I
On the edge of the world my islands lie," sings Mrs. Frear in her
little lyric on the Hawaiian Islands.
"On the edge of the world my islands lie,
Under the sun-steeped sky;
And their waving palms
Are bounteous alms
To the soul-spent passer-by.
"On the edge of the world my islands sleep
In a slumber soft and deep.
What should they know
Of a world of woe,
And myriad men that weep?"
On the rim of the world my fancy seemed to see them that May day
when we went aboard the huge Pacific steamship in San Francisco
Harbor, and she pointed her prow westward toward the vast wilderness
of the Pacific--on the edge of the world, looking out and down
across the vast water toward Asia and Australia. I wondered if the
great iron ship could find them, and if we should realize or
visualize the geography or the astronomy when we got there, and see
ourselves on the huge rotundity of the globe not far above her
equatorial girdle.
Yes, on the rim of the world they lie to the traveler steaming
toward them, and on the rim of the world they lie in his memory
after his return, basking there in that tropical sunlight, forever
fanned by those cooling trade winds, and encompassed by that
morning-glory sea. With my mind's eye I behold them rising from that
enormous abyss of the Pacific, fire-born and rain-carved, vast
volcanic mountains miles deep under the sea, and in some cases miles
high above it, clothed with verdure and teeming with life, the scene
of long-gone cosmic strife and destruction, now the abode of rural
and civic peace and plenty.
The Pacific treated me so much better than the Atlantic ever had
that I am probably inclined to overestimate everything I saw on the
voyage. It was the first trip at sea that ever gave me any pleasure.
The huge vessels are in themselves a great comfort, and in the
placid waters and the sliding down the rotund side of the great
globe under warmer and warmer skies one gains a very agreeable
experience. The first day's run must have carried us out and over
that huge Pacific abyss, the Tuscarora Deep, where there were nearly
four miles of water under us. Some of our aeroplanes have gone up
half that distance and disappeared from sight. I fancy that our
ship, more than six hundred feet long, would have appeared a very
small object, floating across this briny firmament, could one have
looked up at it from the bottom of that sea.
The Hawaiian Islands rise from the border of that vast deep, and one
can fancy how that huge pot must have boiled back in Tertiary times,
when the red-hot lava of which they are mainly built up was poured
from the interior of the globe.
Softer and more balmy grew the air every day, more and more placid
and richly tinted grew the sea, till, on the morning of the sixth
day, we saw ahead of us, low on the horizon, the dim outlines of the
mountains of Molokai. The island of Oahu, upon which Honolulu is
situated, was soon in sight. It was not long before we saw Diamond
Head, a vast crater bowl, eight hundred feet high on its ocean side,
and half a mile across, sitting there upon the shore like some huge,
strange work of man's hand, running back through the hills with a
level rim, and seaward with a sloping base, brown and ribbed, and in
every way unique and striking.
We were approaching a land the child of tropic seas and volcanic
lava, and many of the features were new and strange to us. The
mountains looked familiar in outline, but the colors of the
landscape, the soft lilacs, greens, and browns, and the whole
atmosphere of the scene, were unlike anything we had ever before
seen. And Diamond Head, what a feature it was! Had it only had a
head, one could easily have seen in it a suggestion of a couchant
lion, bony, huge, and tawny, looking seaward, and guarding the
harbor of Honolulu which lies just behind it. Into this harbor, in
the soft morning air, our ship soon found its way, and the monotony
of the vast, unpeopled sea was quickly succeeded by human scenes of
the most varied and animated character, not the least novel of which
were the swarms of half-amphibious native boys who surrounded the
vessel as she lay at the wharf, and with brown, upturned faces and
beckoning hands tempted the passengers to toss dimes into the water.
As the coins struck the surface they would dive with the ease and
quickness of seals, and seize the silver apparently before it had
gone a yard toward the bottom. Holding the coins up to view between
the thumb and finger, they would slip them into their mouths and
solicit more.
On shore we were greeted with the music of the Royal Hawaiian Band,
and a motley crowd of Hawaiians, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, and
Americans, bearing colored leis, or wreaths of flowers, which they
waved at friends on board, and with which they bedecked them as soon
as they came off the gangplank. It was a Babel of tongues in which
the strange, vowel-choked language of the Hawaiians was conspicuous.
Honolulu is a beautiful city, clean, bright, well ordered, and well
appointed,--electric lights, good streets, electric cars, fine
hotels and clubs, excellent fire protection, mountain water,
libraries, parks, handsome buildings, attractive homes,--in fact,
all that we boast of in our home cities. Embosomed in palms, with
mangoes, and other tropical trees, with a profusion of gorgeously
colored vines and hedges, with spacious, well-kept grounds about the
large and comfortable houses in the residential portion--these
features, with the ready hospitality of the people, made our hearts
warm towards it at once.
Volcanic heights on all the land side look down upon the city. Mount
Tantalus, rising four thousand feet above the sea, is just back of
it, with its long slopes of volcanic ash and sand now clothed by
forests and fertile fields, and a huge ancient crater called the
Punch Bowl, born probably on the selfsame day, the geologists think,
as Diamond Head, dominates the city in the immediate foreground. If
the Punch Bowl were again to overflow with the fiery liquid, the
city would soon go up in smoke. But its bowl-like interior is now
covered with grass and trees, and presents a scene of the most
peaceful, rural character.
