From time to time, in our ride to Hilo next morning, this smell would
come up, perhaps in reality. That was a bad ride, all over a sort of
lava bed like a mountain torrent. Then it ended in the beginning of a
road of red earth, soft and spongy, and up to the bellies of the horses.
There we met, after fifteen miles of it, a carriage and horses that took
us to Hilo, over a pretty road through a pretty tropical forest, to this
little old place, the abode of quiet and cocoanut trees, where are very
pleasant people; among them M. Furneaux, the artist, who shows us
sketches, and talks to me of what I sympathize with--the being driven to
means unusual to us, when we try to give an impression of the tone of
colour here.
Ride from Hilo around the east of Island of Hawaii, September 19th to
22d.
It will be difficult to give you an account of our ride. As to the
places, the names are indifferent, I think, and if I occasionally
mention them, it is more for my own help than for yours.
Our ride was to be certainly for three days and more, over what is known
as a very bad road; up and down through the gulches that edge the shore,
breaking the line of our travel, and making little harbours where the
surf ran in to meet the little torrents or runs that hurried to them in
cascades or waterfalls. It was, for the first day or so, beautiful; not
so very grand, except that the simplicity of the scene, consisting of
the sea, high rocks, and some little river running down, had always that
importance that belongs to the typical. Time and time again we had the
high rocky banks of the little bays covered with trees; then in the
centre of the shore, a little half island, with tall cocoanuts, and on
one or both sides of it, the torrent and cascade rushing down, and the
surf running in in a great lacelike spread over the black sand.
Once when I stopped to sketch for an hour or so, I enjoyed the essence
of a type of scene that is with difficulty described, though every one
knows it, and with difficulty painted, though any one might attempt it.
From the hillside hidden in trees came over some very low rocks a
cascade of two rills, and at its feet lay a little sheet of water, of
perhaps some fifty yards in length and very narrow. On either side high
rocks crowned with great ferns and much moss, and behind the few
_lauhala_ (pandanus) trees upon them, and great banana leaves in some
hollow. The rocks were black, spotted with green and white, and at
their feet ran a little rim of sand. This for the land end of the basin.
At the open sea end high rocks running far out into headlands, with many
trees and bushes, so as to make walls, along which the sea rushed
heavily to some little bar, at one end of which, on a small bluff with
huts, grew a few cocoanut trees tossing in the wind: one would wish
there were more. And the sea running far up over this sand melted with a
cross current into the run of the little stream, so gently that each
looked like a separate tide. Here the road crossed the ford, coming on
either side from high-up banks. Near the rocks were the marked edges of
the road, and up the stream, canoes, with white ends like the cusp of
the moon, and white outriggers protected with thatch, lay on the grass.
[Illustration]
As I sat on some wet rocks near the sea, to sketch, I could see what
happened during the day. Some wayfarer came down the slope, pushed
across the stream his horse that put down its head to taste the brackish
water; children and older natives crossed barefooted the less deep
water; high up, some practised native in best dress, crossed at some
well-known ford by adding a few stones. Later, loud cries, and the
noise of a sail coming down. I could see them without looking, for I had
to paint hard with my face turned the other way, and hurried by
occasional showers. For our sky was all cloudy and wet, though faint
drops of sunshine fell also here and there. But the horizon, as I sat so
low, was all clear of that unearthly blue of the islands, against which
danced the grey sea, and the triple line of grey surf, white perhaps
otherwise, but dull against such a clearness of green aquamarine air.
Then the fishermen landed on the rocks and showed their fish, and all
rushed that way, all but the girl who had come to sit behind me, and
followed my work, perhaps to see what I was trying to make out. But she
too succumbed when a half naked man held up a silvery fish of some
mackerel shape right before me and her, and she ran off to the house
near the cocoanut trees. Then the fishermen took off their ragged
clothes, and washed them in the stream, within a foot or so of the
tide-water; great strapping fellows when out of their clothes, with
heavy muscles, splendid and brown like nuts, and sometimes with red
_breech-clouts_, that brought out the olive of the wet skin. Then they
bathed, plunging in the deeper channel, where the waves of their
movement married the tide of the sea with the current of the stream. And
later an old man with peaked grey beard sat down and washed his clothes,
then walked in and lay down, he too as handsome in his nakedness, as he
had looked broken down in his shabby clothes. Then he rose and slowly
put on the wet clothes, to reappear later in a cleaner dress.
