ULUPALAKUA. MAUI. May 12th.
It is three weeks since I left the Hawaiian Hotel and its green mist
of algarobas, but my pleasant visits in this island do not furnish
much that will interest you. There was great excitement on the
wharf at Honolulu the evening I left. It was crowded with natives,
the king's band was playing, old hags were chanting meles, and
several of the royal family, and of the "upper ten thousand" were
there, taking leave of the Governess of Hawaii, the Princess
Keelikolani, the late king's half-sister. The throng and excitement
were so great, that we were outside the reef before I got a good
view of this lady, the largest and the richest woman on the islands.
Her size and appearance are most unfortunate, but she is said to be
good and kind. She was dressed in a very common black holuku, with
a red bandana round her throat, round which she wore a le of immense
oleanders, as well as round her hair, which was cut short. She had
a large retinue, and her female attendants all wore leis of
oleander. They spread very fine mats on the deck, under pulu beds,
covered with gorgeous quilts, on which the Princess and her suite
slept, and in the morning the beds were removed, breakfast was
spread on the mats, and she, some of her attendants, and two or
three white men who received invitations, sat on the deck round it.
It was a far less attractive meal than that which the serene steward
served below. The calabashes, which contained the pale pink poi,
were of highly polished kou wood, but there were no foreign
refinements. The other dishes were several kinds of raw fish, dried
devil-fish, boiled kalo, sweet potatoes, bananas, and cocoa-nut
milk.
I had a very uncomfortable night on a mattress on the deck, which
was overcrowded with natives, and some of the native women and two
foreigners had got a whiskey bottle, and behaved disgracefully. We
went round by the Leper Island.
I landed at Maaleia, on the leeward side of the sandy isthmus which
unites East and West Maui, got a good horse, and, with Mr. G---,
rode across to the residence of "Father Alexander," at Wailuku, a
flourishing district of sugar plantations. Mr. and Mrs. Alexander
were among the early missionaries, and still live on the mission
premises. Several of their sons are settled on the island in the
sugar business, and it was to the Heiku plantation, fifteen miles
off, of which Mr. S. Alexander is manager, that I went on the
following day, still escorted by Mr. G---. Here we heard that
captains of schooners which had arrived from Hawaii, report that a
light is visible on the terminal crater of Mauna Loa, 14,000 feet
above the sea, that Kilauea, the flank crater, is unusually active,
and that several severe shocks of earthquake have been felt. This
is exciting news.
Behind Wailuku is the Iao valley, up which I rode with two island
friends, and spent a day of supreme, satisfied admiration. At Iao
people may throw away pen and pencil in equal despair. The trail
leads down a gorge dark with forest trees, and then opens out into
an amphitheatre, walled in by precipices, from three to six thousand
feet high, misty with a thousand waterfalls, plumed with kukuis, and
feathery with ferns. A green-clad needle of stone, one thousand
feet in height, the last refuge of an army routed when the Wailuku
(waters of destruction) ran red with blood, keeps guard over the
valley. Other needles there are; and mimic ruins of bastions and
ramparts and towers came and passed mysteriously: and the shining
fronts of turrets gleamed through trailing mists, changing into
drifting visions of things that came and went, in sunshine and
shadow, mountains raising battered peaks into a cloudless sky, green
crags moist with ferns, and mists of water that could not fall, but
frittered themselves away on slopes of maiden-hair, and depths of
forest and ferns through which bright streams warble through the
summer years. Clouds boiling up from below drifted at times across
the mountain fronts, or lay like snow masses in the unsunned chasms:
and over the grey crags and piled up pinnacles, and glorified green
of the marvellous vision, lay a veil of thin blue haze, steeping the
whole in a serenity which seemed hardly to belong to earth.
The track from Wailuku to Heiku is over a Sahara in miniature, a
dreary expanse of sand and shifting sandhills, with a dismal growth
in some places of thornless thistles and indigo, and a tremendous
surf thunders on the margin. Trackless, glaring, choking, a guide
is absolutely necessary to a stranger, for the footprints or wheel-
marks of one moment are obliterated the next. I crossed the isthmus
three times, and the third time was quite as incapable of shaping my
course across it as the first, and though I had recklessly declined
a guide, was only too thankful for the one who was forced upon me.
