This is such a pleasant house and household, Mrs. A. is as bright as
though she were not an invalid, and her room, except at meals, is
the gathering-place of the family. The four boys are bright,
intelligent beings, out of doors, barefooted, all day, and with a
passion for horses, of which their father possesses about thirty.
The youngest, Ephy, is the brightest child for three years old that
I ever saw, but absolutely crazy about horses and mules. He talks
of little else, and is constantly asking me to draw horses on his
slate. He is a merry, audacious little creature, but came in this
evening quite subdued. The sun was setting gloriously behind the
forest-covered slopes, flooding the violet distances with a haze of
gold, and, in a low voice, he said, "I've seen God."
There is the usual Chinese cook, who cooks and waits and looks good-
natured, and of course has his own horse, and his wife, a most
minute Chinese woman, comes in and attends to the rooms and to Mrs.
A., and sews and mends. She wears her native dress--a large, stiff,
flat cane hat, like a tray, fastened firmly on or to her head; a
scanty loose frock of blue denim down to her knees, wide trousers of
the same down to her ancles, and slippers. Her hair is knotted up;
she always wears silver armlets, and would not be seen without the
hat for anything. There is not a bell in this or any house on the
islands, and the bother of servants is hardly known, for the
Chinamen do their work like automatons, and disappear at sunset. In
a land where there are no carpets, no fires, no dust, no hot water
needed, no windows to open and shut--for they are always open--no
further service is really required. It is a simple arcadian life,
and people live more happily than any that I have seen elsewhere.
It is very cheerful to live among people whose faces are not soured
by the east wind, or wrinkled by the worrying effort to "keep up
appearances," which deceive nobody; who have no formal visiting, but
real sociability; who regard the light manual labour of domestic
life as a pleasure, not a thing to be ashamed of; who are contented
with their circumstances, and have leisure to be kind, cultured, and
agreeable; and who live so tastefully, though simply, that they can
at any time ask a passing stranger to occupy the simple guest
chamber, or share the simple meal, without any of the soul-harassing
preparations which often make the exercise of hospitality a thing of
terror to people in the same circumstances at home.
People will ask you, "What is the food?" We have everywhere bread
and biscuit made of California flour, griddle cakes with molasses,
and often cracked wheat, butter not very good, sweet potatoes,
boiled kalo, Irish potatoes, and poi. I have not seen fish on any
table except at the Honolulu Hotel, or any meat but beef, which is
hard and dry as compared with ours. We have China or Japan tea, and
island coffee. Honolulu is the only place in which intoxicants are
allowed to be sold; and I have not seen beer, wine, or spirits in
any house. Bananas are an important article of diet, and sliced
guavas, eaten with milk and sugar, are very good. The cooking is
always done in detached cook houses, in and on American cooking
stoves.
As to clothing. I wear my flannel riding dress for both riding and
walking, and a black silk at other times. The resident ladies wear
prints and silks, and the gentlemen black cloth or dark tweed suits.
Flannel is not required, neither are puggarees or white hats or
sunshades at any season. The changes of temperature are very
slight, and there is no chill when the sun goes down. The air is
always like balm; the rain is tepid and does not give cold; in
summer it may be three or four degrees warmer. Windows and doors
stand open the whole year. A blanket is agreeable at night, but not
absolutely necessary. It is a truly delightful climate and mode of
living, with such an abundance of air and sunshine. My health
improves daily, and I do not consider myself an invalid.
Between working, reading aloud, talking, riding, and "loafing," I
have very little time for letter writing; but I must tell you of a
delightful fern-hunting expedition on the margin of the forest that
I took yesterday, accompanied by Mr. Thompson and the two elder
boys. We rode in the mauka direction, outside cane ready for
cutting, with silvery tassels gleaming in the sun, till we reached
the verge of the forest, where an old trail was nearly obliterated
by a trailing matted grass four feet high, and thousands of woody
ferns, which conceal streams, holes, and pitfalls. When further
riding was impossible, we tethered our horses and proceeded on foot.
We were then 1,500 feet above the sea by the aneroid barometer, and
the increased coolness was perceptible. The mercury is about four
degrees lower for each 1,000 feet of ascent--rather more than this
indeed on the windward side of the islands. The forest would be
quite impenetrable were it not for the remains of wood-hauling
trails, which, though grown up to the height of my shoulders, are
still passable.