And a Chinaman charged across the stream on his mule, splashing the
water about him. Then as the fishermen were gone, and all the boys and
the women, probably to their meal just caught, all noise ceased, except
the rush of the surf and the ripple of the tide, and in some interval
the trickling of the little cascade. Above, the wind rustled at times
the palms. Noonday and rest had come. And I left my work, and again on
horseback trudged along the impossible road.
Sunday 21st.
As I went up the bank, a small furtive animal like a weasel ran up the
perpendicular face of the big rock by the waterfall. It was a mongoose,
an animal of a race imported to destroy the pest of rats, and now a
plague in itself, and an example of the eternal story.
The lower part of the sky was clear, with small pearly clouds, the upper
yet covered with heavy mist, so that the ocean was framed as above, and
occasionally the view confined on the sides by the projecting rocks of
the gulches, into which ran the sea and surf. Once, at Onomea, the cliff
was hollowed into a great arch, beyond which the rock, all green with
foliage, rose further out. Whether framed in by such cliffs, or
stretched out beyond a single gaze, the ocean accompanied us most of the
time--the _ocean_, distinctly, not recalling the seas of our shores, but
the _great sea_, hiding the secret of its blue dyes in depths of full
three thousand fathoms. And over its blue ran a perpetual story. Rarely
during our few days was the whole surface under one influence. We saw
faint mists and rain-clouds brushed over the water, often separated by
intervals of sunny sapphire; the sky above still lit up and peaceful.
Sometimes a part of the ocean was wiped out and became sky; sometimes
great bars of grey broke across it; and again, as these rolled over the
stilled edge of the waves, rainbows shone either where they joined the
sea, or through their entire height, up into the upper air. For this
great deceptive space seemed at our distance so peaceful, even when we
could see the surf dashing in folds on the rocks and black beaches.
Sometimes a solitary whitecap dotted it, or when the wind blew more,
many spots of broken light threw a rosy bloom over the enchanted
surface. Islands of reflected light, islands of purple shadow repeated
the clouds above, and often the parent cloud, along with its reflected
lights and its shadows, touched and melted into the waves, making
enclosures, within which the eye could see vaguely, a trembling
repetition of light and dark; and sometimes, perhaps most when
[Illustration: MEN BATHING IN THE RIVER NEAR THE SEA. ONOMEA, ISLAND OF
HAWAII]
seen as a background to some trees or rocks, or grey native hut, with a
figure in waving red or white framed in the blue opening through it, the
distance and the sky melted into mere spaces of slightly different
colour.
The eye never tired of this surface of blue below a greener sky, that
repeated in the air that colour of greenness (blue-tint shade) that
rests the sight. On land, meanwhile, our roads were good or bad, mostly
bad, but not the terrors that we had heard of. Our poor nags struggled
through deep mud at times, or slipped up and down in the rocks and loose
stones of the gulches, or floundered in the river-beds, dropping up and
down as they found footing on hidden boulders, or cantered in a tired
way over some little piece of road near plantations. But their attention
was mostly engaged in stepping along over the half-dried road, looking
and feeling like our old “corduroy” roads, the logs being represented by
bars of higher and drier mud. Over these we rose and sank, and I had
plenty of time to meditate upon the idiocy of that sentimental animal,
the horse, and his relative want of judgment. Never did our beasts step
in any reasoned way upon these alternations of ground, though the little
mule of our guide, as he trotted ahead, never going very fast, never
very slow, showed his romantic relatives what pure intellect, devoid of
emotions, can do in the practical line. With such nonsense I perforce
diverted my mind, when confined within the limits of the road. But our
horses had plenty of rest; we took four whole days for those ninety
miles, stopping to sketch, and going to ask for lunch or dinner, and
bed, at the plantations on our road. The only difficulty seemed to be
our own hesitation at the impudence of our requests. But this is the
custom. Our visit had been telephoned ahead by acquaintances; for the
telephone, that most citylike of our contrivances, goes around the
island, joining together places that are difficult to reach and out of
the way.
And so we met pleasant people by chance, and heard about things
accidentally by way of conversation, and were most kindly treated.
