There is a rumour that the king is coming as the guest of Admiral
Pennock in the Benicia. If it turns out to be true, it will turn
our quiet life upside down.
We met with fearful adventures in the swollen gulches between
Laupahoehoe and Onomea. It is difficult to begin my letter with the
plain prose of our departure from Waipio, which we accomplished on
the morning after I last wrote. On rising after a sound sleep, I
found that my potted beef, which I had carefully hung from a nail
the night before, had been almost carried away by small ants. These
ants swarm in every house on low altitudes. They assemble in
legions as if by magic, and by their orderly activity carry away all
that they do not devour, of all eatables which have not been placed
on tables which have rags dipped in a solution of corrosive
sublimate wound round their legs.
We breakfasted by lamplight, and because I had said that some of the
viands reminded me of home, our kind host had provided them at that
early hour. He absolutely refused to be paid anything for the
accommodation of our party, and said he should be ashamed of himself
if he took anything from a lady travelling without a husband.
It was such a perfect morning. The full moon hung over the
enclosing palis, gleaming on coffee and breadfruit groves, and on
the surface of the river, which was just quivering under a soft sea
breeze. The dew was heavy, smoke curled idly from native houses,
the east was flushing with the dawn, and the valley looked the
picture of perfect peace. A number of natives assembled to see us
start, and they all shook hands with us, exchanging alohas, and
presenting us with leis of roses and ohias. D. looked very pretty
with a red hibiscus blossom in her shining hair. You would have
been amused to see me shaking hands with men dressed only in malos,
or in the short blue shirt reaching to the waist, much worn by them
when at work.
I rode my mare with some pride of proprietorship, and our baggage
for a time was packed on the mule, and we started up the tremendous
pali at the tail of a string of twenty mules and horses laden with
kalo. This was in the form of paiai, or hard food, which is
composed, as I think I mentioned before, of the root baked and
pounded, but without water. It is put up in bundles wrapped in ti
leaves, of from twenty to thirty pounds each, secured with cocoanut
fibre, in which state it will keep for months, and much of the large
quantity raised in Waipio is exported to the plantations, the Waimea
ranches, and the neighbouring districts. A square mile of kalo, it
is estimated, would feed 15,000 Hawaiians for a year.
It was a beautiful view from the top of the pali. The white moon
was setting, the earliest sunlight was lighting up the dewy depths
of the lonely valley, reddening with a rich rose red the huge
headland which forms one of its sentinels; heavy snow had fallen
during the night on Mauna Kea, and his great ragged dome, snow-
covered down to the forests, was blushing like an Alpine peak at the
touch of the early sun. It ripened into a splendid joyous day,
which redeemed the sweeping uplands of Hamakua from the dreariness
which I had thought belonged to them. There was a fresh sea-breeze,
and the sun, though unclouded, was not too hot. We halted for an
early lunch at the clean grass-house we had stopped at before, and
later in the afternoon at that of the woman with whom we had ridden
from Hakalau, who received us very cordially, and regaled us with
poi and pork.
In order to avoid the amenities of Bola Bola's we rode thirty-four
miles, and towards evening descended the tremendous steep, which
leads to the surf-deafened village of Laupahoehoe. Halemanu had
given me a note of introduction to a widow named Honolulu, which
Deborah said began thus, "As I know that you have the only clean
house in L," and on presenting it we were made very welcome.
