The Hawaiian gazette., 1875-11-17

! THE HAWAIIAN ARCHIPELAGO. Six months among the
palm groves coral reefs aud volcanoes Of the sandwich I
ands. ny Isabella l. BIRD. author of tho Englishw
in America" With Illustrations. London, John Murray
| Albcmarle street. 1875.
This is book which we can with good
conscience recommend all to read. We will 60
farther, and say that those who do not read il
will lose an opportunity for enjoying one of the
most piquant and enthusiastic bits of literature
which have illumed our pathway for long
time. The work has been long looked for, and
is now for sale here
The fair authoress is true woman in every
sense of the word. Her sentiments are'of the
most liberal kind; her charity is apparently
universal. She is representative English
woman ola advanced type. One who through
out the length and breadth of Greater Brit
ain can sympathise, and love, and admire
who possesses not the faintest shade of that
snobbishness which charcterizes the typical
John Bull, both male and female. Her love of
Nature is unbounded, and her descriptions,
nearly all of which were written while her i'm
pressions were still fresh and vivid, are mind
photographs glowing with the brilliant colors of
the tropics, which can rarely be surpassed in
truth and effectiveness. One must sometimes
indulge in smile at her teeming exuberance
which occasionally, though rarely, leads her
into extravaganza, as will be noticed in the de-
scription of the passage through the impetu-
GUS torrents of Hakalau, and the Scotchman' s
gulch on Hawaii. The passage was doubt
less extremely dangerous, especially to her, as
she could not swim, but had it been half as bad
as she pictured it, her destruction would have
been the only possible result of the rash at
tempt. However the scene is one of such in
tense and thrilling interest that we find no diff
ficulty in forgiving little use of the "long
bow"
The aborigines are her delight and her adj
miration. She made her first acquaintance
with them before she had landed from the
steamer, and paints them in most graphic man
ner on pages 20 and 81. She travelled in the
company of natives for hundreds of miles, lived
in their houses ii remote valleys where white
faces are seldom seen, and partook of their fish
and two fingered poi," and they seem ever to
have grown in her esteem. She repeatedly al
ludes to the sense of perfect security she con-
stantly enjoyed while alone among them.
Their occasional scanty attire shocks not her
sense of modesty, prudishness having no place
in her composition, but " the brown skin pro-
duces nearly the effect of clothing and in the
"dusky swimmers gliding through the water "
and the youthful athletes, riding the waves on
their surf-boards y she sees naught but the
beauty of the bronzes of the Naples Muse
um.''
Of the many fine descriptions of natura
scenery with which the book abounds, we have
room but for one. A visit to the falls at the
head of Waimanu valley on the north coast of
Hawaii is recorded as follows:
From this point it was one perfect, rapturous,
intoxicating, supreme vision Of beauty, and felt,
as now believe, that at last had reached scene
on which foreign eyes had never looked. The gior-
les Of the topical forest closed IN with their Depth
color, aud redundancy. Here the operations of ia
turc are rapid and decisive. rainfall OF eleven
feet in year and hothOuse temperature force every
plant Into eeaseless activity, and make short work
of decay. Leakage, blossom, fruitage are smultan-
eons aud perennial The river, about as broad as
the Cam al Cambridge, leaped aloug clear like
amber, pausing 10 rest awhile In deep bright pools
where fish sporting above the golden sand,
laughing. sparkling, rushing, ierrorless stream,
=" without mysteries OF agonies,n broken by rocks,
green with moses and fragile ferns, and ia whose
nnchilled waters, not more than three feet deep,
wading was both safe and pleasant. IL not pos
sihle to creep along its margin, the forest was
dense and tangled. so waded the whole way, aud
wherever the waters ran iercely my unshod guide
helped me. Que varied, glorious maze OF Tegeta-
lion came down TO il, aud every green thing leant
lovingly towards II, or stOOp to touch it, aud over
its whole magic length was arehed aud interiaced
The mnrnlhrenf lnrrrs.lparnd nhin rrhnsa millinna