9UHR A *A~i'nii ju I |id* 3 01 OVIIl a39015 01911699 9b DU) 9, iI I 11i rN 1-J 3j i m l _ iIi S s r I:m s D 2Iijik. ~~I ~I 11 X "a, iii dl~ ,F: .i~. 16~' )' "?i iii iii $ t 8 e ri o I Ci 5%~ hj .r ~a b, "t` r"a" "bs B liins-9 reB ~: ri, f a % ~~I Bit~- ";a xi E I, Ca; i!,:~B" """ IIpit,, F 'ldu i, ifll, E' E '~ ~ri3r 612i kf-~"rs.,, ~~ip ,,.a tk I b srgrJ 1il y, r,, ~r lr?,:~IPBr r IIta1, Ii~b..I p~ fi"5i d rr 9%., irk ip iii.db? isr,,iiii a-I'PK " i ii ~3 11l 8 zsP"" " -rriL I.ir i8" " c. erc ~ :3 w 6:Z2 v fC: t C#$3 ",A LO' HAI" I* r r u p,- -" K l C!a,~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~I "AL O'H A!" A HA WA IIAN SALUTA TION. BY GEORGE LEONARD CHANEY. BOSTON: ROBERTS BROTHERS. I880. Co~pyright, x879, By GEORGE L. CHANEY. UNIVERSITY PRESS: JOHN WILSON AN4D SON, CAMBRIDGE. TO Ubfe honorable anb J[tr,? A. a. 3. Carter, WITHOUT WHOSE KIND PERSUASION MY VISIT TO THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN MADE, AND WHOSE GRACIOUS ENTERTAINMENT AND GUIDANCE WHILE I WAS THERE, DID SO MUCH TO MAKE THE MEMORY OF THAT VISIT A LASTING PLEASURE, THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED. Is I. to~~~~~~~ v- A o a4ct PREFACE. "ALOHA" means " Love to you!" It is the Hawaiian salutation and farewell. It expresses both the joy of friends who meet, and the sorrow of those who part. It is the commonest and sweetest word in the Hawaiian tongue. A book of grateful recollections of a winter's residence in the Hawaiian Islands is fortunate in finding for its title a name so gracious, so suited to its topic, and so truly at one with the author's motive in writing it. The visit which these pages will describe was too good to be selfishly enjoyed. The only reparation a man can make for not taking his fellow-men with him, when he goes to Hawaii, is to tell them about it when he gets home. In this book the author hopes to make some amends to his less fortunate fellows. They must not expect to find here a history of the Islands, - Jarves and Ellis have written that as well as anybody is likely to do it; nor yet a full account of the Missions with which these islands are associated, -Bingham and Anderson II CONTENTS. AT SEA... HONOLULU.... WAIKIKI. A VOYAGE WITH THE PRINCE HILO HOMES KILAUEA. " ON THE UPPER VERANDA. COCOA-NUT ISLAND. PUNA AND ONOMEA. A MISSIONARY CHAPTER. WAILUKU.... " KAAWALOA. KONA - ON THE IEIGHTS IlUALALAI....... IAO.... MIAKAWAO AND HALEAKALA. HONOLULU AGAIN.. AROUND OAHU..... ~~r~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~. ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~,~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~,~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~ PAGE 1 9 25 49 66 84 101 121 134 151 168 186 201 213 235 249 264 282 r~~~~~~~~~ I I 4*.R.. 0 ~ G f r I THE t Kg/pLA _ $ s fiffffi l i <\ {HAWAIIAN lilA~ t1ARCHIPELAGO Aj (XT1 0 1 UV iglmW I M I= I A O WICf I i t L T i AN | 14_ I* t X I* ' f *t s* ' j: I r-i L C. ii HAAIA II ARA WELA s == === =g A C I i_ 120- 1000 Mtt "ALOHA!" AT SEA. "g O MAMMA, we have come to the surface of "0' the earth!" This exclamation of our fouryear-old boy, as we sighted Oahu peering above the ocean horizon and looming through its morning mists, exactly expressed our feelings, when, after eight days upon the Pacific, we reached the Hawaiian Islands. There was a world of innocent and unconscious disparagement of the voyage in the boy's ecstatic greeting of land, to which we heartily responded. Not that it had been unusually disagreeable. On the contrary, as voyages go, the trip had been rather easy and accommodating. The " Granada" was a good ship, with the best of officers and crew. If she was a trifle crank, that was due to her light lading. If she did roll more than was consistent with the appearance of perfect sobriety, the blame of that, we were assured, must be divided between the lading and the ocean. Our course kept us directly in the trough of the sea, and anybody familiar with the long swell of the Pacific may 1 " ALOHA " know what that position involves. However, by keeping the earthen vessel in which we have our treasure in this world as lightly laden as the ship, and yielding meekly to the humor of the ocean, rolling all night long from side to side of our berths like unsteady barrels, and in the daytime practising on deck until our sea-legs were fairly on, we managed to endure the voyage. Indeed, we became so habitually unsteady in our motions, that the land itself, for some days after our voyage was over, seemed to reel under our feet. If misery likes company, we were not without congenial consolation. It awaited us at every turn on shipboard. Faces with that " wrung-out-and-flungaway" look peculiar to sea-sickness entreated the pity of a passing tear. I hardly know which is most depressing at such a time, - the helpless invalid or the robust salt. Among our fellow-passengers was a man who never was sea-sick in his life. His favorite boast was that he never missed a meal at sea. The privilege often carried its own punishment with it, as I afterwards learned, when I too could descend the cabin stairway and sit at meat with my tormentor opposite me. But it seemed no punishment to him, even when the flavor of machinery was at its height in all we ate. " My only trouble," he declared, "is to keep the wolf well fed." His poor wife meantime was famishing, without a wish for food, in her state AT SEA. 3 room. Later in the voyage she appeared horizontally in the upper saloon, while her lupine consort rushed about the deck in unnecessary good health, or, seating himself at the piano, played with a mercantile touch which denoted that he made his living by it, as he did. Query: Would not a perfectly healthy man be a perfect brute? Two pretty little girls, with their father, occupied the room opposite to ours. They soon obtained the freedom of the ship, and led our young voyager into perilous explorations, fore and aft; now romping among the live-stock on the forward deck, and now peering over the stern, to watch the gulls or sight a shark foraging in the ship's profitable wake. A subEnglishman, i. e. a colonist from Sydney, sat opposite me at table, and found fault so constantly that we could almost have sworn the fare to be delicious, for the sake of differing from him. Other passengers from the Colonies impressed us more favorably. Friday, January 14, must have been a trying day at sea, for I find this entry in my diary: " How tired I am of being banged about by doors, berths, and other inanimate things! When a man hits you, it is possible to feel a proper resentment, even if you do not hit him back; but there is no retaliating upon a door. The whole thing is ignominious. No wonder ships sometimes hug the shore. I would do it this moment, if I could. Where are we now? The log "ALOHA!" answers: Lat. 27~ 47' N. Long. 145~ 16' W. Whole distance from San Francisco, 1,300 miles." But we will not prolong the story of the voyage, lest the account of its inevitable disagreements should prove as forbidding to the reader as their experience was to the voyager. Only, in common honesty, we must qualify the popular impression that the Pacific is as smooth as a mill-pond, with the confession that it is quite capable of producing sea-sickness, notwithstanding its comparative freedom from great storms. But all this is over now. We have come to the surface of the earth at length. There is Koko Head, the first visible bit of Oahu, magnified by enveloping mists, glorified by dashes of sunshine, and growing every moment more beautiful as the lessening distance reveals its blending of brown lava tints with the vivid green of tropical vegetation. Every rod of the way becomes intensely interesting from this point onward till we enter the harbor of Honolulu. From seven o'clock until ten we are coasting along the island of Oahu, within a mile of the rare panorama which stretches along its southern shore. There is Diamond Head, with one foot on land and one in the sea, the daysman between them, a wonderful volcanic remnant, its fires long extinguished, and yet retaining in form and expression many a suggestion of its passionate youth. There is Waikiki, with its hovering palm-tops, its AT SEA. 5 silent cottages, its cluster of native-grass houses, all seen beyond the silvery edge of the breakers that rave upon its coral reef. Above and further inland, the great valleys of Palolo, Manoa, and Pauoa cover their retreat to the high mountains, with perpetual showers and inpenetrable green. Now Punch-bowl shows its circular brim, with Tantalus looking eagerly down upon it, and the great range of mountains behind him mocking his thirst with their inexhaustible rain-clouds. At their feet sits Honolulu, a city in a grove. The piers at the water's edge and a few bisiness streets have thrown off their coats, as if for convenience in working, but every other portion of the town is clothed "in vernal green." And now the harbor begins to fill with row-boats. Natives on every errand which curiosity or greed can invent, newsmen in pursuit of items for their rival papers, custom-house officials, private parties expecting friends, - each and all the varied interests which greet an ocean steamer on her arrival, board the "Granada " and bid her welcome. Meantime, the entire population seem to have assembled on the wharf. The gun is fired, to signal our arrival. Really this is something like a royal progress. The natives, with their wreaths of orange ilima, or yellow immortelles, or green maild (Alyxia Oliva-formis), or garden roses, and their bright chintz gowns, favor the illusion. Every thing and everybody " ALOHA!" look merry and festive. A chorus of talk and laughter fills the air from the crowd upon the pier. In our eagerness to land, it seems to take longer to get the ship to the wharf than to sail from Koko Head to Honolulu. In the midst of this process a furious shower of rain bursts upon the people. Those in carriages are drenched. The c6mmon crowd find shelter under the immense freight-shed. There, in one delicious heap, oranges, bananas, sugar, and flower-crowned Hawaiians await the passing of the cloud. The formalities of custom-house inspection, including a permit from an officer for leave to take our trunks, and a contribution from us of two dollars towards the support of the Queen's Hospital, were soon over, and we were ashore and with our friends. Happily, we had friends in Honolulu who were expecting us, and whose kindred homes would defend us from all sense of loss if our thoughts should go roving to our New England dwellings. But no stranger need feel lonely in Honolulu. There is a look of friendliness in every face he meets, and with a single letter of introduction to one of these hospitable people he can enjoy all the society he desires. But without this, he need not feel lost. With money in his purse, he can go to the Hawaiian Hotel, the most beautiful government edifice in the town, and live in comfort for two or three dollars per day. The Seamen's Home offers a tidy though plain shelter for AT SEA. 7 travellers of small means. All the world over, one must pay for what one gets. There is no country where living is cheap, unless it is relatively poor. Oahu is no exception to the rule. If you live more cheaply there than elsewhere, it must be because you live more simply. The only necessaries of life which are really cheap in Honolulu are rain, sunshine, and fresh air. And where else in the world will one find these great staples of existence in such abundance and purity? Let no man be frightened by stories of tropical heat. In the winter season, when we were there, every hour of sunshine had its five minutes' bath of rain; and if this had failed, the trade-wind, steadily blowing the cooling breath of the northeast Pacific, would have relieved the air of all excess of heat. But all this we have yet to learn from our three months' visit. As yet, we have scarcely landed. To our inexperienced eyes, these frequent showers seem to throw a damper upon the enjoyment of travel. We see our trunks in an open wagon, encountering the hazards of a mile or more of transportation towards the mountains of rain which crumble into incessant avalanches of water, and we wonder how they will survive the passage to our friends'house. The perfect sang-froid with which our friends took their part of the showers, while it relieved us of all apprehension lest they were sugar or salt, - those leading products of Oahu, - left us uncertain whether they were flesh 8 " ALOHA!" and blood. But notwithstanding these sudden dashes of rain, the ride through the tidy town, with its modest shops, its shaded cottages, its brilliant gardens and lively people, was most captivating. We rode up Nuuanu Avenue to our friends' house. Oh, the rest and blessedness of that end of our long trip across a continent and an ocean! The novelty and rarity of every thing! I see them now as freshly as if I were still in Honolulu, -the bank of ferns, beneath the shade of the mango and monkey-pod; the brook rushing under the graceful archway; the stately Royal palms on its further bank; the green pastures of manienie grass, with here and there a native house; the open veranda, with its beguiling lounges and easy-chairs; the open doors, windows, hall, hearts, hands, - every thing open and free as the day! Ah, where else in the wide world is there such rest as in a good home in the Hawaiian Islands? And when, after shaking the wrinkles and brine of the sea out of ourselves and our clothing, we sat down in the bright dining-room, and ate of the fruits of the land and sipped the comfort of tea that was tea, and not "water bewitched," a la " Granada," there stole such a sense of contentment over us as we had not felt for many a day, if ever before. HONOLULU. 9 HONOLULU. THE trade-wind and abundance of water go so far to relieve the heat of these islands, that all the days are far more comfortable than the average weather in a New England summer. We experienced no such heat there as greeted our visit to the Centennial at Philadelphia, the following July; and when, on our return to Massachusetts, we were asked, one scorching day in August, why we went to the Hawaiian Islands, we answered, with more seriousness than our untravelled readers will give us credit for, " to get cool." All day long the merry wind blows freshly among the branches of the ample shade-trees of Honolulu. As I lie in the bamboo-lounge on my friend's piazza, I am obliged to anchor my newspaper with a book, when I lay it down, or the wind will whisk it away among the mango-trees. I cannot liken this refreshing breeze to the fanning of an immense punka suspended above the island, and kept in motion by invisible servitors. The rush of air is too continuous to be compared with fanning. There are none of those momentary but regularly recurring lulls which give to the exercise of the fan its invariable dis " ALOHA!" appointment. A full river of wind flows over you, in unbroken current, and you realize at length what it is to be as happy as " a clam at high water." Or if you prefer the water itself, and would fain revel in that element, you have only to seek the bath-room, an essential part of every well-furnished house in this country, and there you will find, not an empty trough built in doleful semblance of your last resting-place, but more likely a deep tank or capacious tub, brimming over with cool, pure water, always ready and waiting for your use. The water from some neighboring brook is made to run in this free fashion through your bath-room, and a bath in the house has all the freshness of a dip in the brook. Fancy the recreation with which we rose from this domestic Eunob,-river of the right mind,-and took our place again, after the dire passage of the seas, among the inhabitants of this blessed island. And they, nowise unwilling to admit us to their company, came to greet us day by day, and wish us a happy sojourn among them. Every evening gathered an impromptu party. Scarcely was the late dinner over, and our family at leisure, in parlor or on piazza, before the sound of carriage-wheels on the driveway would herald the coming guests, and each new arrival would but prepare the way for a successor. The universal interest which a visiting stranger excites is not due in the least to his rarity or probable superiority in any re HONOLULU. 11 spect to the usual society of the city. Visitors are far too common, and the society is far too varied and intelligent for such effects. No, it is the genuine instinct of hospitality, a grace which was native to these islands before the missionaries came here. Every Hawaiian shares it. The civility and kindliness common to New England village life have only added new charms and powers to themselves by coming all the way to Hawaii. It is a curious and pleasant thing to see how many of the best characteristics of the AngloAmerican race have been transplanted and domesticated in this far-away kingdom. If the good old type should die out of New England, I believe that it would be found still surviving in the descendants of the best settlers of the Hawaiian Islands. Nearly every resident of American extraction, whether born in the Islands or not, looks to our country as to his native land, and the " States," as they are commonly called, are always spoken of as " home." So prevalent is this way of speaking, that genuine Hawaiians themselves sometimes fall into their white brothers' habit, and speak of coming to the States as "going home." And yet it would be making too much of the predominating New England influence in Hawaiian civilization, to ignore other, co-operating agencies. Especially unfair would it be to the society of Honolulu to omit from its description the various nationalities "ALOHA!" represented there. It is this variety which gives to such society its breadth of view and catholicity of temper, its numerous topics in conversation and its genuine cosmopolitan complexion. The representatives of all civilized nations live together in this little kingdom, and their attachment, each to his own country, intensified by absence and distance, makes the home affairs of every nation subjects of eager comparison and discussion in intelligent circles. We found ourselves in one evening thus early in our visit receiving calls from the United States Minister, the Austrian Consul, Mr. Afong, a wealthy and intelligent Chinese merchant, and a succession of neighborly American-Hawaiians besides. Intelligent and kindly as all of these were, none interested us more, or proved more winning in his address and manners, than the neighbor from China. In looks he very much resembled that rare Christian gentleman, the late Secretary of the American Unitarian Association, Rev. Charles Lowe. The same beaming face and modest grace of manner, the friendly yet unobtrusive courtesy which needs both inheritance and culture to bring it to this fine condition, and a ready intelligence, which, while it apprehended your thought before it was fully expressed, never interrupted your speech with unnecessary assistance! I could almost have persuaded myself that our dear friend had returned to earth in this admirable heathen, to show how like the two might be,-a good Chinaman and a good HONOLULU. 13 Christian. In the obscure light of the retired corner of the room in which he instinctively chose his seat, the inseparable queue, which still held him to his fatherland, hardly showed as it encircled his head like a Hawaiian lei, or wreath; and his speech,which was not frequent, dropped from his lips with the careful exactness of Chinese workmanship. While I am speaking of Mr. A, I may say that these Islands are regarded as the very Paradise of the Chinese. In the main, they are kindly treated here, although a very natural jealousy has arisen between them and the native Hawaiians. The former are a persistent race; the latter, evanescent. Moreover, the Chinese have the very qualities which the Hawaiians most lack. Industry, providence, economy, subtlety, all the money-making and money-saving virtues, are with the former. Idleness, carelessness, generosity, simplicity, all the money-losing qualities, are with the latter. It is the old story of Jacob and Esau over again. Worse still, this Chinese Jacob carries off the daughters as well as the cattle of his host. It is not uncommon for Hawaiian women to marry Chinese husbands, and in a country where women are largely in the minority, this is no slight grievance to the men. This very gentleman whom we are receiving in our friend's parlor has a Hawaiian wife and eleven children. They live in the most elegant house on Nuaanu Avenue; and whlen you call there, as we did, " ALOHA " on Chinese New Year's, you will find yourself received with the same simple yet dignified courtesy which charmed you in the host himself when you first met him. This Chinese New Year's is a festival to be celebrated with something more than a passing reference. It occurs on the 26th of January, the beginning of the Chinese year. Previous to this day, every honest Chinaman pays all his debts. For fear that Western prejudice may deem this a safe and not necessarily large statement, I will say, " every Chinaman who values his reputation" pays his debts before the New Year begins. And this reminds me of a story told by the Count Kleczkowski, in the Introduction to his work on the Chinese Alphabet and Language, which is worthy of wider circulation than it is likely to receive in its place in that learned work: "The vice-roi Y6 had issued an edict condemning to death every native convicted of having the least intercourse with the barbarians, e. g. English, French, and other Europeans. The merchants of these nationalities hastened to close their counting-houses in Canton. One night a Swiss merchant made his preparations to depart. All at once he saw enter his store one of his Chinese customers, who, assisted by coolies, brought him some thousands of piasters in ingots of silver, which he owed him. When the European expressed surprise at such temerity, "I did not wish," replied the HONOLULU. 15 Chinaman, "that any one should deem me capable of taking advantage of unfortunate circumstances not to pay my debts." On New Year's day, then, the entire Chinese people go off, like one of their rockets, into explosive merriment and display. Ah Me and Ah Well, our melancholy cook and waiter, shook the sigh out of themselves and went off celebrating like the rest. In mingled curiosity and greed we followed them, and with some American gentlemen made the rounds of several prominent Chinese merchants' stores. They received in rooms fitted up for the purpose in the rear of their usual places of business. Tables were spread with cold meats, bread, a great variety of dried fruits, preserves, and candy, and promiscuous beverages of flavor unknown to us, because untasted. It was a free lunch, with no ~expectation on the part of the entertainers of a costly drink to follow. The smiling reception which greeted us at every store witnessed the sincerity of their welcome. One ambitious Celestial, emulous of admiration at any cost, entertained in Buffum's.Hall. The king himself was expected to honor the feast this Chinaman had prepared. Curious to see the repast which would be deemed worthy of royalty itself, we mounted the stairway, and entered the grand banqueting hall. Beaming and bounteous Hawaiians blended the brown sugar of their smiles with the tea-like astringency of the somewhat "ALOHA!" thin and puckered Chinese physiognomy. It was a grateful combination. The feast was not at its height when we arrived; on the contrary, there was a "too muchee bye-and-bye," as the Chinaman said of his watch when it lost time, in the appearance of the festival when we were there. Every thing and everybody were waiting for the coming of the king. A long table, raised only a few inches from the floor, was spread with every imaginable Hawaiian delicacy, from squid and sea-weed to the Princess Ruth's favorite bow-wow. Poi, in polished koa calabashes, offered a sauce of equal efficacy to the goose and gander who might eat the sour paste; and scattered among these unctuous viands were the withered sweets in which the Chinaman delights his festive soul. Take care, 0 king, that the lean kine do not eat up the fat ones; that these shrivelled fruits and fishes of China do not dispossess your land of its poi and squid! The day is coming - has already come - when your own people cannot do all that needs doing in the development of your kingdom's natural resources and the accomplishment of its destiny as a great depot of the world's commerce, when its tide, which now flows westward from the prolific shores of China and Japan, shall turn eastward, and reach Europe by way of America. Are these thoughts too grave for the day? Let us move on, then: you to HONOLULU. your grand banquet, and I to the last call of the day, a call of real respect upon the gentlemanly A — His wife is ill and cannot receive us, but there is nothing lacking in the simple politeness of the eldest daughter; and, indeed, the house itself, with its elegant and unique furnishing and its beautiful surroundings, would have been entertaining enough. That evening I attended a meeting at the Bethel, which opened a new door of possible achievement for this immemorial race. It was a union meeting of Chinese and Americans. Sit Moon, a Chinese colporteur employed by the Young Men's Christian Association, addressed his countrymen, of whom about twenty were present. He prayed with them in their own tongue. He then led them in singing from large printed posters, containing, in Chinese characters, the hymns, "There is a happy home," "Just as I am," and "Rock of Ages." It was a curious sensation to hear these familiar tunes with such unfamiliar words; but the novelty was less impressive than the illustration it gave of the unifying power and destiny of Christianity. The very antipodes of tie ealth, Americans and Chinese, - people as antipodal in race characteristics as in geographical position, - were made one in the worship of this Christian Bethel. I know not what a musical ear, listening critically to the singing, might have heard; something curious in harmony, no doubt; but the commingled singing of one 2 C ALOHA!" hymn, partly in Chinese and partly in English, was, to the spiritual ear, prophetic of the day when all nations shall flow together to the knowledge of the Lord. No doubt or question of the possibility of converting the Chinese to Christianity deters these descendants of missionaries from their pious attempts; and truly they are a people eminently worthy of the best we can give them. Twenty centennials ago, they placed at the head of their political constitution that requirement which is our most difficult and most needed reform to-day; viz., that "merit only, established by public examinations, gives the right to every public office." For more than nine centuries, says the Count Kleczkowski in his Introduction to the Study of the Chinese Language, they have kept the institutions which govern them almost intact. "A monarchy," he calls their government, "based on laws, ideas, and customs more democratic than among any other people. In England itself, the towns and boroughs do not enjoy more rights and privileges than those of the country of Hann. The Board of Censors at Peking can publicly reprimand all public officers, even the sovereign himself; and they do it. Needless," he continues, "to speak of their language, the hearthstone of civilization for so many human beings; of their literature, whose riches are little comprehended here; of their history, where one finds noted down in perfect order HONOLULU. 19 and with surprising clearness the least acts of all their sovereigns, statesmen, great captains, sages, scholars, and even the deeds of celebrated women who have made China illustrious, ever since about the time of Confucius; that is to say, for about twenty-four hundred years. Nor ought we to pass in silence the admirable industries of this people, tle patience and perseverance of Chinese workmen, their sobriety, their frugality, their respect for authority, their love of order and peace, and, above all, their contentment in failure or in success, their cheerfulness under hard labor! And, finally, their business talent surpasses even that of the Anglo-Saxon." Four hundred millions of people, one-third of the world's inhabitants, sensible, frugal, industrious, capable, persistent in race and government, and yet self-indulgent, effeminate, conservative alike of good and bad, proud, exclusive, and intolerant,- what a mass of humanity worth saving! what a mountain of remediable evil they present! Are we giving too much thought to the intrusive Chinese question in these remembrances of social life in Honolulu? No more than the omnipresence of the Chinaman himself compels. He is the main dependence of the plantation; the favorite cook; the diligent trader; the successful gardener; the coming man, it may be, in these mid-Pacific isles. " What do you say," asks my host, a day or two (' ALOHA!" after our arrival and domestication in his hospitable home, "to a horseback excursion to-morrow up Kalihi?" Kalihi is a wonderful valley running from the sea to the very heart of the great range of mountains which forms the eastern wall of Oahu. It is one of many such valleys or gorges, and hardly distinguishable from the rest by any excess of beauty. Where all are so lovely, it would be unfair to single out Kalihi for celebration. We welcome the proposal to explore the valley. Those great green clefts in the mountain wall behind Honolulu had tempted us from our first sight of them from the sea, and now we should learn from close inspection what trees combined to weave their eververnal green. The mystery of their native reserve was increased in this case by the story our friend told us of a white man who lived far up Kalihi, in selfimposed exile. Happily he was on pleasant terms with our host, and enjoyed his visits. Under cover of his favor, therefore, we might all go and be assured of a welcome. Our party, numbering five, -three ladies, my host, and myself, - started in gay defiance of the weather, which, at this season, can safely be relied upon to prove sunshiny and rainy every hour of the day. We were mounted on horses of the usual Hawaiian type, naturally lazy, but so accustomed to whip and spur that they did not dare to follow their inclination. At a breakneck gallop they went clattering HONOLULU. through the town and out on the turnpike road to Kalihi. The traveller - especially the lady rider - should bring her own saddle with her. All the enjoyable locomotion here is on horseback, with the slight, exception of the city streets and one road around Oahu. The chances of finding a side-saddle here which will suit your ladyship are not of the best; especially as all the women who are to the manner born ride in the same way as the men, sitting astride their horses. Not only Hawaiians, but very often those of gentler race, prefer to ride in this fashion; and in taking long journeys it is a very common practice, as it is found to be less fatiguing than the onesided arrangement of tamed countries. What a deepening delight it was when, having left the city and the beaten road and crossed the opening uplands, we plunged into the valley itself, and now with a dash through the guava-bushes or the tall grass interwoven with ferns, now between cliffs where the candle-nut trees clung like goats or went bounding past us as we shot by them on our horses, now fording a stream, now scampering over a hillock, now hugged so closely by crowding forest-trees that we seemed in danger of being swept from our horses, now reaching a brief interval of clearing and speeding our beasts to the woods again, on we went, the valley growing thicker in foliage, darker and more damp as we went on, and at last, when the only pos 22 ALOHA!" sible remaining pathway seemed to run up a tree, we found ourselves close upon the Morris hermitage! Clearly our exile would prove no anchorite, for his dwelling was luxurious in vegetation. All the profitable fruits of the land were growing in abundance around him. Oranges hung like starry worlds in the leafy firmament above us. Bananas in every stage of greenness hung from their upright staves, surrounded by waving pennons of prodigious leaves. Limes and loquots filled the intervals of the orchard, and all around were other tropical trees whose fruit was not yet in its season. In the midst of this unspoiled Eden, contented to be alone and so secure from falling, the recluse and his wife (for he was married) passed their uneventful days. No serpent invaded their garden with plausible tongue, for there is not a snake to be found in all the Hawaiian kingdom. Here the man and wife lived alone, in a snug cottage by the side of a spring of never-failing water, and the trees fed them. At the departure of the steamer from Honolulu, Mr. Morris would go down to ship his fruit for the States, and attend to the little shopping his narrow household required. Sometimes the sale of his fruit returned him a profit, but very often it was lost on the passage. His business would not have proved a paying one if he had lived as men live in towns and cities. But he had chosen the better way of becoming rich, -of having few HONOLULU. 23 wants; and in this ample poverty he passed his peaceful days. As we sat on his little veranda, sipping limeade, eating oranges and loquots, and listening to the story of his life, or so much of it as he chose to reveal, the temptation to voluntary banishment from the door-bell of civilization and the visiting-card of society might have proved too strong for our social and professional virtues, but for the evident narrowness of the hermit's accommodations and the warning of the deepening shade that the evening was coming on. Mounting our horses, we rushed away from the dangerous seclusion, and were soon "homeward bound," with some of the lively accompaniments of that stirring hymn about us. A pelting rain fell upon us, but its waters were so mild, and the ensuing sunshine so genial, and the breeze of horseback riding so drying, that when we reached home we were as whole and unharmed as when we started. That is one of the peculiarities of this climate. In the winter season there are daily, almost hourly, rains, especially as you near the mountains, and yet nobody minds them. Umbrellas are seldom used by well people. The recovery from one of these sprinklings is as rapid as the attack. The people of Honolulu take the frequent shower which comes down Nuuanu Avenue from the clouds among the hills very much as Americans regard a watering-machine in their city streets. It lays the dust and cools the air. The rain 24 24 ALOHA!" which pattered along the forest path with us as we left Kalihi seemed rather a companion of our frolic than a marplot. The garments of civilization, to be sure, are not improved by the process. Our ladies' veils clinging to their hats give a shrivelled morningglory effect to their head attire. But not so the native woman who rides before us. Her single but abundant garment of black material is rather irm proved in lustre by the rain. Her plush hat glistens like a raven's breast, and the lei of yellow everlasting around it shines like a ring of gold. The garland of roses and maild hung over her shoulders freshens and blooms anew at the touch of the shower. She is the handsomest Hawaiian we have yet seen, and as she flashes up the hill before us orN a fine horse, which she rides to perfection, and, reaching the crest, is seen for a moment against the bright light of the returning sun, she seems the embodiment of her people, free, bounteous, passionate, fearless, and - vanishing. WAIKIKI. 25 WAIKIKI. XWA.AIKIKI! There is something ill the very name which smacks of the sea. Actually there is a slight taste of salt in my mouth whenever I speak the word. And either my experience of the place has infused its significance into these sparkling syllables, so that they sound to me like the gentle play of the water on the beach, or there is some genuine correspondence between the place and its native name. It is the seaside resort of Honolulu, about three miles from the city. We saw it first from the deck of the steamship " Granada" on the day of our arrival. A string of cottages and grass houses, looking at that distance no larger than shells strewn along the beach, and above them what seemed a flock of musing herons, but was in reality a grove of palms,- this was our earliest impression of Waikiki. We had yearned for it from that moment, notwithstanding the hospitable entertainment and social charm of Honolulu. There seemed a promise of rest in its motionless life, and a chance of self-recovery in its self-forgetful solitude. " Let us go to Waikiki," I said, when my friend invited me to take an after 26 "ALOHA!" noon drive, and left the direction to me. And we went, following Beretania Street till it took us into the open marshes, only relieved here and there by lands redeemed and regained for Eden by the lineal descendants of the man and woman who originally lost it. These loyal sons of Adam had planted algaroba trees and coco palms, and carpeted the bare earth with soft rugs of manienie grass. One thrifty settlement had been named the "Sunny South," and bore its name proudly in a blue arch over the gateway. It was so christened by its proprietor in the time of the great rebellion in the United States, and served to advertise in a showy way his Southern sympathies. But we admire it at this date as a symbol of what the sunny South is destined to become, now that it is redeemed from the low level of a civilization based on slavery. We pass a young cocoa-nut grove, said to contain seven thousand trees, planted by its foresighted owner in the belief that twenty years hence, at a dollar a tree, it will give his heir seven thousand dollars a year. With such examples of the capacity of the land, what a pity it seems to find one's self soon surrounded by wretched marshes, disfigured -if their coarse face can be made uglier than the weeds and wild grasses make it - with muddy ponds of green and stagnant waters. The hard road goes bravely through and over this country, and soon we reach the giant palms WAIKIKI. 