Besides the widow, a very redundant beauty, there were her two
brothers and two male cousins, and all bestirred themselves in our
service, the men in killing and cooking the supper, and the woman in
preparing the beds. It was quite a large room, with doors at the
end and side, and fully a third was curtained off by a calico
curtain, with a gorgeous Cretonne pattern upon it. I was delighted
to see a four-post bed, with mosquito bars, and a clean pulu
mattrass, with a linen sheet over it, covered with a beautiful quilt
with a quaint arabesque pattern on a white ground running round it,
and a wreath of green leaves in the centre. The native women
exercise the utmost ingenuity in the patterns and colours of these
quilts. Some of them are quite works of art. The materials, which
are plain and printed cottons, cost about $8, and a complete quilt
is worth from $18 to $50. The widow took six small pillows,
daintily covered with silk, out of a chest, the uses of which were
not obvious, as two large pillows were already on the bed. It was
astonishing to see a native house so handsomely furnished in so poor
a place. The mats on the floor were numerous and very fine. There
were two tables, several chairs, a bureau with a swinging mirror
upon it, a basin, crash towels, a carafe and a kerosene lamp. It is
all very well to be able to rough it, and yet better to enjoy doing
so, but such luxuries add much to one's contentment after eleven
hours in the saddle.
Honolulu wore a green chemise at first, but when supper was ready
she put a Macgregor tartan holuku over it. The men were very
active, and cooked the fowl in about the same time that it takes to
pluck one at home. They spread the finest mat I have seen in the
centre of the floor as a tablecloth, and put down on it bowls
containing the fowl and sweet potatoes, and the unfailing calabash
of poi. Tea, coffee and milk were not procurable, and as the water
is slimy and brackish, I offered a boy a dime to get me a cocoanut,
and presently eight great, misshapen things were rolled down at the
door. The outside is a smooth buff rind, underneath which is a
fibrous covering, enormously strong and about an inch thick, which
when stripped off reveals the nut as we see it, but of a very pale
colour. Those we opened were quite young, and each contained nearly
three tumblers of almost effervescent, very sweet, slightly
acidulated, perfectly limpid water, with a strong flavour of
cocoanut. It is a delicious beverage. The meat was so thin and
soft that it could have been spooned out like the white of an egg if
we had had any spoons. We all sat cross-legged round our meal, and
all Laupahoehoe crowded into the room and verandah with the most
persistent, unwinking, gimleting stare I ever saw. It was really
unpleasant, not only to hear a Babel of talking, of which, judging
from the constant repetition of the words wahine haole, I was the
subject, but to have to eat under the focussed stare of twenty pair
of eyes. My folding camp-knife appears an object of great interest,
and it was handed round, inside and outside the house. When I
retired about seven, the assemblage was still in full session.
The stars were then bright, but when I woke the next morning a
strong breeze was blowing, the surf was roaring so loud as almost to
drown human voices, and rolling up in gigantic surges, and to judge
from appearances, the rain which was falling in torrents had been
falling for some hours. There was much buzzing among the natives
regarding our prospects for the day. I shall always think from
their tone and manner, and the frequent repetition of the names of
the three worst gulches, that the older men tried to dissuade us
from going; but Deborah, who was very anxious to be at home by
Sunday, said that the verdict was that if we started at once for our
ride of twenty-three miles we might reach Onomea before the freshet
came on. This might have been the case had it not been for Kaluna.
Not only was his horse worn out, but nothing would induce him to
lead the mule, and she went off on foraging expeditions continually,
which further detained us. Kaluna had grown quite polite in his
savage way. He always insisted on putting on and taking off my
boots, carried me once through the Waipio river, helped me to pack
the saddle-bags, and even offered to brush my hair! He frequently
brought me guavas on the road, saying, "eat," and often rode up,
saying interrogatively, "tired?" "cold?" D. told me that he was
very tired, and I was very sorry for him, for he was so thinly and
poorly dressed, and the natives are not strong enough to bear
exposure to cold as we can, and a temperature at 68 degrees is cold
to them. But he was quite incorrigible, and thrashed his horse to
the last.
We breakfasted on fowl, poi, and cocoanut milk, in presence of even
a larger number of spectators than the night before, one of them a
very old man looking savagely picturesque, with a red blanket tied
round his waist, leaving his lean chest and arms, which were
elaborately tattooed, completely exposed.
The mule had been slightly chafed by the gear, and in my anxiety
about a borrowed animal, of which Mr. Austin makes a great joke, I
put my saddle-bags on my own mare, in an evil hour, and not only
these, but some fine cocoanuts, tied up in a waterproof which had
long ago proved its worthlessness. It was a grotesquely miserable
picture. The house is not far from the beach, and the surf, beyond
which a heavy mist hung, was coming in with such a tremendous sound
that we had to shout at the top of our voices in order to be heard.
