Hawaii Statewide Files History - Books.....The Hawaiian Archipelago, Part 2

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Book Title and Information: 
Report of the Royal Commission on the Development of the 
Resources of the Kingdom. By Hawaii Royal Commission on 
the Development of the Resources of the Kingdom. 
Published: Island of Hawaii, 1877. Subjects: The land 
and its people, and areas of Kohala, Waimea, Hamakua, 
Hilo, Puna & Kau.
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The Hawaiian Archipelago - Part 2

LETTER V

VOLCANO OF KILAUEA, Jan. 31

Bruised aching bones, strained muscles, and overwhelming fatigue, render it 
hardly possible for me to undergo the physical labour of writing, but in spirit 
I am so elated with the triumph of success, and so thrilled by new sensations, 
that though I cannot communicate the incommunicable, I want to write to you 
while the impression of Kilauea is fresh, and by "the light that never was on 
sea or shore."

By eight yesterday morning our preparations were finished, and Miss Karpe, whose 
conversance with the details of travelling I envy, mounted her horse on her own 
side-saddle, dressed in a short grey waterproof, and a broad-brimmed Leghorn hat 
tied so tightly over her ears with a green veil as to give it the look of a 
double spout. The only pack her horse carried was a bundle of cloaks and shawls, 
slung together with an umbrella on the horn of her saddle. Upa, who was most 
picturesquely got up in the native style with garlands of flowers round his hat 
and throat, carried our saddle-bags on the peak of his saddle, a bag with 
bananas, bread, and a bottle of tea on the horn, and a canteen of water round 
his waist. I had on my coarse Australian hat which serves the double purpose of 
sunshade and umbrella, Mrs. Thompson's riding costume, my great rusty New 
Zealand boots, and my blanket strapped behind a very gaily ornamented brass-
bossed demi-pique Mexican saddle, which one of the missionary's daughters had 
lent me. It has a horn in front, a low peak behind, large wooden stirrups with 
leathern flaps the length of the stirrup-leathers, to prevent the dress from 
coming in contact with the horse, and strong guards of hide which hang over and 
below the stirrup, and cover it and the foot up to the ancles, to prevent the 
feet or boots from being torn in riding through the bush. Each horse had four 
fathoms of tethering rope wound several times round his neck. In such fashion 
must all travelling be done on Hawaii, whether by ladies or gentlemen.

Upa supplied the picturesque element, we the grotesque. The morning was moist 
and unpropitious looking. As the greater part of the thirty miles has to be 
travelled at a foot's-pace the guide took advantage of the soft grassy track 
which leads out of Hilo, to go off at full gallop, a proceeding which made me at 
once conscious of the demerits of my novel way of riding. To guide the horse and 
to clutch the horn of the saddle with both hands were clearly incompatible, so I 
abandoned the first as being the least important. Then my feet either slipped 
too far into the stirrups and were cut, or they were jerked out; every corner 
was a new terror, for at each I was nearly pitched off on one side, and when at 
last Upa stopped, and my beast stopped without consulting my wishes, only a 
desperate grasp of mane and tethering rope saved me from going over his head. At 
this ridiculous moment we came upon a bevy of brown maidens swimming in a 
lakelet by the roadside, who increased my confusion by a chorus of laughter. How 
fervently I hoped that the track would never admit of galloping again!

Hilo fringes off with pretty native houses, kalo patches and mullet ponds, and 
in about four miles the track, then formed of rough hard lava, and not more than 
24 inches wide, enters a forest of the densest description, a burst of true 
tropical jungle. I could not have imagined anything so perfectly beautiful, 
nature seemed to riot in the production of wonderful forms, as if the moist hot-
house air encouraged her in lavish excesses. Such endless variety, such depths 
of green, such an impassable and altogether inextricable maze of forest trees, 
ferns, and lianas! There were palms, breadfruit trees, ohias, eugenias, candle-
nuts of immense size, Koa (acacia), bananas, noni, bamboos, papayas (Carica 
papaya), guavas, ti trees (Cordyline terminalis), treeferns, climbing ferns, 
parasitic ferns, and ferns themselves the prey of parasites of their own 
species. The lianas were there in profusion climbing over the highest trees, and 
entangling them, with stems varying in size from those as thick as a man's arm 
to those as slender as whipcord, binding all in an impassable network, and 
hanging over our heads in rich festoons or tendrils swaying in the breeze. There 
were trailers, i.e., (Freycinetia scandens) with heavy knotted stems, as thick 
as a frigate's stoutest hawser, coiling up to the tops of tall ohias with tufted 
leaves like yuccas, and crimson spikes of gaudy blossom. The shining festoons of 
the yam and the graceful trailers of the maile (Alyxia Olivaeformis), a sweet 
scented vine, from which the natives make garlands, and glossy leaved climbers 
hung from tree to tree, and to brighten all, huge morning glories of a heavenly 
blue opened a thousand blossoms to the sun as if to give a tenderer loveliness 
to the forest. Here trees grow and fall, and nature covers them where they lie 
with a new vegetation which altogether obliterates their hasty decay. It is four 
miles of beautiful and inextricable confusion, untrodden by human feet except on 
the narrow track. "Of every tree in this garden thou mayest freely eat," and no 
serpent or noxious thing trails its hideous form through this Eden.

It was quite intoxicating, so new, wonderful, and solemn withal, that I was 
sorry when we emerged from its shady depths upon a grove of cocoanut trees and 
the glare of day. Two very poor-looking grass huts, with a ragged patch of 
sugar-cane beside them, gave us an excuse for half an hour's rest. An old woman 
in a red sack, much tattooed, with thick short grey hair bristling on her head, 
sat on a palm root, holding a nude brown child; a lean hideous old man, dressed 
only in a malo, leaned against its stem, our horses with their highly 
miscellaneous gear were tethered to a fern stump, and Upa, the most picturesque 
of the party, served out tea. He and the natives talked incessantly, and from 
the frequency with which the words "wahine haole" (foreign woman) occurred, the 
subject of their conversation was obvious. Upa has taken up the notion from 
something Mr. S--- said, that I am a "high chief," and related to Queen 
Victoria, and he was doubtlessly imposing this fable on the people. In spite of 
their poverty and squalor, if squalor is a term which can be applied to aught 
beneath these sunny skies, there was a kindliness about them which they made us 
feel, and the aloha with which they parted from us had a sweet friendly sound.

From this grove we travelled as before in single file over an immense expanse of 
lava of the kind called pahoehoe, or satin rock, to distinguish it from the a-a, 
or jagged, rugged, impassable rock. Savants all use these terms in the absence 
of any equally expressive in English. The pahoehoe extends in the Hilo direction 
from hence about twenty-three miles. It is the cooled and arrested torrent of 
lava which in past ages has flowed towards Hilo from Kilauea. It lies in 
hummocks, in coils, in rippled waves, in rivers, in huge convolutions, in pools 
smooth and still, and in caverns which are really bubbles. Hundreds of square 
miles of the island are made up of this and nothing more. A very frequent aspect 
of pahoehoe is the likeness on a magnificent scale of a thick coat of cream 
drawn in wrinkling folds to the side of a milk-pan. This lava is all grey, and 
the greater part of its surface is slightly roughened. Wherever this is not the 
case the horses slip upon it as upon ice.

Here I began to realize the universally igneous origin of Hawaii, as I had not 
done among the finely disintegrated lava of Hilo. From the hard black rocks 
which border the sea, to the loftiest mountain dome or peak, every stone, atom 
of dust, and foot of fruitful or barren soil bears the Plutonic mark. In fact, 
the island has been raised heap on heap, ridge on ridge, mountain on mountain, 
to nearly the height of Mont Blanc, by the same volcanic forces which are still 
in operation here, and may still add at intervals to the height of the blue dome 
of Mauna Loa, of which we caught occasional glimpses above the clouds. Hawaii is 
actually at the present time being built up from the ocean, and this great sea 
of pahoehoe is not to be regarded as a vindictive eruption, bringing desolation 
on a fertile region, but as an architectural and formative process.

There is no water, except a few deposits of rain-water in holes, but the moist 
air and incessant showers have aided nature to mantle this frightful expanse 
with an abundant vegetation, principally ferns of an exquisite green, the most 
conspicuous being the Sadleria, the Gleichenia Hawaiiensis, a running wire-like 
fern, and the exquisite Microlepia tenuifolia, dwarf guava, with its white 
flowers resembling orange flowers in odour, and ohelos (Vaccinium reticulatum), 
with their red and white berries, and a profusion of small-leaved ohias 
(Metrosideros polymorpha), with their deep crimson tasselled flowers, and their 
young shoots of bright crimson, relieved the monotony of green. These crimson 
tassels deftly strung on thread or fibres, are much used by the natives for 
their leis, or garlands. The ti tree (Cordyline terminalis) which abounds also 
on the lava, is most valuable. They cook their food wrapped up in its leaves, 
the porous root when baked, has the taste and texture of molasses candy, and 
when distilled yields a spirit, and the leaves form wrappings for fish, hard 
poi, and other edibles. Occasionally a clump of tufted coco-palms, or of the 
beautiful candle-nut rose among the smaller growths. To our left a fringe of 
palms marked the place where the lava and the ocean met, while, on our right, we 
were seldom out of sight of the dense timber belt, with its fringe of tree-ferns 
and bananas, which girdles Mauna Loa.

The track, on the whole, is a perpetual upward scramble; for, though the ascent 
is so gradual, that it is only by the increasing coolness of the atmosphere that 
the increasing elevation is denoted, it is really nearly 4,000 feet in thirty 
miles. Only strong, sure-footed, well-shod horses can undertake this journey, 
for it is a constant scramble over rocks, going up or down natural steps, or 
cautiously treading along ledges. Most of the track is quite legible owing to 
the vegetation having been worn off the lava, but the rock itself hardly shows 
the slightest abrasion.