27 and their covey of nestling cottages. Most of the houses are closed at this season, but in this honest neighborhood there is no need of locks and bars. We look into and over the houses almnost as easily as if their owners were there showing us about the premi es. They were plain low buildings, looking seaward from under the shade of thick branching hauz trees. We turned around in several of them, but somehow did not feel that instinctive affection for them which tells a man when he has found his home. Evidently ours was not there. The prospect of keeping house in that odd corner of creation, with native servants chuckling unintelligent assent to our commands, or Chinese waiters who might as well be dumb, for all we could comprehend of their dialect, was not inviting. We turned sorrowfully away, with the sad refrain of Watts's restless hymn in our minds: — "'Tis vain the ocean's depths to sound, Or pierce to either pole." But we had not seen the whole of Waikiki.. Further along-shore, where the native fishing-canoes are hauled up on the beach, their long black hulks covered but not veiled by coarse-meshed nets, the coco palms grow taller and more numerous, and a comfortable native settlement encamps. The natives are mostly retainers of the Governess of Hawaii, Ruth Keelikolani, who has a house there. So have the king and other members of the royal family, " ALOHA!" as a place of summer resort. Just at the entrance of the little village, near enough to satisfy the sense of human brotherhood, but separate enough for domestic integrity and personal freedom, there is a choice bit of seaside felicity, owned and occupied by my friend's friend. In the Hawaiian Islands your friend's friend is doubly your friend. You seem to be received as twice a man there if you come recommended by another. Your host treats you as if you were not only yourself, but his friend, your indorser. And so it happened that we soon found ourselves inside the sociable-looking open fence. I protest that this fence was more inviting than forbidding. The very pigs of the neighborhood felt free to enter there when the gate was left open. How many times since that hour have I seen -" but let me not anticipate." We found the establishment of our friend's friend consisted of three cottages within one enclosure, with convenient sheds for horses. One of these cottages was wholly unoccupied. There was a superfluity of furniture in the other houses, and best of all, there was an obliging man, willing to rent us the cottage at a merely nominal rate, and ready, with his liberalhearted wife's consent, to let us share his comfortable home and board. This, then, was to be our restingplace. Found at last The spot we had travelled five thousand miles to see. We hated to leave it. WAIKIKI. 29 Why not begin at once? The place might vanish away before we could see it again. What if Diamond Head, a volcano close at hand, but extinct as far back as memory ran, - what if it should wake up and overwhelm our Eden? It seemed too good to be true that we were really coming here to abide. And yet we did. Three days afterwards, when the western sun was pouring its full radiance across the harbor, lighting even the dull marshes with its impartial charity, burnishing the palms and brightening the feathery algarobas with transcendent beauty, running over the upland fields like a green flood of unconsuming fire, and at length filling the misty vale of Manoa with rainbow tints, between the mountains and the ocean, we drove down to Waikiki. There stood our cottage. It had not been swallowed up. Leahi had been merciful. Another and a kinder hand than his had been at work in its chambers. Fresh matting, woven of palm leaves in the beautiful basket pattern common in native manufacture, covered the floors. Lounges of cane, or cushioned to suit the taste that preferred ease to coolness, stretched their beguiling length on the verandas and in the little parlor. In one of the bedrooms a very bed of Ware was made up. Fancy a bed twelve feet by fourteen, really filling the whole sleeping-room, excepting a narrow strip at the foot and along one side. It was provided by our host in that spirit of graceful ac 30 " ALOHA! " commodation to native habits, that amiable agree. ment with whatever is harmless in the peculiar living of the native, which is so marked a trait in the Hawaiian citizen of foreign birth. Native families commonly sleep in one bed, with one voluminous tapa covering over them. A snug little household like ours found ample accommodation on this roomy mattress. Indeed, our boy became so used to the ample verge of this great bed, that, waking up one night, months afterwards, in the narrower berth of the steamship "Zealandia," he pathetically cried out that he could not find himself. I wonder if it ever happens that one's true self runs away from one, to visit, as it were, in some more genial land. Certain it is that our " infant crying in the night" exactly expressed our previous predicament. The problem before us as we drove down to Waikiki could hardly be better stated than by saying that we were in search of ourselves. The penalty of living too thickly with other people is, that a man soon falls into the common ways of thinking, speaking, and doing; and, unless he is possessed of very unusual defences, - a very thick skin or very sharp claws, - he turns out nobody by becoming everybody. Whither had our good man flown? Should we not find him in this swept and garnished house? Alas, alas I the devils also like a clean room, it has been said. But we have no fears but those of hope, WAIKIKI. 31 not daring quite to trust its own predictions, when we leave the world behind and enter this happy retreat. Boku takes our horse and buggy. Kaaikaula deposits our trunks, smiles an ivory smile, and leaves us. Our thoughtful hostess, having anticipated our every earthly want, consigns us, after a hearty welcome, to the full enjoyment of our rest. We sink into the nearest chair or lounge, and look the satisfaction we cannot speak. But let no man count on peace who has within him a hungry stomach, and beside him a hungry boy. Between the two, we were nearly ground to powder before dinner was announced. It is not in the least humiliating to owe the intense sense of comfort and completeness, which we afterwards experienced, to the dinner and its surroundings. Eating in the lanai at Waikiki is a noble exercise of some of the highest faculties of man. Your table is set upon a platform forty feet by fifty, which stretches from the rear of the cottage down to the very edge of the sea. Above your head two immense hau trees hold up the roof. Their thick foliage, starred with yellow flowers, shades the upper surface of the roof; their far-reaching, sinewy branches groin the ceiling from below; their great trunks help to furnish and adorn the room; and in their crooks and crannies pots of flowers and ferns find a natural and becoming resting-place. 32 " ALOHA! On two sides the piazza is enclosed by a wooden wall, one-third closely boarded, the upper two-thirds open as the day. There are blinds that lift or fall over this open space, according to your pleasure or the demands of the weather. The cottage is on the inner side, or mauka, as they say in Hawaii; and the remaining side adjoins the culinary department, and, nearer the sea, opens into a large bathing-house. Furnish this sheltered yet thoroughly open-air diningroom with rattan lounges and easy-chairs; let the sewing-machine, the work-table, the bureau, the dainty parlor vases filled with roses, the children's playthings, - let any and every thing in the house that wants to come, come and enjoy the free, out-of-door life which pervades this place; hang a generous branch of daily ripening bananas up over the tall refrigerator; set the graceful earthen water-coolers on the sideboard, - and you have what may be called the still life of our picture. But when you add the stately, ample figure of Maikopu, the native womanof-all-work, which means no work as nearly as possible; her thatch of short, crisp, curling iron-gray hair; her great black eyes, that seemed always struggling, like spider-captured flies, to free themselves from the web in which slumber's chain had bound them; her deliberate gait and swinging arms as she walked about the premises, a wrathful prophecy of coming woe to neighbors' pigs that ventured within WAIKIKI. 33 her domain, a solid comfort to the children of the household, their equal butt and darling,- when you summon from the china-closet that celestial waiter, Ah Why, with his shock of wiry black hair enwreathed by his inseparable queue in a sort of unfading lei, as if in deference to the Hawaiian custom of crowning the head with flowers; his finely pen cilled features, done in india-ink, and as inscrutable as his handwriting; his empty-looking clothing and exhausted cheeks, - when you surround the diningtable with fresh, joyous, healthy child faces, and *give us old folks a half-rejuvenated look as we sit among them,- when you fancy yourself amid all this novel abundance, balancing your taste between rare roast-beef and plover, that are all ready to turn into swallows and fly down red lane, - ah! then you scent from afar our dinner that evening at Waikiki, and almost know why I say that dining there is a noble exercise of some of the highest faculties of man. Are you aesthetic, devoted to household art? Eastlake never designed a fairer room than this. Are you fond of scenery? Look at that picture on the southern exposure,- Diamond Head and the Pacific Ocean. Or turn westward, and see the sun setting behind the dreamy hills. Does form delight you more than color? Watch that group of native fishermen launching their long canoe. The bronzes of the Vatican are dead cripples beside them. See 3 34 3" ALOHA I" them paddle to the reef, and, seizing the flood swell, bound over it as easily as a salmon would leap a cascade. The stupidity of companionship where the leading interest is eating and drinking is relieved here not only by conversationr, which is never a local commodity, but by the beauty and variety of the outlook, and the possibility that the sail which may come whitening around Diamond Head at any moment is bringing tidings from friends and news from distant peoples. It is no uncommon sauce in the living at Waikiki to have an ocean steamer or bark, with all its delightful possibilities and uncertainties of news, served to the eye, while the dainty mullet appeals to the palate. But I have said enough to justify my claim that there is nothing humiliating in the confession that a deeper content stole over us after dinner than before; nor will any parent suspect us of want of natural affection when we add, that the last obstacle to perfect rest was removed when the children were safe in their beds, and only active in their unknown dreams. That evening I lay on a cane-woven couch, in a grove of coco palms, looking up into the sky. Is there any reserve so complete as the utter openness of the heavens? Come, look into my very heart, they seem to say; and yet who can say that he knows what is there? I saw the stars dimmed, but not WAIKIKI. 35 quenched, by the almost dazzling brilliancy of the moon. A giant palm waved its punka over me, and the rustling of its great fan seemed one with the low moan and sighing of the sea. Why must bliss turn to indifference or pain as soon as man is conscious of it? Why cannot I lie still in this perfect hour and on this perfect spot, and be content, without a question, a thought even, to break the spell? Stranger yet, why is it, when earth and air and sky and soul agree, and every thing seems to favor the mutual revelation, - why is it that nothing comes? I fell sound asleep. Next door to us was a large family of natives, in a very small house. The way they lived in it was by living outside of it. The lane, the yard, the porch, the beach, every contiguous spot, was alive with men, women, childrei, dogs, and pigs, the usual constituents of a Hawaiian family. Every half-hour during the day a sudden and simultaneous squealing, yelping, screaming, and scolding announced a collision of these social forces. The only surety of comparative quiet was when the children were playing marbles in the lane, the men working at their nets or on the sea, the women idling on the porch, the pigs sunning themselves, and the little curs gone visiting. Sure of the unfailing taro, and rich in the daily catch of mullet, there was no sufficient inducement to labor among a people of moderate wants. An intelligent " ALOHA " visitor to these islands having been asked what in his opinion was the chief obstacle to the elevation of the people, answered, in one word, "taro." This nutritious root of the arum esculentum, growing so easily that one month's labor in a taro patch will supply a moderate-sized family a year, furnishes in itself all that is needed to support life. Cooked in various ways, by baking, boiling, frying, and equally good in each, it escapes the danger of surfeiting the eater; while in its commonest form as poi, it makes an acceptable sauce to every kind of meat or fish. To make poi, the root is first baked in the earth, and then pounded with big stone pestles to the consistency of a thick flour paste. Every night we see the fires of these earth-ovens blazing through the palm groves, and in the morning, about as often as a New England housekeeper makes bread, the men of the family make poi. Our neighbor may be seen, on his great baking-day, stripped to the waist and seated on the ground, with a large wooden platter or flat chopping-tray before him. Into this tray the baked taro is thrown, and then, lifting his pestle to the full extent of his long arms, he pounds it as if it were his worst enemy instead of his best friend. If the sweat of the brow is the fair price of one's bread, he earns his many times over, for the perspiration fairly bathes his whole body. Perhaps he has to bear the curse for the entire family, however, for they certainly do not suffer from the work WAIKIKI. 37 they do. Washing, the only very active employment among the women, is beautifully accommodated to their cool laziness. They squat on the edge of a running stream, partly immersed in the water, and make the river and stones do most of the work. As they commonly wear but one garment, -a full flowing overdress called a holoku; and the men, when at their business of fishing, are in full attire if they have their malo around the waist; and the children have no clothing to mention, unless it be an unmentionable,the washing is not very severe. The cares of housekeeping are reduced to a minimum here. I recall my anxious, worried lady-friends at home, discussing the servant question, and only settling it by becoming slaves themselves to their composite labors, and turn a glance at these plump, cheery, lazy, careless women, stretched on the ground half the day long, and wonder which is better. It is rather hard for a preacher of absolute truth to find himself exactly reversing his teaching according to circumstances. And yet here was I, whose one gospel to the congregation at home had been, "live more simply," framing the very opposite message for these people. "Be ambitious to live in better houses, to wear better clothes, to have finer furniture, to live in all ways more richly," I would have said to them. Until some such ambition is aroused in them, no permanent achievements in civilization can be expected of the 38 " ALOHA!" Hawaiians. They are not a trade-loving people. My host, who knows them thoroughly, says that there is not a Hawaiian shopkeeper in Honolulu. They have a natural taste for decorative art. They make capital penmen. If I were going now as missionary to these islands, I would begin my work by setting up a drawing-school in Honolulu. Trade-schools and industrial art institutions are the foremost want of the people. I believe they would develop an admirable capacity in these directions, if properly instructed. I tried to say as much as strongly as I could to the king, in the single interview I had with him. He had been in Boston,. an.d spoke admiringly of her schools, which gave me the opportunity to tell him what had been attempted in the evening schools there, and what we hoped from the new attention given to industrial education. He listened courteously; but who can ever tell whether courtesy covers conviction or takes its place. This royal audience was one of the Waikiki incidents, although it was given us in Honolulu. It deserves a description. We were invited to a moonlight reception at a hospitable house in town. The royal band was to be stationed in the grounds, by the permission of the king, and the social popularity of both host and hostess insured a choice and charming company. We drove to the city just as day was cooling into night, and, passing the festive grounds, were some WAIKIKI. 39 what taken aback to see through the open windows the costumes of an elaborate party. Fortunately, our wedding garments were in town, and it was an easy matter to exchange our spots 'for the plain black which seemed demanded by the occasion. Once admitted, we found that any decent costume would have been in place. People prepared for the promenade were as much at home as the ball-room exquisites. Indeed, if royalty may give the rule, the promenaders were most fittingly arrayed, for we found the princesses holding a shady court on the right veranda, and by and by the king himself came in, wearing his walking costume of white pants and blue roundabout. The house was noble both in proportions and ownership. Broad verandas surrounded it, palms and tamarinds, and mango and samalg, and every other beautiful tropical tree that grows in that island, decorated the grounds. Music and moonlight filled the air with light and social sympathy, and all went merry as a marriage bell. But, "hush! hark! " not the booming of Waterloo, but the hardly less startling sound of the fire alarm is heard, signalling a fire in the royal barracks. The alarm came in one of the pauses of the instrumental music, when we were treated to singing in the grand parlor. Our diva of the salon was just rendering one of Abt's tenderest and sweetest songs when the horrible clang of the bell and fearful hubbub " ALOHA I in the street began. The royal band hurried off to save their belongings in the burning barracks, conversation broke out, a subdued stampede from the gentlemen was started, and still the sweet voice sang its song to the end, leaving one listener at least both grateful and despairing. For why must it always happen that just at the critical moment of almost perfect satisfaction in the enjoymentoof art, or worship, or society, or solitude, there comes an unwelcome voice, a creaking of the door, a dropping of a hymnbook, or an alarm of fire, to break the spell? The fire was a fiasco. Its purpose was apparently fulfilled in spoiling that song. The band was soon playing again under the algaroba trees, and I was having my first conversation with a king, and eating ice-cream with her royal highness, the Princess Kamakaeha. Apropos of the king's interest in Boston (to which I have already referred), they tell a good story down town. At a court reception, soon after Kalakaua returned from his visit to the United States, he spoke with great satisfaction of his stay in Boston, and turning to a NewYorker, asked him if he had ever been there. " May it please your majesty," said the witty Gothamite, "I never heard of the place before." Well, the party came td an end, as every party must, and we went back to our cottage by the sea, newly enamoured of its retirement, in spite of one of the most enjoyable evenings society can furnish. When WAIKIKI. the instinct of hospitality which is native to these islands gets informed and enriched and graced by foreign wealth, intelligence, and culture, it certainly furnishes the perfection of social entertainment. Of course there are in other lands special circles of choice spirits who secure a brilliant intercourse all to themselves of a rare and high kind, but I question if anywhere in the whole world general society is more attractive than in Honolulu. Certainly nowhere else do so many nationalities blend in harmonious social intercourse. Natives of every well-known country reside there, and trading vessels or war-ships from America and the leading countries of Europe are frequently in port. A remarkable trait of these foreign-born or naturalized Hawaiians is that their interest in their native land seems only intensified by their distant residence. The better Hawaiians they are, the better Americans, English, French, or Germans they are. And thus it happens that you meet people fully alive to all the great questions and issues of the day all the world over. Their distance from the scene of these conflicts seems to clear their view of them, and I have heard some of the wisest possible comments upon American affairs, methods, and policies from residents of the islands. Besides, they have in small the same problems to solve in their little kingdom which engage us. All the projected reforms, social, moral, civil, or religious, have their place and agita 42 42 ALOHA " tors there. The instinct of self-preservation compels prohibitory legislation in the interest of temperance. Among a people so incapable of self-care, as most of the native population is, no question is felt to be more vital to the continued existence of the Hawaiian nation than this; and if life on earth is ever to be worth the living, this same question cf temperance must be practically solved. As I came across the American continent, following the line of the Great Pacific Railroad, and saw what a succession of drinking saloons the little towns were, I could not but feel that the train was laid, and in California, with its habitual hard drinking, the mine was dug, which might one day blow the American nation out of existence. The labor questions were as fresh there in Hawaii as here, and even more pressing. Capital was just as selfish and labor just as unreasonable as elsewhere.. I heard so little of woman's suffrage, that I imagined that had never been mooted there; but I was mistaken, for on expressing this opinion to a prominent official in Honolulu, he gave me an amusing incident of the first exercise of this civil trust. When the people were summoned to vote, behold, the women came with the men, very naturally conceiving that they were people, and insisted on depositing their votes. "What did you do about it?" I asked. "Oh," said he, with the utmost nonchalance, as if that were an easy question, "we took their votes and didn't count 'em." WAIKIKI. 43 Religion was even more fully represented on the islands than the reforms or politics. It really seems as if every religion on the face of the earth had made the conversion of the Hawaiians a sort of test of its own power and destiny. In a half-hour's walk from our cottage at Waikiki to Diamond Head I passed a little Protestant church of the Congregational school, then a Roman Catholic church, then the ruins of an old heiatu, or heathen temple, and in one of the dwelling-houses a Mormon missionary was holding a meeting. In a country where the number of male inhabitants largely exceeds the females, the preaching of polygamy must seem like mockery. But we did not come to Waikiki to discuss questions of religion and reform, but rather for a season to leave them in abeyance. Because it is Sunday afternoon when we take our walk along-shore, must we sit and muse on the ruins of that old heiau, and grow sad over its harrowing associations with human sacrifices and brutal rites? Why should the tradition of sin be more congenial to religious feeling than the bright, glad, heavenly prospect of to-day? Come, let us hold converse with the air, the sea, and to-day's sunshine! Let the laughing children take off their shoes and stockings and paddle along the beach, and let us follow them. See! Gatty has found a rare bit of coral, and gives it to us for our young museum; and now Gardy has his bare foot on a squid, and see 44 "ALOHA!" how the Tyrian purple colors water and sand as he presses it. The plovers go whistling over the low plain, the sea breaks gently on the lava rocks, and we walk along the sandy pathway, bordered on one side by blue waves and on the other by the sea-green grass and the broad leaves of the trailing sea-side convolvulus. What valley is that on the right as we walk homewards? My friend says it is Palolo, and we plan an excursion thither next week. He has a native friend who knows the valley through and through; no doubt he knows the lay of the land. But who can penetrate the real nature or reflected consciousness of Palelo valley, its face all sunshine, its heart a vale of tears? They say the rarest ferns on Oahu grow in its moist recesses. This gives new zest to our desire to explore it; for although we are not learned yet in ferns or enthusiastic in collecting them, we cannot wholly escape the general interest which these graceful plants excite in the circle of our acquaintance here. The deep, damp valleys in which these islands abound are the natural abode of ferns, and there are few countries in the world where they grow in such numbers, variety, and perfection. Let it be confessed here that my friend and I never took that excursion together. The cares of this world swallowed up his good intentions. I went in other company, however. WAIKIKI. 45 It was a golden forenoon in the following week when we started together, Gardy on his own pony, and I on the unapproachable Bim,- at least this was Bim's reputation; but every horse is more than half a man, i. e. his rider counts as much in the race as he does. Somehow that pony, with his dashing boy-rider, always managed to keep Bim and me a full length behind. We went tearing down the lane together, the admiration of the native population and terror of the pigs. Then coming to the marshes, we galloped over them by short cuts, taking a ford or two on the way, and came out upon the travelled road which takes the direction of Palolo but never reaches it. Long before the valley is gained, your road runs into a pathway which finally loses itself in the rank grass lining the sides of the deep gulch. Neither of us knowing the precise way, we took advantage of every encounter with natives to ask their direction. Gardy's glib Hawaiian answered all the purposes of communication, and we posted from one smiling face and pleasant "Aloha" to another as we sped on our course. We pass through a roughand-tumble region of lava block, whose barrenness seemed only more hopeless in the growth of that leathery plant, the prickly pear. A visitor from another planet would undoubtedly consider an old sandal the seed of this desperate attempt at vegetation, Presently we enter a stretch of verdant " ALOHA!" country which hardly suffers a break in its luxuriance. Kukui and ohia trees climb the sides of the valley to their very tops. Ferns and guava bushes and rank grasses cover every other spot. We press through these lesser growths wherever the memory of a path still lingers in the down-trodden grass, until further progress seems forbidden by an abrupt declivity. Then we tie the horses to a kukui tree, and go foraging for ferns. Plenty of them; but even our inexperienced eyes cannot make these Davallias rare, or find a wonder in the commoner Asplenium. How quickly abundance surfeits admiration! Only a week before, we were on our knees in the mud, in all the abandon of delighted discovery of the Davallia hirta, and to-day we hardly look at it, growing around us as thick as grass. The only real sensation afforded us in fern gathering was the discovery of a few feeble specimens of the Pteris decipiens, or geranium-fern, as it is often called. It grew on the face of a perpendicular cliff, and, looking up, we could see, on the under side, the neat border of rich brown fruitage, setting off the graceful cut and delicate green texture of the leaves. I take it as evidence that it is the thought in nature, more than the perfection of its expression, which most delights us, that these first poor little fronds of the geranium-fern gave us more intense pleasure than the magnificent specimens we afterwards gathered. The first-fruits gave us the idea. WAIKIKI. 47 There was exactly time enough after our return from Palolo to take a plunge into the sea before dinner. The young fry were before us, our little land-lubber of a son showing among these watersprites of Waikiki like a chicken among ducklings. A better bathing-place for children could not he found. The sandy beach sloped very gradually, the waves came rolling gently in, their full force broken by a reef of coral an eighth of a mile from shore. This reef defended the bathing-place as well from sharks, who knew too much to venture inside it. Here children could play as safely as if they were indoors. Gatty's bright eyes seemed to come up brighter after every dip. Little Helena's curls languished a little, but her dimples never surrendered, and her chubby face resting on the water looked like the pictures of cherubs in the clouds, with puffed-out cheeks blowing great gales. There being no mirror at hand, I cannot describe my own appearance; but if there was anything forlorn about it, the dripping clothes must take the blame, not I. The inner man felt jolly after the double tonic of a horseback ride and a sea-bath, and dinner again in the lanai completely restored our usual modicum of comeliness and self-respect. The perfection of bathing, however, was reserved for another hour. Not under the mid-day sun, when the heat threatens to precipitate you in a bed of 48 C" ALOHA! " chloride of sodium, is that hour found, but at night, just before going to bed, when the bairns are in their cribs, and the pigs are only noisy in their slumbers; when the moon rides high above the waving palms, and in the still air each ripple of the water speaks with startling distinctness; when, looking landward, the valleys seem exalted and the hills made low, and seaward, the music of the breakers greets the ear; when a silver street from Diamond Head stretches far out to sea, and you know not who may be-walking there, - then, ah, then is the hour to break the cerements in which the body of this death which we call life is wrapped, and plunge into the real sea of Being. On such a night I have floated on the ocean near Waikiki, the wave my pillow, moonlight my covering, the heavens my canopy, and there was "rest." A VOYAGE WITH THE PRINCE. 49 A VOYAGE WITH THE PRINCE. W H E were pleasantly surprised, on our arrival at the wharf, to find the royal band playing there. The whisper of Vanity, that the king had arranged this musical farewell in our honor, was soon hushed by the scorn of Common Sense and the rebuke of Modesty. The single interview we had been permitted to enjoy with his Majesty could hardly have made so great an impression upon him that he should lay aside the cares of state, and take to devising honors and pleasant surprises for undistinguished visitors to his kingdom. And yet there was an upward aim in the grand Prussian band-leader's bugle which seemed to say that his music sought another and finer audience than that which was grouped about him on the wharf. A more delighted hearing could hardly have been given him. The faces of this Hawaiian crowd, dark and heavy in repose, lighted up wonderfully under the influence of music. It was like the flow of the sea over pebbles on the beach, making common, dull stones shine and color like gems. Swarthy men, fat-faced women, children whose natural expression was that look of accumulated mis4 " ALOHA! chief best seen in monkeys' faces, all seemed redeemed for the moment by the spell of Herr B — 's playing. Suddenly a gentle excitement among the people further up the wharf called our attention to that quarter. What charm of music, prostration of worship, or spell of genius can resist the nudge of curiosity? We turned like a note of interrogation, and soon discerned a modest open carriage making its way along the pier, followed by another, even more unpretending than the first. These vehicles contained the royal family. I easily recognized his Majesty, dressed in white pants, a blue roundabout sack, and on his head no likeness of a kingly crown, but a neat straw hat. There was a certain physical gravity about his well-developed body, and an air of easy resignation to his high position which might be called kingly, and, while every expression of popular goodwill was courteously and even gratefully received, the king did not solicit applause by any look or gesture which might seem to expect or desire it. In dress, in manner, in equipage, in following, he seemed what he was, - a citizen king. His quiet bearing and modest attire were a double commendation beside the gay and festive apparel and manner of his companion. This young gentleman was arrayed in a suit of spotless flannel of a creamy hue, which fitted his wellrounded limbs like the rind of a melon. A heavy lei or wreath of alamanda flowers hung around his A VOYAGE WITH THE PRINCE. neck, and deepened the richness of the creamy suit with its intense yellow, and his light felt hat had its original delicacy still more refined by a white, gauzelike veil of Indian manufacture wound about the crown, and hanging its fringed edges from behind. A mere colorist in art might liken the bronzed face of the prince, thus surrounded by white and yellow, to a gorgeous marigold; but the comparison would miss all the majesty to which the fine proportions and handsome features of the heir-apparent made a legitimate claim. We have seen few prettier pictures of native grouping than the leave-taking of our ideal beau of a prince. Bounding lightly from his carriage, he bows his way graciously through the crowd to the open buggy in the rear, and shakes his royal sisters by the hand. They, eschewing pride, are driving their own team, and sit in the presence of the people with that amiable appearance of trying not to think themselves so very much above other people, which, like mercy, becomes a throned monarch better than his crown. There was a ponderous sweetness in the ladies' good-by, as, leaning from the carriage, they shook hands in the heavy, lingering way of their people, and with that beaming good-will which belongs peculiarly to the Hawaiian face. Domestic virtues seem most beautiful in kings and royal families. It was good for all those common people who stood around to cc ALOHA " see this kindly parting between prince and princesses Brotherly love and family courtesy will grow commoner and stronger in every grass house in the island for such royal illustration of their dignity and beauty. And now our prince is coming on board. The king, his brother, comes with him. A retinue of fifteen or twenty men accompany his Highness. The band strikes up Kamehamaha's March. The bustle of departure, the babble of farewell messages, the last words and final commissions, the hissing of steam, the hauling of ropes, the calls and responses of officers and men, all the seeming confusion which ensues when a hundred minds, at one and the same moment, seek to do a hundred different things, goes on with the music and seems to spoil its harmonies. But there is something more than harmony of sound in real music; and though this be marred, the other influence prevails. Every faculty feels the impetus of the soul-stirring band, whether the ear is consciously listening or not. As we move into the harbor, its surface ruffled with waves, but sustained by a still deep below, we seem to owe as much to the band on shore as to the crew on deck. The music sustains the toil. A flutter of white kerchiefs on the pier, taken up, when the wharf has disappeared, by the breakers along-shore, and continued out at sea by waves that seem always signalling their sorrowful farewells; and so we go upon our voyage. A VOYAGE WITH THE PRINCE. 53 We are in the steamer " Kilauea," bound for Hilo, on the island of Hawaii. We think we know something of the ills, the incidents, and the pleasures of the way, from the accounts of previous travellers. Far be it from the writer of this paper to disturb his reader with doubts regarding the value of such knowledge. The present historian certainly is too wary thus to destroy in advance the faith of his audience. He confidently believes that any reader with ordinary imagination, common understanding, and a little dramatic sympathy, will see quite clearly through the glass of this description, the steam ark in which we are making our voyage with the prince. But for the smoke-stack, which rose like a leaning tower from her centre, she might have been taken for a lumber-ship from the coast of Maine. The pine and red-wood boards, which made a large portion of her cargo, would have encouraged this mistake, and the liberal set of sails by which the winds of heaven were entreated to speed the vessel, as if the little engine in her hold were conscious of its insufficient force, gave further warrant to the comparison. Something of this notable lack of driving-power at the centre was generously attributed by captain and purser to the inferior quality of the coal with which the engine was fed. Meantime, we sought to console ourselves for the moderation of our speed with the customary "ALOHA!" formula, "slow and sure." It did not help us much in this endeavor to be told by one who knew, that the reason of the slight pressure which was applied to the boiler was the fear that it would not bear any greater strain upon its strength. But how base a thing is fear; how doubly base, when one is travelling in the same ship with majesty! We look for our prince. A camp-stool from the cabin serves him as a provisional throne, and around this precarious seat upon the after-deck is grouped as servile a company of courtiers as any heir-apparent could collect.