The Kilauea is not a fast propeller, and as she lurched very much in
crossing the channel most of the passengers were sea-sick, a
casualty which did not impair their cheerfulness and good humour.
After dark we called at Kawaihae (pronounced To-wee-hye), on the
northwest of Hawaii, and then steamed through the channel to the
east or windward side. I was only too glad on the second night to
accept the offer of "a mattrass on the skylight," but between the
heavy rolling caused by the windward swell, and the natural
excitement on nearing the land of volcanoes and earthquakes, I could
not sleep, and no other person slept, for it was considered "a very
rough passage," though there was hardly a yachtsman's breeze. It
would do these Sybarites good to give them a short spell of the
howling horrors of the North or South Atlantic, an easterly
snowstorm off Sable Island, or a winter gale in the latitude of
Inaccessible Island! The night was cloudy, and so the glare from
Kilauea which is often seen far out at sea was not visible.
When the sun rose amidst showers and rainbows (for this is the
showery season), I could hardly believe my eyes. Scenery,
vegetation, colour were all changed. The glowing red, the fiery
glare, the obtrusive lack of vegetation were all gone. There was a
magnificent coast-line of grey cliffs many hundred feet in height,
usually draped with green, but often black, caverned, and fantastic
at their bases. Into cracks and caverns the heavy waves surged with
a sound like artillery, sending their broad white sheets of foam
high up among the ferns and trailers, and drowning for a time the
endless baritone of the surf, which is never silent through the
summer years. Cascades in numbers took one impulsive leap from the
cliffs into the sea, or came thundering down clefts or "gulches,"
which, widening at their extremities, opened on smooth green lawns,
each one of which has its grass house or houses, kalo patch,
bananas, and coco-palms, so close to the broad Pacific that its
spray often frittered itself away over their fan-like leaves. Above
the cliffs there were grassy uplands with park-like clumps of the
screw-pine, and candle-nut, and glades and dells of dazzling green,
bright with cataracts, opened up among the dark dense forests which
for some thousands of feet girdle Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, two vast
volcanic mountains, whose snowcapped summits gleamed here and there
above the clouds, at an altitude of nearly 14,000 feet. Creation
surely cannot exhibit a more brilliant green than that which clothes
windward Hawaii with perpetual spring. I have never seen such
verdure. In the final twenty-nine miles there are more than sixty
gulches, from 100 to 700 feet in depth, each with its cataracts, and
wild vagaries of tropical luxuriance. Native churches, frame-built
and painted white, are almost like mile-stones along the coast, far
too large and too many for the notoriously dwindling population.
Ten miles from Hilo we came in sight of the first sugar plantation,
with its patches of yet brighter green, its white boiling house and
tall chimney stack; then more churches, more plantations, more
gulches, more houses, and before ten we steamed into Byron's, or as
it is now called Hilo Bay.
This is the paradise of Hawaii. What Honolulu attempts to be, Hilo
is without effort. Its crescent-shaped bay, said to be the most
beautiful in the Pacific, is a semi-circle of about two miles, with
its farther extremity formed by Cocoanut Island, a black lava islet
on which this palm attains great perfection, and beyond it again a
fringe of cocoanuts marks the deep indentations of the shore. From
this island to the north point of the bay, there is a band of golden
sand on which the roar of the surf sounded thunderous and drowsy as
it mingled with the music of living waters, the Waiakea and the
Wailuku, which after lashing the sides of the mountains which give
them birth, glide deep and fern-fringed into the ocean. Native
houses, half hidden by greenery, line the bay, and stud the heights
above the Wailuku, and near the landing some white frame houses and
three church spires above the wood denote the foreign element. Hilo
is unique. Its climate is humid, and the long repose which it has
enjoyed from rude volcanic upheavals has mingled a great depth of
vegetable mould with the decomposed lava. Rich soil, rain, heat,
sunshine, stimulate nature to supreme efforts, and there is a
luxuriant prodigality of vegetation which leaves nothing uncovered
but the golden margin of the sea, and even that above high-water-
mark is green with the Convolvulus maritimus. So dense is the wood
that Hilo is rather suggested than seen. It is only on shore that
one becomes aware of its bewildering variety of native and exotic
trees and shrubs. From the sea it looks one dense mass of greenery,
in which the bright foliage of the candle-nut relieves the glossy
dark green of the breadfruit--a maze of preposterous bananas, out of
which rise slender annulated trunks of palms giving their infinite
grace to the grove. And palms along the bay, almost among the surf,
toss their waving plumes in the sweet soft breeze, not "palms in
exile," but children of a blessed isle where "never wind blows
loudly." Above Hilo, broad lands sweeping up cloudwards, with their
sugar cane, kalo, melons, pine-apples, and banana groves suggest the
boundless liberality of Nature. Woods and waters, hill and valley
are all there, and from the region of an endless summer the eye
takes in the domain of an endless winter, where almost perpetual
snow crowns the summits of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. Mauna Kea from
Hilo has a shapely aspect, for its top is broken into peaks, said to
be the craters of extinct volcanoes, but my eyes seek the dome-like
curve of Mauna Loa with far deeper interest, for it is as yet an
unfinished mountain. It has a huge crater on its summit 800 feet in
depth, and a pit of unresting fire on its side; it throbs and
rumbles, and palpitates; it has sent forth floods of fire over all
this part of Hawaii, and at any moment it may be crowned with a
lonely light, showing that its tremendous forces are again in
activity. My imagination is already inflamed by hearing of marvels,
and I am beginning to think tropically.