It is a hateful ride, yet anything so hideous and aggressively
odious is a salutary experience in a land of so much beauty. Sand,
sand, sand! Sand-hills, smooth and red; sand plains, rippled,
whites and glaring; sand drifts shifting; sand clouds whirling; sand
in your eyes, nose, and mouth; sand stinging your face like pin
points; sand hiding even your horse's ears; sand rippling like
waves, hissing like spin-drift, malignant, venomous! You can only
open one eye at a time for a wink at where you are going. Looking
down upon it from Heiku, you can see nothing all day but the dense
brown clouds of a perpetual sand-storm.
My charming hostess and her husband made Heiku so fascinating, that
I only quitted it hoping to return. The object which usually
attracts strangers to Maui is the great dead volcano of Haleakala,
"The house of the sun," and I was fortunate in all the circumstances
of my ascent. My host at Heiku provided me with a horse and native
attendant, and I rode over the evening before to the house of his
brother, Mr. J. Alexander, who accompanied me, and his intelligent
and cultured society was one of the pleasures of the day.
People usually go up in the afternoon, camp near the summit, light a
fire, are devoured by fleas, roast and freeze alternately till
morning, and get up to see the grand spectacle of the sunrise, but I
think our plan preferable, of leaving at two in the morning. The
moon had set. It was densely dark, and it was raining on one side
of the road, though quite fine on the other. By the lamplight which
streamed from our early breakfast table, I only saw wet mules and
horses, laden with gear for a mountain ascent, a trim little
Japanese, who darted about helping, my native, who was picturesquely
dressed in a Mexican poncho, Mr. Alexander, who wore something which
made him unrecognisable; and myself, a tatterdemalion figure,
wearing a much-worn green topcoat of his over my riding suit, and a
tartan shawl arranged so as to fall nearly to my feet. Then we went
forth into the darkness. The road soon degenerated into a wood
road, then into a bridle track, then into a mere trail ascending all
the way; and at dawn, when the rain was over, we found ourselves
more than half-way up the mountain, amidst rocks, scoriae, tussocks,
ohelos, a few common compositae, and a few coarse ferns and woody
plants, which became coarser and scantier the higher we went up, but
never wholly ceased; for, at the very summit, 10,200 feet high,
there are some tufts of grass, and stunted specimens of a common
asplenium in clefts. Many people suffer from mountain sickness on
this ascent, but I suffered from nothing but the excruciating cold,
which benumbed my limbs and penetrated to my bones; and though I
dismounted several times and tried to walk, uphill exercise was
impossible in the rarefied air. The atmosphere was but one degree
below the freezing-point, but at that height, a brisk breeze on
soaked clothes was scarcely bearable.
The sunrise turned the densely packed clouds below into great rosy
masses, which broke now and then, showing a vivid blue sea, and
patches of velvety green. At seven, after toiling over a last steep
bit, among scoriae, and some very scanty and unlovely vegetation, we
reached what was said to be the summit, where a ragged wall of rock
shut out the forward view. Dismounting on some cinders, we stepped
into a gap, and from thence looked down into the most gigantic
crater on the earth. I confess that with the living fires of
Kilauea in my memory, I was at first disappointed with the deadness
of a volcano of whose activity there are no traditions extant.
Though during the hours which followed, its majesty and wonderment
grew upon me, yet a careful study of the admirable map of the
crater, a comparison of the heights of the very considerable cones
which are buried within it, and the attempt to realize the figures
which represent its circumference, area, and depth, not only give a
far better idea of it than any verbal description, but impress its
singular sublimity and magnitude upon one far more forcibly than a
single visit to the actual crater.
I mentioned in one of my first letters that East Maui, that part of
the island which lies east of the isthmus of perpetual dust-storms,
consists of a mountain dome 10,000 feet in height, with a monstrous
base. Its slopes are very regular, varying from eight to ten
degrees. Its lava-beds differ from those of Kauai and Oahu in being
lighter in colour, less cellular, and more impervious to water. The
windward side of the mountain is gashed and slashed by streams,
which in their violence have excavated large pot-holes, which serve
as reservoirs, and it is covered to a height of over 2000 feet by a
luxuriant growth of timber. On the leeward side, several black and
very fresh-looking streams of lava run into the sea, and the whole
coast for some height above the shore shows most vigorous volcanic
action. Elsewhere the rock is red and broken, and lateral cones
abound near the base.