- The same breeze which wafted the smoke of his Highness's cigar in our direction brought snatches of conversation, in which there was a suffocating odor of obsequious flattery. To the credit of the native complexion be it said, this servility was more marked in the manner and speech of foreigners than of Hawaiians. There was a respectful desire to please, and the natural devotion of followers to their master, in the conduct of the native suite. But there was all the profusion of insincerity in the address of the white courtiers. A red-faced Englishman curiously blended familiarity with deference, as he sat, in slouchy ease, beside the prince, leaning confidentially towards him, doing the talking for both with equal impudence and volubility, and borrowing from the pauses in which he took a whiff or two from his cigar, the only moderation or dignity which graced his A VOYAGE WITH THE PRINCE. speech. Every twenty minutes, with remarkable regularity, he would disappear, descending into the cabin, and returning redder, if possible, than before. Evidently the usual accompaniments of a princely progress were on board, and this gentleman knew where to find them. But night is coming on; where shall we sleep? The native passengers are settling the question for themselves. They crowd the deck forward of the cabin with their bale-like figures, rolled up in shawls and blankets, and heaped together upon matting woven of the limp lauhala leaves. They cover their heads, even more carefully than their feet, when sleeping,a habit which, with other unhealthy ways of living, will one day cost them their lives. The babble of their childlike speech and laughter is hushed in early sleep. The slow, unceasing thud of the engine only seems to deepen slumber. Even under royal encouragement conversation droops, and either the fount of inspiration in the cabin runs dry, or too frequent draughts have destroyed its potency. The only interruption to repose is that uneasy something within, that substantial ghost, which will not down at your bidding. Ah, if we could foil him with sleep! " Steward! let us have our beds made up on deck to-night." And here the persuasive shilling gives obedience speed. The mattresses and other bedding are soon brought on deck, and we lie looking up from "ALOHA!" our spreads at the stars that peep down on us, through the blanket of the night. The prince's couch is just aft of us. It merits a description. Mounted on four short but well-turned legs, the royal bedstead stands firm and secure in its own weight. In shape and style it looks like a big cribbage-board, only it opens laterally and not from end to end. Perhaps the checker-board which ornaments its top panel, when closed, suggested this comparison. Unsealed, it offers a capacious couch, where mats, sheets, pillows, and all the outward conditions of rest are found closeted away. Iron supports are fitted to the sides and ends, over which a protecting canopy is spread, and there the uneasy head which hopes to wear a crown is in vited to rest. Leleiohoku, for whom this royal couch has been spread, seems not inclined to rest to-night. One by one his dusky suite sink into the deeper darkness of night and sleep; his foreign adulators are at length sincere in oblivious indifference and heedless slumber. Two young Hawaiians, once schoolmates, now companions of the prince, alone remain with him. They are singers. So is the prince; and together they solace themselves for the day's weary conversation and the night's drowsy unconcern with songs in their low, sweet, bubbling native tongue. The guitar, touched but never twanged by the skilful, sympathetic player, seemed to sing the same sweet, liquid words that A VOYAGE WITH THE PRINCE. came from its human companions. I cannot tell what part each took. Guitar, prince, friends, all seemed to sing as one voice; and the song they chanted was like the movement of the sea, endlessly repeated in seeming monotony, and ye.t never twice the same. Somehow it seemed to hold us as a swinging cabinlamp is held in its socket, and keep our spirits up and buoyant, as its flame keeps straight amid the tossing of the sea. Its rise and cadence were one with the ship's career upon the waves, and while the music lasted sickness was dispelled. "Sing on, dear prince," we willed, but dared not cry, lest the consciousness of our hearing should disturb the perfect simplicity of this song in the night. " Fear not to wake the sleepers; waking, they will be doubly blessed, and sleeping, some added grace and peace will wait upon their dreams! " And so we fell on sleep, the stars, like angels' faces, beaming watchfully above us, the breezy trade-wind fanning our repose, the music soothing us as if it were Nature's lullaby, and the glad waves clapping their hands as if they too heard and loved the prince's song. Does the ear or the eye wake first? Is it sound or light which first rouses us from sleep? Starlight still 58 "8 ALOHA " reigned when we awoke, but there was a new significance in the sounds that greeted us. The regular beat ing of the engine, whose monotony had become a positive sedative, now grew fitful, and finally ceased. Orders and responses, and the scuffle of hurrying feet, the flapping of sails as they came bellying down, and the rattle and squeak of pulley and rope; the jargon of half-roused natives breaking through the chrysalis cerements in which Death's brother had wound them; the love-pat of the sea upon the ship's side, so different from the hard slap it had beenr used to; the reviving crowing of the ship's live fowl, answered from afar by kindred voices; the little crowd by the ship's side, brought out in glowing distinctness by the lantern they held; the thump of the lowering boat as it struck the water; and the sound of oars and hospitable voices on the dim sea,- this stir of noises all predominated by the sudden rush of escaping steam, whose long, shrill hush, as if to quell the racket, was the most rousing of all, brought us gradually to the consciousness that we had arrived somewhere, and were at-anchor. We were in Lahaina harbor, and it was four o'clock in the morning. A vision as of a creamy star suddenly falling out of darkness into darkness more profound, and we realized that our prince had gone down over the vessel's side, to take the boat for shore. No more sleep. Sitting on the deck, we reversed the usual way of waking up, the eyes grad A VOYAGE WITH THE PRINCE. 59 ually opening to a view already well up before us; and, wide-awake ourselves, we looked and saw the land, the sea, the sky come into perceptible existence. We knew enough, thanks to the old fable, to look to the west to catch the first view of the rising sun, and out of the rosy curtain of morning mist we could see Lanai come forth, and further off Molokai. Sunward a black mountain stood, raying light, and as the sun rose higher, and poured its rays over the summit, the whole western slope was clothed in living green. The fresh, wavy verdure of the cane-fields could not be disguised by distance or by morning mists, nor could one mistake the tall coco palms, with their unique figures. But all the other foliage failed to report its kind to the distant spectator. Its abundance was so great, that one could hardly discern the houses, peeping timidly from beneath overgrowing trees and vines. The sun is well up when we resume our voyage. Our prince may not be snatched too quickly from the embraces of his prospective subjects, abjects now. He comes at length, newly adorned with leis of fresh red roses. His English travelling conpanion also wears a big collar of the same hue, a surfeit of red. Then we start again, and coast along the shore of Maui till we come to Maalaea Bay. Here the surf rolls in such high breakers towards the sandy shore, that we look anxiously at the crowded boat, riding, as it seems, 60 " ALOHA I" straight into the curling, breaking waves. We do not see how or where, but somehow she has escaped them, and through some gap in the dangerous reef she has found the shore. The passengers are landed, safe and merry. We hear them laughing on the little pier, where they stand crowded together. It seems to be no small part of the business of the "Kilauba" to lose time; or is it due in part to our fine company that we make such halting progress? There is nothing engaging in the island at this point; a dreary plain between two dreary mountains offering poor investment for one's powers of vision and admiration. A kindly shark comes to our rescue in this dull juncture, and the tedium of waiting is relieved by watching his dignified antics. Bits of orange-peel thrown upon the waters served for a time to keep up the delusion of breakfasting. Afterwards, a more substantial but less harmless morsel was offered him. A bit of salt pork, despoiled by death, time, and pickle of its native contrariness, was tied to a long rope and thrown overboard. Nothing short of a man or baby could have been more attractive to the shark. He eyed it from afar as it sank bewitchingly beneath the waves. Even when his back was turned, he seemed to see his fate in that delicious bait, and no affected indifference could conceal his inclination for it. "Look! he turns. Now he is coming for it. Quiet, everybody!" Nearer and nearer he comes. Nearer and A VOYAGE WITH THE PRINCE. 61 nearer the boatswain draws the bait. No use, he sees his enemy, or catches some dim suspicion of an evil influence near him. He turns and swims slowly away. Another throw, and the ingratiating pig is after him. He sees it, slowly turns again, and follows its sinking sweetness. Nearer, nearer they come, pork and shark. " Now for it I" The harpoon goes hurtling through the air and dashing beneath the water. " Pull now!" and the men pull, and soon there is stretched on deck — the harpoon, a little wet, but otherwise uninjured. Still skirting along Maui, till we come to Makee's Landing. Is it the sea-sickness which has spoiled our vision, or is this scenery less grand than it has been described? We certainly feel no enthusiasm about it, and find nothing in the rude landing-place to tempt us to disembark. Far up the side of a big hill we see a hopeful patch of cultivated land, and that, we suppose, is the famous Ulupalakua, or sugar plantation, of Captain Makee. Paradise, at this distance, looks wonderfully like any other place. Meantime, if this is "Halehkalh," or the "House of the Sun," we begin to wish the sun would stay indoors, for it is getting scorchingly hot. What is that about the Hawaiian channel? "As bad as the English Channel," did some one say, and twice as long a passage. Memories of a pitiless run from Dieppe to Newcastle crowd on us with mocking distinctness. "Steward, " ALOHA! - you needn't take away the beds; it isn't necessary." "Breakfast?" "No, thank you, we are not hungry." But our fellow-passengers are. Maimoku, the matron of the princely retinue, is setting her table. A lauhala mat is spread on the deck; calabashes of polished kou are filled with poi, and placed upon the mat; dried fish is set forth to give the feast a sort of backbone, and "Welcome! welcome! " Maimoku seems to say. A crowd of hungry men surround her, but she still reserves a seat. She looks at me, smiles, and motions her generous invitation. I decline as gratefully as if I could have accepted her kind attention. Every seat is soon taken, and it was better than a feast, at that precise moment, to see those people dip the social finger into the same calabash and partake of the pasty poi, and smack their lips in musical accord over their flitches of dried mullet and squid. Suddenly, when we were taking such amiable delight in our neighbor's enjoyment, such unenvying satisfaction in another's cheer, we became conscious that the " Kilauea" had been taken in tow by a sea-serpent. Apropos of the Hawaiian channel, all through that dreary day we were swung through the water as comfortably as if we had taken passage to the moon on the tail of a kite. The sun shone brightly. He didn't care. The sea fairly danced with malicious enjoyment. The sky was as blue as a brand-new farmcart. So were we. A VOYAGE WITH THE PRINCE. 63 In the cabin below us, the pathetic strumming of the prince's guitar, mingled with voices " now querulously high, now softly, sadly low," and the singing that was so sure a balm by night, strove in vain to banish the sleepless miseries of day upon the channel. And yet, as I recall that terrible day, at a safe distance in time and space, I remember even more vividly than its disagreements the songs that floated up through the companion-way. "Good tidings from home!" Did the royal singer know then that we had left Honolulu with this best blessing in our hands, - good news from the dear friends at home? Yes, even in that hour our hearts responded to that song. And what was the taking melody your Highness gave us with every other line, "Comrades, touch your elbows "? Was it a song of the camp? Surely never warrior was wooed by such dulcet command as that. There was nothing of military ring or rigor in that luscious entreaty to close up the ranks. Doves and nightingales alone could render such a duet as your soft voices tuned us. And, best of all, those tender, sweet, rippling, eddying Hawaiian songs, rivers of refreshment were they in our terrible desert of life. We shall never forget them. C ALOHA " I__r = - — r E mau ka Ea o ka Ai - na, Ma kou,.L. 1 -..:...^=: - 'Fr-..-r L_ po - - no mau a ma - kou ma - na nu, E o- la, e o - la, ka Mo - i. [.....1 I t= z.. z....=H4 I. W_#_#_ &-~~~~~~{ So singing and sighing we sailed past the setting sun into the night again. And at midnight there was a cry made. We started as if the coming of the Bridegroom were indeed announced. " Look! " cried one, pointing to the heavens; and there, far up among the stars that overhung the southern horizon, we saw a great light. Alone, but for the stars, with no clearly visible base of mountain or of land, there glowed the torch of Mauna Loa in the heavens. The HILO HOMES. 65 sight was as unexpected by the other voyagers as by ourselves. Only once in intervals of two or three years does Mokuaweoweo, the summit crater of Mauna Loa, break forth. Ordinarily, the fiery flood finds opening enough in Kilauea, the ever-active crater on the side of Mauna Loa. Only in some crisis in the kingdom, some great event in the royal faitily, is the flame kindled on the summit, says the popular belief. I turn to see how this portent affects our prince. He is awake and up. He will land presently at Kawaihae, where he goes to make a visit. In the darkness I can see nothing of his face or its expression. A single spot of fire, as of a glowing coal, suddenly and momentarily breaks out there. The prince is smoking his cigar. " Ah, my prince!" I inwardly cry, "there's a great, great flood of fiery, mad, brutal, devastating passion under and in and through us all. Keep it down, keep it under, you in your high places, or a portent more' terrible than Mokuaweoweo's torch will flame over Hawaii Nei.1 1 Prince William Pitt Leleiohoku died April 11, 1877. 5 66 " ALOHA!" HILO HOMES. W E had two homes at one time during a fortnight in Hilo. It happened thus: Our first home, having received us and made us whole again after our damaging voyage in the " Kilauea," was obliged to surrender our room, on the next arrival of that punctual boat, to a party of friends who had previously engaged it. With true Hawaiian hospitality, our host had urged our longer stay in Hilo, although he knew he could no longer accommodate us; and all objections on our part were removed when we found that an arrangement could be made by which we could have rooms in another house and take our meals at his. It seemed no sufficient impediment to this arrangement that the other house was a quarter of a mile distant; we thought we should enjoy the walk. And there was such a look of welcome and rest in the new home which opened its arms to us, that we could not resist it. At the head of the street on which the two Congregational churches stand, set on a hill in true gospel fidelity to the light committed to its charge, our second home awaited us. A venerable missionary and his estimable wife, his life-long companion and assist HILO HOMES. ant in all his laborious work among these people, were the sole occupants of this large dwelling. Every room in it had once been occupied by the children of their large family; but now all had grown up and flown away, and they were left alone. Happily for them as for the people they had so long loved and served, two of their sons were settled in Hilo, in homes of their own. Every day the voices of their grandchildren, at a soothing distance from their own door, could be heard laughing or crying, according to the fortunes of their sport. The great mango trees, with their thick, dark foliage, hid their son's house from view; but they could not shut out the household cheer which came over, not only in voices but in active little persons, who trooped through the gateway in search of rose-apples or after water-lemons, or with a sure instinct which led them to grandma's pantry to taste the crisp fruit which only ripens in her oven. Every forenoon the older children meet in their grandmother's room, and she teaches them. But these matters belong to a later acquaintance with this house. All we are supposed to know at this writing is, that we can open the lattice-work gate, if we will, stopping, as we must, to admire a tiny, pure white passion-flower that runs over the stone wall by the gateway; that we can walk up the gravel path, bordered all the way, at least one hundred feet in length, with lilies, roses, jasmine, clumps of verbena " ALOHA!" grass, geraniums, and other less-known garden plants; that the kindest of welcomes waits for us on the lower veranda, bids us rest in the dearest of old-fashioned New England parlors, offers us lunch in the cosey dining-room, and then takes us upstairs and gives us the freedom of the whole second story. Three large rooms, looking so homelike that it seemed as if they must have been made and furnished in Worcester County, and sent to the islands by raft, were to be all our own. Two of them opened directly upon a broad upper veranda. And what a view was there I Below us, the garden as rich in trees as we have already seen it is in flowers. From this vantage-ground we could see its broad expanse and variegated beauty. How finely that slender iron-wood, which young C. insists on calling a tin-tree, shows against the solid mass of foliage beyond! Is that a tamarind with the rounded outline and graceful branches sloping to the ground? Yes; and those tall poles beyond, decked with green ribbons, are bamboo. The fig-trees by the wall are stuffing their purple jars with sweet preserve; there are clusters of light-colored blossoms on the mango trees, as showy but not so gracefil as the flowers of our own chestnut; little mandarin oranges hang like colored lanterns in the dusky green of their halfblighted leaves; the pride of India waves its blossoming rod over all, and all things seem to feel its IILO HOMES. 69 fairy-like spell. Is it all real, the perfect scene beyond, or is it a piece of enchantment? Beyond the garden wall the village street sloped gently to the sea. The square tower of the native church rose just high enough for picturesque effect above the great tamarind tree beside it; further along, the slender white spire of the foreign church balanced, without repeating, the bread-fruit tree on the opposite side of the road. Then came the village, set in the blue enamel of the great, broad sea; and between the shore and the horizon Cocoa-nut Island lifted its " fronded palms in air." "At length! " we gasped, as our mother -I mean the good missionary's wife - left us in full possession of these rooms, and at length we seemed to have found the natural home of rest. Nothing seemed a hardship which had brought us to this house, and we blessed the love which only ejected us from one Eden to usher us into another. Indeed, we should now have both, for were we not going daily to our first home? With the best of company there, and the perfection of quiet and solitude here, " Oh! what can we ask of thy Providence more?" Nothing, surely, in the way of outward blessings. But let that man be advised who hopes to find rest in his circumstances. A charming view only exposes you to keener agony, if in any way you are disturbed in its enjoyment. Of what comfort is " ALOHA!" a lounge when you are tired, if you cannot lie down on it long enough to sleep? Not that our case was quite so bad as that, for in the fortnight of our stay we found the best rest we had known, and enjoyed rich draughts of beauty, hospitality, and sleep. But it is none the less.worrying, when you are just ready to merge yourself, as it were, into the scene that charms you, to be recalled to personal consciousness and greedy activity by the voice of your child, insisting that you shall cut sugar-cane and feed him with it; or, just as you have made every needed arrangement, and with drawing-board and paint-box on the chair beside you, and a book to read in the intervals while the last tint is drying, what mortal man can view with mental composure the indiscriminate blending of all the colors by the sacrilegious fingers of privileged youth, and the confident appeal for admiration from this innocent marplot? Or, harder lot, suppose you belong to a certain society for the prevention of cruelty to dumb animals; suppose you have not only a vague sense that the objects of such a society are good, but a watchful eye, a feeling heart, and burning indignation whenever you meet with an instance of such cruelty; suppose that you sit on this heavenly veranda on some blissful morning, all nature singing psalms, and your soul responding, and suddenly there comes running up the street a rout of driven cattle, behind them rough men on horseback, HILO HOMES. their spurs jingling, their lassoes swinging, and through clouds of dust, if the day be dry, their shrill voices goading the ear. Now the cattle reach the entrance of the neighboring field, they are hurried into it; bellowing and frightened they scatter over its broad expanse of green. Soon one is singled from the herd. In the further corner of the green stands a very gallows, only it is far less merciful than * the gallows raised for man. To this place of execution the cow or ox is driven or dragged. Then skilful hands throw the staggering lasso, and with horns and hoofs all caught and fastened to the dreadful posts, the creature lies there, hot, helpless, terrified, awaiting the deliberate murder, not without torture often, which these native butchers inflict. I never saw the climax of this bloody persecution, because I would not follow it up and look. But not so the most consistent of women; with costly loyalty to her own sense of duty and to the home society of which she is a zealous member, she was in at the death, viewing it from a window of the inner room, and returning to the family circle with a terrible resolution in her altered face. Heaven was no longer heaven to her. Alas, alas! how can it ever be to any of us, even if we reach there, so long as wrong and cruelty and sin exist! That day at dinner Madame refused beef. The next morning, at breakfast, she gently caressed the bit of steak that was served her, 72 " ALOHA! but would have none of it. She had formed the dire resolution, in a land where beef is almost the only meat, to eat no more beef in Hilo; and she kept it. I am told that this is the common way of butchering in the Islands. We were shocked to hear of worse cruelties than these among people whose Christian training ought to have borne better fruits; e. g., the hamstringing of cattle in the great pastures, and leaving them in this agonizing state several days before despatching them. As for the natives, they are notoriously cruel to the nobler animals, letting their horse go bruised, while they will pet their dirty pigs and dirtier dogs more than they pet their children. Clearly, the doctrinal Christianity in which they have been well schooled needs supplementing with some of the practical applications of its spirit in the common relationships of life. I believe I have already spoken of the need and opportunity among these natives of industrial training. This will be a good place to say that many years ago this want was clearly seen, and in a measure provided for, by the sagacious missionary at whose house we are staying. Father Lyman, as he is well called by everybody here, has maintained a school for native young men in Hilo for more than forty years, and always the aim of fitting the scholars for useful and honorable toil has been kept in view. As we sit on our piazza in the early evening and HILO HOMES. 73 feel the stillness which follows the last song of the birds among the mangoes, suddenly, like a whole troop of whippoorwills, the flutes of the students strike up, Think of a dozen or twenty-flutes all warbling together! They choose these instruments because they are the cheapest. The effect of this music heard from a distance is very pleasing, but when the players favor you with a serenade upon the lower veranda, a little is enough. Sometimes the flutes give place to singing, and then a very cataract of sound pours forth. We recall a gala night when the students came down to entertain the company with their music, and it really seemed as if Niagara were thundering away on the front steps. It rains more easily in Hilo than anywhere else in the known world. We had not taken this into the account at its full figure when we arranged to live and dine in homes so far apart. In order to reach the annual rainfall of one hundred and eighty inches, it is necessary that some rain should fall nearly every day; and yet there are days when it seems as if the entire demand had been met in twenty-four hours. We no longer demurred about the story of the flood. Forty days of such rain would overwhelm a world. When these showers came at meal-time, it required some planning to navigate our double housekeeping. Not that either of us was afraid of rain. We were neither sugar nor salt; but we were flesh and blood, 74 "4 ALOH-A!" a much more intricate and susceptible compound; and sometimes, when it rained so that even a fish wouldn't have ventured out, Madame and the boy would remain at home and allow me, arryyed in a raven-like costume of india-rubber, to bring them their fare. In pleasant weather, i. e. when it did not rain more than a bucketful a minute, we marched in glad procession to our meals, - the brave mother leading the way through mud and mire, impervious in waterproof, and I meekly dragging the boy in a babywagon, which with greater meekness he accepted. Snugly tucked away under shawls, and wholly covered by the top further extended by an old umbrella, he made the trip in safety, and " turned up smiling at the close. Only it must be admitted, in favor of his manhood, that he always begged to be taken out before reaching the front door, and looked unutterably disgusted whenever he was landed on the piazza with that very unmartial cloak, his mother's cape, around him. Let no man be kept from Hilo by the stories he may hear about its rainfall. Doubtless they are all true; but the natural inference of people accustomed to rain in other places is far from true. There is something exceptional in this rain of Hilo. It is never cold, hardly damp even. They do say that clothes will dry in it. It is liquid sunshine, coming down in drops instead of atmospheric waves. I can think of nothing that describes it so well as HILO HOMES. 75 the story told me by my truthful sister. A polite young fellow, as society counts politeness, greeted her one day in the midst of a pouring rain with the conventional salutation, "A very pleasant day, Mrs. B." "It rains hard," she said, with her usual candor. " Yes, oh yes," he answered, " but it is kind of mild, moist, and agreeable." That is Hilo exactly. Laugh if you will, and beg to be excused, you will miss the sweetest spot on earth if you do not go there. All our embarrassment about the rain was only sauce to the fish. Life might have grown a little tame but for this piquant item of risk and adventure. Besides, we were never in any troublesome dilemma. Suppose it should rain too solidly to admit of our going abroad, the only penalty was one good entertainment replaced by another. Again and again the little dining-room at the foot of Qur stairway stopped us on our way to one or another meal, and shared its sweetness with us. If only the preserve had been quince instead of mango, we might easily have thought that we were in the old house at the home farm again, with the wisest of grandmothers and best of grandfathers presiding at the table. There is a simplicity in ripe old age as winning, if not as captivating, as that of childhood. We never tired of listening to the narratives of missionary experience which our venerable friends, Father Lyman and his wife, detailed to us. Seated in the "ALOHA!" folding-door parlors, on a stormy evening, the astral lamp, which came over not exactly in the " Mayflower," but in some lineal descendant of that freeborn craft, shedding its cheerful light around, we read and talked together of Nature and Providence and their deep harmonies. I remember we read an article on "Faith Cures," written by the Doctor's son, exploring with brave common-sense and medical knowledge, combined with Christian reverence and discrimination, these modern miracles of healing. From this we naturally branched off into subjects that had been common thinking-ground for all of us, and about which we had come to seemingly opposite conclusions. But no bigotry marred the discussion or left its condemnation among our memories of that night. A little " Life of Daniel Wheeler," an English missionary who had once visited the island, contained a curious account of the deliverance he experienced from a terrible simoom in the Southern Pacific. We took up the book, and read how a school of blackfish or small whales came up around the tempest-tossed vessel just in time to break the force of the waves. Wheeler regarded these fish as sent by God for the express purpose of saving his life. The natives in this neighborhood believe that Dr. Coan's prayers prevented the great lava-flow of 1855 which was coming. in the direction of Hilo from overwhelming the town. I refer to this belief, and ask HILO HOMES. 77 about it. " We had a special meeting of prayer at the time of the great flow of 1855," the Doctor said, " but it did not stop for several months after that." And then, to show me how he felt about it, he gave me this story of his house-building. He had planned for some time to have his house enlarged. In this remote place it takes a long time to get the necessary lumber and other material together, and last, but not least, to secure the services of the carpenters. The men and material were all ready, when the appearance of the fiery flood on Mauna Loa, taking the -very direction of Hilo, seemed to make house-repairing a doubtful investment. The river of burning lava came daily nearer and nearer, slowly but surely, down the gradual slope of the high mountain. If it continued to flow until it reached the sea, as many of the flows have done, the town must be overwhelmed. "What will you do about it? " said the head carpenter. " I will release you from the contract, if you say so." But, said the Doctor, I told them "they might go ahead." The dry way in which he told the story, and the twinkle in his deep, dark eye, were very suggestive of the practical, working faith which has so distinguished his whole life-work. Then we had whole pages from the queer, pathetic, toilsome, half-paid, yet all-rewarded missionary life they ' had led together. The goodwife told her story of how she first taught the natives music. They seemed to "ALOHA!" have no natural ear or knowledge of the first principles of music. But she undertook the difficult task of soothing the savage breast before the savage ear had been attuned to concord of sweet sounds. Her scanty store of musical learning, brought from a New England singing-school, seemed little capital to begin with. But she made the most of it. She taught them their " fa-sol-la," until they caught the secret, and once learned, they took the greatest delight in their new accomplishment. Every new musical instrument that came to the island was like the visit of an angel to them. They were eager to master each manipulation. A bass-viol, which arrived one day in a whaling-ship, was an object of intense interest and desire. She never played a viol in her life, but she taught them to play. Since then, they have learned to use many different instruments. Then we communed together of the grand endeavor of their lives to plant Christian principles and sentiments among these easily impressible but hardly consistent people; of the discouragements arising more often from the undermining influence of careless or ugly and degraded white men, than from native incapacity or ill-will; of their long and never-ceasing struggle with these enemies and their perverts; of the evident decrease of missionary influence with the rising generation of Hawaiian youth, its causes and its certain effects,-of all these things we talked together, they with the HILO HOMES. natural concern of parents watching their children's growth and entrance upon an independent career, and we with the fresh enthusiasm of visitors to whom every thing was new, and every thing connected with these excellent people especially interesting. With many others of the same devoted type of Christian character, they had left their home and country to carry the faith they believed and trusted to the isles that were waiting for it. They had been young, but now were old. The slender salary on which they had lived and reared a large family could not have left any thing for the dependence of old age. The little annuity still given them by the association which sent them forth with the promise of better things, had been reduced that very year. But there was no sign of need in' this house. If economy lived there, so did hospitality, and the latter was supreme. The private affairs of my entertainers are, of course, not my business or another's. But I venture to dwell on this question of the position and support of the resident missionaries, because so much ungenerous comment has been passed upon the comfort which their homes display. The very people who have made the missionaries' houses their homes, and enjoyed their free entertainment, will, on their return to the States, speak of the missionary's lot as unduly comfortable and prosperous, and thus repay the generosity of their island hosts with cruel injustice. Time and time again have these good peo "ALOHA!" pie given shelter for weeks and months even to perfect strangers visiting Hilo, and refused just payment, simply out of sensitiveness to the misconceptions or false representations of the cavilling world. It took us some time to comprehend the half-apologetic way in which some of the missionaries accounted for the beauty and comfort of their homes. This land was a gift from some grateful chief; this house built with "our own hands;" the gardens were God's gift, and needed no extenuation, but the nice rug on the parlor floor must be understood to be a present from a man whose children had received their schooling free of charge in the missionary's family; the pictures were all home products or friendly remembrances; nearly every chair and table had come from some kindly donor far away. At length it dawned upon us that there were people in the world mean enough to grudge the missionaries these little comforts and adornments. The very people who had sent them out would be the first to detect the least taint of worldliness in them. I remember hearing in Honolulu of a virtuous home patroness of the mission writing to the wife of one of the ministers, and urging her not to spend her time taking pleasuretrips from island to island. Unmerciful Ocean! toss that woman awhile in a wretched coasting schooner -the only medium of inter-island communication at that time - in the Hawaiian channel, and let her call that pleasuring, if she can. HILO HOMES. 81 An evening spent in our other Hilo home, although very different from the one just described, was fully as delightful. When the hour succeeding dinner was clear, as it often was, we would stroll through the village to Wailuku bridge and watch the deep, clear water near its junction with the sea. High banks plumed with the richly variegated Sadleria and hung with the streaming Nephrolepis exaltata stood on either side. Waterfalls half hidden by the dense foliage leaped like daring swimmers into the river and disappeared. Upstream the cascade echoed the roaring of the sea below. Native horsemen dashed along the road to the bridge, then slackened their pace to keep the law, and, once across, galloped up the hill on the other side and disappeared. Strange trees stood black against a sky still bright with the afterglow of sunset, and far away, tree-like in form, cloudlike in substance, the smoke of Mauna Loa's summit fire could be clearly seen. Later in the evening we shall see it from the upper veranda shining red against a darkened sky. But meantime all the doors and windows of the prettiest and most homelike of parlors are open. From the dainty rose in its crystal vase on the escritoire to the comfortable chair in the corner, you feel that taste has wedded thrift, and both are keeping house together here. The piano is open. Why cannot we have some music? We can. The sisters play duets, then the 6 82 "ALOHA 1" matrons sing, so tunefully and with such true consent, that it seems as if they must always have sung together. Then Maestro (that means our host) bashfully but courageously handles his violin, and " Bravo I bravo!" say we all, as the king and queen of instruments, the violin and piano, play together. Perchance some friend from one of the eleven other white families in Hilo may happen to come in. There are just twelve of them in the village. Then another voice in the song. or another listener in the audience is the only change, unless, preferring conversation, the company breaks into social speech; then the evening is goye before we fairly know that it is going, and we find our way to bed. For a tired man, there is just society enough in Hilo; and it is wonderful how complete and widely representative that little social circle is. In spite of the seeming profanity of giving publicity to a community which is more like one large family than a number of distinct families, I must pay my debt of tribute to all the Hilo homes that gave us a happy entrance into their communicable joys. The good physician, the devoted missionary, the wise teacher, the devout, preacher and friendly pastor, the sober judge, the enterprising cattle-raiser, the able public officer, the gentlemanly shop-keeper, the planter, the lawyer, the surveyor, the laborer,- all are here; and when to these and their interesting well-bred families are added the HILO HOMES. 