Hawaii Statewide Files History - Books.....The Hawaiian Archipelago, Part 6

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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 6

LETTER XXV

KALAIEHA, HAWAII

My departure from Ulupalakua illustrates some of the uncertainties of island 
travelling. On Monday night my things were packed, and my trunk sent off to the 
landing; but at five on Tuesday, Mr. Whipple came to my door to say that the 
Kilauea was not in Lahaina roads, and was probably laid up for repairs. I was 
much disappointed, for the mild climate had disagreed with me, and I was longing 
for the roystering winds and unconventional life of windward Hawaii, and there 
was not another steamer for three weeks.

However, some time afterwards, I was unpacking, and in the midst of a floor 
littered with ferns, photographs, books, and clothes, when Mrs. W. rushed in to 
say that the steamer was just reaching the landing below, and that there was 
scarcely the barest hope of catching her. Hopeless as the case seemed, we 
crushed most of my things promiscuously into a carpet bag, Mr. W. rode off with 
it, a horse was imperfectly saddled for me, and I mounted him, with my bag, 
straps, spurs, and a package of ferns in one hand, and my plaid over the saddle, 
while Mrs. W. stuffed the rest of my possessions into a clothes bag, and the 
Chinaman ran away frantically to catch a horse on which to ride down with them.

I galloped off after Mr. W., though people called to me that I could not catch 
the boat, and that my horse would fall on the steep broken descent. My saddle 
slipped over his neck, but he still sped down the hill with the rapid "racking" 
movement of a Narraganset pacer. First a new veil blew away, next my plaid was 
missing, then I passed my trunk on the ox-cart which should have been at the 
landing; but still though the heat was fierce, and the glare from the black lava 
blinding, I dashed heedlessly down, and in twenty minutes had ridden three miles 
down a descent of 2,000 feet, to find the Kilauea puffing and smoking with her 
anchor up; but I was in time, for her friendly clerk, knowing that I was coming, 
detained the scow. You will not wonder at my desperation when I tell you that 
half-way down, a person called to me, "Mauna Loa is in action!"

While I was slipping off the saddle and bridle, Mr. W. arrived with the carpet-
bag, yet more over-heated and shaking with exertion than I was, then the 
Chinaman with a bag of oddments, next a native who had picked up my plaid and 
ferns on the road, and another with my trunk, which he had rescued from the ox-
cart; so I only lost my veil and two brushes, which are irreplaceable here.

The quiet of the nine hours' trip in the Kilauea restored my equanimity, and 
prepared me to enjoy the delicious evening which followed. The silver waters of 
Kawaihae Bay reflected the full moon, the three great mountains of Hawaii were 
cloudless as I had not before seen them, all the asperity of the leeward shore 
was softened into beauty, and the long shadows of bending palms were as still 
and perfect as the palms themselves. But there was a new sight above the silver 
water, for the huge dome of Mauna Loa, forty miles away, was burning red and 
fitfully. A horse and servant awaited me, and we were soon clattering over the 
hard sand by the shining sea, and up the ascent which leads to the windy table-
lands of Waimea. The air was like new life. At a height of 500 feet we met the 
first whiff of the trades, the atmosphere grew cooler and cooler, the night-wind 
fresher, the moonlight whiter; wider the sweeping uplands, redder the light of 
the burning mountain, till I wrapped my plaid about me, but still was chilled to 
the bone, and when the four hours' ride was over, soon after midnight, my limbs 
were stiff with tropical cold. And this, within 20 degrees of the equator, and 
only 2,500 feet above the fiery sea-shore, with its temperature of 80 degrees, 
where Sydney Smith would certainly have desired to "take off his flesh, and sit 
in his bones!"

I delight in Hawaii more than ever, with its unconventional life, great upland 
sweeps, unexplored forests, riotous breezes, and general atmosphere of freedom, 
airiness, and expansion. As I find that a lady can travel alone with perfect 
safety, I have many projects in view, but whatever I do or plan to do, I find my 
eyes always turning to the light on the top of Mauna Loa. I know that the ascent 
is not feasible for me, and that so far as I am concerned the mystery must 
remain unsolved; but that glory, nearly 14,000 feet aloft, rising, falling, "a 
pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night," uplifted in its awful 
loneliness above all human interests, has an intolerable fascination. As the 
twilight deepens, the light intensifies, and often as I watch it in the night, 
it seems to flare up and take the form of a fiery palm-tree. No one has ascended 
the mountain since the activity began a month ago; but the fire is believed to 
be in "the old traditional crater of Mokuaweoweo, in a region rarely visited by 
man."

A few days ago I was so fortunate as to make the acquaintance of Mr. W. L. Green 
(now Minister of The Interior), an English resident in Honolulu, a gentleman of 
wide scientific and literary culture, one of whose objects in visiting Hawaii is 
the investigation of certain volcanic phenomena. He asked me to make the ascent 
of Mauna Kea with him, and we have satisfactorily accomplished it to-day.

The interior of the island, in which we have spent the last two days, is totally 
different, not only from the luxuriant windward slopes, but from the fiery 
leeward margin. The altitude of the central plateau is from 5,000 to 6,000 feet, 
there is not a single native dwelling on it, or even a trail across it, it is 
totally destitute of water, and sustains only a miserable scrub of mamane, 
stunted ohias, pukeawe, ohelos, a few compositae, and some of the hardiest 
ferns. The transient residents of this sheep station, and those of another on 
Hualalai, thirty miles off, are the only human inhabitants of a region as large 
as Kent. Wild goats, wild geese (Bernicla sandvicensis), and the Melithreptes 
Pacifica, constitute its chief population. These geese are web-footed, though 
water does not exist. They build their nests in the grass, and lay two or three 
white eggs.

Our track from Waimea lay for the first few miles over light soil, destitute of 
any vegetation, across dry glaring rocky beds of streams, and round the bases of 
numerous tufa cones, from 200 to 1500 feet in height, with steep smooth sides, 
composed of a very red ash. We crossed a flank of Mauna Kea at a height of 6000 
feet, and a short descent brought us out upon this vast tableland, which lies 
between the bulbous domes of Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa, and Hualalai, the loneliest, 
saddest, dreariest expanse I ever saw.

The air was clear and the sun bright, yet nothing softened into beauty this 
formless desert of volcanic sand, stones, and lava, on which tufts of grass and 
a harsh scrub war with wind and drought for a loveless existence. Yet, such is 
the effect of atmosphere, that Mauna Loa, utterly destitute of vegetation, and 
with his sides scored and stained by the black lava-flows of ages, looked like a 
sapphire streaked with lapis lazuli. Nearly blinded by scuds of sand, we rode 
for hours through the volcanic wilderness; always the same rigid mamane, 
(Sophora Chrysophylla?) the same withered grass, and the same thornless 
thistles, through which the strong wind swept with a desolate screech.

The trail, which dips 1000 feet, again ascends, the country becomes very wild, 
there are ancient craters of great height densely wooded, wooded ravines, the 
great bulk of Mauna Kea with his ragged crest towers above tumbled rocky 
regions, which look as if nature, disgusted with her work, had broken it to 
pieces in a passion; there are living and dead trees, a steep elevation, and 
below, a broad river of most jagged and uneven a-a. The afternoon fog, which 
serves instead of rain, rolled up in dense masses, through which we heard the 
plaintive bleating of sheep, and among blasted trees and distorted rocks we came 
upon Kalaieha.

I have described the "foreign residences" elsewhere. Here is one of another 
type, in which a wealthy sheep-owner's son, married to a very pretty native 
woman, leads for some months in the year from choice, a life so rough, that most 
people would think it a hardship to lead it from necessity. There are two 
apartments, a loft and a "lean-to." The hospitable owners gave me their 
sleeping-room, which was divided from the "living-room" by a canvass partition. 
This last has a rude stone chimney split by an earthquake, holding fire enough 
to roast an ox. Round it the floor is paved with great rough stones. A fire of 
logs, fully three feet high, was burning, but there was a faulty draught, and it 
emitted a stinging smoke. I looked for something to sit upon, but there was 
nothing but a high bench, or chopping-block, and a fixed seat in the corner of 
the wall. The rest of the furniture consisted of a small table, some pots, a 
frying-pan, a tin dish and plates, a dipper, and some tin pannikins. Four or 
five rifles and "shot-guns," and a piece of raw meat, were hanging against the 
wall. A tin bowl was brought to me for washing, which served the same purpose 
for every one. The oil was exhausted, so recourse was had to the native 
expedient of a jar of beef fat with a wick in it.

We were most hospitably received, but the native wife, as is usually the case, 
was too shy to eat with us or even to appear at all. Our host is a superb young 
man, very frank and prepossessing looking, a thorough mountaineer, most expert 
with the lasso and in hunting wild cattle. The "station" consists of a wool 
shed, a low grass hut, a hut with one side gone, a bell-tent, and the more 
substantial cabin in which we are lodged. Several saddled horses were tethered 
outside, and some natives were shearing sheep, but the fog shut out whatever 
else there might be of an outer world. Every now and then a native came in and 
sat on the floor to warm himself, but there were no mats as in native houses. It 
was intolerably cold. I singed my clothes by sitting in the chimney, but could 
not warm myself. A fowl was stewed native fashion, and some rice was boiled, and 
we had sheep's milk and some ice cold water, the drip, I think, from a 
neighbouring cave, as running and standing water are unknown.

There are 9000 sheep here, but they require hardly any attendance except at 
shearing time, and dogs are not used in herding them. Indeed, labour is much 
dispensed with, as the sheep are shorn unwashed, a great contrast to the 
elaborate washings of the flocks of the Australian Riverina. They come down at 
night of their own sagacity, in close converging columns, sleep on the gravel 
about the station, and in the early morning betake themselves to their feeding 
grounds on the mountain.

Mauna Kea, and the forests which skirt his base, are the resort of thousands of 
wild cattle, and there are many men nearly as wild, who live half savage lives 
in the woods, gaining their living by lassoing and shooting these animals for 
their skins. Wild black swine also abound.

The mist as usual disappeared at night, leaving a sky wonderful with stars, 
which burned blue and pale against the furnace glare on the top of Mauna Loa, to 
which we are comparatively near. I woke at three from the hopeless cold, and 
before five went out with Mr. Green to explore the adjacent lava. The atmosphere 
was perfectly pure, and suffused with rose-colour, not a cloud-fleece hung round 
the mountain tops, hoar-frost whitened the ground, the pure white smoke of the 
volcano rose into the reddening sky, and the air was elixir. It has been said 
and written that there are no steam-cracks or similar traces of volcanic action 
on Mauna Kea, but in several fissures I noticed ferns growing belonging to an 
altitude 4000 feet lower, and on putting my arm down, found a heat which 
compelled me to withdraw it, and as the sun rose these cracks steamed in all 
directions. There are caves full of ferns, lava bubbles in reality, crust over 
crust, each from twelve to eighteen inches thick, rolls of lava cooled in coils, 
and hideous a-a streams on which it is impossible to walk two yards without the 
risk of breaking one's limbs or cutting one's boots to pieces.

While we breakfasted a young man in rags, without shoes or stockings, but with 
the accent and address of a gentleman, came in, a man of good family and 
education in England, but who had "gone to the bad out here," and had joined a 
gang of bullock-catchers. Why do people persist in sending "ne'er-do-weels" to 
such regions without a definite occupation? It is certain ruin.

I will not weary you with the details of our mountain ascent. Our host provided 
ourselves and the native servant with three strong bullock-horses, and 
accompanied us himself. The first climb is through deep volcanic sand slashed by 
deep clefts, showing bands of red and black ash. We saw no birds, but twice 
started a rout of wild black hogs, and once came upon a wild bull of large size 
with some cows and a calf, all so tired with tramping over the lava that they 
only managed to keep just out of our way. They usually keep near the mountain 
top in the daytime for fear of the hunters, and come down at night to feed. 
About 11,000 were shot and lassoed last year. Mr. S--- says that they don't need 
any water but that of the dew-drenched grass, and that horses reared on the 
mountains refuse to drink, and are scared by the sight of pools or running 
streams. Unlike horses I saw at Waikiki, which shut their eyes and plunged their 
heads into water up to their ears, in search of a saltish weed which grows in 
the lagoons.

The actual forest, which is principally koa, ceases at a height of about 6000 
feet, but a deplorable vegetation beginning with mamane scrub, and ending with 
withered wormwood and tufts of coarse grass, straggles up 3000 feet higher, and 
a scaly orange lichen is found in rare pitches at a height of 11,000 feet.

The side of Mauna Kea towards Waimea is precipitous and inaccessible, but to our 
powerful mountain horses the ascent from Kalaieha presented no difficulty.

We rode on hour after hour in intense cold, till we reached a height where the 
last stain of lichen disappeared, and the desolation was complete and 
oppressive. This area of tufa cones, dark and grey basalt, clinkers, scoriae, 
fine ash, and ferruginous basalt, is something gigantic. We were three hours in 
ascending through it, and the eye could at no time take in its limit, for the 
mountain which from any point of view below appears as a well defined dome with 
a ragged top, has at the summit the aspect of a ridge, or rather a number of 
ridges, with between 20 and 30 definite peaks, varying in height from 900 to 
1400 feet. Among these cones are large plains of clinkers and fine gravel, but 
no lava-streams, and at a height of 12,000 feet the sides of some of the valleys 
are filled up with snow, of a purity so immaculate and a brilliancy so intense 
as the fierce light of the tropical sun beat upon it, that I feared snow-
blindness. We ascended one of the smaller cones which was about 900 feet high, 
and found it contained a crater of nearly the same depth, with a very even 
slope, and lined entirely with red ash, which at the bottom became so bright and 
fiery-looking that it looked as if the fires, which have not burned for ages, 
had only died out that morning.

