Among the middle-aged women, however, you often meet with fine heads and large, expressive features.

The women have not unfrequently a majesty of carriage and a tragic intensity of features and expression which are quite remarkable.

Their loose dress gives grace as well as dignity to their movements, and whoever invented it for them deserves more credit than he has received.

It is a little startling at first to see women walking about in what, to our perverted tastes, look like calico or black stuff night-gowns; but the dress grows on you as you become accustomed to it; it lends itself readily to bright ornamentation; it is eminently fit for the climate; and a stately Hawaiian dame, marching through the street in black _holaku_--as the dress is called--with a long necklace, or _le_, of bright scarlet or brilliant yellow flowers, bare and untrammeled feet, and flowing hair, surmounted often by a low-crowned felt hat, compares very favorably with a high-heeled, wasp-waisted, absurdly-bonneted, fashionable white lady.
[Illustration: COCOA-NUT GROVE, AND RESIDENCE OF THE LATE KING KAMEHAMEHA V., AT WAIKIKI, OAHU.] As you travel through the country, you see not unfrequently one of the tall, majestic, large women, who were formerly, it is said by old residents, more numerous than now.

I have been assured by several persons that the race has dwindled in the last half century; and all old residents speak with admiration of the great stature and fine forms of the chiefs and their wives in the early days.