Statewide County HI Archives News.....Letters of Isabella L. Bird Bishop. - Part 18. October 23, 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, 12:51 am Keepers Of The Culture, A Study In Time Of The Hawaiian Islands October 23, 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 23, 2008 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Historical Collections of Hawai'i Keepers of the Culture A Study in Time, of the Hawai'ian Islands Letters of Isabella L. Bird Bishop " Six Months Among the Palm Graves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes of the Sandwich Islands." Letter # XI. - Part 1 Transcribed ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Letter # XI - Part 1 " Six Months Among the Palm Graves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes in the Sandwich Islands " Hilo, Hawaii There is a rumour that the King i coming as the guest of Admiral Pennock in the Benicia. If it tuens out to be true, it will turn our quite life upside down. +++++++++++ We met with fearful adventures in the swollen gulches between Laupahoehoe and Onomea. It is difficult to begin my letter with the plain prose of our departure from Waipio, which we accomplished on the morniing after I last wrote. On arising after a sound sleep, I found that my potted beef, which I had carefully hung from a nail the night before, had been amost carrid away by small ants. These ants swarm in every house on low altitudes. They assemble in legions as if by magic, and by their orderly activity carry away all that they do not devour, of all eatables which have not been placed on tables which have rags dipped in a solution of corrosive sublimate wound around the table legs. We breakfasted by lamplight, and because I had said that some of the viands reminded me of home, our kind host had provided them at that early hour. He absolutely refused to be paid anything for the accomodation of our party, and said he should be ashambed of himself if he took anyting from a ldy travelling without a husband. It was such a perfect morning. The full moon hung over the enclosing palis, gleaming on coffee and breadfruit groves, and on the surface of the river, which was just quivering under a soft breeze. The dew was heavy, smoke curled idly from native houses, the east was flushing with dawn, and the valley looked the picture of perfect peace. A number of natives assembled to see us start, and tey all shook hands with us, exchanging alohas, and presenting us with leis of rses and ohias. Deborah looked very pretty with a red hibiscus blossom in her shinning hair. You would have been amused to see e shaking hands with men dressed only in malos, or the short blue shirt reaching to the waist, much worn by tem when at work. I rode my mare with some pride of proprietorship, and our baggage for a time was packed on the mule, and we started up the tremendous pali at the tail of a string of twenty mules and horses laden with kalo. This was in the form of palai, or hard food, which is composed, as I think I mentioned before, of the root baked and pounded, but without water. It is put up in bundles wrapped inn ti leaves, of from twenty to thirty pound each, secured with cocoanut fibre, in which state it will keep for months, and much of the large quntity raised in Waipio is exported to the plantations, the Waimea ranches, and the neighboring districts. A square mile of kalo, it is estimated, would feed 15,000 Hawiians for a year. It is a beautiful view from the top of the pali. the white moon was setting,,the earliest sunlight was lighting up the dewy depths of the lonely valley, reddening with a rich rose red the huge headland which forms one of its sentinls; heavy snow had fallen during the night on Mauna Kea, and his great ragged dome, snow-covered down to the forests, was blushing like an Alpine peak at the touch of the early sun. It ripened into a slendid joyous day, which redeemed the sweeping uplands of Hamakua from the dreariness which I had thought belonged to them. There was a fresh sea-breeze, and the sun, though unclouded, was not too hot. We halted for an early lunch at the clean grass house we had stopped at before, and later in the afternoon at of the woman with whom we had ridden from Hakalau,who recieived us very cordially, and regaled us with poi and pork. In order to avoid the amenities of Bola Bola's, we rode thirty-four miles, and towards evening descended the tremendous steep, which leads to the surf-deafened village of Laupahoehoe. Halemaiu had given me a note of introduction to a widow named Honolulu, which Deborah said begun thus," As I know that you have the only clean house in Laupahoehoe," and on presenting it we were made very welcome. Besides the widow, a very redundant beauty, there were her two brothers and two male cousins, and all bestirred themselves in our service, the men in killing and cooking supper, and the woman in preparing the beds. It was quite a large room, with doors at the end and side, and fully a third was curtained off by a calico curtain, with a gorgeous Cretonne pattern upon it. I was delighted to see a four-post bed, with mosquito bars, and a claen pulu mattress, with a linen sheet over it, covered with a beautiful quilt with a quaint arabesque pattern on a white ground running round it, and a wreath of green leaves in the centre. The native women execise the most ingenuity in the patterns and colours of these quilts. Some of them are quite works of art. The materials, which are plain and printed cottons, cost about $8, and a complete quilt is worth from $18 to $50. The widow took six small pillows, daintly covered with silk, out of a chest, the uses of which were not obvious, as two large pillows were aready on the bed. It was astonishing to see a native house so handsomely furnished in so poor of a place. The mats on the floor were numerous and very fine. thee were two tables, severl chairs, a bureau with a swinging mirror upon it, a basin, crash towels, a carafe and a kerosene lamp. It is all very well to be able to rough it, and yet better to ejoy doing so, but such luxeries add much to one's contentment after eleven hours in the saddle. Honolulu wore a green chemise at first, but when supper was ready, sheput a Macgregor ratan holuku over it. The men were very active, and cooked the fowk in about the same time that it takes to pluck one at home. They spread the finest mat I have seen in the center of the floor s a tablecloth, and put down on it bowls containing the fowl and sweet potatoes, and the unfailing calabash of poi. Tea, coffee and milk were not procurable, and as the water is slimy and brackash, I offered a boy a dime to get me a cocoanut, and presently eight great, misshapen things were