I am sitting at the door of a grass lodge, at the end of all things,
for no one can pass further by land than this huge lonely cleft.
About thirty natives are sitting about me, all staring, laughing,
and chattering, and I am the only white person in the region. We
have all had a meal, sitting round a large calabash of poi and a
fowl, which was killed in my honour, and roasted in one of their
stone ovens. I have forgotten my knife, and have had to help myself
after the primitive fashion of aborigines, not without some fear,
for some of them I am sure are in an advanced stage of leprosy. The
brown tattooed limbs of one man are stretched across the mat, the
others are sitting cross-legged, making lauhala leis. One man is
making fishing-lines of a beautifully white and marvellously
tenacious fibre, obtained from an Hawaiian "flax" plant (possibly
Urtica argentea), very different from the New Zealand Phormium
tenax. Nearly all the people of the valley are outside, having come
to see the wahine haole: only one white woman, and she a resident
of Hawaii, having been seen in Waimanu before. I am really alone,
miles of mountain and gulch lie between me and the nearest whites.
This is a wonderful place: a ravine about three miles long and
three-quarters of a mile wide, without an obvious means of ingress,
being walled in by precipices from 2000 to 4000 feet high. Five
cascades dive from the palis at its head, and unite to form a placid
river about up to a horse's body here, and deep enough for a horse
to swim in a little below. Dense forests of various shades of green
fill up the greater part of the valley, concealing the basins into
which the cascades leap, and the grey basalt of the palis is mostly
hidden by greenery. At the open end, two bald bluffs, one of them
2000 feet in height, confront the Pacific, and its loud booming surf
comes up to within one hundred yards of the house where I am
writing, but is banked off by a heaped-up barrier of colossal
shingle.
Hot and silent, a sunset world of an endless afternoon, it seems a
palpable and living dream. And a few of these people, I understand,
have dreamed away their lives here, never having been beyond their
valley, at least by land. But it is a dream of ceaseless speech and
rippling laughter. They are the merriest people I have yet seen,
and doubtless their isolated life is dear to them.
I wish I could sketch this most picturesque scene. In the verandah,
which is formed of mats, two handsome youths, and five women in
green, red, and orange chemises, all with leis of ferns round their
hair, are reclining on the ground. Outside of this there is a
pavement of large lava stones, and groups in all colours, wreathed
and garlanded, including some much disfigured old people, crouching
in red and yellow blankets, are sitting and lying there. Some are
fondling small dogs; and a number of large ones, with a whole tribe
of amicable cats, are picking bones. Surf-boards, paddles, saddles,
lassos, spurs, gear, and bundles of ti leaves are lying about.
Thirteen horses are tethered outside, some of which brought the
riders who escorted me triumphantly from the head of the valley.
The foreheads of the precipices opposite are reddening in the
sunset, and between them and me horses and children are constantly
swimming across the broad, still stream which divides the village
into two parts; and now and then a man in a malo, and children who
have come up the river swimming, with their clothes in one hand,
increase the assemblage.
All are intently watching me, but are as kind and good-natured as
possible; and my guide from Waipio is discoursing to them about me.
He knows a little abrupt, disjointed, almost unintelligible English,
and comes up every now and then with an interrogation in his manner,
"Father? mother? married? watch? How came?" "You" appears beyond
his efforts. "Kilauea? Lunalilo?" Then he goes back and orates
rapidly, gesticulating emphatically. A very handsome, pleasant-
looking man, with a red sash round his waist, who, I understand from
signs, is the schoolmaster, emerged from the throng, and sat down
beside me; but his English appears limited to these words, "How
old?" When I told him by counting on my fingers he laughed
heartily, and said "Too old," and he told the others, and they all
laughed. I have photographs of Queen Victoria and Mr. Coan in my
writing-book, and when I exhibited them they crowded round me
clapping their hands, and screaming with delight when they
recognized Mr. Coan. The king's handwriting was then handed round
amidst reverent "ahs" and "ohs," or what sounded like them. This
letter was also passed round and examined lengthwise, sidewise, and
upside down. They shrieked with satirical laughter when I pressed
some fragile ferns in my blotting-book. The natives think it quite
idiotic in us to attach any value to withered leaves. My inkstand
with its double-spring lids has been a great amusement. Each one
opened both, and shut them again, and a chorus of "maikai, maikai,"
(good) ran round the circle. They seem so simple and good that at
last I have trusted them with my watch, which excites unbounded
admiration, probably because of its small size. It is now on its
travels; but I am not the least anxious about it. A man pointed to
a hut some distance on the other side of the river, and appeared
interrogative, and on my replying affirmatively, he mounted a horse
and carried off the watch in the direction indicated. Mr. Ellis
came to this valley in a canoe, and he mentions that when he
preached, the natives, who seemed to be very indifferent to the
general truths of Christianity, became very deeply interested when
they heard of Ora loa ia Jesu (endless life by Jesus). While I was
up the valley the poor people made a wonderful bed of seven fine
mats, one over the other, on one side of the house, and screened it
off with a flaring muslin curtain; but on the other side there are
ten pillows in a row, so that I wonder how many are to occupy the
den during the night. I am now writing inside the house, with a
hollowed stone, with some beef fat and a wick in it, for a light,
and two youths seem delegated to attend upon me. One holds my ink,
and if I look up, the other rushes for something that I am supposed
to want. They insist on thinking that I am cold because my clothes
are wet, and have thrown over me several folds of tapa, made from
the inner bark of the wauti or cloth plant (Broussonetia
papyrifera). They brought me a kalo leaf containing a number of
living freshwater shrimps, and were quite surprised when I did not
eat them.
