The Hawaiian Archipelago - Six Months Among The Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, And Volcanoes Of The Sandwich Islands By Isabella L. Bird
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The Women
Have A Most Peculiar Walk, With A Swinging Motion From The Hip At
Each Step, In Which The Shoulder Sympathises.
I never saw anything
at all like it.
It has neither the delicate shuffle of the
Frenchwoman, the robust, decided jerk of the Englishwoman, the
stately glide of the Spaniard, or the stealthiness of the squaw; and
I should know a Hawaiian woman by it in any part of the world. A
majestic wahine with small, bare feet, a grand, swinging, deliberate
gait, hibiscus blossoms in her flowing hair, and a le of yellow
flowers falling over her holuku, marching through these streets, has
a tragic grandeur of appearance, which makes the diminutive, fair-
skinned haole, tottering along hesitatingly in high-heeled shoes,
look grotesque by comparison.
On Saturday, our kind host took Mrs. D. and myself to the market,
where we saw the natives in all their glory. The women, in squads
of a dozen at a time, their Pa-us streaming behind them, were
cantering up and down the streets, and men and women were thronging
into the market-place; a brilliant, laughing, joking crowd, their
jaunty hats trimmed with fresh flowers, and leis of the crimson ohia
and orange lauhala falling over their costumes, which were white,
green, black, scarlet, blue, and every other colour that can be dyed
or imagined. The market is a straggling, open space, with a number
of shabby stalls partially surrounding it, but really we could not
see the place for the people.
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