Canoes came off from the shore, dusky swimmers glided through the
water, youths, athletes, like the bronzes of the Naples Museum, rode
the waves on their surf-boards, brilliantly dressed riders galloped
along the sands and came trooping down the bridle-paths from all the
vicinity till a many-coloured tropical crowd had assembled at the
landing. Then a whaleboat came off, rowed by eight young men in
white linen suits and white straw hats, with wreaths of carmine-
coloured flowers round both hats and throats. They were singing a
glee in honour of Mr. Ragsdale, whom they sprang on deck to welcome.
Our crowd of native fellow-passengers, by some inscrutable process,
had re-arrayed themselves and blossomed into brilliancy. Hordes of
Hilo natives swarmed on deck, and it became a Babel of alohas,
kisses, hand-shakings, and reiterated welcomes. The glee singers
threw their beautiful garlands of roses and ohias over the foreign
passengers, and music, flowers, good-will and kindliness made us
welcome to these enchanted shores. We landed in a whaleboat, and
were hoisted up a rude pier which was crowded, for what the arrival
of the Australian mail-steamer is to Honolulu, the coming of the
Kilauea is to Hilo. I had not time to feel myself a stranger, there
were so many introductions, and so much friendliness. Mr. Coan and
Mr. Lyman, two of the most venerable of the few surviving
missionaries, were on the landing, and I was introduced to them and
many others. There is no hotel in Hilo. The residents receive
strangers, and Miss Karpe and I were soon installed in a large buff
frame-house, with two deep verandahs, the residence of Mr.
Severance, Sheriff of Hawaii.
Unlike many other places, Hilo is more fascinating on closer
acquaintance, so fascinating that it is hard to write about it in
plain prose. Two narrow roads lead up from the sea to one as
narrow, running parallel with it. Further up the hill another runs
in the same direction. There are no conveyances, and outside the
village these narrow roads dwindle into bridle-paths, with just room
for one horse to pass another. The houses in which Mr. Coan, Mr.
Lyman, Dr. Wetmore (formerly of the Mission), and one or two others
live, have just enough suggestion of New England about them to
remind one of the dominant influence on these islands, but the
climate has idealized them, and clothed them with poetry and
antiquity.
Of the three churches, the most prominent is the Roman Catholic
Church, a white frame building with two great towers; Mr. Coan's
native church with a spire comes next; and then the neat little
foreign church, also with a spire. The Romish Church is a rather
noisy neighbour, for its bells ring at unnatural hours, and doleful
strains of a band which cannot play either in time or tune proceed
from it. The court-house, a large buff painted frame-building with
two deep verandahs, standing on a well-kept lawn planted with exotic
trees, is the most imposing building in Hilo. All the foreigners
have carried out their individual tastes in their dwellings, and the
result is very agreeable, though in picturesqueness they must yield
the plain to the native houses, which whether of frame, or grass
plain or plaited, whether one or two storied, all have the deep
thatched roofs and verandahs plain or fantastically latticed, which
are so in harmony with the surroundings. These lattices and single
and double verandahs are gorgeous with trailers, and the general
warm brown tint of the houses contrasts pleasantly with the deep
green of the bananas which over-shadow them. There are living
waters everywhere. Each house seems to possess its pure bright
stream, which is arrested in bathing houses to be liberated among
kalo patches of the brightest green. Every verandah appears a
gathering place, and the bright holukus of the women, the gay shirts
and bandanas of the men, the brilliant wreaths of natural flowers
which adorn both, the hot-house temperature, the new trees and
flowers which demand attention, the strange rich odours, and the low
monotonous recitative which mourns through the groves make me feel
that I am in a new world. Ah, this is all Polynesian! This must be
the land to which the "timid-eyed" lotos-eaters came. There is a
strange fascination in the languid air, and it is strangely sweet
"to dream of fatherland" . . .
I.L.B.