The Orient and the Occident meet in Honolulu. There Asia and America
join hands. The main features of the city are decidedly American,
but the people seen upon the street and at work indoors and out are
more than half Oriental. The native population cuts only a small
figure. The real workers--carpenters, masons, field hands, and
house servants--are mostly Japanese. Virtually all the work of the
immense sugar plantations is done by the little brown men and women,
while China supplies some of the merchants in the city and the
sailors and stewards on the ocean steamers. What admirable servants
the Chinese make, so respectful, so prompt, so silent, so quick to
comprehend! The Japanese house servants on the islands also give
efficient and gracious service.
I had gone to Honolulu reluctantly, but tarried there joyfully. The
fine climate, with its even temperature of about eighty degrees
Fahrenheit, and with all that is enervating or oppressive in that
degree of heat winnowed out of it by the ceaseless trade winds; the
almost unbroken sunshine, perfumed now and then by a sprinkle of
sunlit rain from the mountains; the wonderful sea laving the shores
on the one hand and the cool, cloud-capped, and rain-drenched
heights within easy reach on the other; the green, cozy valleys; the
broad sweep of plain; the new, strange nature on every side; the
novel and delicious fruits; the pepsin-charged papaya, or tree
melon, which tickles the palate while it heals and renews the whole
digestive system; the mangoes (oh, the mangoes!); the cordiality of
the people; the inviting bungalows; the clean streets; the good
service everywhere--all made me feel how mistaken was my reluctance.
Most of the Americans one meets there are descendants of the
missionaries who went out from New England and New York early in the
last century, and one feels at home with them at once. Many of the
residents there have been educated in the States. The Governor, Mr.
Frear, is a graduate of Yale; his wife is a graduate of Wellesley.
One day a charming Southern woman, president of the College Club,
invited us to meet the college women of the city. The gathering took
place under the trees upon the lawn of one of the older homesteads.
There were forty college women present, many of them teachers, from
Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, Bryn Mawr, and Barnard. Among them were
two girls who had visited me at my cabin, "Slabsides," while they
were at Vassar.
Wide as is the world, the traveler is pretty sure to strike threads
of relation with his home country wherever he goes. I made the
acquaintance in Honolulu of a man from my own county; another, who
showed us great kindness, was from an adjoining county; while one
day upon the street I was called by name by a man whom I had known
as a boy in the town where I now live.
One Saturday a walking-club, largely made up of men and women
teachers, whose native Hawaiian name meant "Walkers in Unfrequented
Places," asked us to join them in a walk up Palola Valley to the
site of an extinct crater well up in the mountains. These walkers in
unfrequented places proved to be real walkers, and gave us all and
more than we had bargained for--more mud and wet and slippery trails
through clinging vines and rank lantana scrub than was good for our
shoes and garments or for the bodies inside them. It was a long pull
of many miles, at first up the valley over a fair highway, then into
the woods on the mountain-side along a trail that was muddy and
slippery from the recent showers, and most of the time was buried
out of sight beneath the high, coarse stag-horn fern and a thick
growth of lantana that met above it as high as our shoulders. A more
discouraging mountain climb I never undertook. The vegetation was
all novel, but it had that barbaric rankness of all tropical woods,
with nothing of the sylvan sweetness and simplicity of our home
woods. There were no fine, towering trees, but low, gnarled, and
tortuous ones, which, with their hanging vines, like the broken
ropes of a ship's rigging, and their parasitic growths, presented a
riotous, disheveled appearance.
Nature in the tropics, left to herself, is harsh, aggressive,
savage; looks as though she wanted to hang you with her dangling
ropes, or impale you on her thorns, or engulf you in her ranks of
gigantic ferns. Her mood is never as placid and sane as in the
North. There is a tree in the Hawaiian woods that suggests a tree
gone mad. It is called the hau-tree. It lies down, squirms, and
wriggles all over the ground like a wounded snake; it gets up, and
then takes to earth again. Now it wants to be a vine, now it wants
to be a tree. It throws somersaults, it makes itself into loops and
rings, it rolls, it reaches, it doubles upon itself. Altogether it
is the craziest vegetable growth I ever saw. Where you can get it up
off the ground and let it perform its antics on a broad skeleton
framework, it makes a cover that no sunbeam can penetrate, and forms
a living roof to the most charming verandas--or lanais, as they are
called in the islands--that one can wish to see.
But I saw and heard one thing on this walk that struck a different
note: it was one of the native birds, the Oahu thrush. The moment I
heard it I was reminded of our brown thrasher, though the song, or
whistle, was much finer and richer in tone than that of our bird.
The glimpse I got of the bird showed it to be of about the size and
shape of our thrasher, but much brighter in color. It seems as
though the two species must have had a common origin some time,
somewhere. I was attracted by no other native bird on this walk. In
the valley below we had seen and heard the Chinese workmen going
about their rice-fields making strange sounds to drive away the
rice-birds, a small, brown species that has been introduced from
India.
When we reached the mountain-top, we found it enveloped in fog and
mist, and the scene was cold and cheerless. We looked down through a
screen of foliage into a deep valley that seemed almost beneath us,
and which is supposed to have been an ancient crater. There, on the
brink, the walkers had a rude cabin, where we ate our lunch beside a
fire and tried to dry our bedraggled garments.
From this point some of the party continued their walk, looking for
more unfrequented places, but some of us had longings the other way,
and retraced our steps toward the sunlight and the drier winds we
had left. We reached town footsore and bedraggled, and the little
Japanese who cleaned and pressed my suit of clothes, and made them
look as good as new for seventy-five cents, well earned his money.