After riding steadily for six hours, our horses, snorting and panting, and 
plunging up to their knees in fine volcanic ash, and halting, trembling and 
exhausted, every few feet, carried us up the great tufa cone which crowns the 
summit of this vast fire-flushed, fire-created mountain, and we dismounted in 
deep snow on the crest of the highest peak in the Pacific, 13,953 feet above the 
sea. This summit is a group of six red tufa cones, with very little apparent 
difference in their altitude, and with deep valleys filled with red ash between 
them. The terminal cone on which we were has no cavity, but most of those 
forming the group, as well as the thirty which I counted around and below us, 
are truncated cones with craters within, and with outer slopes, whose estimated 
angle is about 30 degrees. On these slopes the snow lay heavily. In coming up we 
had had a superb view of Mauna Loa, but before we reached the top, the clouds 
had congregated, and lay in glistening masses all round the mountain about half-
way up, shutting out the smiling earth, and leaving us alone with the view of 
the sublime desolation of the volcano.

We only remained an hour on the top, and came down by a very circuitous route, 
which took us round numerous cones, and over miles of clinkers varying in size 
from a ton to a few ounces, and past a lake the edges of which were frozen, and 
which in itself is a curiosity, as no other part of the mountain "holds water." 
Not far off is a cave, a lava-bubble, in which the natives used to live when 
they came up here to quarry a very hard adjacent phonolite for their axes and 
other tools. While the others poked about, I was glad to make it a refuge from 
the piercing wind. Hundreds of unfinished axes lie round the cave entrance, and 
there is quite a large mound of unfinished chips.

This is a very interesting spot to Hawaiian antiquaries. They argue, from the 
amount of the chippings, that this mass of phonolite was quarried for ages by 
countless generations of men, and that the mountain top must have been upheaved, 
and the island inhabited, in a very remote past. The stones have not been worked 
since Captain Cook's day; yet there is not a weather-stain upon them, and the 
air is so dry and rarified that meat will keep fresh for three months. I found a 
mass of crystals of the greenish volcanic glass, called olivine, imbedded in a 
piece of phonolite which looked as blue and fresh as if only quarried yesterday.

We travelled for miles through ashes and scoriae, and then descended into a 
dense afternoon fog; but Mr. S. is a practised mountaineer, and never faltered 
for a moment, and our horses made such good speed that late in the afternoon we 
were able to warm ourselves by a gallop, which brought us in here ravenous for 
supper before dark, having ridden for thirteen hours. I hope I have made it 
clear that the top of this dead volcano, whether cones or ravines, is deep soft 
ashes and sand.

To-morrow morning I intend to ride the thirty miles to Waimea with two native 
women, and the next day to go off on my adventurous expedition to Hilo, for 
which I have bought for $45 a big, strong, heavy horse, which I have named 
Kahele. He has the poking head and unmistakable gait of a bullock horse, but is 
said to be "a good traveller."

I.L.B.


LETTER XXVI

"MY CAMP," HAWAIIAN SLOPES, May 21

This is the height of enjoyment in travelling. I have just encamped under a 
lauhala tree, with my saddle inverted for a pillow, my horse tied by a long 
lariat to a guava bush, my gear, saddle-bags, and rations for two days lying 
about, and my saddle blanket drying in the sun. Overhead the sun blazes, and 
casts no shadow; a few fleecy clouds hover near him, and far below, the great 
expanse of the Pacific gleams in a deeper blue than the sky. Far above, towers 
the rugged and snow-patched, but no longer mysterious dome of Mauna Loa; while 
everywhere, ravines, woods, waterfalls, and stretches of lawn- like grass 
delight the eye. All green that I have ever seen, of English lawns in June, or 
Alpine valleys, seems poor and colourless as compared with the dazzling green of 
this sixty-five miles. It is a joyous green, a glory. Whenever I look up from my 
writing, I ask, Was there ever such green? Was there ever such sunshine? Was 
there ever such an atmosphere? Was there ever such an adventure? And Nature--for 
I have no other companion, and wish for none--answers, "No." The novelty is that 
I am alone, my conveyance my own horse; no luggage to look after, for it is all 
in my saddle-bags; no guide to bother, hurry, or hinder me; and with knowledge 
enough of the country to stop when and where I please. A native guide, besides 
being a considerable expense, is a great nuisance; and as the trail is easy to 
find, and the rivers are low, I resolved for once to taste the delights of 
perfect independence! This is a blessed country, for a lady can travel 
everywhere in absolute security.

My goal is the volcano of Kilauea, with various diverging expeditions, involving 
a ride of about 350 miles; but my health has so wonderfully improved, that it is 
easier to me now to ride forty miles in a day than ten some months ago.

You have no idea of the preparations required for such a ride, and the 
importance which "littles" assume. Food for two days had to be taken, and all 
superfluous weight to be discarded, as every pound tells on a horse on a hard 
journey. My saddle-bags contain, besides "Sunday clothes," dress for any 
"gaieties" which Hilo may offer; but I circumscribed my stock of clothes as much 
as possible, having fallen into the rough-and-ready practice of washing them at 
night, and putting them on unironed in the morning. I carry besides, a canvas 
bag on the horn of my saddle, containing two days' provender, and a knife, 
horse-shoe nails, glycerine, thread, twine, leather thongs, with other little et 
ceteras, the lack of which might prove troublesome, a thermometer and aneroid in 
a leather case, and a plaid. I have discarded, owing to their weight, all the 
well-meant luxuries which were bestowed upon me, such as drinking cups, flasks, 
etnas, sandwich cases, knife cases, spoons, pocket mirrors, etc. The inside of a 
watchcase makes a sufficient mirror, and I make a cup from a kalo leaf. All 
cases are a mistake,--at least I think so, as I contemplate my light equipment 
with complacency.

Yesterday's dawn was the reddest I have seen on the mountains, and the day was 
all the dawn promised. A three-mile gallop down the dewy grass, and slackened 
speed through the bush, brought me once again to the breezy slopes of Hamakua, 
and the trail I travelled in February, with Deborah and Kaluna. Though as green 
then as now, it was the rainy season, a carnival of rain and mud. Somehow the 
summer does make a difference, even in a land without a winter. The temperature 
was perfect. It was dreamily lovely. No song of birds, or busy hum of insects, 
accompanied the rustle of the lauhala leaves and the low murmur of the surf. But 
there is no hot sleep of noon here--the delicious trades keep the air always 
wakeful.

When the gentleman who guided me through the bush left me on the side of a pali, 
I discovered that Kahele, though strong, gentle, and sure-footed, possesses the 
odious fault known as balking, and expressed his aversion to ascend the other 
side in a most unmistakable manner. He swung round, put his head down, and no 
amount of spurring could get him to do anything but turn round and round, till 
the gentleman, who had left me, returned, beat him with a stick, and threw 
stones at him, till he got him started again.

I have tried coaxing him, but without result, and have had prolonged fights with 
him in nearly every gulch, and on the worst pali of all he refused for some time 
to breast a step, scrambled round and round in a most dangerous place, and 
slipped his hind legs quite over the edge before I could get him on.

His sociability too is ridiculously annoying. Whenever he sees natives in the 
distance, he neighs, points his ears, holds up his heavy head, quickens his 
pace, and as soon as we meet them, swings round and joins them, and can only be 
extricated after a pitched battle. On a narrow bridge I met Kaluna on a good 
horse, improved in manners, appearance, and English, and at first he must have 
thought that I was singularly pleased to see him, by my turning round and 
joining him at once; but presently, seeing the true state of the case, he 
belaboured Kahele with a heavy stick. The animal is very gentle, and 
companionable, and I dislike to spur him; besides, he seems insensible to it; so 
the last time I tried Rarey's plan, and bringing his head quite round, twisted 
the bridle round the horn of the saddle, so that he had to turn round and round 
for my pleasure, rather than to indulge his own temper, a process which will, I 
hope, conquer him mercifully.

But in consequence of these battles, and a halt which I made, as now, for no 
other purpose than to enjoy my felicitous circumstances, the sun was sinking in 
a mist of gold behind Mauna Loa long before I reached the end of my day's 
journey. It was extremely lovely. A heavy dew was falling, odours of Eden rose 
from the earth, colours glowed in the sky, and the dewiest and richest green was 
all round. It was eerie, but delightful. There were several gulches to cross 
after the sun had set, and a silence, which was almost audible, reigned in their 
leafy solitudes. It was quite dark when I reached the trail which dips over the 
great pali of Laupahoehoe, 700 feet in height; but I found myself riding 
carelessly down what I hardly dared to go up, carefully and in company, four 
months before. But whatever improvement time has made in my health and nerves, 
it has made none in this wretched zoophyte village.

Leading Kahele, I groped about till I found the house of the widow Honolulu, 
with whom I had lodged before, and presently all the natives assembled to stare 
at me. After rubbing my horse and feeding him on a large bundle of ti leaves 
that I had secured on the road, I took my own meal as a spectacle. Two old 
crones seized on my ankles, murmuring lomi, lomi, and subjected them to the 
native process of shampooing. They had unrestrained curiosity as to the 
beginning and end of my journey. I said "Waimea, Hamakua," when they all 
chorused, "Maikai;" for a ride of forty miles was not bad for a wahine haole. I 
said, "Wai, lio," (water for the horse), when they signified that there was only 
some brackish stuff unfit for drinking.

In spite of the garrulous assemblage, I was asleep before eight, and never woke 
till I found myself in a blaze of sunshine this morning, and in perfect 
solitude. I got myself some breakfast, and then looked about the village for 
some inhabitants, but found none, except an unhappy Portuguese with one leg, and 
an old man who looked like a leper, to whom I said, "Ko" (cane) "lio" (horse), 
exhibiting a rial at the same time, on which he cut me a large bundle, and I sat 
on a stone and watched Kahele as he munched it for an hour and a half.

It was very hot and serene down there between those palis 700 and 800 feet high. 
The huts of the village were all shut, and not a creature stirred. The palms 
above my head looked is if they had always been old, and there was no movement 
among their golden plumes. The sea itself rolled shorewards more silently and 
lazily than usual. An old dog slept in the sunshine, and whenever I moved, by a 
great effort, opened one eye. The man who cut the cane fell asleep on the grass. 
Kahele ate as slowly as if he had resolved to try my patience, and be revenged 
on me for my conquest of him yesterday, and his heavy munching was the only 
vital sound. I got up and walked about to assure myself that I was awake, 
saddled and bridled the horse, and mounted the great southward pali, thankful to 
reach the breeze and the upper air in full possession of my faculties, after the 
torpor and paralysis of the valley below.

Never were waters so bright or stretches of upland lawns so joyous as to-day, or 
the forest entanglements so entrancing. The beautiful Eugenia malaccensis is now 
in full blossom, and its stems and branches are blazing in all the gulches, with 
bunches of rose- crimson stamens borne on short spikelets.

HILO, HAWAII, May 24th

Once more I am in dear beautiful Hilo. Death entered my Hawaiian "home" lately, 
and took "Baby Bell" away, and I miss her sweet angel-presence at every turn; 
but otherwise there are no changes, and I am very happy to be under the roof of 
these dear friends again, and indeed each tree, flower, and fern in Hilo is a 
friend. I would not even wish the straggling Pride of India, and over- abundant 
lantana, away from this fairest of the island Edens. I wish I could transport 
you here this moment from our sour easterly skies to this endless summer and 
endless sunshine, and shimmer of a peaceful sea, and an atmosphere whose 
influences are all cheering. Though from 13 to 16 feet of rain fall here in the 
year the air is not damp. Wet clothes hung up in the verandah even during rain, 
dry rapidly, and a substance so sensitive to damp as botanical paper does not 
mildew.

I met Deborah on horseback near Onomea, and she told me that the Austins were 
expecting me, and so I spent three days very pleasantly with them on my way 
here.

I.L.B.

That old Kilauea has just come in, and has brought the English mail, and a 
United States mail, an event which sets Hilo agog. Then for a few hours its 
still, drowsy life becomes galvanized, and people really persuade themselves 
that they have something to do, and all the foreigners write letters hastily, or 
add postscripts to those already written, and lose the mail, and rush down 
frantically to the beach to send their late letters by favour of the obliging 
purser. The mail to-day was an event to me, as it has brought your long- looked-
for letters.


LETTER XXVII

HILO, June 1

Mr. and Mrs. Severance and I have just returned from a three-days' expedition to 
Puna in the south of Hawaii, and I preferred their agreeable company even to 
solitude! My sociable Kahele was also pleased, and consequently behaved very 
well. We were compelled to ride for twenty-three miles in single file, owing to 
the extreme narrowness of the lava track, which has been literally hammered down 
in some places to make it passable even for shod horses. We were a party of 
four, and a very fat policeman on a very fat horse brought up the rear.

At some distance from Hilo there is a glorious burst of tropical forest, and 
then the track passes into green grass dotted over with clumps of the pandanus 
and the beautiful eugenia. In that hot dry district the fruit was already ripe, 
and we quenched our thirst with it. The "native apple," as it is called, is of 
such a brilliant crimson colour as to be hardly less beautiful than the flowers. 
The rind is very thin, and the inside is white, juicy, and very slightly 
acidulated. We were always near the sea, and the surf kept bursting up behind 
the trees in great snowy drifts, and every opening gave us a glimpse of deep 
blue water. The coast the whole way is composed of great blocks of very hard 
black lava, more or less elevated, upon which the surges break in perpetual 
thunder.

