All These Tropical Forests Are Absolutely Impenetrable, Except To Axe And Billhook, And After A Trail Has Been Laboriously Opened, It Needs To Be Cut Once Or Twice A Year, So Rapid Is The Growth Of Vegetation.

This one, through the Puna woods, only admits of one person at a time.

It was really rapturously lovely. Through the trees we saw the soft steel-blue of the summer sky: not a leaf stirred, not a bird sang, a hush had fallen on insect life, the quiet was perfect, even the ring of our horses' hoofs on the lava was a discord. There was a slight coolness in the air and a fresh mossy smell. It only required some suggestion of decay, and the rustle of a fallen leaf now and then, to make it an exact reproduction of a fine day in our English October. The forest was enlivened by many natives bound for Hilo, driving horses loaded with cocoa-nuts, bread-fruit, live fowls, poi and kalo, while others with difficulty urged garlanded pigs in the same direction, all as presents for the king. We brought back some very scarce parasitic ferns.

HILO, February 24.

I rode over by myself to Onomea on Saturday to get a little rest from the excitements of Hilo. A gentleman lent me a strong showy mare to go out on, telling me that she was frisky and must be held while I mounted; but before my feet were fairly in the stirrups, she shook herself from the Chinaman who held her, and danced away. I rode her five miles before she quieted down. She pranced, jumped, danced, and fretted on the edge of precipices, was furious at the scow and fords, and seemed demented with good spirits. Onomea looked glorious, and its serenity was most refreshing. I rode into Hilo the next day in time for morning service, and the mare, after a good gallop, subsided into a staidness of demeanour befitting the day. Just as I was leaving, they asked me to take the news to the sheriff that a man had been killed a few hours before. He was riding into Hilo with a child behind him, and they went over by no means one of the worst of the palis. The man and horse were killed, but the child was unhurt, and his wailing among the deep ferns attracted the attention of passers-by to the disaster. The natives ride over these dangerous palis so carelessly, and on such tired, starved horses, that accidents are not infrequent. Hilo had never looked so lovely to me as in the pure bright calm of this Sunday morning.

The verandahs of all the native houses were crowded with strangers, who had come in to share in the jubilations attending the king's visit. At the risk of emulating "Jenkins," or the "Court Newsman," I must tell you that Lunalilo, who is by no means an habitual churchgoer, attended Mr. Coan's native church in the morning, and the foreign church at night, when the choir sang a very fine anthem. I don't wish to write about his faults, which have doubtless been rumoured in the English papers.

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