The walk of eight or ten miles which we took two weeks later with
Governor Frear and his wife, up the new Castle trail to the
mountain-top behind Tantalus, had some features in common with the
first walk,--the increasing mist and coolness as we entered the
mountains, the dripping bushes, and the slippery paths,--but we got
finer views, and found a better-kept trail. Our walk ended on the
top of a narrow ridge of the mountain, where we ate our lunch in a
cold, driving mist and were a bit uncomfortable. I was interested in
the character of the ridge upon which we sat. It was not more than
six feet wide, a screen of volcanic rock worn almost to an edge, and
separated two valleys six or seven hundred feet deep. The Governor
said he could take me where the dividing ridge between the two
valleys was so narrow that one could literally sit astride of it, so
that one leg would point to one valley and the other to the other.
This is a feature of a new country geologically; the rains and other
agents of erosion have whittled the mountains to sharp edges, but
have not yet rounded or leveled them.
The northeast trade winds which blow upon these islands nine months
in the year bring a burden of moisture from the Pacific which is
condensed into rain and mist by the mountains, and which, with the
rank vegetation that it fosters, carves them and sharpens them like
a great grindstone revolving against their sides. At a place called
the Pali--and at the Needles, on the island of Maui--it has worn
through the mountain-chain and made deep and very picturesque gorges
where, in the case of the Pali, the wind is so strong and steady
that you can almost lie down upon it.
It was near the Pali that I saw what I had never seen or heard of
before--a waterfall reversed, going up instead of down. It suggested
Stockton's story of negative gravity. A small brook comes down off
the mountain and attempts to make the leap down a high precipice;
but the winds catch it and carry it straight up in the air like
smoke. It is translated; it becomes a mere wraith hovering above the
beetling crag. Night and day this goes on, the wind snatching from
the mountains in this summary way the water it has brought them.
On the walk with the Governor we made the acquaintance of some of
the land shells for which these islands are famous--pretty,
pearl-like little whorls living on the largest trees, and about the
size of a chipping sparrow's egg, with pointed ends, variously
colored. There are more than two hundred species on the different
islands, I think, each valley having varieties peculiar to itself,
showing what a factor isolation is in the evolution of new species.
The Governor and his wife, and a young man who had specialized in
conchology, plucked them from nearly every bush and tree; but my
eye, being untrained in this kind of work, was very slow in finding
them.
Coming down from these Hawaiian mountains is like coming out of a
dripping tent of clouds into the clear, warm sunshine. The change is
most delightful. Your clothing dries very quickly, and chilliness
gives place to genial warmth. And the prospects that open before
you, the glimpses down into these deep, yellow-green, crater-like
valleys, checkered with neat little Chinese farms, the panorama of
the city and the sea unrolling as you come down, and always Diamond
Head standing guard there to the east--how the vision of it all
lingers in the memory!
In climbing the heights, it was always a surprise to me to see the
Pacific rise up as I rose, till it stood up like a great blue wall
there against the horizon. A level plain unrolls in the same way as
we mount above it, but it does not produce the same illusion of
rising up like a wall or a mountain-range; the blue, facile water
cheats the eye.
One of the novel pleasures in which most travelers indulge while in
Honolulu is surf-riding at Waikiki, near Diamond Head. The sea, with
a floor of lava and coral, is here shallow for a long distance out,
and the surf comes in at intervals like a line of steeds cantering
over a plain. We went out in our bathing-suits in a long, heavy
dugout, with a lusty native oarsman in each end. When several
hundred yards from shore, we saw, on looking seaward, the long,
shining billows coming, whereupon our oarsmen headed the canoe
toward shore, and plied their paddles with utmost vigor, uttering
simultaneously a curious, excited cry. In a moment the breaker
caught us and, in some way holding us on its crest, shot us toward
the shore like an arrow. The sensation is novel and thrilling. The
foam flies; the waters leap about you. You are coasting on the sea,
and you shout with delight and pray for the sensation to continue.
But it is quickly over. The hurrying breaker slips from under you,
and leaves you in the trough, while it goes foaming on the shore.
Then you turn about and row out from the shore again, and wait for
another chance to be shot toward the land on the foaming crest of a
great Pacific wave.
I suppose the trick is in the skill of the oarsmen in holding the
boat on the pitch of the billow so that in its rush it takes you
with it. The native boys do the feat standing on a plank. I was
tempted to try this myself, but of course made a comical failure.
One of my pleasant surprises in Honolulu--one that gave the touch of
nature which made me feel less a stranger there--was learning that
the European skylark had been introduced and was thriving on the
grassy slopes back of the city. The mina, a species of starling from
India as large as our robin and rather showily dressed, with a loud,
strident voice, I had seen and heard everywhere both in town and
country, but he was a stranger and did not appeal to me. But the
thought of the skylark brought Shelley and Wordsworth, and English
downs and meadows, near to me at once, and I was eager to hear it.
So early one morning we left the Pleasanton, our tarrying-place, and
climbed the long, pastoral slope above the city, where cattle and
horses were grazing, and listened for this minstrel from the
motherland. We had not long to wait. Sure enough, not far from us
there sprang from the turf Shelley's bird, and went climbing his
invisible spiral toward the sky, pouring out those hurried, ecstatic
notes, just as I had heard him above the South Downs of England. It
was a moment of keen delight to me. The bird soared and hovered,
drifting about, as it were, before the impetuous current of his
song, with all the joy and abandon with which the poets have
credited him. It was like a bit of English literature vocal in the
air there above these alien scenes. Presently another went up, and
then another, and still another, the singers behaving in every
respect as they do by the Avon and the Tweed, and for a moment I
seemed to be breathing the air that Wordsworth and Shelley breathed.