Upa had indicated that we were to stop for rest at the "Half Way House;" and, as 
I was hardly able to sit on my horse owing to fatigue, I consoled myself by 
visions of a comfortable sofa and a cup of tea. It was with real dismay that I 
found the reality to consist of a grass hut, much out of repair, and which, bad 
as it was, was locked. Upa said we had ridden so slowly that it would be dark 
before we reached the volcano, and only allowed us to rest on the grass for 
half-an-hour. He had frequently reiterated "Half Way House, you wear spur;" and, 
on our remounting, he buckled on my foot a heavy rusty Mexican spur, with 
jingling ornaments and rowels an inch and a half long. These horses are so 
accustomed to be jogged with these instruments that they won't move without 
them. The prospect of five hours more riding looked rather black, for I was much 
exhausted, and my shoulders and knee-joints were in severe pain. Miss K.'s horse 
showed no other appreciation of a stick with which she belaboured him than 
flourishes of his tail, so, for a time, he was put in the middle, that Upa might 
add his more forcible persuasions, and I rode first and succeeded in getting my 
lazy animal into the priestly amble known at home as "a butter and eggs trot," 
the favourite travelling pace, but this not suiting the guide's notion of 
progress, he frequently rushed up behind with a torrent of Hawaiian, emphasized 
by heavy thumps on my horse's back, which so sorely jeopardised my seat on the 
animal, owing to his resenting the interference by kicking, that I "dropped 
astern" for the rest of the way, leaving Upa to belabour Miss K.'s steed for his 
diversion.

The country altered but little, only the variety of trees gave place to the ohia 
alone, with its sombre foliage. There were neither birds nor insects, and the 
only travellers we encountered in the solitude compelled us to give them a wide 
berth, for they were a drove of half wild random cattle, led by a lean bull of 
hideous aspect, with crumpled horns. Two picturesque native vaccheros on mules 
accompanied them, and my flagging spirits were raised by their news that the 
volcano was quite active. The owner of these cattle knows that he has 10,000 
head, and may have a great many more. They are shot for their hides by men who 
make shooting and skinning them a profession, and, near settlements, the owners 
are thankful to get two cents a pound for sirloin and rump-steaks. These, and 
great herds which are actually wild and ownerless upon the mountains, are a 
degenerate breed, with some of the worst peculiarities of the Texas cattle, and 
are the descendants of those which Vancouver placed on the islands and which 
were under Tabu for ten years. They destroy the old trees by gnawing the bark, 
and render the growth of young ones impossible.

As it was getting dark we passed through a forest strip, where tree- ferns from 
twelve to eighteen feet in height, and with fronds from five to seven feet long, 
were the most attractive novelties. As we emerged, "with one stride came the 
dark," a great darkness, a cloudy night, with neither moon nor stars, and the 
track was further obscured by a belt of ohias. There were five miles of this, 
and I was so dead from fatigue and want of food, that I would willingly have 
lain down in the bush in the rain. I most heartlessly wished that Miss K. were 
tired too, for her voice, which seemed tireless as she rode ahead in the dark, 
rasped upon my ears. I could only keep on my saddle by leaning on the horn, and 
my clothes were soaked with the heavy rain. "A dreadful ride," one and another 
had said, and I then believed them. It seemed an awful solitude full of mystery. 
Often, I only knew that my companions were ahead by the sparks struck from their 
horse's shoes.

It became a darkness which could be felt.

"Is that possibly a pool of blood?" I thought in horror, as a rain puddle glowed 
crimson on the track. Not that indeed! A glare brighter and redder than that 
from any furnace suddenly lightened the whole sky, and from that moment 
brightened our path. There sat Miss K. under her dripping umbrella as 
provokingly erect as when she left Hilo. There Upa jogged along, huddled up in 
his poncho, and his canteen shone red. There the ohia trees were relieved 
blackly against the sky. The scene started out from the darkness with the 
suddenness of a revelation. We felt the pungency of sulphurous fumes in the 
still night air. A sound as of the sea broke on our ears, rising and falling as 
if breaking on the shore, but the ocean was thirty miles away. The heavens 
became redder and brighter, and when we reached the crater-house at eight, 
clouds of red vapour mixed with flame were curling ceaselessly out of a huge 
invisible pit of blackness, and Kilauea was in all its fiery glory. We had 
reached the largest active volcano in the world, the "place of everlasting 
burnings."

Rarely was light more welcome than that which twinkled from under the verandah 
of the lonely crater-house into the rainy night. The hospitable landlord of this 
unique dwelling lifted me from my horse, and carried me into a pleasant room 
thoroughly warmed by a large wood fire, and I hastily retired to bed to spend 
much of the bitterly cold night in watching the fiery vapours rolling up out of 
the infinite darkness, and in dreading the descent into the crater. The heavy 
clouds were crimson with the reflection, and soon after midnight jets of flame 
of a most peculiar colour leapt fitfully into the air, accompanied by a dull 
throbbing sound.

This morning was wet and murky as many mornings are here, and the view from the 
door was a blank up to ten o'clock, when the mist rolled away and revealed the 
mystery of last night, the mighty crater whose vast terminal wall is only a few 
yards from this house. We think of a volcano as a cone. This is a different 
thing. The abyss, which really is at a height of nearly 4,000 feet on the flank 
of Mauna Loa, has the appearance of a great pit on a rolling plain. But such a 
pit! It is nine miles in circumference, and its lowest area, which not long ago 
fell about 300 feet, just as ice on a pond falls when the water below it is 
withdrawn, covers six square miles. The depth of the crater varies from 800 to 
1,100 feet in different years, according as the molten sea below is at flood or 
ebb. Signs of volcanic activity are present more or less throughout its whole 
depth, and for some distance round its margin, in the form of steam cracks, jets 
of sulphurous vapour, blowing cones, accumulating deposits of acicular crystals 
of sulphur, etc., and the pit itself is constantly rent and shaken by 
earthquakes. Grand eruptions occur at intervals with circumstances of 
indescribable terror and dignity, but Kilauea does not limit its activity to 
these outbursts, but has exhibited its marvellous phenomena through all known 
time in a lake or lakes in the southern part of the crater three miles from this 
side.

This lake, the Hale-mau-mau, or House of Everlasting Fire of the Hawaiian 
mythology, the abode of the dreaded goddess Pele, is approachable with safety 
except during an eruption. The spectacle, however, varies almost daily, and at 
times the level of the lava in the pit within a pit is so low, and the 
suffocating gases are evolved in such enormous quantities, that travellers are 
unable to see anything. There had been no news from it for a week, and as 
nothing was to be seen but a very faint bluish vapour hanging round its margin, 
the prospect was not encouraging.

When I have learned more about the Hawaiian volcanoes, I shall tell you more of 
their phenomena, but tonight I shall only write to you my first impressions of 
what we actually saw on this January 31st. My highest expectations have been 
infinitely exceeded, and I can hardly write soberly after such a spectacle, 
especially while through the open door I see the fiery clouds of vapour from the 
pit rolling up into a sky, glowing as if itself on fire.

We were accompanied into the crater by a comical native guide, who mimicked us 
constantly, our Hilo guide, who "makes up" a little English, a native woman from 
Kona, who speaks imperfect English poetically, and her brother who speaks none. 
I was conscious that we foreign women with our stout staffs and grotesque dress 
looked like caricatures, and the natives, who have a keen sense of the 
ludicrous, did not conceal that they thought us so.

The first descent down the terminal wall of the crater is very precipitous, but 
it and the slope which extends to the second descent are thickly covered with 
ohias, ohelos (a species of whortleberry), sadlerias, polypodiums, silver grass, 
and a great variety of bulbous plants many of which bore clusters of berries of 
a brilliant turquoise blue. The "beyond" looked terrible. I could not help 
clinging to these vestiges of the kindlier mood of nature in which she sought to 
cover the horrors she had wrought. The next descent is over rough blocks and 
ridges of broken lava, and appears to form part of a break which extends 
irregularly round the whole crater, and which probably marks a tremendous 
subsidence of its floor. Here the last apparent vegetation was left behind, and 
the familiar earth. We were in a new Plutonic region of blackness and awful 
desolation, the accustomed sights and sounds of nature all gone. Terraces, 
cliffs, lakes, ridges, rivers, mountain sides, whirlpools, chasms of lava 
surrounded us, solid, black, and shining, as if vitrified, or an ashen grey, 
stained yellow with sulphur here and there, or white with alum. The lava was 
fissured and upheaved everywhere by earthquakes, hot underneath, and emitting a 
hot breath.

After more than an hour of very difficult climbing we reached the lowest level 
of the crater, pretty nearly a mile across, presenting from above the appearance 
of a sea at rest, but on crossing it we found it to be an expanse of waves and 
convolutions of ashy-coloured lava, with huge cracks filled up with black 
iridescent rolls of lava, only a few weeks old. Parts of it are very rough and 
ridgy, jammed together like field ice, or compacted by rolls of lava which may 
have swelled up from beneath, but the largest part of the area presents the 
appearance of huge coiled hawsers, the ropy formation of the lava rendering the 
illusion almost perfect. These are riven by deep cracks which emit hot 
sulphurous vapours. Strange to say, in one of these, deep down in that black and 
awful region, three slender metamorphosed ferns were growing, three exquisite 
forms, the fragile heralds of the great forest of vegetation, which probably in 
coming years will clothe this pit with beauty. Truly they seemed to speak of the 
love of God. On our right there was a precipitous ledge, and a recent flow of 
lava had poured over it, cooling as it fell into columnar shapes as symmetrical 
as those of Staffa. It took us a full hour to cross this deep depression, and as 
long to master a steep hot ascent of about 400 feet, formed by a recent lava-
flow from Hale-mau-mau into the basin. This lava hill is an extraordinary sight-
-a flood of molten stone, solidifying as it ran down the declivity, forming 
arrested waves, streams, eddies, gigantic convolutions, forms of snakes, stems 
of trees, gnarled roots, crooked water-pipes, all involved and contorted on a 
gigantic scale, a wilderness of force and dread. Over one steeper place the lava 
had run in a fiery cascade about 100 feet wide. Some had reached the ground, 
some had been arrested midway, but all had taken the aspect of stems of trees. 
In some of the crevices I picked up a quantity of very curious filamentose lava, 
known as "Pele's hair." It resembles coarse spun glass, and is of a greenish or 
yellowish- brown colour. In many places the whole surface of the lava is covered 
with this substance seen through a glazed medium. During eruptions, when fire-
fountains play to a great height, and drops of lava are thrown in all 
directions, the wind spins them out in clear green or yellow threads two or 
three feet long, which catch and adhere to projecting points.

