RIDGE HOUSE, KONA, HAWAII. June 12.
I landed in Kealakakua Bay on a black lava block, on which tradition
says that Captain Cook fell, struck with his death-wound, a century
ago. The morning sun was flaming above the walls of lava 1,000 feet
in height which curve round the dark bay, the green deep water
rolled shorewards in lazy undulations, canoes piled full of
pineapples poised themselves on the swell, ancient cocopalms glassed
themselves in still waters--it was hot, silent, tropical.
The disturbance which made the bay famous is known to every
schoolboy; how the great explorer, long supposed by the natives to
be their vanished god Lono, betrayed his earthly lineage by groaning
when he was wounded, and was then dispatched outright. A cocoanut
stump, faced by a sheet of copper recording the circumstance, is the
great circumnavigator's monument. A few miles beyond, is the
enclosure of Haunaunau, the City of Refuge for western Hawaii. In
this district there is a lava road ascribed to Umi, a legendary
king, who is said to have lived 500 years ago. It is very perfect,
well defined on both sides with kerb-stones, and greatly resembles
the chariot ways in Pompeii. Near it are several structures formed
of four stones, three being set upright, and the fourth forming the
roof. In a northerly direction is the place where Liholiho, the
king who died in England, excited by drink and the persuasions of
Kaahumanu, broke tabu, and made an end of the superstitions of
heathenism. Not far off is the battle field on which the adherents
of the idols rallied their forces against the iconoclasts, and were
miserably and finally defeated. Recent lava streams have descended
on each side of the bay, and from the bare black rock of the landing
a flow may be traced up the steep ascent as far as a precipice, over
which it falls in waves and twists, a cataract of stone. A late
lava river passed through the magnificent forest on the southerly
slope, and the impressions of the stems of coco and fan palms are
stamped clearly on the smooth rock. The rainfall in Kona is heavy,
but there is no standing water, and only one stream in a distance of
100 miles.
This district is famous for oranges, coffee, pineapples, and
silence. A flaming palm-fringed shore with a prolific strip of
table land 1,500 feet above it, a dense timber belt eight miles in
breadth, and a volcano smoking somewhere between that and the
heavens, and glaring through the trees at night, are the salient
points of Kona if anything about it be salient. It is a region
where falls not
". . . Hail or any snow,
Or ever wind blows loudly."
Wind indeed, is a thing unknown. The scarcely audible whisper of
soft airs through the trees morning and evening, rain drops falling
gently, and the murmur of drowsy surges far below, alone break the
stillness. No ripple ever disturbs the great expanse of ocean which
gleams through the still, thick trees. Rose in the sweet cool
morning, gold in the sweet cool evening, but always dreaming; and
white sails come and go, no larger than a butterfly's wing on the
horizon, of ships drifting on ocean currents, dreaming too! Nothing
surely can ever happen here: it is so dumb and quiet, and people
speak in hushed thin voices, and move as in a lethargy, dreaming
too! No heat, cold, or wind, nothing emphasised or italicised, it
is truly a region of endless afternoons, "a land where all things
always seem the same." Life is dead, and existence is a languid
swoon.
This is the only regular boarding house on Hawaii. The company is
accidental and promiscuous. The conversation consists of
speculations, varied and repeated with the hours, as to the arrivals
and departures of the Honolulu schooners Uilama and Prince, who they
will bring, who they will take, and how long their respective
passages will be. A certain amount of local gossip is also hashed
up at each meal, and every stranger who has travelled through Hawaii
for the last ten years is picked to pieces and worn threadbare, and
his purse, weight, entertainers, and habits are thoroughly
canvassed. On whatever subject the conversation begins it always
ends in dollars; but even that most stimulating of all topics only
arouses a languid interest among my fellow dreamers. I spend most
of my time in riding in the forests, or along the bridle path which
trails along the height, among grass and frame-houses, almost
smothered by trees and trailers.
Many of these are inhabited by white men, who, having drifted to
these shores, have married native women, and are rearing a dusky
race, of children who speak the maternal tongue only, and grow up
with native habits. Some of these men came for health, others
landed from whalers, but of all it is true that infatuated by the
ease and lusciousness of this languid region,
"They sat them down upon the yellow sand,
Between the sun and moon upon the shore;
And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,
. . . . ; but evermore
Most weary seem'd the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
Then some one said, "We will return no more."
They have enough and more, and a life free from toil, but the
obvious tendency of these marriages is to sink the white man to the
level of native feelings and habits.
