with many plantations soon after the war. Other misfortunes plunged the always poor laboring class into absolute starvation, many of the well-to-do were ruined, and business has been severely hampered by questions of tariff arising out of the change in political status. The United States government has done much and will continue its kindly endeavors to ameliorate the condition of these people. With the speedy return of good times there ought to be a growing stream of pleasure as well as business traffic to an island so exceptionally rich in the natural features which give fresh delight to the travelled eye and unfold a new world of charm to the fortunate ones who go abroad for the first time.

Honolulu, the capital of the Hawaiian group, has long been an American city in all but name. The geographical position of the islands destined them to come within the pale of our civilization. Within a century the natives have been transformed from a state of animalism into a self-respecting, progressive people. While the aborigines have been rapidly dying out there has been a steady influx of new blood from various sources. The population is about 120,000, immigrants from Japan and Portugal forming a considerable proportion of the laboring class. Chinese immigration has been restricted.

The traveller might almost imagine himself in some New England or Pennsylvania town as he drives through the streets of Honolulu. The capital is laid out on the American plan, the churches and houses might have been transplanted by a cyclone, and the very attire of the people in general keeps up the illusion of being at home from home. The palace of the last king and queen bears as little relation to the hut of their great predecessor, Kamehameha the First, as do the New York tailor-made suits and dresses of the citizens of Honolulu to the scanty loin-cloth which their grandparents considered the height of Sandwich Islands fashion.

More and more will these lovely isles become the pleasure-grounds for our people and for all world-tourists. The important practical value of their annexation will be better understood if it ever becomes necessary to back up the essential principle of the Monroe Doctrine against foreign foes. As a growing metropolis Honolulu has charms of its own independent of the ideal climate and luxuriant flora of the twelve islands.

The narratives of the first travellers to Owhyee, as they styled it, glowed with descriptions of the voluptuous charms of the natives, whose life was a round of pleasure, untempered by the wholesome necessity for hard toil. It was a lotos land for all who sojourned there. The harmful consequences of unwholesome ease are not yet eradicated. Christianity has achieved almost miraculous triumphs, and the conditions of modern life in crowded communities are helping to harden the native temperament. The leper colony in Molokai is one of several sad sights which are, perhaps, better left unseen. Also the clandestine Saturnalia still kept up on the old lines, with some winking or dozing on the part of natives in authority.

Trips can be made to the surrounding islands, famous for their volcanic mountains and tropical verdure. The largest active crater in the world is that of Kilauea, being nine miles in circumference, with vertical sides about one thousand feet deep and at the bottom a lake of molten lava, boiling furiously in some parts and throwing off fibres like spun silk which float in the air. These craters are apt to break into activity without warning.

City life in Honolulu, as already remarked, can almost delude a Southerner into fancying himself at home. It is quite cosmopolitan in its degree. There are well-equipped hotels, an English library, street railways, electric lights, telephones, insurance offices, colonies and clubs of American and British lawyers, business men, physicians and journalists. Modern progress is strikingly impressed on the visitor who draws his own picture of the primitive semi-savages he expects to see, when he hears the familiar hum of mills and factories, the roar and pounding noises of foundries, and the imposing array of wharves and vessels. Hawaii is a natural hub of the wheel of world-traffic. From its ports there is a large and fast-growing steamship trade with the principal commercial centres all over the globe. We shall pass from Honolulu round to the Philippines in the easiest fashion. One is surprised at the number of Chinese and Japanese laborers in Hawaii, some of whom have prospered and own large business establishments. The foreign element in the labor field has been a source of mild trouble but is now in a fair way to solve itself. A gratifying feature is the public school system. Everywhere are centres of light and learning, promising a grand future for the island population. The abundant yield of rice, sugar, coffee, bananas, and other foodstuffs is mostly bought for the American people.

The pleasures and pains of the voyage to the Philippines have been the subject of too many public letters since the war to need re-telling. The two thousand islands which form the little-known archipelago are the homes of a number of mixed tribes, with whom the traveller will not crave intimate acquaintance for some time. In Luzon, the chief island, we may feel fairly at home, now that its all but pathless wilds, as well as its long-settled towns and hamlets, are sprinkled with American soldiers. In time, doubtless, scientific exploration will approximately fix the value of the mineral and arable fields of the archipelago. Until knowledge increases in this direction there will not be much inducement to roam among peoples with questionable manners, strange religions and outlandish dialects. The Tagal folk has reached, as regards the more favored class, a high degree of civilization. The Malay blood has peculiarities of its own. Under long-continued Spanish rule the Luzon native has developed intellectually and nurtured an ambition for self-government. This half-amicable, half-hostile relationship between the Spanish friars, who have been the spiritual, and perhaps still more the civic, trainers and masters of the natives, is a most interesting study for the newly arrived visitor.

Landing at Manila, the commercial centre and capital of the islands, we find ourselves in a city blending the characteristics of an old-fashioned Spanish town with the mild business air of a third-rate western port. The buildings speak of the tropical perils to be encountered. Dewey’s bombardment was more generous than the earthquakes and gales that smote the Cathedral. These visitations come oftener than those of angels. Houses are built low and massively on the ground floor, to insure that a one-story home shall remain when the upstairs section flies away. Terrific gales come unannounced and life is temporarily suspended until it is possible to swim into the streets and rake in the flotsam and jetsam that once lodged within your walls. Periodical rains lend variety to the novice’s experience. They descend in Niagaras, giving free and wholesome baths to the many who need them and to those who need them not, and give the mud lanes that serve for streets a timely cleaning up. The rainfall record has shown as much as 114 inches in a year.

Your hotel will be the perfection of cleanliness, but the window openings are vast and glass-panes are unknown. The mahogany bedstead is bedless, a mat of woven cane strips, bare of everything that can encourage warmth or harbor little neighbors, but winged visitors float in to remind the sleeper he is not in the Waldorf-Astoria, and then depart, perhaps. By day life can be very enjoyable. Churches, which are largely art-galleries also, fine squares and promenades, fashionable