My Friends At Home, Who Were Interested In My Narratives, Urged Me To Give Them To A Wider Circle, And My Inclinations Led Me In The Same Direction, With A Sort Of Longing To Make Others Share Something Of My Own Interest And Enjoyment.

The letters which follow were written to a near relation, and often hastily and under great difficulties of circumstance, but even with these and other disadvantages, they appear to me the best form of conveying my impressions in their original vividness.

With the exception of certain omissions and abridgments, they are printed as they were written, and for such demerits as arise from this mode of publication, I ask the kind indulgence of my readers. ISABELLA L. BIRD. January, 1875.

TRAVELS IN THE SANDWICH ISLANDS.

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

Canon Kingsley, in his charming book on the West Indies, says, "The undoubted fact is known I find to few educated English people, that the Coco palm, which produces coir rope, cocoanuts, and a hundred other useful things, is not the same plant as the cacao bush which produces chocolate, or anything like it. I am sorry to have to insist upon this fact, but till Professor Huxley's dream and mine is fulfilled, and our schools deign to teach, in the intervals of Greek and Latin, some slight knowledge of this planet, and of those of its productions which are most commonly in use, even this fact may need to be re-stated more than once."

There is no room for the supposition that the intelligence of Mr. Kingsley's "educated English" acquaintance is below the average, and I should be sorry to form an unworthy estimate of that of my own circle, though I have several times met with the foregoing confusion, as well as the following and other equally ill-informed questions, one or two of which I reluctantly admit that I might have been guilty of myself before I visited the Pacific:

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