Underneath the green maze, invisible streams, deep down, made sweet
music, sweeter even than the gentle murmur of the cool breeze among
the trees. The forest on the volcano track, which I thought so
tropical and wonderful a short time ago, is nothing for beauty to
compare with this "garden of God." I wish I could describe it, but
cannot; and as you know only our pale, small-leaved trees, with
their uniform green, I cannot say that it is like this or that. The
first line of a hymn, "Oh, Paradise! oh, Paradise!" rings in my
brain, and the rustic exclamation we used to hear when we were
children, "Well, I never!" followed by innumerable notes of
admiration, seems to exhaust the whole vocabulary of wonderment.
The former cutting of some trees gives atmosphere, and the tumbled
nature of the ground shows everything to the best advantage. There
were openings over which huge candle-nuts, with their pea-green and
silver foliage, spread their giant arms, and the light played
through their branches on an infinite variety of ferns. There were
groves of bananas and plantains with shiny leaves 8 feet long, like
enormous hart's-tongue, the bright-leaved noni, the dark-leaved koa,
the mahogany of the Pacific; the great glossy-leaved Eugenia--a
forest tree as large as our largest elms; the small-leaved ohia, its
rose-crimson flowers making a glory in the forests, and its young
shoots of carmine red vying with the colouring of the New England
fall; and the strange lauhala hung its stiff drooping plumes, which
creak in the faintest breeze; and the superb breadfruit hung its
untempting fruit, and from spreading guavas we shook the ripe yellow
treasures, scooping out the inside, all juicy and crimson, to make
drinking cups of the rind; and there were trees that had surrendered
their own lives to a conquering army of vigorous parasites which had
clothed their skeletons with an unapproachable and indistinguishable
beauty, and over trees and parasites the tender tendrils of great
mauve morning glories trailed and wreathed themselves, and the
strong, strangling stems of the ie wound themselves round the tall
ohias, which supported their quaint yucca-like spikes of leaves
fifty feet from the ground.
There were some superb plants of the glossy tropical-looking bird's-
nest fern, or Asplenium Nidus, which makes its home on the stems and
branches of trees, and brightens the forest with its great shining
fronds. I got a specimen from a koa tree. The plant had nine
fronds, each one measuring from 4 feet 1 inch to 4 feet 7 inches in
length, and from 7 to 9 inches in breadth. There were some very
fine tree-ferns (Cibotium Chamissoi?), two of which being
accessible, we measured, and found them seventeen and twenty feet
high, their fronds eight feet long, and their stems four feet ten
inches in circumference three feet from the ground. They showed the
most various shades of green, from the dark tint of the mature
frond, to the pale pea green of those which were just uncurling
themselves. I managed to get up into a tree for the first time in
my life to secure specimens of two beautiful parasitic ferns
(Polypodium tamariscinum and P. Hymenophylloides?). I saw for the
first time, too, a lygodium and the large climbing potato-fern
(Polypodium spectrum), very like a yam in the distance, and the
Vittaria elongata, whose long grassy fronds adorn almost every tree.
The beautiful Microlepia tenuifolia abounded, and there were a few
plants of the loveliest fern I ever saw (Trichomanes meifolium), in
specimens of which I indulged sparingly, and almost grudgingly, for
it seemed unfitting that a form of such perfect beauty should be
mummied in a herbarium. There was one fern in profusion, with from
90 to 130 pair of pinnae on each frond; and the fronds, though often
exceeding five feet in length, were only two inches broad
(Nephrolepis pectinata). There were many prostrate trees, which
nature has entirely covered with choice ferns, specially the rough
stem of the tree-fern. I counted seventeen varieties on one trunk,
and on the whole obtained thirty-five specimens for my collection.
The forest soon became completely impenetrable, the beautiful
Gleichenia Hawaiiensis forming an impassable network over all the
undergrowth. And, indeed, without this it would have been risky to
make further explorations, for often masses of wonderful matted
vegetation sustained us temporarily over streams six or eight feet
below, whose musical tinkle alone warned us of our peril. I shall
never again see anything so beautiful as this fringe of the
impassable timber belt. I enjoyed it more than anything I have yet
seen; it was intoxicating, my eyes were "satisfied with seeing." It
was a dream, a rapture, this maze of form and colour, this entangled
luxuriance, this bewildering beauty, through which we caught bright
glimpses of a heavenly sky above, while far away, below glade and
lawn, shimmered in surpassing loveliness the cool blue of the
Pacific. To me, with my hatred of reptiles and insects, it is not
the least among the charms of Hawaii, that these glorious
entanglements and cool damp depths of a redundant vegetation give
shelter to nothing of unseemly shape and venomous proboscis or fang.
Here, in cool, dreamy, sunny Onomea, there are no horrid, drumming,
stabbing, mosquitoes as at Honolulu, to remind me of what I forget
sometimes, that I am not in Eden. {128}
I.L.B.