The ascent from Makawao, though it is over rather a desolate tract
of land, has in its lower stages such a dismal growth of pining koa
and spurious sandal-wood, and in its upper ones so much ohelo scrub,
with grass and common aspleniums quite up to the top, that as one
sits lazily on one's sure-footed horse, the fact that one is
ascending a huge volcano is not forced upon one by any overmastering
sterility and nakedness. Somehow, one expects to pass through some
ulterior stage of blackness up to the summit. It is no such thing;
and the great surprise of Haleakala to me was, that when according
to calculation there should have been a summit, an abyss of vast
dimensions opened below. The mountain top has been in fact blown
off, and one is totally powerless to imagine what the forces must
have been which rent it asunder.
The crater was clear of fog and clouds, and lighted in every part by
the risen sun. The whole, with its contents, can be seen at a
single glance, though its girdling precipices are nineteen miles in
extent. Its huge, irregular floor is 2000 feet below; New York
might be hidden away within it, with abundant room to spare; and
more than one of the numerous subsidiary cones which uplift
themselves solitary or in clusters through the area, attain the
height of Arthur's Seat at Edinburgh. On the north and east are the
Koolau and Kaupo Gaps, as deep as the crater, through which oceans
of lava found their way to the sea. It looks as if the volcanic
forces, content with rending the mountain top in twain, had then
passed into an endless repose.
The crater appears to be composed of a hard grey clinkstone, much
fissured; but lower down the mountain, the rock is softer, and has a
bluish tinge. The internal cones are of very regular shape, and
most of them look as if their fires had only just gone out, with
their sides fiercely red, and their central cavities lined with
layers of black ash. They are all composed of cinders of light
specific gravity, and much of the ash is tinged with the hydrated
oxide of iron. Very few of the usual volcanic products are present.
{335} Small quantities of sulphur, in a very impure form, exist
here and there, but there are no sulphur or steam-cracks, or hot
springs on any part of the mountain. With its cold ashes and dead
force, it is a most tremendous spectacle of the power of fire.
Some previous travellers had generously left some faggots on the
summit, and we made a large fire for warmth, and I rolled my blanket
round me, and sat with my feet among the hot embers, but all to no
purpose. The wind was strong and keen, and the fierce splendour of
the tropic sun conveyed no heat. Mr. A. went away investigating,
the native rolled himself in his poncho and fell asleep by the fire,
and I divided the time between glimpses into the awful desolation of
the crater, snatched between the icy gusts of wind, and the
enjoyment of the wonderful cloud scenery which to everybody is a
great charm of the view from Haleakala. The day was perfect; for
first we had an inimitable view of the crater and all that could be
seen from the mountain-top, and then an equally inimitable view of
Cloudland. There was the gaunt, hideous, desolate abyss, with its
fiery cones, its rivers and surges of black lava and grey ash,
crossing and mingling all over the area, mixed with splotches of
colour and coils of satin rock, its walls dark and frowning,
everywhere riven and splintered, and clouds perpetually drifting in
through the great gaps, and filling up the whole crater with white
swirling masses, which in a few minutes melted away in the sunshine,
leaving it all as sharply definite as before. Before noon clouds
surrounded the whole mountain, not in the vague flocculent,
meaningless masses one usually sees, but in Arctic oceans, where
lofty icebergs, floes and pack, lay piled on each other, glistening
with the frost of a Polar winter; then alps on alps, and peaks of
well remembered ranges gleaming above glaciers, and the semblance of
forests in deep ravines loaded with new fallen snow. Snow-drifts,
avalanches, oceans held in bondage of eternal ice, and all this
massed together, shifting, breaking, glistering, filling up the
broad channel which divides Maui from Hawaii, and far away above the
lonely masses, rose, in turquoise blue, like distant islands, the
lofty Hawaiian domes of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, with snow on Mauna
Kea yet more dazzling than the clouds. There never was a stranger
contrast than between the hideous desolation of the crater below,
and those blue and jewelled summits rising above the shifting
clouds.