If our excursion had taken us only to the island of Oahu and its
beautiful city, it would have been eminently worth while, but the
last week in May we took what is called the inter-island trip, a six
days' voyage among the various islands, when we visited the great
extinct crater of Haleakala on Maui, and the active volcano Kilauea
on Hawaii. It is a voyage over several rough channels in a small
steamer, and my friends said, "If you have not yet paid tribute to
Neptune, you will pay it now." But I did not. My companions were
prostrated, but I see Neptune respects age, and my slumbers were
undisturbed. A wireless message had gone to Mr. Aiken, on the island
of Maui, to meet us with his automobile in the morning at the
landing at Kahului. We were taken to the shore on a lighter, along
with the horses and cargo, and there found our new friend awaiting
us.
The great mountain of Haleakala rose up in a long line against the
sky on the left, and the deeply eroded and canyoned mountains of the
older, or west, end of the island on our right. Toward the latter
our guide took us. It was a pleasant spin along the good roads, in
the fresh morning air, near the beach, to Wailuku, the shire town of
the island, two or three miles distant. Here we were most hospitably
entertained in the home of Mr. Penhallow, the director of a large
sugar plantation.
Here for the first time in my life I saw a gang of steam plows
working, pulled by a stationary engine at each end of the field, and
turning over the red, heavy volcanic soil. The work was mainly in
the hands of Japanese, and was well done. We afterward saw Japanese
by the score, both men and women, planting a large area of newly
plowed land with sugar-cane.
After we were rested and refreshed, and had sampled the mangoes that
had fallen from a tree near the house, Mr. Aiken took us in his
automobile up into the famous Iao Valley, at the mouth of which
Wailuku is situated. It is a deep, striking chasm carved out of the
mountain by the stream, rank with verdure of various kinds, and
looked down upon by sharp peaks and ridges five or six thousand feet
high. We soon reached the clear rapid, brawling stream, as bright as
a Catskill mountain trout brook, and after a mile or two along its
course we came to the end of the road, where we left the machine and
took a trail that wound onward and upward over a slippery surface
and through dripping bushes, for we here began to reach the skirts
of the little showers that almost constantly career over and about
the interior of these mountains. I neither saw nor heard a bird or
other live thing. Guava apples lay on the ground all along the
trail, and one could eat them and not make faces. Some of the sharp,
knife-blade ridges that cut down toward us from the higher peaks
were very startling, and so steep and high that they could be
successfully scaled only by the aid of ropes and ladders. A more
striking object-lesson in erosion by rain would be hard to find.
There were no naked rocks; short, thick vegetation covered even the
steepest slopes, and the vegetable acids which this generated, and
the perpetual rains, weathered the mountains down. It soon became so
wet that we stopped far short of the head of the valley, and turned
back. I wished to look into the great, deep, green amphitheatre
which seems to lie at the head, but had glimpses of it only from a
distance. How many millenniums will it be, I said to myself, before
erosion will have completed its work here, and these thin, high
mountain-walls will be in ruins? Surely not many.
We returned to the hospitable home we had left, and passed the
midday there. In the afternoon Mr. Aiken, guiding our eyes by the
forms of trees that cut the horizon-line on the huge flank of
Haleakala, pointed out the place of his own homestead, twenty or
more miles away. From this point the great mountain appeared like a
vast landscape tilted up at an easy angle against the horizon. One
could hardly believe it was ten thousand feet high. The machine
climbed easily more than half the distance to Mr. Aiken's
plantation, which we reached in good time in the afternoon, and
where we passed a very enjoyable night. It was a surprise to find
swarms of mosquitoes at this altitude, so free from all
mosquito-breeding waters. But the house was well protected against
them. Mosquitoes, as well as flies and vermin, are not native to the
island. They came in ships not very long ago, and are now very
troublesome in certain parts. They came round the Horn. Mr. Aiken's
house itself came round the Horn seventy or eighty years ago. It is
a quaint, New England type of house, and has a very homelike look.
In front of it, near the gate, stands a Japanese pine which is an
object of veneration to all Japanese who chance to come that way.
Often their eyes fill with tears on beholding it, so responsive are
the little yellow men to associations of home.
In the morning Mr. Aiken drove us in a wagon to a place he has
called "Idlewild," six miles farther up the great slope of the
mountain. This slope of Haleakala is like a whole township,
diversified with farms and woods, valleys and hills, resting on its
elbows, so to speak, and looking out over the Pacific. We could look
up to the cloud-line, about seven thousand feet above the sea, and
occasionally get a glimpse of the long line of the summit through
rifts in the clouds. At Idlewild our expedition, consisting of six
mules and four people, was fitted out, and in the early afternoon we
started on the trail up the mountain.
For several miles our way led over grassy slopes where cattle were
grazing, and above which skylarks were singing. This was one of the
happy surprises of the trip--the soaring and singing skylarks. All
the way till we reached the cloud-belt, we had the larks pouring
down their music from the sky above us. They seemed specially
jubilant. It was May in England, too, and they sang as though the
spirit of those downs and fells was stirring in their hearts, under
alien skies, but true to the memories of home.
