CHAPTER XIX

In the Hawaiian Isles—Spiritualism in Boston—Return to Britain—Invention of the System of Easy Reading for Blind and Sighted Chinese.

“So long THY Power hath blest me, sure it still Will lead me on O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till The night is gone, And with the morn those angel faces smile Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.”

The programme sketched in my letter was exactly carried out. I spent two intensely interesting months in the group which we used to call “The Sandwich Isles,” and was most kindly received by many of the principal people, including the King and Queen, his sisters, and the Dowager Queen Emma; but especially by Mr. and Mrs. Severance at Hilo. Also by some of the early American missionaries, who could tell me first-hand of the marvellous changes they had witnessed in the Isles since the days when the people first found courage to defy the wrath of the awful volcanic deities who manifested their power in such terrible earnest.

Thrilling indeed it was to hear such histories from those white-haired “fathers,” as they were lovingly called, who had borne so active a part in the conversion of the whole race to a pure Christian faith. And thrilling, too, to receive from eye-witnesses details of the successive appalling eruptions of the volcano and hairbreadth escapes of the people.

My visit to the active volcano was most happily timed, as I had the good-fortune to see and paint a succession of very remarkable changes within the bed of the great crater, and subsequently to obtain a striking picture of the interior of the largest dormant crater in the known world, strangely suggestive of the illustrations which scientific artists produce of the face of the moon.

All I saw and heard is fully told in my book _Fire Fountains of Hawaii_,[70] which to my own mind is perhaps the most interesting of my varied travel notes.

Then once again I returned to San Francisco, my impressions of which, and of the glorious Californian forests, are recorded in _Granite Crags of California_ (Blackwood).

Christmas with my nephew and niece in Maryland, and a very quaintly interesting New Year in Washington, were followed by a visit to wonderful Niagara (which, however, from its flat surroundings, did not entrance me, as did Yosemite in its apparent fall from heaven). Then came a delightful visit to the Winthrops at Boston, where their charming home was the centre of all the most cultivated society. There I had the great pleasure of making acquaintance with Oliver Wendell Holmes, _The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table_, and Longfellow, who each invited me to spend a most interesting day with them at their respective homes.

The latter showed me a tree close to his house, bearing an inscription to say that beneath it Washington took command of the army. The house itself was Washington’s headquarters. Mr. Holmes showed me admirable large landscapes (framed) embroidered by his daughter-in-law with silk on silk (I think). They are like very effective oil-paintings—certainly a triumph of needlework.

Mr. Winthrop took me all over Harvard College and to everything else that was best worth seeing. But one distinctive feature of Boston—as a centre of spiritualism—he and his family refused to countenance in any way. Nevertheless, as a traveller I felt that my acquaintance with Boston would be incomplete without hearing something about it, and they therefore most kindly commended me to the care of a gentleman who, though himself knowing nothing about it, undertook to escort me and several other inquisitive ladies to visit one of the innumerable “mediums,” whose names and addresses are registered at a regular business office.

Thither he went, and quite at random wrote down a few names of mediums, including that of Mrs. Nikersen White, a delicate little fair-haired lady, with whom he made an appointment for us on the following morning. What that lady (who by no possibility could have known any of the details on which she spoke to each of us) said to us in her pretty sitting-room, in bright morning sunshine, I do not care to recall here.

Under the name “UNFATHOMED MYSTERIES,” I wrote an account of that interview, which appeared in _Blackwood’s Magazine_ for May 1883, and it has been reproduced in _Tales from Blackwood_, No. XI. I need only say that the interview so haunted me, that had I been remaining in Boston, I should have found it difficult to act on the advice of my hosts (which I am certain was sound), to have nothing more to do with it. As it was, my speedy departure for England counteracted the strong temptation to return.

Of the strange termination of my voyage in being wrecked in the ss. _Montana_ off Holyhead, I have spoken in