The Hawaiian Archipelago - Six Months Among The Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, And Volcanoes Of The Sandwich Islands By Isabella L. Bird
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But Where Were The Hard, Angular,
Careworn, Sallow, Passionate Faces Of Men And Women, Such As Form
The Majority Of Every Crowd At Home, As Well As In America, And
Australia?
The conditions of life must surely be easier here, and
people must have found rest from some of its burdensome
conventionalities.
The foreign ladies, in their simple, tasteful,
fresh attire, innocent of the humpings and bunchings, the
monstrosities and deformities of ultra-fashionable bad taste, beamed
with cheerfulness, friendliness, and kindliness. Men and women
looked as easy, contented, and happy as if care never came near
them. I never saw such healthy, bright complexions as among the
women, or such "sparkling smiles," or such a diffusion of feminine
grace and graciousness anywhere.
Outside this motley, genial, picturesque crowd about 200 saddled
horses were standing, each with the Mexican saddle, with its
lassoing horn in front, high peak behind, immense wooden stirrups,
with great leathern guards, silver or brass bosses, and coloured
saddle-cloths. The saddles were the only element of the picturesque
that these Hawaiian steeds possessed. They were sorry, lean,
undersized beasts, looking in general as if the emergencies of life
left them little time for eating or sleeping. They stood calmly in
the broiling sun, heavy-headed and heavy-hearted, with flabby ears
and pendulous lower lips, limp and rawboned, a doleful type of the
"creation which groaneth and travaileth in misery." All these
belonged to the natives, who are passionately fond of riding. Every
now and then a flower-wreathed Hawaiian woman, in her full radiant
garment, sprang on one of these animals astride, and dashed along
the road at full gallop, sitting on her horse as square and easy as
a hussar.
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