Before we reached the summit we came upon another introduction from
overseas--the English pheasant. One started up from some bushes only
a few yards from the trail, went booming away, and disappeared in a
deep gully. A little later another sprang up, uttering a cackling
cry as it flew away. We saw three altogether. The only home thing we
saw was white clover in patches here and there, and it gave a most
welcome touch to the unfamiliar scenes.
The cattle we passed on the way were suffering dreadfully from
another introduction from the States--the Texas horn-fly, which had
recently made its appearance. The poor beasts were driven half-crazy
by it, as their sunken eyes and poor condition plainly showed.
The trail became rougher and steeper as we ascended, and the grass
and trees gave place to low, scrubby bushes. We were half an hour or
more in the cloud-belt, where the singing skylarks did not follow
us. The clouds proved to be as loose of texture and as innocent as
any summer fog that loiters in our valleys; but it was good to
emerge into the sunshine again, and see the jagged line of the top
sensibly nearer, and the canopy of clouds unroll itself beneath us.
Far ahead of us and near the summit we saw a band of wild
goats--twenty-two, I counted--leisurely grazing along, and now and
then casting glances down upon us. They were domestic animals gone
wild, and still retained their bizarre colors of white and black.
One big black leader with a long beard looked down at us and shook
his head threateningly. We reached the summit before the sun reached
the horizon, and our eyes looked forth upon a strange world, indeed.
On one hand the vast sea of cloud, into which the sun was about to
drop, rolled away from the mountain below us, with its white surface
and the irregular masses rising up from it, suggesting a sea of
floating ice. Through rifts in it we caught occasional glimpses of
the Pacific--blue, vague, mystical gulfs that seemed filled with
something less substantial than water. On the other hand was the
vast crater of Haleakala, two thousand feet deep, and many miles
across, in which the shadows were deepening, and which looked like
some burned-out Hades.
We stood or sat on the jagged edge and saw the day depart and the
night come down, the glory of cloud and sea and sunset on the one
hand, and on the other side the fearful chasm of the extinct
volcano, red and black and barren, with the hosts of darkness
gathering in it. It was like a seat between heaven and hell. Then
later, when the Southern Cross came out and rose above the awful
gulf, the scene was most impressive.
The crater of Haleakala is said to be the largest extinct crater in
the world. To follow all its outlines would lead one a distance of
more than twenty miles, but it is so irregular in shape that one
gets only a poor conception of its extent in a view from its brink.
At its widest part it cannot be more than four or five miles across.
It was evidently formed by the whole top of the mountain having been
blown out or else sunk down in recent geologic times. The fragments
of jagged rock that thickly strew the surface all about the summit
look as if they might have fallen there. The floor of the interior
of the crater is thickly studded with many minor craters, through
which the internal fires found vent after the crater as a whole had
ceased to act. They are of the shape of huge haystacks, with a hole
in the top, and looked soft and yielding in outline, and in color as
though they were composed of soot and brick-dust. One of them is
much larger than any of the rest. I thought it might be two hundred
feet high. "It is eight hundred," said our guide; yet its summit was
more than a thousand feet below the rim upon which we sat.
There has been no eruption in Haleakala since early in the last
century. Over a large area of the interior the black lava, cracked
and crumpled, meets the eye. Miles down one of its great arms toward
the sea, we could see the green lines of vegetation, mostly rank
ferns, advancing like an invading army. Far ahead were the
skirmishers, loose bands of ferns, with individual plants here and
there pushing on over the black, uneven surface toward the secondary
craters of the centre. Vegetation was also climbing down the ragged
sides of the crater, dropping from rock to rock like an invading
host. The ferns, those pioneers of the vegetable world, appear to
come first. Their giant progenitors subdued the rocks and made the
soil in Carboniferous times, and prepared the way for higher
vegetable forms, and now these striplings take up the same task in
this primitive world of the crater of Haleakala. Their task is a
long and arduous one, much more so than in those parts of the island
where the rainfall is more copious; but give them time enough, and
the barren lava will all be clothed with verdure. When decomposed
and ripened by time, it makes a red, heavy soil that supports many
kinds of plants and trees.
The ferns come slowly marching in from without, but in the centre of
the crater, on the slopes of the red cones and at their bases, is
another plant that seems indigenous, born of the ash and the scoria
of the volcano, and that apparently has no chlorophyl in its
make-up. This is a striking plant, called the silver sword, from the
shape and color of its long, narrow leaves. They are the color of
frosted silver, and are curved like a sword. It is a strange
apparition, white and delicate and rare, springing up in the crater
of a slumbering volcano. A more striking contrast with the
atmosphere of the surroundings would be hard to find--a suggestion
of peace and purity above the graves of world-destroying forces, an
angel of light nourished by the ashes of the demons of death and
darkness.
It is claimed by the people of the island that this plant is found
in no other place on the globe, but this can hardly be possible. If
its evolution took place in one crater, it would take place in
another. It consists of a great mass of silvery-white, bristling
leaves resting upon the ground, from which rises a stalk, strung
with flowers, to the height of five or six feet. It is evidently of
the Yucca type of plant, and has met with a singular transformation
in the sleeping volcano's mouth, all its harsh and savage character
turned into gentleness and grace, its armament of needles and
daggers giving place to a soft, silvery down. We did not see the
plant growing except at a great distance, through field-glasses, but
we saw a photograph of it and a dried specimen after we came down
from the summit.