Suddenly the verdure ceased, and we emerged upon a hideous scene, one of the 
many lava flows from Kilauea, an irregular branching stream, about a mile broad. 
It is suggestive of fearful work on the part of nature, for here the volcano has 
not created but destroyed. The black tumbled sea mocked the bright sunshine, all 
tossed, jagged, spiked, twirled, thrown heap on heap, broken, rifted, upheaved 
in great masses, burrowing in ravines of its own making, full of broken bubble 
caves, and torn by a-a streams. Close to the track crystals of olivine lie in 
great profusion, and in a few of the crevices there are young plants of a fern 
which everywhere has the audacity to act as the herald of vegetation.

Beyond this desert the country is different in its features from the rest of the 
island, a green smiling land of Beulah, varied by lines of craters covered 
within and without with vegetation. For thirty miles the track passes under the 
deep shade of coco palms, of which Puna is the true home; and from under their 
feathery shadow, and from amidst the dark leafage of the breadfruit, gleamed the 
rose- crimson apples of the eugenia, and the golden balls of the guava. I have 
not before seen this exquisite palm to advantage, for those which fringe the 
coast have, as compared with these, a look of tattered, sombre, harassed 
antiquity. Here they stood in thousands, young as well as old, their fronds 
gigantic, their stems curving every way, and the golden light, which is peculiar 
to them, toned into a golden green. They were loaded with fruit in all stages, 
indeed it is produced in such abundance that thousands of nuts lie unheeded on 
the ground. Animals, including dogs and cats, revel in the meat, and in the 
scarcity of good water the milk is a useful substitute.

Late in the afternoon we reached our destination, a comfortable frame house, on 
one of those fine natural lawns in which Hawaii abounds. A shower at seven each 
morning keeps Puna always green. Our kind host, a German, married to a native 
woman, served our meals in a house made of grass and bamboo; but the wife and 
children, as is usual in these cases, never appeared at table, and contented 
themselves with contemplating us at a great distance.

The next afternoon we rode to one of the natural curiosities of Puna, which gave 
me intense pleasure. It lies at the base of a cone crowned with a heiau and a 
clump of coco palms. Passing among bread-fruit and guavas into a palm grove of 
exquisite beauty, we came suddenly upon a lofty wooded cliff of hard basaltic 
rock, with ferns growing out of every crevice in its ragged but perpendicular 
sides. At its feet is a cleft about 60 feet long, 16 wide, and 18 deep, full of 
water at a temperature of 90 degrees. This has an absolute transparency of a 
singular kind, and perpetrates wonderful optical illusions. Every thing put into 
it is transformed. The rocks, broken timber, and old cocoa nuts which lie below 
it, are a frosted blue; the dusky skins of natives are changed to alabaster; and 
as my companion, in a light print holuku, swam to and fro, her feet and hands 
became like polished marble tinged with blue, and her dress floated through the 
water as if woven of blue light. Everything about this spring is far more 
striking and beautiful than the colour in the blue grotto of Capri. It is heaven 
in the water, a jewelled floor of marvels, "a sea of glass," "like unto 
sapphire," a type, perhaps, of that on which the blessed stand before the throne 
of God. Above, the feathery palms rose into the crystalline blue, and made an 
amber light below, and all fair and lovely things were mirrored in the wonderful 
waters. The specific gravity must be much greater than that of ordinary water, 
for it did not seem possible to sink, or even be thoroughly immersed in it. The 
mercury in the air was 79 degrees, but on coming out of the water we felt quite 
chilly.

I like Puna. It is like nothing else, but something about it made us feel as if 
we were dwelling in a castle of indolence. I developed a capacity for doing 
nothing, which horrified me, and except when we energised ourselves to go to the 
hot spring, my companions and I were content to dream in the verandah, and watch 
the lengthening shadows, and drink cocoa-nut milk, till the abrupt exit of the 
sun startled us, and we saw the young moon carrying the old one tenderly, and a 
fitful glare 60 miles away, where the solemn fires of Mauna Loa are burning at a 
height of nearly 14,000 feet.

HILO

There are many "littles," but few "mickles" here. It is among the last that two 
foreign gentlemen have successfully accomplished the ascent of Mauna Loa, and 
the mystery of its fires is solved. I write "successfully," as they went up and 
down in safety, but they were involved in a series of pilikias: girths, stirrup-
leathers, and cruppers slipping and breaking, and their sufferings on the summit 
from cold and mountain sickness appear to have been nearly incapacitating. 
Although much excited, they are collected enough to pronounce it "the most 
sublime sight ever seen." They, as well as several natives who have passed by 
Kilauea, report it as in full activity, which bears against the assertion that 
the flank crater becomes quiet when the summit crater is active.

Another and sadder "mickle" has been the departure of ten lepers for Molokai. 
The Kilauea, with the Marshal, and Mr. Wilder who embodies the Board of Health, 
has just left the bay, taking away forty lepers on this cruise; and the 
relations of those who have been taken from Hilo are still howling on the beach. 
When one hears the wailing, and sees the temporary agony of the separated 
relatives, one longs for "the days of the Son of Man," and that his healing 
touch, as of old in Galilee, might cleanse these unfortunates. Nine of the 
lepers were sent on board from the temporary pest-house, but their case, though 
deeply commiserated, has been overshadowed by that of the talented half-white, 
"Bill Ragsdale," whom I mentioned in one of my earlier letters, and who is 
certainly the most "notorious" man in Hilo. He has a remarkable gift of 
eloquence, both in English and Hawaiian: a combination of pathos, invective, and 
sarcasm; and his manner, though theatrical, is considered perfect by his native 
admirers. His moral character, however, has been very low, which makes the 
outburst of feeling at his fate the more remarkable.

Yesterday, he wrote a letter to Sheriff Severance, giving himself up as a leper 
to be dealt with by the law, expressing himself as ready to be expatriated to-
day, but requesting that he might not be put into the leper-house, and that he 
might go on board the steamer alone. The fact of his giving himself up excited 
much sympathy, as, in his case, the signs of the malady are hardly apparent, and 
he might have escaped suspicion for some time.

He was riding about all this morning, taking leave of people, and of the 
pleasant Hilo lanes, which he will never see again, and just as the steamer was 
weighing anchor, walked down to the shore as carefully dressed as usual, 
decorated with leis of ohia and gardenia, and escorted by nearly the whole 
native population. On my first landing here, the glee club, singing and flower-
clad, went out to meet him; now tears and sobs accompanied him, and his 
countrymen and women clung to him, kissing him, to the last moment, whilst all 
the foreigners shook hands as they offered him their good wishes. He made a 
short speech in native, urging quiet submission to the stringent measures which 
government is taking in order to stamp out leprosy, and then said a few words in 
English. His last words, as he stepped into the boat, were to all: "Aloha, may 
God bless you, my brothers," and then the whale boat took him the first stage 
towards his living grave. He took a horse, a Bible, and some legal books with 
him; and, doubtless, in consideration of the prominent positions he has filled, 
specially that of interpreter to the Legislature, unusual indulgence will be 
granted to him.

At the weekly prayer meeting held this evening in the foreign church, the 
medical officer gave a very pathetic account of his interview with him this 
morning, in which he had feelingly requested the prayers of the church. It was 
with unusual fervour afterwards that prayer was offered, not for him only, but 
for "all those who, living, have this day been consigned to the oblivion of the 
grave, and for the five hundred of our fellow-subjects now suffering on 
Molokai." A noble instance of devotion has just been given by Father Damiens, a 
Belgian priest, who has gone to spend his life amidst the hideous scenes, and 
the sickness and death of the ghastly valley of Kalawao.

I.L.B.


A CHAPTER ON THE LEPER SETTLEMENT ON MOLOKAI

In 1865, the Hawaiian Legislature, recognizing the disastrous fact that leprosy 
is at once contagious and incurable, passed an act to prevent its spread, and 
eventually the Board of Health established a leper settlement on the island of 
Molokai for the isolation of lepers. In carrying out the painful task of weeding 
out and exiling the sufferers, the officials employed met with unusual 
difficulties; and the general foreign community was not itself aware of the 
importance of making an attempt to "stamp out" the disease, until the beginning 
of Lunalilo's reign, when the apparently rapid spread of leprosy, and sundry 
rumours that others than natives were affected by it, excited general alarm, and 
not unreasonably, for medical science, after protracted investigation, knows 
less of leprosy than of cholera. Nor are medical men wholly agreed as to the 
manner in which infection is communicated; and, as the white residents on the 
islands associate very freely and intimately with the natives, eating poi out of 
their calabashes, and sleeping in their houses and on their mats, there was just 
cause for uneasiness.

The natives themselves have been, and still are, perfectly reckless about the 
risk of contagion, and although the family instinct among them is singularly 
weak, the gregarious or social instinct is singularly strong, and it has been 
found impossible to induce them to give up smoking the pipes, wearing the 
clothes, and sleeping on the mats of lepers, which three things are universally 
regarded by medical men as undoubted sources of infection. At the beginning of 
1873, it was estimated that nearly 400 lepers were scattered up and down the 
islands, living among their families and friends, and the healthy associated 
with them in complete apathy or fatalism. However bloated the face and glazed 
the eyes, or however swollen or decayed the limbs were, the persons so afflicted 
appeared neither to scare nor disgust their friends, and, therefore, Hawaii has 
absolutely needed the coercive segregation of these living foci of disease. When 
the search for lepers was made, the natives hid their friends away under mats, 
and in forests and caves, till the peril of separation was over, and if they 
sought medical advice, they rejected foreign educated aid in favour of the 
highly paid services of Chinese and native quacks, who professed to work a cure 
by means of loathsome ointments and decoctions, and abominable broths worthy of 
the witches' cauldron.

However, as the year passed on, lepers were "informed against," and it became 
the painful duty of the sheriffs of the islands, on the statement of a doctor 
that any individual was truly a leper, to commit him for life to Molokai. Some, 
whose swollen faces and glassy goggle eyes left no room for hope of escape, gave 
themselves up; and few, who, like Mr. Ragsdale, might have remained among their 
fellows almost without suspicion, surrendered themselves in a way which reflects 
much credit upon them. Mr. Park, the Marshal, and Mr. Wilder, of the Board of 
Health, went round the islands repeatedly in the Kilauea, and performed the 
painful duty of collecting the victims, with true sympathy and kindness. The woe 
of those who were taken, the dismal wailings of those who were left, and the 
agonised partings, when friends and relatives clung to the swollen limbs and 
kissed the glistering bloated faces of those who were exiled from them for ever, 
I shall never forget.

There were no individual distinctions made among the sufferers. Queen Emma's 
cousin, a man of property, and Mr. Ragsdale, the most influential lawyer among 
the half-whites, shared the same doom as poor Upa, the volcano guide, and 
stricken Chinamen and labourers from the plantations. Before the search 
slackened, between three and four hundred men, women, and children were gathered 
out from among their families, and placed on Molokai.

Between 1866 and April 1874, eleven hundred and forty-five lepers, five hundred 
and sixty of whom were sent from Kahili in the spring of 1872, have arrived on 
Molokai, of which number four hundred and forty-two have died, the majority of 
the deaths having occurred since the beginning of Lunalilo's reign, when the 
work of segregation was undertaken in earnest. At the present time the number on 
the island is 703, including 22 children. These unfortunates are necessarily 
pauperised, and the small Hawaiian kingdom finds itself much burdened by their 
support. The strain on the national resources is very great, and it is not 
surprising that officials called upon to meet such a sad emergency should be 
assailed in all quarters of the globe by sentimental criticism and misstatements 
regarding the provision made for the lepers on Molokai. Most of these are 
unfounded, and the members of the Board of Health deserve great credit both for 
their humanity and for their prompt and careful attention to the complaints made 
by the sufferers.

At present the two obvious blots on the system are, the insufficient house 
accommodation, involving a herding together which is repulsive to foreign, 
though not to native, ideas; and the absence of a resident physician to 
prescribe for the ailments from which leprosy is no exemption. Molokai, the 
island of exile, is Molokai aina pali, "the land of precipices," in the old 
native meles, and its walls of rock rise perpendicularly from the sea to a 
height varying from 1000 to 2500 feet, in extreme grandeur and picturesqueness, 
and are slashed, as on Hawaii, by gulches opening out on natural lawns on the 
sea level. The place chosen for the centralization and segregation of leprosy is 
a most singular plain of about 20,000 acres, hemmed in between the sea and a 
precipice 2000 feet high, passable only where a zigzag bridle track swings over 
its face, so narrow and difficult that it has been found impossible to get 
cattle down over it, so that the leper settlement below has depended for its 
supplies of fresh meat upon vessels. The settlement is accessible also by a very 
difficult landing at Kalaupapa on the windward side of Molokai.

Three miles inland from Kalaupapa is the leper village of Kalawao, which may 
safely be pronounced one of the most horrible spots on all the earth; a home of 
hideous disease and slow coming death, with which science in despair has ceased 
to grapple; a community of doomed beings, socially dead, "whose only business is 
to perish;" wifeless husbands, husbandless wives, children without parents, and 
parents without children; men and women who have "no more a portion for ever in 
anything that is done under the sun," condemned to watch the repulsive steps by 
which each of their doomed fellows passes down to a loathsome death, knowing 
that by the same they too must pass.