83 visitors from the other islands and from other countries, who come bringing their news and interests and the literature of all lands, every element of good society is present here. "See Naples, and then die! " said somebody. " See Hilo, and live for ever I " say I. ". ALOHA " KILAUEA. T HIRTY miles of horseback riding on a fair road make a pleasant constitutional; but thirty miles of churning- call it not riding —up the long ascent which leads from Hilo to the volcano will try the soundest constitution. I took it under the happiest auspices, fitted out by that prince of hosts and providers, the sheriff of Hilo, and accompanied by Rev. Mr. Forbes, every inch a gentleman and every nail a man. Mr. Forbes had left study and garden, in both of which he was an active worker, to go with me to Kilauea. Born and bred in the islands, he was master of the Hawaiian language, familiar with the people and their ways, and at home throughout the country. No better guide or more congenial companion could have been offered me; and, to make his kindness only more evident, he had given me the hospitality of his pulpit the Sunday before, and counted my service there a return, in effect, if not in kind, for his companionship to the volcano. We started immediately after breakfast on Monday morning, our horses freshly shod for the journey so trying to horses' soles, firmly saddled and bridled, KILAUEA. 85 and around their necks the invariable rope, a useful if not ornamental lei, which takes the place of a halter in this region. Strong thongs of hide held our luggage in rear and front of saddle; rubber leggings defended our nether extremities from the anticipated mud of the first stage of our journey, and the rain which was sure to fall any or every hour of the day; and a rubber overcoat was the uppermost thing in our pack, ready for use at any moment. A pair of spurs too blunt to be really cruel, and yet large and threatening enough to inspire speed, tinkled at my heels. Thus accoutred, we plunged in. A lively dash through the little town was all the really enjoyable riding vouchsafed us. After that, came three or four miles of swamp, hidden and aggravated by the rank Hilo grass; then a four-mile ride through a tropical jungle and forest, and then unmitigated lava in savage undress all the way to Kilauea. If this trip had been invented by some cunning philosopher, to demonstrate the predominance of mind over matter, it could not have been better contrived for the purpose. Fascinated, absorbed, delighted with the novelty and beauty of the country, our minds hardly noticed, excepting in moments of unusual bumping or bruising, what happened to our bodies. It was my first experience of a really tropical wood; and whatever expectations had been excited by reading and pictures were fully realized in this forenoon's ride through the " ALOHA!" Hilo forest. Ohias, with their fiery tongues of blossom; bread-fruit trees, as rich and dark in foliage as the Magnolia grandflora; screw-pines, with their open, fan-shaped clusters of leaves, boring their way upwards through the crowding forest; ferns of every name and form, from the big pulu tree-fern and the parasitic bird's-nest to the graceful stag'shorn, overrunning all the underbrush; and countless asplenia in every crevice of the woods not filled with larger growth. I saw bananas, too, planted here by some thrifty hand perhaps, and their great fronds, like monstrous cannas, blended happily with the wild vegetation about them. Even more than the variety of the growth and its richness of verdure, the fulness of it amazed me. The forest seemed to grudge us the narrow horse-path by which we made our way through it. A single step on either side plunged us into a tangle of prostrate trunks and branches bound down by chains and cords of creepers and vines, which forbade further progress in that direction. The great wood was a riot of vegetation, in which the dead and the living were inextricably blended. If any moral is to be drawn from this suggestive forest, I think it must be the supremacy of life over death. The two seemed to be wrestling together there in a struggle for the upper hand. And need I say how gloriously life comes off victor. It is life which aspires in these mammoth trees, tingles in the ruddy KILAUEA. 87 tips of the young shoots of the ohia, rounds into nutritious fulness in the bread-fruit, hangs its ripening clusters on the banana, and rides rampant in vines and running ferns over all the spoils of death. Let no one fancy- ministers as we are, and given to moralizing - that any such homily was preached by us, or even thought of, as we bounded over the woodland path. A truce to all professional thoughts! This is our vacation. And yet I do remember with something of conscientious regret that my Orthodox brother and myself were guilty of some talking on " the inspiration of the Bible," " the ways of salvation," and the rest, as we travelled in single file that day. Yes, and we paid for it at the time by losing one of our shawls in the neglect of the discussion, and having to ride back a mile or two to regain it. But once out of the woods, the way grows too toilsome for further conferences of this kind. A grove of coco palms wave their farewell to us as we push up the wilderness of lava which is to be our pathway now until we reach the volcano. Soon we shall pass a plantation of ki trees, whose leaves are the favorite wrappers for Hawaiian products. There are signs of habitation, too, in this seemingly uninhabitable region. Now and then a grass house appears, with cane-fields behind it; one or two natives pass us; and here come some children, and in their hands- of all things in the world - school-books! Our thoughts 88 "ALOHA I" go back to the little country schoolhouse overlooking the farms in Worcester County, where the boys and girls of the former generation of New-Englanders walked two or three miles a day to get their learning. And here in the heart of Hawaii -thanks to the devotion and energy of some of these very boys and girls, since grown to manhood and womanhood - the same hopeful sign and surety of Christian civilization' greet me. Arrived at the half-way house, a grass hut of limited size but unlimited hospitality, we share the keeper's noontide meal, redeemed from utter poverty by a dessert of sugar-cane and oranges. A wild goose, crippled by domestication, - the only visible livestock, - goes through the motions of paddling on the shining and smooth pahoehoe rock, which sheds every drop of water rained upon it as quickly as the goose's back itself. Oh for his wings, or some proportionally large and strong, to take our belabored bodies the rest of the way to the crater-house! But wings cannot be had for the asking, and few of us earn them in this earthly pilgrimage. Our allowance of resting-time being over, we mount and pursue our climbing, slipping, bounding way. No delighted taste or mental preoccupation can dull our sense of touch to the impositions it has suffered and must suffer with increasing injury. But why enlarge upon the rigor of the road? That is no more than we bargained for when we un KILAUEA. 89 dertook the trip. That, like every thing else, may become easy by use and custom. Here comes a tall horseman down the mountain at this very moment,a man of threescore years, if we may judge from his wrinkled face and gray hair. An ample poncho hangs over him: he asks no other protection. He keeps his horse going at a pace which will take him to Hilo in half the time we should need for the descent. He has come from his ranch, eight or ten miles above Kilauea, and makes nothing of the trip. Neither do his native workmen, who come down from their high dairy every week, bringing fresh butter. I wonder they do not start with fresh cream: it would be admirably churned when they arrived at Hilo, and thus the agitation of the passage might be utilized. We reached the crater-house at last as twilight was deepening into night, the darkness increased by a thick rain. Far away, looking like the glare of a large iron-foundry, were the fires of the living volcano. It was not so very startling. Of the two, I am sure I was more impressed, at that moment, by the comfortable domestic fires blazing in the great, open fireplace of the reception-room of the craterhouse, than by the murky glow of Kilauea's burning lake, four miles away. Three or four officers and midshipmen of H. M. S. " Myrmidon," then at anchor in Byron's Bay, were chatting by the fireside. They had come up by way of Puna, and had already " ALOHA!" been down into the crater. We found them lively and intelligent companions. Making room for us by the fire, they beguiled the half-hour of drying and warming in which we indulged before supper with descriptions of their visit to the burning lake. They were strongly tempted to go down again by night; but the darkness, the rain, and the absence of the guide discouraged them. Every few minutes, moved 'by a common impulse, we would go to the window fronting. the volcano, and look for some new develop-, ment in the changeable monster. Little appeared, however. The red cloud in the distance was always there, with a streak of yellow under it, which seemed to be in motion. That was the lake. In the blackness of the abyss below us, ruddy seams would come and go, and sometimes slender threads of orange would run through the darkness. This was caused by fresh lava bursting through the cracks of the superincumbent crust. Mist and steam rose in clouds from the rain-deluged expanse of heated lava. To one unacquainted with the splendors of a near view of the lake, these obstacles of distance and rain were rather cooling to the enthusiasm. In the midst of the mingled talk and observation, the door of the house was thrown open, and there in the opening, illumined by the glow of our blazing fire, and set off by the darkness of the night behind him, stood the little commander of the "Myrmidon," as jolly and KILAUEA. 91 bright a brand as was ever caught from the burning. He had been to the fire-pit by night, and came back dripping with rain and overflowing with wonder. Hlale-mau-mau was in splendid action. We could have no conception of it from the house. It would surpass our expectations on the morrow, if its present activity continued. And so our reassuring commander talked on, reviving our hopes of a sight on the morrow which should make the toils of to-day a slight matter in comparison. The next morning was clear. It showed us exactly where we were, - in a large grass house not far from the edge of a hole in the world, from five hundred to a thousand feet deep and nine miles in circumference. The blackness of freshly cooled lava was below, in one great lake of fire-ice; —to make a daring but not unnatural compound. Cooled water and cooled lava take on similar forms, and the grouping of these upheaved masses of lava-rock was like the surface of a great ice-floe. A cliff all around the crater, in places exactly perpendicular, - the fragments falling from it, and usually accumulated at the foot of such cliffs in sloping insteps of ddbris, having been swallowed up and melted in the once molten flood. In the far corner of the great crater, a cloud which no sunshine can disperse; under it, the fire unquenchable. I wonder if I am alone in the impulse I have to turn away from the object I most desire to see; that is, " ALOHA I" if it is a great object. I had the same feeling at Niagara. It seizes me at Kilauea. I am in no haste to go. Rather would I turn away and wait. But Captain H and Mr. Forbes and the hardened guide are waiting for me. I must go. The preliminary tumble of six hundred feet is calculated to shake the sentiment well out of one; and following that, further on, another, only less, descent completes the disenthralment. We are now walking over a crust of such very patent fact and thinly veiled reality of fiery trial that we need the confidence inspired by our guide's unconcern, and the assurance that in all the numerous visits to the volcano there has never been a serious accident. It seems incredible that there is no danger in such wanderings over a floor which has been broken up within the week -yes, within twentyfour hours —by the force of undermining fire and flood. What certainty can there be that the very path which we are taking may not crack and bulge with liquid lava this very moment? Only an inch or two below the dull, black surface, these blocks glow like heated coal. My walkingstick kindles into flame the moment it enters one of these cracks. We actually cross streams of lava which were pressed out and cooled only yesterday. In places there are openings through which the underground rivers of molten lava may be seen. Our guide took us to one of these holes, and, looking into KILAUEA. it, we could watch the torrent of melted rock pouring like water from some unseen upper lake to the region below our very feet; its mass a yellow flood, its spray a flaming gas. And still we went on, fascinated by the beautiful peril of the place. Lava in all its varied forms stretched around us. Great coils, like ships' hawsers, twisted and spun in what interminable walk below us! Fold on fold, as smooth as finest satin! Sulphur-tinted scales as gorgeous as the parrot's plumage! Blocks as perfectly quarried as if cut and dressed by the stone-mason. Caves where the lava, cooling as it dripped, has fretted the roof with Venetian red or dull gray pendants. Glittering crusts, so light and porous that they seem like petrified sponges, with every color of the rainbow caught and prisoned in them. Surely lava is the veritable Proteus, and in all its changes it is always unmistakable lava and nothing else. What else could coil and crack and shimmer and gloom and melt and hold and run and stand still, and make and destroy the world around it in such seemingly indifferent fashion, as this sea of lava on whose frozen waves we are walking with a faith in Nature which Peter had not in his Lord. And now we are nearing the living fountain of this great, black sea. Cones dripping sulphur and spouting steam and fire appear. We follow our guide around a brook of lava too hot and fresh for us to wade through it. {A ALOHA!" A steady lift in the surface of the crater. We are coming to the lake. A dull roar as of a lion over the bank! A gust of hot sulphurous air in our faces! One more upward step to where our guide is standing, and Hale-mau-mau lies before us, - a lake of molten lava one hundred and fifty feet across, and twenty feet below the edge on which we stand. It looked gray as we saw it in the full daylight, and at first sight it might have been taken for a sea of melted lead; but in its tidal motion towards the southwest, either the wind or its own inner agony roughened its surface, and every ripple bled. Nothing is or can be as it has been painted; least of all this ever-changing volcano. Nature always surprises, but seldom disappoints us. I had looked for fury, tempest, frenzy, in this lake of fire. I found a terrible composure. Only in one place on the opposite shore, where the sea seemed to break, was there any audible or visible outburst. There a lateral fountain flung itself thirty feet into the air; and, cooled and winnowed by the passing breeze, scattered shilling black grains of lava and the dry, brittle chaff, called Pele's hair, far and wide. But even this wild fountain seemed perfectly controlled. It only added to the impression of power in reserve and under full control, with which Halemau-mau affected me. Am I putting the gloss of my own faith upon this tremendous Apocalypse of Nature, KILAUEA. 95 or is it true that all these phials and trumpets; these "lightnings, thunderings, and voices;" these "breastplates of fire, and jacinth, and brimstone;" this " wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation;" this "torment whose smoke ascendeth for ever and ever;" this " lake of fire and brimstone;" all the palpable horrors of this unsearchable world in which we live, - are held in the hollow of God's hand, and controlled by his all-perfect and all-loving will? Not even by the side of the neighboring lake of Kilauea, the second lake to which we passed from the subdued grandeur of Hale-mau-mau, was this faith disturbed. And surely if any thing could shake one's trust in the identity of the God of Nature and the God of Grace, it would be Kilauea as I saw it that morning. Three fire-fountains were flinging shreds of gory lava thirty, forty feet into the air, and all the while a feral roar seemed to attest the presence of the great dragon, "-that old serpent" of the Revelation. But he. was bound, and a seal was set upon his imprisonment. You felt it in every heave and outburst of the molten sea. We watched for an hour its gray billows dashing into fire-spray against the black shore, and throwing flecks of lava over the adjacent field, and no sense of danger or thought of fear attended us. A pronounced crack all around the rim of Kilauea, about three feet from the edge, warned us not to step be 96 " ALOHA!" yond its death-line. That broken edge falls into the fiery abyss from time to time, and goes to the burning. The nearest approach to an accident ever known here was when Mr. A- and some friends from Onomea overstepped the line to look more directly into the pit. They had just stepped back from their perilous exploration when the shelf on which they had been standing fell into the burning lake. More prudent, we keep on the safer side, and watch the play of the fire-fountains, fascinated by their novelty and splendor. Just before we came away, a mighty commotion began in the centre of the sea. Its surface was upheaved, and the very mountain seemed to shake with the "swelling theredf." Slowly, deliberately, as if with settled purpose, the movement was begun, and then, with one tremendous spring, the fountain shot into the air a column of blood-red lava, thirty feet in height, showering burning pebbles upon the surrounding lake, and a spray like spun glass upon the neighboring rocks. For a few minutes it stood blowing like a whale, where it had risen, and then it wallowed slowly to the shore, leaving the gray sea behind it lashed into bloody foam. When we turned away, it was still roaring and fuming under the forbidding cliff which shut it in. But it was only biding its time. That very night, looking from our distant post of observation, the volcano-house, we could distinctly see the rushing of the uplifted flood KILAUEA. 97 from shore to shore, and the leap of the fiery monsters from their imprisonment. On our way back we picked beautiful specimens of lava, were overtaken by a rain-storm, and reached the little inn with our clothing thoroughly soaked. But nothing could dampen the glow of our impression of Kilauea, the transcendent volcano of the world; Kilauea, the " Only." The commander took a sulphur bath, warranted, on the homoeopathic principle, to cure all the ills and disagreements of volcanic travel. Our investigation of the primitive bath-house and its ingenious arrangement for curing bruises by substituting scalding- did not encourage a resort to its healing ministries. The device is no more than a box over a sulphur steam crack. In this box the bather shuts himself, only keeping his head above the cover, and lets the sulphur steam slowly parboil him. Whether the process is really a relief or not, or whether, like the victims of some other showmen, the patients report a cure for the sake of enticing others into their misery, I cannot say. The commander declared himself quite restored by it, and followed us to the great sulphur banks afterwards as curiously as if he had never heard of sulphur before. If we had not liked our commander so thoroughly, we might have smiled a little at his expense now and then. His stature was like that of Zaccheus, and he probably weighed less than a hun7 " ALOHA!" dred pounds. To see him following our native guide, a magnificent giant, six feet high and upwards, and splendidly proportioned, stepping gingerly in his footsteps, holding up all he could, and saying to his big leader, I step more heavily than you," was as pretty a picture of English self-consequence as one often sees. That evening the lakes were in splendid commotion. We longed to visit them again, but could get no guide or companion, as it was raining heavily all the evening. Later it cleared, and we could see the intense glow of Kilauea, and high up on Mauna Loa's summit the graceful pillar of fire-tinted smoke, which had been visible, more or less distinctly, for the previous ten days. The desire to ascend the great dome and look down upon its rare eruption was not encouraged either by the season or my friends, and we were compelled to be content with Mauna Loa's lower crater, the lake we had just visited. The commander, Mr. F-, and myself, spent the evening hilariously, reading the notes made by previous travellers in the visitor's book, and some Hawaiian letters of Mark Twain, which were pasted into the same book. We found some amusement, considerable interest, much disgust, and some information, in the comments of the visitors. But in Mr. Clemens's inimitable letters we found unbounded merriment and food for laughter. A wholesome alterative it proved, after the awful KILAUEA. 99 impressions of the day; and we all slept and dreamed the better for it. We woke to a sunrise only equalled in my remembrance by one I saw on Mont Blanc. There stood Mauna Loa, with a rosy tint upon its cloudy cap,. which, as we watched, moved slowly down, covering the whole of the mountain side, and disappeared at length in the great black pit that lay below us. Mauna Kea's clustering, snow-capped peaks could also be seen. Kilauea smoked gloomily afar off. Steam rose from innumerable cracks in the drear expanse that intervened, and not far from the very brink on which we stood, the shining trail of a new flow of lava which had gushed out during the night was clearly visible. At nine o'clock we bade farewell to all this greatness, and started for home. The " right little island" commander, with his guide, followed or accompanied us from the start. And many a good talk did we have together of wanderings in other lands and over other seas. The commander had been everywhere, and every. where he had studied country and people with that English thoroughness which is so satisfactory in its results and recollections. After all, a little of Old England goes farther than a great deal of the other European nationalities. After visiting them all, I felt thankful that we were of English blood and antecedents. England is a good country to have come away 100 "ALOHA i" from. And is not Hawaii a good country to have tome to? We thought so, at least, on that fair day in February, when, with sure-footed horses under us; the unclouded blue of the sky above; fresh mountain breezes keeping us cool; palm trees fanning the placid earth; the woods calling us to their unfailing shade; the sea murmuring a welcome home; Hilo, with its refreshing bath, its nourishing fare, its myrtles and lilies and roses, and, best of all, its true-hearted friends waiting for us, - we went back from our visit to Kilauea, the ninth wonder of the world. (n, si,.: "ON THE UPPER VERANDA. 101 "ON THE UPPER VERANDA," "N 0, thank you; I hate ferns." I had proposed that we all go to the upper veranda and spend the forenoon in studying Miss R - 's magnificent collection of ferns. This was the response I got from one of my fair company. The moral courage it took to utter such a sentiment in Hawaii can only be known by one who has been there. As ignorance of famous people elsewhere argues yourself unknown, so indifference to ferns in Hawaii puts you beyond the pale of gentle society. By one bold sentence, therefore, Miss Clara made herself an exile from the very heart of Hilo; and, as if realizing her expulsion from the garden, she caught up the bit of sewing which served her so often as a defence from disagreeable projects, and fled to the parlor. There she sat, perfectly content, if ferns grew in Eden, as may well be supposed, since they are the very beginnings of vegetation, to be outside. Shall I confess to a temptation to follow her example? Her moral heroism was not the only attraction beside her good company. At this safe distance, and after the ample expiation I have since made for the offence, let me admit that there 102 " ALOHA!" was a latent sympathy within me with the sentiment she had expressed. Those large domains of art and science which furnish so much of interesting fact and illustration to the reading and conversation of other countries, are almost exclusively occupied in the Hawaiian Islands by ferns. You make or receive an evening call, and, in place of the latest discovery by Darwin or Huxley, you are told that Miss Bhas found a new fern. Instead of going to the art gallery or the athleneum, you go to Mr. Hitchcock's to see his pressed ferns. Every house has its album of rare specimens, all nicely mounted, as they say, -a good expression for the ubiquitous hobby-horse. On all occasions Filix, the fern, is trotted out for your weary admiration. What makes the burden more exasperating is the scholarly knowledge which many of these people have on this subject, and the embarrassing way in which they assume equal knowledge on your part. Your contented ignorance rebels at this constant forgetfulness of its rights. Cumbrous botanical names, with Greek fathers and Latin mothers, afflict your ears far more than the musical Hawaiian Palapala. If both are heathen, the scholarly terms have the disadvantage of being dead heathen. The result of one of these parlor lectures upon the Filices, copiously illustrated with pressed and mounted specimens, is, that you go away feeling as if you had been pressed C ON THE UPPER VERANDA." 103 and glued to card-board yourself, and wondering what manner of fern you are. Poor Miss Clara had spoken out of the depths of repeated experience of this sort, in which affronted ignorance and wearied admiration had played the active and passive parts in a social fiction of enjoyment; and I understood her. Clearly there are but two escapes from such misery. One must either learn more, and come to the enthusiasm which springs from ample information; or one must take refuge in determined ignorance, and refuse to hear the troublous thing mentioned. It was a critical moment. Which should we choose? Was it the ferns themselves, or the rare collection of them, or the charm of that broad, upper veranda overlooking the glossy rose-apple trees and the garden of roses and myrtle, and letting the eyes rove delightedly up and far away over fields of wavy cane, across the dark and distant forest belt, along the soft, gray sides of Mauna Kea, and higher and higher to the very summit white with driven snow, only one step from heaven, or was it the social instinct in us, which made the prospect of a forenoon spent in any congenial way blessing enough, which decided us? For one reason or all, we went to the upper veranda, and spent the forenoon as I shall narrate. First, we made a rest for the great fern-case out of two chairs. Then we lifted the precious case from the hall, where it commonly stood, into position for 104 " ALOHA! action on the chairs. Then we cushioned the back of the chair with shawls, that no scratch should touch the polished koa cover. This lifted, there was a yet more exquisite cover of native woods - the side of a portfolio - to be raised and protected, and then came the ferns. They were mounted on full-size sheets of Bristol-board, and some of the specimens required more than this space to display their noble proportions. It needed no scientific knowledge and no effort of the will to admire the frontispiece of this unique book. A wreath of Asplenium multisectum, the lacefern of Kauai, encircled that generous native salutation, the epitome of all good-will, "Aloha," its letters traced by the same delicate fern. Then the name of the lady to whom the book was presented was spelled out in choicest fern lettering. After this sop to the amiable and aesthetic sentiment, the scientific strata came thick and heavy. There they lay on their white beds of Bristol-board, "lifeless but beautiful," and little slabs of printed paper at their feet gave their names and habitat. Yes, the description is rather sepulchral, but the beauty of pressed leaves and flowers is always the beauty of death. After all, we needed the puzzle and provocation of their scientific names to relieve the study of its pathos. "What is that?" we would cry, as the lifting of a fresh sheet would uncover a frond with "ON THE UPPER VERANDA." 105 the free sweep of a goose-quill, tipped and evenly trimmed on either side with tapering pinnae, its rachis and midrib prettily furred with hair as smooth as the otter's. Asplenium horridum, one reads from the slab, hab. Hawaii, &c. Then we all look as wise as we are ignorant, and pass on until the frequent recurrence of this word "asplenium " piques us into finding out its meaning, and, if possible, ascertaining the marks of this genus. We are not without the means of learning, if we are not too dull to use them. Mrs. C- and Mrs. S- have Gray's Manual between them, a sufficient help when the fern in question has relations in New England. A happy chance, when it happens, because then we learn, by one reference, the family traits, the common every-day name, and how to pronounce the grander name, besides all the needed details of structure and habits of growth. What a gulf of distance between us and the asple'nium family is bridged over when we learn that its vulgar name is spleenwort; and that it got its title from a supposed efficacy in diseases of the spleen. No doubt. We begin to feel its effect already in our own improved temper, as we make so much progress into its high-sounding secret. "Asplenium horridum," says one. "Not at all horrid, now that we know about it." But the horridum, my unclassical friend, is only a harmless Latin way of describing the downy coating of the stem. It o106 " ALOHA!" - stands up, so the old Romans would have said, "like the hair on a frightened man's head." Horridum is simply hairy. We take it for granted that everybody knows that ferns are classified according to the disposition of their seeds or fruitage, which is generally placed on the back of the fertile leaves. If you go ferning with a collector, you will at first be amused to see him turn every leaf upside down, as if it were a crab or turtle. He then anxiously examines the seeding on the under side. According as this is well or poorly marked, he accepts or rejects it. No matter how perfectly shaped or finely cut the frond may be, if it is not well seeded it has little value to him. In time, the chief beauty of a fern comes to reside in the fruitage. It is in vain to expostulate with the victim of the fern-fever; it is part of his madness to see no beauty except in the fertile specimen. He smiles superior when you admire an unfruitful branch, and only asks of each leaf you bring him, " Is it well seeded?" The collection before us - a gift of friendship as it is-seldom ventures to present any but truly botanical specimens. And so carefully selected are they, such rare examples of their varied kinds and ways, that the taste of the scientific collector, no less than his knowledge, seems to find countenance in this fascinating book. By degrees we learn to recognize the members of the asplenium family whenever they appear; and as a test of our powers we cover the name ON THE UPPER VERANDA. 107 at the bottom of the card, and venture to pronounce upon the unfamiliar specimen, whether it be asplenium or something else. "Fruit-dots single, and placed on the upper side of the veinlets," we repeat after Gray, or perchance choosing Hooker, whose Synopsis Filicum is one of our books of reference, we mumble inscrutable details that make either our ignorance or his knowledge ridiculous. Of course we make many blunders; but gradually we get so disciplined by our mistakes and so encouraged by our successes, that we hail with tolerable confidence each new asplenium, and call it by its family name. The specific names we put off for another day, or never, declaring that we do not care to know any thing more than the genus to which the ferns belong. Mistress Mary, not in the least contrary, but meekly submitting to instructions from one as ignorant of ferns as she was, consulted dictionary and glossary as occasion required, and soon won the reward of her docility by becoming one of the quickest discerners of us all. Madame held the simple lens which served us as a microscope, and the seed-spores had to be very seedy indeed - quite beyond the recognition of their own family- to escape her nice inquisition. "Sori oblong or linear," - the sori are the fruit-dots. Yes, she saw them. Involucre or indusium -that means the covering or envelope in which each cluster of seeds is generally enclosed -"attached by one 108 c" ALOHA! " edge to veinlet." "Yes, there it was," or very likely " No," because the involucre was simply shrivelled up past recognition in these dry and dead-ripe specimens. But generally enough features remained for identification, and the clearly printed labels soon corrected our mistakes. Make any thing in nature a subject of real study, and you shall find indifference turn to enthusiasm and ennui disappear. There is so much freedom and such endless variety, even in the household which goes by the same name. The members of the asplenium family, for example, differ at first sight even more than they agree. What a contrast between the Asplenium fra-. gile, brought from the cool cleft of the mountain, where the waters flow unceasingly and rains fall every day, and the nidus, nesting in the old ohia trees of the Hilo woods, and spreading its strong, thick leaves on all sides like an Indian's feather head-dress, the under surface of each fertile leaf embossed with ashy lines of fern fruitage! Or who that studies these, and reconciles them in his mind with the same family, is prepared for the sudden freak, as it seems, in the Asplenium gemmiferum, where little ferns, the very image of their mother, start out from, the leaves of the parent fern, and grow, with root and stem, until their weight bends their supporting stalk to the earth, when they come of age and start on a career for themselves! " ON THE UPPER VERANDA." 109 Only look at that gemmiferum, literally covered with a colony of young ferns. Now we pick up a sheet of Bristol-board, on which a fern is mounted, fully as delicate as the choicest lace-shawls of Brussels, and tapering in the same gradual way towards its graceful tip. Caught in its meshes, tiny brown specks may be discovered by the clear-sighted. The microscope would show that this too is an asplenium, but a blade of corn and the misty gallium are no more unlike to all appearance than these sisters of one family, - the birds'-nest fern of Hawaii and the lacefern of Kauai. We are just getting actively interested in this fernstudy, Gray and Hooker and Loudon and Webster's Unabridged all open, the lens well adjusted, the marvellous collection revealing its treasures with kindly moderation to our unpractised eyes, when our selfbanished sister in the parlor, tired of embroidering absurd butterflies and impossible leaves on a background of linen drilling, suddenly takes to the piano, - a mutual attraction, as it seems, for that responsive instrument always gave out more to her prompt yet persuasive touch than to any other. Was it in mockery and with mischievous design upon our learned occupation that she played Von Weber's Invitation to the Waltz with such bewitching spirit? But we were not to be diverted. A Gymnogramme 110 " ALOHA! Javanica turned up just in time to captivate alike our taste and our curiosity. A chorus of approving " Ohs! " greeted the coming of this perfect creature. There she stood, at least three feet high, raying olivegreen leaves with edges of the finest pinking. "Veins free," says Gray. Anybody can see that; the whole delicate meshwork in which the expanding life had once been prisoned was as visible and as free as a net sinking in green waters. In the texture of the leaf, but not of it, the very spirit of the fern seemed lingering, as if in fond rapture over the beautiful body it once inhabited. I think we got our first real preference for the fruited side of ferns when we saw this Gymnogramme. The rich brown lines of spores following and emphasizing the free veins combined the graceful branching of Micronesian coral with the equal grace and superior refinement of the fern. Sea and mountain seemed to acknowledge this perfect plant as their child, as in soberest scientific fact she was. For is it not the sea sending up unceasingly its vapors which gives these islands their often showers, and without the rains you would search in vain, even in the deep gulches of Maui, for this exquisite creature. " So it lives in Maui," I repeat, reading the invaluable label on the card-board. " I commission you, as you value the memory of this hour, you people who are going to Maui, to get me a specimen of this Gymnogramme." There is a laughing assent among my "ON THE UPPER VERANDA." 111 audience, which, I am satisfied, covers the same earnestness which really lurks in my own extravagant adjuration. They mean to get it for me. Who knows but I may pick it for myself, if times and seasons and the more uncertain movements of the steamer " Kilauea " conspire to favor it, in the yet unplotted future. One word about the name, - Gymnogramme, - a style, I grant you, which contorts the mouth like a slight shock of paralysis. But when you know that it means simply "a naked line," and describes the clear marking of the fruitage running along the free veins, you see the sense of it, and that helps wonderfully in recollecting and using it. "Why not call it the 'Naked Line' fern, do you say? That is what Captain St. George said when we showed him the fern and explained its name to him; only he put it with more wit as well as sailorly roughness, -" Why not call it ' Barebones'? Seems to me that's what you mean." The possibility of having our queen among ferns thus styled reconciled us at once to "Gymnogramme." Besides, when we think of it, the popular demand that every thing in nature shall be named in the vernacular is simply a piece of national conceit and narrowness. In that case, every student of the scientific books written in other languages than his own would have his labor many times redoubled. Greek and Latin names in scien e really facilitate the study of natural history. "c ALOHA!" They are a cosmopolitan tongue in science. They do for the world of natural philosophy what French has done for the traveller on the continent of Europe. They offer an accurate, and, to the student, a perfectly intelligible medium of communication, all the more safe because, from their popular disuse, they are not exposed to the changes which take place in every living language. But we are getting off our veranda. Lunch will soon be ready, and then we must close our portfolio for the day, if not for ever. It will never answer to leave so many good families unvisited. There are the Pterides, who trim their leafy dresses sometimes with narrow binding, sometimes with borderings of fur. They are all alike in this, that their fruitage is arranged on the back and along the edge of the fertile leaves. Decora, in the specimen before us, has her slender leaflets laden with sable. Cretica is more sparing in her ornamentation, although her size and graceful carriage might bear the burden better. Is there vanity and folly in plants, too, or is it only the natural injustice of ignorant prejudice clothing innocence in its own unrighteousness, that makes us think Decora is dressed too showily for her size? What a grand creature is Quadriaurita, in cleanly green that stands pressing so well, and neatly finished in velvet brown We admire Irregularis for his very eccentricity. The charming vagrant knows no law but "c ON THE UPPER VERANDA." 