There are two or three educated residents, and there is a small
English church with daily service, conducted by a resident
clergyman.
The beauty of this part of Kona is wonderful. The interminable
forest is richer and greener than anything I have yet seen, but
penetrable only by narrow tracks which have been made for hauling
timber. The trees are so dense, and so matted together with
trailers, that no ray of noon-day sun brightens the moist tangle of
exquisite mosses and ferns which covers the ground. Yams with their
burnished leaves, and the Polypodium spectrum, wind round every tree
stem, and the heavy ie, which here attains gigantic proportions,
links the tops of the tallest trees together by its stout knotted
coils. Hothouse flowers grow in rank profusion round every house,
and tea-roses, fuchsias, geraniums fifteen feet high, Nile lilies,
Chinese lantern plants, begonias, lantanas, hibiscus, passion-
flowers, Cape jasmine, the hoya, the tuberose, the beautiful but
overpoweringly sweet ginger plant, and a hundred others: while the
whole district is overrun with the Datura brugmansia (?) here an
arborescent shrub fourteen feet high, bearing seventy great trumpet-
shaped white blossoms at a time, which at night vie with those of
the night-blowing Cereus in filling the air with odours.
Pineapples and melons grow like weeds among the grass, and
everything that is good for food flourishes. Nothing can keep under
the redundancy of nature in Kona; everything is profuse, fervid,
passionate, vivified and pervaded by sunshine. The earth is
restless in her productiveness, and forces up her hothouse growth
perpetually, so that the miracle of Jonah's gourd is almost repeated
nightly. All decay is hurried out of sight, and through the glowing
year flowers blossom and fruits ripen; ferns are always uncurling
their young fronds and bananas unfolding their great shining leaves,
and spring blends her everlasting youth and promise with the
fulfilment and maturity of summer.
"Never comes the trader, never floats a European flag,
Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from
the crag:
Droops the heavy-blossom'd bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree--
Summer isles of Eden lying in dark purple spheres of sea."
HUALALAI. July 28th.
I very soon left the languid life of Kona for this sheep station,
6000 feet high on the desolate slope of the dead volcano of
Hualalai, ("offspring of the shining sun,") on the invitation of its
hospitable owner, who said if I "could eat his rough fare, and live
his rough life, his house and horses were at my disposal." He is
married to a very attractive native woman who eats at his table, but
does not know a word of English, but they are both away at a wool-
shed eight miles off, shearing sheep.
This house is in the great volcanic wilderness of which I wrote from
Kalaieha, a desert of drouth and barrenness. There is no permanent
track, and on the occasions when I have ridden up here alone, the
directions given me have been to steer for an ox bone, and from that
to a dwarf ohia. There is no coming or going; it is seventeen miles
from the nearest settlement, and looks across a desert valley to
Mauna Loa. Woody trailers, harsh hard grass in tufts, the Asplenium
trichomanes in rifts, the Pellea ternifolia in sand, and some ohia
and mamane scrub in hollow places sheltered from the wind, all hard,
crisp, unlovely growths, contrast with the lavish greenery below. A
brisk cool wind blows all day; every afternoon a dense fog brings
the horizon within 200 feet, but it clears off with frost at dark,
and the flames of the volcano light the whole southern sky.
My companions are an amiable rheumatic native woman, and a crone who
must have lived a century, much shrivelled and tattooed, and nearly
childish. She talks to herself in weird tones, stretches her lean
limbs by the fire most of the day, and in common with most of the
old people has a prejudice against clothes, and prefers huddling
herself up in a blanket to wearing the ordinary dress of her sex.
There is also a dog, but he does not understand English, and for
some time I have not spoken any but Hawaiian words. I have plenty
to do, and find this a very satisfactory life.
I came up to within eight miles of this house with a laughing,
holiday-making rout of twelve natives, who rode madly along the
narrow forest trail at full gallop, up and down the hills, through
mire and over stones, leaping over the trunks of prostrate trees,
and stooping under branches with loud laughter, challenging me to
reckless races over difficult ground, and when they found that the
wahine haole was not to be thrown from her horse they patted me
approvingly, and crowned me with leis of maile. I became acquainted
with some of these at Kilauea in the winter, and since I came to
Kona they have been very kind to me.