As we ascended, the flow became hotter under our feet, as well as more porous 
and glistening. It was so hot that a shower of rain hissed as it fell upon it. 
The crust became increasingly insecure, and necessitated our walking in single 
file with the guide in front, to test the security of the footing. I fell 
through several times, and always into holes full of sulphurous steam, so 
malignantly acid that my strong dog-skin gloves were burned through as I raised 
myself on my hands.

We had followed a lava-flow for thirty miles up to the crater's brink, and now 
we had toiled over recent lava for three hours, and by all calculation were 
close to the pit, yet there was no smoke or sign of fire, and I felt sure that 
the volcano had died out for once for our especial disappointment. Indeed, I had 
been making up my mind for disappointment since we left the crater-house, in 
consequence of reading seven different accounts, in which language was exhausted 
in describing Kilauea.

Suddenly, just above, and in front of us, gory drops were tossed in air, and 
springing forwards we stood on the brink of Hale-mau-mau, which was about 35 
feet below us. I think we all screamed, I know we all wept, but we were 
speechless, for a new glory and terror had been added to the earth. It is the 
most unutterable of wonderful things. The words of common speech are quite 
useless. It is unimaginable, indescribable, a sight to remember for ever, a 
sight which at once took possession of every faculty of sense and soul, removing 
one altogether out of the range of ordinary life. Here was the real "bottomless 
pit"--the "fire which is not quenched"--"the place of hell"--"the lake which 
burneth with fire and brimstone"-- the "everlasting burnings"--the fiery sea 
whose waves are never weary. There were groanings, rumblings, and detonations, 
rushings, hissings, and splashings, and the crashing sound of breakers on the 
coast, but it was the surging of fiery waves upon a fiery shore. But what can I 
write! Such words as jets, fountains, waves, spray, convey some idea of order 
and regularity, but here there was none. The inner lake, while we stood there, 
formed a sort of crater within itself, the whole lava sea rose about three feet, 
a blowing cone about eight feet high was formed, it was never the same two 
minutes together. And what we saw had no existence a month ago, and probably 
will be changed in every essential feature a month hence.

What we did see was one irregularly-shaped lake, possibly 500 feet wide at its 
narrowest part and nearly half a mile at its broadest, almost divided into two 
by a low bank of lava, which extended nearly across it where it was narrowest, 
and which was raised visibly before our eyes. The sides of the nearest part of 
the lake were absolutely perpendicular, but nowhere more than 40 feet high; but 
opposite to us on the far side of the larger lake they were bold and craggy, and 
probably not less than 150 feet high. On one side there was an expanse entirely 
occupied with blowing cones, and jets of steam or vapour. The lake has been 
known to sink 400 feet, and a month ago it overflowed its banks. The prominent 
object was fire in motion, but the surface of the double lake was continually 
skinning over for a second or two with a cooled crust of a lustrous grey- white, 
like frosted silver, broken by jagged cracks of a bright rose-colour. The 
movement was nearly always from the sides to the centre, but the movement of the 
centre itself appeared independent and always took a southerly direction. Before 
each outburst of agitation there was much hissing and a throbbing internal 
roaring, as of imprisoned gases. Now it seemed furious, demoniacal, as if no 
power on earth could bind it, then playful and sportive, then for a second 
languid, but only because it was accumulating fresh force. On our arrival eleven 
fire fountains were playing joyously round the lakes, and sometimes the six of 
the nearer lake ran together in the centre to go wallowing down in one vortex, 
from which they reappeared bulging upwards, till they formed a huge cone 30 feet 
high, which plunged downwards in a whirlpool only to reappear in exactly the 
previous number of fountains in different parts of the lake, high leaping, 
raging, flinging themselves upwards. Sometimes the whole lake, abandoning its 
usual centripetal motion, as if impelled southwards, took the form of mighty 
waves, and surging heavily against the partial barrier with a sound like the 
Pacific surf, lashed, tore, covered it, and threw itself over it in clots of 
living fire. It was all confusion, commotion, force, terror, glory, majesty, 
mystery, and even beauty. And the colour! "Eye hath not seen" it! Molten metal 
has not that crimson gleam, nor blood that living light! Had I not seen this I 
should never have known that such a colour was possible.

The crust perpetually wrinkled, folded over, and cracked, and great pieces were 
drawn downwards to be again thrown up on the crests of waves. The eleven 
fountains of gory fire played the greater part of the time, dancing round the 
lake with a strength of joyousness which was absolute beauty. Indeed after the 
first half hour of terror had gone by, the beauty of these jets made a profound 
impression upon me, and the sight of them must always remain one of the most 
fascinating recollections of my life. During three hours, the bank of lava which 
almost divided the lakes rose considerably, owing to the cooling of the spray as 
it dashed over it, and a cavern of considerable size was formed within it, the 
roof of which was hung with fiery stalactites, more than a foot long. Nearly the 
whole time the surges of the further lake taking a southerly direction, broke 
with a tremendous noise on the bold craggy cliffs which are its southern 
boundary, throwing their gory spray to a height of fully forty feet. At times an 
overhanging crag fell in, creating a vast splash of fire and increased 
commotion.

Almost close below us there was an intermittent jet of lava, which kept cooling 
round what was possibly a blowhole forming a cone with an open top, which when 
we first saw it was about six feet high on its highest side, and about as many 
in diameter. Up this cone or chimney heavy jets of lava were thrown every second 
or two, and cooling as they fell over its edge, raised it rapidly before our 
eyes. Its fiery interior, and the singular sound with which the lava was vomited 
up, were very awful. There was no smoke rising from the lake, only a faint blue 
vapour which the wind carried in the opposite direction. The heat was excessive. 
We were obliged to stand the whole time, and the soles of our boots were burned, 
and my ear and one side of my face were blistered. Although there was no smoke 
from the lake itself, there was an awful region to the westward, of smoke and 
sound, and rolling clouds of steam and vapour whose phenomena it was not safe to 
investigate, where the blowing cones are, whose fires last night appeared 
stationary. We were able to stand quite near the margin, and look down into the 
lake, as you look into the sea from the deck of a ship, the only risk being that 
the fractured ledge might give way.

Before we came away, a new impulse seized the lava. The fire was thrown to a 
great height; the fountains and jets all wallowed together; new ones appeared, 
and danced joyously round the margin, then converging towards the centre they 
merged into one glowing mass, which upheaved itself pyramidally and disappeared 
with a vast plunge. Then innumerable billows of fire dashed themselves into the 
air, crashing and lashing, and the lake dividing itself recoiled on either side, 
then hurling its fires together and rising as if by upheaval from below, it 
surged over the temporary rim which it had formed, passing downwards in a slow 
majestic flow, leaving the central surface swaying and dashing in fruitless 
agony as if sent on some errand it failed to accomplish.

Farewell, I fear for ever, to the glorious Hale-mau-mau, the grandest type of 
force that the earth holds! "Break, break, break," on through the coming years,

"No more by thee my steps shall be,
No more again for ever!"

It seemed a dull trudge over the black and awful crater, and strange, like half-
forgotten sights of a world with which I had ceased to have aught to do, were 
the dwarf tree-ferns, the lilies with their turquoise clusters, the crimson 
myrtle blossoms, and all the fair things which decked the precipice up which we 
slowly dragged our stiff and painful limbs. Yet it was but the exchange of a 
world of sublimity for a world of beauty, the "place of hell," for the bright 
upper earth, with its endless summer, and its perennial foliage, blossom, and 
fruitage.

Since writing the above I have been looking over the "Volcano Book," which 
contains the observations and impressions of people from all parts of the world. 
Some of these are painstaking and valuable as showing the extent and rapidity of 
the changes which take place in the crater, but there is an immense quantity of 
flippant rubbish, and would-be wit, in which "Madam Pele," invariably occurs, 
this goddess, who was undoubtedly one of the grandest of heathen mythical 
creations, being caricatured in pencil and pen and ink, under every ludicrous 
aspect that can be conceived. Some of the entries are brief and absurd, "Not 
much of a fizz," "a grand splutter," "Madam Pele in the dumps," and so forth. 
These generally have English signatures. The American wit is far racier, but 
depends mainly on the profane use of certain passages of scripture, a species of 
wit which is at once easy and disgusting. People are all particular in giving 
the precise time of the departure from Hilo and arrival here, "making good time" 
being a thing much admired on Hawaii, but few can boast of more than three miles 
an hour. It is wonderful that people can parade their snobbishness within sight 
of Hale-mau-mau.

This inn is a unique and interesting place. Its existence is strikingly 
precarious, for the whole region is in a state of perpetual throb from 
earthquakes, and the sights and sounds are gruesome and awful both by day and 
night. The surrounding country steams and smokes from cracks and pits, and a 
smell of sulphur fills the air. They cook their kalo in a steam apparatus of 
nature's own work just behind the house, and every drop of water is from a 
distillery similarly provided. The inn is a grass and bamboo house, very 
beautifully constructed without nails. It is a longish building with a steep 
roof divided inside by partitions which run up to the height of the walls. There 
is no ceiling. The joists which run across are concealed by wreaths of 
evergreens, from among which peep out here and there stars on a blue ground. The 
door opens from the verandah into a centre room with a large open brick fire 
place, in which a wood fire is constantly burning, for at this altitude the 
temperature is cool. Some chairs, two lounges, small tables, and some books and 
pictures on the walls give a look of comfort, and there is the reality of 
comfort in perfection. Our sleeping-place, a neat room with a matted floor opens 
from this, and on the other side there is a similar room, and a small eating-
room with a grass cookhouse beyond, from which an obliging old Chinaman who 
persistently calls us "sir," brings our food. We have had for each meal, tea, 
preserved milk, coffee, kalo, biscuits, butter, potatoes, goats' flesh, and 
ohelos. The charge is five dollars a day, but everything except the potatoes and 
ohelos has to be brought twenty or thirty miles on mules' backs. It is a very 
pretty picturesque house both within and without, and stands on a natural lawn 
of brilliant but unpalatable grass, surrounded by a light fence covered with a 
small trailing double rose. It is altogether a most magical building in the 
heart of a formidable volcanic wilderness. Mr. Gilman, our host, is a fine 
picturesque looking man, half Indian, and speaks remarkably good English, but 
his wife, a very pretty native woman, speaks none, and he attends to us entirely 
himself.

