The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1903-01-18
A STRANGERS IMPRESSIONS
OF HONOLULU

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ana always new as the sun that rise:
in its course and gilds the seas ant
paints the rugged lava peaks of tbs
high hills. From the sea the city lies
sheltered in the shadow of its trees and
the rude peaks that front the ocean with
a frowping defiance that has endured
since the land sprang from the depths
long ago, in its birth of fire. The city
shelters in the shadows of the hills. and
yet it assaults theShills, climbing higher
/ and higher,<ana each white dwelling
I that peeps cut from its empowering
Ishade gives new point of beauty to the
stranger on the deck of the steamer
stealing along slowly through the Mo-
| lokai channel toward that break in the
white coral reefs that marks the en-
trance to the little sheltered harbor
The city grows more beautiful as it is
more closely approached. The foliage
takes tropical form. The ragged fronds
of the cocoanut trees tower above the
more widely spreading trees, and the
breakers roll in thunderously upon the
reefs that fend off the seas, dashing up
smothers of foam. Swift launches come
off to-the ship as she comes closer and
closer, and white sailboats dart about
and about her. like sea birds of larger
growth. Then, slowly the wharves rise
more closely they are seen to be crowd
ed with smiling people, waiting to greet
friends, only, mayhap 20 welcome stran-
gers-for Honolulu is hospitable in the
best sense-and the small Kanaka boys
are disporting themselves in the water
is filled with odd cries, and all that new
life lies open to the stranger-that life
that is so strange and new to him ami
that he yet comes to see, presently, in
all its best aspects is scarcely at all diff
ferent from the life he has left ON the
mainland.
Honolulu is a town of narrow, crooked
streets, to the first view. OF narrow,
crooked streets that lead every whittier,
like the streets in the old French quar-
the narrow streets there are broad ave-
nues, leading with plain directness to
definite goals. The stranger takes the
avenues on his second and better i'm
preston. He is lost, at first, in the
maze of the narrow ways, and the
idness of tropical coloring that lies all
about him. He finds himself presently,
as lost men always find themselves.
And he finds that he has come into a
world that is new to him, and yet ia
miliar-a world wherein the best that is
in life is at his command, and in which
the happy dweIlers have learned to
cease striving for the non-essentiais. 1t
is so easy to be happy anywhere under
the sun, if that lesson has been but
lulu, for the lesson is the lesson of
the very air one breathes.
For the material things, so necessary
and yet soymuch an affair of every day, |
they are all here. Honolulu is a city, |
for instance, in which the stranger can
get about easily-and stranger who gets
about easily in a new place is a stranger
who is reasonably well content. The
street car service, considering that it is |
new and considering the size of the city, !
is good The stranger can ride from
Waikiki straight away across the city, |
and then can cross in another direction
and even essay to climb the hills over
a route that is more truly scenic" than
many of the mountain railways on the
mainland of America that are much
more widely advertised. The hotels,
those real homes of the stranger in all
ands, are we'll run, agreeable places at
which to live-and, if they We're not, I
10 not think there was ever a hungry
stranger in all the city. The stranger
who has had dinner is a stranger who
ooks with pleasure upon his surround
ngs, however strange.
The sea meets the land at the gates
OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES