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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Lahaina Is Thoroughly Beautiful And
Tropical Looking, With Its White Latticed Houses Peeping Out From
Under Coco Palms, Breadfruit, Candlenut,
Tamarinds, mangoes,
bananas, and oranges, with the brilliant green of a narrow strip of
sugar-cane for a background, and
Above, the flushed mountains of
Eeka, riven here and there by cool green chasms, rise to a height of
6000 feet. Beautiful Lahaina! It is an oasis in a dazzling desert,
straggling for nearly two miles along the shore, but compressed into
a width of half a mile. It was a great missionary centre, as well
as a great whaling station, but the whalers have deserted it, and
missions are represented now only by the seminary of Lahainaluna on
the hillside. An old palace, the remains of a fort, a custom-house,
and a native church are the most conspicuous buildings. The stores
and dwellings of the foreign residents are scattered along the
shore, and the light frame house, with its green verandah, buried
amid gorgeous exotics and shaded by candlenut and breadfruit, looks
as seemly and in keeping as in far-off Massachusetts, under hickory
and elm. The grass houses of the natives cluster along the waters'
edge, or in lanes dark with mangoes and bananas, and fragrant with
gardenia fringing the cane-fields. These, with adobe houses and
walls, the flush of the soil, the gaudy dresses of the natives, the
masses of brilliant exotics, the intense blue of the sea, and the
dry blaze of the tropical heat, give a decided individuality to the
capital of Maui.
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