Hawaiian Life; Being Lazy Letters from Low Latitudes (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1894 edition. Excerpt: ...blossoms from the cliff. The fruits ripen and fall in their season, and the dews nightly feed these unfailing fountains when that land yonder lies parched and dead. Of all this inner valley not a rood but is Nature's own. lao has been and shall always be, the temple and the throne of beauty. Grove upon grove crowns her terraces; garden upon garden perfumes her cloudy hights. Babylon indeed is fallen, and its grandeur is laid waste; but lao the solitary, whom art may not approach nor utility desecrate, --lao, clothed in perennial splendor, savage, somber, serene, shall endure and reign forever. Let the frivolous, who know Hawaii, and who believe themselves especially acquainted with the island of Maui, --let them laugh if they will when I take them out of the Eden of lao to Kalepolepo by the shore. It is out of Eden, I am free to confess; but let those that sit in the seat of the scftrnful keep their seats, for there are worse places in the Hawaiian world than Kalepolepo, and they probably occupy one of them. Not that I consider Kalepolepo the queen of Hawaiian watering-places; still if Midas were to expend as much money upon it as has been lavished upon certain unpromising summer resorts I wot of, Kalepolepo might easily take the palm--whether royal, cocoa, wine, cabbage, screw, fan or native palm. Kalepolepo is not puffed up, is not boastful of her architecture, her water works, or her public or private gardens. She sits quietly upon the hem of the desert, the sand drifting in upon her inch by inch; the sea playfully reaching up to her, as if to drag her down into the depths. Patience on a monument smiles not more blandly than she--and she has two griefs to smile at: first, there is her loss of prestige; second, there is the aggravating...