Statewide County HI Archives News.....Letters of Isabella L. Bird Bishop. - Part 16. October 17, 2008 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/hi/hifiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 October 23, 2008, 12:43 am Keepers Of The Culture, A Study In Time Of The Hawaiian Islands October 17, 2008 Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 October 17, 2008. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Historical Collections of Hawaii Keepers of the Culture A Study in Time, of the Hawai'ian Islands Letters of Isabella. L. Bird Bishop " Six Months Among the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanos of the Sandwich Islands. " Letter # X - part 1. Transcribed. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Letter # X - part 1 " Six Months Among the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes of the Sandwich Islands." Waipio Valley Hawaii There is something fearful in the isolation of this valley, open at the sea, and walled in on all others by palis or precipices, from 1,000 to 2,000 feet in height, over the easiest of which hangs the dizzy track, which after trailing over the country for sixty difficult miles, connects Waipio with the little world of Hilo The evening is very sombre, and darkness comes on early between these high walls. I am in a native house which not a word of English is spoken, and Deborah, among her own people, has returned with zest to the exclusive use of her own tongue.This is more solitary than solitude, and tired as I am with riding and roughing it, I must console myself with writing you. The natives, after staring and giggling for sometime, took this letter out of my hand, with many exclamations, which, Deborah tells me, are at the rapidity and minuteness of my writing. I told them the letter was to my sister, and they asked if I had your picture. They are delighted with it, and it is going around a large circle assembled without. They see very few foreign women here, and are surprised that I have not brought a foreign man with me. There was quite a bustle of small preparations before we left Omomea. Deborah was mush excited, and i was not less so, for it is such a complete novelty to take a five days' riede alone with the natives. Deborah is a very nice native girl of sventeen, who speaks English tolerably, having been brought up by Mr. and Mrs. Austin. She has lately married to a white man employed on the plantation. Mr. Austin most kindly lent me a favourite mule, but declined to state that she would not kick, or buck, or turn obstinate, or lie down in the water, all which performances are characteristic of mules. She has, however, as he expected behaved as the most righteous of her species. Our equipment was a matter for some consideration, as I had no waterproof; but eventually I wore my flannel riding dress, and carried my plaid in front of the saddle. My saddlebags,which were behind, contained besides our changes of clothes, a jar of Liebig's essence of eef, some ptted beef, a tin of butter, a tin of biscuits, a tin of sardines, a small loaf, and some roast yams. Deborah looked very piquante in a bloomer dress of dark blue, with masses of shining hair in natural ringlets falling over the collar, mixing with her lei of red rose-buds. She rode a powerful horse, of which she has much need,as this is the most severe road on horses on Hawaii, and it takes a really good animal to come to Waipio and go back to Hilo. We got away at seven in bright sunshine, and Deborah's husband accompanied us the first mile to see that our girths and gear were all right. It was very slippery, but my mule deftly gathered her feet under her, and slid when she could nt walk. From Onomea to the place where we expected to find the guide, we kept going up and down the steep sides of ravines, and scrambling through torrents till we reached a deep amd most picturesque gulch, with a primitive school-house at the bottom, and some grass-houses clustering under palms and papayas, a valley scene of endless ease and perpetual afternoon. Here we found that Deborah's uncle, who was to have been our guide, cold not go, because his horse was not strong enough, but her cousin voluntered his escort, and went away to catch his horse, while we tethere ours and went into the school-house. This reminded me somewhat of the very poorest schools connected with the Edinburgh Ladies' Highland School Association, but the teacher had a remarkable paucity of clothing, and he seemed to have the charge of his baby, which, much clothed, and indee much muffled, lay on the bench besde him. For there were benches, and a desk, and even a blackboard and primers down in the deep gulch, where the music of lving waters, and the thunderous roll of the Pacific, accompanied the children's tuneless voices as tey sang an Hawaiian hymn. I shall remember nothing of the scholars but rows of gleming white teeth, and splendid brown eyes. I though both the teacher and children very apathetic. There were lamentably few, though the pretty rididly enforced law, which compells all children between the ages of six and fifteen to attend school forty weeks of the year, and probably gathered together all the children of the district. They all wore coloured chemises and leis of flowers. Outside, some natives presented us with some ripe papayas. Mounting again, we were joined by two native women, who were travelling the greater part of the way hither, and this made it more cheerful for deborah. The elder one had nothing on her head bu hre wild black hair, and she wore a black holuku, a lei of the orange seeds of the pandanus, orange trousers and big spurs strapped on her bare feet. A child of four, bundled up in a balck pancho, rode on a blanket behind the saddle, and was tied to the woman's waist, by an orange shawl. The younger woman, who was very pretty, wore a sailor's hat, leis of crimson ohia blossoms round her hat and throat, a black holuka, a crimson poncho, and one spur, and held up a green umbrella whenever it rained. We were shortly joined by Kaluna, the cousin, on an old, wall-eyed, bare-tailed, raw-boned horse, whose wall-eyes contrived to express mingled suspicion and fear, while a flabby, pendant, lower lip, conveyed the impression of complete abjectness. He looked like some humanbeings who would be vicious if they dared, but the vice had been beaten out of him long ago, and only the fear remained. He has a raw suppurating sore under the saddle, glueing the blanket to his lean back, and crouches when he is mounted. Both legs on one side look shorter than the other, giving a crooked look to himself and his rider, and his bare feet are worn thin a if he had been on lava. I rode him for a mile yesterday, and when he attempted a convulsive canter, with three shor steps and a stumble in it, his abbreviated off-legs made me feel as if I were