A party of native travellers rainbound are here, and the native women are 
sitting on the floor stringing flowers and berries for leis. One very 
attractive-looking young woman, refined by consumption, is lying on some 
blankets, and three native men are smoking by the fire. Upa attempts 
conversation with us in broken English, and the others laugh and talk 
incessantly. My inkstand, pen, and small handwriting amuse them very much. Miss 
K., the typical American travelling lady, who is encountered everywhere from the 
Andes to the Pyramids, tireless, with an indomitable energy, Spartan endurance, 
and a genius for attaining everything, and myself, a limp, ragged, shoeless 
wretch, complete the group, and our heaps of saddles, blankets, spurs, and gear 
tell of real travelling, past and future. It is a most picturesque sight by the 
light of the flickering fire, and the fire which is unquenchable burns without.

About 300 yards off there is a sulphur steam vapour-bath, highly recommended by 
the host as a panacea for the woeful aches, pains, and stiffness produced by the 
six-mile scramble through the crater, and I groaned and limped down to it: but 
it is a truly spasmodic arrangement, singularly independent of human control, 
and I have not the slightest doubt that the reason why Mr. Gilman obligingly 
remained in the vicinity was, lest I should be scalded or blown to atoms by a 
sudden freak of Kilauea, though I don't see that he was capable of preventing 
either catastrophe! A slight grass shed has been built over a sulphur steam 
crack, and within this there is a deep box with a sliding lid and a hole for the 
throat, and the victim is supposed to sit in this and be steamed. But on this 
occasion the temperature was so high, that my hand, which I unwisely 
experimented upon, was immediately peeled. In order not to wound Mr. Gilman's 
feelings, which are evidently sensitive on the subject of this irresponsible 
contrivance, I remained the prescribed time within the shed, and then managed to 
limp a little less, and go with him to what are called the Sulphur Banks, on 
which sulphurous vapour is perpetually depositing the most exquisite acicular 
sulphur crystals; these, as they aggregate, take entrancing forms, like the 
featherwork produced by the "frost-fall" in Colorado, but, like it, they perish 
with a touch, and can only be seen in the wonderful laboratory where they are 
formed.

In addition to the natives before mentioned, there is an old man here who has 
been a bullock-hunter on Hawaii for forty years, and knows the island 
thoroughly. In common with all the residents I have seen, he takes an intense 
interest in volcanic phenomena, and has just been giving us a thrilling account 
of the great eruption in 1868, when beautiful Hilo was threatened with 
destruction. Three weeks ago, he says, a profound hush fell on Kilauea, and the 
summit crater of Mauna Loa became active, and amidst throbbings, rumblings, and 
earthquakes, broke into such magnificence that the light was visible 100 miles 
at sea, a burning mountain 13,750 feet high! The fires after two days died out 
as suddenly, and from here we can see the great dome-like top, snow-capped under 
the stars, serene in an eternal winter.

I.L.B.


LETTER VI

HILO, HAWAII, Feb. 3

My plans are quite overturned. I was to have ridden with the native mail-carrier 
to the north of the island to take the steamer for Honolulu, but there are 
freshets in the gulches on the road, making the ride unsafe. There is no steamer 
from Hilo for three weeks, and in the meantime Mr. and Mrs. S. have kindly 
consented to receive me as a boarder; and I find the people, scenery, and life 
so charming, that I only regret my detention on Mrs. Dexter's account. I am 
already rested from the great volcano trip.

We left Kilauea at seven in the morning of the 1st Feb. in a pouring rain. The 
natives decorated us with leis of turquoise and coral berries, and of crimson 
and yellow ohia blossoms. The saddles were wet, the crater was blotted out by 
mist, water dripped from the trees, we splashed through pools in the rocks, the 
horses plunged into mud up to their knees, and the drip, drip, of vertical, 
earnest, tepid, tropical rain accompanied us nearly to Hilo. Upa and Miss K. 
held umbrellas the whole way, but I required both hands for holding on to the 
horse whenever he chose to gallop. As soon as we left the crater-house Upa 
started over the grass at full speed, my horse of course followed, and my feet 
being jerked out of the stirrups, I found myself ignominiously sitting on the 
animal's back behind the saddle, and nearly slid over his tail, before, by 
skilful efforts, I managed to scramble over the peak back again, when I held on 
by horn and mane until the others stopped. Happily I was last, and I don't think 
they saw me. Upa amused me very much on the way; he insists that I am "a high 
chief." He said a good deal about Queen Victoria, whose virtues seem well known 
here: "Good Queen make good people," he said, "English very good!" He asked me 
how many chiefs we had, and supposing him to mean hereditary peers, I replied, 
over 500. "Too many, too many!" he answered emphatically-- "too much chief eat 
up people!" He asked me if all people were good in England, and I was sorry to 
tell him that this was very far from being the case. He was incredulous, or 
seemed so out of flattery, and said, "You good Queen, you Bible long time, you 
good!" I was surprised to find how much he knew of European politics, of the 
liberation of Italy, and the Franco-German war. He expressed a most orthodox 
horror of the Pope, who, he said, he knew from his Bible was the "Beast!" He 
said, "I bring band and serenade for good Queen sake," but this has not come off 
yet.

We straggled into Hilo just at dusk, thoroughly wet, jaded, and satisfied, but 
half-starved, for the rain had converted that which should have been our lunch 
into a brownish pulp of bread and newspaper, and we had subsisted only on some 
half-ripe guavas. After the black desolation of Kilauea, I realized more fully 
the beauty of Hilo, as it appeared in the gloaming. The rain had ceased, cool 
breezes rustled through the palm-groves and sighed through the funereal foliage 
of the pandanus. Under thick canopies of the glossy breadfruit and banana, 
groups of natives were twining garlands of roses and ohia blossoms. The lights 
of happy foreign homes flashed from under verandahs festooned with passion-
flowers, and the low chant, to me nearly intolerable, but which the natives 
love, mingled with the ceaseless moaning of the surf and the sighing of the 
breeze through the trees, and a heavy fragrance, unlike the faint sweet odours 
of the north, filled the evening air. It was delicious.

I suffered intensely from pain and stiffness, and was induced to try a true 
Hawaiian remedy, which is not only regarded as a cure for all physical ills, but 
as the greatest of physical luxuries; i.e. lomi- lomi. This is a compound of 
pinching, pounding, and squeezing, and Moi Moi, the fine old Hawaiian nurse in 
this family, is an adept in the art. She found out by instinct which were the 
most painful muscles, and subjected them to a doubly severe pounding, laughing 
heartily at my groans. However, I must admit that my arms and shoulders were 
almost altogether relieved before the lomi-lomi was finished. The first act of 
courtesy to a stranger in a native house is this, and it is varied in many ways. 
Now and then the patient lies face downwards, and children execute a sort of 
dance upon his spine. ["Reef Rovings."] Formerly, the chiefs, when not engaged 
in active pursuits, exacted lomi-lomi as a constant service from their 
followers.

A number of Hilo folk came in during the evening to inquire how we had sped, and 
for news of the volcano. I think the proximity of Kilauea gives sublimity to 
Hilo, and helps to lift conversation out of common-place ruts. It is no far-off 
spectacle, but an immediate source of wonder and apprehension, for it rocks the 
village with earthquakes, and renders the construction of stone houses and 
plastered ceilings impossible. It rolls vast tidal waves with infinite 
destruction on the coast, and of late years its fiery overflowings have twice 
threatened this paradise with annihilation. Then there is the dead volcano of 
Mauna Loa, from whose resurrection anything may be feared. Even last night a 
false rumour that a light was to be seen on its summit brought everyone out, but 
it was only an increased glare from the pit of Hale-mau-mau. It is most 
interesting to be in a region of such splendid possibilities.

I.L.B.


LETTER VII

HILO, HAWAII

The white population here, which constitutes "society," is very small. There are 
two venerable missionaries "Father Coan" and "Father Lyman," the former pastor 
of a large native congregation, which, though much shrunken, is not only self-
sustaining, but contributes $1200 a year to foreign missions, and the latter, 
though very old and frail, the indefatigable head of an industrial school for 
native young men. Their houses combine the trimness of New England, with the 
luxuriance of the tropics; they are cool retreats, embowered among breadfruit, 
tamarind, and bamboo, through whose graceful leafage the blue waters of the bay 
are visible. Innumerable exotics are domesticated round these fair homesteads. 
Two of "Father Lyman's" sons are influential residents, one being the 
Lieutenant-Governor of the island. Other sons of former missionaries are settled 
here in business, and there are a few strangers who have been attracted hither. 
Dr. Wetmore, formerly of the mission, is a typical New Englander of the old 
orthodox school. It is pleasant to see him brighten into almost youthful 
enthusiasm on the subject of Hawaiian ferns. My host, a genial, social, 
intelligent American, is sheriff of Hawaii, postmaster, etc., and with his 
charming wife (a missionary's daughter), and some friends who live with them, 
make their large house a centre of kindliness, friendliness, and hospitality. 
Mr. Thompson, pastor of the foreign church, is a man of very liberal culture, as 
well as wide sympathies. The lady principal of the Government school is a 
handsome, talented Vermont girl, and besides being an immense favourite, well 
deserves her unusual and lucrative position.

