What I saw on the west coast of South and North America, and at the Hawaiian Islands.: By H. Willis Baxley, M.D.

CHlAPTER XXXIII.
DEPARTTURE FROM HONOLULU-ISLANDS OF MOLOKAI AND LANAI-LAHIIAINA-SEAPORT OF
THE ISLAND OF MAUI-TEMPTATIONS OF RESIDENCE-TEMPERATURE-SIMPLICITY OF
NATIVE HABITS-ADVENT OF THE WHITE MAN A CURSE TO THE NATIVES-UNITED
STATES CONSULS AND HOSPITALS IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES-OFFICIAL MALFEASANCE.
T.HE oject of my visit to Honolulu being accomplished,
duty forbade the gratification of a wish to linger longer among
the attractions of this politically chief island of the group, and
in a cominercial sense, as before stated, its most important, for
it is the principal resort of the great whaling fleet of the Pacific,
whicli in the palmy days'of whaling was'sometimes represented
in the harbor of Honolulu by more than one hundred vessels,
valued, with their cargoes, at ten millions of dollars, riding at
anchor within its protecting reef. Such prosperity, however, is
not likely to be realized in the future, although Oahu may retain its'relative commercial importance, for the rapidly-diminishling " catch" of whales, owing to their disappearance from
the seaman's favorite fishing grounds, together with the growth
of San, Francisco, and the opening of other Pacific ports, are
working revolutions in trade, and affording depots of supply and
transshipment that cannot fail to operate disadvantageously upon
the shipping interests of the Hawaiian Islands, so far at least as
relates to this particular source of their prosperity.
Leaving Kauai to the northwest, an island of great salubrity
and agricultural capacity, the first in the order of creation of
this group, as it was also the first in that of modern discovery,
we steered in the little Hawaiian steamer "Kilauea" out of the
harbor of Honolulu, bound for Lahaina, another port at which
the United States have a resident consul. The king was aboard