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The sights of Honolulu had not lost their novelty the tropical foliage of palm, banana, bread-fruit, monkey-pod and algaroba trees; the dark-skinned, brightly-clad natives with flowers on their heads, who walked with bare feet and stately tread along the shady sidewalks or tore through the streets on horseback; the fine stone or wooden residences with wide cool verandas, or humbler native huts surrounded by walls of coral-rock instead of fences; the deep indigo-blue ocean on one hand and the rich green mountains on the other, dripping with moisture and alternately dark and bright with the gloom of clouds and the glory of rainbows, still wore for me their original freshness and interest when I received an urgent request to come to Waialua, a little village on the other side of the island.
From far off, muffled by distance, came the faint stamping of their tethered horses. The eyes of all were intently fixed upon the solitary sleeper who lay on his back on a lauhala mat a hundred feet away under the monkey-pod trees. Large as were the Hawaiian cowboys, the sleeper was larger. Also, as his snow-white hair and beard attested, he was much older.
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.
Then there is the beautiful West Indian rain-tree, which the Honolulu people call the monkey-pod tree, and which in the Philippines is miscalled acacia. Its broad branches extend outward in graceful curves, the foliage is thick but not crowded, and it is an ideal shade tree, apart from the charm of its blossoms of purplish pink.
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