There are hardly any young ladies, and very few young men, but plenty of rosy, 
blooming children, who run about barefoot all the year. Besides the Hilo 
residents, there are some planters' families within seven miles, who come in to 
sewing circles, church, etc. There is a small class of reprobate white men who 
have ostracized themselves by means of drink and bad morals, and are a curse to 
the natives. The half whites, among whom "Bill Ragsdale" is the leading spirit, 
are not numerous. Hilo has no carriage roads and no carriages: every one must 
ride or travel in a litter. People are very kind to each other. Horses, dresses, 
patterns, books, and articles of domestic use, are lent and borrowed 
continually. The smallness of the society and the close proximity are too much 
like a ship. People know everything about the details of each other's daily 
life, income, and expenditure, and the day's doings of each member of the little 
circle are matters for conversation. Indeed, were it not for the volcano and its 
doings, conversation might degenerate into gossip. There is an immense deal of 
personal talk; the wonder is that there is so little ill-nature. Not only is 
what everybody does here common property, but the sayings, doings, goings, 
comings, and purchases of every one in all the other islands are common property 
also, made so by letters and oral communication. It is all very amusing, and on 
the whole very kindly, and human interests are always interesting; but it has 
its perilous side. They are very kind to each other. There is no distress which 
is not alleviated. There is no nurse, and in cases of sickness the ladies take 
it by turns to wait on the sufferer by day and night for weeks, and even months. 
Such inevitable mutual dependence of course promotes friendliness.

The foreigners live very simply. The eating-rooms are used solely for eating, 
the "parlours" are always cheerful and tasteful, and the bedrooms very pretty, 
adorned with all manner of knick-knacks made by the ladies, who are 
indescribably deft with their fingers. Light Manilla matting is used instead of 
carpets. A Chinese man-cook, who leaves at seven in the evening, is the only 
servant, except in one or two cases, where, as here, a native woman condescends 
to come in during the day as a nurse. In the morning the ladies, in their fresh 
pretty wrappers and ruffled white aprons, sweep and dust the rooms, and I never 
saw women look more truly graceful and refined than they do, when engaged in the 
plain prose of these domestic duties. They make all their own dresses, and when 
any lady is busy and wants a dress in a hurry, two or three of them meet and 
make it for her. I never saw people live such easy pleasant lives. They have 
such good health, for one thing, partly no doubt because their domestic duties 
give them wholesome exercise without pressing upon them. They have abounding 
leisure for reading, music, choir practising, drawing, fern-printing, fancy 
work, picnics, riding parties, and enjoy sociability thoroughly. They usually 
ride in dainty bloomer costumes, even when they don't ride astride. All the 
houses are pretty, and it takes little to make them so in this climate. One 
novel fashion is to decorate the walls with festoons of the beautiful fern 
Microlepia tenuifolia, which are renewed as soon as they fade, and every room is 
adorned with a profusion of bouquets, which are easily obtained where flowers 
bloom all the year. Many of the residents possess valuable libraries, and these, 
with cabinets of minerals, volcanic specimens, shells, and coral, with weapons, 
calabashes, ornaments, and cloth of native manufacture, almost furnish a room in 
themselves. Some of the volcanic specimens and the coral are of almost 
inestimable value, as well as of exquisite beauty.

The gentlemen don't seem to have near so much occupation as the ladies. There 
are two stores on the beach, and at these and at the Court-house they aggregate, 
for lack of club-house and exchange. Business is not here a synonym for hurry, 
and official duties are light; so light, that in these morning hours I see the 
governor, the sheriff, and the judge, with three other gentlemen, playing an 
interminable croquet game on the Court-house lawn. They purvey gossip for the 
ladies, and how much they invent, and how much they only circulate can never be 
known!

There is a large native population in the village, along the beach, and on the 
heights above the Wailuku River. Frame houses with lattices, and grass houses 
with deep verandahs, peep out everywhere from among the mangoes and bananas. The 
governess of Hawaii, the Princess Keelikalani, has a house on the beach shaded 
by a large umbrella-tree and a magnificent clump of bamboos, 70 feet in height. 
The native life with which one comes constantly in contact, is very interesting.

The men do whatever hard work is done in cultivating the kalo patches and 
pounding the kalo. Thus kalo, the Arum esculentum, forms the national diet. A 
Hawaiian could not exist without his calabash of poi. The root is an object of 
the tenderest solicitude, from the day it is planted until the hour when it is 
lovingly eaten. The eating of poi seems a ceremony of profound meaning; it is 
like the eating salt with an Arab, or a Masonic sign. The kalo root is an ovate 
oblong, as bulky as a Californian beet, and it has large leaves, shaped like a 
broad arrow, of a singularly bright green. The best kinds grow entirely in 
water. The patch is embanked and frequently inundated, and each plant grows on a 
small hillock of puddled earth. The cutting from which it grows is simply the 
top of the plant, with a little of the tuber. The men stand up to their knees in 
water while cultivating the root. It is excellent when boiled and sliced; but 
the preparation of poi is an elaborate process. The roots are baked in an 
underground oven, and are then laid on a slightly hollowed board, and beaten 
with a stone pestle. It is hard work, and the men don't wear any clothes while 
engaged in it. It is not a pleasant-looking operation. They often dip their 
hands in a calabash of water to aid them in removing the sticky mass, and they 
always look hot and tired. When it is removed from the board into large 
calabashes, it is reduced to paste by the addition of water, and set aside for 
two or three days to ferment. When ready for use it is either lilac or pink, and 
tastes like sour bookbinders' paste. Before water is added, when it is in its 
dry state, it is called paiai, or hard food, and is then packed in ti leaves in 
20 lb. bundles for inland carriage, and is exported to the Guano Islands. It is 
a prolific and nutritious plant. It is estimated that forty square feet will 
support an Hawaiian for a year.

The melon and kalo patches represent a certain amount of spasmodic industry, but 
in most other things the natives take no thought for the morrow. Why should they 
indeed? For while they lie basking in the sun, without care of theirs, the 
cocoanut, the breadfruit, the yam, the guava, the banana, and the delicious 
papaya, which is a compound of a ripe apricot with a Cantaloupe melon, grow and 
ripen perpetually. Men and women are always amusing themselves, the men with 
surf-bathing, the women with making leis--both sexes with riding, gossiping, and 
singing. Every man and woman, almost every child, has a horse. There is a 
perfect plague of badly bred, badly developed, weedy looking animals. The beach 
and the pleasant lawn above it are always covered with men and women riding at a 
gallop, with bare feet, and stirrups tucked between the toes. To walk even 200 
yards seems considered a degradation. The people meet outside each others' 
houses all day long, and sit in picturesque groups on their mats, singing, 
laughing, talking, and quizzing the haoles, as if the primal curse had never 
fallen. Pleasant sights of out-door cooking gregariously carried on greet one 
everywhere. This style of cooking prevails all over Polynesia. A hole in the 
ground is lined with stones, wood is burned within it, and when the rude oven 
has been sufficiently heated, the pig, chicken, breadfruit, or kalo, wrapped in 
ti leaves is put in, a little water is thrown on, and the whole is covered up. 
It is a slow but sure process.

Bright dresses, bright eyes, bright sunshine, music, dancing, a life without 
care, and a climate without asperities, make up the sunny side of native life as 
pictured at Hilo. But there are dark moral shadows, the population is shrinking 
away, and rumours of leprosy are afloat, so that some of these fair homes may be 
desolate ere long. However many causes for regret exist, one must not forget 
that only forty years ago the people inhabiting this strip of land between the 
volcanic wilderness and the sea were a vicious, sensual, shameless herd, that no 
man among them, except their chiefs, had any rights, that they were harried and 
oppressed almost to death, and had no consciousness of any moral obligations. 
Now, order and external decorum at least, prevail. There is not a locked door in 
Hilo, and nobody makes anybody else afraid.

The people of Hawaii-nei are clothed and civilized in their habits; they have 
equal rights; 6,500 of them have kuleanas or freeholds, equable and enlightened 
laws are impartially administered; wrong and oppression are unknown; they enjoy 
one of the best administered governments in the world; education is universal, 
and the throne is occupied by a liberal sovereign of their own race and 
election.

Few of them speak English. Their language is so easy that most of the foreigners 
acquire it readily. You know how stupid I am about languages, yet I have already 
picked up the names of most common things. There are only twelve letters, but 
some of these are made to do double duty, as K is also T, and L is also R. The 
most northern island of the group, Kauai, is as often pronounced as if it began 
with a T, and Kalo is usually Taro. It is a very musical language. Each syllable 
and word ends with a vowel, and there are none of our rasping and sibilant 
consonants. In their soft phraseology our hard rough surnames undergo a 
metamorphosis, as Fisk into Filikina, Wilson into Wilikina. Each vowel is 
distinctly pronounced, and usually with the Italian sound. The volcano is 
pronounced as if spelt Keel-ah-wee-ah, and Kauai as if Kah-wye-ee. The name 
Owhyhee for Hawaii had its origin in a mistake, for the island was never 
anything but Hawaii, pronounced Hah-wye-ee, but Captain Cook mistook the prefix 
O, which is the sign of the nominative case, for a part of the word. Many of the 
names of places, specially of those compounded with wai, water, are very 
musical; Wailuku, "water of destruction;" Waialeale, "rippling water;" Waioli, 
"singing water;" Waipio, "vanquished water;" Kaiwaihae, "torn water." Mauna, 
"mountain," is a mere prefix, and though always used in naming the two giants of 
the Pacific, Mauna Kea, and Mauna Loa, is hardly ever applied to Hualalai, "the 
offspring of the shining sun;" or to Haleakala on Maui, "the house of the sun."

I notice that the foreigners never use the English or botanical names of trees 
or plants, but speak of ohias, ohelos, kukui (candle- nut), lauhala (pandanus), 
pulu (tree fern), mamane, koa, etc. There is one native word in such universal 
use that I already find I cannot get on without it, pilikia. It means anything, 
from a downright trouble to a slight difficulty or entanglement. "I'm in a 
pilikia," or "very pilikia," or "pilikia!" A revolution would be "a pilikia." 
The fact of the late king dying without naming a successor was pre-eminently a 
pilikia, and it would be a serious pilikia if a horse were to lose a shoe on the 
way to Kilauea. Hou- hou, meaning "in a huff," I hear on all sides; and two 
words, makai, signifying "on the sea-side," and mauka, "on the mountain side." 
These terms are perfectly intelligible out of doors, but it is puzzling when one 
is asked to sit on "the mauka side of the table." The word aloha, in foreign 
use, has taken the place of every English equivalent. It is a greeting, a 
farewell, thanks, love, goodwill. Aloha looks at you from tidies and 
illuminations, it meets you on the roads and at house-doors, it is conveyed to 
you in letters, the air is full of it. "My aloha to you," "he sends you his 
aloha," "they desire their aloha." It already represents to me all of kindness 
and goodwill that language can express, and the convenience of it as compared 
with other phrases is, that it means exactly what the receiver understands it to 
mean, and consequently, in all cases can be conveyed by a third person. There is 
no word for "thank you." Maikai "good," is often useful in its place, and smiles 
supply the rest. There are no words which express "gratitude" or "chastity," or 
some others of the virtues; and they have no word for "weather," that which we 
understand by "weather" being absolutely unknown.