Indeed, when on one occasion our amiable hostess asked us to remain over
night, and we had listened to German music, and had talked with the
doctor in charge of the plantations, and our host himself arrived from
the fields, it seemed hard to go and break our feeling of content.
Perhaps I ought to tell you something about the plantations, but that is
too much like information--and what do you need it for? All that we saw
was sugar, which occupies the east coast; on the other side of the
island, as different as the other side of the continent, there are
cattle ranches, and we were told that most of the sugar land that is
available has been taken already. Most of the low land, I suppose; for
the upper land further from the sea is often reclaimed and used, but it
is less favourable. The yield by the acre below, at the highest, has
been about eight tons, while the upper is not more than five; all this
upon land which a few years ago was forest--wide downs now--covered
either with sugar-cane or grass, and dotted with trees, were all covered
to the sea edge, which, where I write now is a cliff fully eight hundred
feet high.
The sugar plantations employ many Chinese and Japanese labourers, of
whom there are a good many thousand, and we saw on two occasions “camps”
of Japanese, as they are called. In the shops or stores attached to one
plantation (as in others), I saw the Japanese costume again, for men and
women--the _kimono_ and the _obi_ and the _geta_ or wooden clogs; of
course they are mostly peasants or of low class, as I could easily
surmise without inquiring, by Awoki’s manner. “They are great children,”
says our good lady to me, and the doctor at one residence has much to
say about the anomalous position he stands in with regard to them and
others. He is employed by the government to inspect them, as well as
other hands, to see that they are not made to work in illness, and he
also examines the flock, in the interest of the employers, to see that
they do not shirk. The result is that he is a physician who cannot trust
the word of his patient about his ailings, after his patient has made up
his mind to be ill, who if one ailing is dismissed, will call up as
many as may seem available--and inscrutable. I am told that the Japanese
illness, _kakke_, or as they call it here, _biri biri_, persists among
them. It is a form of slow paralysis, having its premonitory symptoms;
sometimes to be cured, but not often. The patients, not white, have the
better chance if they be under competent care, for the government gives
free medical attention, and I understood that many avail themselves of
it who could as well pay.
I need not say that the great tariff question is that of the moment;
free sugar with us will shake the Hawaiian tree, and weaker planters
will go to the wall. I always feel regret when I see all put into one
chance, so liable to fluctuation, and it is to be hoped that coffee,
which here is excellent, may succeed and grow more available. I take it
that the difficulty is always in the picking, and that there may be
chance for some improvement in the facility.
September 22d.
Our last sugar plantation took us to the edge of the great valley of
Waipio, from one to two thousand feet deep, at the further and higher
inland end of which drops a great waterfall; from its outside sea-cliffs
trickle down others from the lesser height of eight hundred. But all was
wrapped in mist, for at this point of our ride we had almost the only
bad weather of the trip. Here we turned toward the other side of the
island, across great downs and spreads of land like those we had seen on
first landing on the island. We were out of the rainy influence. The
whole spread of the landscape was that of dryness; of the “Sierras”; we
rode at first through vast fields or spreads of green, where the path
was marked by the rooting of the pigs, who here run loose and grow wild.
A great mountain slope rose to our left--Mauna Kea--and as we dipped to
the sea we had Mount Hualalai to continue it. But that was after we had
stopped on our last day’s ride in a dry country, where distances swam in
the pale colours that belong to the volcanoes and the desert, while near
us green marked the foreground.
We rested and dreamed in midday, at some hospitable residence, from
whose verandah, in the great heat, we saw Hawaiians coursing recklessly
about in the way you would like to ride; and cattle on many hills; while
the young ladies in the shade made garlands (_leis_) for us to wear
around our necks and hats on our last ride to the shore. Adams and I
rode slowly down, a mile behind the others, in the blazing afternoon, a
most delicious air breaking the heat; with that same sense of space that
had accompanied our first day ashore. And as the sun set like a clear
ball of fire over the blue sea, and sent rosy flickerings to the shore,
we came down to the edges of the bay.