A small stone church near the landing, and another at Kalawao, tell of the 
extraordinary devotion of a Catholic priest, who, with every prospect of 
advancement in his Church, and with youth, culture, and refinement to hold him 
back from the sacrifice, is in this hideous valley, a self exiled man, for 
Christ's sake. It was singular to hear the burst of spontaneous admiration which 
his act elicited. No unworthy motives were suggested, all envious speech was 
hushed; it was almost forgotten by the most rigid Protestants that Father 
Damiens, who has literally followed the example of Christ by "laying down his 
life for the brethren," is a Romish priest, and an intuition, higher than all 
reasoning, hastened to number him with "the noble army of martyrs."

In Kalawao are placed not only the greater number of the lepers, but the 
hospital buildings. Most of the victims are of the poorer classes and live in 
brown huts; but two of rank, Mrs. Napela and the Hon. P. Y. Kaeo, Queen Emma's 
cousin, have neat wooden cottages on the way from the landing, with every 
comfort which their means can provide for them. The hospital buildings are about 
twelve in number, well and airily situated on a height; they are built of wood 
thoroughly whitewashed, and are enclosed by a fence. Although it is hoped that a 
leper hospital is not to be a permanent institution of the kingdom, the soft 
green grass of the enclosure has been liberally planted with algaroba trees, 
which in a year or two will form a goodly shade, and water has been brought in 
from a distance at considerable expense, so that an abundant supply is always at 
hand. The lepers are dying fast, and the number of advanced cases in the 
hospital averages forty. In the centre of the hospital square there are the 
office buildings, including the dispensary, which is well supplied with 
medicines, so that in the absence of a doctor, common ailments may be treated by 
an intelligent English leper. The superintendent's office, where the accounts 
and statistics of the settlement are kept, and where the leper governor holds 
his leper court, and the post-office, are also within the enclosure; but the 
true governor and law-giver is Death.

When Mr. Ragsdale left Hilo as a leper, the course he was likely to take on 
Molokai could not be accurately forecasted; and it was felt that the presence in 
the leper community of a man of his gift of eloquence and influence might either 
be an invaluable assistance to the government, or else a serious embarrassment. 
In every position he had hitherto occupied, he had acquired and retained a 
remarkable notoriety; and no stranger could visit the islands without hearing of 
poor "Bill Ragsdale's" gifts, and the grievous failings by which they were 
accompanied.

Hitherto the hopes of his well wishers have been fulfilled, and the government 
has found in him a most energetic as well as prudent agent. "It is better to be 
first in Britain than second in Rome;" and probably this unfortunate man, 
superintendent of the leper settlement, and popularly known as "Governor 
Ragsdale," has found a nobler scope for his ambition among his doomed brethren 
than in any previous position. His remarkable power of influencing his 
countrymen is at present used for their well being; and though his authority is 
practically almost absolute, owing to the isolation of the community, and its 
position almost outside the operation of law, he has hitherto used it with good 
faith and moderation. He is nominally assisted in his duties by a committee of 
twenty chosen from among the lepers themselves; but from his superior education 
and native mental ascendancy, all immediate matters in the settlement are 
decided by his judgment alone.

The rations of food are ample and of good quality, and notwithstanding the 
increase in the number of lepers, and the difficulty of communication, there has 
not been any authenticated case of want. Each leper receives weekly 21 lbs. of 
paiai, and from 5 to 6 of beef, and when these fail to be landed, 9 lbs. of 
rice, 1 lb. of sugar, and 4 lbs. of salmon. Soap and clothing are also supplied; 
but, for all beyond these necessaries, the lepers are dependent on their own 
industry, if they are able to exercise it, and the kindness of their friends. 
Coffee, tobacco, pipes, extra clothing, knives, toys, books, pictures, working 
implements and materials, have all been possessed by them in happier days; and 
though packages of such things have been sent by the charitable for distribution 
by Father Damiens, it is not possible for island benevolence fully to meet an 
emergency and needs so disproportionate to the population and resources of the 
kingdom. Besides the two Catholic churches, there are a Protestant chapel, with 
a pastor, himself a leper, who is a regularly ordained minister of the Hawaiian 
Board, and two school-houses, where the twenty-two children of the settlement 
receive instruction in Hawaiian from a leper teacher. There is a store, too, 
where those who are assisted by their friends can purchase small luxuries, which 
are sold at just such an advance on cost as is sufficient to clear the expense 
of freight. The taste for ornament has not died out in either sex, and women are 
to be seen in Kalawao, hideous and bloated beyond description, decorated with 
leis of flowers, and looking for admiration out of their glazed and goggle eyes.

King Kalakaua and Queen Kapiolani have paid a visit to the settlement, and were 
received with hearty alohas, and the music of a leper band. The king made a 
short address to the lepers, the substance of which was "that his heart was 
grieved with the necessity which had separated these, his subjects, from their 
homes and families, a necessity which they themselves recognised and acquiesced 
in, and it should be the earnest desire of himself and his government to render 
their condition in exile as comfortable as possible." While he spoke, though it 
is supposed that a merciful apathy attends upon leprosy, his hideous audience 
showed signs of deep feeling, and many shed tears at his thoughtfulness in 
coming to visit those, who, to use their own touching expression, were "already 
in the grave."

The account which follows is from the pen of a gentleman who accompanied the 
king, and visited the hospital on the same occasion, in company with two members 
of the Board of Health.

    "As our party stepped on shore, we found the lepers assembled to the number 
of two or three hundred--there are 697 all told in the settlement--for they had 
heard in advance of our coming, and our ears were greeted with the sound of 
lively music. This proceeded from the 'band,' consisting of a drum, a fife, and 
two flutes, rather skilfully played upon by four young lads, whose visages were 
horribly marked and disfigured with leprosy. The sprightly airs with which these 
poor creatures welcomed the arrival of the party, sounded strangely incongruous 
and out of place, and grated harshly upon our feelings. And then as we proceeded 
up the beach, and the crowd gathered about us, eager and anxious for a 
recognition or a kind word of greeting--oh, the repulsive and sickening libels 
and distorted caricatures of the human face divine upon which we looked! And as 
they evidently read the ill-concealed aversion in our countenances, they 
withdrew the half-proffered hand, and slunk back with hanging heads. They felt 
again that they were lepers, the outcasts of society, and must not contaminate 
us with their touch. A few cheerful words of inquiry from the physician, Dr. 
Trousseau, addressed to individuals as to their particular cases, broke the 
embarrassment of this first meeting, and soon the crowd were chatting and 
laughing just like any other crowd of thoughtless Hawaiians, and with but few 
exceptions, these unfortunate exiles showed no signs of the settled melancholy 
that would naturally be looked for from people so hopelessly situated. Very 
happy were they when spoken to, and quite ready to answer any questions. We saw 
numbers whom we had known in years past, and who, having disappeared, we had 
thought dead. One we had known as a Representative, and a very intelligent one, 
too, in the Legislature of 1868. On greeting him as an old-time acquaintance, he 
observed, 'Yes, we meet again--in this living grave!' He is a man of no little 
consideration among the people, being entrusted by the Board of Health with the 
care of the store which is kept here for the sale of such goods as the people 
require. All do not appear to be lepers who are leprous. We saw numbers who 
might pass along our streets any day without being suspected of the taint. They 
had it, however, in one way or another. Sometimes on the extremities only, 
eating away the flesh and rotting the bones of the hands or feet; and sometimes 
only appearing in black and indurated spots on the skin, noticed only on a 
somewhat close examination. This last sort is said to be the worst, as being 
most surely fatal and easiest transmitted. We saw women who had the disease in 
this stage, walking about, whom it was difficult to believe were lepers.

    "If our sensibilities were shocked at the sight of the crowd of lepers we 
had met at the beach, walking about in physical strength and activity, how shall 
we describe our sensations in looking upon these loathsome creatures in the 
hospital, in whom it was indeed hard to recognise anything human? The rooms were 
cleanly kept and well ventilated, but the atmosphere within was pervaded with 
the sickening odour of the grave. At each end, squatted or lying prone on their 
respective mats or mattresses, were the yet breathing corpses of lepers in the 
last stages of various forms of the disease, who glanced inquisitively at us for 
a moment out of their ghoul-like eyes--those who were not already beyond seeing-
-and then withdrew within their dreadful selves. Was there ever a more pitiful 
sight?

    "In one room we saw a sight that will ever remain fixed indelibly on the 
tablets of memory. A little blue-eyed, flaxen haired child, apparently three or 
four years old, a half-caste, that looked up at us with an expression of 
timorous longing to be caressed and loved; but alas, in its glassy eyes and 
transparent cheeks were the unmistakable signs of the curse--the sin of the 
parents visited upon the child!

    "In another room was one--a mass of rotting flesh, with but little semblance 
of humanity remaining--who was dying, and whose breath came hurried and 
obstructed. A few hours at most, and his troubles would be over, and his happy 
release arrive. There had been fourteen deaths in the settlement during the 
previous fortnight. On the day of our visit there were fifty-eight inmates of 
the hospital." 

Though the lifting of the veil of mystery which hangs over the death valley of 
Molokai discloses some of the most woeful features of the curse, it is a relief 
to know the worst, and that the poor leprous outcasts in their "living grave" 
are not outside the pale of humanity and a judicious philanthropy. All that can 
be done for them is to encourage their remaining capacities for industry, and to 
smooth, as far as is possible, the journey of death. The Hawaiian Government is 
doing its best to "stamp out" the disease, and to provide for the comfort of 
those who are isolated; and, with the limited means at its disposal, has acted 
with an efficiency and humanity worthy of the foremost of civilised countries.


LETTER XXVIII

HILO, June 2nd

Often since I finished my last letter has Hazael's reply to Elisha occurred to 
me, "Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?" For in answer to 
people who have said, "I hope nothing will induce you to attempt the ascent of 
Mauna Loa," I always said, "Oh, dear, no! I should never dream of it;" or, 
"Nothing would persuade me to think of it!"

This morning early, Mr. Green came in, on his way to Kilauea, to which I was to 
accompany him, and on my casually remarking that I envied him his further 
journey, he at once asked me to join him, and I joyfully accepted the 
invitation! For, indeed, my heart has been secretly set on going, and I have had 
to repeat to myself fifty times a day, "no, I must not think of it, for it is 
impossible."

Mr. Green is going up well equipped with a tent, horses, a baggage mule, and a 
servant, and is confident of being able to get a guide and additional mules 
fifty miles from Hilo. I had to go to the Union School examination where the 
Hilo world was gathered, but I could think of nothing but the future; and I can 
hardly write sense, the prospect of the next week is so exciting, and the time 
for making preparations is so short. It is an adventurous trip anyhow, and the 
sufferings which our predecessors have undergone, from Commodore Wilkes 
downwards, make me anxious not to omit any precaution. The distance which has to 
be travelled through an uninhabited region, the height and total isolation of 
the summit, the uncertainty as to the state of the crater, and the duration of 
its activity, with the possibility of total failure owing to fog or strong wind, 
combine to make our ascent an experimental trip.

The news of the project soon spread through the village, and as the ascent has 
only once been performed by a woman, the kindly people are profuse in offers of 
assistance, and in interest in the journey, and every one is congratulating me 
on my good fortune in having Mr. Green for my travelling companion. I have 
hunted all the beach stores through for such essentials as will pack into small 
compass, and every one said "So you are going to 'the mountain;' I hope you'll 
have a good time;" or, "I hope you'll have the luck to get up."

Among the friends of my hosts all sorts of useful articles were produced, a camp 
kettle, a camping blanket, a huge Mexican poncho, a cardigan, capacious 
saddlebags, etc. Nor was Kahele forgotten, for the last contribution was a bag 
of oats! The greatest difficulty was about warm clothing, for in this perfect 
climate, woollen underclothing is not necessary as in many tropical countries, 
but it is absolutely essential on yonder mountain, and till late in the 
afternoon the best intentions and the most energetic rummaging in old trunks 
failed to produce it. At last Mrs. ---, wife of an old Scotch settler, bestowed 
upon me the invaluable loan of a stout flannel shirt, and a pair of venerable 
worsted stockings, much darned, knitted in Fifeshire a quarter of a century ago. 
When she brought them, the excellent lady exclaimed, "Oh, what some people will 
do!" with an obvious personal reference.

She tells us that her husband, who owns the ranch on the mountain at which we 
are to stay the last night, has been obliged to forbid any of his natives going 
up as guides, and that she fears we shall not get a guide, as the native who 
went up with Mr. Whyte suffered so dreadfully from mountain sickness, that they 
were obliged to help him down, and he declares that he will not go up again. Mr. 
Whyte tells us that he suffered himself from vomiting and vertigo for fourteen 
hours, and severely from thirst also, as the water froze in their canteens; but 
I am almost well now, and as my capacity for "roughing it" has been severely 
tested, I hope to "get on" much better. A party made the ascent nine months ago, 
and the members of it also suffered severely, but I see no reason why cautious 
people, who look well to their gear and clothing, and are prudent with regard to 
taking exercise at the top, should suffer anything worse than the inconveniences 
which are inseparable from nocturnal cold at a high elevation.

My preparations are completed to-night, the last good wishes have been spoken, 
and we intend to leave early tomorrow morning.

I.L.B.


LETTER XXIX*

CRATER HOUSE, KILAUEA, June 4th

[* I venture to present this journal letter just as it was written, trusting 
that the interest which attaches to volcanic regions, will carry the reader 
through the minuteness and multiplicity of the details.]

Once more I write with the splendours of the quenchless fires in sight, and the 
usual world seems twilight and commonplace by the fierce glare of Halemaumau, 
and the fitful glare of the other and loftier flame, which is burning ten 
thousand feet higher in lonely Mokua-weo-weo.