Natives have no surnames. Our volcano guide is Upa, or Scissors, but his wife 
and children are anything else. The late king was Kamehameha, or the "lonely 
one." The father of the present king is called Kanaina, but the king's name is 
Lunalilo, or "above all." Nor does it appear that a man is always known by the 
same name, nor that a name necessarily indicates the sex of its possessor. Thus, 
in signing a paper the signature would be Hoapili kanaka, or Hoapili wahine, 
according as the signer was man or woman. I remember that in my first letter I 
fell into the vulgarism, initiated by the whaling crews, of calling the natives 
Kanakas. This is universally but very absurdly done, as Kanaka simply means man. 
If an Hawaiian word is absolutely necessary, we might translate native and have 
maole, pronounced maori, like that of the New Zealand aborigines. Kanaka is to 
me decidedly objectionable, as conveying the idea of canaille.

I had written thus far when Mr. Severance came in to say that a grand display of 
the national sport of surf-bathing was going on, and a large party of us went 
down to the beach for two hours to enjoy it. It is really a most exciting 
pastime, and in a rough sea requires immense nerve. The surf-board is a tough 
plank shaped like a coffin lid, about two feet broad, and from six to nine feet 
long, well oiled and cared for. It is usually made of the erythrina, or the 
breadfruit tree. The surf was very heavy and favourable, and legions of natives 
were swimming and splashing in the sea, though not more than forty had their 
Papa-he-nalu, or "wave sliding boards," with them. The men, dressed only in 
malos, carrying their boards under their arms, waded out from some rocks on 
which the sea was breaking, and, pushing their boards before them, swam out to 
the first line of breakers, and then diving down were seen no more till they re-
appeared as a number of black heads bobbing about like corks in smooth water 
half a mile from shore.

What they seek is a very high roller, on the top of which they leap from behind, 
lying face downwards on their boards. As the wave speeds on, and the bottom 
strikes the ground, the top breaks into a huge comber. The swimmers but appeared 
posing themselves on its highest edge by dexterous movements of their hands and 
feet, keeping just at the top of the curl, but always apparently coming down 
hill with a slanting motion. So they rode in majestically, always just ahead of 
the breaker, carried shorewards by its mighty impulse at the rate of forty miles 
an hour, yet seeming to have a volition of their own, as the more daring riders 
knelt and even stood on their surf-boards, waving their arms and uttering 
exultant cries. They were always apparently on the verge of engulfment by the 
fierce breaker whose towering white crest was ever above and just behind them, 
but just as one expected to see them dashed to pieces, they either waded quietly 
ashore, or sliding off their boards, dived under the surf, taking advantage of 
the undertow, and were next seen far out at sea, preparing for fresh exploits.

The great art seems to be to mount the roller precisely at the right time, and 
to keep exactly on its curl just before it breaks. Two or three athletes, who 
stood erect on their boards as they swept exultingly shorewards, were received 
with ringing cheers by the crowd. Many of the less expert failed to throw 
themselves on the crest, and slid back into smooth water, or were caught in the 
combers which were fully ten feet high, and after being rolled over and over, 
ignominiously disappeared amidst roars of laughter, and shouts from the shore. 
At first I held my breath in terror, thinking the creatures were smothered or 
dashed to pieces, and then in a few seconds I saw the dark heads of the objects 
of my anxiety bobbing about behind the rollers waiting for another chance. The 
shore was thronged with spectators, and the presence of the elite of Hilo 
stimulated the swimmers to wonderful exploits.

These people are truly amphibious. Both sexes seem to swim by nature, and the 
children riot in the waves from their infancy. They dive apparently by a mere 
effort of the will. In the deep basin of the Wailuku River, a little below the 
Falls, the maidens swim, float, and dive with garlands of flowers round their 
heads and throats. The more furious and agitated the water is, the greater the 
excitement, and the love of these watery exploits is not confined to the young. 
I saw great fat men with their hair streaked with grey, balancing themselves on 
their narrow surf-boards, and riding the surges shorewards with as much 
enjoyment as if they were in their first youth. I enjoyed the afternoon 
thoroughly.

Is it "always afternoon" here, I wonder? The sea was so blue, the sunlight so 
soft, the air so sweet. There was no toil, clang, or hurry. People were all 
holidaymaking (if that can be where there is no work), and enjoying themselves, 
the surf-bathers in the sea, and hundreds of gaily-dressed men and women 
galloping on the beach. It was so serene and tropical. I sympathize with those 
who eat the lotus, and remain for ever on such enchanted shores.

I am gaining health daily, and almost live in the open air. I have hired the 
native policeman's horse and saddle, and with a Macgregor flannel riding 
costume, which my kind friends have made for me, and a pair of jingling Mexican 
spurs am quite Hawaiianised. I ride alone once or twice a day exploring the 
neighbourhood, finding some new fern or flower daily, and abandon myself wholly 
to the fascination of this new existence.

I.L.B.


LETTER VIII

ONOMEA, HAWAII - JUDGE AUSTIN'S

Mrs. A. has been ill for some time, and Mrs. S. her sister and another friend 
"plotted" in a very "clandestine" manner that I should come here for a few days 
in order to give her "a little change of society," but I am quite sure that 
under this they only veil a kind wish that I should see something of plantation 
life. There is a plan, too, that I should take a five days' trip to a remarkable 
valley called Waipio, but this is only a "castle in the air."

Mr. A. sent in for me a capital little lean rat of a horse which by dint of 
spirit and activity managed to keep within sight of two large horses, ridden by 
Mr. Thompson, and a very handsome young lady riding "cavalier fashion," who 
convoyed me out. Borrowed saddle- bags, and a couple of shingles for carrying 
ferns formed my outfit, and were carried behind my saddle. It is a magnificent 
ride here. The track crosses the deep, still, Wailuku River on a wooden bridge, 
and then after winding up a steep hill, among native houses fantastically 
situated, hangs on the verge of the lofty precipices which descend 
perpendicularly to the sea, dips into tremendous gulches, loses itself in the 
bright fern-fringed torrents which have cleft their way down from the mountains, 
and at last emerges on the delicious height on which this house is built.

This coast looked beautiful from the deck of the Kilauea, but I am now convinced 
that I have never seen anything so perfectly lovely as it is when one is 
actually among its details. Onomea is 600 feet high, and every yard of the 
ascent from Hilo brings one into a fresher and purer air. One looks up the 
wooded, broken slopes to a wild volcanic wilderness and the snowy peaks of Mauna 
Kea on one side, and on the other down upon the calm blue Pacific, wrinkled by 
the sweet trade-wind, till it blends in far-off loveliness with the still, blue, 
sky; and heavy surges break on the reefs, and fritter themselves away on the 
rocks, tossing their pure foam over ti and lauhala trees, and the exquisite 
ferns and trailers which mantle the cliffs down to the water's edge. Here a 
native house stands, with passion-flowers clustering round its verandah, and the 
great solitary red blossoms of the hibiscus flaming out from dark surrounding 
leafage, and women in rose and green holukus, weaving garlands, greet us with 
"Aloha" as we pass. Then we come upon a whole cluster of grass houses under 
lauhalas and bananas. Then there is the sugar plantation of Kaiwiki, with its 
patches of bright green cane, its flumes crossing the track above our heads, 
bringing the cane down from the upland cane-fields to the crushing-mill, and the 
shifting, busy scenes of the sugar-boiling season.

Then the track goes down with a great dip, along which we slip and slide in the 
mud to a deep broad stream. This is a most picturesque spot, the junction of two 
clear bright rivers, and a few native houses and a Chinaman's store are grouped 
close by under some palms, with the customary loungers on horseback, asking and 
receiving nuhou, or news, at the doors. Our accustomed horses leaped into a 
ferry-scow provided by Government, worked by a bearded female of hideous aspect, 
and leaped out on the other side to climb a track cut on the side of a 
precipice, which would be steep to mount on one's own feet. There we met parties 
of natives, all flower- wreathed, talking and singing, coming gaily down on 
their sure- footed horses, saluting us with the invariable "Aloha." Every now 
and then we passed native churches, with spires painted white, or a native 
schoolhouse, or a group of scholars all ferns and flowers. The greenness of the 
vegetation merits the term "dazzling." We think England green, but its colour is 
poor and pale as compared with that of tropical Hawaii. Palms, candlenuts, 
ohias, hibiscus, were it not for their exceeding beauty, would almost pall upon 
one from their abundance, and each gulch has its glorious entanglement of 
breadfruit, the large-leaved ohia, or native apple, a species of Eugenia 
(Eugenia Malaccensis), and the pandanus, with its aerial roots, all looped 
together by large sky-blue convolvuli and the running fern, and is marvellous 
with parasitic growths.

The distracting beauty of this coast is what are called gulches-- narrow deep 
ravines or gorges, from 100 to 2,000 feet in depth, each with a series of 
cascades from 10 to 1,800 feet in height. I dislike reducing their glories to 
the baldness of figures, but the depth of these clefts (originally, probably, 
the seams caused by fire torrents), cut and worn by the fierce streams fed by 
the snows of Mauna Kea, and the rains of the forest belt, cannot otherwise be 
expressed. The cascades are most truly beautiful, gleaming white among the dark 
depths of foliage far away, and falling into deep limpid basins, festooned and 
overhung with the richest and greenest vegetation of this prolific climate, from 
the huge-leaved banana and shining breadfruit to the most feathery of ferns and 
lycopodiums. Each gulch opens on a velvet lawn close to the sea, and most of 
them have space for a few grass houses, with cocoanut trees, bananas, and kalo 
patches. There are sixty-nine of these extraordinary chasms within a distance of 
thirty miles!