It is an all day's trip down into the crater and back, climbing over
sliding sands and loose scoria, and our time was too limited to
undertake it. We passed the night on the summit in a rude stone hut,
which had a fireplace where the guide made coffee, but we had only
the volcanic rock for floor. Upon this we spread our ample supply of
blankets, and got such sleep as is to be had on high, cold
mountain-tops, where the ribs of the mountain prove to be so much
harder than one's own ribs--not a first-class quality of sleep, but
better than none.
I arose about two o'clock, and made my way out into the star-blazing
night. Such glory of the heavens I had never before seen. I had
never before been lifted up so near them, and hence had never before
seen them through so rarefied an atmosphere. The clouds and vapors
had disappeared, and all the hosts of heaven were magnified. The
Milky Way seemed newly paved and swept. There was no wind and no
sound. The mighty crater was a gulf of blackness, but the sky blazed
with light.
The dawn comes early on such a mountain-top, and before four o'clock
we were out under the fading stars. As we had seen the day pass into
night, surrounded by these wonderful scenes, now we saw the night
pass into day, and the elemental grandeur on every hand reborn
before us. There was not a wisp of cloud or fog below us or about us
to blur the great picture. The sun came up from behind the vast,
long, high wall of the Pacific that filled the eastern horizon, and
the shadows fled from the huge pile of mountain in the west. We hung
about the rim of the great crater or sat upon the jagged rocks,
wrapped in our blankets, till the sun was an hour high.
We got another glimpse of the band of goats picking their way from
ledge to ledge far below us on the side of the crater. I saw and
heard two or three mina birds fly past, apparently seeking new
territory to occupy. These birds are more enterprising than the
English sparrows, which also swarm in the island towns but do not
brave the mountain-heights. The bird from India seems at home
everywhere.
After breakfast we still haunted for an hour or more the brink of
the great abyss, where one seemed to feel the pulse of primal time,
loath to tear ourselves away, loath also to take a last view of the
panorama of land and sea, lit by the morning sun, which spread out
far below us. To the southeast we could dimly see the outlines of
the island of Hawaii, with a faint gleam of snow on its great
mountain Mauna Loa, nearly fourteen thousand feet high. In the
northwest a dim, dark mass low in the horizon marked the place of
Oahu. The ocean rose in the vast horizon and blended with the sky.
The eye could not tell where one ended and the other began.
The mules had had a comfortable night in a rude stone stable against
the rocks, and were more eager to hit the down trail than were we.
The descent proved more fatiguing than the ascent, the constant
plunging motion of the animals' shoulders being a sore trial. We
dropped down through the belt of clouds that had begun to form, and
out into the grassy region of the singing skylarks, past herds of
grazing cattle, and at noon were again at Idlewild, resting our
weary limbs and comforting the inner man.
In the afternoon Mr. Aiken drove us back to his home farm, where we
again passed a very pleasant night. In the morning I walked with him
through his pineapple plantation. It was a new kind of farming and
fruit-growing to me. I forget now how many hundred thousand plants
his field contained. They are set and cultivated much as cabbage is
with us, but present a strangely stiff and forbidding aspect. The
first cutting is when the plants are about eighteen months old, one
large solid apple from each plant. The second crop is called the
"raggoon" crop, and yields two apples from each plant, but smaller
and less valuable than the first. The field is then reset. I also
walked with Mr. Aiken over some new land he was getting ready for
pineapples. It had been densely covered with lantana scrub, and
clearing it and grubbing it out had been an heroic task. The lantana
takes complete possession of the soil, grows about four or five feet
high, and makes a network of roots in the soil that defies anything
but a steam plow. The soil is a red, heavy clay, and it made the
farmer in me sweat to think of the expenditure of labor necessary to
turn a lantana bush into a pineapple field. The redness of this
volcanic soil is said to be owing to the fact that the growth of
vegetation brings the iron into new combinations with organic acids.
Later in the day we visited the large Baldwin pineapple-canning
plant, and were shown the whole process of preparing and canning the
fruit, and all but surfeited with the most melting and delicious
pineapples it was ever my good luck to taste. The Hawaiian pineapple
probably surpasses all others in tenderness and lusciousness, and it
loses scarcely any of these qualities in the cans. Ripened in the
field, where it grew on the flanks of great Haleakala, and eaten out
of hand, it is a dream of tropic lusciousness. The canning is done
by an elaborate system of machinery managed by Japanese men and
women, the naked hand never coming in contact with the peeled fruit,
but protected from it by long, thin rubber gloves. There ought to be
a great future for this industry, when Eastern consumers really find
out the superior quality of the Hawaiian product.
From Mr. Aiken's house one has a view of the great wall of mountains
that form the western and older--older geologically--end of the
island, in which lies the famous Iao Valley, which I have already
described. We judge, from the much deeper marks of rain erosion,
that this end of the island is vastly older than the butt end upon
which Haleakala is situated. Haleakala is eroded comparatively
little. On all its huge northern slope there is only one
considerable gash or gully, and this is probably not many thousand
years old; but the northwestern end of the island is worn and carved
in the most striking manner. Looking at it that morning, I compared
it to my extended, relaxed hand, the northern end being gashed and
grooved like the sunken spaces between the fingers, while the
southwest end, not more than ten miles distant, was only slightly
grooved and more like the solid wrist and back hand. All the rains
brought by the northeast trades fall upon the northeast end of the
islands. The mountain-peaks on the end hold the clouds and strip
them dry, so that little or no rain falls upon the south and
southwest sides. This is true of all the islands. One end of each is
arid and barren, while the other is wet and verdant. One of the
smaller islands, Kahoolawe, I believe, dominated by Maui on the
northeast, is said to be drying up and blowing away by inches.