Mr. Green and I left Hilo soon after daylight this morning, and made about "the 
worst time" ever made on the route. We jogged on slowly and silently for thirty 
miles in Indian file, through bursts of tropical beauty, over an ocean of fern-
clad pahoehoe, the air hot and stagnant, the horses lazy and indifferent, till I 
was awoke from the kind of cautious doze into which one falls on a sure-footed 
horse, by a decided coolness in the atmosphere, and Kahele breaking into a 
lumbering gallop, which he kept up till we reached this house, where, in spite 
of the exercise, we are glad to get close to a large wood fire. Although we are 
shivering, the mercury is 57 degrees, but in this warm and equable climate, 
one's sensations are not significant of the height of the thermometer.

It is very fascinating to be here on the crater's edge, and to look across its 
deep three miles of blackness to the clouds of red light which Halemaumau is 
sending up, but altogether exciting to watch the lofty curve of Mauna Loa 
upheave itself against the moon, while far and faint, we see, or think we see, 
that solemn light, which ever since my landing at Kawaihae has been so 
mysteriously attractive. It is three days off yet. Perhaps its spasmodic fires 
will die out, and we shall find only blackness. Perhaps anything, except our 
seeing it as it ought to be seen! The practical difficulty about a guide 
increases, and Mr. Gilman cannot help us to solve it. And if it be so cold at 
4000 feet, what will it be at 14,000?

KILAUEA, June 5th

I have no room in my thoughts for anything but volcanoes, and it will be so for 
some days to come. We have been all day in the crater, in fact, I left Mr. Green 
and his native there, and came up with the guide, sore, stiff, bruised, cut, 
singed, grimy, with my thick gloves shrivelled off by the touch of sulphurous 
acid, and my boots nearly burned off. But what are cuts, bruises, fatigue, and 
singed eyelashes, in comparison with the awful sublimities I have witnessed to-
day? The activity of Kilauea on Jan. 31 was as child's play to its activity to-
day: as a display of fireworks compared to the conflagration of a metropolis. 
THEN, the sense of awe gave way speedily to that of admiration of the dancing 
fire fountains of a fiery lake; NOW, it was all terror, horror, and sublimity, 
blackness, suffocating gases, scorching heat, crashings, surgings, detonations; 
half seen fires, hideous, tortured, wallowing waves. I feel as if the terrors of 
Kilauea would haunt me all my life, and be the Nemesis of weak and tired hours.

We left early, and descended the terminal wall, still as before, green with 
ferns, ohias, and sandalwood, and bright with clusters of turquoise berries, and 
the red fruit and waxy blossoms of the ohelo. The lowest depression of the 
crater, which I described before as a level fissured sea of iridescent lava, has 
been apparently partially flooded by a recent overflow from Halemaumau, and the 
same agency has filled up the larger rifts with great shining rolls of black 
lava, obnoxiously like boa-constrictors in a state of repletion. In crossing 
this central area for the second time, with a mind less distracted by the 
novelty of the surroundings, I observed considerable deposits of remarkably 
impure sulphur, as well as sulphates of lime and alum in the larger fissures. 
The presence of moisture was always apparent in connexion with these formations. 
The solidified surges and convolutions in which the lava lies, the latter 
sometimes so beautifully formed as to look like coils of wire rope, are truly 
wonderful. Within the cracks there are extraordinary coloured growths, orange, 
grey, buff, like mineral lichens, but very hard and brittle.

The recent lava flow by which Halemaumau has considerably heightened its walls, 
has raised the hill by which you ascend to the brink of the pit to a height of 
fully five hundred feet from the basin, and this elevation is at present much 
more fiery and precarious than the former one. It is dead, but not cold, lets 
one through into cracks hot with corrosive acid, rings hollow everywhere, and 
its steep acclivities lie in waves, streams, coils, twists, and tortuosities of 
all kinds, the surface glazed and smoothish, and with a metallic lustre.

Somehow, I expected to find Kilauea as I had left it in January, though the 
volumes of dense white smoke which are now rolling up from it might have 
indicated a change; but after the toilsome, breathless climbing of the awful 
lava hill, with the crust becoming more brittle, and the footing hotter at each 
step, instead of laughing fire fountains tossing themselves in gory splendour 
above the rim, there was a hot, sulphurous, mephitic chaos, covering, who knows 
what, of horror?

So far as we could judge, the level of the lake had sunk to about 80 feet below 
the margin, and the lately formed precipice was overhanging it considerably. 
About seven feet back from the edge of the ledge, there was a fissure about 
eighteen inches wide, emitting heavy fumes of sulphurous acid gas. Our visit 
seemed in vain, for on the risky verge of this crack we could only get momentary 
glimpses of wallowing fire, glaring lurid through dense masses of furious smoke 
which were rolling themselves round in the abyss as if driven by a hurricane.

After failing to get a better standpoint, we suffered so much from the gases, 
that we coasted the north, till we reached the south lake, one with the other on 
my former visit, but now separated by a solid lava barrier about three hundred 
feet broad, and eighty high. Here there was comparatively little smoke, and the 
whole mass of contained lava was ebullient and incandescent, its level marked 
the whole way round by a shelf or rim of molten lava, which adhered to the side, 
as ice often adheres to the margin of rapids, when the rest of the water is 
liberated and in motion. There was very little centripetal action apparent. 
Though the mass was violently agitated it always took a southerly direction, and 
dashed itself with fearful violence against some lofty, undermined cliffs which 
formed its southern limit. The whole region vibrated with the shock of the fiery 
surges. To stand there was "to snatch a fearful joy," out of a pain and terror 
which were unendurable. For two or three minutes we kept going to the edge, 
seeing the spectacle as with a flash, through half closed eyes, and going back 
again; but a few trials, in which throats, nostrils, and eyes were irritated to 
torture by the acid gases, convinced us that it was unsafe to attempt to remain 
by the lake, as the pain and gasping for breath which followed each inhalation, 
threatened serious consequences.

With regard to the north lake we were more fortunate, and more persevering, and 
I regard the three hours we spent by it as containing some of the most solemn, 
as well as most fascinating, experiences of my life. The aspect of the volcano 
had altogether changed within four months. At present there are two lakes 
surrounded by precipices about eighty feet high. Owing to the smoke and 
confusion, it is most difficult to estimate their size even approximately, but I 
think that the diameter of the two cannot be less than a fifth of a mile.

Within the pit or lake by which we spent the morning, there were no fiery 
fountains, or regular plashings of fiery waves playing in indescribable beauty 
in a faint blue atmosphere, but lurid, gory, molten, raging, sulphurous, 
tormented masses of matter, half seen through masses as restless, of lurid 
smoke. Here, the violent action appeared centripetal, but with a southward 
tendency. Apparently, huge bulging masses of a lurid-coloured lava were 
wallowing the whole time one over another in a central whirlpool, which 
occasionally flung up a wave of fire thirty or forty feet. The greatest 
intensity of action was always preceded by a dull throbbing roar, as if the 
imprisoned gases were seeking the vent which was afforded them by the upward 
bulging of the wave and its bursting into spray. The colour of the lava which 
appeared to be thrown upwards from great depths, was more fiery and less gory 
than that nearer the surface. Now and then, through rifts in the smoke we saw a 
convergence of the whole molten mass into the centre, which rose wallowing and 
convulsed to a considerable height. The awful sublimity of what we did see, was 
enhanced by the knowledge that it was only a thousandth part of what we did not 
see, mere momentary glimpses of a terror and fearfulness which otherwise could 
not have been borne.

A ledge, only three or four feet wide, hung over the lake, and between that and 
the comparative terra firma of the older lava, there was a fissure of unknown 
depth, emitting hot blasts of pernicious gases. The guide would not venture on 
the outside ledge, but Mr. Green, in his scientific zeal, crossed the crack, 
telling me not to follow him, but presently, in his absorption with what he saw, 
called to me to come, and I jumped across, and this remained our perilous 
standpoint. [Since then, the Austins of Onomea were standing on a similar ledge, 
when a sound as of a surge striking below, made them jump back hastily, and in 
another moment the projection split off, and was engulfed in the fiery lake.]

Burned, singed, stifled, blinded, only able to stand on one foot at a time, 
jumping back across the fissure every two or three minutes to escape an 
unendurable whiff of heat and sulphurous stench, or when splitting sounds below 
threatened the disruption of the ledge: lured as often back by the fascination 
of the horrors below; so we spent three hours.

There was every circumstance of awfulness to make the impression of the sight 
indelible. Sometimes dense volumes of smoke hid everything, and yet, upwards, 
from out "their sulphurous canopy" fearful sounds rose, crashings, thunderings, 
detonations, and we never knew then whether the spray of some hugely uplifted 
wave might not dash up to where we stood. At other times the smoke partially 
lifting, but still swirling in strong eddies, revealed a central whirlpool of 
fire, wallowing at unknown depths, to which the lava, from all parts of the 
lake, slid centrewards and downwards as into a vortex, where it mingled its 
waves with indescribable noise and fury, and then, breaking upwards, dashed 
itself to a great height in fierce, gory, gouts and clots, while hell itself 
seemed opening at our feet. At times, again, bits of the lake skinned over with 
a skin of a wonderful silvery, satiny sheen, to be immediately devoured; and as 
the lurid billows broke, they were mingled with misplaced patches as if of 
bright moonlight. Always changing, always suggesting force which nothing could 
repel, agony indescribable, mystery inscrutable, terror unutterable, a thing of 
eternal dread, revealed only in glimpses!

It is natural to think that St. John the Evangelist, in some Patmos vision, was 
transported to the brink of this "bottomless pit," and found in its blackness 
and turbulence of agony the fittest emblems of those tortures of remorse and 
memory, which we may well believe are the quenchless flames of the region of 
self-chosen exile from goodness and from God. As natural, too, that all 
Scripture phrases which typify the place of woe should recur to one with the 
force of a new interpretation, "Who can dwell with the everlasting burnings?" 
"The smoke of their torment goeth up for ever and ever," "The place of hell," 
"The bottomless pit," "The vengeance of eternal fire," "A lake of fire burning 
with brimstone." No sight can be so fearful as this glimpse into the interior of 
the earth, where fires are for ever wallowing with purposeless force and aimless 
agony.

Beyond the lake there is a horrible region in which dense volumes of smoke 
proceed from the upper ground, with loud bellowings and detonations, and we took 
our perilous way in that direction, over very hot lava which gave way 
constantly. It is near this that the steady fires are situated which are visible 
from this house at night. We came first upon a solitary "blowing cone," beyond 
which there was a group of three or four, but it is not from these that the 
smoke proceeds, but from the extensive area beyond them, covered with smoke and 
steam cracks, and smoking banks, which are probably formed of sulphur deposits. 
I only visited the solitary cone, for the footing was so precarious, the sight 
so fearful, and the ebullitions of gases so dangerous, that I did not dare to go 
near the others, and never wish to look upon their like again.

The one I saw was of beehive shape, about twelve feet high, hollow inside, and 
its walls were about two feet thick. A part of its imperfect top was blown off, 
and a piece of its side blown out, and the side rent gave one a frightful view 
of its interior, with the risk of having lava spat at one at intervals. The name 
"Blowing Cone" is an apt one, if the theory of their construction be correct. It 
is supposed that when the surface of the lava cools rapidly owing to enfeebled 
action below, the gases force their way upwards through small vents, which then 
serve as "blow holes" for the imprisoned fluid beneath. This, rapidly cooling as 
it is ejected, forms a ring on the surface of the crust, which, growing upwards 
by accretion, forms a chimney, eventually nearly or quite closed at the top, so 
as to form a cone. In this case the cone is about eighty feet above the present 
level of the lake, and fully one hundred yards distant from its present verge.

The whole of the inside was red and molten, full of knobs, and great fiery 
stalactites. Jets of lava at a white heat were thrown up constantly, and 
frequently the rent in the side spat out lava in clots, which cooled rapidly, 
and looked like drops of bottle green glass. The glimpses I got of the interior 
were necessarily brief and intermittent. The blast or roar which came up from 
below was more than deafening; it was stunning: and accompanied with heavy 
subterranean rumblings and detonations. The chimney, so far as I could see, 
opened out gradually downwards to a great width, and appeared to be about forty 
feet deep; and at its base there was an abyss of lashing, tumbling, restless 
fire, emitting an ominous surging sound, and breaking upwards with a fury which 
threatened to blow the cone and the crust on which it stands, into the air.

The heat was intense, and the stinging sulphurous gases which were given forth 
in large quantities, most poisonous. The group of cones west of this one, was 
visited by Mr. Green; but he found it impossible to make any further 
explorations. He has seen nearly all the recent volcanic phenomena, but says 
that these cones present the most "infernal" appearance he has ever witnessed. 
We returned for a last look at Halemaumau, but the smoke was so dense, and the 
sulphur fumes so stifling, that, as in a fearful dream, we only heard the 
thunder of its hidden surges. I write thunder, and one speaks of the lashing of 
its waves; but these are words pertaining to the familiar earth, and have no 
place in connection with Kilauea. The breaking lava has a voice all its own, 
full of compressed fury. Its sound, motion, and aspect are all infernal. 
Hellish, is the only fitting term.

We are dwelling on a cooled crust all over Southern Hawaii, the whole region is 
recent lava, and between this and the sea there are several distinct lines of 
craters thirty miles long, all of which at some time or other have vomited forth 
the innumerable lava streams which streak the whole country in the districts of 
Kau, Puna, and Hilo. In fact, Hawaii is a great slag. There is something very 
solemn in the position of this crater-house: with smoke and steam coming out of 
every pore of the ground, and in front the huge crater, which to-night lights 
all the sky. My second visit has produced a far deeper impression even than the 
first, and one of awe and terror solely.

