"The cook was a strapping Kanaka, rather more than six feet in height, and would have weighed nearly three hundred pounds. While I was the only occupant of the table, the family had formed a circle on their mats, where they were discussing their supper with the utmost eagerness. _He_ devoted his entire attention to me. He was a good specimen of a well poi-fed native. I could see his frame to advantage, for his sole dress consisted of a short woolen shirt and the malo; and his head of hair resembled that of the pictured Medusa. When I first sat down to the table, he took up my plate, and with a mouthful of breath, which was really a small breeze, he blew the dust from it. "This act occasioned me no small merriment. But when, in supplying me with 'tea,' he took up a bowl and wiped it out with the corner of his flannel shirt, I could refrain no longer. I laughed until my sides fairly ached and the tears streamed down my face.... For a moment the family were taken by surprise, and so was this presiding deity of culinary operations. But on a second outburst from myself, they felt reassured, and joined with me in my laughter. The cook, however, seemed to feel that I had laughed at some one of his blunders; so he dipped the bowl in a calabash of water, washed it out with his greasy fingers, and again wiped it out with that same shirt lap. This was done three times, in answer to the laughter it was impossible for me to restrain. And when he had filled the bowl with tea, and saw that it remained untasted, he put a large quantity of sugar into the huge tea-kettle, shook it up, placed it at my right elbow, and told me to drink _that_! "The evening was closed with solemn devotions. The best bed in the house was placed at my disposal; and upon it was replaced the sheet on which I had just before supped, and on which I slept during that night. The bed was carefully stuffed with a soft downy substance, resembling raw silk, but called by the natives _pulu_, and culled from the tree-fern. The pillows were stuffed with the same material." [Illustration: QUEEN EMMA.] Kamehameha III was succeeded by his nephew and adopted son Kamehameha IV. Although he had a violent temper, he had many good qualities. His wife was Queen Emma, granddaughter of John Young, who was very English in her tastes. It was in her honour that the King founded the Queen's Hospital, and it was probably due to her influence that he started the Anglican mission and made an excellent translation of the English prayer book into the Hawaiian language. The harbour of Honolulu was enlarged by him and other improvements were made, and the cultivation of rice was introduced. After his death, which occurred in San Francisco, Queen Emma made an attempt to obtain the crown, but was unsuccessful.