From the sands you return to Waimea, and can ride thence next day to Koloa in the forenoon, and to Na-Wiliwili in the afternoon.  The following day’s ride will bring you to Hanalei, a highly picturesque valley which lies on the rainy side of the island, Waimea being on the dry side.  At Hanalei you should take the steamer and sail in her around the Palis of Kauai, a stretch of precipitous cliff twenty-five miles long, the whole of which is inaccessible from the sea, except by the native people in canoes; and many parts of which are very lovely and grand.  Thus voyaging, you will circumnavigate the island, returning to Na-Wiliwili, and thence in a night to Honolulu.

It is easy and pleasant to see Kauai, taking a store of provisions with you and lodging in native houses.  But if you have made some acquaintances in Honolulu you will be provided with letters of introduction to some of the hospitable foreign families on this island; and thus the pleasure of your visit will be greatly increased.  I do not, I trust, violate the laws of hospitality if I say something here of one of these families—­the owners of the little island of Niihau, who have also a charming residence in the mountains of Kauai.  They came to Honolulu ten or twelve years ago from New Zealand in a ship of their own, containing not only their household goods, but also some valuable sheep.  Thus fitted out they were sailing over the world, looking for such a little empire to own as they found in Niihau; and here they settled, selling their ship; and here they remain, prospering, and living a quiet, peaceful, Arcadian life, with cattle and sheep on many hills, and with a pleasant, hospitable house, where children and grandchildren are clustered together, and where the stranger receives the heartiest of welcomes.  It was a curious adventure to undertake, this sailing over the great Pacific to seek out a proper home; and I did not tire of listening to the account of their voyage and their settlement in this new and out-of-the-way land, from the cheery and delightful grandmother of the family, a Scotch lady, full of the sturdy character of her country people, and altogether one of the pleasantest acquaintances I made on the Islands.

[Illustration:  WAIALUA FALLS, ISLAND OF KAUAI.]

Kauai has many German residents, mostly, like these Scotch people I have spoken of, persons of education and culture, who have brought their libraries with them, and on whose tables and shelves you may see the best of the recent literature, as well as the best of the old.  A New Yorker who imagines, cockney-like, that civilization does not reach beyond the sound of Trinity chimes is startled out of this foolish fancy when he finds among the planters and missionaries here, as in other parts of these Islands, men and women of genuine culture maintaining all the essential forms as well as the realities of civilization; yet living so free and untrammeled a life that he who comes from the high-pressure social atmosphere of New York can not help but envy these happy mortals, who seem to have the good without the worry of civilization, and who have caught the secret of how to live simply and yet gently.