around which, upon mats on the ground, the Prince and other guests took their seats. Princess Kawananakoa, a lady of fine figure, in middle life, dressed in the conventional garments of Bond Street, representative of the Hawaiian Royal house, was given a place of honour next to the guest of the occasion. Hawaiian soldiers in yellow robes, with scarlet head-pieces that might have been patterned on the helmet of Achilles, and gold-tipped "tabu" staves, the size of broom-sticks, which represented life-and-death authority under the old régime, took up stations in the background. Immense flower-garlands were hung round the visitors' necks and they were served, upon plates of "ti" leaves, with savoury viands from the still smoking pit. Then from gourd-lutes of a weird band of musicians, tinkled out a soft refrain. Suddenly, from the dim shelter of an aerial-rooted banyan tree, human voices reinforced the chant, and four Hawaiian damsels, voluminously clad in flaming yellow feather-mantles, ending in deep ruffs over the ankles, leapt gracefully upon a mat in front, where they were joined by two similarly caparisoned and equally agile male partners with whom they proceeded to dance. The performance was like an Indian _nautch_ run mad. The heads and busts of the dancers remained almost stationary, thus forming a fulcrum around which the rest of their persons seemed to gyrate, with serpentine arms, india-rubber hips, and racing feet, the dancers, all the time, pouring out doleful melodies to which the gourd-lutes twanged in solemn harmony. One could almost see, as the weird notes rose and fell, Polynesian folk, in frail, palm-wood canoes, blown out to sea by fierce Eastern typhoons, from fisheries on the far coasts of the Malay, to perish mournfully and alone, in the vast empty spaces of the Pacific, only an occasional wanderer, through the centuries, finding refuge in some rare isle, and there building up a race of mingled blood, whose high cheek-bones, soft tongue, swaying dances and outrigged boats, speak of a Mongolian origin and an Eastern home.