I think we came through eleven, fording the streams in all but two. The descent 
into some of them is quite alarming. You go down almost standing in your 
stirrups, at a right angle with the horse's head, and up, grasping his mane to 
prevent the saddle slipping. He goes down like a goat, with his bare feet, 
looking cautiously at each step, sometimes putting out a foot and withdrawing it 
again in favour of better footing, and sometimes gathering his four feet under 
him and sliding or jumping. The Mexican saddle has great advantages on these 
tracks, which are nothing better than ledges cut on the sides of precipices, for 
one goes up and down not only in perfect security but without fatigue. I am 
beginning to hope that I am not too old, as I feared I was, to learn a new mode 
of riding, for my companions rode at full speed over places where I should have 
picked my way carefully at a foot's pace; and my horse followed them, galloping 
and stopping short at their pleasure, and I successfully kept my seat, though 
not without occasional fears of an ignominious downfall. I even wish that you 
could see me in my Rob Roy riding dress, with leather belt and pouch, a lei of 
the orange seeds of the pandanus round my throat, jingling Mexican spurs, blue 
saddle blanket, and Rob Roy blanket strapped on behind the saddle!

This place is grandly situated 600 feet above a deep cove, into which two 
beautiful gulches of great size run, with heavy cascades, finer than Foyers at 
its best, and a native village is picturesquely situated between the two. The 
great white rollers, whiter by contrast with the dark deep water, come into the 
gulch just where we forded the river, and from the ford a passable road made for 
hauling sugar ascends to the house. The air is something absolutely delicious; 
and the murmur of the rollers and the deep boom of the cascades are very 
soothing. There is little rise or fall in the cadence of the surf anywhere on 
the windward coast, but one even sound, loud or soft, like that made by a train 
in a tunnel.

We were kindly welcomed, and were at once "made at home." Delicious phrase! the 
full meaning of which I am learning on Hawaii, where, though everything has the 
fascination of novelty, I have ceased to feel myself a stranger. This is a 
roomy, rambling frame-house, with a verandah, and the door, as is usual here, 
opens directly into the sitting-room. The stair by which I go to my room 
suggests possibilities, for it has been removed three inches from the wall by an 
earthquake, which also brought down the tall chimney of the boiling-house. Close 
by there are small pretty frame-houses for the overseer, bookkeeper, sugar 
boiler, and machinist; a store, the factory, a pretty native church near the 
edge of the cliff, and quite a large native village below. It looks green and 
bright, and the atmosphere is perfect, with the cool air coming down from the 
mountains, and a soft breeze coming up from the blue dreamy ocean. Behind the 
house the uplands slope away to the colossal Mauna Kea. The actual, dense, 
impenetrable forest does not begin for a mile and a half from the coast, and its 
broad dark belt, extending to a height of 4,000 feet, and beautifully broken, 
throws out into greater brightness the upward glades of grass and the fields of 
sugar-cane.

This is a very busy season, and as this is a large plantation there is an 
appearance of great animation. There are five or six saddled horses usually 
tethered below the house; and with overseers, white and coloured, and natives 
riding at full gallop, and people coming on all sorts of errands, the hum of the 
crushing-mill, the rush of water in the flumes, and the grind of the waggons 
carrying cane, there is no end of stir.

The plantations in the Hilo district enjoy special advantages, for by turning 
some of the innumerable mountain streams into flumes the owners can bring a 
great part of their cane and all their wood for fuel down to the mills without 
other expense than the original cost of the woodwork. Mr. A. has 100 mules, but 
the greater part of their work is ploughing and hauling the kegs of sugar down 
to the cove, where in favourable weather they are put on board of a schooner for 
Honolulu. This plantation employs 185 hands, native and Chinese, and turns out 
600 tons of sugar a year. The natives are much liked as labourers, being docile 
and on the whole willing; but native labour is hard to get, as the natives do 
not like to work for a term unless obliged, and a pernicious system of 
"advances" is practised. The labourers hire themselves to the planters, in the 
case of natives usually for a year, by a contract which has to be signed before 
a notary public. The wages are about eight dollars a month with food, or eleven 
dollars without food, and the planters supply houses and medical attendance. The 
Chinese are imported as coolies, and usually contract to work for five years. As 
a matter of policy no less than of humanity the "hands" are well treated; for if 
a single instance of injustice were perpetrated on a plantation the factory 
might stand still the next year, for hardly a native would contract to serve 
again.

The Chinese are quiet and industrious, but smoke opium, and are much addicted to 
gaming. Many of them save money, and, when their turn of service is over, set up 
stores, or grow vegetables for money. Each man employed has his horse, and on 
Saturday the hands form quite a cavalcade. Great tact, firmness, and knowledge 
of human nature are required in the manager of a plantation. The natives are at 
times disposed to shirk work without sufficient cause; the native lunas, or 
overseers, are not always reasonable, the Chinamen and natives do not always 
agree, and quarrels and entanglements arise, and everything is referred to the 
decision of the manager, who, besides all things else, must know the exact 
amount of work which ought to be performed, both in the fields and factory, and 
see that it is done. Mr. A. is a keen, shrewd man of business, kind without 
being weak, and with an eye on every detail of his plantations. The requirements 
are endless. It reminds me very much of plantation life in Georgia in the old 
days of slavery. I never elsewhere heard of so many headaches, sore hands, and 
other trifling ailments. It is very amusing to see the attempts which the would-
be invalids make to lengthen their brief smiling faces into lugubriousness, and 
the sudden relaxation into naturalness when they are allowed a holiday. Mr. A. 
comes into the house constantly to consult his wife regarding the treatment of 
different ailments.

I have made a second tour through the factory, and am rather disgusted with 
sugar making. "All's well that ends well," however, and the delicate crystalline 
result makes one forget the initial stages of the manufacture. The cane, 
stripped of its leaves, passes from the flumes under the rollers of the 
crushing-mill, where it is subjected to a pressure of five or six tons. One 
hundred pounds of cane under this process yield up from sixty-five to seventy-
five pounds of juice. This juice passes, as a pale green cataract, into a 
trough, which conducts it into a vat, where it is dosed with quicklime to 
neutralize its acid, and is then run off into large heated metal vessels. At 
this stage the smell is abominable, and the turbid fluid, with a thick scum upon 
it, is simply disgusting. After a preliminary heating and skimming it is passed 
off into iron pans, several in a row, and boiled and skimmed, and ladled from 
one to the other till it reaches the last, which is nearest to the fire, and 
there it boils with the greatest violence, seething and foaming, bringing all 
the remaining scum to the surface. After the concentration has proceeded far 
enough, the action of the heat is suspended, and the reddish-brown, oily-looking 
liquid is drawn into the vacuum-pan till it is about a third full; the 
concentration is completed by boiling the juice in vacuo at a temperature of 150 
degrees, and even lower. As the boiling proceeds, the sugar boiler tests the 
contents of the pan by withdrawing a few drops, and holding them up to the light 
on his finger; and, by certain minute changes in their condition, he judges when 
it is time to add an additional quantity. When the pan is full, the contents 
have thickened into the consistency of thick gruel by the formation of minute 
crystals, and are then allowed to descend into an heater, where they are kept 
warm till they can be run into "forms" or tanks, where they are allowed to 
granulate. The liquid, or molasses, which remains after the first 
crystallization is returned to the vacuum pan and reboiled, and this reboiling 
of the drainings is repeated two or three times, with a gradually decreasing 
result in the quality and quantity of the sugar. The last process, which is used 
for getting rid of the treacle, is a most beautiful one. The mass of sugar and 
treacle is put into what are called "centrifugal pans," which are drums about 
three feet in diameter and two feet high, which make about 1,000 revolutions a 
minute. These have false interiors of wire gauze, and the mass is forced 
violently against their sides by centrifugal action, and they let the treacle 
whirl through, and retain the sugar crystals, which lie in a dry heap in the 
centre.

The cane is being flumed in with great rapidity, and the factory is working till 
late at night. The cane from which the juice has been expressed, called "trash," 
is dried and used as fuel for the furnace which supplies the steam power. The 
sugar is packed in kegs, and a cooper and carpenter, as well as other mechanics, 
are employed.

Sugar is now the great interest of the islands. Christian missions and whaling 
have had their day, and now people talk sugar. Hawaii thrills to the news of a 
cent up or a cent down in the American market. All the interests of the kingdom 
are threatened by this one, which, because it is grievously depressed and 
staggers under a heavy import duty in the American market, is now clamorous in 
some quarters for "annexation," and in others for a "reciprocity treaty," which 
last means the cession of the Pearl River lagoon on Oahu, with its adjacent 
shores, to America, for a Pacific naval station. There are 200,000 acres of 
productive soil on the islands, of which only a fifteenth is under cultivation, 
and of this large area 150,000 is said to be specially adapted for sugar 
culture. Herein is a prospective Utopia, and people are always dreaming of the 
sugar- growing capacities of the belt of rich disintegrated lava which slopes 
upwards from the sea to the bases of the mountains. Hitherto, sugar growing has 
been a very disastrous speculation, and few of the planters at present do more 
than keep their heads above water.

Were labour plentiful and the duties removed, fortunes might be made; for the 
soil yields on an average about three times as much as that of the State of 
Louisiana. Two and a half tons to the acre is a common yield, five tons, a 
frequent one, and instances are known of the slowly matured cane of a high 
altitude yielding as much as seven tons! The magnificent climate makes it a very 
easy crop to grow. There is no brief harvest time with its rush, hurry, and 
frantic demand for labour, nor frost to render necessary the hasty cutting of an 
immature crop. The same number of hands is kept on all the year round. The 
planters can plant pretty much when they please, or not plant at all, for two or 
three years, the only difference in the latter case being that the rattoons 
which spring up after the cutting of the former crop are smaller in bulk. They 
can cut when they please, whether the cane be tasselled or not, and they can 
plant, cut, and grind at one time!

