RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
and the native viands which go with it, in entertainments which are called "poi dinners," and we were treated to as many of these as our time would permit. "Poi" bears an unpleasant outward resemblance to cockroach paste and, try as I would, I was never able to cultivate a taste for it. But foreigners do learn to like it, for I found Americans in Honolulu eating it with the greatest relish and dipping it up with their fingers in true Hawaiian style.
On our last evening in Honolulu, after a morning of sightseeing, a luncheon, an hour in the buffeting surf, and a large tea-party, we were given a particularly elaborate "poi dinner" where we all sat on the floor and at which all the guests appeared in native costume with "leis" around their necks and in their hair. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Mott Smith, sent the Hawaiian Band, whose leader came out from old Emperor William to King Kalakaua, and they serenaded us with most wonderful Hawaiian music, interspersed, for their own pride's sake, with well rendered selections from the finest operas. The girls came to flaming bright "Mother-Hubbard" dresses, crowned and covered with "leis," to dance for us the curious folk-lore dances of the old-time. It was a delightful whirl of music and lights and colour—added to fish and pot and a cramped position—but I was tired enough not to be sorry when the time came for the singing of "Aloha Oc" and our departure for the ship which lay out in the harbour ready to up-anchor at daybreak and start on its way to Japan.
On the evening of the tenth of May we reached the estuary near the head of which is Yokohama and further on is Tokio. For at least two hours we steamed past a low-lying shore line before we came in sight of the sweep of steep cliff to the southward which forms the great outer harbour.
There was just one thing that we could really look at; one insistent, dominant point in the landscape which caught us and held us fascinated,—Fujiyama. I had seen Fuji-
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