Above us to the left rose a hill crowned with the remains of some one
building that trailed down its side, still red in the sunlight. To our
right were palms and black sand and enclosures, apparently deserted, and
with an afterglow like that of Egypt, a look of desolate Africa. In the
dark we passed over the black sand, and behind the trees through which
the moon moved restlessly in the water, and came up to an absurd little
hotel kept by a Chinaman, where we dismounted among black pigs charging
about, and bade good-bye to amiable Mr. Much, our guide, who had
preceded us.
Then we met, at tea, the manager of the last place (Waimea) we had dined
at. He told me of what I had missed by not getting in in the
morning--the shipping of the steers, which are parked out on the shore,
then singled out and lassoed by the “boys,” whom they rush after into
the sea, where it is the horse and rider’s business to get them to the
boats. To these their heads are secured, and they are rowed off
swimming, willy-nilly, to the steamers, into which some contrivance
hoists them.
These cattle came, I understand, from the great ranch of Mr. Sam Parker
up in the mountains, a wealthy Hawaiian of partly white blood, whose
name is well known besides as giving hospitality in a lordly way in his
lonely domain.
And in the evening we waited for the steamer, not in the house of refuge
and food, where water was scarce, and where poor Mr. Much could get
nothing to eat, as being too late; but near by, under a verandah or wide
canopy of palm branches lit up by the moonlight. There we listened to
Hawaiian music--while our older hosts sat on the mats--melancholy chants
adapted to European airs, and among them one apparently original, a sad,
romantic sort of cakewalk, to which one could fancy dusky savage
warriors keeping time, with many foliage-adorned feet, and hands tossed
up and pointing out. It was called the March of Kamehameha (the old
conqueror of these islands), and I let myself understand that it was a
reproduction of the veritable sounds that once celebrated his triumphs
and mastery over these islands; from which dates the royalty now
existing, though his royal race itself is extinct.
And we, too, stretched on the mats brought out, and listened to lazy
talk in the language, until the steamer came, when all walked down in
time to the wharf, after the sheep and the freight had been put on
board, and we rowed out on the water smooth as that of a lake, to the
little steamer, and later went to bed and waited until morning, when we
steamed for the next port and thence to Honolulu, and our own house in
the valley.
We met on board many pleasant people, and among others a former
neighbour, though unknown, who is now one of the few American
missionaries in the Islands. These, I think he told me, are all that
remain who are salaried from America. He spoke to us about Mr. Hyde,
whom Mr. Stevenson had been attacking, as if he belonged to him by his
name; and explained how exaggerated was the notion of this gentleman’s
affluence. All, I understand, that he gets, besides what his wealthy
family allow him (and for that he could not be held responsible), is
some two thousand five hundred a year and his residence--surely not a
large amount. I have not myself read all that Mr. Stevenson has written,
so that I have but a vague idea of the question, but my informant tells
me that Father Damien, as is well understood, was no saint, and that two
pastors had told him of things that looked wrong. These are themselves
rather vague to the outsider, but much weight seemed to attach to them
with our informant--a gentlemanly person, who looked little like the
usual clergyman, and had a brave air of the church militant about him.
But it was more pleasant to talk to him about St. Gaudens, whom he knew,
and about what he had done of late years; for everywhere we find that
there are others who know friends; and the desert of Gobi alone would be
without home associations.
At Sea, Oct. 2, 1890.
Yesterday we crossed the equator; it was cool and pleasant, as lovely as
one could wish. In the evening I found an overcoat comfortable. To-day
it is more salty and cloudy, wind behind us more from the north;
indefinable blue sea that looks grey against the delicate blue and
silver of the sky, but near by, under the guards, it is like a greener
lapis lazuli.
Yesterday, as I wrote, we crossed the equator, and left it with
disrespect behind us, almost unnoticed--the Line, as they used to call
it. And soon we shall have dropped the sun also, which would, were there
no clouds, no abundant awnings, leave us with diminished shadows,
insufficient to cover our feet. And at the thought of dropping him, the
old Taoist wish of getting outside the points of the compass comes over
me, the feeling that leads me to travel. Can we never get to see things
as they are, and is there always a geographical perspective? Should I
reach Typee shall I find it invaded by others? Shall I find everywhere
the company of our steamers?
On Sunday morning we shall be dropped into a boat off Tutuila, some
sixty miles away from the Samoa to which we go. How long we stay as I
told you, I do not know, but we think of Tahiti later, and even other
places, that I dare not think of, for I must return some day. But before
that day, I wish to have seen a Fayaway sail her boat in some other
Typee.