WAIPIO, March 5th.
It seems fully a week since I left Waimea yesterday morning, so many
new experiences have been crowded into the time. I will try to
sketch my expedition while my old friend Halemanu is preparing
dinner. The morning opened gloriously. The broad Waimea plains
were flooded with red and gold, and the snowy crest of Mauna Kea was
cloudless. We breakfasted by lamp light (the days of course are
short in this latitude), and were away before six. My host kindly
provided me with a very fine horse and some provisions in a leather
wallet, and with another white man and a native accompanied me as
far as this valley, where they had some business. The morning
deepened into gorgeousness. A blue mist hung in heavy folds round
the violet bases of the mountains, which rose white and sharp into
the rose-flushed sky; the dew lay blue and sparkling on the short
crisp grass; the air was absolutely pure, and with a suspicion of
frost in it. It was all very fair, and the horses enjoyed the
morning freshness, and danced and champed their bits as though they
disliked being reined in. We rode over level grass-covered ground,
till we reached the Hamakua bush, fringed with dead trees, and full
of ohias and immense fern trees, some of them with a double tier of
fronds, far larger and finer than any that I saw in New Zealand.
There are herds of wild goats, cattle, and pigs on the island, and
they roam throughout this region, trampling, grubbing, and rending,
grinding the bark of the old trees and eating up the young ones.
This ravaging is threatening at no distant date to destroy the
beauty and alter the climate of the mountainous region of Hawaii.
The cattle are a hideous breed--all bones, hide, and horns.
We were at the top of the Waipio pali at eight, and our barefooted
horses, used to the soft pastures of Waimea, refused to carry us
down its rocky steep, so we had to walk. I admired this lonely
valley far more than before. It was full of infinite depths of
blue--blue smoke in lazy spirals curled upwards; it was eloquent in
a morning silence that I felt reluctant to break. Against its dewy
greenness the beach shone like coarse gold, and its slow silver
river lingered lovingly, as though loth to leave it, and be merged
in the reckless loud-tongued Pacific. Across the valley, the track
I was to take climbed up in thready zigzags, and disappeared round a
bold headland. It was worth a second visit just to get a glimpse of
such a vision of peace.
Halemanu, with hospitable alacrity, soon made breakfast ready, after
which Mr. S., having arranged for my further journey, left me here,
and for the first time I found myself alone among natives ignorant
of English. For the Waimanu trip it is essential to have a horse
bred in the Waimanu Valley and used to its dizzy palis, and such a
horse was procured, and a handsome native, called Hananui, as guide.
