The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1870-03-12
Letter from HilO.

Mr.. EDITOR 1t is election day, and all true
patriots are off to the polls, whilst l, not ranking
myself in that category, remain at home. with a sort
of holiday feeling, however, hanging about me,
which prompts me to have a little chat with you.
1 have nothing creditable to say of the weather,
which in HilO is always mean and contemplate /;
and there is very little to be said either about the
somnOlent little city, which has scarcely got over a
bad headache, caused by eating too much rice on the
China New Year. l hear that some honorable dollars
accrued to His Majesty's treasury from a few broken
heads and bloody noses, though as a general thing
the hams and chow chow were consumed in manner
very complete and satisfactory to all parties. There
are no earthquakes or tidal waves to report,-no
sensation of any kind the Empire of Hilo is Peace.
Let us go somewhere else.
1 was sitting the other day, in imagination, as l
have many a time done in reality, on the grim rocks
of KOholalele, looking seward towards the Boreatic
regions where the whalers go, and quite shut out
from the chattering world behind me by the tall gray
pail that makes our windward coasts SO grand and
grievous, whilst at my feet, over the waves and far
away, rolled and tumbled in infinite fray all the per-
turbed spirits of the North Pacific Ocean-even as
forty years ago 1 saw fantastic shapes and turbulent
forthcomings of a possible Future from another cliff
on another "Island by the Sea-"
Now, by what odd and incongruous confederation
of ideas it came about I'll not try to explain, but
following legitimately in the train of thought which
had possession of me then and there, came to my
memory a phrase, read not long ago and forgotten,
one might wish, like a bar of bad music or a nasty
taste,-even a phrase from an epistle written by one
Jenkins, for the Gazette and the believers therein,-
a phrase which 1 think not you or any other man
could connect with my situation aforesaid, and its
apparently consequential mental surroundings. But
you see, l was for the nonce a sort of "lon on a
rock which Solomon himself couldn't understand.
This was the phrase, (when found to be made u note
of "We mir'd together on The most delightful
terms Of perfect equaiity.'' Yea, verify mustn't
that have been an unexpected sensation And the
Grand Vizier himself, doing his own Jenkinsing,
couldn't have expressed it better! For hasn't he
for the last seven or eight years at least followed that
Sta of has East, that Ultima Thule of his steady
ambition, through thick and thin, and sometimes
over the ~stifest kind of country, where less persistent
riders always come to grief, to attain at last this
blessed condition of perfect equality with nothing
less (by a fortuitous Academy than a Prince Royal
of a civilized land, whose bearings as a gentleman
seemed new in " Vanity Fair and seem TO have
been appropriated by the select one for his own
especial eomplacency, whilst the innocent visitor
passed on, Sin maiden meditation, fancy free,''
little thinking of the spirit he had evoked,-of the
Bottle Imp whom he had uncorked
Perfect equality-nothing less 1t is thought by
some that Rank is better for blue blood that Daring
is safer when accompanied with Genius, and that
Decorations are prettier with Diamonds,-but never
mind, let US get along.
You must come and sit beside me now for n while
on this rock and look around with me. DO you
Al = l. A. Lnnao ~ SnornnusN- n-1 II l.
capacity of the world, could, toih a HaUaiian ap-
preparation, construct a power whose butt would be
more than a fy-kick in comparison with the terrible
minute-guns that, with charges Of many thousand
m~ile-power, are now and ever since "Creation's
dawn have been pounding against this precipice
You think not. Well, then, here comes the man
who does not agree with you, Z" perfectly equal" to
himself or any other man, who might stand boldly
that valiant pigmy Sir Godfrey Hudson addressing
Charles End, "Fear, may it please Your .Mojesfy,
is q thing unkHown TO me-" And he'll boss the
job. So here he comes, like a second Xerxes, with
his man Friday, forsooth, and drawings, Lord bless
US with twelve or fifteen hundred dollars worth of
Jack-straws and three-penny nails, and a brace of
inferior genii as bold and almost as wise as himself,
TO do battle with the infinite powers aforesaid, and
break a lance with the wild spirits that scream and
sing over the main, and whose dwellings are the
four winds of heaven.
AS the French soldier once exclaimed, at is
magnificent, but it is not battle 3"
But never mind - our Engineering Excellency
thinks himself On delightful terms of perfect equality
with the occasion, and he will coerce Neptune into
placitude-or know the reason why.
Now as you are sitting here on this Koholalele
rock beside me, just look down and see what is left
of the construction, engineered by an Excellency
and his man Friday ON the most delightful terms, &C..
and executed by the inferior genii aforementioned,
and approved (this is a very interesting part of the