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June 6, 1916 From over the lofty Koolau Mountains, vagrant wisps of the trade wind drifted, faintly swaying the great, unwhipped banana leaves, rustling the palms, and fluttering and setting up a whispering among the lace-leaved algaroba trees. Only intermittently did the atmosphere so breathe for breathing it was, the suspiring of the languid, Hawaiian afternoon.
As we steam along and pass the estancias of wealthy farmers, I observe on the banks hundreds of cows, large troops of horses, and flocks of sheep, in numbers sufficient to puzzle even the calculating Pedder. There are very few wild trees to be seen, except on the highlands an occasional specimen of the Ombu or Algaroba species.
During the whole morning they had been galloping through the region of the Monte, or bush, that border-land which connects the treeless plains with the tropical forests of the north, where thorny shrubs covered the ground in more or less dense patches, where groves of the algaroba a noble tree of the mimosa species, and trees laden with a peach-like but poisonous fruit, as well as other trees and shrubs, diversified the landscape, and where the ground was carpeted with beautiful flowering plants, among which were the variegated blossoms of verbena, polyanthus, and others.
The wire cost little more at Rosario than it would have done in England, and the chief trouble was bringing the posts, which were made of algaroba wood, from the town. This wood grows abundantly upon the upper river, and is there cut down and floated in great rafts down to Rosario. It is a tough wood, which splits readily, and is therefore admirably suited for posts.
Esparto, the coarse grass which grows almost everywhere in Spain, has long been an article of commerce, as well as the algaroba bean said to be the locust bean, on which John the Baptist might have thriven for it is the most fattening food for horses and cattle, and produces in them a singularly glossy and beautiful coat.
The country about us was uncultivated and generally open, but here and there were straggling lines of low stone walls overgrown with a wild vine resembling our morning-glory, the masses of green leaves starred with large pink flowers. The algaroba, a graceful tree resembling the elm, grew along the roadside, generally about fifteen feet high.
One man carried a half-grown pig in a rope net attached to his stirrup: it looked tired of life. So, under the arching algaroba and monkey-pod trees that shade Nuannu Avenue, and past the royal palms that grace the yards, we rode into beautiful Honolulu. There was a little boy a year or two since who lived under the shadow of Martinswand.
The voices of the singers broke softly and meltingly into an Hawaiian love-song, and officers and women, with encircling arms, were gliding and whirling on the lanai; and once again the woman laughed under the algaroba trees. And Percival Ford knew only disapproval of it all.
And beyond the reef and beyond the blue, nestling among cocoanut trees and bananas, umbrella trees and breadfruits, oranges, mangoes, hibiscus, algaroba, and passion-flowers, almost hidden in the deep, dense greenery, was Honolulu. Bright blossom of a summer sea! Fair Paradise of the Pacific!
And again, from under the dark algaroba tree arose the laugh of a woman that was a love-cry; and past his chair, on the way to bed, a bare-legged youngster was led by a chiding Japanese nurse-maid.
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