rolled down at the door. The outside is a smooth buff rind, underneath which is a fiberous covering, enormously strong and about an inch thick, which when stripped off reveals the ut as we see it, but of a very pale colour. Those we opened were quite young, and each contained nearly three tumblers of almost effervescent, very sweet,slightly acidulated, perfectly limid water, with a strong flavour of cocoanut. It is a delicious beverage. The meat was so thin and soft that it could have been spooned out like the white of an egg if we had had any spoons. We all sat cross-legged round our meal, and all Laupahoehoe crowded into the room and verandah with the most persistent, unwrinkling, gimleting stare I ever saw. It was really unpleasant, not only to hear a babel of talking, of wjich, judging from the constant repetition of the words wahine haole , I was the subject, but to have to eat under the focussed stare of twenty pair of eyes. My folding camp-knife apears as object of great interest, and it was handed round, inside and outside the house. When I retired about seven, the assemblage was still in full session. The stars were then bright, but when I woke the next morning a strong breeze was blowing, the surf was roaring so loud as almost to drown human vioces, and rolling up in gigantic surges, nd to judge from appearances, therain which was falling in torrents had been falling for some hours. There was much buzzing among the natives regarding our prospects for the day. I shall think from their tone and manner, and the frequent repetition of the names of the three worst guches, that the older men tried to dsisuade us from going; but Deborah, who was very anxious to be home by Sunday, said that the verdict was that if we started at once for our ride of twenty-three miles, we might reach Onomea before the freshet came on. This might have been the case had it not been for Kaluna. Not only was his horse worn out, but nothing would induce him to lead the mule, and she wnt off on fraging expeditions continually, which further detained us. Kaluna had grown quite polite in his savage way. He aways insisted on putting on and taking off my boots, carried me once through the Waipio river, helped me to pack the saddle-bags, and evenofferd to brush my hair ! He frequently brought me quavas on the road, saying, " eat." and often rode up, saying interrogatively, " tired ?" "cold ?' Deborah told me that he was very tired, and I was very sorry for him, for he was so thinly and poorly dressed, and the natives are not strong enough to bear exposure to cold as we can, and a temperature at 68 degrees is cold to them. But he was quite incorrigible, and thrashed his horse to the last. We breakfasted on fowl, poi, and cocoanut milk, in presence of even a larger number of spectators than the night before, one of them a very old man looking savagely picturesque, with a red blanket tied around his waist, leaving his lean chest and arms, which were elaborately tattooed, completely exposed. The mule had been slightly chafed by the gear, and my anxiety about a borrowed animal, of which Mr. Austin makes a great joke, I put my saddlebags on my own mare, in an evil hour, and not only these, but some fine cocoanuts, tied up in a waterproof which had long ago proved its worthlessness. It was a grotesquely miserable picture. The house is not far from the beach, and the surf, beyond which a heavy mist hung, was coming in with such a tremendous sound that we had to shout at the top of our voices. in order to be heard. The sides of the great gulch rose like prison walls, cascades which had no existance the previous night hurledthemselves from the summit of the cliffs directly into the sea, the rain, which fell in sheets, not drops, covered th ground to the depth of two or three inches, and dripped from the wretched , shivering horses, which stood huddled together with their tails between their legs. My thin falannel suit was wet through evenbefore we mounted. I dispesed with stockings, as I was told that waring them in rain chills and stffens the limbs. Deborah, about whom I was anxous, as well as the mule, had a really waterpreeof cloak, and I am glad to say hs quite lost the cough from which she suffered before our expedition. She does not care about the rain any more than I do. We soon reached the top of the worst and dizziest of all the palis, and then splashed on mile after mile, down sliding banks, and along rocky tracks, from which the soil had been carried away, and we passed through water-rents, the sides of which were as high as our horses' heads, where the ground had been level a few days before. By noon the aspect of things became so bad that I wished we had a white man with us, as I was uneasy about some of the deepest gulches. When four hours' journey from Onomea, Kaluna's horse broke down, and he left us to get another, and we rode a mile out of our way to visit Deborah's grandparents. Her uncle carried us across some water to their cookhouse, where, happily, a kalo baking had just been accomplished in a hole in the ground, lined with stones, among which the embers were still warm. In this very small hut, in which man could hardly stand upright, therewere fivemen only dressed in malos, four women, two of them very old, much tattooed, and huddled in blankets, two children, five pertinaciously sociable dogs, to cats, and heaps of things of different kinds. They are a most gregarious people, always visiting each other, and living in each others' houses, and so hospitable that no Hawaiian, howver poor, will refuse to share his last mouthful of poi with a stranger of his own race. These people looked very poor, but probably were not really so, as they had a nice grass house, with very fine mats, within a few yards. A man went out, cut off the head of a fowl, singed it in the flame, cut it to pieces, put it into a pot to boil, and before our feet were warm the bird was cooked, and we ate it out of the pot with some baked kalo. Deborah took me out to see some mango trees, and apnd filled with gold fish, which she said had been hers when she was a child. She seeed very fond of her realtives, among whom she looked like a fairy princess; and I tink they admired her very much, and teated her with some defernce. The object of our vist was to procure a le of birds' feathers which they had bee making for her, and for which I am sure 300 birds must have bee sacrificed. It was a very beautiful as well as costly ornament, and the most ingeniously packed for traveling by being laid at full lenth within a slender cylinder of bamboo. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Letter # XI continued in part 2. 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