113 freedom; his errors are his nature; and yet, in all his wanderings, this guiltless vagabond never drops the family trait. Hallo! there is the common brake. Is he, then, a Pteris? Yes, and bears the soaring name of Aquilina. Perhaps his eagle wings carry him to all lands. Certes, he is found everywhere. But the flower of this family, if Cryptogamia can have a flower, is Decipiens.1 She is sometimes called Geranium, because she is most like a wild geranium leaf, made.thicker and stronger, as suits a rock-fern, and mounted on a stem as glossy and crisp, if not as black, as the stem of the Maiden's Hair. Imagine such a leaf, as nicely bordered with rich brown seeds on its under edge as if it were framed in black walnut. But you must not imagine the stiffness and hard finish of a picture-frame: the setting must be as soft as wool, and follow the ins and outs of the leaf with easy but even exactness. No clumsy folds, nothing drawn or puckered, and no hard edge either. The perfection of framing, trimming, and stitching are all combined here. Everybody must admire the beauty of this dainty bit of nature, even in the hard and dry presentment of a herbarium. But go in search of it some bright day, when the showers have ceased for a day or two preceding, and the miry valleys can be 1 I find this fern called Pellcea geraniifolia at the Botanic Garden in Cambridge. 8 114 -" ALOHA 1 " travelled. Let me take you up the Nuuanu road to the Pali,' and, as we lead our horses down the steep, rocky stairway, sliding, creeping, almost tumbling as we go, let us catch a favoring angle in the pathway, to rest man and beast, and then, peeping up the cliff, we shall be sure to find the prettiest possible specimens of our fern. She loves the dizzy height above the sea, Where she can watch and wait; Watch for the greater good that is to be, Wait for it, - watch and wait. 'Tis all she does. Yet is she my delight, More lovely, idling so, Than busy people toiling through the night To make their projects go. When o'er the waters gleams the coming sail That heralds heaven on earth, The Lord shall find thee waiting, without fail, Type of the second birth. What a traveller is fancy Here have we made the trip to Oahu and back on a pressed fern, all in the writing of a single page. Mistress Mary, still in her most amiable mood, is singing,"Pretty, pretty Poly-podium, How d' you do? How d'you do?" It is our introduction, or rather the more intimate and free salutation, of partial acquaintance with another family of ferns, the Polypodium. We had seen the Lineare tufting the limbs of old bread-fruit trees c ON THE UPPER VERANDA." in the streets of Hilo, and two or three quite tame specimens had rooted themselves in the eaves of the wash-house. Their oddity rather than their beauty had stopped us as we were about to pass them by. Pressed and mounted, they exhibited their double row of round sori, running nearly the full length of their slender fronds, with all the pride and precision of a company in some grand military review. A more likely simile, however, would be found, if I should compare them to the strips of peppermints one used to buy at the candy-stores a generation ago, or to a row of buttons basted upon pasteboard. All this was so unlike what we had been accustomed to consider the fern pattern, that it took us some time to realize that we were still in the order Filices. The clearly marked and distinct sori or seed-clusters gave us the best possible examples of fern fructification. There they were like so many tiny ant-hills, and we could see that there was no indusium or covering over the seeds. This was their family trait, by which we might always know them. But when it happens, as it does with all the ferns, that the indusium is only visible in its full, outspread shape for a brief period, and afterwards either shrivels up out of all regular shape or drops off entirely, how are we to distinguish with certainty between the Polypodium and the other varieties? That is at present a poser, and will remain so until long experience has made you sage on 116 "ALOHA!" ferns. Meantime, live with them and learn. Learn that the little fellow next to Lineare, and enough like him to be his brother, only that he is covered with hairs, - a kind of Esau to smooth brother Jacob opposite, - is Polypodium Hookeri. A charmer, isn't he? You would think so, if you should find him in a deep gorge I know, hiding his bright eyes in a cool lap of moss. Live and learn that the other little fellow, with his sori almost hopping out of him like a lobster's eye, is Pseudo-grammitis. A big name, perhaps you think, for so small a specimen; but that is rather royal than otherwise. If your notions have been wholly shaped by the specimens thus far exhibited, you will be sure to guess wrong when we display before your eyes a typical fern-form, a foot or two high, and having all the sub-breadth and tapering elegance of the best of the genus. Nephrodium. No. What do you know about Nephrodium? We have not studied that yet. Asplenium, then. No, nor yet Asplenium, although that accommodating family can always take in a fern that cannot get a lodging elsewhere. You know it is not a Pteris, because its fruitage is scattered all over its back, like the spots on a turtle. Are they covered? Madame, who holds the lens, looks, and says "No." Is there any sign of a covering? Has the indusium shrivelled or fallen off? Apparently not shrivelled; as to falling off, cannot say. c ON THE UPPER VERANDA." We conclude to call it a Polypodium, unless it is something else. It isn't something else. We look triumphantly at one another, and say, we are decidedly making progress. Polypodium unitum is the legend. But even this evidence of versatility in this family does not prepare us for the next revelation. A little spray turns up as fine as the finest acacia leaf, and looking something like it; very like the foliage of the tamarind. What can it be? The seeding is so small and scattered, finding scant standing-room on the slender pinnae, that it is difficult to investigate. But eyes and lens undertake the task, and pronounce in favor of no indusium. Spores free. Can it be a Polypodium? Opinions are divided. Is it a fern at all? Isn't somebody cheating us? Hasn't that jocose captain who wanted our Gymnogramme disgraced been playing a practical joke upon us, and slipped a leaf of tamarind into this sumptuous collection? Tamarind leaves do not have sori. No, but they may have less tidy seeds out of a neighboring kingdom. " Nonsense!" says Madame, her eyes and lens flashing with injured feeling. "We recognize the seeding. This is a fern." And so it is. Polypodium tamariscinum is named from its resemblance to the tamarind leaf; so our suspicion was not wholly without sense. In spite of our resolution to the contrary, we are getting into the specific names; but when they are so significant as 118 "ALOHA!" the last one, how can we help it? But the generic names are enough for one forenoon. We have not learned half of them. Will somebody explain Aspidium, and tell us how to recognize the children of that household? Somebody reads from Loudon -precious old encyclopedia as he is, as far as he goes - that the name comes from the Greek oruts, a shield. You may know them by their shields, round indusia protecting the spores. See! and the lens lays bare the smooth disk of the involucre, so that we all appreciate the fitness of the name. A fresh specimen of the Falcatum presents the shields of an army of son. But not all the specimens are so surely marked. Sometimes the circle is slit on one side, and becomes kidney-shaped. How then distinguish them from the Nephrodium, which gets its name from its kidneylike indusia? No great matter if we do not always maintain the distinction, for they are near relations. Together they make a noble family group. The arrowheaded Aculeatum carries both spear and shield, and *fights its way bravely through the world. And see how the lances of Haleakalense bristle for the fray! Find that fern, as I did at a later date, half-way up the side of that ruined House of the Sun, Haleikalh, - it grows nowhere else in the world, - and if you are worthy to pick it, you will feel yourself glowing with something like the grateful emotion of Columbus on discovering a new world. For this is no tame "' ON THE UPPER VERANDA." lowland weed, no common world-wide branch. It presses up through the deadly breach made by volcanic shock, and down which the flood of molten lava once poured red-hot rivers to the sea. Under a surface which glows in the sunshine like the satin rock the natives call pahoehoe, it carries, soft and warm in woolly folds, the hidden treasure of perennial life. Silently and well it keeps the memory of the mountain which gave it birth and still supports it. Heart of fire in breast of stone! Ha-le-h-ka-la! Thy fires are dead, thy life is flown, Ha-le-a-ka-la! But I thy heart will keep, In me thy fires shall sleep, And in the day when all things burn Thy ancient glory shall return, Ha-le-h-ka-ll! Ha-le-a-ka-l! There is more courage in that fern than in half the men. And yet there seems no need of bothering these simple children of nature with moral attributes. Enough that they are beautiful without intention, true without effort, original without folly, and constant without being dull. I find them refreshing company after a surfeit of the other kind. I believe I could profitably introduce my human friends wherever they are to each and all of this rather green, I confess, but very presentable family. If we had not already gone far enough into the gallery of family 120 "c ALOHA I" portraits, I would beg you to look at more of them. But high noon is at hand. The piano is still. Miss Clara has gone to make her toilet for lunch; no slight matter for our modern Eve. Our hostess excuses herself, and leaves us. Madame sighs conclusively, as if conscious of the necessity of stopping our study for the day, but by no means resigned to it. Our fair interpreters lay aside their clew; and school is dismissed. Only for a few moments do we linger to note the changed scene. Mauna Kea is a closed book. Wrapped in clouds, he is to sight as he were not. The rain is trooping seaward over the dimmer and dimmer forest belts; and now across the darkening fields of cane the storm comes freshening on. Now the slender, towering Pride of India feels it; now it catches the helpless bananas, tearing their saillike leaves in shreds; now it shakes the mango and the wide branching samang beside the piazza, and the drops fall briskly on the roses and lilies in the garden. We have just time enough to house our fern-case in the big upper hall before the floods of Hilo are let loose again. Lunch is now ready, and our forenoon on the upper veranda is over. COCOA-NUT ISLAND. 121 COCOA-NUT ISLAND. ALF a mile from Hilo pier, as the ships sail, lies Cocoa-nut Island. An acre of land would amply cover it, and leave something to tuck in around the edge. Two or three dozen cocoa-nut trees grow there, and in virtue of their prominence give the island its name. It is so near the eastern shore of the harbor, that one is tempted to wade over the narrow channel that flows between. We had been waiting for a favorable conjunction of weather, leisure, and desire, to go and spend the day there. It came on Thursday, March 4. We had been expecting it a day or two before, and all needed preparations were made when the sun rose on this happy morning. The A - 's, Miss Mary, and her sisterly aunt and our hostess were to go on horseback, while our host, Miss Clara, Madame, the children, and myself were to ride the billows. A retinue of handy servants relieved us of every burden except ourselves. This morning that particular bundle was not so heavy as we have known it. Sunshine, leisure, good company, and a happy prospect for the day quite buoyed up the old baggage. We marched to the shore, cavalry and infantry and baggage-train, 122 2 ALOHA!" intent on investing the Castle of Peace, said to be located on Cocoa-nut Island, and bringing it to a surrender before sunset. It was a bright, clear day, so we took every possible protection against the rain, - waterproofs, umbrellas, rubber coats, shawls, and other wraps. Then the bathing-clothes helped swell the luggage. Hampers and baskets filled up the train, and off we started. The invoice of our cargo, however, would not be complete without the following item: two long sticks of sugar-cane for the children. Slippery, unaccommodating, and of unequal length, they refused to travel in company with any other bundle, and engrossed the entire strength of a fullgrown native, who walked with them to the shore, one in each hand, looking as miserable as if each cane were a policeman escorting him to the jail. The embarkation at Hilo is always a blundering process. It is always by mistake that anybody gets into the great boat which jumps and bumps at the foot of the iron stairway on the wharf. According to all the probabilities, you ought to step into the sea, and the boat ought to be flung upon the sand by the combing waves that break a foot or two nearer shore. Thanks to my facility at blundering, I was soon floundering, like a fish fresh caught, in the bottom of the yawl. Unable to assist my companions beyond the instructive example I had set them, it was with real gratitude that I saw them come down in the COCOA-NUT ISLAND. 123 arms of stalwart kanakas like the other baggage, and get stowed away in out-of-the-way corners. Then, with an explosion of Hawaiian outcries, we shot deliberately out into the sea, and went ricochetting over the waves like a slow cannon-ball. In favoring lifts we could catch glimpses of our cavalry flying over the circling beach. Fluttering veils and flowing robes and galloping horses made a lively and captivating picture from the sea. Meantime our own course develops beauty as we go, and once free from the vicissitudes of the landing, we thoroughly enjoy this short voyage. "How beautiful is labor! " exclaimed the sage, as he sat in the shade on a summer's day, and watched his wife bringing water from the well. Beautiful indeed! we echo, as, stretched out at our ease, we admire the broad shoulders and supple arms of the oarsmen, pulling our boat from wave to wave. Oh for a bronze of that steersman, mastering boat and sea with the flap of his long oar! Face and posture speak as audibly as the tongue. Now, "Wiki! wiki!" he cries, and the very children know what he means. To this hour my boy cries "Wiki! wiki! " when he means "Hurry up!" The sea going one way and our boat the other, doubles the impression of speed, I suppose. We seem to be making good progress, and congratulate ourselves on the prospect of reaching the island of rendezvous before the land-going party. But distances at sea are deceptive things. 124 1" ALOHA " Either Cocoa-nut Island is adrift and floating away from us, or it is further from the pier than half a mile. And when at length we pick our way through the narrow channel on its eastern end, we find our friends picking shells, and their horses picking grass on the main shore. We disembark, and they are soon ferried over, and then our picnic begins. First we search the ragged lava rock for shells, alive or dead. Then, skirting the shore, we come upon miniature bluffs of iron-like rock, against which the waves beat themselves into fountains of silvery spray. Harbors and headlands and creeks and sloping sandy beach, all in little, girded this petite world. It would have made a perfect home for some Liliput Robinson Crusoe; only little Robinson would have need to beware of the cocoa-nuts aloft, if he valued his own. These soaring palms do not know how to be little. Once plumed, the young trees have a compass of wing equal to that of the oldest. The mature trees cuddle their fruit under them as a hen gathers her chickens. We lay on the ground in this grove of coco palms and discussed the chances of the fruit's falling while we were there. The sceptic whose wiser judgment would have placed the pumpkin on the oak tree and the acorn on the vine would have been perfectly satisfied with the arrangement here. But what shame would have covered the poetical philosopher who snubbed the sceptic so unmercifully for his innocent criticism when the acorn struck him! COCOA-NUT ISLAND. 125 "Fool, had that bough a pumpkin bore, Thy noddle would have worked no more, Nor skull have kept it in." Beside one of these hard-shelled nuts a pumpkin would have been a very soft impeachment of the human providence which the popular faith so confidently discovers in every way of nature. But the doctrine of chances, even imperfectly understood, was so favorable to our taking our ease, that we felt no risk in our palmy bower. I am not sure but we would have enjoyed thinking that one or two of the nuts might fall, in order that we might taste their contents. A cocoa-nut fresh from the trees is no every-day fare for New-Englanders. We began to feel curiosity pricking appetite, and desire fairly piqued. into longing, as we looked up at the inaccessible fruit. It would have had time to turn very sour, however, before our appetites could have been gratified, if chance or our own agility had been our only dependence. Fortunately, our native servants liked nothing better than to be up a tree; and, before we could see how they did it, they had climbed or walked up, for feet as well as hands grasped the branchless trunk, and were showering the ground about us with fruit. It was hardly more accessible now than before; for its husk was as impenetrable as the shell of a tortoise. Here, again, our deft natives were our 126 a ALOHA! ) friends. Seizing the nuts in both hands, they raised and dashed them, blunt end downwards, upon a pointed rock or sharp stick thrust into the ground, and when the outer shell was thus removed, hands and teeth together completed the operation. A light tap with a stone around the facial end removed it as neatly as if it were only the cover of a fruit-can, and then every sense was regaled at once by the outcome. Odors of costliest ointment, milk of Nature's kindness, a cool cup all brown without, all white within, meat so tender that it could be eaten with a spoon, and, when its contents were eaten, the dainty shell, held up to the ear, would discourse as sweet and solemn music as any conch you ever picked up on the beach. If there is anywhere else in the world a view in which grandeur and sweetness so conspire to elevate and console the spectator as the view from this island, I have not found it. Byron's Bay in front, its face all smiles, - not laughing, very far removed from that immeasurable laughter of the ocean which Homer celebrates, and in which there seems something almost sardonic, not quite friendly, at the least, - then the keen edge of the beach flashing over the blossoming waves like a sickle that for ever cuts a field for ever blooming. Above the beach, the business street where Commerce takes his ease, and Speculation nods. It is impossible to keep the reflection COCOA-NUT ISLAND. 127 of our experience of Hilo out of this distant view of it. We recognize, within the little maze of foliage and house-tops, our own dwelling, and can hardly realize that we are on the island which, from its windows, seems no more than a distant reef. Three churches lift their towers and spires, and borrow so much beauty from distance that we wonder if it may not be that the church, after all, is as great a blessing to those who stand apart from its intimate ministration as to those that enter in. Who can tell what springs of healing memory are opened in the " heart's deep cell" at the sound of Sabbath bells, or what monitions of conscience are felt in the church's upraised finger? Though empty of hearers, the church itself is a preacher of righteousness to all who can see it. Viewing the little town, as we do to-day, lying between the street of Commerce and the temple of Religion, we see the condition of a State's prosperity, business life "in the fear of the Lord." If I were preaching, I would take the history of Hawaii for the last fifty years to show that, while useful occupation is necessary to good conduct, the commerce which pursues its ends regardless of moral right and Christian admonition is the ruin of the land it visits. But this is serious talk for our day of island rest and recreation. Let the eyes rove contentedly, seeing only their beauty now, over the fields of sugar-cane and across the uplands covered with rich Hilo grass. 128 "c ALOHA!" Distance is as kind to factories as to churches, and the tall chimneys and shabby buildings blend harmoniously with tree and meadow foliage. Then the belt of forest trees which binds Hawaii like a girdle deepens the shade, but keeps the fertile color of the wondrous green landscape; and above all, yet in and through all, - for we feel its presence even when its form is shut out by clouds, - stands Mauna Kea, the perfect mountain. Its rise is so gradual and its summit so far away, that there is nothing threatening or impending about it. One is not startled or overpowered by it. At first, he rather wonders that it does not look higher, with its fourteen thousand feet of stature. It has the greatness of the angels, above us, yet with us; or, to keep within the range of human observation, it has that fixed and tranquil look which long experience, meekly borne, gives to the faces of the wisest and best people we have known. Its greatness was achieved, not merely native or compulsory. For unnumbered years it had patiently built up its great mass and drawn its noble outline against the sky. It had gone through the waters, and they had not overflowed it; and though the flames had enveloped it, no smell of fire was in its garments. Among historical characters, it reminds me most of John the Evangelist: in youth, a son of thunder, invoking fire to come down and consume an unbelieving COCOA-NUT ISLAND. 129 world; in riper years, the calm, receptive soul, into whose brooding mind the spirit of truth poured the revelation of the Word. "Dost thou tarry till he come?" we ask, as we look up at this permanent prophet of a better world; and far up on the mountain's summit a light, "white and glistering," seems to say, "He cometh now." He cometh now! See clouds of heaven brightening, And golden street across the waters laid, From east to west; behold! his coming shineth, Love's kindred see Love in the things He made. Distance turns all songs to hymns. This verse bears no resemblance to the verses we recited or read that day. Photographic writing must be done on the spot of the occurrence delineated, or within sight of it. This distant recollection of past travel, no doubt, borrows as much from our present mood as from the old experience. But if it is true, as men so often find, that we only wake up to the significance of an occasion when it is gone by, this sketch may be the truer and better for waiting. What we really read was something humorous from " Martin Chuzzlewit," and something dreamy from Tennyson's " Lotos Eaters;" and of the two, Dickens was the more enjoyed. It is a mistake to select your reading for any lovely bit of scenery from the poets of Nature. Nature wants to be complemented with humanity, not surfeited with her own reflections. 9 130 "C ALOHA I" Bret Harte hints this thought when, in his threnody to Dickens, he pictures the tall pines listening to the story of Little Nell. Better a discord even, than any increase of the monotone which underlies the music of the sea-shore. We found little interest and no natural rapport in the "Lotos Eaters " that day, although read by a voice as grave and sweet as its own beguiling verse. But Cocoa-nut Island has livelier sports than this legendary idlesse. The prettiest bathing-beach in the world lies on the seaward side. It is guarded on either side by rocks of lava, and slopes gently down from the yellow-green sedge-grass, over white sands and under rolling waves, to unknown depths beyond. Already our native boys, dressed in their beautiful bathing-suits of rich brown skin and malo round the waist, are laughing and leaping like seals from the rocks and among the waves. I join them in a suit of flannel, not remarkable for beauty, and try to attribute my inferior swimming in part to my clothing. Surely the Pacific is salter than the Atlantic. I never felt so briny after bathing at home. Other people speak of it, and at Waikiki the best furnished cottages provided for a fresh-water bath immediately after the sea-bath. If there is any virtue in salt, there seems to be no reason why one should not keep for ever after one of these dips in the waters of the Pacific. Their adhesive power is equally strong. COCOA-NUT ISLAND. 131 The process of dressing in one of the recesses of this little sandy beach made me wonder how much of the island would be left behind when I got through. For all that, the bath was refreshing. The day would not have been complete without it. Looking back across a whole continent and half an ocean, after an interval of six months, and amid the more than tropical heat of a New England summer, so strong is the memory of this sea-bath from Cocoa-nut Island, that a physical sense of coolness and invigoration comes over me as I write. The green fields that stretch away on all sides from my window turn to blue waves. The elms are singing the song of the palms. The woodbine has caught the very air and manner of the sea convolvulus. Blurred by distance, the farm men's voices sound indistinct as pure Hawaiian, and in the closing of an eye I am in Hilo again. "Come, friends," I hear our host and captain say, " if we are to reach home before night, we must turn our faces shorewards soon." He knows how hardly we shall part from this captivating spot. Besides, are we not promised a ramble along the main shore towards Keokaha? A beach with rarer shells is there; and the whole rocky shore beyond is most curiously cracked into branching dykes, through which the rising waves pour incessant floods, filling and falling as the ocean heaves and falls. We are put across the channel in our boat, and for an hour longer we follow " ALOHA I" the coast, marvelling at the work of fire and water fulfilling the word of the Lord. These iron rocks were poured in a molten river from mountain into ocean. Think of iron fired in Mauna Loa and tempered in the Pacific Ocean! Such is the tire which binds Hawaii. We walk along the rim, and peer into the black caves, where the green waves make their den. Now, as it seems, all is still and empty. And now, with a deep roar, his mane on end, the leonine water comes rushing towards us. Perchance some angel, unseen of us, stops his mouth. He slinks back, surly but subdued. Wait quietly and watch, looking into one of these dark pits. See, the rock is all alive with crabs, almost as black as the pit. The least movement from you will send them scampering to their protecting clefts. But they fear nothing from the roaring, trampling waves; they simply cling the tighter when the waters rise and let the great flood roll over them. In this fascinating exploration we take no note of time, and night might have overtaken us among these pitfalls if the captain's call had not sounded. We returned to the boat, to find every thing packed, and everybody but ourselves ready to return. Then the land and sea forces took each its natural way, after one of the most peaceful and successful assaults that little island has ever known. COCOA-NUT ISLAND. 133 Farewell! thou happy moment in a day of Time, Thou island, set in the immeasurable sea; 'Tis not by length of days true joy is found: 'Tis by pure rapture and intensity. One truly happy moment is enough To keep the clew and guide the traveller's way; As in a labyrinth, one little spark Leads through the darkness into open day. 134 " ALOHA 1" PUNA AND ONOMEA. MONDAY, March 13. I START with Mr. Lt, this forenoon, for a trip to Puna. I am mounted on "Romeo," one of his horses. We propose to ride to Kaau, where Mr. L — has a house and cattle station, dine there, and press on to Puna this afternoon. The entire ride to Kaau is through the woods, which only differ from those we passed in going to Kilauea in being more open and evidently more frequently travelled. The road is quite passable; or would be, if one had wings. In places. it really seems like a road constructed, as it has been, by the hand of man. My friend, when mounted on one of his horses, is a perfect centaur. There is nothing in the shape of the impassable which he cannot ride over with perfect ease. He cannot lay claim to the cattle on a thousand hills, but thousands of cattle on the hill are his or his partners'. A levelheaded man under all circumstances, he inspires me with absolute confidence and respect. He is the eldest son of my revered friend, in whose house one of the happiest fortnights of my life has been passed. PUNA AND ONOMEA. 135 His own house, close beside his father's, unites New England thrift with Hawaiian grace and pleasantness in a rare and happy combination. It was like him to give me "Romeo," his favorite horse, for this excursion; and equally like him to saddle himself with my care and guidance on an errand of business of his own. It seems to have been given to these missionaries, as a compensation for their early sacrifices and labors, to have diligent, upright, and prosperous sons. Both in the Islands and in our own country the children of Hawaiian missionaries are occupying positions of responsibility, and accumulating property. The habits of industry and economy in which they were of necessity bred have doubtless had much to do with their success. This very family, besides giving my accomplished companion and his brother, the circuit judge, to Hawaii, has sent two able sons to America and a daughter to Kauai. Arrived at Kaau, we lunch on boiled eggs and taro, bait our horses and give them a brief nooning, and at two o'clock start again for Puna. The student of lava will find every variety on this route, and an abundance of it. Beginning in a vast expanse of paheoeho or satin-stone, it leads to a-a, pumice, and rotten-stone. Lauhala forests cover the pahoehoe, and now and then as we travel through them wild cattle make their appearance, and acknowledge Mr. L-'s ownership by running rapidly away. Some coco palms succeed the lauhalas. 136 3"ALOHA! All the way the sound of a splendid surf attends us, and occasionally a lock of silvery spray tossed above the rocks hints the ocean beauty which we cannot see. All at once this iron barrier is removed, and we are opposite a beach where the surf rolls up magnificently. At the foot of the black lava sand-hills, beyond this beach, we stop to pick up olivine crystals scattered among the lava pebbles. Then we come to fresh green lands, with the finest specimens of coco palms which we have seen. Mr. Clemens's witty comparison of this palm to a "feather-duster struck by lightning" does not apply to these luxuriant jets of foliage. Each frond, with pinnye of a vivid, glossy green and a midrib of polished amber, was a piece of ideal vegetation. I did not wonder that Miss B-, who sojourned with us at Hilo, wished, above all things, to carry one of these palm leaves to America with her. It is the chef-d'oeuvre of tropical vegetation. No wonder this district was a favorite dwelling-place of the natives. A respectable settlement still remains. But the large old meeting-house, which stands among the little grass houses as an ostrich might stand with a brood of chickens about her, seems sadly.in excess of the probable need of the place. Not many years ago it was filled with worshipping congregations. Dr. Coan tells me that he has preached there to an overflowing house; but there will be no crowd this year, although all the population around is convened. PUNA AND ONOMEA. 137 There is to be a general conference in this church in two days. On our return to-morrow, we shall meet family and neighborly parties going to Puna to keep this church appointment. Delegates from Hilo will be coming over this difficult road; Mr. Forbes and Dr. Coan will both be among them. The latter has often walked the whole distance, preached, presided at business meetings, prayed, talked, and responded to innumerable calls and claims, - doing the work of a week in two days, - during one of these conferences. When I asked him if such unremitted speech and labor did not wear upon him, his answer was, "Well, I sometimes feel a little legweary." A little way beyond the church, we turn aside from the beaten path, to visit a famous warm spring. Riding through a coco grove, we soon reach it, - a natural bathing-trough in the cleft of a rock. A little hut on its brink - itself very inadequately clad - answered for a dressing or undressing house, and from its threshold the bather stepped or plunged, according to his ability. My companion, like all Hawaiians " to the manner born," was amphibious, and disported himself in this deep pool of tepid water with a freedom and variety of action which made my laborious pawing on the surface ridiculous. What refreshment anybody finds in this enervating flood I cannot imagine. The unwary traveller will be as sured that it is a potent cure for all the bruises and 138 " ALOHA!" jars incident to flesh; and in this faith he may go in. If he wishes to keep his faith, he had better stay out. One clear, cold bath is worth a hundred of these warm ablutions. We arrive at Captain E 's ranch, our destination, at six o'clock. Here we find a cluster of buildings facing a cluster of green hills and springing pasture-lands, and in their rear the ever-present sea. Captain E- is a German, his wife is Hawaiian, and his children are both. The native complexion and eyes, hovever, predominate in the family, and their life on the ranch will make the Hawaiian type of character and habit the ruling one. Half a dozen houses are required to do the duty of one or two larger houses among us. A dwelling and dormitory, a dining-house, a shop, a store, a barn, all are clustered together here; and an immense barn-yard, where cows in every stage of unruliness are congregated, completes the domesticity of the place. This is a stopping-place for travellers going to Kilauea by the Puna route, and happily one can pay for his entertainment, a rare privilege in these too hospitable islands. What would a New England farmer say to one of these great ranches, so prodigal of cattle, so destitute of milk? The operation of milking the cows at evening was more like a battle than a peaceful farming chore. No song of the milkmaid would ever have been written here. The gentle animal with the beseeching eyes, sweetly PUNA AND ONOMEA. 139 responsive to the milkmaid's touch, is not a Hawaiian product. These untamed beasts will yield nothing unless their calves are kept, to appeal to their natural feelings; and even then the process of securing the residue is attended with serious liabilities from hoof or horn. A mad bull is a tame creature, it is said, beside a mad cow. The former shuts his eyes when he drives at you; the latter keeps hers open. This interferes with one's freedom in dodging her attack. I was pleased to see that our ranchero, the captain, in spite of his knowledge of the field, made some very lively motions as he badgered the cows into position for milking, and beset them with calf and milker on either hand. It may be that the uncertain temper of the cattle in this secluded ranch life serves to introduce the spice of excitement into its excessive monotony. The irascible cow is the pastoral analogue of the murderer, burglar, or house-burner of civilized society, whose exploits give the daily paper its zest and entertainment. Certainly something more than the possibility of an earthquake or an eruption is needed to give to the joys of this perfect earth their needed element of insecurity. The dwellers in volcanic regions lose their-dread of earthquakes the moment they are past, and no spectacle of cooled lava raises the fear of fiery floods. Mr. L — has to look for some cattle on the way (" ALOHA I" home, and give directions to his drivers. He therefore takes an early start the next morning, agreeing to intercept me somewhere on my return. As there is but one path, and no temptation in the adjoining country to leave it, I cannot well go astray, and have no regret but the loss for a while of his agreeable company. There is an old heiau on a neighboring hill which I must visit, and also a green lake to which I am recommended; a subtle compliment, no doubt, to my inexperience in Hawaiian ways and places. I visit the lake first, and find it a deep pool in the pit of an old crater. Time, moisture, and warmth have clothed the once bare sides of the crater with foliage, and I suppose the green tint comes from the reflection in the pool of its verdant enclosure. Two ducks held undisputed possession of the lake when I was there. I should say that it was an excellent place for ducks. The other excursion to the hill-top, where the ruins of the old heiau may be seen, and where an outlook is secured unsurpassed in scope, variety, and suggestiveness, must have a chapter by itself. I cannot marshal what I wish to say about Christian missions and their influence upon these islands under any other text than that given to me that morning in the deserted heiau of Puna. In the missionary chapter which follows must be given the story of my impressions upon this desecrated hill-top. After spending PUNA AND ONOMEA. the forenoon there, I rode back to Captain E - 's, to make my farewell and pay my dues. I found a native woman there who was well known for her skill in weaving the strong and comely lauhala mats, everywhere used by the Hawaiians as beds. She engaged to furnish me with half a dozen, and the Captain undertook to send them to my friends in Honolulu to be shipped to America. They are much admired, and often used by our guests at the farm in New England where we spend our summers. Laid upon the grass, they offer a tempting and comfortable lounge, easily transported, and never out of order. One summer night, when my Hawaiian recollections were so strong with me, that I was compelled to do something to quiet the homesickness for Hawaii, I slept on our lanai,- a piazza thirty feet square, which we have built on the Hawaiian pattern, - and made these mats my bed. It proved an effectual cure for that attack. I did not wonder that those islanders resorted to lomi-lomi, or any other manipulation which would relieve the body of stiffness and soreness. One quiet night of such repose is as exhausting as a day's journey on horseback. And when, in the midst of the horizontal stargazing with which the night commenced, the air began to hum with insect life, and grow " eager and nipping" with insect vitality, ah! then we remembered Hawaii's only but sufficient misery, - the nocturnal mosquito. 