The Bishop Museum of Polynesian Ethnology contains the finest collection in existence of things illustrating the life and customs of Polynesia. Among other things, the visitor is shown the personal god of war of that sovereign whose grand-child was the last to hold the sceptre of the Kanakas. There are royal documents to prove that more than one thousand men have been beheaded before this grim-faced old idol. Here, too, is the famous robe of birds' feathers, made to please the fancy of this same grim old monarch. The feathers of which this strange, but really elegant, robe is made are of a reddish color. The birds from which they were plucked were found only in the Hawaiian Islands and each bird had only four feathers, two being under each wing. The extinction of the bird is attributed to the making of this royal robe. So many of them were needed that hundreds of hunters were employed a score or more of years to secure the number required. Placing the wages of the hunters at a reasonable figure, the value of the robe is over three hundred thousand dollars. At Honolulu one sees also that famous sport of the South Sea Islanders, _surf-shooting_. The native wades far out into the surf with a long narrow board and then sits astride of it upon the surface of the water. As the long billows come rolling in, he places his board upon the convex surface of an advancing wave, then, with the poise of a rope-dancer, he places his weight properly upon the plank and is shot forward with precipitate rapidity. Between Honolulu and Manila lies the imaginary line where the days of the week are supposed to begin and end. It has long been a custom among sailors to hold the "Revels of Neptune" on the night after a vessel crosses either the International Date Line or the Equator, and the ship is then turned over to the crew. Even the petty officers of the ship are not free from being made the objects of the sport, and passengers of especial prominence have often been treated to a bath in a tub of cold water or had their faces lathered with a broom as a shaving brush while a bar of old iron served the purpose of a razor. A naval lieutenant on the battleship which conveyed Napoleon from London to St. Helena, writing to one of the court ladies in London, states that Napoleon offered the sailors four hundred dollars in gold and actually gave them eighty-five dollars to escape being ducked in a tub of cold water and shaved with a rough iron hoop when they crossed the equator.[A] [A] Century Magazine for September, 1889. We reached the line on Thursday night and awoke a few hours later on Saturday morning, having lost a day in revelry. CHAPTER II. MANILA.