A CHARACTERISTIC LETTER.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 29, 12 August 1871, Page 3

A CHARACTERISTIC LETTER.

Mr Charles Matthews, the celebrated comedian, writing to a friend in Auckland, gives the following amusing account of his visit to the Sandwich Islands:—“Sailed for the Sandwich Islands at two, in the. Moses Taylor, familiarly—but by no means vulgarly—entitled the ‘ Rolling Moses.’ Reached Honolulu, the capital of the island of Oahu, and the seat of the Government of the Hawaiian group, on Saturday, the 19th; eighteen days, four thousand and thirteen miles and three quarters ! (accuracy again, exact os an architect’s estimate, £4,000 is Ifd.) Headwinds (of course) all the way ; longest passage (of course) ever known; and certainly the roughest. Heavy rolling seas —not a sail, a bird, or a fish sighted ; the only excitement we had arising from the old novelty of two Thursdays coming together in one week—two 9ths of February arm-in-arm. At Honolulu, one of the loveliest spots on earth, I acted one night by command, in the presence of his Majesty Kameliameha V., King of the Sandwich Islands (not Hoky-Ponky Wonky-Fong, as erroneously reported), and a memorable night it was. ** On my way to the quaint little Hawaiian theatre, situated in a rural lane, in the midst of a pretty garden glowing with gaudy tropical flowers, and shaded by cocoa-trees, bananas, banyans, and tamarinds, I met the play-bill of the evening. A perambulatory. Kanaka (or native black gentleman), walking between two boards (called in London figuratively a £ sandwich man,’ but here of course literally so), carried aloft a large illuminated lighted lantern, with the announcement in the Kanaka language, to catch the attention of the colored inhabitants. I found the theatre (to use the technical expression) ‘ crammed to suffocation,’ which merely means ' very full,’ though, from the state of the thermometer on this occasion, ‘ suffocation’ was not so incorrect a description as usual. A really elegant-looking audience (tickets

10s each), evening dresses, uniforms of every cut and every country. * Chieftesses’ and ladies of every tinge, in dresses of every color, flowers and jewels in profusion, satin playbills, fans going, windows and doors all open, an outside staircase leading straight into the dress circle, without lobby, checktaker, or money-taker. Kanaka women in the garden below selling bananas by the glare of flaring torches on a sultry tropical moonlight night. The whole thing was nothing but a midsummer night’s dream. And was it nothing to see a pit-full of Kanakas —black, brown, and whitey-brown all lately cannibals ■ showing their white teeth, grinning and enjoying ‘ patter v. Clatter,’ as much as a few years ago they would have enjoyed the roasting of a missionary or the baking of a baby. It was certainly a page in one’s history never to be forgotten.”