142 "ALOHA!" But this is a most unseasonable reminiscence, just as we were setting out on our horseback ride to Hilo, in the clear noon-tide. It is a sparkling day; hardly a cloud in the sky; a new edition of the old poem of the creation, bound in blue and gold. "Romeo " and I ask no other company than each other, and set out buoyantly on our return. Woodland and garden and pasture-land brighten and cheer the way for the first hour or two, and when we come to the desolate lava flows and their desperate surroundings, we are not alone, - Mr. L -, with two native herdsmen, join us before that time. Together we ride back to Kaau, every mile or two meeting natives from Hilo going to Puna to attend the coming convention; and when we reach the grass house in which we are to spend the night, we find Dr. Coan and his estimable wife there. The account of that evening must be postponed also to our chapter on missions. After the evening services were over, Mr. L — and I took a bath in the sea, and then, walking inland a rod or two, we plunged into a fresh-water pond which lies conveniently near the sea, and were rescued from the pickle in which the over-salt Pacific generally leaves the bather in its waters. That night, thanks to healthy weariness and the double bath, we slept a dreamless sleep on beds of mats. Half of the grass house was curtained off, and all the white company lay down there with quite as much privacy and far more air and room than that PUNA AND ONOMEA. 143 last achievement of modern civilization, the Pullman car, affords. My host and I rose at four o'clock the next morning, determined to reach Hilo by breakfast time. We also secured, by our early start, the only fresh and cool hours of the day for the journey. In mingled moonlight and dawn we passed through the Hilo woods, and arrived at our homes- no other name is dear enough for the houses in which I stayed at Hilo - in time for the all-renewing bath and the best of breakfasts which awaited us there. In my absence, Madame and the boy had absconded. The A s of Onomea had invited us to visit them in their breezy home, and Mr. S — had escorted the only members of the family who could accept the invitation to their destination. Onomea is about eight miles north of Hilo. It is the name given to Mr. A - 's extensive sugar plantation and mills. In the rainy season, there is some peril in crossing the streams which flow into the sea all along this shore through numerous ravines. But we had been favored with ten days' freedom from frequent rains, - a special dispensation, it seemed, for our benefit. It gave us the very opportunity we desired, not only to visit Onomea, which Miss Bird has described in such a fascinating way in her rapturous book, but also to see some unique falls in the great forest in the rear of Hilo. It was arranged that Mrs. S- and I should follow the deserters on my return, and on Thursday 144 1( ALOHA!" morning we started. After crossing the deep-flowing Wailuku, and climbing the further bank of the gulch through which it finds the ocean, our way was through a succession of ravines of varying depth but unvary. ing steepness. The road was little more than a bridle-path, and seemed to have been engineered by a stream of water. Its course was very much the same as might be taken by such a stream starting from the top and running down the side of the ravine; Possibly it was built with reference to the wishes of running water, for undoubtedly in this region of incessant rain the water is its most frequent traveller. But nobody who can appreciate the glorious green and luxuriant grace of the vegetation here will complain of the rain. It is that which makes such verdure possible. And what would the sugar-fields and taro patches do without this abundant rainfall? We stop at Paukaa, and find the sugar-pans in full ebullition. We pass Kaiwiki, too, the sugar plantation in which our good doctor of Hilo is interested. We easily ford most of the streams with which this coast is fringed, but two of them require a ferry-boat. We are taken over one of them by a native ferry-man, or woman rather, for this stalwart creature who pulls the raft over the stream is a woman, in spite of her masculine beard. Native riders, male and female, with their invariable lei of brightcolored flowers and their unfailing " Aloha "of kindly PUNA AND ONOMEA. 145 salutation, meet us and pass on. Trains of mules carry bags of sugar to the shore, but there seems to be no exit for it among the breakers that beat incessantly before the cove. In the rear of the sugar-mills, long flumes, lifted on high trestle-work, run far as eye can see up to the waving cane-fields, and even to the belt of trees far beyond. Down these flumes, carried again by the willing waters, come the wood from the forests and the cane-stalks from the fields. These last lie in heaps by the mill side, and go, grinding and ground, through the tremendous presses, and come forth with all their juices crushed out of them. Henceforth they are known as " trash," and after being dried in great piles under cover, they serve as fuel to boil their own life-blood into the sugar of commerce. All these and other processes make up a part of our observations at Onomea, where we shall find model sugar-mills in full operation. Mr. A -, who is to be our host, is an American of the best business type. He has brought his plantation and mills to their present efficiency only at great expense and by indomitable industry, energy, and skill. How any man has the courage to attempt the culture of cane, its conversion into sugar, and its exportation to other countries, in the face of such obstacles as he has to meet in Hawaii, surpasses my limited powers of imagination or enterprise. What though this lava soil does produce five tons to the acre, the business of getting 10 C" ALOHA!" those tons transported to the shore, and then the cost of the sugar plant, as the mill is called, and then the gauntlet of wind and wave which the manufactured article has to run before it is safely shipped, are enough to discourage any but the most resolute of planters. The first cost of the works at Onomea was one hundred thousand dollars, and the annual cost of running them is thirty thousand. No wonder sugarmakers on the Islands must have either reciprocity with America or annexation, with its freedom from consuming duties. Onomea is on a headland, six hundred feet above the sea. Two ravines converge at its feet, and the bright waters meet there, if not as calmly as in the sweet vale of Avoca, still with a rapture of salutation which is more in sympathy with this impassioned land. A miniature village nestles under its trees, and on the height above it rise the roofs and chimneys of the sugar-mill, the regularity and stiffness of the one made almost picturesque by the rambling and varied character of the other. We make the last ascent, pass the mill and its attendant houses, and dismount before the garden paling which, in true Yankee fashion, runs along in front of the dwellinghouse, and defends a patch of flowers from brute invasion. Our hostess comes down the garden path with both my truants, to meet and welcome her sister, Mrs. S, and myself. This, then, is Onomea, the PUJNA AND ONOMEA. 147 compend of all earthly sweetness and freshness, if one may trust Miss Bird's account. If we did not think so at that moment, it was because no worthy sight, any more than a really great person, is revealed at its first introduction. Twentyfour hours in this upland home nearly brought us to our predecessor's enthusiasm. Like the cane in its fields, Onomea grew in sweetness every hour. Its domestic life, replete with comfort and unencumbered by display; its true simplicity, saved from the possibility of rudeness by refinement and good taste in its proprietors, - gave precisely that happy medium between camp life with its freedom, and city life with its slavery, which we so often sigh for at home, but fail to find. We had no time to explore its natural wonders; an afternoon walk to a deep gorge with a dizzy bridge above it was our only excursion. Our acquaintance with the forest treasures in the great belt of woods behind it must be made at another time and in another section of the girdle. Here the crowning interest is the very material one of sugar-making. I am glad to see it in all its processes, and conducted as it is by Mr. A — in the most approved manner. The great flumes with their rushing water, bringing cane-stalks from the distant fields, explain themselves; but the apparatus inside the mill needs explanation. My host leads me from the blade to the full sugar in the bags, and I see the "ALOHA!" press, the huge containers where the juice lies sweetly sulking; the precipitator; the vacuum-pan or monstrous boiler, in which the liquid comes to its required grossness; the ingenious centrifugals, in which the sugar is at length separated from its burden of treacle; and, last of all, the packing-room, where the sugar lies like a great sand-bank, waiting to be put into bags and shipped. At the time of my visit, the negotiations for the reciprocity treaty with the United States were still pending, and the life or death of the sugar interest was involved in the issue. The settlement of that question by the passage of that treaty has given an impetus to sugar production which will revolutionize the whole country. The cultivation of new lands, and the introduction of foreign labor and foreign capital which it involves, must change the social and political status as much as it changes the natural features of the Islands. Happily there is a leaven of well-bred, Christian character already predominant in Hawaii, and in the uncertain issue of the future —in the conversion of the barbarism of a selfish commerce in the future, as in the less difficult conversion of the barbarism of the native community in the past - this Christian character and influence must be the main dependence. I look to these men whom I could name, if it werdnot invidious to others equally trustworthy but unknown to me, to maintain the high standard of business honor PUNA AND ONOMEA. 149 and preserve the noble habit of humane interest in the humble classes in which they have been nurtured. Their fathers did not go to Hawaii for greed. Like the land of the Pilgrims, from which the early missionaries came, Hawaii was colonized for God. It is their sons', to keep it from the world, the flesh, and the devil. The horses are saddled and waiting at the gate. Mrs. S- and Mrs. C — are lifted into their side-saddles, so loyal are they to the inconvenient ways of civilization. Young C — sits astride the pommel of a Mexican saddle, nicely pillowed for his greater ease in riding, and behind him a big kanaka sits, holding him on and guiding the horse. I navigate the mule. This fellow is a great wag, so I am told. He brought Mr. S — down the other day, when the first instalment of our party came here, and Madame, who is a curious observer of animals, declares that she saw this mule deliberately lift his foot, as if to kick Mr. S, and then just as deliberately put it down again, with the threat unfulfilled. That was his little joke. Probably out of deference to the cloth, he refrained from joking on this journey, and we all set out on our return to Hilo in the best of health, spirits, and prospects of a safe conduct. The native horseman, with my boy in charge, led the way. His greater speed often opened a long distance between us, and, as we surmounted one side of a ravine, we " ALOHA!" could see him disappearing over the summit.of the opposite side at a rate to which our young horseman was not accustomed. We wondered how the boy was bearing the separation from us, and the roughand-tumble ride he was having in the embrace of his dark-skinned keeper. We found the secret of his unexampled content, when we overtook the trio - horse, kanaka, and boy - stopping at a wayside station. Young C — was blissfully sucking the end of a generous stalk of sugar-cane. We saw Deborah, the companion of Miss Bird's thrilling adventures on this road, - a staid, pleasant-looking young matron now, happily married to a white husband. Our journey home was wholly without incident of an exciting or thrilling kind, the ride itself being its sufficient enjoyment; and when we reached Mr. S — 's house again, the dear home-letters we found awaiting us there made this best of dwellings more homelike to our hearts than ever. A MISSIONARY CHAPTER. A MISSIONARY CHAPTER. NEAR the village of Puna, in Hawaii, on the crest of an extinct volcano, may be found the ruins of a heiau, or heathen temple. I rode there one bright morning, and, tying my horse to one of the old palm trees that grew beside the ruins, I gave myself without reserve to the suggestions of the place and the hour. The spot commanded the most varied and beautiful scenery among the Hawaiian Islands. Seen from this height, the ocean seemed smoothed of all its ripples, but the convolutions of glazed and deadened surfaces showed what currents were wrestling together there. The black lava shore was every moment brightened by jets of white spray thrown over it by the heaving sea. Two rounded cones of pumice and ashes varied, but could not relieve, the long coast-line of barren lava. But this line once passed, the green plumes of the coco palm answered brightly the signal of the sea. Long stretches of native forests were behind them, and, looking further inland, both the great mountains came into view: Mauna Loa, with his outline so like the bent bow, and the cloud of its still active volcano hovering 152 " ALOHA!" above it with direful remembrance of the "smoking flax;" and Mauna Kea, the perfect mountain, its snowy summit 13,800 feet above the sea, and yet so gradual and evenly sustained in its elevation, that it seemed like a well-spent life seen in happy review, with all its successive steps ordered by the Lord and crowned with Heaven's approval and companionship. On the near left, the greenest of pastures covered a rolling upland where herds of cattle were grazing. A thrifty settlement near by claimed pasture and herd as its own, and above the groves of cocoa-nut and bread-fruit trees rose a white church-spire, so like the country steeples of New England that any one would have known its Puritan origin. The fresh wind blew among the palms above me, making their monstrous fronds strive and groan, and all around me, on the ground, the old fruits of the coco palms lay, bare and bleached, their hollow eyes affecting me as if they had been in reality, and not only in imagination, the skulls of the victims who had perished on this mountain top. I was alone, far away from home, surrounded by novel and imposing scenery, fresh from hearing and reading of the savage worship which had been native to this spot, and I seemed, under these circumstances, so favorable to the working of imagination and sympathy, to come nearer to the reality of heathen superstition and human sacrifice than I had ever been before. Up this A MISSIONARY CHAPTER. 153 very steep which I had ridden over, the doomed men were led or dragged. On these very stones where I reposed, their blood had flowed. The same heavens stretched over them and made no sign; the same hills looked down, beautiful but heedless, consenting to their death. There was no pity in the laughing sea. Remembering this, there came a heartless look over earth and sky; but in all the scene there was one little speck that showed white above the palm trees, that seemed to grow purer and holier and sweeter than all the rest. It was the poor, cheap, homely old Puritan steeple that told where the village church was built. " IIe hath no form nor comeliness;... there is no beauty that we should desire him." "Lift up thine eyes round about, and behold: all these gather themselves together, and come to thee. As I live, saith the Lord, thou shalt surely clothe thee with them all, as with an ornament, and bind them on thee, as a bride doeth." We had ridden from Hilo the day before, -- twentyfive miles, - over a sea of lava as rough and broken as a field of ice-hummocks in the Arctic Ocean. On our return we met several companies of natives, all mounted, on their way to Puna to attend an ordination service, which, with its conference meetings, was to extend over several days. Arriving at Keaau, our resting station for the night, we found the veteran missionary of Hilo, Dr. Coan, there. Although past " ALOHA " his threescore years and ten, he was started on this toilsome ride to give the dignity and fervor of his presence to the approaching meetings. No journeying that I have ever undertaken compares in difficulty and consequent fatigue with this riding over a lavastone region, where the road is as uneven, winding, and slippery as the bed of at mountain stream; but this old man seemed insensible to weariness, and impervious alike to rain or sunstroke. Just from a bath in the cool wellof Keaau, he greeted us with all the freshness of perpetual youth in his expansive face, and such abundance in his flowing white hair, that it seemed rather the decoration of wisdom than the confession of many years. I shall not soon forget the story of his early missionary attempts among the savages of Patagonia, which he told me that evening, -how he left home and friends and the advances of pleasant parishes in New England, where he could easily have settled, and the woman who was his betrothed, and sailed off with only one companion, amid many discouragements, and, as it afterwards proved, led by mistaken information in regard to the people and the country to which he was bound. But deeper than the remembrance of his story of mission adventure among the Patagonians is the impression left with me of that evening's service in the grass house of Kaau. We were resting, in default of chairs, on the lauhala mats in which the native A MISSIONARY CHAPTER. 155 houses abound. The ranch-owner and myself were stretched on mats by the door; the native herdsmen were grouped opposite us, almost hidden in the double darkness of their own skins and the evening shades. On the one table of the house stood an astral lamp, and facing it, with rival and superior brightness, was the venerable missionary, his Bible before him, and his hymn-book, as if eager to open its mouth wide with praise, just parted at the selected number. The sure, strong, tempered tones of vigorous manhood and experienced faith gave forth the epistle in English, and then the same lips, speaking Hawaiian, - the very language alike of childhood and of prayer, - opened with invocation, thanksgiving, and petition. Never but once before have I heard a hymn sung with such bashful yet manly earnestness as these people sang their evening psalm, - that was when the wounded soldiers in Fredericksburg, led by Helen Gilson, sung "There is rest for the weary." The very stars, seen through the open doorway, seemed crowding to listen, and the great sea said "Amen." Dr. Coan has labored nearly fifty years in these islands, and every house within a hundred miles knows and honors him. He has walked all these rough ways, frequently going forty miles, on parish business. In 1869 he had received 12,627 people into his church, — the largest church roll of any " ALOHA!" minister in his generation. More than 2,000 were received on one day, although their conversion was not of that ephemeral sort. They had attested their sincerity by a long period of previous inquiry and probation, but they were formally admitted to the church on one day. If I dwell on the work of thi~ man, it is not because he is the only or chief missionary, but because he is a fine example of his kind, and because I happened to meet and see him in the midst of his parochial duties. In Hilo, where his home is, I lived near him and his large native church, and could hear the daily call of his sonorous bell, summoning young men to their classes or the people to their prayers. It revived the memory of college privileges nearer home as I saw the students of Father Lyman's native academy come trooping over the field and down the road in apparel which showed the haste if not the eagerness of their devotions, and disappear within the portals of the old-fashioned New England meeting-house. On Sundays, the flood of praise which filled the church could only be equalled by the rains which fall in Hilo. It was a pleasure, unique to me, to preach to the unfamiliar audience which gathered there. Dr. Coan's hearty and prompt insistence on my preaching for him quite overcame every obstacle of divergent religious sect and foreign tongue. For the first, if he did not mind it, I had no desire to; and for the sec A MISSIONARY CHAPTER. 157 ond, I had already tried speaking with an interpreter, and liked it. Undoubtedly it robs speech of its continuous flow, and takes all the rush out of one's eloquence, to be obliged to stop at every sentence while the interpreter translates. But what is lost in &lan is compensated for by the gain in conciseness and solid contents. I accepted it as a wholesome discipline in the art of matterful preaching, and would recommend it as a good method of training in our divinity schools. But the lasting satisfaction of this service in Dr. Coan's church is not in its compulsory deliberation of speech: it is in the responses of brighteyed intelligence catching the speaker's meaning; the revelations of a common humanity in people who live the wide world apart; and the hope of some unseen good accomplished, which is always the preacher's earlest of reward. When I went to church that day and found the veteran pastor standing in the doorway, welcoming with beaming face and hearty grasp of the hand the people as they entered; when I saw among the congregation not only Hawaiians but Chinese, and learned that some of them, too, belonged to the church, - it gave me a sense of the brotherhood. of man and a corresponding joy in this manifestation of it, with which the intellectual consent given to this doctrine, as I have heard it gloriously preached at home, compared only as some fine description of a pine-apple compares with the real taste of one. Again, in the c ALOHA I" church, as so often before in the social life and business walks of these islands, had I been struck with their cosmopolitan character. The whole world in little is there, and I know of no other place where the people of all nations unite so happily without losing their distinctive flavor. Something of this is due, no doubt, to the mild demands of the local government upon the inhabitants; but how much more must be credited to the prevalence of that religion which makes man our brother, and God the common Father of all mankind! I was saying that I met Dr. Coan on his way to the convention at Puna. You know the man better, now that I have described something of his work. Strong, devoted, shrewd, reverent, emotional, yet always selfcontained, dignified, yet of most gracious manner, he seems in face and figure, no less than in recorded deeds, a fine type of his class. Goldsmith's vicar, whose " gown the children plucked to share the good man's smile," was not more sweetly venerable. I could only think of that saintly father of the Deserted Village, when I saw Dr. Coan coming along the rural streets of Hilo. He came up the road leading to his church, one.Sunday, at the head of a sad procession of mourners bringing the body of an honored woman in that little town. She had died suddenly, and all hearts were touched with sympathy for her family. The great church was filled with people. No chief or A MISSIONARY CHAPTER. 159 " chiefs " would have had a larger funeral. And yet this woman was only a nurse and day-laborer. Her worth, and not her rank, was her glory. A consistent Christian woman, everybody agreed. If only one such jewel were found in the crown of the good missionary's rejoicing, it would be enough to justify his labors. I do not like to argue the cause of foreign missions in a Christian community. The necessity for such an argument would reflect too much upon its Christianity. "Do you think," asked a merchant of an earnest religious man and merchant of Honolulu, " that the mission to the Hawaiian Islands has really done the people much good?" That depends," was the spirited reply, " on whether the people of the Hawaiian Islands have souls or not." I would be willing to rest the case on much lower ground than that, unassailable as that would be; for if the benefits of the Christian religion were for this world only, it would be pre-eminently true that Christianity has blessed and redeemed these people. The story of its advent into Hawaii may not be freshly remembered. The first missionaries were sent forth to their work from Park Street Church in Boston, October 15, 1819. One month after they had started, idolatry and the cruel system of tabu in the Islands were overthrown -by the free act of king and high-priest, so that when they arrived there, after a five months' voyage, they 160 "A ALOHA! found the " isles literally waiting for God's law." No wonder Bingham took this for his text, on that first Sunday, when he preached on board the brig " Thaddeus," that "Mayflower" of the Pacific, and the people gathered on the shore and waited for his word. Since that day, forty ordained missionaries, six physicians, twenty lay teachers, and eighty-three female missionaries, have been sent to these islands by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. The people of the United States have contributed more than a million of dollars to the support of this mission. What have been the returns? The statistics in 1863 say: Fifty-six Protestant churches formed, to which have been admitted sixty-seven thousand members. Then follow the establishment of common schools, the translation and publication and spread of the Bible, and a large amount of educational and Christian literature. If missionary influence were followed into all the departments where its consecrated agents have worked for the good of the kingdom, it would unquestionably be found true that not only religion, education, literature, indeed the very existence of a written language, but the government itself, owed its best features to Christian teaching and superintendence. The first utterance of the Bill of Rights, granted by the king in 1839, - a paper which corresponds to our Declaration of Independence,- says, in Bible phrase, that " God has made of one blood all A MISSIONARY CHAPTER. 161 nations of men;" and the motto of the kingdom to-day is, that "Righteousness is the foundation of the land." In the code of laws adopted in 1846 we find it provided that "the religion of Jesus Christ shall continue to be the established national religion of the Hawaiian Islands." Thus early and late, in form and in substance, is the government based on Christian principles and profession. To appreciate the extent of this change, in little more than half a century, one must know something of the land and people before the missionaries went to them. In their first intercourse with the white men who came to their islands they seem to have been friendly, generous, and unsuspecting. The murder of Captain Cook, which has been for years almost the only thing known about the Hawaiian Islands, was not an act of unprovoked hostility or especial cruelty. They had received him and his crew with lavish hospitality, seeing in Cook, as they superstitiously believed, one of their long-lost gods, - Lono. He practised on their superstition, receiving honors, worship, and gifts as a god,- not a very creditable proceeding, surely. He paid the penalty of his effrontery with his life; for when, on being wounded, he groaned, the people cried, " Can a god groan? " and immediately despatched him. His treatment by the natives, on the whole, demonstrates their superstition, their simplicity, but hardly their cruelty. They were 11 " ALOHA!" habitual thieves, and had no idea of what is meant by domestic purity. Infanticide was not uncommon. Idolatry was everywhere practised, and human sacrifices were freely offered to their deities. Add to these traits and customs the devastating effects of frequent wars, intemperance, and licentiousness, and enough is known to make the comparison between Hawaii fifty years before and Hawaii fifty years after the entrance of Christian missions an argument of sufficient force on the side of missionary success. The numerical decline of the native population of these islands began before the missionaries arrived, and is due to causes no power on earth can wholly remove. The best authority on this subject —Mr. Jarves-says that Christianity has really arrested a decay already fearfully active before it came to the Islands. But whether this can be claimed or not, there is no question as to its beneficent influence upon the characters and social customs of the people. Mr. Damon, in a review of the first fifty years of the missions to the Hawaiian Islands, says: "The missionaries and their coadjutors may not have accomplished all that their ardent desires led them to anticipate, or all that zealous writers have represented, but this one fact has been achieved, through their toils and labors, accompanied by God's rich blessing,- Christianity has here become firmly established, and from this point as a centre Christian missionaries have been A MISSIONARY CHAPTER. 163 sent to the Marquesan Islands and Micronesia." He alludes in this to the missionary zeal and enterprise of the Hawaiian converts themselves, who support and supply with preachers a mission of their own to the islands of the South Pacific. In this very fact they show that they have taken Christianity in its typical form; for where the spirit of Christ is, there always is the spirit of missions. I was in Honolulu when the "Morning Star," the mission-ship which makes an annual voyage among the stations in the Pacific, arrived there. She brought glad tidings from afar; for there, too, in those lost islands, so far away from the civilized centres of the world, the word of Jesus Christ had taken such hold that the queen of one of the islands - Obodinyeh - had left her pleasant home among the hilly and fruitful lands, and sailed away from her kingdom and her people to carry the news of salvation to the low coral islands further west. Such examples of Christian heroism as this can hardly be surpassed, if they can be equalled, among our own more favored communities; and they show, beyond all cavil, the receptiveness of these people to the Christian spirit. The story of Kapiolani and her heroic attempt to deliver her people from the terrors of their heathen worship, is just as decisive of the thoroughness of her own conversion to Christianity, and even more dramatic in some of its incidents. Her famous visit 164 "ALOHA!" td Kilauea, and demonstration of the unreality of Pele, its dreaded goddess, is only equalled by the Bible account of the contest between Elijah and the prophets of Baal. Determined to destroy, if possible, the superstitious belief in Pele, which had weighed upon her land for generations, and been the source of so much cruelty and wrong, Kapiolani left her home in Kona and walked to Kilauea. In vain her terrified and affectionate dependants clung to her by the way, and tried to change her purpose. Over the hard and shining blocks of lava, through cinders and ashes, under great ohia trees that shot out their tongues of fire at her, as if to warn her of her approaching destruction, - on and up she walked, until she came to the rim of the great black pit, and saw beyond the floes of fresh lava, still glowing in their seams and crevices with consuming heat, the raging, swelling, liquid fire. Then picking the ohelo berries which grew beside her, and which it was not lawful to eat until the first-fruits had been thrown into the volcano, in honor of its divinity, she went down into the pit, eating the forbidden berries, and walking fearlessly over the uncertain sea, until she came to the shore of the blood-red lake, burning and spouting with unquenchable fire; and there, in the very stronghold of Pele's power, she denied the heathen divinity's existence, and prayed to the one true God. In Judge Fornander's studious book on the Polynesian Races, I find it stated A MISSIONARY CHAPTER. that the Pel or Pele of the Hawaiians is probably the same as the Bel or Baal of the Phoenicians. Starting from one cradle, in Western Asia, this devastating superstition made its way to the shores of the Mediterranean and to the islands of the mid-Pacific. But in the fulness of time another and diviner faith wfent sailing westward, encircling the world with its light and life, and dulling the glow of Pele's lake and Bel's shining idol, with its superior illumination. It went with Paul the length of the Mediterranean, and sent the divinities that crowded its shores sighing from their fanes; it crossed the Atlantic with Columbus, the prevailing motive of whose voyage was the advancement of Christianity; it occupied the new world in the name of Christ, and years afterward sent its missionaries to the Pacific isles, to conquer them for God. If we could see and know what cruel rites, involving human sacrifice; what deadly worship, perpetuating human ignorance and hate; what tyrannous inequalities, shielded by the death-line of a pitiless tabu; what habitual warfare and shameless vice; what rooted wrongs, persistent injuries, established lies, and low customs, - this rebuking, renewing, reforming religion of Jesus Christ has met and overthrown, we should not spend our strength in needless criticisms upon its earlier evidences, its lesser miracles, local adaptations, or passing accompaniments, but, con t ALOHA!" vinced and converted by its abiding purity and power, we should go forth to share its blessing with all mankind. If I am asked how the Hawaiian Christians average in life and character, and whether they illustrate very brilliantly the Christian virtues, I must admit that they are hardly more successful in that than the average Christian in our own country. Why should they be? And is it not enough to justify and glorify all that has been done for them that in half a century they have risen from superstition, war, and ignorance, to a condition of peace among themselves and with all mankind, freedom from idolatry and human sacrifice, general comfort, and the nearest approach to universal education known among any people? Nearly every adult upon the Islands can read and write. If you would realize how great an achievement this is, you have only to imagine the Indians of North America, after five times as long an apprenticeship, and with all the advantages (?) of close contact with the United States; converted to Christianity, taught in public schools, obedient to just authority, delivered from warfare, and pursuing honest callings. Do you say," Why spend your strength on these perishing nations? Are they not dying out?" I answer: We are not competent to make that objec A MISSIONARY CHAPTER. 167 tion. It is not open to men who are themselves hastening to decay to question the value of Christianity to a dying race. The same consideration would dispose as justly of their own claims upon the blessings of the Christian religion. 