in the most
loathsome abodes of wretchedness, and vilest dens of vice; in all save
absolute want or destitution, far below, in the moral scale, the worst
hovels of iniquity in the great cities