I thoroughly like living among them, taking meals with them on their
mats, and eating "two fingered" poi as if I had been used to it all
my life. Their mirthfulness and kindliness are most winning; their
horses, food, clothes, and time are all bestowed on one so freely,
and one lives amongst them with a most restful sense of absolute
security. They have many faults, but living alone among them in
their houses as I have done so often on Hawaii, I have never seen or
encountered a disagreeable thing. But the more I see of them the
more impressed I am with their carelessness and love of pleasure,
their lack of ambition and a sense of responsibility, and the time
which they spend in doing nothing but talking and singing as they
bask in the sun, though spasmodically and under excitement they are
capable of tremendous exertions in canoeing, surf-riding, and
lassoing cattle.
While down below I joined three natives for the purpose of seeing
this last sport. They all rode shod horses, and had lassoes of ox
hide attached to the horns of their saddles. I sat for an hour on
horseback on a rocky hill while they hunted the woods; then I heard
the deep voices of bulls, and a great burst of cattle appeared, with
hunters in pursuit, but the herd vanished over a dip of the hill
side, and the natives joined me. By this time I wished myself
safely at home, partly because my unshod horse was not fit for
galloping over lava and rough ground, and I asked the men where I
should stay to be out of danger. The leader replied, "Oh, just keep
close behind me!" I had thought of some safe view-point, not of
galloping on an unshod horse with a ruck of half maddened cattle,
but it was the safest plan, and there was no time to be lost, for as
we rode slowly down, we sighted the herd dodging across the open to
regain the shelter of the wood, and much on the alert.
Putting our horses into a gallop we dashed down the hill till we
were close up with the chase; then another tremendous gallop, and a
brief wild rush, the grass shaking with the surge of cattle and
horses. There was much whirling of tails and tearing up of the
earth--a lasso spun three or four times round the head of the native
who rode in front of me, and almost simultaneously a fine red
bullock lay prostrate on the earth, nearly strangled, with his
foreleg noosed to his throat. The other natives dismounted, and put
two lassoes round his horns, slipping the first into the same
position, and vaulted into their saddles before he was on his legs.
He got up, shook himself, put his head down, and made a mad blind
rush, but his captors were too dexterous for him, and in that and
each succeeding rush he was foiled. As he tore wildly from side to
side, the natives dodged under the lasso, slipping it over their
heads, and swung themselves over their saddles, hanging in one
stirrup, to aid their trained horses to steady themselves as the
bullock tugged violently against them. He was escorted thus for a
mile, his strength failing with each useless effort, his tongue
hanging out, blood and foam dropping from his mouth and nostrils,
his flanks covered with foam and sweat, till blind and staggering,
he was led to a tree, where he was at once stabbed, and two hours
afterwards a part of him was served at table. The natives were
surprised that I avoided seeing his death, as the native women
greatly enjoy such a spectacle. This mode of killing an animal
while heated and terrified, doubtless accounts for the dark colour
and hardness of Hawaiian beef.
Numbers of the natives are expert with the lasso, and besides
capturing with it wild and half wild cattle, they catch horses with
it, and since I came here my host caught a sheep with it, singling
out the one he wished to kill, from the rest of the galloping flock
with an unerring aim. It takes a whole ox hide cut into strips to
make a good lasso.
One of my native friends tells me that a native man who attended on
me in one of my earlier expeditions has since been "prayed to
death." One often hears this phrase, and it appears that the
superstition which it represents has by no means died out. There
are persons who are believed to have the lives of others in their
hands, and their services are procured by offerings of white fowls,
brown hogs, and awa, as well as money, by any one who has a grudge
against another. Several other instances have been told me of
persons who have actually died under the influence of the terror and
despair produced by being told that the kahuna was "praying them to
death." I cannot learn whether these over-efficacious prayers are
supposed to be addressed to the true God, or to the ancient Hawaiian
divinities. The natives are very superstitious, and the late king,
who was both educated and intelligent, was much under the dominion
of a sorceress.
I have made the ascent of Hualalai twice from here, the first time
guided by my host and hostess, and the second time rather
adventurously alone. Forests of koa, sandal-wood, and ohia, with an
undergrowth of raspberries and ferns clothe its base, the fragrant
maile, and the graceful sarsaparilla vine, with its clustered coral-
coloured buds, nearly smother many of the trees, and in several
places the heavy ie forms the semblance of triumphal arches over the
track. This forest terminates abruptly on the great volcanic
wilderness, with its starved growth of unsightly scrub. But
Hualalai, though 10,000 feet in height, is covered with Pteris
aquilina, mamane, coarse bunch grass, and pukeave to its very
summit, which is crowned by a small, solitary, blossoming ohia.