We were away by ten, and galloped across the valley till we came to
the nearly perpendicular pali on the other side. The sight of this
air-hung trail from Halemanu's house has turned back several
travellers who were bent on the trip, but I had been told that it
was quite safe on a Waimanu horse; and keeping under my fears as
best I could, I let Hananui precede me, and began the ascent, which
is visible from here for an hour. The pali is as nearly
perpendicular as can be. Not a bush or fern, hardly a tuft of any
green thing, clothes its bare, scathed sides. It terminates
precipitously on the sea at a height of 2000 feet. Up this shelving
wall, something like a sheep track, from thirty to forty-six inches
broad, goes in great swinging zigzags, sometimes as broken steps of
rock breast high, at others as a smooth ledge with hardly foothold,
in three places carried away by heavy rains--altogether the most
frightful track that imagination can conceive. {235} It was most
unpleasant to see the guide's horse straining and scrambling,
looking every now and then as if about to fall over backwards. My
horse went up wisely and nobly, but slipping, jumping, scrambling,
and sending stones over the ledge, now and then hanging for a second
by his fore feet. The higher we went the narrower and worse it
grew. The girth was loose, so as not to impede the horse's
respiration, the broad cinch which usually passes under the body
having been fastened round his chest, and yet it was once or twice
necessary to run the risk of losing my balance by taking my left
foot out of the stirrup to press it against the horse's neck to
prevent it from being crushed, while my right hung over the
precipice. We came to a place where the path had been carried away,
leaving a declivity of loose sand and gravel. You can hardly
realize how difficult it was to dismount, when there was no margin
outside the horse. I somehow slid under him, being careful not to
turn the saddle, and getting hold of his hind leg, screwed myself
round carefully behind him. It was alarming to see these sure-
footed creatures struggle and slide in the deep gravel as though
they must go over, and not less so to find myself sliding, though I
was grasping my horse's tail.
Between the summit and Waimanu, a distance of ten miles, there are
nine gulches, two of them about 900 feet deep, all very beautiful,
owing to the broken ground, the luxuriant vegetation, and the bright
streams, but the kona, or south wind, was blowing, bringing up the
hot breath of the equatorial belt, and the sun was perfectly
unclouded, so that the heat of the gorges was intense. They succeed
each other occasionally with very great rapidity. Between two of
the deepest and steepest there is a ridge not more than fifty yards
wide.
Soon after noon we simultaneously stopped our horses. The Waimanu
Valley lay 2500 feet (it is said) below us, and the trail struck off
into space. It was a scene of loneliness to which Waipio seems the
world. In a second the eye took in the twenty grass lodges of its
inhabitants, the five cascades which dive into the dense forests of
its upper end, its river like a silver ribbon, and its meadows of
living green. In ten seconds a bird could have spanned the ravine
and feasted on its loveliness, but we could only tip over the dizzy
ridge that overhangs the valley, and laboriously descend into its
heat and silence. The track is as steep and broken as that which
goes up from hence, but not nearly so narrow, and without its
elements of terror, for kukuis, lauhalas, ohias, and ti trees, with
a lavish growth of ferns and trailers, grow luxuriantly in every
damp rift of rock, and screen from view the precipices of the pali.
The valley looks as if it could only be reached in a long day's
travel, so very far it is below, but the steepness of the track
makes it accessible in an hour from the summit. As we descended,
houses and a church which had looked like toys at first, dilated on
our sight, the silver ribbon became a stream, the specks on the
meadows turned into horses, the white wavy line on the Pacific beach
turned into a curling wave, and lower still, I saw people, who had
seen us coming down, hastily shuffling into clothes.
There were four houses huddled between the pali and the river, and
six or eight, with a church and schoolhouse on the other side; and
between these and the ocean a steep narrow beach, composed of large
stones worn as round and smooth as cannon balls, on which the surf
roars the whole year round. The pali which walls in the valley on
the other side is inaccessible. The school children and a great
part of the population had assembled in front of the house which I
described before. There was a sort of dyke of rough lava stones
round it, difficult to climb, but the natives, though they are very
kind, did not, on this or any similar occasion, offer me any help,
which neglect, I suppose, arises from the fact that the native women
never need help, as they are as strong, fearless, and active as the
men, and rival them in swimming and other athletic sports. An old
man, clothed only with his dark skin, was pounding baked kalo for
poi, in front of the house; a woman with flowers in her hair, but
apparently not otherwise clothed, was wading up to her waist in the
river, pushing before her a light trumpet-shaped basket used for
catching shrimps, and the other women wore the usual bright-coloured
chemises.
I wanted to make the most of the six hours of daylight left, and we
remounted our horses and rode for some distance up the river, which
is the highway of the valley, all the children swimming on our right
and left, each holding up a bundle of clothes with one hand, and two
canoes paddled behind us. The river is still and clear, with a
smooth bottom, but comes halfway up a horse's body, and riders take
their feet out of the stirrups, bring them to a level with the
saddle, lean slightly back, and hold them against the horse's neck.
Equestrians following this fashion, canoes gliding, children and
dogs swimming, were a most amusing picture. Several of the children
swim to and from school every day. I was anxious to get rid of this
voluntary escort, and we took a gallop over the soft springy grass
till we reached some very pretty grass houses, under the shade of
the most magnificent bread-fruit trees on Hawaii, loaded with fruit.
