The native women festoon themselves in an extraordinary manner with flowers on all gala occasions, while the men wear wreaths of the same about their straw hats, often adding braided leaves of laurel hung across the shoulder and chest. The white blossoms of the jasmine, fragrant as tuberoses, which they much resemble, are generally employed for this decorative purpose, being offered for sale about the streets and on the veranda of the hotel in long strings woven fresh from the vines. Upon the slightest excuse for doing so, all Honolulu blossoms like a rose. We landed on a Saturday, which is a regular gala-day with the natives, and indeed every one seems to join in making it a general holiday. It is pay-day on the plantations and in the town establishments, besides being the day on which the country people come to market with their produce. But all marketing, all buying and selling of goods is over by noon or an hour after, when the riot of pleasure-seeking begins. It was a ludicrous sight to observe the sailors who happened to be in port join in the Saturday carnival. To do so in proper style it was absolutely necessary for them to be on horseback; and a sailor in that situation always seems like a fish out of water. With his feet thrust as far into the stirrups as possible, his body bent well forward and with both hands firmly grasping the pommel of the saddle, he leaves the horse to go pretty much his own way, while he thumps hard and fast up and down in his uncertain seat, to the undisguised merriment of the natives and lookers-on generally.
One of these foremast hands had been furnished with a bucking horse,--we rather think designedly so. The animal was subject to periodical attacks of this vicious propensity, one of which fits took him directly opposite the Post-office, where we chanced to be standing. It was really astonishing to see how successfully the unaccustomed rider clung to the horse's back; a practised rider could not have kept his seat more determinedly. The struggle between horse and man lasted for some ten minutes, but was finally ended by Jack Tar being landed in the middle of the street face downward, to the infinite amusement of the crowd who had watched the progress of the struggle. Jack, nevertheless, remounted his Bucephalus, and rode away with his comrades, who had patiently awaited the issue, bestriding the animal as he would have done a topsail yard in a gale of wind.