The sides of the great gulch rose like prison walls, cascades which
had no existence the previous night hurled themselves from the
summit of the cliffs directly into the sea, the rain, which fell in
sheets, not drops, covered the ground to the depth of two or three
inches, and dripped from the wretched, shivering horses, which stood
huddled together with their tails between their legs. My thin
flannel suit was wet through even before we mounted. I dispensed
with stockings, as I was told that wearing them in rain chills and
stiffens the limbs. D., about whom I was anxious, as well as about
the mule, had a really waterproof cloak, and I am glad to say has
quite lost the cough from which she suffered before our expedition.
She does not care about rain any more than I do.
We soon reached the top of the worst and dizziest of all the palis,
and then splashed on mile after mile, down sliding banks, and along
rocky tracks, from which the soil had been completely carried, the
rain falling all the time. In some places several feet of soil had
been carried away, and we passed through water-rents, the sides of
which were as high as our horses' heads, where the ground had been
level a few days before. By noon the aspect of things became so bad
that I wished we had a white man with us, as I was uneasy about some
of the deepest gulches. When four hours' journey from Onomea,
Kaluna's horse broke down, and he left us to get another, and we
rode a mile out of our way to visit Deborah's grandparents.
Her uncle carried us across some water to their cook-house, where,
happily, a kalo baking had just been accomplished, in a hole in the
ground, lined with stones, among which the embers were still warm.
In this very small hut, in which a man could hardly stand upright,
there were five men only dressed in malos, four women, two of them
very old, much tattooed, and huddled up in blankets, two children,
five pertinaciously sociable dogs, two cats, and heaps of things of
different kinds. They are a most gregarious people, always visiting
each other, and living in each other's houses, and so hospitable
that no Hawaiian, however poor, will refuse to share his last
mouthful of poi with a stranger of his own race. These people
looked very poor, but probably were not really so, as they had a
nice grass-house, with very fine mats, within a few yards.
A man went out, cut off the head of a fowl, singed it in the flame,
cut it into pieces, put it into a pot to boil, and before our feet
were warm the bird was cooked, and we ate it out of the pot with
some baked kalo. D. took me out to see some mango trees, and a pond
filled with gold-fish, which she said had been hers when she was a
child. She seemed very fond of her relatives, among whom she looked
like a fairy princess; and I think they admired her very much, and
treated her with some deference. The object of our visit was to
procure a le of birds' feathers which they had been making for her,
and for which I am sure 300 birds must have been sacrificed. It was
a very beautiful as well as costly ornament, {165} and most
ingeniously packed for travelling by being laid at full length
within a slender cylinder of bamboo.
We rode on again, somewhat unwillingly on my part, for though I
thought my apprehensions might be cowardly and ignorant, yet D. was
but a child, and had the attractive wilfulness of childhood, and she
was, I saw, determined to get back to her husband, and the devotion
and affection of the young wife were so pleasant to see, that I had
not the heart to offer serious opposition to her wishes, especially
as I knew that I might be exaggerating the possible peril. I
gathered, however, from what she said, that her people wanted us to
remain until Monday, especially as none of them could go with us,
their horses being at some distance. I thought it a sign of
difficulties ahead, that on one of the most frequented tracks in
Hawaii, we had not met a single traveller, though it was Saturday, a
special travelling day.
