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Introduction
In a general appreciation of surfing and Waikiki Beach, Hill notes:

The girls here grow silly and rave over some Duke, who is a star surfrider,
just as they do over some magnetic tenor singer or some actor at home.

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EASE AND SELF-POSSESSION IN THE WATER

On this oasis, in the middle of a wide ocean, the natives learn to swim in babyhood.
Visit the beach by day or night and you will find them disporting in the tide.
At evening parties, it is said that the guests exchange their dress suits for bathing suits and make a hearty response to what the wild waves are saying.
On visiting one of the local little seats of learning, Isabella Bird finds that several of the children swim to and from school every day.
Our first sight on reaching Honolulu and our last on leaving it, were of these little brown amphibious beings that riot in the waves from infancy.
As we drew near to these Summer Isles of Eden, small black heads were seen bobbing about like corks in the ocean.
The sun-kissed Pacific was nearly as transparent as the atmosphere and the lithe slender bodies of these young natives, equally
at home on land or sporting in the sea could be seen at a great depth, as much at home as their familiar friends the

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fish that darted about among them.
On grasping the sinking coin they would hold it in hand until they came to the surface, when they would first exhibit it to the person who cast it into the water, and then they would pass it to their mouths, which soon became well-filled pouches.

THE ISLANDERS AT PLAY

Their amusements are swimming, music, canoeing, surf-riding and surprisingly we are shown their places for precipitous
coasting or sliding.
This toboganing is done on a sharp incline of lava sometimes covered with the velocity of the wind.

"Farewell, ye mountains,
By glory crowned;
Ye sacred fountains
Of gods renowned;
Ye woods and highlands,
Where heroes dwell;
Ye seas and islands,
Farewell! Farewell!"

The girls here grow silly and rave over some Duke, who is a star surfrider, just as they do over some magnetic tenor singer

or some actor at home.
The surf-board is a highly polished plank about eight feet long and ten inches wide, having thin edges and is shaped exactly like a coffin lid.
It is made of a very buoyant wood.
The trick is, having pushed the surfboard out to sea, beyond the first line of combers, to so catch the highest incoming breaker, that is running like a race horse, at just the right moment, as to keep within its curl.
They come to shore swift as an arrow shot from a bow.
The expert, doing stunts, will rise and stand, and often stand upon his head, upon the plank that is carried furiously landwards
on the curling crest of a great roller.

RIGHT SIDE UP WITH CARE

The canoes that they operate on the same great combers, have universally, out-riggers, which are made of a light corky wood, which rest and run on the water, parrallel with the canoe and at the distance of five to ten feet from it.
They are turned up at one end like a sleigh runner and the other end is

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shaped somewhat like the stock of a gun.
The canoe cannot fall toward the outrigger to which it is lashed, and its weight and that of the yoke keep it from turning over in the opposite direction.
The native is at his best in and upon the ocean.
The water is as mild as that in one of our rivers during August.
We come to understand why the Greeks and Romans built baths of rare and costly marbles and spent hours each day in gentle dalliance with perfumed waters.
When the canoeist and surf-rider race, they fly away on the waves like some hurrying thing of life.
The original canoe was made of some giant pine caught by the gale, a present from Oregon and borne hither by the waves.
On tranquil water the boat moves as lightly as a swan.

Hill, James Langdon:
Tiptops of Travel,
visits to places of human interest and to the homes of ideas
R.G. Badger, Boston,1925.

Hathi Trust
https://hdl.handle.net/2027/wu.89097143713

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