After some time the scene shifted, and through glacial rifts
appeared as in a dream the Eeka mountains which enfold the Iao
valley, broad fields of cane 8000 feet below, the flushed palm-
fringed coast, and the deep blue sea sleeping in perpetual calm.
But according to the well-known fraud which isolated altitudes
perpetrate upon the eye, it appeared as if we were looking up at our
landscape, not down; and no effort of the eye or imagination would
put things at their proper levels.
But gradually the clouds massed themselves, the familiar earth
disappeared, and we were "pinnacled in mid-heaven" in unutterable
isolation, blank forgotten units, in a white, wonderful, illuminated
world, without permanence or solidity. Our voices sounded thin in
the upper air. The keen, incisive wind that swept the summit, had
no kinship with the soft breezes which were rustling the tasselled
cane in the green fields of earth which had lately gleamed through
the drift. It was a new world and without sympathy, a solitude
which could be felt. Was it nearer God, I wonder, because so far
from man and his little works and ways? At least they seemed little
there, in presence of the tokens of a catastrophe which had not only
blown off a mountain top, and scattered it over the island, but had
disembowelled the mountain itself to a depth of 2000 feet.
Soon after noon we began to descend; and in a hollow of the
mountain, not far from the ragged edge of the crater, then filled up
with billows of cloud, we came upon what we were searching for; not,
however, one or two, but thousands of silverswords, their cold,
frosted silver gleam making the hill-side look like winter or
moonlight. They can be preserved in their beauty by putting them
under a glass shade, but it must be of monstrous dimensions, as the
finer plants measure 2 ft. by 18 in. without the flower stalk. They
exactly resemble the finest work in frosted silver, the curve of
their globular mass of leaves is perfect; and one thinks of them
rather as the base of an epergne for an imperial table, or as a
prize at Ascot or Goodwood, than as anything organic. A particular
altitude and temperature appear essential to them, and they are not
found straggling above or below a given line.
We reached Makawao very tired, soon after dark, to be heartily
congratulated on our successful ascent, and bearing no worse traces
of it than lobster-coloured faces, badly blistered.
After accepting sundry hospitalities I rode over here, skirting the
mountain at a height of 2000 feet, a most tedious ride, only
enlivened by the blaze of nasturtiums in some of the shallow
gulches. It is very pretty here, and I wish all invalids could
revel in the sweet changeless air. The name signifies "ripe bread-
fruit of the gods." The plantation is 2000 feet above the sea, and
is one of the finest on the islands; and owing to the slow maturity
of the cane at so great a height, the yield is from five to six tons
an acre. Water is very scarce; all that is used in the boiling-
house and elsewhere has been carefully led into concrete tanks for
storage, and even the walks in the proprietor's beautiful garden are
laid with cement for the same purpose. He has planted many thousand
Australian eucalyptus trees on the hillside in the hope of procuring
a larger rainfall, so that the neighbourhood has quite an exotic
appearance.
The coast is black and volcanic-looking below, jutting into the sea
in naked lava promontories, which nature has done nothing to drape.
Concerning a river of specially black lava, which runs into the sea
to the south of this house, the following legend is told:--
"A withered old woman stopped to ask food and hospitality at the
house of a dweller on this promontory, noted for his penuriousness.
His kalo patches flourished, cocoa-nuts and bananas shaded his hut,
nature was lavish of her wealth all round him. But the withered hag
was sent away unfed, and as she turned her back on the man she said,
'I will return to-morrow.'
"This was Pele, the goddess of the volcano, and she kept her word,
and came back the next day in earthquakes and thunderings, rent the
mountain, and blotted out every trace of the man and his dwelling
with a flood of fire."
Maui is very "foreign" and civilised, and although it has a native
population of over 12,000, the natives are much crowded on
plantations, and one encounters little of native life. There is a
large society composed of planters' and merchants' families, and the
residents are profuse in their hospitality. It is not infrequently
taken undue advantage of, and I have heard of planters compelled to
feign excuses for leaving their houses, in order to get rid of
unintroduced and obnoxious visitors, who have quartered themselves
on them for weeks at a time. It is wonderful that their patient
hospitality is not worn out, even though, as they say, they
sometimes "entertain angels unawares."
I.L.B.