For two hours before reaching the top, the way lies over countless
flows and beds of lava, much disintegrated, and almost entirely of
the kind called pahoehoe. Countless pit craters extend over the
whole mountain, all of them covered outside, and a few inside, with
scraggy vegetation. The edges are often very ragged and
picturesque. The depth varies from 300 to 700 feet, and the
diameter from 700 to 1,200. The walls of some are of a smooth grey
stone, the bottoms flat, and very deep in sand, but others resemble
the tufa cones of Mauna Kea. They are so crowded together in some
places as to be divided only by a ridge so narrow that two mules can
scarcely walk abreast upon it. The mountain was split by an
earthquake in 1868, and a great fissure, with much treacherous
ground about it, extends for some distance across it. It is very
striking from every point of view on this side, being a complete
wilderness of craters, and over 150 lateral cones have been counted.
The object of my second ascent was to visit one of the grandest of
the summit craters, which we had not reached previously owing to
fog. This crater is bordered by a narrow and very fantastic ridge
of rock, in or on which there is a mound about 60 feet high, formed
of fragments of black, orange, blue, red, and golden lava, with a
cavity or blow-hole in the centre, estimated by Brigham as having a
diameter of 25 feet, and a depth of 1800. The interior is dark
brown, much grooved horizontally, and as smooth and regular as if
turned. There are no steam cracks or signs of heat anywhere.
Superb caves or lava-bubbles abound at a height of 6000 feet. These
are moist with ferns, and the drip from their roofs is the water
supply of this porous region.
Hualalai, owing to the vegetation sparsely sprinkled over it, looks
as if it had been quiet for ages, but it has only slept since 1801,
when there was a tremendous eruption from it, which flooded several
villages, destroyed many plantations and fishponds, filled up a deep
bay 20 miles in extent, and formed the present coast. The terrified
inhabitants threw living hogs into the stream, and tried to
propitiate the anger of the gods by more costly offerings, but
without effect, till King Kamehameha, attended by a large retinue of
priests and chiefs, cut off some of his hair, which was considered
sacred, and threw it into the torrent, which in two days ceased to
run. This circumstance gave him a greatly increased ascendancy,
from his supposed influence with the deities of the volcanoes.
I have explored the country pretty thoroughly for many miles round,
but have not seen anything striking, except the remains of an
immense heiau in the centre of the desert tableland, said to have
been built in a day by the compulsory labour of 25,000 people: a
lonely white man who lives among the lava, and believes he has
discovered the secret of perpetual motion: and the lava-flow from
Mauna Loa, which reached the sea 40 miles from its exit from the
mountain.
I was riding through the brushwood with a native, and not able to
see two yards in any direction, when emerging from the thick scrub,
we came upon the torrent of 1859 within six feet of us, a huge,
straggling, coal-black river, broken up into streams in our
vicinity, but on the whole, presenting an iridescent uphill expanse
a mile wide. We had reached one of the divergent streams to which
it had been said after its downward course of 9000 feet, "Hitherto
shalt thou come and no further," while the main body had pursued its
course to the ocean. Whatever force impelled it had ceased to act,
and the last towering wave of fire had halted just there, and lies a
black arrested surge 10 feet high, with tender ferns at its feet,
and a scarcely singed ohia bending over it. The flow, so far as we
scrambled up it, is heaped in great surges of a fierce black,
fiercely reflecting the torrid sun, cracked, and stained yellow and
white, and its broad glistening surface forms an awful pathway to
the dome-like crest of Mauna Loa, now throbbing with internal fires,
and crowned with a white smoke wreath, that betokens the action of
the same forces which produced this gigantic inundation. Close to
us the main river had parted above and united below a small mamane
tree with bracken under its shadow, and there are several oases of
the same kind.
I have twice been down to the larger world of the wool-shed, when
tired of strips of dried mutton and my own society. The hospitality
there is as great as the accommodation is small. The first time, I
slept on the floor of the shed with some native women who were up
there, and was kept awake all night by the magnificence of the light
on the volcano. The second time, several of us slept in a small,
dark grass-wigwam, only intended as a temporary shelter, the
lowliest dwelling in every sense of the word that I ever occupied.