Kilauea is altogether different from the European volcanoes which send lava and 
stones into the air in fierce sudden spasms, and then subside into harmlessness. 
Ever changing, never resting, the force which stirs it never weakening, raging 
for ever with tossing and strength like the ocean: its labours unfinished and 
possibly never to be finished, its very unexpectedness adds to its sublimity and 
terror, for until you reach the terminal wall of the crater, it looks by 
daylight but a smoking pit in the midst of a dreary stretch of waste land.

Last night I thought the Southern Cross out of place; to-night it seems 
essential, as Calvary over against Sinai. For Halemaumau involuntarily typifies 
the wrath which shall consume all evil: and the constellation, pale against its 
lurid light, the great love and yearning of the Father, "who spared not His own 
Son but delivered Him up for us all," that, "as in Adam all die, even so in 
Christ shall all be made alive."

AINEPO, HAWAII, June 5th

We had a great fright last evening. We had been engaging mules, and talking over 
our plans with our half-Indian host, when he opened the door and exclaimed, 
"There's no light on Mauna Loa; the fire's gone out." We rushed out, and though 
the night was clear and frosty, the mountain curve rose against the sky without 
the accustomed wavering glow upon it. "I'm afraid you'll have your trouble for 
nothing," Mr. Gilman unsympathisingly remarked; "anyhow, its awfully cold up 
there," and rubbing his hands, reseated himself at the fire. Mr. G. and I stayed 
out till we were half-frozen, and I persuaded myself and him that there was a 
redder tinge than the moonlight above the summit, but the mountain has given no 
sign all day, so that I fear that I "evolved" the light out of my "inner 
consciousness."

Mr. Gilman was eloquent on the misfortunes of our predecessors, lent me a pair 
of woollen socks to put on over my gloves, told me privately that if anyone 
could succeed in getting a guide it would be Mr. Green, and dispatched us at 
eight this morning with a lurking smile at our "fool's errand," thinly veiled by 
warm wishes for our success. Mr. Reid has two ranches on the mountain, seven 
miles distant from each other, and was expected every hour at the crater- house 
on his way to Hilo, but it was not known from which he was coming, and as it 
appeared that our last hope of getting a guide lay in securing his good will, 
Mr. G., his servant, and packmule took the lower trail, and I, with a native, a 
string of mules, and a pack-horse, the upper. Our plans for intercepting the 
good man were well laid and successful, but turned out resultless.

This has been an irresistibly comical day, and it is just as well to have 
something amusing interjected between the sublimities of Kilauea, and whatever 
to-morrow may bring forth. When our cavalcades separated, I followed the guide 
on a blind trail into the little-known regions on the skirts of Mauna Loa. We 
only travelled two miles an hour, and the mules kept getting up rows, kicking, 
and entangling their legs in the lariats, and one peculiarly malign animal dealt 
poor Kahele a gratuitous kick on his nose, making it bleed.

It is strange, unique country, without any beauty. The seaward view is over a 
great stretch of apparent table-land, spotted with craters, and split by cracks 
emitting smoke or steam. The whole region is black with streams of spiked and 
jagged lava, meandering over it, with charred stumps of trees rising out of 
them.

The trail, if such it could be called, wound among koa and sandalwood trees 
occasionally, but habitually we picked our way over waves, coils, and hummocks 
of pahoehoe surrounded by volcanic sand, and with only a few tufts of grass, 
abortive ohelos, and vigorous sow thistles (much relished by Kahele) growing in 
their crevices. Horrid cracks, 50 or 60 feet wide, probably made by earthquakes, 
abounded, and a black chasm of most infernal aspect dogged us on the left. It 
was all scrambling up and down. Sometimes there was long, ugly grass, a brownish 
green, coarse and tufty, for a mile or more. Sometimes clumps of wintry-looking, 
dead trees, sometimes clumps of attenuated living ones; but nothing to please 
the eye. We saw neither man nor beast the whole way, except a wild bull, which, 
tearing down the mountain side, crossed the trail just in front of us, causing a 
stampede among the mules, and it was fully an hour before they were all caught 
again.

The only other incident was an earthquake, the most severe, the men here tell 
me, that has been experienced for two years. One is prepared for any caprices on 
the part of the earth here, yet when there was a fearful internal throbbing and 
rumbling, and the trees and grass swayed rapidly, and great rocks and masses of 
soil were dislodged, and bounded down the hillside, and the earth reeled, and my 
poor horse staggered and stopped short; far from rising to the magnitude of the 
occasion, I thought I was attacked with vertigo, and grasped the horn of my 
saddle to save myself from falling. After a moment of profound stillness, there 
was again a subterranean sound like a train in a tunnel, and the earth reeled 
again with such violence that I felt as if the horse and myself had gone over. 
Poor K. was nervous for some time afterwards. The motion was as violent as that 
of a large ship in a mid-Atlantic storm. There were four minor shocks within 
half an hour afterwards.

After crawling along for seven hours, and for the last two in a dripping fog, so 
dense that I had to keep within kicking range of the mules for fear of being 
lost, we heard the lowing of domestic cattle, and came to a place where felled 
trees, very difficult for the horses to cross, were lying. Then a rude boundary 
wall appeared, inside of which was a small, poor-looking grass house, consisting 
of one partially-divided room, with a small, ruinous- looking cook-house, a 
shed, and an unfinished frame house. It looked, and is, a disconsolate 
conclusion of a wet day's ride. I rode into the corral, and found two or three 
very rough-looking whites and half-whites standing, and addressing one of them, 
I found he was Mr. Reid's manager there. I asked if they could give me a night's 
lodging, which seemed a diverting notion to them; and they said they could give 
me the rough accommodation they had, but it was hard even for them, till the new 
house was put up. They brought me into this very rough shelter, a draughty grass 
room, with a bench, table, and one chair in it. Two men came in, but not the 
native wife and family, and sat down to a calabash of poi and some strips of 
dried beef, food so coarse, that they apologised for not offering it to me. They 
said they had sent to the lower ranch for some flour, and in the meantime they 
gave me some milk in a broken bowl, their "nearest approach to a tumbler," they 
said. I was almost starving, for all our food was on the pack-mule. This is the 
place where we had been told that we could obtain tea, flour, beef, and fowls!

By some fatality my pen, ink, and knitting were on the pack-mule; it was very 
cold, the afternoon fog closed us in, and darkness came on prematurely, so that 
I felt a most absurd sense of ennui, and went over to the cook-house, where I 
found Gandle cooking, and his native wife with a heap of children and dogs lying 
round the stove. I joined them till my clothes were dry, on which the man, who 
in spite of his rough exterior, was really friendly and hospitable, remarked 
that he saw I was "one of the sort who knew how to take people as I found them."

This regular afternoon mist which sets in at a certain altitude, blotting out 
the sun and sky, and bringing the horizon within a few yards, makes me certain 
after all that the mists of rainless Eden were a phenomenon, the loss of which 
is not to be regretted.

Still the afternoon hung on, and I went back to the house feeling that the most 
desirable event which the future could produce would be--a meal. Now and then 
the men came in and talked for a while, and as the darkness and cold 
intensified, they brought in an arrangement extemporised out of what looked like 
a battered tin bath, half full of earth, with some lighted faggots at the top, 
which gave out a little warmth and much stinging smoke. Actual, undoubted, night 
came on without Mr. Green, of whose failure I felt certain, and without food, 
and being blinded by the smoke, I rolled myself in a blanket and fell asleep on 
the bench, only to wake in a great fright, believing that the volcano house was 
burning over my head, and that a venerable missionary was taking advantage of 
the confusion to rob my saddle-bags, which in truth one of the men was moving 
out of harm's way, having piled up the fire two feet high.

Presently a number of voices outside shouted Haole! and Mr. Green came in 
shaking the water from his waterproof, with the welcome words, "Everything's 
settled for to-morrow." Mr. Reid threw cold water on the ascent, and could give 
no help; and Mr. G. being thus left to himself, after a great deal of trouble, 
has engaged as guide an active young goat-hunter, who, though he has never been 
to the top of the mountain, knows other parts of it so well that he is sure he 
can take us up. Mr. G. also brings an additional mule and pack- horse, so that 
our equipment is complete, except in the matter of cruppers, which we have been 
obliged to make for ourselves out of goats' hair rope, and old stockings. If Mr. 
G. has an eye for the picturesque, he must have been gratified as he came in 
from the fog and darkness into the grass room, with the flaring fire in the 
middle, the rifles gleaming on the wall, the two men in very rough clothing, and 
myself huddled up in a blanket sitting on the floor, where my friend was very 
glad to join us.

Mr. Green has brought nothing but tea from Kapapala, but Gandle has made some 
excellent rolls, besides feasting us on stewed fowl, dough-nuts, and milk! 
Little comfort is promised for to-night, as Gandle says with a twinkle of kindly 
malice in his eye, that we shall not "get a wink of sleep, for the place swarms 
with fleas." They are a great pest of the colder regions of the islands, and 
like all other nuisances, are said to have been imported! Gandle and the other 
man have entertained us with the misfortunes of our predecessors, on which they 
seem to gloat with ill-omened satisfaction.

I.L.B.

LETTER XXIX -- Continued

KAPAPALA, June 8th

The fleas at Ainepo quite fulfilled Mr. Gandle's prognostications, and I was 
glad when the cold stars went out one by one, and a red, cloudless dawn broke 
over the mountain, accompanied by a heavy dew and a morning mist, which soon 
rolled itself up into rosy folds and disappeared, and there was a legitimate 
excuse for getting up. Our host provided us with flour, sugar, and dough-nuts, 
and a hot breakfast, and our expedition, comprising two natives who knew not a 
word of English, Mr. G. who does not know very much more Hawaiian than I do, and 
myself, started at seven. We had four superb mules, and two good pack-horses, a 
large tent, and a plentiful supply of camping blankets. I put on all my own warm 
clothes, as well as most of those which had been lent to me, which gave me the 
squat, padded, look of a puffin or Esquimaux, but all, and more were needed long 
before we reached the top. The mules were beyond all praise. They went up the 
most severe ascent I have ever seen, climbing steadily for nine hours, without a 
touch of the spur, and after twenty-four hours of cold, thirst, and hunger, came 
down again as actively as cats. The pack-horses too were very good, but from the 
comparative clumsiness with which they move their feet they were very severely 
cut.

We went off, as usual, in single file, the guide first, and Mr. G. last. The 
track was passably legible for some time, and wound through long grass, and 
small koa trees, mixed with stunted ohias and a few common ferns. Half these koa 
trees are dead, and all, both living and dead, have their branches covered with 
a long hairy lichen, nearly white, making the dead forest in the slight mist 
look like a wood in England when covered with rime on a fine winter morning. The 
koa tree has a peculiarity of bearing two distinct species of leaves on the same 
twig, one like a curved willow leaf, the other that of an acacia.

After two hours ascent we camped on the verge of the timber line, and fed our 
animals, while the two natives hewed firewood, and loaded the spare pack-horse 
with it. The sky was by that time cloudless, and the atmosphere brilliant, and 
both remained so until we reached the same place twenty-eight hours later, so 
that the weather favoured us in every respect, for there is "weather" on the 
mountain, rains, fogs, and wind storms. The grass only grows sparsely in tufts 
above this place, and though vegetation exists up to a height of 10,000 feet on 
this side, it consists, for the most part, of grey lichens, a little withered 
grass, and a hardy asplenium.

At this spot the real business of the ascent begins, and we tightened our 
girths, distributed the baggage as fairly as possible, and made all secure 
before remounting.

We soon entered on vast uplands of pahoehoe which ground away the animals' feet, 
a horrid waste, extending upwards for 7000 feet. For miles and miles, above and 
around, great billowy masses, tossed and twisted into an infinity of fantastic 
shapes, arrest and weary the eye, lava in all its forms, from a compact 
phonolite, to the lightest pumice stone, the mere froth of the volcano, 
exceeding in wildness and confusion the most extravagant nightmare ever 
inflicted on man. Recollect the vastness of this mountain. The whole south of 
this large island, down to, and below the water's edge, is composed of its 
slopes. Its height is nearly three miles, its base is 180 miles in 
circumference, so that Wales might be packed away within it, leaving room to 
spare. Yet its whole huge bulk, above a height of about 8000 feet, is one 
frightful desert, at once the creation and the prey of the mightiest force on 
earth.

Struggling, slipping, tumbling, jumping, ledge after ledge was surmounted, but 
still, upheaved against the glittering sky, rose new difficulties to be 
overcome. Immense bubbles have risen from the confused masses, and bursting, 
have yawned apart. Swift-running streams of more recent lava have cleft straight 
furrows through the older congealed surface. Massive flows have fallen in, 
exposing caverned depths of jagged outlines. Earthquakes have riven the 
mountain, splitting its sides and opening deep crevasses, which must be leapt or 
circumvented. Horrid streams of a-a have to be cautiously skirted, which after 
rushing remorselessly over the kindlier lava have heaped rugged pinnacles of 
brown scoriae into impassable walls. Winding round the bases of tossed up, 
fissured hummocks of pahoehoe, leaping from one broken hummock to another, 
clambering up acclivities so steep that the pack-horse rolled backwards once, 
and my cat-like mule fell twice, moving cautiously over crusts which rang hollow 
to the tread; stepping over deep cracks, which, perhaps, led down to the burning 
fathomless sea, traversing hilly lakes ruptured by earthquakes, and split in 
cooling into a thousand fissures, painfully toiling up the sides of mounds of 
scoriae frothed with pumice-stone, and again for miles surmounting rolling 
surfaces of billowy ropy lava--so passed the long day, under the tropic sun, and 
the deep blue sky.

