nk that it would soon be associated with danger
and dismay. Beyond the river were two or three native huts thatched with
grass, and a little white cottage, the summer home of Princess Lydia,
the king's sister. Passing these, we rode over a smooth green lawn
glittering with large bright dewdrops, and dismounted in front of the
seminary-gate. The large whitewashed brick house, two stories and a half
high, with wide verandas around three sides, looks toward the sea. In
front of it is a garden filled with flowers and vines and shrubbery, the
pride and care of the school-girls. There are oleander trees with
rose-colored blossoms, pomegranate trees whose flowers glow amid the
dark-green foliage like coals of fire, and orange and lime trees covered
with fragrant white flowers, which the girls string and wear around
their necks. Besides roses, heliotrope, geraniums, sweet-pea, nasturtium
and other familiar flowers, there are fragrant Japanese lilies, and also
plants and shrubs from the Micronesian Islands. On one side is a grove
of tamarind and kukui-nut trees, mingled with tall cocoanut palms, which
stretches to the deep, still river, a few rods away: on the other is the
school-house, a two-story frame, painted white, shaded by tall
pride-of-India trees and backed by a field of corn. My room opened on a
veranda shaded with kukui trees, and as the "coo-coo-ee coo-coo-ee" of
the doves in the branches came to my ears I thought that the trees had
received their name from the notes of the doves, but afterward learnt
that _kukui_ in the Hawaiian language meant "light," and that the nuts,
being full of oil, were strung on bamboo poles by the natives and used
as torches.

The morning after my arrival I saw the girls at breakfast, and found
them of all shades of complexion from deep chocolate-brown to white.
Their glossy black hair, redolent of cocoanut oil, was ornamented with
fresh flowers, and their bright black eyes danced with fun or languished
with sullen scorn. The younger ones were bright and happy in their
expression, but the older ones seemed already to realize the curse that
rests upon their decaying race, and to move with melancholy languor, as
if brooding over it in stifled rebellion or resigned apathy. Some would
be called beautiful anywhere: they were graceful in form, had fine
regular features and lovely, expressive eyes; others were attractive
only on account of their animation; while one comical little negro girl,
who