CHARM OF COLOR OF HONOLULU.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2989, 29 September 1919, Page 7

CHARM OF COLOR OF HONOLULU.

(“Age” Correspondent.) To the voyager across the Pacific Oahu gives a jewel day. And in the spring of turquoise and sapphire days it takes pride ot place, like a captain jewel. You may find little of the paradisical about the water front at Honolulu, but flit quickly through the Americanised streets of the business part of the city, and there opens up a chain of pictures, gem coloured and wonderful-pictures of compelling splendour or pictures of a daintiness to inspire the artist who lays his brush upon some delicate china plate. Oahu is the island beautiful. It offers a home for painter or poet, and must cany an appeal irresistible to all lovers of the picturesque. The island scorns made for the dainty little people who walk in silken kimonos beneath the (lower-decked trees. Honolulu unfolds itself in sections. We take the first unimpressive pill of the business quarter, with its pretentious buildings and its shuttling of electric trains. Then follows long streets, where the races arc mixed. Here are labouring dwellers; but practically every house is fronted by a garden of high-coloured flowers. This, however, is scarcely a preparation for tho garden areas of the socially elect, where there are backgrounds of green, of banyan and bread fruit, of fringed banana leaf and stately palm, of lawn and creeper, for the display of myriad blooms. Here the bougrainvillea pours its colour over trees in cascades of flaming red and rich purple, Hi© pink shower shakes its cherry-like sprays in the air, the hibiscus flaunts its scarlet boldness. And through the chromatic show peep the bungalows of the fortunate. You think that amid these fenceless gardens numaiis have found a fairy land indeed. We motor through the green grounds of Oahu College, speeding past splendid buildings, down long avenues of royal palms that rise to regal heights. We pass from this exquisite corner of Honolulu to scenes made up of more grandeur. The road to the Pacific. Heights

affords a dozen panoramas. Below are spread out the plots on which taro, the national vegetable is cultivated. The inundated fields throw back silver gleams to the sky, and the uncovered gardens fall into a chequer scheme, the squares of which are bordered with low hedges of green. Beyond lifts the cup-like shape of the punch bowl, once fiery and vindicate, but now lost in sleep. A few more hundred yards of climbing and the houses of Honolulu, scattered about the water’s edge at the valley mouth of Nuuanu are re ' vealed in fair prospect, with green interlacings of palm and tree. From the gar-den-garbed slopes of the Pacific Heights we look up the valey of Nuuanu. Here, in legendary times, the gods had their home; but, with keen appreciation of good things the Americans have adopted the site for the “nineteenth hole” of their star golf course, and round about, where the ancient cep a people or gnomes once sported and cried shrilly in play, are now heard only the rattling lawn mowers on the greens, the click of masliie on rubber core, and warning'shouts of “Fore!” The Nuuanu valley, rising gently from the sea to the precipitous rampart of the Pali, with its outlook upon the Pacific that washes the other shores of the island, is now a home of peace, and the car purrs out a song of content as the wheels toll over the gentle gradients. But more than 100 years ago — in the last decade of the eighteenth century —the armed warriors of Hawaii and of Oahu made the streams run red down this valley of gentleness. To-day, where fell the crumpled remnant of Oahu, stretch the long rows of the pineapple plants. Here is a fair land of gentle undulations, marked with queer mounds and cones, coloured with the green of vegetation and the red of newly-turned earth. The hills throw round it a protecting arm, and on the seaward side the creamy surf curls in towards the yellow sands. Afar the sun sparkles on the Pacific bine, and here and there the northeast trades lash an overreaching wave until a foam cap flashes whitely. There are joys at Waikiki—the long beach that runs away to the foot of Diamond Head. Waikiki has been made widely known by a ditty that has tormented our .every night in the tropics With unnecessary choral emphasis, to say nothing of ukelele accompaniment, the charms of some maiden whose main purpose in life seems to have been the giving of language, lessons “on the beach at Waikiki,” have been impressed upon us. Why she selected the beach at Waikiki goodness only knows! Anyway, there isn’t much beach there —or, at an. rate, not much sand. An American friend confessed himself disappointed with Oahu after his first visit. He looked for more of the old romance—for grass houses and ukeleles strumming in the moonlight. But Gee!” he exclaimed. “The Hawaiians are hard to find, and instead of grass huts and ukeleles they’ve taken to bungalows and victrolas. The island’s Americanised all right, and what isn’t is Japanned, or whatever you call it Vos. tn-day the natives form only a small section of* the cosmopolitan population of Hawaii. There are four times as 11) >i ■ ■ v Japanese, and the 23,700 Hawaiians are equalled in number by the Portuguese, and nearly equalled by the Chinese. Then there are. the Americans and Europeans. The statement that Honolulu is “actually ethnlogically and geographically the melting pot of the world” certainly finds statistical support. And here, in their paradise on the “cross roads of the Pacific, the races mingle and live in happiness.

One of the romances of the Peerage is furnished by the case of the Earl of Ducky the Father of the House ot herds, who catered on lus 93rd year last month, and is the oldest maimer of the House with the exception of the Earl of Halshury, who will be 9b m . the autumn. Lord Ducic has been a member of the House for 66 years. It was in 1853, vwhen M..P. tor the Stroud division, that he succeeded Ins lather in the earldom, and although the present Earl of Coventry succeeded his "randfather exactly ten years previouslv, lie did not take his seat in Parliament until he attained his maioritv several years later. ’ Sir Rabindranath Tagore (the Indian poet'i has sent a letter to the Viceroy, protesting against the measures taken hv the Government in quelling the Punjab disturbances, and asking to be relieved of his knighthood Here is a story illustrating the tact ol ,M Jusscrand, the French Ambassador in New York. A senator at a luncheon said to M. Jusserand: Take—oer—eska voo voo-ly I mean—or—-passvinoi-—sill voo play :Or M. Jusseraiid laid his hand on the senator’s shoulder, and in his excellent English said: “My dear sir, my very donr sir, do please stop speaking French Your accent is so Parisian (hat positive!v, it makes me homesick.'” Xow that pearls are so rapidly increasing in value, .it is sad to think some are perishing in the Louvre. Mine. Thiers bequeathed to that institution a. marvellous pearl necklace, which withiij a few vears fell a victim to the mysterious‘disease deli nod by experts as a form of starvation. Pearls live by contact with humanity, and for this reason jewellers maintain that they should j,o worn on the ban skin. If the Louvre necklace could he worn for a time the pearls would recover their lustre. But, according to the will of Mine. Thiers, it must not Re removed from, its case, so the pearls are gradually he-\ coming more unsightly and shrivelled, and must ultimately be lost to the world.