Towards afternoon, clouds heaped themselves in brilliant snowy masses, all 
radiance and beauty to us, all fog and gloom below, girdling the whole mountain, 
and interposing their glittering screen between us and the dark timber belt, the 
black smoking shores of Kau, and the blue shimmer of the Pacific. From that 
time, for twenty-four hours, the lower world, and "works and ways of busy men" 
were entirely shut out, and we were alone with this trackless and inanimate 
region of horror.

For the first time our guide hesitated as to the right track, for the faint 
suspicion of white smoke, which had kept alive our hope that the fire was still 
burning, had ceased to be visible. We called a halt while he reconnoitred, tried 
to eat some food, found that our pulses were beating 100 a minute, bathed our 
heads, specially our temples, with snow, as we had been advised to do by the 
oldest mountaineer on Hawaii, and heaped on yet more clothing. In fact, I tied a 
double woollen scarf over all my face but my eyes, and put on a French soldier's 
overcoat, with cape and hood, which Mr. Green had brought in case of emergency. 
The cold had become intense. We had not wasted words at any time, and on 
remounting, preserved as profound a silence as if we were on a forlorn hope, 
even the natives intermitting their ceaseless gabble.

Upwards still, in the cold bright air, coating the edges of deep cracks, 
climbing endless terraces, the mules panting heavily, our breath coming as if 
from excoriated lungs,--so we surmounted the highest ledge. But on reaching the 
apparent summit we were to all appearance as far from the faint smoke as ever, 
for this magnificent dome, whose base is sixty miles in diameter, is crowned by 
a ghastly volcanic table-land, creviced, riven, and ashy, twenty-four miles in 
circumference. A table-land, indeed, of dark grey lava, blotched by outbursts, 
and torn by streams of brown a-a, full of hideous crevasses and fearful shapes, 
as if a hundred waves of lava had rolled themselves one on another, and had 
congealed in confused heaps, and been tortured in all directions by the mighty 
power which had upheaved the whole.

Our guide took us a little wrong once, but soon recovered himself with much 
sagacity. "Wrong" on Mauna Loa means being arrested by an impassable a-a stream, 
and our last predecessors had nearly been stopped by getting into one in which 
they suffered severely.

These a-a streams are very deep, and when in a state of fusion move along in a 
mass 20 feet high sometimes, with very solid walls. Professor Alexander, of 
Honolulu, supposes them to be from the beginning less fluid than pahoehoe, and 
that they advance very slowly, being full of solid points, or centres of 
cooling: that a- a, in fact, grains like sugar. Its hardness is indescribable. 
It is an aggregate of upright, rugged, adamantine points, and at a distance, a 
river of it looks like a dark brown Mer de Glace.

At half-past four we reached the edge of an a-a stream, about as wide as the 
Ouse at Huntingdon Bridge, and it was obvious that somehow or other we must 
cross it: indeed, I know not if it be possible to reach the crater without 
passing through one or another of these obstacles. I should have liked to have 
left the animals there, but it was represented as impossible to proceed on foot, 
and though this was a decided misrepresentation, Mr. Green plunged in. I had 
resolved that he should never have any bother in consequence of his kindness in 
taking me with him, and, indeed, everyone had enough to do in taking care of 
himself and his own beast, but I never found it harder to repress a cry for 
help. Not that I was in the least danger, but there was every risk of the 
beautiful mule being much hurt, or breaking her legs. The fear shown by the 
animals was pathetic; they shrank back, cowered, trembled, breathed hard and 
heavily, and stumbled and plunged painfully. It was sickening to see their 
terror and suffering, the struggling and slipping into cracks, the blood and 
torture. The mules with their small legs and wonderful agility were more 
frightened than hurt, but the horses were splashed with blood up to their knees, 
and their poor eyes looked piteous.

We were then, as we knew, close to the edge of the crater, but the faint smoke 
wreath had disappeared, and there was nothing but the westering sun hanging like 
a ball over the black horizon of the desolate summit. We rode as far as a deep 
fissure filled with frozen snow, with a ledge beyond, threw ourselves from our 
mules, jumped the fissure, and more than 800 feet below yawned the inaccessible 
blackness and horror of the crater of Mokuaweoweo, six miles in circumference, 
and 11,000 feet long by 8,000 wide. The mystery was solved, for at one end of 
the crater, in a deep gorge of its own, above the level of the rest of the area, 
there was the lonely fire, the reflection of which, for six weeks, has been seen 
for 100 miles.

Nearly opposite us, a thing of beauty, a perfect fountain of pure yellow fire, 
unlike the gory gleam of Kilauea, was regularly playing in several united but 
independent jets, throwing up its glorious incandescence, to a height, as we 
afterwards ascertained, of from 150 to 300 feet, and attaining at one time 600! 
You cannot imagine such a beautiful sight. The sunset gold was not purer than 
the living fire. The distance which we were from it, divested it of the 
inevitable horrors which surround it. It was all beauty. For the last two miles 
of the ascent, we had heard a distant vibrating roar: there, at the crater's 
edge, it was a glorious sound, the roar of an ocean at dispeace, mingled with 
the hollow murmur of surf echoing in sea caves, booming on, rising and falling, 
like the thunder music of windward Hawaii.

We sat on the ledge outside the fissure for some time, and Mr. Green actually 
proposed to pitch the tent there, but I dissuaded him, on the ground that an 
earthquake might send the whole thing tumbling into the crater; nor was this a 
whimsical objection, for during the night there were two such falls, and after 
breakfast, another quite near us.

We had travelled for two days under a strong impression that the fires had died 
out, so you can imagine the sort of stupor of satisfaction with which we feasted 
on the glorious certainty. Yes, it was glorious, that far-off fire-fountain, and 
the lurid cracks in the slow-moving, black-crusted flood, which passed calmly 
down from the higher level to the grand area of the crater.

This area, over two miles long, and a mile and a half wide, with precipitous 
sides 800 feet deep, and a broad second shelf about 300 feet below the one we 
occupied, at that time appeared a dark grey, tolerably level lake, with great 
black blotches, and yellow and white stains, the whole much fissured. No steam 
or smoke proceeded from any part of the level surface, and it had the 
unnaturally dead look which follows the action of fire. A ledge, or false beach, 
which must mark a once higher level of the lava, skirts the lake, at an 
elevation of thirty feet probably, and this fringed the area with various signs 
of present volcanic action, steaming sulphur banks, and heavy jets of smoke. The 
other side, above the crater, has a ridgy broken look, giving the false 
impression of a mountainous region beyond. At this time the luminous fountain, 
and the red cracks in the river of lava which proceeded from it, were the only 
fires visible in the great area of blackness. In former days people have 
descended to the floor of the crater, but owing to the breaking away of the 
accessible part of the precipice, a descent now is not feasible, though I doubt 
not that a man might even now get down, if he went up with suitable tackle, and 
sufficient assistance.

The one disappointment was that this extraordinary fire-fountain was not only 
800 feet below us, but nearly three-quarters of a mile from us, and that it was 
impossible to get any nearer to it. Those who have made the ascent before have 
found themselves obliged either to camp on the very spot we occupied, or a 
little below it.

The natives pitched the tent as near to the crater as was safe, with one pole in 
a crack, and the other in the great fissure, which was filled to within three 
feet of the top with snow and ice. As the opening of the tent was on the crater 
side, we could not get in or out without going down into this crevasse. The tent 
walls were held down with stones to make it as snug as possible, but snug is a 
word of the lower earth, and has no meaning on that frozen mountain top. The 
natural floor was of rough slabs of lava, laid partly edgewise, so that a newly 
macadamised road would have been as soft a bed. The natives spread the horse 
blankets over it, and I arranged the camping blankets, made my own part of the 
tent as comfortable as possible by putting my inverted saddle down for a pillow, 
put on my last reserve of warm clothing, took the food out of the saddle bags, 
and then felt how impossible it was to exert myself in the rarified air, or even 
to upbraid Mr. Green for having forgotten the tea, of which I had reminded him 
as often as was consistent with politeness!

This discovery was not made till after we had boiled the kettle, and my dismay 
was softened by remembering that as water boils up there at 187 degrees, our tea 
would have been worthless. In spite of my objection to stimulants, and in 
defiance of the law against giving liquor to natives, I made a great tin of 
brandy toddy, of which all partook, along with tinned salmon and dough-nuts. 
Then the men piled faggots on the fire and began their everlasting chatter, and 
Mr. Green and I, huddled up in blankets, sat on the outer ledge in solemn 
silence, to devote ourselves to the volcano.

The sun was just setting: the tooth-like peaks of Mauna Kea, cold and snow 
slashed, which were blushing red, the next minute turned ghastly against a 
chilly sky, and with the disappearance of the sun it became severely cold; yet 
we were able to remain there till 9.30, the first people to whom such a thing 
has been possible, so supremely favoured were we by the absence of wind.

When the sun had set, and the brief red glow of the tropics had vanished, a new 
world came into being, and wonder after wonder flashed forth from the previously 
lifeless crater. Everywhere through its vast expanse appeared glints of fire--
fires bright and steady, burning in rows like blast furnaces; fires lone and 
isolated, unwinking like planets, or twinkling like stars; rows of little fires 
marking the margin of the lowest level of the crater; fire molten in deep 
crevasses; fire in wavy lines; fire, calm, stationary, and restful: an 
incandescent lake two miles in length beneath a deceptive crust of darkness, and 
whose depth one dare not fathom even in thought. Broad in the glare, giving 
light enough to read by at a distance of three-quarters of a mile, making the 
moon look as blue as an ordinary English sky, its golden gleam changed to a 
vivid rose colour, lighting up the whole of the vast precipices of that part of 
the crater with a rosy red, bringing out every detail here, throwing cliffs and 
heights into huge black masses there, rising, falling, never intermitting, 
leaping in lofty jets with glorious shapes like wheatsheaves, coruscating, 
reddening, the most glorious thing beneath the moon was the fire-fountain of 
Mokuaweoweo.

By day the cooled crust of the lake had looked black and even sooty, with a 
fountain of molten gold playing upwards from it; by night it was all 
incandescent, with black blotches of cooled scum upon it, which were perpetually 
being devoured. The centre of the lake was at a white heat, and waves of white 
hot lava appeared to be wallowing there as in a whirlpool, and from this centre 
the fountain rose, solid at its base, which is estimated at 150 feet in 
diameter, but thinning and frittering as it rose high into the air, and falling 
from the great altitude to which it attained, in fiery spray, which made a very 
distinct clatter on the fiery surface below. When one jet was about half high, 
another rose so as to keep up the action without intermission; and in the lower 
part of the fountain two subsidiary curved jets of great volume continually 
crossed each other. So, "alone in its glory," perennial, self-born, springing up 
in sparkling light, the fire-fountain played on as the hours went by.

From the nearer margin of this incandescent lake there was a mighty but 
deliberate overflow, a "silent tide" of fire, passing to the lower level, 
glowing under and amidst its crust, with the brightness of metal passing from a 
furnace. In the bank of partially cooled and crusted lava which appears to 
support the lake, there were rifts showing the molten lava within. In one place 
heavy white vapour blew off in powerful jets from the edge of the lake, and 
elsewhere there were frequent jets and ebullitions of the same, but there was 
not a trace of vapour over the burning lake itself. The crusted large area, with 
its blowing cones, blotches and rifts of fire, was nearly all visible, and from 
the thickness and quietness of the crust it was obvious that the ocean of lava 
below was comparatively at rest, but a dark precipice concealed a part of the 
glowing and highly agitated lake, adding another mystery to its sublimity.

It is probable that the whole interior of this huge dome is fluid, for the 
eruptions from this summit crater do not proceed from its filling up and running 
over, but from the mountain sides being unable to bear the enormous pressure; 
when they give way, high or low, and bursting, allow the fiery contents to 
escape. So, in 1855, the mountain side split open, and the lava gushed forth for 
thirteen months in a stream which ran for 60 miles, and flooded Hawaii for 300 
square miles. [Since white men have inhabited the islands, there have been ten 
recorded eruptions from the craters of Mauna Loa, and one from Hualalai.]

From the camping ground, immense cracks parallel with the crater, extend for 
some distance, and the whole of the compact grey stone of the summit is much 
fissured. These cracks, like the one by which our tent was pitched, contain 
water resting on ice. It shows the extreme difference of climate on the two 
sides of Hawaii, that while vegetation straggles up to a height of 10,000 feet 
on the windward side in a few miserable blasted forms, it absolutely ceases at a 
height of 7,000 feet on the leeward.

It was too cold to sit up all night; so by the "fire light" I wrote the enclosed 
note to you with fingers nearly freezing on the pen, and climbed into the tent.

It is possible that tent life in the East, or in the Rocky Mountains, with beds, 
tables, travelling knick-knacks of all descriptions, and servants who study 
their master's whims, may be very charming; but my experience of it having been 
of the make-shift and non-luxurious kind, is not delectable. A wooden saddle, 
without stuffing, made a very fair pillow; but the ridges of the lava were 
severe. I could not spare enough blankets to soften them, and one particularly 
intractable point persisted in making itself felt. I crowded on everything 
attainable, two pairs of gloves, with Mr. Gilman's socks over them, and a thick 
plaid muffled up my face. Mr. Green and the natives, buried in blankets, 
occupied the other part of the tent. The phrase, "sleeping on the brink of a 
volcano," was literally true, for I fell asleep, and fear I might have been 
prosaic enough to sleep all night, had it not been for fleas which had come up 
in the camping blankets. When I woke, it was light enough to see that the three 
muffled figures were all asleep, instead of spending the night in shiverings and 
vertigo, as it appears that others have done. Doubtless the bathing of our heads 
several times with snow and ice-water had been beneficial.