168 "ALOA I" WAILUKU. E VERY thing that happened in Hilo is memorable to me, and every thing I saw there is as clearly visible to my closed eyes as to-day's landscape is when I look around me. It is as difficult to leave the subject, in this story of Hawaiian travel, as it was to leave the place itself when I was there. To omit from these pages the account of my excursion to the falls of the river Wailuku, and the description of the surf-bathing by the natives, would be like describing America and omitting Niagara. Not that the Wailuku Falls bear any comparison in size to the American lake-fall, but relatively to the island they are as large and interesting. The first of them is only two or three miles from Hilo, and is as easily reached as any thing can be which lies beyond the slippery, muddy, and uneven bridle-paths which pass for roads in Hawaii. Anuenue, the native name of this fall, or Rainbow Fall, in English, is unique among waterfalls. The entire river precipitates itself over a natural arch of basalt, and leaps a hundred feet into a green lake below. When very full, the stream is separated into two branches on the edge of the arch, -i -— ~i i- ------ _ __re; $i; rgj L 1 fi- ~~ BP iZsr;bcilc Fnil i-,: A #~ W!iMiUJ. }f69 but these branches unite again before the lake is reached. The high cliffs on either side are decorated with ferns in plumes and streamers, and a dwarf growth of tree runs along their summits. The arch is as perfect as if made by hand, and under it, behind the falling river, is a deep recess filled with the shadow and spray of the descending water. It would be difficult to say whether the sense of form or of colod is most charmed by this perfect gem, already set by Nature with matchless taste. Nothing purer in tint could be found in the beryl itself than the delicate green of the fall as it broke over the brown basalt rock, and the deeper emerald of the lake below only rivalled the jewel above in clearness and delicacy. Clothe the slender figure with snowy white, and let its floating drapery be interwoven with prismatic hues when the sun comes forth from his chamber in the skies, and if that splendid bridegroom can find another bride more worthy of him on the earth, I have never seen her. A visit to Anuenue is within the reach of every traveller to Hilo, at any and all seasons. But the trip to Puka-o-maui, the falls on the same river six or seven miles inland, and hidden in the thick of the great forest belt, is only feasible when there has been comparatively little rain, and the road is delivered of its floo d and swamps. Our host and hostess had been watching the weather ffor at, with a 170 "ALOHA " view of giving us this rare and delightful excursion. The clouds agreed with their kind intention, and one fine day in March our party started for a day in the woods and along the wild and variable course of the Wailuku. Dr. Wetmore, Captain K, of the "Three Brothers,"- a ship then in port, -and I started in advance of the other members of the party, in order to explore a certain portion of the forest a little off the direct path to the Natural Bridge. The Doctor and I were in search of the Botrychium, a rare fern which had been found once or twice in that neighborhood. Mr. and Mrs. S -, Miss RI-, Madame, and John, the accomplished servant who waited upon our table at Hilo, were the other division of the party, and we planned to meet at noon at our common destination. Off we started,the Doctor, the Captain, and I, - at a holiday pace, determined to make the most of the only tolerable road we should find that day. We were soon enough reduced to moderation, however, and plodded patiently upwards and onwards, until we were deep in the woods. Then began the hunt which was destined to have its conclusion very far from Hilo. Arrived at or near the supposed habitat of the Botrychium, we tethered our steeds to a tree and explored on foot the tangle of living and dead vegetation which makes up these Hilo woods. We found nearly every other fern in the catalogue except the one we were in search of. WAILUKU. At any other time and in any other mood than that of exclusive interest in that one specimen, we should have been enraptured by the richness and variety of our collection; but the Botrychium wanting, all was wanting. Rather crestfallen at our failure, we made our way back from the side-path we had followed to the trail which led to the Natural Bridge, and in due time caught up with our party. They were in the best of spirits. Success had crowned all their labors. Having nothing at heart but the full enjoyment of every thing they met, every step of the way had given them enjoyment. They were just sitting down to their noontide lunch, only waiting for our arrival to give the signal for beginning. They had explored the remarkable bed of the Wailuku above the falls; had seen the singular cave into which its water flowed; had wondered at the temerity of the native swimmers who had dared to enter that darkness, with the river as their guide, taking the risk of coming out into the sunlight again in safety; had lingered on the brink of Puka-o-maui, and shuddered at its height; and on their way to it they had stopped, as we had, and seen the veil-like waving and lapsing of the river as it flowed in two widely separate streams down the face of a steep but not quite perpendicular cliff. The same green flood at its feet which we saw at Anuenue, and then the Wailuku ran on to new wrestling with the black and gray 172 1c ALOHA!" rocks which disputed its passage to the sea. On comparing our spoils, after lunch, and joining in admiration over the graceful Gleicheniwe, the richly seeded Polypodia, the filmy Trichomenes enwreathing the dead trees, the brown-backed Acrostichum, the branching Marattia, what does Madame produce from her fern-press but a veritable Botrychium,the very fern we had gone out of our way to find! She had picked it up on the direct route to the falls, and innocently presented it to our astonished eyes, asking what it could be. The sequel of the hunt for the Botrychium may as well be given here. Wherever we went, from that day onward, our eyes were open for this fern. In Kona, in Maui, in Oahu, we were always expecting and never finding it. The few poor specimens obtained that day at Hilo were the only ones we brought home with us to America. But now, behold what pains we travellers take to search the world for the blessing which lies in our own homes! The following summer, we picked finer specimens of Botrychium literally a stone's-throw from our own door in New England, than can be found in all Hawaii. On our way home from the Natural Bridge, that afternoon, we left the beaten path once more, to see Pei-Pei Falls, and their peculiar surroundings. Here the Wailuku spreads as it nears the edge of a high cliff, and falls in several parts: the larger one a direct WAILUKU. plunge of heavy waters; the others slender, trailing streams, lingering on the face of the cliff as they descend. The meeting of the waters in the pool below is concealed from view by a natural castle of rock, which stands midway in the river-bed and guards the pass. Lesser blocks of lava rock are thrown in admirable confusion up and down the stream, and we sit on one of them and look up the river to the falls, or down to the green pools which lie below. Among these pools are some which are called boiling pots, because they resemble great caldrons with water in full ebullition within them. They are natural pits in the bed of the river, connected with each other by hidden conduits below the surface. Their connection is clearly proved by the reappearance in the pool below of whatever is dropped in the one above. The natural history of this one river, from its source on the sides of Mauna Kea, fed by its melting snows, through the unexplored forests, along the path laid out for it by volcanic eruption and earthquake, through the mysterious lava galleries and caves, now broken to fragments on the sides of Puka-o-maui, ana united again in the basin below, now torn into shreds by the rough carding of the rocks it encounters in its pathway, and thrown as wool into the great bin behind Pei-Pei, and then drawn out as yarn from the distaff, whirled and wound in the pools below, and finally woven into the dazzling garment in 174 1" ALOHA!" which Anuenue robes herself before descending to the sea,-would make a magnificent study of the manufacture of Nature. But our time is short for even a passing glance at a few only of its wonderful processes. Already the waning day admonishes us that we must return to Hilo. I remember that ride home as the time of my first realization of the perfect adaptation of these Hawaiian horses to the land they traverse. It is mistaken and unnecessary kindness to let them mope over these slippery ways. Experience has made their feet as sure as a goat's; and, like the goat, they can scamper over the rocks better than they can walk. It is only a question of how much the rider can endure of this lively agitation. Challenged by the daring speed of my nearest companion, the spirited and fearless Miss R, I set out on my return side by side with her, in true Hawaiian negligence of neck and head. We got back in time for a late dinner, so delighted with the novelty of the day's sights that we forgot to be weary with the day's travel. I had heard and read so much of the skill of the natives in swimming and their perfect domestication in the sea, that I very much wished to see some exhibition of their aquatic accomplishments. Our friends from New York came home one evening from a walk to the rapids of the Wailuku, much amused and astonished at an incident in their walk. They WAILUKU. 175 had met a native man and woman on the shore, who, like themselves, wished to make their way home. But instead of taking the toilsome way overland, these accomplished travellers quietly embarked upon the river, and shot the rapids as if they had been fishes. There is a point on the river sixty or seventy feet above deep water, from which men leap into the flood below. When Governor Dominis of Oahu sent word one morning that there would be an exhibition of surf-bathing at eleven o'clock, we were all eager to attend. The governor was visiting Hilo, and being, by marriage, a brother of the king, his wishes were received as commands by the loyal people. Promptly at eleven we went to the wharf. A large party of Americans, chaperoned by Mrs. A. L.. Stone of San Francisco, was there before us. Officers of the " Myrmidon," the British ship in which Governor Dominis had come to Hilo from Honolulu, were also in attendance. The entire commercial and trading population of Hilo was out,- a matter of three or four store-keepers and their clerks. A larger crowd of Hawaiians lined the shore, and about a dozen men, in bathing-suits of the most economical dimensions and carrying each of them a long board, more like a laundry-board divested of its cloth than any thing else, were leaping from the rocks and swimming among the breakers. The usual course of the sea in this harbor is to start with a slight curl of the 176 C( ALOHA I" lip just opposite the mouth of the Wailuku River, and then gradually break into a broad, good-natured laugh, running all alolng the curving beach beyond the little pier. If a skilful surf-bather can get his board to the front, where the roller first begins, and keep it just on the edge of the advancing wave, he will be carried with increasing swiftness on to the final break-up of the sea in the surf upon the shore. A very slight maladjustment of the saddle on these watery coursers will unseat the most accomplished rider. Again and again, amid shouts of laughter from the native crowd on shore and unnecessary sighs of anxiety from the uninitiated foreigners, these surf-riders were upset and submerged in the rushing waters. Hardly would they disappear before their shining heads would come up again in the rear of the wave that had thrown them, and they would push out further into the sea, to mount the next convenient roller. They rode their surf-boards as boys coast downhill, flat upon their faces, and seemed to keep themselves in place by a timely stroke or holdfast of their hands. The toil of swimming off with their big boards after each ride, and beginning again, would have spoiled the sport for less easy swimmers. As in coasting, one needs the excitement of a rapid descent to sustain the labor of returning to the starting-point; but to these natural swimmers it was all sport. The dilemma of the landsman who, comparing WAILUKU. 177 the perils of the shore with those of the sea, declared that in case of an accident on land, "There you are," but on the sea, "Where are you?" was no dilemma to them. Under water or above it, was equally home. And when their run was a success, and prone on their shooting rafts they came swift as an arrow shot from a bow, in one triumphant rush, from far away, almost to the rocks at our feet, it gave me a new sense of the beauty and worth of physical perfection. "Punch" says that, in case of accident, "absence of body is better than presence of mind." But there is such a thing as bodily presence which can almost defy accident. TIhese men are displaying it this very hour. See that man on his surf-board coming in on the perilous edge of the wave. He is actually standing upright on the tottering chip beneath him. With arms outstretched and body held in perfect poise he comes, fearless of fall, because equally ready for every issue of his venture. The water seems to confess him as its master, and carries him with a proud docility like a well-broken horse. The crowd watches him with breathless interest. Some of them know the difficulty of that ride. Nearer, nearer, he comes, riding the surf from the beginning to the end of the course, and then leaping, with the grace and freedom of a circus-rider, into the deep, and swimming, amid the plaudits of the spectators, to the shore. A chase of shining, brown-coated fellows, like crabs, over the 12 178 a ALOHA I" rocks to the shelter where they have left their garments of civilization, and the show is over. The audience slowly and contentedly retire. Again, at the governor's mandatory wish, some natives climb the coco palms that overlook the pier, and throw down cocoa-nuts for our refreshment. The fruit is still young enough to yield a smooth sweet pulp, instead of the hard and dry crust which passes for cocoa-nut in America. The milk in these cocoa-nuts has never been soured or skimmed. We drink the cloudy nectar, and then eat the soft lining of the cup which held it. Delightful it is to. live in a community as truly refined as any in Europe or America, and yet so free from useless conventionality that one can walk the streets eating bananas and cocoa-nuts without compromising his gentility. Am I painting Hilo in too bright colors? Am I making it an Eden, safe from wrong and sorrow, because literally free from serpents? Then let me dip my brush in some darker tint, and put in the shadows. What is the woful sound which comes from that confused company which is coming along the sea-side road and making for the pier? As they come nearer, I see two women, - one old, but redeemed for the moment from the repulsiveness of mingled age and disease by the pathos of her fate; the other young, and to the inexperienced eye blooming and well. Both are lepers. They are going to the boat, which will WAILUKU. 179 soon take them away from their families and friends for ever. It is the farewell of death, without its rest to the dying or its consolation to the bereaved. The girl's mother throws her arms about her, and weeps and wails with the agony of despair. Never on earth, unless the mother herself should fall a victim to the disease and be banished to Molokai, will she see her child again. Neighbors and relatives and friends weep and wail together, and the poor, frightened girl, dazed with the tumult about her and her inability to imagine her coming exile, stares, open-eyed and tearless, at the frantic company. They have decked her in the brightest leis, in real pity but seeming mockery of her misfortune; and one after another, careless of possible contagion to themselves, embrace and kiss the lepers as they take their departure. It seems a cruel remedy, —the forcible exportation of all leprous people in the Hawaiian Islands to one great prison valley on the island of Molokai. But they are kindly treated there. The government is responsible for their care. The island is one of the most beautiful in the group, and the valley in which they are immured is said to be unsurpassed in grandeur and fertility. Still the fact remains that their home is a prison, a life-long hospital, and no health, abundance or beauty in the land can hide the ugliness of leprosy or mitigate the misfortune of its victims. Nor are these islands free from other forms " ALOHA! " of disease. Death is no stranger here. The rapid diminution of the native inhabitants-from 130,000 in 1832, to 44,088 in 1878- shows how busily he has been at work. This is not the place to discuss the causes of this striking decline. But to those which have been adduced —namely, foreign diseases, alcohol, too rapid change from rude to civilized ways of living and consequent sterility —may be added the astonishing ease with which a Hawaiian dies. Let him imagine that he is going to die on a certain day not far removed, and die he will. He has only to fancy that some malignant neighbor is "praying him to death," as he calls it, and his early death is sure. This remnant of superstition is by no means rare. Every neighborhood furnishes examples to-day of death proceeding from this cause alone. Even Christian converts succumb to this fatal delusion, and pine and die, if they once believe that they have roused the enmity of one of these assassins-by-prayer. I saw a large family of orphans in one of the Hawaiian asylums, whose mother had been wholly unable, either by love of her offspring or faith in her religion, to shake off the influence of this evil eye. Whatever the connection between mind and body may be, it is certain that the bodies of these people are quite subservient to the mind which has resolved to die. Add to this and all the other elements of dissolution the desperation into which illness plunges these childish people, WAILUKU. 181 so that they fly for cure to any thing which gives temporary relief, and the cause of their decline in numbers becomes no mystery. The startling sound of their wailing is the one token that even Hawaii is not Paradise. I sit on the high veranda, with Eden's garden all about me; a bird in the mango tree is singing, It's raining; it's raining; hear it rain! " And very likely it is raining; but there is no terror or real unpleasantness in these renewing floods. The daring children are walking far out upon the long branches of the great tamarind tree by the church. There is a merry rout in the school-yard. But suddenly a sound, in which the plaint of the dove is blended with the rapid pulsing of his cooing, comes mournfully to my ear. I ask the meaning of this note, and learn that it is the wailing of the natives for their dead. I shall never forget the heartache we felt in our Hilo home when the burden of this lamentation was raised for the faithful woman who had served equally as servant and respected friend in the household. Moe-moe was suddenly stricken down with apoplexy on Friday evening, and died the same night. Our first assurance of her death came from the direction of the little house in which her husband lived, and to which she had been carried soon after her attack. The dove-like wailing, indefinitely prolonged and often repeated, told us that all was over. 182 " ALOHA!" Mourn! birds in your tamarind-bowers, Sing soft! sing low! Moe-moe, like the ripe fruit, is fallen, Sing low! sing low! -A rose-apple drops in the garden, Sing soft! sing low! Moe-moe has fallen, has fallen, Sing low! sing low! Dark are the leaves of the mango, Sing soft! sing low! Bright are its green-gold fruit-drops, Sing low! sing low! On the ground they are lying, lying I Sing soft! sing low! All the world is dying, dying! Sing low! sing low! But I cannot let my last word to Hilo be a lamentation. How can I best collect and blend into one focus of commemorative photography my recollections of that place? Prose is too tame; poetry too hazardous. And yet it must be one or the other. Reader, you shall call it either. ALOHA! HILO!- HILO! ALOHA! Three rounded hills, that once were capped with flame, But now stand, clothed with green, from top to toe, Beckon across the harbor to our ship. Sight them above the church! now, pilot, as we go. An island tufted with the coco palm, Edged with white sand and based on lava block, Is anchored close to shore, and like a boat It seems, among the heaving waves, to toss and rock. WAILUKU. 183 A bluff like Erin's, green-clad, ocean-bound, Forbids and tempts us on the other side. Ah, yes, we long thy verdant couch to share, But dare not trust thy surging, breaking tide. Midway the channel takes us as we sail, And bows of promise circle from the prow; While in our wake the troubled waters flow Far out to sea, and leave us, careless how The busy world maintains its noisy life. Go! wrinkled care, and troubled waters, cease I This is the shore where Hope's renewing wave, One moment dying, lives the next as Peace. Hark how the rough sea hurries to the beach Rude and impetuous, like a stubborn will, And foams and chafes, while the untroubled land Repeats Christ's admonition: "Peace, be still! " See, from the wharf that just escapes the surf Two boats are leaping with long, sweeping stroke; And groups of men and women in the street Signal, Aloha! ere the word is spoke. O children of the Sun! we come to you From delving in the mines of thought and deed; Sick are we, for the air, the light, the warmth, On which your glowing bodies daily feed. Snatch us from thought, and let us ride with you On ringing beach, and up the dizzy steep; Plunge with us in the sea, and show us how You shoot the rapids, and the cliffs o'erleap. Teach us the secret of your cheerfulness, Your full content at tables that seem bare To our fastidious sense, and help us learn In simple tastes to find abundant fare. 184 " ALOHA!" One moment, rocking by the little pier; The next, caught up by strong and friendly hands: A sea of faces smiling at our fear, The great sea laughing at the trembling sands. Oh! sweet to foot of man is solid earth! Clay cleaves to clay, dust unto dust is dear; And I in very ecstasy of joy could kiss This land, nor blush to feel the rising tear. Along the causeway, past the village store, Up the sequestered street, whose tropic shade, Fanned by banana leaves and freshly coursed By wayside stream, rather for rest than walk seems made, Together let us go. And where the street Stops midway 'tween the court-house and the home, There let us stop, and learn how passing sweet It is to bide, while thought and memory roam. How sweet to rest between the arms of love Mercy and Justice offer to mankind! And know that even so the great world lies In God's embrace, as it shall one day find. Again the lily blooms beside the porch; Again the roses scent the lingering air, And ferns uplift their crozier by the door, Guarding the household with religious care. Again you stand, dear friends, and bid us come Make your home our home, and your best set forth. Oh! was there lack or coldness in our speech, The lack or coldness of our frozen North, Forgive it. Underneath the snow and ice The grateful crocus waits to be set free; And our cup's thankfulness is filled to-night With the warm vintage of sweet memory. WAILUKU. 185 We thank you. And in weary times to come, When every beggar at the door goes fed Save friendship, hungriest of all, we '11 say, " Friendship still lives in Hilo. 'Tis not dead." I know not if the voyages yet to come Will ever bring me to your shore again; But I do love thee so, that 1 could ask E'en from the bliss we hope, for this world's pain, Just time enough to see thee once again. Stay, angel of deliverance! I would cry, Grant me one look at Hilo ere we go. Heaven lies that way. Methinks, 'tis somewhere nigh. 186 " ALOHA I " " KAAWALOA." IT was black midnight when we dropped into Kealakakua Bay. It might have been the bottom of a well, for all we could see. Indeed, the impenetrable darkness around us, overhung by a bit of star-spangled sky, rather encouraged this view of the situation, and we might have fallen into sympathetic musing upon the likeness between our fortunes and those of Joseph, if the business of landing had not made a strong claim upon our attention. Egyptian bondage, provided it was on land, had no terrors for us, after the last twenty-four hours on the sea. All I remember of that midnight landing is a big, red buoy, to which our steamer was made fast, bobbing up and down in the light of the ship's lantern, and a boat-load of luggage, into which we all tumbled with unreasoning faith. It was literally a leap hi the dark. How we got ashore is as confused a matter in my mind as the memory of a bad dream. What remains clear is this: A square room in a grass house, the walls stopping half-way to the roof, like a screen; scanty furniture, a round table with a kerosene lamp on it, a bureau, two whole chairs and -~- Sii -;:~: -~.~~~~~ ~ ss-: cir "~(141 - i alI IiF~i iii -i 1 d "~ LII:q:i 51 iaTTeti: XlotlSe and eapl"~ GOokll;i-Illnljnjeil:, Raaulaloal I "KAAWALOA " 187 the remains of a third in one corner. An old man, wrinkled, tremulous, paralytic, but speaking kindly English in the most tender and pathetic of voices, supplied the conversation which is supposed to make strangers feel at home. I cannot remember whether I asked him how far it was to Egypt or not: the question would have been a perfectly natural one. There was an uncertain complexion and foreign look about this old man which might have suited the Midianitish character. A very little child, of yet more uncertain complexion, hovered about the man, and took his fond, feeble caresses and endearments with that look of blank ingratitude which over-petted children often have. An active, fine-looking young woman, evidently a half-white, superintended the house and showed us our room, and a strongly built young man brought up the luggage. This, then, was the family with whom we were to board a while. We were in the parlor. j The room adjoining was to be our sleeping-room; other guests, if they arrived, were to occupy the rooms that remained. There was no ceiling to either of them. One common firmament of bamboo anid palm-leaf roofing was over them all. The best room, which was assigned to us, had a mosquito-netting, which was fortunately large enough to include the couch on which our little boy slept. Too thankful for land to be critical of its accommodations, and too sleepy to 188 18 ALOHA " be proud, we took immediate possession of our room. The morning light revealed all to us. The old man was Mr. Moses Barrett, an Englishman by birth, long a resident of this place, and, by intermarriage with its people, deeply identified with it. The young man and woman were his son and daughter. The little child was his granddaughter, and the shy, dark woman who haunted the background of this family group was Mr. Barrett's native wife. They had a home on the heights near Kona village, where they commonly dwelt; but they had come down to this house on the beach to entertain us there. Our Hilo host had prepared them for our coming by writing them a letter. Their lower house was built for the entertainment of guests who might wish to stay on the shore. As we were of that description, their place was what we wanted, - at least, its location was satisfactory; beyond that, honesty compels us to say that it required good health and spirits on our part, as well as the best of intentions and most obliging manners on the part of our entertainers, to make our stay here tolerable. I think we could have borne with the fare, not being epicures, but the water was really the only valid argument in favor of intoxicating beverage that I ever met. Wrigglers might enjoy it, - indeed, they seemed to, - but man could not. It was rain-water kept too long, and it shared the corruptibility of the manna, " KAAWALOA." 189 which was referred to the same source as the rain, in ancient story. The house itself was not uncomfortable, being a good specimen of the better class of grass houses. Long piazzas on both sides furnished airy and shaded living-rooms by day. The incessant breeze on the southern end of the piazza kept mosquitoes at bay: it would be rather strong for an invalid, however. We sat boldly in it, reading, talking, and naturalizing among the corals and shells we found thereabouts. But when I ask myself, how would an invalid fare in this house by the beach, I cannot but think that he were better off at home, wherever his home may be. A generous diet, cheerful society, easy bed, and all the nameless comforts which are a part of every good New England home, are wanting here. Without them, the pure air is not enough. It is unfortunate that the only accommodations in Kona at all suitable for delicate people are on the heights. The difference between the climates of the two places is very marked. On the beach, every thing is bone-dry. Rain falls but seldom, and only in showers. On the heights, it rains nearly every afternoon, and, of course, the nights are cool and damp. Nevertheless, such is the purity of the air in both places, and so equable is their climate, that people who cannot live elsewhere often improve in health here. For their sakes, and for others like them, there ought to be a comfortable hotel on the beach as well " ALOHA!" as on the heights. It would be well if both hotels were owned and managed by one proprietor, so that no unpleasant jealousies or suspicions should arise between them. Water could easily be carried from the cisterns on the hill to the hotel below, and all the products of the fertile upland could be daily served at the sea-side. We found one invalid so much impressed by the difference in climate between the sea-shore and the heights, that he had arranged to spend his forenoons above and his afternoons and nights below. His dormitory was at Kealakakua. He hired the second story of a little frame house there, and hoped to find quiet, salubrious nights. The ride to and fro would give him just enough daily exercise. It seemed as if he had made the perfection of an arrangement; but it fell through in less than a week. Natives and mosquitoes combined against'him. The mosquitoes kept him awake, and the clamor of the unknown tongue, however friendly its meaning, only deepened the natural sense of loneliness. There is no desert like uncongenial company. This very man, however, in spite of these slight disagreements, had gained nine pounds of flesh in five weeks' stay at Kona. He had lost at nearly the same rate during his fortnight at Honolulu. Another invalid, whose pale face met us among the dark-skins of Kealakekua with something of the surprise and pleading of a castaway, - although his residence here C" KAAWALOA." was voluntary, - had passed seven months of it, and still lived. He was planning, however, to go back to the States, whence he came, and seek entrance into one of the California hospitals. Better the sympathy and comfort of an asylum, despite its sickly and pitiful companionship, than the monotonous fare, hard lodging, and rude "Greek" of this out-of-the-way settlement. Happily, we had no sickness to miumor in our choice of clime or dwelling-place. Caring cli ifly to be let alone, we found in Mr. Barrett's house on the beach the very best possible spot on earth for this sweet neglect. Our only fellow-boarder there was a delightfully shy man, who seldom appeared, except at meal-time, and whose unquestioning eating of whatever was placed before hini seemed to rebuke the objections which sometimes rose within us. After doing us this good service, he would utterly disappear. The utmost that could be extracted from him in the way of friendly communication was his acceptance of the reading of a huge bundle of newspapers which had overtaken us at Hilo, and come to Kona with the other baggage. I have rarely met so agreeable a person in all my experience at public hotels. But "What's his name or where's his hame?" let no man ask me. I ought also to make grateful mention of some capital people who were with us for the first day of our stay here, and whose intelligent " ALOHA!" conversation, filled with knowledge and experience of things we knew nothing of, helped immensely to smooth the transition from society to solitude. Will you stand up and have your picture taken, Mr. Surveyor, and you, young hunter, the surveyor's son? But no, let us wait until I can paint you - where I hope some day to find you- in your camp on Hualalai. That is your true background. But Captain St. George we may never see again. Here, if anywhere, he must make his appearance. Come ashore in your long-boat, Captain! Land at the little pier before our house! Take care that its shaky timbers do not give way. Nature has been kinder to you than Art has been to our wharf. Come up to the house, and take a seat on our breezy veranda! Slowly, as befits his generous size, the captain comes up the coral walk, greets us with manly, straightforward air and look, takes the offered seat without a sign of any want of confidence in its strength or capacity, and we talk together as if we had been lifelong friends instead of acquaintances of the day. His ship is bound for the Arctic Ocean, in pursuit of whales. She has just returned from a cruise in the Middle and South Pacific. She lies at anchor to-day in Kealakekua Bay; to-morrow she will set sail for Honolulu. And who are we, and what doing in this forsaken country? Confidence begets confidence. His frankness inspires frankness in return. " KAAWALOA." 193 He plainly thinks we have made a mistake in coming here; fears we can never abide it till the return of the "Kilauea," three weeks off; urges us to take passage with him and return to Honolulu. But he does not know how much we prize the very isolation he dreads for us. No, we have chosen our lot in Kona for three weeks, in spite of bodeful dissuasions from all our friends, and we shall abide by it. The captain takes another tack, and this time we pull together. Finding us interested in shells, corals, fishes, and all the " things creeping innumerable" of the sea, he happily remembers that he has more or less of such plunder on board ship. With sailor-like generosity he promises to bring them ashore on his next landing. I verily believe he made a special trip for the purpose; for that very afternoon we saw his jolly boat and jollier face at the little pier, and sure enough he had brought us his treasures: a huge preserve-jar, filled with dredgings from the bottom of the Arctic Ocean; a bundle of Micronesian shells; a tidy bag of woven palm-leaf, filled with hard-won contributions from the tight-fisted North. Every specimen had its corresponding page of narrative in Captain St. George's Book of Remembrance. It was one of Kona's hottest days when we entertained the captain, or rather when he entertained us, on Moses Barrett's piazza. But either the story of Arctic voyaging was physically cooling, or its interest 13 194 c" ALOHA!" was so engaging to the mind, that we ceased to notice the heat. Supper and Kona were alike a surprise when Sarah announced the one, and the sunset light on the great cliff of Kaawaloa revealed the other. "Well, I wouldn't have believed it was so late," says the captain; "quick time we've been making, sure." The king himself might have envied the easy grace and dignity with which our visitor rose to depart. Surprise could not betray him to make haste. Only his own brave ship weighing anchor could equal the deliberate manner of his going. We knew too much to urge his staying to supper. Iis ship sails to-morrow. Shall we meet again? Madame, who takes the earliest opportunity after his departure to tell me how much she likes Captain St. George, —as if I had not seen it with incipient jealousy all the time, -says she "hopes so." So do I, for I like the man as much as she does. I could have hugged him when he came ashore the next day, and, sitting again on our sheltered piazza, told us that two of his crew had deserted him. Worthless fellows they must have been! One of them he had tended through a severe attack of rheumatism, and just succeeded in getting him well. "I'm afraid he'll get sick again," said the saint. Actually he was more anxious about the health of that wretched runaway than about his own loss. "He would set sail without them," he said; "beat " KAAWALOA." out to sea for a day or two," so as to deceive the deserters, who would be watching his movements, and then return and send in a boat to take back the renegades, if the officers succeeded in capturing them." Perhaps, then, we shall see him yet again. The surveyor and his son leave us to-day, Saturday, March 25. Before they go, we must acknowledge their courtesy and the profit of their company. And I must thank them for their really urgent invitation to visit their camp, although I do not yet see how I can accept it. We had a rare experience together this morning,an eclipse of the sun. It began about seven o'clock. Something seemed to stop, as if an old clock should suddenly cease ticking. Everybody and every thing seemed to feel that something unusual was happening. A universal hush held all in its quiet keeping. We instinctively talked in lower tones than was our wont. The waves that commonly swept vigorously over the rocks just lapped their weedy edges; the tall palms seemed to stoop and listen; the very goats ceased their piteous cry for water. The light of the sun seemed lessened as the eclipse grew, but with this singular effect, -objects were not less distinctly seen; rather were they brought out with new apparition. The effect was not of light, but of lightning prolonged. The line of Mauna Loa's unbent bow was 196 "ALOHA " clearly drawn against the eastern sky. The great sepulchral cliff, in whose natural caves the dead of past generations were entombed, showed strangely near; the little settlement of low grass houses seemed to draw closer together, as if their helplessness would fain find comfort in community. The people sat still and waited. Some of them, seeing us grouped around the surveyor's theodolite, in whose reflector we could follow the progress of the eclipse, with equal distinctness and comfort to the eye, drew near with respectful curiosity. They did not appear to be afraid. They showed none of the traditional superstition and dread of uneducated people. One of them, a wrinkled, unkempt, and uncany-looking old woman, wanted to look. I could make nothing of her guttural comment; but the surveyor, a ready interpreter of Hawaiian, told me that she said, "The moon is eating the sun up." Our shy mentor of the dining-room, the unknown fellowboarder, grew quite sociable during the eclipse, but I forget what he said. On second thought, I doubt if he said any thing; only his habitual silence so suited the reserve and suspense of the hour, that it seemed like speech. I should have remembered it if he had said any thing; for every thing that happened in that weird, unearthly place and half-hour's lapse of time is ingrained in my memory. Not alone the grander features of mountain, cliff, sea, and sun KAAWALOA. 