PASSAGES FROM A DIARY IN THE PACIFIC
SAMOA
Off the island of Tutuila, on Board the Cutter Carrying Mail,
Tuesday, Oct. 7, 1890 (Samoan Time).
The morning looked rainy with the contrary northwest wind that we had
carried with us below the equator, when the shape of the little cutter
that was to take us showed between the outstanding rocks of the coast of
Tutuila. As the big steamer slowed up, a few native boats came out to
meet it, manned with men paddling and singing in concert, some of them
crowned with leaves, and wearing garlands about their necks, their naked
bodies and arms making an indescribable red colour against the blue of
the sea, which was as deep under this cloudy sky, but not so brilliant
as under yesterday’s sun. They came on board, some plunging right into
the sea on their way to the companion ladder, bringing fruit and
curiosities for sale. But our time had come; and we could only give a
glance at the splendid nakedness of the savages adorned by fine
tattooing that looked like silk, and with waist drapery of brilliant
patterns. We dropped into the dancing boat that waited for us and
scrambled into the little cutter or schooner some thirty feet long, not
very skilfully managed, that was to
[Illustration: FAYAWAY SAILS HER BOAT. SAMOA]
take us sixty miles against the wind to Apia. A few minutes, and the
steamer was far away; and we saw the boats of the savages make a red
fringe of men on the waves that outlined the horizon--a new and strange
sensation, a realizing of the old pictures in books of travel and the
child traditions of Robinson Crusoe.
Our crew was made up of the captain, a brown man from other and far-away
islands, and two blacks, former cannibals from Solomon Islands, with
gentle faces and manners, and rings of ivory in their noses. Our captain
spoke of hurry, and used strange words not clear to understand in his
curious lingo; but after an hour or so of heavy rain he announced his
intention to beat in again and wait for some change of wind. And so we
ran into a little harbour high with mountains, all wooded as if with
green plumage, cornered by a high rock standing far out, on which stood
out, like great feathers, a few cocoa-palms. Palms fringed the shore
with shade. A blue-green sea ran into a thin line of breakers--like one
of the places we have always read of in “Robinson Crusoe” and similar
travellers: “A little cove with the surf running in, and a great swell
on the shore.” Our cutter was anchored; then, as we declined to remain
on board, either in the rain or in the impossible little cabin about
eight feet long, we were taken into the boat, which was skilfully
piloted through an opening in the inside reef; and, the surf being high,
we were carried to shore on the backs of two handsome fellows whose
canoe had come alongside. We walked up to the church, a curious long,
low building behind the cocoa-palms; all empty, with thatched roofs and
walls of coral cement; the doorway open, with two stones to block out
casual straying pigs, I suppose. Inside I saw a long wooden trough,
blocked out of a tree. I did not know that this was the old war-drum of
pagan times, now used for the Christian bell.
Behind the church, a few yards off, was our destination--a Samoan
“grass-house,” the guest-house of the village, as I know now. It was
thatched with sugar-cane leaves, was elliptical, with a turtle-backed
roof, supported by pillars all around, and by three central pillars that
were connected by curved beams, from which hung cocoanut cups and
water-bottles, or which supported rolls of painted bark cloth. The
pebble floor showed at places not covered with the mats, as well as near
the centre pillars, where a fire still smoked. Most of the screens of
matting, which make the only wall between the pillars, were down, making
a gentle shade, in which one woman was sleeping; another, on the
opposite side to us, her back turned and naked to the waist, was working
at large folds of bark cloth. The women rose from this occupation, and
offered their hands, saying, “_alofa!_”[1] A younger woman was lying
sick, her wrapped-up head on the Samoan pillow of a long bamboo,
supported at either end, so as to free it from the ground.
With the same “_alofa_” came an elegant young creature, perhaps some
sixteen years old, wearing a gay waist drapery of flowered pattern, red,
yellow, and purple--with a loose upper garment or chemise of red and
violet--open at the sides. Then another, short and strong, with heavy
but handsome arms and legs, and with bleared eyes. And we sat down on
the mats, the girls cross-legged, and looked at each other while the
captain talked, I know not what of.