Circumstances were singular. It was a strange thing to sleep on a lava-bed at a 
height of nearly 14,000 feet, far away from the nearest dwelling, "in a region," 
as Mr. Jarves says, "rarely visited by man," hearing all the time the roar, 
clash, and thunder of the mightiest volcano in the world. It seemed all a wild 
dream, as that majestic sound moved on. There were two loud reports, followed by 
a prolonged crash, occasioned by parts of the crater walls giving way; vibrating 
rumblings, as if of earthquakes; and then a louder surging of the fiery ocean, 
and a series of most imposing detonations. Creeping over the sleeping forms, 
which never stirred even though I had to kneel upon one of the natives while I 
untied the flap of the tent, I crept cautiously into the crevasse in which the 
snow-water was then hard frozen, and out upon the projecting ledge. The four 
hours in which we had previously watched the volcano had passed like one; but 
the lonely hours which followed might have been two minutes or a year, for time 
was obliterated.

Coldly the Pole-star shivered above the frozen summit, and a blue moon, nearly 
full, withdrew her faded light into infinite space. The Southern Cross had set. 
Two peaks below the Pole-star, sharply defined against the sky, were the only 
signs of any other world than the world of fire and mystery around. It was 
light, broadly, vividly light; the sun himself, one would have thought, might 
look pale beside it. But such a light! The silver index of my thermometer, which 
had fallen to 23 degrees Fahrenheit, was ruby red; that of the aneroid, which 
gave the height at 13,803 feet (an error of 43 feet in excess), was the same. 
The white duck of the tent was rosy, and all the crater walls and the dull-grey 
ridges which lie around were a vivid rose red.

All Hawaii was sleeping. Our Hilo friends looked out the last thing; saw the 
glare, and probably wondered how we were "getting on," high up among the stars. 
Mine were the only mortal eyes which saw what is perhaps the grandest spectacle 
on earth. Once or twice I felt so overwhelmed by the very sublimity of the 
loneliness, that I turned to the six animals, which stood shivering in the north 
wind, without any consciousness than that of cold, hunger, and thirst. It was 
some relief even to pity them, for pity was at least a human feeling, and a 
momentary rest from the thrill of the new sensations inspired by the 
circumstances. The moon herself looked a wan unfamiliar thing--not the same moon 
which floods the palm and mango groves of Hilo with light and tenderness. And 
those palm and mango groves, and lighted homes, and seas, and ships, and cities, 
and faces of friends, and all familiar things, and the day before, and the years 
before, were as things in dreams, coming up out of a vanished past. And would 
there ever be another day, and would the earth ever be young and green again, 
and would men buy and sell and strive for gold, and should I ever with a human 
voice tell living human beings of the things of this midnight? How far it was 
from all the world, uplifted above love, hate, and storms of passion, and war, 
and wreck of thrones, and dissonant clash of human thought, serene in the 
eternal solitudes!

Things had changed, as they change hourly in craters. The previous loud 
detonations were probably connected with the evolutions of some "blowing cones," 
which were now very fierce, and throwing up lava at the comparatively dead end 
of the crater. Lone stars of fire broke out frequently through the blackened 
crust. The molten river, flowing from the incandescent lake, had advanced and 
broadened considerably. That lake itself, whose diameter has been estimated at 
800 feet, was rose-red and self-illuminated, and the increased noise was owing 
to the increased force of the fire-fountain, which was playing regularly at a 
height of 300 feet, with the cross fountains, like wheat-sheaves, at its lower 
part. These cross- fountains were the colour of a mixture of blood and fire, and 
the lower part of the perpendicular jets was the same; but as they rose and 
thinned, this colour passed into a vivid rose-red, and the spray and splashes 
were as rubies and flame mingled. For ever falling in fiery masses and fiery 
foam: accompanied by a thunder-music of its own: companioned only by the solemn 
stars: exhibiting no other token of its glories to man than the reflection of 
its fires on mist and smoke; it burns for the Creator's eye alone. No foot of 
mortal can approach it.

Hours passed as I watched the indescribable glories of the fire- fountain, its 
beauty of form, and its radiant reflection on the precipices, eight hundred feet 
high, which wall it in, and listened to its surges beating, and the ebb and flow 
of its thunder-music. Then a change occurred. The jets, which for long had been 
playing at a height of 300 feet, suddenly became quite low, and for a few 
seconds appeared as cones of fire wallowing in a sea of light; then with a roar 
like the sound of gathering waters, nearly the whole surface of the lake was 
lifted up by the action of some powerful internal force, and rose three times 
with its whole radiant mass, in one glorious, upward burst, to a height, as 
estimated by the surrounding cliffs, of six hundred feet, while the earth 
trembled, and the moon and stars withdrew abashed into far-off space. After this 
the fire-fountain played as before. The cold had become intense, 11 degrees of 
frost; and I crept back into the tent; those words occurring to me with a new 
meaning, "dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto."

We remained in the tent till the sun had slightly warmed the air, and then 
attempted to prepare breakfast by the fire; but no one could eat anything, and 
the native from Waimea complained of severe headache, which shortly became 
agonizing, and he lay on the ground moaning, and completely prostrated by 
mountain sickness. I felt extreme lassitude, and exhaustion followed the 
slightest effort; but the use of snow to the head produced great relief. The 
water in our canteens was hard frozen, and the keenness of the cold aggravated 
the uncomfortable symptoms which accompany pulses at 110 degrees. The native 
guide was the only person capable of work, so we were late in getting off, and 
rode four and a half hours to the camping ground, only stopping once to tighten 
our girths. Not a rope, strap, or buckle, or any of our gear gave way, and 
though I rode without a crupper, the breeching of a pack mule's saddle kept mine 
steady.

The descent, to the riders, is far more trying than the ascent, owing to the 
continued stretch of very steep declivity for eight thousand feet; but our mules 
never tripped, and came into Ainepo as if they had not travelled at all. The 
horses were terribly cut, both again in the a-a stream, and on the descent. It 
was sickening to follow them, for at first they left fragments of hide and hair 
on the rocks, then flesh, and when there was no more hide or flesh to come off 
their poor heels and fetlocks, blood dripped on every rock, and if they stood 
still for a few moments, every hoof left a little puddle of gore. We had all the 
enjoyment and they all the misery. I was much exhausted when we reached the 
camping-ground, but soon revived under the influence of food; but the poor 
native, who was really very ill, abandoned himself to wretchedness, and has only 
recovered to-day.

The belt of cloud which was all radiance above, was all drizzling fog below, and 
we reached Ainepo in a regular Scotch mist. The ranchman seemed rather grumpy at 
our successful ascent, which involved the failure of all their prophecies, and, 
indeed, we were thoroughly unsatisfactory travellers, arriving fresh and 
complacent, with neither adventures nor disasters to gladden people's hearts. We 
started for this ranch seven miles further, soon after dark, and arrived before 
nine, after the most successful ascent of Mauna Loa ever made.

Without being a Sybarite, I certainly do prefer a comfortable pulu bed to one of 
ridgy lava, and the fire which blazes on this broad hearth to the camp-fire on 
the frozen top of the volcano. The worthy ranchman expected us, and has treated 
us very sumptuously, and even Kahele is being regaled on Chinese sorghum. The 
Sunday's rest, too, is a luxury, which I wonder that travellers can ever forego. 
If one is always on the move, even very vivid impressions are hunted out of the 
memory by the last new thing. Though I am not unduly tired, even had it not been 
Sunday, I should have liked a day in which to recall and arrange my memories of 
Mauna Loa before the forty-eight miles' ride to Hilo.

This afternoon, we were sitting under the verandah talking volcanic talk, when 
there was a loud rumbling, and a severe shock of earthquake, and I have been 
twice interrupted in writing this letter by other shocks, in which all the 
frame-work of the house has yawned and closed again. They say that four years 
ago, at the time of the great "mud flow" which is close by, this house was moved 
several feet by an earthquake, and that all the cattle walls which surround it 
were thrown down. The ranchman tells us that on January 7th and 8th, 1873, there 
was a sudden and tremendous outburst of Mauna Loa. The ground, he says, throbbed 
and quivered for twenty miles; a tremendous roaring, like that of a blast 
furnace, was heard for the same distance, and clouds of black smoke trailed out 
over the sea for thirty miles.

We have dismissed our guide with encomiums. His charge was $10; but Mr. Green 
would not allow me to share that, or any part of the expense, or pay anything, 
but $6 for my own mule. The guide is a goat-hunter, and the chase is very 
curiously pursued. The hunter catches sight of a flock of goats, and hunts them 
up the mountain, till, agile and fleet of foot as they are, he actually tires 
them out, and gets close enough to them to cut their throats for the sake of 
their skins. If I understand rightly, this young man has captured as many as 
seventy in a day.

CRATER HOUSE, KILAUEA, June 9th

This morning Mr. Green left for Kona, and I for Kilauea; the ranchman's native 
wife and her sister riding with me for several miles to put me on the right 
track. Kahele's sociable instincts are so strong, that, before they left me, I 
dismounted, blindfolded him, and led him round and round several times, a 
process which so successfully confused his intellects, that he started off in 
this direction with more alacrity than usual. They certainly put me on a track 
which could not be mistaken, for it was a narrow, straight path, cut and 
hammered through a broad horrible a-a stream, whose jagged spikes were the 
height of the horse. But beyond this lie ten miles of pahoehoe, the lava-flows 
of ages, with only now and then the vestige of a trail.

Except the perilous crossing of the Hilo gulches in February, this is the most 
difficult ride I have had--eerie and impressive in every way. The loneliness was 
absolute. For several hours I saw no trace of human beings, except the very rare 
print of a shod horse's hoof. It is a region for ever "desolate and without 
inhabitant," trackless, waterless, silent, as if it had passed into the 
passionless calm of lunar solitudes. It is composed of rough hummocks of 
pahoehoe, rising out of a sandy desert. Only stunted ohias, loaded with crimson 
tufts, raise themselves out of cracks: twisted, tortured growths, bearing their 
bright blossoms under protest, driven unwillingly to be gay by a fiery soil and 
a fiery sun. To the left, there was the high, dark wall of an a-a stream; 
further yet, a tremendous volcanic fissure, at times the bed of a fiery river, 
and above this the towering dome of Mauna Loa, a brilliant cobalt blue, lined 
and shaded with indigo where innumerable lava streams had seamed his portentous 
sides: his whole beauty the effect of atmosphere, on an object in itself 
hideous. Ahead and to the right were rolling miles of a pahoehoe sea, bounded by 
the unseen Pacific 3,000 feet below, with countless craters, fissures emitting 
vapour, and all other concomitants of volcanic action; bounded to the north by 
the vast crater of Kilauea. On all this deadly region the sun poured his tropic 
light and heat from one of the bluest skies I ever saw.

The direction given me on leaving Kapapala was, that after the natives left me I 
was to keep a certain crater on the south-east till I saw the smoke of Kilauea; 
but there were many craters. Horses cross the sand and hummocks as nearly as 
possible on a bee line; but the lava rarely indicates that anything has passed 
over it, and this morning a strong breeze had rippled the sand, completely 
obliterating the hoof-marks of the last traveller, and at times I feared that 
losing myself, as many others have done, I should go mad with thirst. I examined 
the sand narrowly for hoof- marks, and every now and then found one, but always 
had the disappointment of finding that it was made by an unshod horse, therefore 
not a ridden one. Finding eyesight useless, I dismounted often, and felt with my 
finger along the rolling lava for the slightest marks of abrasion, which might 
show that shod animals had passed that way, got up into an ohia to look out for 
the smoke of Kilauea, and after three hours came out upon what I here learn is 
the old track, disused because of the insecurity of the ground.

It runs quite close to the edge of the crater, there 1,000 feet in depth, and 
gives a magnificent view of the whole area, with the pit and the blowing cones. 
But the region through which the trail led was rather an alarming one, being 
hollow and porous, all cracks and fissures, nefariously concealed by scrub and 
ferns. I found a place, as I thought, free from risk, and gave Kahele a feed of 
oats on my plaid, but before he had finished them there was a rumbling and 
vibration, and he went into the ground above his knees, so snatching up the 
plaid and jumping on him I galloped away, convinced that that crack was 
following me! However, either the crack thought better of it, or Kahele 
travelled faster, for in another half-hour I arrived where the whole region 
steams, smokes, and fumes with sulphur, and was kindly welcomed here by Mr. 
Gilman, where he and the old Chinaman appear to be alone.

After a seven hours' ride the quiet and the log fire are very pleasant, and the 
host is a most intelligent and sympathising listener. It is a solemn night, for 
the earth quakes, and the sound of Halemaumau is like the surging of the sea.

HILO, June 11th

Once more I am among palm and mango grove, and friendly faces, and sounds of 
softer surges than those of Kilauea. I had a dreary ride yesterday, as the rain 
was incessant, and I saw neither man, bird, or beast the whole way. Kahele was 
so heavily loaded that I rode the thirty miles at a foot's pace, and he became 
so tired that I had to walk.

It has been a splendid week, with every circumstance favourable, nothing sordid 
or worrying to disturb the impressions received, kindness and goodwill 
everywhere, a travelling companion whose consideration, endurance, and calmness 
were beyond all praise, and at the end the cordial welcomes of my Hawaiian 
"home."

I.L.B.

The Hawaiian Archipelago - End of Part 6