rgo of _The
Aloha_, and wondered if the _Sentinel_ would start botanical gardens
and a lighting plant and turn them to the account of advertisers.

All the time, mile upon mile, was unrolling before them the
unforgetable beauty of the island. So perfectly were its features
marshaled and so exact were its proportions that, as in many great
experiences and as in all great poems, one might not, without
familiarity, recall its detail, but must instead remain wrapped in
the glory of the whole. The avenues, wide as a river, swept between
white banks of majestic buildings combining with the magic of great
mass the pure beauty of virginal line. Line, the joy of line, the
glory of line, almost, St. George thought, the divinity of line, was
everywhere manifest; and everywhere too the divinity of colour, no
longer a quality extraneous, laid on as insecure fancy dictates,
but, by some law long unrevealed, now actually identified with the
object which it not so much decorated as purified. The most
interesting of the thoroughfares led from the Eurychorus, or public
square, along the lagoon. This fair water, extending from Med to
Melita, was greenly shored and dotted with strange little pleasure
crafts with exquisite sweeping prows and silken canopies. Before a
white temple, knee-deep in whose flowered ponds the ibises dozed
and contemplated, was anchored the imperial trireme, with
delicately-embroidered sails and prow and poop of forgotten metals.
From within, temple music sounded softly and was never permitted to
be silenced, as the flame of the Vestals might never be
extinguished. Here on the shores had begun the morning traffic of
itinerant merchants of Med and Melita, compelled by law to carry on
their exchange in the morning only, when the light is least lovely.
Upon canopied wagons drawn by strange animals, with shining horns,
were displayed for sale all the pleasantest excuses for
commerce--ostrich feathers, gums, gems, quicksilver, papyrus, bales
of fair cloth, pottery, wine and oranges. The sellers of salt and
fish and wool and skins were forced down under the wharfs of the
lagoon, and there endeavoured to attract attention by displaying
fanciful and lovely banners and by liberating faint perfumes of the
native orris and algum. Street musicians, playing tunefully upon the
zither and upon the crowd, wandered, wearing wreaths of fir, and
clustered about stalls where were offered tenuous blades, and
statues, and temple vessel