That evening was the finest I have seen on the islands; there was a
less abrupt transition from day to night, and the three great
mountains and the desert were etherealised and glorified by a
lingering rose and violet light. When darkness came on, our great
camp fire was hardly redder than the glare from the volcano, and its
leaping flames illuminated as motley a group as you would wish to
see; the native shearers, who, after shearing eighty sheep each in a
day, washed, and changed their clothes before eating; a negro
goatherd with a native wife and swarthy children, two native women,
my host and myself, all engaged in the rough cooking befitting the
region, toasting strips of jerked mutton on sticks, broiling wild
bullock on the coals, baking kalo under ground, and rolls in a rough
stone oven, and all speaking that base mixture of English and
Hawaiian which is current coin here. The meal was not less rude
than the cookery. We ate it on the floor of the wigwam, with an old
tin, with some fat in it, for a lamp, and a bit of rope for a wick,
which kept tumbling into the fat and leaving us in darkness.
The next day I came up here alone, driving a pack-horse, and with a
hind-quarter of sheep tied to my saddle. It is really difficult to
find the way over this desert, though I have been several times
across. When a breeze ripples the sand between the lava hummocks,
the footprints are obliterated, and there are few landmarks except
the "ox bone" and the "small ohia." It is a strange life up here on
the mountain side, but I like it, and never yearn after
civilization. The one drawback is my ignorance of the language,
which not only places me sometimes in grotesque difficulties, but
deprives me of much interest. I don't know what day it is, or how
long I have been here, and quite understand how possible it would be
to fall into an indolent and aimless life, in which time is of no
account.
THE RECTORY, KONA. August 1st.
I left Hualalai yesterday morning, and dined with my kind host and
hostess in the wigwam. It was the last taste of the wild Hawaiian
life I have learned to love so well, the last meal on a mat, the
last exercise of skill in eating "two-fingered" poi. I took leave
gratefully of those who had been so truly kind to me, and with the
friendly aloha from kindly lips in my ears, regretfully left the
purple desert in which I have lived so serenely, and plunged into
the forest gloom. Half way down, I met a string of my native
acquaintances, who, as the courteous custom is, threw over me leis
of maile and roses, and since I arrived here, others have called to
wish me goodbye, bringing presents of figs, cocoa-nuts and bananas.
This is one of the stations of the "Honolulu Mission," and Mr.
Davies, the clergyman, has, besides Sunday and daily services, a
day-school for boys and girls. The Sunday attendance at church, so
far as I have seen, consists of three adults, though the white
population within four miles is considerable, and at another station
on Maui, the congregation was composed solely of the family of a
planter. Clerical reinforcements are expected from England shortly;
but from what I have seen and heard everywhere, I do not think that
the coming clergy, even if inspired by the same devotion and
disinterestedness as Bishop Willis, will make any sensible progress
among the people.
In truth, I believe that the "Honolulu Mission," from the first, has
been a mistake. As such, strictly speaking, there is no room for
it, for all the natives are nominal Christians, and are connected
more or less with the Congregational denomination. To attempt to
proselytize them to the English Church, or to unsettle their
religious relations in any way, would, on the whole, be a hopeless,
as well as an invidious task, and would not improbably result in
driving some among them into the greater apparent unity of the
Church of Rome. Those who believe in the oneness of the invisible
church, and that all who hold "one Lord, one faith, one baptism,"
are within the pale of salvation, may well hesitate before expending
energy, men, money, and time on proselytizing efforts.
Among the whites who have sunk into the mire of an indolent and
godless, if not an openly immoral life, there is an undoubted field
for Evangelistic effort; but it is very doubtful, I think, whether
this class can be reached by services which appeal to higher culture
and instincts than it possesses, and, indeed, generally, the island
Episcopalians are not in sympathy with the "symbolism" and "high
ritual" which from the first have been outstanding features of this
"mission." The education of the young in the principles of the
Prayer Book is aimed at by the Bishop and his coadjutors, but in
spite of zeal and devotion, I doubt whether the English Church on
these islands can ever be anything but a pining and sickly exotic.
Kona looks supremely beautiful, a languid dream of all fair things.
Yet truly my heart warms to nothing so much as to a row of fat
English cabbages which grow in the rectory garden, with a
complacent, self-asserting John Bullism about them. It is best to
leave the islands now. I love them better every day, and dreams of
Fatherland are growing fainter in this perfumed air and under this
glittering sky. A little longer, and I too should say, like all who
have made their homes here under the deep banana shade,--
"We will return no more,
. . . . our island home
Is far beyond the wave, we will no longer roam."
I.L.B.