There are some unregenerates, both white and bronze, still in Honolulu who say something like this about the missionaries and the country. This may or may not have any truth in it. It is certainly quite true that the missionaries have done an immense amount of good in the Sandwich Islands. It is also true that they and their descendants form the aristocracy and ruling class of the islands. They have the most magnificent houses and most beautiful estates. They also run the most lucrative businesses. Not the worthy pastors themselves, of course. In Hawaii, the word “missionary” means not only the missionaries themselves, but their descendants to the third and fourth generations. Perhaps the most good-natured way to put it would be to say that here the labourer was worthy of his hire and saw that he got it. But there was one deadly contrast in Honolulu which I frankly say shocked and horrified me, hardened globe-trotter as I am! I don’t think I ever saw a place which possesses more churches, schools, missions, and other missionary machinery to the acre than Honolulu. It also runs considerably to saloons and hotels with bar-annexes; but these justify their existence by paying enormous licences to the revenue. Wherefore they charge the thirsting citizen a shilling a time for a drink, no matter how small or common; which, of course, either keeps down drunkenness or punishes those who drink with poverty. Millionaires, and, some whisper, the missionaries, take their liquid comforts at home. But one night after dinner, having nothing else to do but smoke and listen to small talk in the intervals of fighting the mosquitos, I went off by myself to explore the Asiatic Quarter. I had no hint or direction from anybody, and, by sheer accident, I found myself in a street which was the exact replica of the slave-market in Chinatown, San Francisco. Slaves of all colours and nationalities, white and brown and yellow and black, were sitting behind the lattices of their prisons. Chinese and Japanese “Houses of Delight” were running full steam ahead. It was only natural that I should catch myself wondering whether I had not been spirited back into Chinatown, instead of walking the streets of Holy Honolulu where the missionaries and the churches have reigned practically supreme for fifty years. One curiously revolting feature of the scene was this: The Americanisation of Hawaii was proceeding apace just then. Four or five big transports, bound for Manila, were in the harbour. There were American sentries at the Government Buildings over which Old Glory floated from sunrise to sunset. Squads of American troops drilled daily in the open places. American patrols marched through the streets by night, and American soldiers and sailors jostled with Jap and Chinaman, Negro and Malay along the narrow pavements of the Hawaiian slave-market. It was a curious mingling of East and West, not by any means flattering to the West.