We crossed one gulch in which the water was strong, and up to our
horses' bodies, and came upon the incorrigible Kaluna, who, instead
of catching his horse, was recounting his adventures to a circle of
natives, but promised to follow us soon. D. then said that the next
gulch was rather a bad one, and that we must not wait for Kaluna,
but ride fast, and try to get through it. When we reached the pali
above it, we heard the roaring of a torrent, and when we descended
to its brink it looked truly bad, but D. rode in, and I waited on
the margin. She got safely across, but when she was near the
opposite side her large horse plunged, slipped, and scrambled in a
most unpleasant way, and she screamed something to me which I could
not hear. Then I went in, and
"At the first plunge the horse sank low,
And the water broke o'er the saddle bow:"
but the brave animal struggled through, with the water up to the top
of her back, till she reached the place where D.'s horse had looked
so insecure. In another moment she and I rolled backwards into deep
water, as if she had slipped from a submerged rock. I saw her fore
feet pawing the air, and then only her head was above water. I
struck her hard with my spurs, she snorted, clawed, made a desperate
struggle, regained her footing, got into shallow water, and landed
safely. It was a small but not an agreeable adventure.
We went on again, the track now really dangerous from denudation and
slipperiness. The rain came down, if possible, yet more heavily,
and coursed fiercely down each pali track. Hundreds of cascades
leapt from the cliffs, bringing down stones with a sharp rattling
sound. We crossed a bridge over one gulch, where the water was
thundering down in such volume that it seemed as if it must rend the
hard basalt of the palis. Then we reached the lofty top of the
great Hakalau gulch, the largest of all, with the double river, and
the ocean close to the ford. Mingling with the deep reverberations
of the surf, I heard the sharp crisp rush of a river, and of "a
river that has no bridge."
The dense foliage, and the exigencies of the steep track, which had
become very difficult, owing to the washing away of the soil,
prevented me from seeing anything till I got down. I found Deborah
speaking to a native, who was gesticulating very emphatically, and
pointing up the river. The roar was deafening, and the sight
terrific. Where there were two shallow streams a week ago, with a
house and good-sized piece of ground above their confluence, there
was now one spinning, rushing, chafing, foaming river, twice as wide
as the Clyde at Glasgow, the land was submerged, and, if I remember
correctly, the house only stood above the flood. And, most fearful
to look upon, the ocean, in three huge breakers, had come quite in,
and its mountains of white surge looked fearfully near the only
possible crossing. I entreated D. not to go on. She said we could
not go back, that the last gulch was already impassable, that
between the two there was no house in which we could sleep, that the
river had a good bottom, that the man thought if our horses were
strong we could cross now, but not later, etc. In short, she
overbore all opposition, and plunged in, calling to me, "spur, spur,
all the time."
Just as I went in, I took my knife and cut open the cloak which
contained the cocoanuts, one only remaining. Deborah's horse I knew
was strong, and shod, but my unshod and untried mare, what of her?
My soul and senses literally reeled among the dizzy horrors of the
wide, wild tide, but with an effort I regained sense and self-
possession, for we were in, and there was no turning. D., ahead,
screeched to me what I could not hear; she said afterwards it was
"spur, spur, and keep up the river;" the native was shrieking in
Hawaiian from the hinder shore, and waving to the right, but the
torrents of rain, the crash of the breakers, and the rush and hurry
of the river confused both sight and hearing. I saw D.'s great
horse carried off his legs, my mare, too, was swimming, and shortly
afterwards, between swimming, struggling, and floundering, we
reached what had been the junction of the two rivers, where there
was foothold, and the water was only up to the seat of the saddles.
Remember, we were both sitting nearly up to our waists in water, and
it was only by screaming that our voices were heard above the din,
and to return or go on seemed equally perilous. Under these
critical circumstances the following colloquy took place, on my
side, with teeth chattering, and on hers, with a sudden
forgetfulness of English produced by her first sense of the imminent
danger we were in.
Self.--"My mare is so tired, and so heavily weighted, we shall be
drowned, or I shall."
Deborah (with more reason on her side).--"But can't go back, we no
stay here, water higher all minutes, spur horse, think we come
through."
Self.--"But if we go on there is broader, deeper water between us
and the shore; your husband would not like you to run such a risk."
Deborah.--"Think we get through, if horses give out, we let go; I
swim and save you."