What a spell the mountains do lay upon the clouds everywhere,--the
robber mountains,--in these islands exacting the last drop of water
of all the ocean-born vapors that pass over them! On the northeast
side of the Lahaina district there are valleys four or five thousand
feet deep; on the southwest side there are no valleys worth
mentioning. The difference in this respect was forcibly brought home
to me when, later in the day, we made an automobile trip from
Wailuku to Lahaina on the southwest side; in going less than twenty
miles we quickly passed from the region of verdant valleys and
mountain-slopes into a hard, raw, barren, unweathered region, where
there was no soil, and where the rocks looked as crude and
forbidding as they must have looked the day they flowed out from the
depths as molten lava. In outline the island of Maui suggests a
truncated statue, the west end representing the head, very old and
wrinkled and grooved by time and trouble, the peninsula the
well-proportioned neck, and broad-breasted Haleakala forming the
trunk. What a torso it is, fire-born and basking there in the
tropic seas!
The oldest island of the Hawaiian group is Kauai, called the garden
island, because it has much the deepest and most fertile soil. It
shows much more evidence of erosion than any of the other islands.
The next in point of erosion, and hence in point of age, is Oahu,
upon which Honolulu is situated. Then come Molokai and Maui, the two
ends of the latter being of vastly unequal age. Hawaii, the largest
of them all, nearly as large as Connecticut, is the youngest of the
group, and shows the least effects of erosion. When it is as old as
Kauai is now, its two huge mountains, Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, will
probably be cut up into deep valleys and canons and sharp, high
ridges, as are the mountains of Kauai and Oahu. The lapse of time
required to bring about such a result is beyond all human
calculation. Whether one million or two millions of years would do
it, who knows? Those warm tropical rains, aided by the rank
vegetation which they beget and support, dissolve the volcanic rock
slowly but inevitably.
Through the courtesy of Mr. Lowell, the superintendent, we had that
day the pleasure of going through a large sugar-making plant at
Paia--one that turns out nearly fifty thousand tons of sugar a year.
We saw the cane come in from the fields in one end of the plant, and
the dry, warm product being put up in bags at the other. All the
latest devices and machinery for sugar-making we saw here in full
operation, affording a contrast to the crude and wasteful methods I
had seen in the island of Jamaica a few years before.
In the afternoon we availed ourselves of the five or six miles of
narrow-gauge railway, the only one on the island, to go from Paia to
Wailuku, where we were met by another automobile, which hurried us
to Lahaina, where we were to meet the steamer that was to convey us
to Hilo, on Hawaii. I say "hurried," but before the journey of
twenty-odd miles was half over, we realized the truth of the old
adage, "The more haste, the less speed." The automobile began to
sulk and finally could be persuaded to go only on the low gear, and
to rattle along at about the speed of a man with a horse and buggy.
We reached Lahaina just as the boat was entering the harbor.
The next morning we found ourselves steaming along past the high,
verdant shores of Hawaii. For fifty miles or more the land presented
one unbroken expanse of sugar-cane, suggesting fields of some
gigantic yellow-green grass. At Hilo the sun was shining between
brief showers, and the air was warm and muggy. It is said to rain
there every day in the year, and the lush vegetation made the
statement seem credible. Judge Andrews met us at the steamer, and
took us to his home for rest and dinner, and was extremely kind to
us.
In the mid-afternoon we took the train for Glenwood, thirty miles on
our way to the volcano of Kilauea. A large part of the way the road
leads through sugar plantations, newly carved out of the koa and
tree-fern wilderness that originally covered the volcanic soil.
Clusters of the little houses of the Japanese laborers, perched high
above the ground on slender posts, were passed here and there.
Everywhere we saw wooden aqueducts, or flumes, winding around the
contours of the hills and across the little valleys, often on high
trestle-work, and partly filled with clear, swift-running water, in
which the sugar-cane was transported to the mills.
At Glenwood stages meet the tourists and convey them over a fairly
good road that winds through the tree-fern forests to the Volcano
House, ten miles away. The beauty of that fern-lined forest, the
long, stately plumes of the gigantic ferns meeting the eye
everywhere, I shall not soon forget. I saw what appeared to be a
large, showy red raspberry growing by the roadside, but I did not
find it at all tempting to the taste.
It was dark when we reached the Volcano House, and we saw off to the
left a red glow upon the fog-clouds, like the reflected light from
a burning barn or house in the country, and inferred at once that it
came from the volcano, which it did. From my window that night, as I
lay in bed, I could see this same angry glow upon the clouds. The
smell of sulphur was in the air about the hotel, and very hot steam
was issuing from cracks in the rocks. A party of tourists on
horseback, in the spirit of true American hurry, visited the volcano
that night, but we chose to wait until the morrow.
The next morning the great crater of Kilauea was filled with fog,
but it lifted, and the sun shone before noon. We passed a pleasant
forenoon strolling along the tree-fringed brink, looking down eight
or nine hundred feet upon its black lava floor, and plucking ohelo
berries, which grew there abundantly, a kind of large, red
huckleberry that one could eat out of hand, but that one could not
get excited over. They were better in a pie than in the hand. Their
name seemed to go well with the suggestion of the scenes amid which
they grew. Kilauea is a round extinct crater about three miles
across and seven or eight hundred feet deep. It has been the scene
of terrific explosions in past ages, but it has now dwindled to the
small active crater of Halemaumau, which is sunk near the middle of
it like a huge pot, two hundred or more feet deep and a thousand
feet across.
