But the private houses—for instance, those stretching away along King Street, west, to Waikiki, perhaps the loveliest bathing-place in the world—are, after all, the pleasantest memories that one brings away from Honolulu. Mostly low and broad-verandahed, white-painted, and embowered in foliage of every shade of green, faced with smooth, emerald lawns spangled with flower-beds blazing bright with every colour that Nature loves to paint her tropical flowers, they seemed rather the dwellings of lotus-eaters in “the land where it is always afternoon” than the houses of hard-headed, keen-witted business men and politicians, mostly of American descent, who have not only piled up many millions by various methods, but have also created this leafy paradise out of the bare and swampy seashore that it was when Captain Cook landed upon it. I happened to arrive in Honolulu at a very interesting time. The Monroe Doctrine had been stretched across the Pacific from San Francisco to the Philippines, and Honolulu was a sort of hitching-post which kept it from sagging into the water. Among the white population there was a good deal more American than English being spoken. The harbour was full of American transports. Blue-clad, very business-like-looking American troops were marching and drilling and patrolling all over the place. Many of the men wore, in addition to their regimentals, portrait-medallions of the President or their best girls—a sight to make a British War Office Person ill for the rest of his official days. For myself, it liked me well. Saving the American occupation, but not by any means unconnected with it, the four salient facts of Honolulu seemed to me to be Missionaries, Mosquitos, Millionaires, and Morality spelt backwards. The missionaries and the mosquitos came to Honolulu at the same time, about seventy-five years ago. The mosquitos are supposed to have come in old sugar-casks from Mexico, and it is known that the missionaries came chiefly first-class from San Francisco. I mention the coincidence for what it is worth. Both are at present going strong. The missionaries practically own and run the place with the assistance of the sugar millionaires who helped the United States to annex the islands. The mosquitos are, with one exception, the most venomous and insidious that I have ever suffered from. There is one notable point of difference between the missionaries and the mosquitos in Honolulu. The missionaries and their congregations sing voluminously, and also very prettily. The Hawaiian mosquito does not sing. He makes his descent silently and stealthily, sucks the life-blood out of you, and goes away, leaving you to scratch and swear and wonder how on earth he managed to get his work in without you knowing it.