Even under these circumstances a gleam of the ludicrous shot through
me at the idea of this small fragile being bearing up my weight
among the breakers. I attempted to shift my saddle-bags upon her
powerful horse, but being full of water and under water, the attempt
failed, and as we spoke both our horses were carried off their
vantage ground into deep water.
With wilder fury the river rushed by, its waters whirled dizzily,
and, in spite of spurring and lifting with the rein, the horses were
swept seawards. It was a very fearful sight. I saw Deborah's horse
spin round, and thought woefully of the possible fate of the bright
young wife, almost a bride; only the horses' heads and our own heads
and shoulders were above water; the surf was thundering on our left,
and we were drifting towards it "broadside on." When I saw the
young girl's face of horror I felt increased presence of mind, and
raising my voice to a shriek, and telling her to do as I did, I
lifted and turned my mare with the rein, so that her chest and not
her side should receive the force of the river, and the brave
animal, as if seeing what she should do, struck out desperately. It
was a horrible suspense. Were we stemming the torrent, or was it
sweeping us back that very short distance which lay between us and
the mountainous breakers? I constantly spurred my mare, guiding her
slightly to the left, the side grew nearer, and after exhausting
struggles, Deborah's horse touched ground, and her voice came
faintly towards me like a voice in a dream, still calling "Spur,
spur." My mare touched ground twice, and was carried off again
before she fairly got to land some yards nearer the sea than the
bridle track.
When our tired horses were taking breath I felt as if my heart
stopped, and I trembled all over, for we had narrowly escaped death.
I then put our saddle-bags on Deborah's horse. It was one of the
worst and steepest of the palis that we had to ascend; but I can't
remember anything about the road except that we had to leap some
place which we could not cross otherwise. Deborah, then thoroughly
alive to a sense of risk, said that there was only one more bad
gulch to cross before we reached Onomea, but it was the most
dangerous of all, and we could not get across, she feared, but we
might go and look at it. I only remember the extreme solitude of
the region, and scrambling and sliding down a most precipitous pali,
hearing a roar like cataract upon cataract, and coming suddenly down
upon a sublime and picturesque scene, with only standing room, and
that knee-deep in water, between a savage torrent and the cliff.
This gulch, called the Scotchman's gulch, I am told, because a
Scotchman was drowned there, must be at its crossing three-quarters
of a mile inland, and three hundred feet above the sea. In going to
Waipio, on noticing the deep holes and enormous boulders, some of
them higher than a man on horseback, I had thought what a fearful
place it would be if it were ever full; but my imagination had not
reached the reality. One huge compressed impetuous torrent, leaping
in creamy foam, boiling in creamy eddies, rioting in deep black
chasms, roared and thundered over the whole in rapids of the most
tempestuous kind, leaping down to the ocean in three grand broad
cataracts, the nearest of them not more than forty feet from the
crossing. Imagine the Moriston at the Falls, four times as wide and
fifty times as furious, walled in by precipices, and with a
miniature Niagara above and below, and you have a feeble
illustration of it.
Portions of two or three rocks only could be seen, and on one of
these, about twelve feet from the shore, a nude native, beautifully
tattooed, with a lasso in his hands, was standing nearly up to his
knees in foam; and about a third of the way from the other side,
another native in deeper water, steadying himself by a pole. A
young woman on horseback, whose near relative was dangerously ill at
Hilo, was jammed under the cliff, and the men were going to get her
across. Deborah, to my dismay, said that if she got safely over we
would go too, as these natives were very skilful. I asked if she
thought her husband would let her cross, and she said "No." I asked
her if she were frightened, and she said "Yes;" but she wished so to
get home, and her face was as pale as a brown face can be. I only
hope the man will prove worthy of her affectionate devotion.