It is a beautiful crop in any stage of growth, especially in the tasselled 
stage. Every part of it is useful--the cane pre- eminently--the leaves as food 
for horses and mules, and the tassels for making hats. Here and elsewhere there 
is a plate of cut cane always within reach, and the children chew it 
incessantly. I fear you will be tired of sugar, but I find it more interesting 
than the wool and mutton of Victoria and New Zealand, and it is a most important 
item of the wealth of this toy kingdom, which last year exported 16,995,402 lbs. 
of sugar and 192,105 gallons of molasses. [In 1873 the export of sugar reached a 
total of upwards of 23,000,000 lbs.] With regard to molasses, the Government 
prohibits the manufacture of rum, so the planters are deprived of a fruitful 
source of profit. It is really difficult to tear myself from the subject of 
sugar, for I see the cane waving in the sun while I write, and hear the busy hum 
of the crushing-mill.

I.L.B.


LETTER IX

ONOMEA, HAWAII

This is such a pleasant house and household, Mrs. A. is as bright as though she 
were not an invalid, and her room, except at meals, is the gathering-place of 
the family. The four boys are bright, intelligent beings, out of doors, 
barefooted, all day, and with a passion for horses, of which their father 
possesses about thirty. The youngest, Ephy, is the brightest child for three 
years old that I ever saw, but absolutely crazy about horses and mules. He talks 
of little else, and is constantly asking me to draw horses on his slate. He is a 
merry, audacious little creature, but came in this evening quite subdued. The 
sun was setting gloriously behind the forest-covered slopes, flooding the violet 
distances with a haze of gold, and, in a low voice, he said, "I've seen God."

There is the usual Chinese cook, who cooks and waits and looks good- natured, 
and of course has his own horse, and his wife, a most minute Chinese woman, 
comes in and attends to the rooms and to Mrs. A., and sews and mends. She wears 
her native dress--a large, stiff, flat cane hat, like a tray, fastened firmly on 
or to her head; a scanty loose frock of blue denim down to her knees, wide 
trousers of the same down to her ancles, and slippers. Her hair is knotted up; 
she always wears silver armlets, and would not be seen without the hat for 
anything. There is not a bell in this or any house on the islands, and the 
bother of servants is hardly known, for the Chinamen do their work like 
automatons, and disappear at sunset. In a land where there are no carpets, no 
fires, no dust, no hot water needed, no windows to open and shut--for they are 
always open--no further service is really required. It is a simple arcadian 
life, and people live more happily than any that I have seen elsewhere. It is 
very cheerful to live among people whose faces are not soured by the east wind, 
or wrinkled by the worrying effort to "keep up appearances," which deceive 
nobody; who have no formal visiting, but real sociability; who regard the light 
manual labour of domestic life as a pleasure, not a thing to be ashamed of; who 
are contented with their circumstances, and have leisure to be kind, cultured, 
and agreeable; and who live so tastefully, though simply, that they can at any 
time ask a passing stranger to occupy the simple guest chamber, or share the 
simple meal, without any of the soul-harassing preparations which often make the 
exercise of hospitality a thing of terror to people in the same circumstances at 
home.

People will ask you, "What is the food?" We have everywhere bread and biscuit 
made of California flour, griddle cakes with molasses, and often cracked wheat, 
butter not very good, sweet potatoes, boiled kalo, Irish potatoes, and poi. I 
have not seen fish on any table except at the Honolulu Hotel, or any meat but 
beef, which is hard and dry as compared with ours. We have China or Japan tea, 
and island coffee. Honolulu is the only place in which intoxicants are allowed 
to be sold; and I have not seen beer, wine, or spirits in any house. Bananas are 
an important article of diet, and sliced guavas, eaten with milk and sugar, are 
very good. The cooking is always done in detached cook houses, in and on 
American cooking stoves.

As to clothing. I wear my flannel riding dress for both riding and walking, and 
a black silk at other times. The resident ladies wear prints and silks, and the 
gentlemen black cloth or dark tweed suits. Flannel is not required, neither are 
puggarees or white hats or sunshades at any season. The changes of temperature 
are very slight, and there is no chill when the sun goes down. The air is always 
like balm; the rain is tepid and does not give cold; in summer it may be three 
or four degrees warmer. Windows and doors stand open the whole year. A blanket 
is agreeable at night, but not absolutely necessary. It is a truly delightful 
climate and mode of living, with such an abundance of air and sunshine. My 
health improves daily, and I do not consider myself an invalid.

Between working, reading aloud, talking, riding, and "loafing," I have very 
little time for letter writing; but I must tell you of a delightful fern-hunting 
expedition on the margin of the forest that I took yesterday, accompanied by Mr. 
Thompson and the two elder boys. We rode in the mauka direction, outside cane 
ready for cutting, with silvery tassels gleaming in the sun, till we reached the 
verge of the forest, where an old trail was nearly obliterated by a trailing 
matted grass four feet high, and thousands of woody ferns, which conceal 
streams, holes, and pitfalls. When further riding was impossible, we tethered 
our horses and proceeded on foot. We were then 1,500 feet above the sea by the 
aneroid barometer, and the increased coolness was perceptible. The mercury is 
about four degrees lower for each 1,000 feet of ascent--rather more than this 
indeed on the windward side of the islands. The forest would be quite 
impenetrable were it not for the remains of wood-hauling trails, which, though 
grown up to the height of my shoulders, are still passable.

Underneath the green maze, invisible streams, deep down, made sweet music, 
sweeter even than the gentle murmur of the cool breeze among the trees. The 
forest on the volcano track, which I thought so tropical and wonderful a short 
time ago, is nothing for beauty to compare with this "garden of God." I wish I 
could describe it, but cannot; and as you know only our pale, small-leaved 
trees, with their uniform green, I cannot say that it is like this or that. The 
first line of a hymn, "Oh, Paradise! oh, Paradise!" rings in my brain, and the 
rustic exclamation we used to hear when we were children, "Well, I never!" 
followed by innumerable notes of admiration, seems to exhaust the whole 
vocabulary of wonderment. The former cutting of some trees gives atmosphere, and 
the tumbled nature of the ground shows everything to the best advantage. There 
were openings over which huge candle-nuts, with their pea-green and silver 
foliage, spread their giant arms, and the light played through their branches on 
an infinite variety of ferns. There were groves of bananas and plantains with 
shiny leaves 8 feet long, like enormous hart's-tongue, the bright-leaved noni, 
the dark-leaved koa, the mahogany of the Pacific; the great glossy-leaved 
Eugenia--a forest tree as large as our largest elms; the small-leaved ohia, its 
rose-crimson flowers making a glory in the forests, and its young shoots of 
carmine red vying with the colouring of the New England fall; and the strange 
lauhala hung its stiff drooping plumes, which creak in the faintest breeze; and 
the superb breadfruit hung its untempting fruit, and from spreading guavas we 
shook the ripe yellow treasures, scooping out the inside, all juicy and crimson, 
to make drinking cups of the rind; and there were trees that had surrendered 
their own lives to a conquering army of vigorous parasites which had clothed 
their skeletons with an unapproachable and indistinguishable beauty, and over 
trees and parasites the tender tendrils of great mauve morning glories trailed 
and wreathed themselves, and the strong, strangling stems of the ie wound 
themselves round the tall ohias, which supported their quaint yucca-like spikes 
of leaves fifty feet from the ground.

There were some superb plants of the glossy tropical-looking bird's- nest fern, 
or Asplenium Nidus, which makes its home on the stems and branches of trees, and 
brightens the forest with its great shining fronds. I got a specimen from a koa 
tree. The plant had nine fronds, each one measuring from 4 feet 1 inch to 4 feet 
7 inches in length, and from 7 to 9 inches in breadth. There were some very fine 
tree-ferns (Cibotium Chamissoi?), two of which being accessible, we measured, 
and found them seventeen and twenty feet high, their fronds eight feet long, and 
their stems four feet ten inches in circumference three feet from the ground. 
They showed the most various shades of green, from the dark tint of the mature 
frond, to the pale pea green of those which were just uncurling themselves. I 
managed to get up into a tree for the first time in my life to secure specimens 
of two beautiful parasitic ferns (Polypodium tamariscinum and P. 
Hymenophylloides?). I saw for the first time, too, a lygodium and the large 
climbing potato-fern (Polypodium spectrum), very like a yam in the distance, and 
the Vittaria elongata, whose long grassy fronds adorn almost every tree. The 
beautiful Microlepia tenuifolia abounded, and there were a few plants of the 
loveliest fern I ever saw (Trichomanes meifolium), in specimens of which I 
indulged sparingly, and almost grudgingly, for it seemed unfitting that a form 
of such perfect beauty should be mummied in a herbarium. There was one fern in 
profusion, with from 90 to 130 pair of pinnae on each frond; and the fronds, 
though often exceeding five feet in length, were only two inches broad 
(Nephrolepis pectinata). There were many prostrate trees, which nature has 
entirely covered with choice ferns, specially the rough stem of the tree-fern. I 
counted seventeen varieties on one trunk, and on the whole obtained thirty-five 
specimens for my collection.

The forest soon became completely impenetrable, the beautiful Gleichenia 
Hawaiiensis forming an impassable network over all the undergrowth. And, indeed, 
without this it would have been risky to make further explorations, for often 
masses of wonderful matted vegetation sustained us temporarily over streams six 
or eight feet below, whose musical tinkle alone warned us of our peril. I shall 
never again see anything so beautiful as this fringe of the impassable timber 
belt. I enjoyed it more than anything I have yet seen; it was intoxicating, my 
eyes were "satisfied with seeing." It was a dream, a rapture, this maze of form 
and colour, this entangled luxuriance, this bewildering beauty, through which we 
caught bright glimpses of a heavenly sky above, while far away, below glade and 
lawn, shimmered in surpassing loveliness the cool blue of the Pacific. To me, 
with my hatred of reptiles and insects, it is not the least among the charms of 
Hawaii, that these glorious entanglements and cool damp depths of a redundant 
vegetation give shelter to nothing of unseemly shape and venomous proboscis or 
fang. Here, in cool, dreamy, sunny Onomea, there are no horrid, drumming, 
stabbing, mosquitoes as at Honolulu, to remind me of what I forget sometimes, 
that I am not in Eden. [NOTE.--Throughout these letters the botanical names 
given are only those which are current on the Islands. Those specimens of ferns 
which survived the rough usage which befel them, are to be seen in the Herbarium 
of the Botanical Garden at Oxford, and have been named and classified by my 
cousin, Professor Lawson.]

I.L.B.

The Hawaiian Archipelago - End of Part 2