one, by the natives! An oven is built in the ground, of stones, and the pig is done up in taro leaves, aud put in, and the place is filled up. I don't quite know the whole process. I know the result is all that can be desired in the way of a pig done brown!

Taro, like the calla, must have moisture and mud. The natives pull it up and sell it by the bunch-four for a quarter (hapaha). One, when boiled or baked, would make a meal for three; fine, firm, delicate and tasteless as a good potato; very nutritious, and easily digested. From this the natives make their poi, which is a thin porridge, subject to fermentation.

Europeans, as well as American and Asiatics, intermarry with the Hawaiians.

On King street, in Palace Square, one of the principal streets of Honolulu, and about ten minutes' walk from the steamer's wharf, and five from the English Church and the Hawaiian Hotel, is the Palace, with its fine grounds. Opposite are the Government Buildings, where Legislature holds its term. Here, too, is a fine museum, with a multitude of native curios and relics. In the grounds is a statute, in bronze, of Kamehameha I.

From this point you can drive on to the sea, a distance of four miles, lined with pretty houses the entire road. You will soon pass a native church built of coral formation, just beyond the Government Buildings; and the trees will often demand your attention. If it be a moonlight night, you may notice, if you are watchful, an old coral wall, a couple of miles before

you reach the sea, covered, loaded, with the nightblooming cereus. The effect is beautiful and artistic, at a little distance, but too near, they are coarse, pale and rank-looking, not like those under fine cultivation. And this brings to my mind the lantana— man's dreaded foe, as hateful a one, and as hated as the "Canada thistle" of the north. In New England the lantana is found in hot-houses in quite small plants. The bloom is changeable in its color, pinks and yellows intermingled-sometimes white. This rough, strong shrub, with its many interlacing, wire-like branches. of toughest, ugliest kind, and its mass, its cloud of color in heads somewhat like the red clover, will, where it once gets a foothold, an inch of ground sowed with its pernicious, deadly seed, not only spread an ell, a yard, but acres upon acres; and so rapid and malignant is its growth, like to all other evil things, that it is almost impossible to uproot it. It takes so firm and determined a hold that "all the king's oxen and all the king's men" can hardly manage it. It saps the land, and literally makes a rich man poor! At its worst it attains a height of four or five feet. It must be chopped down and the ground chopped up! It has been suggested that if its millions of lovely laughing blossoms could be used by the chemist, a fine perfume could be made. Very likely. I am sure it could supply a nation. But it would be "high treason" to ask an Islander to buy a bottle-and the man would be mobbed by the time "Lantana Perfume was even suggested by him!

Strange to say, some of the wild flowers are very pale, limp, colorless, and odorless. A wild convolvulus is sickly looking, and as pale as moonlight. You will see it on the sides of the hills, sometimes, but not pretty at all. It looks very homesick and unhappy.

But most of the climbers and some of the bushes, as well as trees-the Poinciana Regia, for instance, where the pretty, delicate green of the leaves can hardly be seen, for the mass of scarlet—are truly superb, magnificent, in color. Then there is the pink Poinciana Regia, with changeable blossoms, the “Pride of India," with blossom that looks, at a distance, like the apple, and oh, so many, many others of beauty, in bush and tree; not to mention all the palms, banana, tamarind, mango, and countless more.

Our lovely little annuals do not thrive under these trees, and must be sowed and resowed. So, many give them up, and look to the lilies, roses, geraniums and the flaming shrubs. To keep up a fine flower garden at the Islands is a world of care, and needs the presence, continually, of a gardener.

Until within a very few years no one thought of locking a door on these islands. You could make your call at any hour in the day or evening, in your neighbor's parlor; if no one was about you could rest, entertain yourself, play a tune on the piano, put your card down, and go. And you might go to a number of houses and find all the doors and windows open, certainly, never shut. If a native went in and wanted a spool of cotton, or any other trifle, and took it, no

body cared-certainly not the native! And for anybody else—why, everybody knew everybody, and that was the end of it. And outside of Honolulu to-day, there is very little of the lock and key.

ALOHA, HAWAII! ALOHA NUI!

IT

THE COCOANUT.

T did sound very strange to one born in the land of the elm, the glorious maples and the majestic oak, to hear it remarked with perfect complacency and assurance, that there was no tree so beautiful as the cocoanut, when seen on the shore from an incoming vessel! But "we live and learn;" and I lived to learn and to endorse the sentiment with all my heart! At first, the very thought of such disloyalty to the tree of my childhood, the home of my birth-the beautiful and graceful elm, seemed almost to take away my breath! The tall, gaunt, branchless, boughless, uncompanionable, selfish-looking tree! But I came, in less time than a few years, to pass by elm, and "England's boast," the royal palm, and travelers' pride of India, and all other, to rejoice at, and take off my hat to, the cocoanut! Yes, it does stand alone, often far away from all friends of its kind, with sky and sea only, one tree with its star-like crown of leaves and cluster of nuts; and its great height of forty, fifty, sixty feet, perchance, and a century of age, or more, it may be, reaching and bending toward its friend, the sea! Yes, it loves the shore and the sea.

Again, a perfect fringe of them may be seen, or a group, as of one family, or a grove, even.

Look!