In the mid-afternoon a party of eight or ten of us on horseback set
out to visit the volcano. The trail led down the broken and shelving
side of the crater, amid trees and bushes, till it struck the floor
of lava at the bottom. In going down I was aware all the time of a
beautiful bird-song off on my left, a song almost as sweet as that
of our hermit thrush, but of an entirely different order. I think it
was the song of one of the honey-suckers, a red bird with black
wings that in flight looked like our scarlet tanager.
Our course took us out over the cracked and contorted lava-beds,
where no green thing was growing. The forms of the lava-flow
suggested mailed and writhing dragons, with horrid, gaping mouths
and vicious claws. The lava crunched beneath the horses' feet like
shelly and brittle ice. At one point we passed over a wide, jagged
crack on a bridge. As we neared the crater, the rocks grew warm, and
sulphur and other fumes streaked the air.
When a half-mile from the crater we dismounted, and, leaving our
horses in charge of the guide, proceeded on foot over the cracked
and heated lava rocks toward the brink of this veritable devil's
caldron. The sulphur fumes are so suffocating that it can be
approached only on the windward side. The first glance into that
fearful pit is all that your imagination can picture it. You look
upon the traditional lake of brimstone and fire, and if devils were
to appear skipping about over the surface with pitchforks, turning
their victims as the cook turns her frying crullers in the
sputtering fat, it would not much astonish you. This liquid is
rather thick and viscid, but it is boiling furiously. Great masses
of it are thrown up forty or fifty feet, and fall with a crash like
that of the surf upon the shore. Livid jets are thrown up many feet
high against the sides and drip back, cooling quickly as the lava
descends. We sat or stood upon the brink, at times almost letting
our feet hang over the sides, and shielding our faces from the
intense heat with paper masks and veils. It is probably the only
place in the world where you can come face to face with the heart of
an active volcano. There are no veils of vapor to hide it from you.
It appears easy enough to cast a stone into the midst of it, but
none of us could quite do it.
The mass of boiling lava is said to be about one and one half acres
in extent. Its surface is covered with large masses of floating
crust, black and smooth, like leather or roofing-paper, and between
these masses, or islands, the molten lava shows in broad, vivid
lines. It is never quiet. When not actually boiling, there is a slow
circulatory movement, and the great flakes of black crust,
suggesting scum, drift across from one end to the other and are
drawn under the rocks. At one moment only this movement is apparent,
then suddenly the mass begins to boil furiously all over the
surface, and you hear dimly the sound of the bursting bubbles and
the crash of the falling lava. When this takes place, the black
floating masses are broken up and scattered as they are in boiling
maple-syrup, but they quickly reunite, and are carried on by the
current as before.
Looking upon this scene with the thought of the traditional lake of
fire and brimstone of our forefathers in mind, you would say that
these black, filthy-looking masses floating about on the surface
were the accumulation of all the bad stuff that had been fried out
of the poor sinners since hell was invented. How much wickedness and
uncharity and evil thought it would represent! If the poor victims
were clarified and made purer by the process, then it would seem
worth while.
At the Volcano House they keep a book in which tourists write down
their impressions of the volcano. A distinguished statesman had been
there a few days before us, and had written a long account of his
impressions, closing with this oratorical sentence: "No pen, however
gifted, can describe, no brush, however brilliant, can portray, the
wonders we have been permitted to behold." I could not refrain from
writing under it, "I have seen the orthodox hell, and it's the real
thing."
That huge kettle of molten metal, mantling and bubbling, how it is
impressed upon my memory! It is a vestige of the ancient cosmic fire
that once wrapped the whole globe in its embrace. It had a kind of
brutal fascination. One could not take one's eyes from it. That
network of broad, jagged, fiery lines defining those black, smooth
masses, or islands, of floating matter told of a side of nature we
had never before seen. We lingered there on the brink of the fearful
spectacle till night came on, and the sides of the mighty caldron,
and the fog-clouds above it, glowed in the infernal light. Not so
white as the metal pouring from a blast furnace, not so hot, a more
sullen red, but welling up from the central primordial fires of the
earth. This great pot has boiled over many times in the recent past,
as the lava-beds we traveled over testify, and it will probably boil
over again. It has been unusually active these last few years.
About nine o'clock we rode back, facing a cold, driving mist, the
back of each rider, protected by the shining yellow "slickers,"
glowing to the one behind him, in the volcano's light, till we were
a mile or more away.
The next morning came clear, and the sight of the mighty slope of
Mauna Loa, lit up by the rising sun, was a grand spectacle. It
looked gentle and easy of ascent, wooded here and there, and here
and there showing broad, black streaks from the lava overflows at
the summit in recent years; but remembering that it was nearly four
thousand feet higher than Haleakala, I had no desire to climb it.
This mountain and its companion, Mauna Kea, are the highest island
mountains in the world.
The stage rolled us back through the fern forest to the railway
station and thence on to Hilo again, where in good time, in the
afternoon, we went aboard the steamer; and the next morning we were
again in the harbor of Honolulu, glad we had made the inter-island
trip, and above all glad that we had seen Haleakala.