It was pleasant to ride occasionally in the warm sun, and feast the eye upon the ever-changing panorama of the forest (beyond and below us), with its many tints, its softened lights and shadows, its billowy undulations sweeping gently down from the mountain to the sea.

It was pleasant also, at intervals, to leave the sultry sun and pass into the cool, green depths of this forest and indulge in sentimental reflections under the inspiration of its brooding twilight and its whispering foliage.
We rode through one orange grove that had ten thousand tree in it! They were all laden with fruit.
At one farmhouse we got some large peaches of excellent flavor.
This fruit, as a general thing, does not do well in the Sandwich Islands.
It takes a sort of almond shape, and is small and bitter.

It needs frost, they say, and perhaps it does; if this be so, it will have a good opportunity to go on needing it, as it will not be likely to get it.
The trees from which the fine fruit I have spoken of, came, had been planted and replanted sixteen times, and to this treatment the proprietor of the orchard attributed his-success.
We passed several sugar plantations--new ones and not very extensive.
The crops were, in most cases, third rattoons.

[NOTE .-- The first crop is called "plant cane;" subsequent crops which spring from the original roots, without replanting, are called "rattoons."] Almost everywhere on the island of Hawaii sugar-cane matures in twelve months, both rattoons and plant, and although it ought to be taken off as soon as it tassels, no doubt, it is not absolutely necessary to do it until about four months afterward.

In Kona, the average yield of an acre of ground is two tons of sugar, they say.