rolling over on one side. Kaluna beats him the whole time with a eavy stick; but except when he strikes him most barbarously about his eyes and nose, he only cringes, without quickening his pace. When I rode him mercifully the true hound nature came out. The sufferings of this wretched animal have been the great drawback on this journey. I have now bribed Kaluna with as much as the horse is worth to give him a month's rest, and long before that time I hope the owl-hawks will be picking his bones. The horse has come before the rider, but Kaluna is no nonentity. he is a very handsome youth of sixteen, with eyes which are remarkable, even in this land of splendid eyes, a straight nose, a very fine mouth, and beautiful teeth, a msaa of wavy, almost curly hair, and a complexion not so brown as to concel the mantling of the bright southern blood in his cheeks. His figure is lithe, athletic, and as pliable as if he were an invertebrate animal, capable of unlimited doublings up and contortions, to which his white shirt and blue coton trousers are no impediment. he is almost a complete savage; his movements are impulsive and uncontrolled, and his handsome face loos as if it belonged to a half-trained creature out of the woods. he talks loud, laughs incessantly, croons a monotonous chat, which sounds almost as heathenish as tom-toms, throws himself out of hs saddle, hanging on one foot, lingers behind to gather fruits, and then comes tearing up, beating his horse over te ears and nose, with a fearful yell and prlonged sound like " har-r-r-ouche," striking my mule and threatening to overturn me as he passes me on the narroew track. He is the most thoroughly careless and irresponsible being I ever saw, reckless about the horses, reckless about himself, without any manners or any obvious sence of right and propriety. In his mouth this musical tongue becomes as harsh a the speech of a cocatoo or parrot. His manner is familiar. He rides up to me, pokes his head under my hat, and says, interrogatively, " Cold ! " by which I understand that the poor boy is shivering himself. In eating he plunges his hand into my bowl of fowl, or snatches half my biscuit. Yet I daresay he means welll, and I am thoroughly amused with him, except when he maltreats his horse. It is a very strange life going about with the natives, whose ideas, as shown by their habits, are, to say the least of it, very peculiar. Deborah speaks English fairly, having been brought up by white people, and is a very nice girl. But were she one of our own race I should not suppose her to be more than eleven years old, and she does not seem able to understand my ideas on any subject, though I can be very much interested and amused with hearing hers. We had a perfect day until the middle of the afternoon. The dimpling Pacific was never more than a mile from us as we kept the narrow track in the long green grass, and on our left the blunt snow-patched peaks of Mauna Kea rose from the girdle of forest, looking so delusively near that I fancied a two hours' climb would take us to his loft summit. The track for twenty-six miles is just in and out of gulches, from 100 to 800 feet in depth, all opening on the sea, which sweeps into them in three booming rollers. The candle-nut or kukai tree, which on the whole predominates, has leaves of a rch deep green when mature, which contrast beautifully with the flaky silvery look o the younger foliage. Some of the shallower gulches are filled exclusively with tis tree, which in growing up to the light to 100 feet of the top, presents a mass and density of leafage quite unigue, giving the gulch the appearance as if billows of green had rolled in and solidified there. Each gulch has some specialty o ferns and trees, and in such a distance as sixty iles they are considerably with the variations of soil, climate, and temerature. But everywhere the rocks, trees, and soil are covered and crowded with the most exquisite ferns and mosses, from the great tree-fern, whose bright fronds light up the darker foliage, to the lovely maidenhair and graceful selginellas which are mirrored in pools of sparling water. Everywhere, too, the great morning gory opened to a heaven not bluer then itself. The descent into the gulches is always solemn. You canter along a bright breezy upland, and are suddenly arrested bu a precipice, and from the depths of a forest abyss a low plash or murmur rises, or a deep bass sound, significant of water which mos be crossed, and one reluctantly leaves the upper to plunge into heavy shadow, and each experience increases one's apprehansions concerning the next. Though in some gulches, the kukui preponderates, in others the lauhala whose aerial roots support it in otherwise impossible positions, and in others the sombre ohia, yet there were some grand clefts in which nature has mingled her treasures impartially, and out of cool depths of ferns rose the feathery coco-palms, the glorious breatfruit, and its melon-like fruit, the large ohia, ideal in its beauty,-- the most gorgeous flowering tree I have ever seen, with spikes of rose-crimson blossoms borne on the old wood, blazing among its shining many-tinted leafage,-- the tall papaya with its fantastic crown, the pofuse gigantic plantain, and innumerable other trees, shubs, and lianas, in the beauty and bounteousness of an endless spring. Imagine my surprise on seeing at the bottom of one gulch, a grove of good-sized, dark-leaved, very handsome trees, with an abundance of smooth round green fruit upon them, and on reaching them finding that they wee orange trees their great size, far exceeding that of the largest at Valencia, having prevented me from recognizing them earlier ! In anoter, some large shrubs with oval, shning, dark leaves, much crimped at the edges, bright green berries along the stalks, and masses of pure white flowers lying fat, like snow on evergreens, turned out to be coffee ! The guava with its obtuse smooth leaves, sweet white blossoms on solitary, auxillary stalks, and yellow fruit was unversal. The novelty of the fruit, fliage, and vegetation is an intense delight to me. I should like to see how the rigid aspect of a coniferpous tree, of which there is not one indigenous to the islands, would look by contrast. We passed through a long thicket of sumach, an exotic from North America, which still retaines its old habit of shedding its leaves, and its grey, wintry, desolate-looking branches reminded me that there are less-favoured parts of the world, and that uou are among mist, cold, muk, slush, gales, leaflessness, and all the dismal concomitants of an English winter. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Letter # X continued in part 2. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/hi/statewide/newspapers/letterso73nnw.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/hifiles/ File size: 14.0 Kb