There were orange trees in blossom, and coffee trees with masses of
sweet white flowers lying among their flaky branches like snow, and
the unfailing cocoa-nut rising out of banana groves, and clusters of
gardenia smothering the red hibiscus. Here Hananui adopted a
showman's air; he made me feel as if I were one of Barnum's
placarded monsters. I had nothing to do but sit on my horse and be
stared at. I felt that my bleached face was unpleasing, that my
eyes and hair were faded, and that I had a great deal to answer for
in the way of colour and attire. From the way in which he asked me
unintelligible questions, I gathered that the people were
catechizing him about me, and that he was romancing largely at my
expense. They brought me some bananas and cocoa-nut milk, which
were most refreshing.
Beyond the houses the valley became a jungle of Indian shot (Canna
indica), eight or nine feet high, guavas and ohias, with an
entangled undergrowth of ferns rather difficult to penetrate, and
soon Hananui, whose soul was hankering after the delights of
society, stopped, saying, "Lios (horses) no go." "We'll try," I
replied, and rode on first. He sat on his horse laughing
immoderately, and then followed me. I see that in travelling with
natives it is essential to have a definite plan of action in one's
own mind, and to verge on self-assertion in carrying it out. We
fought our way a little further, and then he went out of sight
altogether in the jungle, his horse having floundered up to his
girths in soft ground, on which we dismounted and tethered the
horses. H. had never been any further, and as I failed to make him
understand that I desired to visit the home of the five cascades, I
had to reverse our positions and act as guide. We crept along the
side of a torrent among exquisite trees, moss, and ferns, till we
came to a place where it divided. There were three horses tethered
there, some wearing apparel lying on the rocks, and some human
footprints along one of the streams, which decided me in favour of
the other. H. remonstrated by signs, as doubtless he espied an
opportunity for much gossip in the other direction, but on my
appearing persistent, he again laughed and followed me.
From this point it was one perfect, rapturous, intoxicating, supreme
vision of beauty, and I felt, as I now believe, that at last I had
reached a scene on which foreign eyes had never looked. The glories
of the tropical forest closed us in with their depth, colour, and
redundancy. Here the operations of nature are rapid and decisive.
A rainfall of eleven feet in a year and a hothouse temperature force
every plant into ceaseless activity, and make short work of decay.
Leafage, blossom, fruitage, are simultaneous and perennial. The
river, about as broad as the Cam at Cambridge, leaped along, clear
like amber, pausing to rest awhile in deep bright pools, where fish
were sporting above the golden sand, a laughing, sparkling, rushing,
terrorless stream, "without mysteries or agonies," broken by rocks,
green with mosses and fragile ferns, and in whose unchilled waters,
not more than three feet deep, wading was both safe and pleasant.
It was not possible to creep along its margin, the forest was so
dense and tangled, so we waded the whole way, and wherever the water
ran fiercely my unshod guide helped me. One varied, glorious maze
of vegetation came down to it, and every green thing leant lovingly
towards it, or stooped to touch it, and over its whole magic length
was arched and interlaced the magnificent large-leaved ohia, whose
millions of spikes of rose-crimson blossoms lit up the whole arcade,
and the light of the afternoon sun slanted and trickled through
them, dancing in the mirthful water, turning its far-down sands to
gold, and brightening the many-shaded greens of candlenut and
breadfruit. It shone on majestic fern-trees, on the fragile
Polypodium tamariscinum, which clung tremblingly to the branches of
the ohia, on the beautiful lygodium, which adorned the uncouth trunk
of the breadfruit; on shining banana leaves and glossy trailing
yams; on gigantic lianas, which, climbing to the tops of the largest
trees, descended in vast festoons, passing from tree to tree, and
interlacing the forest with a living network; and on lycopodiums of
every kind, from those which wrapped the rocks in feathery green to
others hardly distinguishable from ferns. But there were twilight
depths too, where no sunlight penetrated the leafy gloom, damp and
cool: dreamy shades, in which the music of the water was all too
sweet, and the loveliness too entrancing, creating that sadness,
hardly "akin to pain," which is latent in all intense enjoyment.
Here and there a tree had fallen across the river, from which grew
upwards and trailed downwards, fairy-like, semi-transparent mosses
and ferns, all glittering with moisture and sunshine, and now and
then a scarlet tropic bird heightened the effect by the flash of his
plumage.
