Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/52

28 being groups of girls on horseback and the herders who were driving cattle to market or for a change of pasture. The girls were generally in bright-colored robes, which were gathered in at the waist with brighter sashes that streamed behind them as they dashed alongthe road. Most of them wore straw hats on their heads, and generally the hats were adorned with flowers in wreaths and festoons, which were most liberally bestowed. Now and then Frank's attention was drawn to a pretty face which surmounted a neck adorned with a string of blossoms of gaudy colors; the necklace formed an admirable setting for the complexion, but sometimes the blossoms were not chosen with due regard to the contrast of colors.

The Hawaiian cow-boys, or cattle-drivers, were not unlike their American prototypes, as they wore broad-brimmed hats and bright-colored scarfs; they were mounted on tough little horses, and sat in saddles of the American cow-boy pattern, the pommel rising high, and the stirrups made of wood. Then there were strings of pack-mules and horses coming down from the points in the mountains inaccessible to