Here, though people say it is a most perilous gulch, I was not
afraid for her life or mine, with the amphibious natives to help us;
but I was sorely afraid of being bruised, and scarred, and of
breaking the horses' legs, and I said I would not cross, but would
sleep among the trees; but the tumult drowned our voices, though the
Hawaiians by screeching could make themselves understood. The
nearest man then approached the shore, put the lasso round the nose
of the woman's horse, and dragged it into the torrent; and it was
exciting to see a horse creeping from rock to rock in a cataract
with alarming possibilities in every direction. But beasts may well
be bold, as they have not "the foreknowledge of death." When the
nearest native had got the horse as far as he could, he threw the
lasso to the man who was steadying himself with the pole, and urged
the horse on. There was a deep chasm between the two into which the
animal fell, as he tried to leap from one rock to another. I saw
for a moment only a woman's head and shoulders, a horse's head, a
commotion of foam, a native tugging at the lasso, and then a violent
scramble on to a rock, and a plunging and floundering through deep
water to shore.
Then Deborah said she would go, that her horse was a better and
stronger one; and the same process was repeated with the same slip
into the chasm, only with the variation that for a second she went
out of sight altogether. It was a terribly interesting and exciting
spectacle with sublime accompaniments. Though I had no fear of
absolute danger, yet my mare was tired, and I had made up my mind to
remain on that side till the flood abated; but I could not make the
natives understand that I wished to turn, and while I was screaming
"No, no," and trying to withdraw my stiffened limbs from the
stirrups, the noose was put round the mare's nose, and she went in.
It was horrible to know that into the chasm as the others went I too
must go, and in the mare went with a blind plunge. With violent
plunging and struggling she got her fore feet on the rock, but just
as she was jumping up to it altogether she slipped back snorting
into the hole, and the water went over my eyes. I struck her with
my spurs, the men screeched and shouted, the hinder man jumped in,
they both tugged at the lasso, and slipping and struggling, the
animal gained the rock, and plunged through deep water to shore, the
water covering that rock with a rush of foam, being fully two feet
deep.
Kaluna came up just after we had crossed, undressed, made his
clothes into a bundle, and got over amphibiously, leaping, swimming,
and diving, looking like a water-god, with the horse and mule after
him. His dexterity was a beautiful sight; but on looking back I
wondered how human beings ever devised to cross such a flood. We
got over just in time. Some travellers who reached Laupahoehoe
shortly after we left, more experienced than we were, suffered a two
days' detention rather than incur a similar risk. Several mules and
horses, they say, have had their legs broken in crossing this gulch
by getting them fast between the rocks.
Shortly after this, Deborah uttered a delighted exclamation, and her
pretty face lighted up, and I saw her husband spurring along the top
of the next pali, and he presently joined us, and I exchanged my
tired mare for his fresh, powerful horse. He knew that a freshet
was imminent, and believing that we should never leave Laupahoehoe,
he was setting off, provided with tackle for getting himself across,
intending to join us, and remain with us till the rivers fell. The
presence of a responsible white man seemed a rest at once. We had
several more gulches to cross, but none of them were dangerous; and
we rode the last seven miles at a great pace, though the mire and
water were often up to the horses' knees, and came up to Onomea at
full gallop, with spirit and strength enough for riding other twenty
miles. Dry clothing, hot baths, and good tea followed delightfully
upon our drowning ride. I remained over Sunday at Onomea, and
yesterday rode here with a native in heavy rain, and received a warm
welcome. Our adventures are a nine days' wonder, and every one says
that if we had had a white man or an experienced native with us, we
should never have been allowed to attempt the perilous ride. I feel
very thankful that we are living to tell of it, and that Deborah is
not only not worse but considerably better. E--- will expect some
reflections; but none were suggested at the time, and I will not now
invent what I ought to have thought and felt.
Due honour must be given to the Mexican saddle. Had I been on a
side-saddle, and encumbered with a riding-habit, I should have been
drowned. I feel able now to ride anywhere and any distance upon it,
while Miss Karpe, who began by being much stronger than I was, has
never recovered from the volcano ride, and seems quite ill.
Last night Kilauea must have been tremendously active. At ten P.M.,
from the upper verandah, we saw the whole western sky fitfully
illuminated, and the glare reddened the snow which is lying on Mauna
Loa, an effect of fire on ice which can rarely be seen.
I.L.B.