After an hour of wading we emerged into broad sunny daylight at the
home of the five cascades, which fall from a semicircular precipice
into three basins. It is not, however, possible to pass from one to
the other. This great gulf is a grand sight, with its dark deep
basin from which it seemed so far to look up to the heavenly blue,
and the water falling calmly and unhurriedly, amidst innumerable
rainbows, from a height of 3000 feet. The sides were draped with
ferns flourishing under the spray, and at the base the rock was very
deeply caverned. I enjoyed a delicious bath, relying on sun and
wind to dry my clothes, and then reluctantly waded down the river.
At its confluence with another stream, still arched by ohias, a man
and two women appeared rising out of the water, like a vision of the
elder world in the days of Fauns, and Naiads, and Hamadryads. The
water was up to their waists, and leis of ohia blossoms and ferns,
and masses of unbound hair fantastically wreathed with moss, fell
over their faultless forms, and their rich brown skin gleamed in the
slant sunshine. They were catching shrimps with trumpet-shaped
baskets, perhaps rather a prosaic occupation. They joined us, and
we waded down together to the place where they had left their
horses. The women slipped into their holukus, and the man insisted
on my riding his barebacked horse to the place where we had left our
own, and then we all galloped over the soft grass.
Waimanu had turned out to meet us about thirty people on horseback,
all of whom shook hands with me, and some of them threw over me
garlands of ohia, pandanus, and hibiscus. Where our cavalcade
entered the river, a number of children and dogs and three canoes
awaited us, and thus escorted I returned triumphantly to the house.
The procession on the river of paddling canoes, swimming children,
and dogs, and more than thirty riders, with their feet tucked up
round their horses' necks, all escorting a "pale face," was
grotesque and enchanting, and I revelled in this lapse into
savagery, and enjoyed heartily the kindliness and goodwill of this
unsophisticated people.
When darkness spread over the valley, clear voices ascended in a
weird recitative, the room filled up with people, pipes circulated
freely, poi was again produced, and calabashes of cocoa-nut milk.
The meles were long, and I crept within my curtain and lay down, but
the drowsiness which legitimately came over me after riding thirty
miles and wading two, was broken in upon by two monstrous
cockroaches really as large as mice, with fierce-looking antennae
and prominent eyes, both of which mounted guard on my pillow. On
rising to drive them away, I found to my dismay that they were but
the leaders of a host, which only made a temporary retreat, rustling
over the mat and dried grass with the crisp tread of mice, and
scaring away sleep for some hours. Worse than these were the
mosquitoes, also an imported nuisance, which stabbed and stung
without any preliminary droning; and the heat was worse still, for
thirteen human beings were lying on the floor and the door was shut.
Had I known that two of these were lepers, I should have felt far
from comfortable. As it was, I got up soon after midnight, and
cautiously stepping among the sleeping forms, went out of doors.
Everything favoured reflection, but I think the topics to which my
mind most frequently reverted were my own absolute security--a lone
white woman among "savages," and the civilizing influence which
Christianity has exercised, so that even in this isolated valley,
gouged out of a mountainous coast, there was nothing disagreeable or
improper to be seen. The night was very still, but the sea was
moaning; the river rippled very gently as it brushed past the reeds;
there was a hardly perceptible vibration in the atmosphere, which
suggested falling water and quivering leaves; and the air was full
of a heavy, drowsy fragrance, the breath of orange flowers, perhaps,
and of the night-blowing Cereus, which had opened its ivory urn to
the moon. I should have liked to stay out all night in the vague,
delicious moonlight, but the dew was heavy, and moreover I had not
any boots on, so I reluctantly returned to the grass house, which
was stifling with heat and smells of cocoa-nut oil, tobacco, and the
rancid smoke from beef fat.
Before sunrise this morning my horse was saddled, and a number of
natives had assembled. Hananui had disappeared, but the man who
lent me his bare-backed horse yesterday was ready to act as guide.
My boots could not then be found, so I adopted the native fashion of
riding with bare feet. We again rode up the river in that slow and
solemn fashion in which horses walk in water, galloped over a
stretch of grass, crossed a bright stream several times, and then
entered a dense jungle of Indian shot, plantains, and sadlerias,
with breadfruit, kukui, and ohia rising out of it. There were
thousands of plantains, a fruit resembling the banana, but that it
requires cooking. The Indian shot, the yellow-blossomed variety,
was of a gigantic size. Its hard, black seeds put into a bladder
furnish the chic-chac, which in many places is used as an
accompaniment to the utterly abominable and heathenish tom-tom.
