Hawaii — page 85: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Reed 76 HONOLULU. within by the outlying reef which bounds the inner har- bor. As soon as the whalers began to frequent the place in numbers, a town quickly sprung up, and in 1820 Hono- lulu contained six or seven thousand inhabitants, while to-day its population reaches thirty thousand. Many persons have variously described the view of Honolulu as they approached it from the sea. Some have gone into raptures over it, whilst others have been disappointed. Unless the traveler has been led to ex- pect something extremely wonderful, he cannot fail to be charmed with the view of the city and its surrounding scenery, as seen from the deck of an incoming steamer. It is quite true that the hills of Oahu have not that. same luxurious vegetation that so many islands of the Southern Pacific are noted for, and the city has no par- ticular building to attract attention, but without doubt Honolulu is a prettier place to gaze at from the sea than nineteen out of twenty cities to be found anywhere on the face of the globe. It has been rightly called “a city in a grove.” To me, standing upon the top of the Punch Bowl, the city is a mass of beautiful green foliage, with here and there a flag pole, indicating that somewhere beneath the tree tops is a dwelling. Twenty-five years ago little could be said of praise in regard to the city, however pleased one might be with the surrounding scenery. The streets were dusty, houses insignificant, irregularly built and located, with scarcely a tree anywhere to be seen. All this is now changed, and by nothing more than the cComicbooks.com