Here guavas as large as oranges and as yellow as lemons ripened and
fell unheeded. Sometimes deep down we heard the rush of water, and
Paalau got down and groped for it on his hands and knees; sometimes
we heard a noise as of hippopotami, but nothing could be seen but
the tips of ears, as a herd of happy, unbroken horses, scared by our
approach, crashed away through the jungle. Clear rapid streams,
fern-fringed, sometimes offered us a few yards of highway, but the
jungle ever grew more dense, the forest trees larger, the lianas
more tangled, the streams more sunk and rocky, and though the horses
shut their eyes and boldly pushed through the tangle, we were fairly
foiled when within half a mile from the head of the valley. I
thoroughly appreciated the unsightly leather guards which are here
used to cover the stirrups and feet, as without them I could not
have ridden ten yards. We were so hemmed in that it was difficult
to dismount, but I bound some wild kalo leaves round my feet, and
managed to get over some broken rock to a knoll, from which I
obtained a superb view of the wonderful cleft. Palis 3000 feet in
height walled in its head with a complete inaccessibility. It lay
in cool dewy shadow till the sudden sun flushed its precipices with
pink, and a broad bar of light revealed the great chasm in which it
terminates, while far off its portals opened upon the red eastern
sky. This little lonely world had become so very dear to me, that I
found it hard to leave it.
There was some stir near the sea, for a man was about to build a
grass house, and they were preparing a stone pavement for it.
Thirty people sat on the ground in a line from the beach, and passed
stones from hand to hand, as men pass buckets at a fire. It seemed
a very attractive occupation, and I could hardly get Hananui to
leave it. The natives are most gregarious and social in their
habits. They assemble together for everything that has to be made
or done, and their occupations and amusements are shared by both
sexes. In old days it is said that a king of Hawaii assembled most
of the adults of the then populous island, and formed a human chain
three miles long to pass up stones for the building of the great
Heiau in Kona. It is said that this valley had 2000 inhabitants
forty years ago, but they have dwindled to 117. The former estimate
is probably not an excessive one, for nearly the whole valley is
suitable for the culture of kalo, and a square mile of kalo will
feed 15,000 natives for a year.
Two women were shrimping in the river, the children were swimming to
school, blue smoke curled up into the still air, kalo was baking
among the stones, and a group of women sat sewing and making leis on
the ground. The Waimanu day had begun; and it was odd to think that
through the long summer years days dawned like this, and that the
people of the valley grew grey and old in shrimping and sewing and
kalo baking. All Waimanu shook hands with me, the kindly "Aloha"
filled the air, and the women threw garlands over us both. I could
hardly induce my host to accept a dollar and a half for my
entertainment. From the dizzy summit of the pali, where the sun was
high and hot, I looked my last on the dark, cool valley, slumbering
in an endless calm, the deepest, greenest, quaintest cleft on all
the island.
The sun was fierce and bright, the ocean had a metallic glint, the
hot breath of the kona was scorching. My hands, swollen from
mosquito bites, could not be stuffed into my gloves, and inflamed
under the sun, and my wet boots baked and stiffened on my feet.
Hananui plaited a crown of leaves for my hot head, which I found a
great relief. I was still minded to linger, for one side of each
glorious gulch was cool with shadow and dripping with dew. The blue
morning glories were yet unwilted, rivulets dropped down into ferny
grottoes and lingered there, rose ohia blossoms lighted shady
places, orange flowers gleamed like stars amidst the dense leafage,
and the crimped-leaved coffee shrubs were white with their mimic
snow. It was my last tropical dream, and I was rudely roused by
finding myself on the unsightly verge of the great bluff on the
north side of this valley, which plunges to the sea with an
uncompromising perpendicular dip of 2000 feet, and carries on its
dizzy brow a shelving trail not more than two feet wide!
I felt that I must go back and live and die in Waimanu rather than
descend that scathed steep, and being stupid with terror flung
myself from my horse, forgetting that it was much safer to trust to
his four feet than to my two, and to an animal without "nerves,"
dizziness, or "the fore-knowledge of death," than to my palsied,
cowardly self. I had intended to go into details of the horrible
descent, but the "pilikia" is over now, and Halemanu claps me on the
shoulder with an approving smile, ejaculating, "Maikai, maikai"
(good). Besides, my returning senses inform me that I have not
tasted food since yesterday, and some delicious river fishes are
smoking on the table. . . . .
I.L.B.