7 197 capped sky are there, but I recall the very blocks of lava in the old sea-wall, the blank look of the coralpaved yard, the gaping shells on the window-sill, the motionless string of coral suspended from the porch to be bleached; the one solitary flower that adorned this waste, a brave hollyhock, the flower alike of home and Palestine; the floor of the piazza sprinkled all over with tiny crescents, made by the partially eclipsed sun shining through the cracks in the roofing (we got the same effect by pricking a pin-hole in paper and letting the sun shine through it); the old man, with that vague rim around the iris of his eyes which great age brings (take heart, old friend, 'tis only for an hour, the eclipse is passing over); and the busy, idle, pretty, heedless child, frolicking among the shining crescents, and already spangled with them as she stamps her little brown feet, angry because she cannot pick them up and put them in her hair. "Come, Leo, let us get our traps together and be starting," says the surveyor to his son. His band of native assistants had been sent over the mountain from Hilo, with horses and mules, and they were all to rendezvous at Kealakekua, the village across the bay. We bade them "good-by" with real regret, which, however, was somewhat tempered in my case by the hope and prospect, however dim, that I might yet see them in their camp. It certainly required all 198 Cc ALOHA!" our trust in our own domestic resources of enjoyment to part in one day with both the surveyor and Captain St. George. We watched Leo's canoe till it became lost to sight on the opposite shore of the broad harbor, and then subsided into the tamest of famlily intercourse for the remainder of the day, not without a sense of relief from the agitation of parting with three quarters of the sun for an hour, and three friends of a day perhaps for ever. We had a " serio-comico-ludicro " experience that night. The most assiduous of mothers, whose ears never sleep, who has repeatedly found herself in the dead of night by her child's couch just in time to catch him before he touched the floor, aroused me to the practical solution of one of the most trying problems humanity can present. "Something was in the water-pitcher." This apparently trifling circumstance, reported in a low tone, out of deference to the confiding structure of the house, produced, at first, a truly horrifying effect upon my half-awakened senses. We are always most fearful of things we only half know. By degrees I fully comprehended (1) that something was in the water-pitcher, and (2) that that something was alive. It was not a favorable hour for scientific investigation. I am aware that authors have been known to leave their beds at midnight and seize the thought that haunted them, and scientific explorers often spend whole nights without sleep. " KAAWALOA." ~ 199 But their facilities for study, I sincerely hope, were superior to those at hand in Kona. I never could manage a kerosene-lamp. If I remove the chimney, it never goes back where it was before. If the top has a hinge on one side and a catch on the other, I generally mistake the one for the other. Moreover, an equally hazardous preliminary step needed to be taken. General Putnam in the wolf's den had a smooth retreat compared with my situation. He had a rope to his leg, and somebody to pull him out. I had no such auxiliaries. The economical adjustment of one mosquito-net so as to protect at once a bed and a couch had made getting in a toil and getting out an adventure. Nevertheless, something was in the water-jar, and that something was alive. " What is it?" The very question in this land of centipedes, scorpions, and other vermin known and unknown to the American skin, seemed like a threat in the dark. " Don't you want to see? " This was not a rhetorical question. I recognized il it a form of address which I should describe, if I were making a grammar, as the injunctive interrogative. It is a command issued in the form of a question. At that moment I knew my calling. My fate was still uncertain. The " What is it" was certainly full of life. I could hear him making the circuit of his watery cell and viciously scratching the smooth, forbidding sides thereof. Oh, of course, I did it. "Did what?" Got up, - got 200 cc ALOHA I" worsted, as usual, by the lamp, - opened the door, and in the solemn starlight removed that pitcher to the adjoining yard. It tilted when I took it by the handle, but happily the well was low. In a muffled argument on the question of release, I had obstinately refused to let that unknown monster free. He had chosen his bed, and he should lie in it. Would that all men might have the same privilege! The morning light revealed that we had caught a rat. Not belonging to the cruel society of dumb animals, I confess I felt sonme compunction at having left him to die this slow death. But not being a cat, what else could I do? I noticed that most consistent of women, with whose connivance the deed was done, and who is a member of the Society, and a director also, following the thirsty hens around all the forenoon with a saucer of water in her hand. Once she started with the same saucer for a herd of goats, full a thousand strong, bleating for water on the craggy hill-side. "Alas, alas, my poor lady 1 not all the perfumes of Araby," &c. KONA- ON THE HEIGHTS. 201 KONA - ON THE HEIGHTS. W7 E found two boarding-houses on the Heights, one too full and too promiscuously filled for enjoyment; the other wholly empty. The whole upper story of the house was ours. Besides the enclosed rooms, there were two - one in front and one in the rear of the house - which had one side wholly open to air and sunshine. Here we could sit in all the security of in-door life, and yet feel ourselves in the open air and among the abundant trees. What days of realized longings for rest and leisure for domestic intercourse were those at Kona! Madame at her sewing, fern-pressing, or blissful idling; I at my reading, writing, sketching, or dreaming; our boy delighting himself in the grounds below, cautiously patronizing now a cross old hen with so many children she did not know what to do, or a mother donkey with her ridiculous colt, or a whole barn-yard filled with half-tamed cows, superintended by a black herdsman and the innkeeper's son. Away beyond the trees, shimmering in the sunlight, the interminable waste of ocean stretched towards the west, and nowhere else in my experience has such a far-reaching 202 O ALOHA 1" ocean view been seen. So high were we above the sea, that great ships sailing over it seemed no larger than chips. Only the practised eye could discern * them. And yet at this long distance the struggling of ocean currents, the footprints of the winds as they coursed the watery desert, the still reaches where the sunlight spread its oil of gladness and the darkened hue of the cloud-shadows on the face of the deep, could be distinctly traced. All this seemed spread at our very feet, albeit fathomless depths below us, because the trees around us shut out all view of the intervening ascent of country. This was our sea view.from the hanging chamber in the rear-of the house. The outlook mauka, as the Hawaiians say, or towards the mountains, was as beautiful as this was grand. But its beauty was a morning glory. To enjoy it, one must look before ten o'clock in the forenoon. After that, the mists trooped up from the sea, and shut out the mountain's majesty till the dawn of the next day. But taken at the right moment, no view could be more lovely than Hualalai, the " Child of the Sun." This is the third mountain in height in Hawaii, but it is hardly inferior in beauty to its two rivals, Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. It mounts to its eight thousand feet of altitude with gradual bht unbroken ascent from the sea-shore. A rosy glow in its prevailing hue of gray hints the probable truth that " e'en in its ashes, glow its wonted fires." KONA-ON THE HEIGHTS. The volcano has only ceased to flow within the present century. But in this precocious country vegetation has put on the strength and fulness which only centuries can gather in other lands. Already the mountain is clothed to its very shoulders with grass and trees, and even on its head a crop of shrubs and ferns may be found. The forest girdle which surrounds Hawaii is nowhere more luxuriant than here; and when it approaches the sea, the vegetation settles into a thick growth of Hilo grass. Looking from our chamber window in the early forenoon, we have the whole spectacle in one transcendent view: the Pride of India, with its minarets of feathery foliage and purple bloom; the blue-green spires of the young Eucalyptus lining the grass-grown road; the nearer woods of varied leafage, flanked by the broad band of royal koas; Hualalai beyond, looking so shadowy, thin, and evanescent in its rose-tinted veils that it seemed most like the unsubstantial fabric of a dream which hovers between reality and unreality in the confusion of one awaking. For human interest in the picture, there is the rival inn at a safe and picturesque distance, where the solitary road of Kona crosses the hill; beyond, the tower of the old Congregational church, no longer in use; and up the hillside on the right, the spire of the English Mission chapel. Hark! already its little bell is ringing, and we know that Mr. Davis, the rector, and his wife and " ALOHA!" their family of native scholars are gathering there for their daily morning devotions. There is something so pathetic in the loneliness and desertion of this little church in the wilderness that we cannot resist its pleading solicitation. Day after day we go to its services; not because they wholly suit us, - on the contrary, their formality and repetition are distasteful, - but because we cannot let any Christian church, of whatever lower name, be so friendless and alone. It really seemed as if the Master himself were lost on that far-away island, and crying out to his disciples for at least one hour of companionship and watching. No priest in the Roman communion ever found his duty in the scrupulous performance of the service, whether men would hear or forbear, more completely than did this devoted missionary of the English Church. Delicate in health, he had yet performed prodigies of skill, strength, and invention in the rearing and maintaining of this chapel. With his own hands he had cleared an acre for God, rooting out the wild guavas and their rude companions, supplanting the obstinate Hilo grass with soft manienie; and there, in the centre of this symbol of redemption, stood his tidy chapel, neat and comely as befits its ministry, and behind it the rector's house and school. With only such help as his native friends could give him, he had built and furnished the chapel. Friends at home had contributed to its decoration. With his KONA - ON THE HEIGHTS. 205 own hands he had shaped the massive koa-wood font, and none the less sacredly did he offer the water of baptism from its ample urn. One of his larger pupils -for he kept a day-school as well as a churchplayed the reed-organ. The tunes never varied, so that her small skill was equal to its day. The children formed the only congregation, excepting the rector's wife and ourselves, and, on Sundays, an occasional visitor from the village. Never did the familiar salutation, " Dearly beloved brethren," come home to me with such a sense of entire appropriation (I being the only brother in the assembly) as in this orphaned church in Kona. If the Anglican mission to the Hawaiian Islands is indeed an intrusion and a superfluity, as many believe, it pays a heavy penalty for its effrontery in thus invading the see of Orthodox Congregationalism. With Romanism and its mission on one side, and rival forms of Protestantism on the other, English Episcopalianism is not likely to prove successful in these islands. Nevertheless, our indomitable rector is fighting a good fight, and in his labors for the native children committed to his charge he has his reward. He is doing his whole duty as he understands it; and what better success for a man is there than that? I dare not limit his influence to the pitiful congregation which he reaches by his services in Kona. He is keeping alive the Christian tradition of a missionary gospel, and his patient heroism ALOHA!" and real self-sacrifice are animating the soul of the church which sends him forth. After morning service we stroll home to the repose of the Ridge House, or drop into one of the only two stores in the village to make sonle purchase, or visit a coffee plantation and inspect its unfamiliar growth, or, if we are very enterprising, take a ride on our host's mule. There are horses to be had for the hiring, but activity seems so wholly out of place in Kona that we are not tempted to ride. The natives evidently do not share our temporary indifference to horseflesh. They dash along the road like the wind. There comes a youth whose complexion reveals his European blood, but in all else he is one with his Hawaiian companions. A cattle-driver by habit and choice, he carries the signs and implements of his business with him. You will see him, some day, at the landing at Kaawaloa, with Moses Barrett, urging the cows overboard, that they may swim to some ship in the harbor. He is a daring rider, a sure hand at the lasso, and as rough as the country he inhabits. Besides the cattle kept in sight, as it were, by the landed proprietors of Kona, there are droves of wild stock among the forests and springing uplands, and the pursuit and capture of these require rough riding and skilful manoeuvres with lasso and horse. It is no holiday sport, this cattle-huuting in Hawaii, for besides the active hostility of the wild bull or wilder KONA- ON THE HEIGHTS. 207 cow, there are passive foes lurking in the underbrush more perilous still. The cooling lava of which this country was made has left innumerable pits and chasms into which the unwary horseman may find himself precipitated some day. The bursting of a lava-bubble forty or fifty feet in diameter, and the ugly hole which results, its edge overgrown in time by dense masses of shrubbery, furnishes a terrible pitfall to man and beast. Only a little while before we visited Kona, the son of the ex-missionary residing there, Mr. Paris, barely escaped with his life from one of these traps. He was a bold rider and skilful hunter, familiar, too, with the country; but this did not save him from a terrible accident. His native assistants missed him from their company. He did not return to the appointed rendezvous, and a long and anxious search ensued for'his discovery. All night and all day they scoured the woods and uplands without finding trace of man or horse. But towards evening of the second day, one of the natives, who knew of the location of an overgrown lava-cave, led the way to it, and there young Paris was found, more dead than alive. His horse had leaped with him into the very centre of the pit, thirty or forty feet deep. When he came to his senses after the shock, he found his horse had broken his neck, and he had shattered his arm. Escape by any exertion of his own was impossible. The walls around him were 208 c8 ALOA!" smooth and perpendicular. Neither had he strength to climb, if any friendly stepping-stones had been offered to him. His watch stopped at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, the hour of his accident; and when he was recovered, it was evening of the second day. He had heard his rescuers hunting for him the afternoon preceding, but could not make them hear his voice. In what hopeless misery the intervening hours were passed, only the lost sufferer could know. But these are not the memories that belong to uneventful Kona. These stirring accidents by flood and field should seek their celebration where they find the scene of their occurrence, either on the ocean below our happy interval of rest, or on the mountain above it. Dr. Chalmers once recommended a young preacher to " cultivate the pause." Kona had all the impressiveness of a pause in the oration of life. In it, the concentred experience, admonition, and cheer of all preceding existence seemed to be distilled in one full cup of blissful elixir. In it, too, the desire and purpose of coming years was crystallizing. There are times in life when our " strength is to sit still." Kona is the natural resting-place of "quietness and confidence," a Sabbath in space. "We take no note of time, save by its loss to give it then a name." It is the one place in the world where we were delivered from the consciousness of our besetting sin, - procrastination. When all days were KONA- 0] THE HEIGHTS. 209 alike, there was no reason for doing a thing to-day rather than to-morrow. Our last hold on the outside world - the steamer "Kilauea " - would not be due for three weeks. So long, therefore, we were shut up to the one land where indolence is virtue. The bread-fruit tree should give us bread for the plucking and baking. Its sweet substance, more like the contents of a great boiled chestnut than any thing else, only needed salt and butter to make it take the place of the sweetest rusks of civilization. The perennial bunch of bananas always-hanging in our airy parlor should furnish forth the forenoon lunch. Taro in all its captivating forms, excepting poi, should fill out the measure of our gustatory content. Thus fed with fruits which hardly need the hand of cultivation to bring them to perfection, and exhilarated by the far-famed Kona coffee, so dried that all the sweetness of its pulpy investiture is fixed in the berry, we need not fear hunger or thirst. The blessed silence of a world forgot is all about us. Seen from this height, the very sea seems still, and stretches far as eye can see, a million leagues of calm. The Papaya just opposite my window has spread i:s ample parasol, and in its shade the yellowing fruit clusters thickly about the corrugated trunk. A spider has spun his web from one tier to another of the outspread leaves, and seems sleeping suspended in the 14 cc ALOHA " motionless air. The Datura brugmansia hangs its inverted cup and spills its fragrance all abroad. Your very heart-beats are almost audible, when suddenly the spell is broken by a sound as of a dry pump being "fetched" by water and suction. And yet there is something unmistakably animal in the sound. It turns out to be the young donkey. The sound is so irresistibly comical, that you laugh in spite of yourself. Thus when the pressure of this supernatural beauty and stillness is getting to be too much for you, Nature comes to your relief with.one of her domestic absurdities. Sometimes we were as much diverted by our own eccentricities as by our humble relative's, the donkey's. Fully possessed, as we were by this time, with the fern-fever, our collection was becoming the weightiest part of our luggage. Each walk up the road or into the neighboring woods discovered some new fern, or some fine specimen of former friends. The temptation to gather and press them was too strong for resistance. Besides, was not Kona the peculiar home of some choice varieties greatly desired to complete our collection? The Polypodium spectrum, or, as it is familiarly called, the sweet-potato fern, grew in these woods. Mr. Davis knew the precise trees in the forest belt whose trunks were wreathed by it. He kindly took us there one day, and a rare afternoon we had in that tangle of dead and living trees and KONA -- N THE HEIGHTS. 211 vines. What plumes of Trichonenes radicans; what quills of Asplenium of various species; what splendidly seeded Aspidium falcatum! We came home with presses running over with richness. And then came the wearier labor of carefully putting the specimens into safe and evenly acting presses. Furniture, baggage, clothing, every available article of weight and fitness, was put upon the rising mass; until one day, on my return from a brief walk, I found my lady herself, in the utterness of her devotion, seated upon an inverted table, which made the summit of the fernpress, and calmly reading Hooker's "Synopsis Filicum," with the monstrous herbarium beneath her, and the legs of the table shutting her in. A week of this harmless life so lulled all fears of man or woman, or bird or beast, or sea or volcano, to rest, that I began to think it possible to accept the surveyor's invitation to visit him at his camp on Hualalai. Every morning's view of the mountain renewed the longing to come into nearer acquaintance with it. Our host had an obedient white mule, warranted to take me to the upper sheep-ranche of Dr. T -- from which I could be guided to the camp on the dead volcano. A visit to the Doctor's house in Kona assured me that he was still at the upper ranch, and once there, with his sending, I should be sure of reaching the surveyor's party quickly and safely. It seemed too good an opportunity for mountaineering 212 "ALOHA " among the volcanoes to be lost. Three or four days would be long enough to get a taste of the life. There seemed no good reason for my not going, and I went; and the story thereof, will it not be told in the next chapter HUALALAL 213 HUALALAI. IT was a perfect morning in April when I started on my host's white mule for the camp on Hualalai. My first stage of nine miles through pasture and dense forest would bring me to Dr. T 's sheepranch. Beyond that an unknown excursion over a wilderness of lava lay before me. But with a shepherd guide familiar with such travel, no danger need be apprehended. My mule and I had barely reached the centre of the great pasture-land through which our journey lay at first, when a solitary horseman appeared riding down the hill. He proved to be the Doctor himself, on whose safe-conduct I was relying for the discovery of the camp. With the ready politeness of his race, - the Doctor was from France, - he tore a leaf from his note-book and gave me this persuasive order upon his overseer at the ranch: " Mr. C- is going to meet Mr. H — on Hualalai. Send for Rudolph at once. In the mean time, get an animal in for him, and send Rudolph with him to our house at Hualalai. From there Dick will guide Mr. C- to Mr. H-'s camp." With this Napoleonic despatch I went forward, " ALOHA " fully armed for victory. To a man not afraid to be alone, there was nothing to disturb the enjoyment of the ride. There was none of the soul-searching stillness of Kona village to overawe one. The woods were full of song. No savage foe of any kind lurked in the jungle of grass and fern. There was some risk of missing the way in the open uplands, where numberless cattle-paths diverged in every direction. But we struck the woods on the right trail, and after that there were no seductive by-ways. The path was undeniably muddy, and there were places where the mule exhibited more doubt than confidence in the safety of proceeding. But kindness and exampleI dismounting and leading the way - conquered his prudence and disarmed his obstinacy, and we went forward. We were fully six hours, however, in making the nine miles to the sheep-ranch, and I began to have fears that I had mistaken the road, when the sight of cattle and a clearing, soon followed by the appearance of the farm-buildings, reassured me. My own absorbing and delaying interest in the vast tropical forest through which I had been passing occasioned the lateness of our arrival fully as much as the difficulty of the toilsome ascent and the proverbial slowness of the mule. To one not familiar, or only recently acquainted, with such woods, the charm of novel vegetation and birds singing in a foreign tongue is irresistible. Add the HUALALAI. 215 fern-furore to his other susceptibilities, and it will be no wonder if he takes the whole day for his ride from the village to the ranch. The only familiar bird-note was the whistle of the quail. The iiwi and o-o of Hawaii were as strange as their names, and their notes resembled these native names by which they were called. From the wings of the former are obtained the peculiar hair-like yellow feathers from which the royal capes were made. And as only two of these little feathers are found on each wing, some idea of the rarity and costliness of the garment may be imagined. The birds are held sacred to royalty, and formerly they could not be caught or killed for anybody but the foremost chief A peculiar privilege this, when each bird could only furnish four of the coveted plumes, and a single royal cape would consume millions of them! - which sets me to wondering whether popular brutality would not be a safer defence than royal luxury. What a mine of wealth these magnificent koa trees would be to the people who should transport their timber to the shore and ship it to foreign countries! The koa is the Hawaiian mahogany. It takes a polish like gold or diamonds. In the hands of foreign workmen, it might be made as ornamental as precious marbles. And here is a great belt of it around Hawaii, broad and full enough to supply every city in America. These commercial estimates are all afterthoughts. While under the fascination of the lavish 216 cc ALOHA " beauty of the woods, no sense is appealed to but the aesthetic. The climbing ie, garlanding the great trees like maile wreaths upon the Hawaiian beauties, carries the effect of interlacing and tangle, which usually is limited to undergrowth, to the very summits of the tall trees. Clusters of the bird's-nest fern rest like Indian crowns upon the strong limbs of the koas. Ohias and remnants of the sandal-wood vary the forest foliage with their characteristic hues. But, after all, the ferns, in all their variety and grace, are the sensation of the place. From dead trees, in odd ribbons and tongues, the Ophioglossum hangs in clusters. The Asplenium, with tiny infant on its tip, ready when borne to the earth to begin an independent life and go leaping onward to generation after generation, starts up at the foot of the same old trees. In our very pathway grow magnificent specimens of the Aspidium, with its back one great array of rounded shields. The Pteris cretica grew in clusters as we entered the wood. At every step some new specimen greeted us. But these are tame preparations for the rough life which is before us. Once at the ranch, we enter a new region of interest and adventure. Henceforth till our return we shall have small time for botanizing, and can only notice, as we pass over the lava waste, the little Pellea ternifolia, or in deep crannies ill the rock some delicate Asplenium. Rudolph is not at HUALALAI. 217 the ranch when we arrive. A native boy takes us in charge, and together we drive a mile further up the mountain to the sheep-shearing station. There, at length, we find Rudolph, a herdsman of Teutonic birth, and with the honest friendly face and manner of his race. By this time it is towards evening, and we have none too much time to reach the upper sta. tion, seven miles away, before night. Off we go, Rudolph on his fresh horse and I on my indefatigable mule, over the most forsaken region this side, of Sahara. For two or three miles a fine pumice or granulated lava covered the ground, and over this, with no indications that I could discern of right or wrong in the way of our going, we pushed across the high table-land. Soon the mists began to close us in, and the darkness coming on, we were condemned to pick our way over a region far more broken and pathless than the desert behind us. Up and down and round and about, now slipping, now sliding, now leaping, now cautiously stepping, with the d6bris of innumerable earthquakes and volcanic eruptions only made more ruinous by time under our feet, and the double darkness of mist and night in our faces, we rode forward in search of the appointed resting-place. It was impossible to doubt or fear with such a cheerful, confident companion as my trusty guide. All the way we talked and laughed as cheerfully as if we were snugly ensconced by some safe fireside. Nevertheless, 218 21 ALOHA!" I was glad when I heard Rudolph send through the darkness a shrill whistle, as if signalling some expected companion. We were nearing the end of that day's march, I hoped; but no answer came to the whistled summons. Again and again repeated, it awoke no response but its own echo. Rudolph showed no surprise, but kept moving in no decided direction that I could discover, but by serpentine windings and labyrinthine paths, until at length I found myself meekly following him through a large sheep-yard, as we discovered the dimly seen enclosure to be on the following day. Drawing rein before a poor little hut, Rudolph leaped from his horse and began pounding at the door. This time he got a response, but not the one he expected. A dog's voice was his only welcome, and the nature of the welcome was somewhat dubious. Evidently he had been left to guard the premises while his master was away. Whatever the canine keeper's disposition, he could not open the door, and Rudolph was driven to invent some less burglarious process than breaking it down in order to effect an entrance. He has it! Suddenly he goes to the rear of the house, creeps under it and lifts a trap-door which opens into the main room of the little dwelling. Then he comes and lets me in, first quieting the dog, which proves much smaller than its bark. Then follows a search for matches, candles, fuel, water, food, and the where HUALALAI. withal to satisfy the dog within us, barking for his supper. Happily we find enough for our needs, and something in the way of luxury in the shape of three or four eggs. The fragments of tallow candles by whose light our cooking and eating were illumined held out to burn just long enough for us to make up our beds on the floor, and throw ourselves in the bliss of ignorance into their greasy embrace. The wraps and blankets of a solitary herdsman on Hualalai could not be expected to be other than they were; but when the indifference of sleep was added to the ignorance of the darkness, our couch would have been no easier if it had been of eider-down instead of slightly alleviated hard-wood. Only once in the night was I awakened to my condition by something small and alive running over me. It was the dog, making friends with the hand which had rifled his master's house. Daylight, which came in due time, revealed nothing in our refuge which should tempt us to delay there. In the absence of its proprietor, its only attraction was gone. I was doubly sorry to miss him, because I had heard of his intelligence and skill; and with his thorough knowledge of the country, and probable acquaintance with the very situation of the surveyor's encampment, I could have gone directly thither. But Rudolph was fully equal to the emergency. Locking up the little hut and its solitary guardian as he had found them, and making his egress through " ALOHA " the trap-door, he saddled the steeds forthwith, and led the way in cheerful expectancy up the forbidding steep of the great mountain. I thought I had seen the worst Hawaii could show in the way of travelling in my previous rides in Hilo and Puna, but those pleasant by-ways of alternate mud, ashes, and glass were easy-going compared with the upper reaches of Hualalai. A sea of lava hummocks, with occasional clearings of unmitigated cinders as crisp and clinging as if they had just been raked out of a great furnace! How our animals navigated this solid deep with neither wings nor sails to help them I cannot tell. Perhaps, like Lucy Maria crossing the puddle, they took a long breath, held up all they could, and scudded over on the tips of their toes or hoofs. I only klow that somehow we were carried through without slip or serious injury to man or beast. The forenoon was getting well advanced, and already the dense mist was beginning to cover the mountain-sides, when Rudolph sighted some horses a mile or two away towards the sea. They must belong to the surveying party; but what takes them down there? The camp, we had been told, was near the very summit. In the absence of the telephone, we had no choice but to make our way in this unpromising direction, and look for guidance to these stray fragments of the party. We reached them after another hour of excruciating riding, - excruciating to the animals, but endurable HUALALAI. 221 by us, -and found two natives with a string of mules and horses seeking water. They had brought their animals all this long distance down the mountain to give them drink in one of the natural cave-cisterns known to them in this vicinity. The camp, they reported, was far up the mountain, in a sheltered depression just below the summit. There was no time to lose if we wished to reach it before the cloudmist should wholly enclose it. So back we turned, and plodded resolutely upwards. To my unwonted eye, a needle in a load of hay would have seemed much more easily found than a hidden camp on this interminable, mist-enveloped volcano. But the cheerful Rudolph led the way undaunted, and without the least clew that I could discover he brought me by high noon into the desired camp. There in the very attic of the world, or, if that is too confined a figure for the airy, open perch on Hualalai, there on the very ridge-pole of creation, our surveyor and his party had alighted. A scrub growth of ohias and sandalwood made a miniature forest in this sky-valley, and under its lee the tents were pitched, the fires built, the horses tied, the luggage stored, and at the time of our arrival nobody posted. The whole party was abroad: some hunting, some foraging, some seeking water for the horses, as we had already seen. The faithful Rudolph, hardly stopping long enough to break a cracker for his noontide lunch, soon set out 222 "c ALOHA!" upon his homeward jaunt, and I was left in sole possession of the camp and its contents. More weary than hungry, I was best served by the shade and repose of the cool couch of mats which I found spread within the surveyor's tent. There, with such breezes as blow only in Hawaii, and there only on Hualalai, fanning me without and filling my lungs within, I awaited, in horizontal contentment, the return of the hunter. What game, do you say, could there be in these desperate places? Wild pigs, for one thing! You might have seen their tusks, as curving and almost as long as rams' horns, in Dick's hut, where we spent the last night. No jokers these mountain boars! Fed on roots,- though how they get at them without having their nozzles sharpened is a mystery, -and now and then stealing a lamb or sheep from the immense flocks which pasture here, they attain a wonderful sweetness of meat, if not of temper. A taste of these juicy porkers, roasted in the open air before a great wood-fire, would go far to overcome the common prejudice against swine's flesh. These mountain pigs are lineal descendants of the very explorers which commerce and civilization set rooting in these islands. Would that all their gifts had been as useful! Aristotle says that animals which rove have a flavor which the stalled beast cannot equal. The wild sheep, cattle, and goats which inhabit this great forest and wilderness seem to have HUALALAI. 223 gained rather than lost by their return to their natural savagery. But it would not be safe to carry the parallel to the humanity which Hawaii presents. There is no corresponding improvement in these apostates to civilization and progress, the natives of Europe or America, who have fallen into the wild and coarse life of an inferior people. Of course I am not speaking of respectable and humane people who have made Hawaii their home, and by honorable intermarriage and faithful love are rearing families in Christian nurture and culture. For these men we have only respect and admiration. The intimacy which we were privileged to enjoy with one such family was the source of joy and instruction at the time, and is still one of my most grateful memories of life in Hawaii. I am speaking only of those voluntary castaways who have made shipwreck of their manhood by a retreat to barbarism, - men who have given themselves over to all uncleanness, and whose reward is with them in a degradation and vileness only profitable for warning. Certainly, then, whatever brutes may gain by a relapse into their natural wildness, men only lose on that track. By this time I begin to be hungry; and, the hunters not returning, I do not scruple to blunt the edge of my appetite with such crumbs of dinner as I can find in the promiscuous heap of provender and lug 224 2" ALOHA!" gage which lines the sides of the tent. Was ever solitude so instinct with the sense of human sociability as this? Commonly such a post as I had attained-eight thousand feet above the sea, in a cleft of the rock, wind-swept, now veiled in mist, now clear in sunshine -fills a man with the sense of loneliness, or rather of other company than his fellows. But sitting here in this tent door, I was so surrounded with the tokens of human fellowship in its common domestic phases, - kettles and fryingpans, dippers and dishes, tin cans and boxes, buckets and blankets, saddles and bridles, and all the delightful confusion of camp existence, -that I could not feel myself alone. Nor was I alone very long. Out of the mist, like a human sunbeam, the yellow head of young Leo, the surveyor's son, suddenly appears. Then follows the surveyor himself and some of his native attendants; and no lord in his own castle, with the assurance of an unlimited larder and endless means of entertainment, could have welcomed me more cordially or generously than did this host whose bed and board were covered by a single tent. The hospitality of people in. these islands is beyond praise, and, unhappily, beyond requital. I should like to catch that surveyor and his stalwart son on our New England hills some day, and turn the tables on them for their ungrudging entertainment of me on Hualalai. There was no reason to fear the lack of animal food in this HUALALAI. 225 endless fold of sheep and goats and cattle; but the stock of bread was not so easily replenished. Fortunately the large retinue of servants which the surveyor's work required, and the corresponding train of mules and horses, furnished carriage for a generous camp outfit, and, in case of need, it was not impossible to send to the village itself for further supplies. In this assurance, we gave our appetite the freedom of the camp, and dined luxuriously. That afternoon I had my first and last experience in hunting the wild goats. They rove these heights in herds; now few, now many; but there are so many of them in all, that the hunter is sure to come in sight of them every hour of the day. We had scarcely gone a halfmile from our camp before we saw our quarry at a long gunshot on the edge of the opposite hill. "Bang!" goes the surveyor's rifle, and "Bang! bang! " goes young Leo's double-barrel; and away go the wild goats, scattering and leaping from one lava-block to another, and making for the lower slope with the elasticity of grasshoppers and the speed of deer. "Now, Leo, keep them in sight; we must have hit one of them!" And down the broken mountain-side, like a fresh flow of lava, young Leo goes racing. I follow in all the zest of that surviving brute in man which likes to be in at the death. Sure enough, one of the goats is wounded. H-ere are marks of blood on the rock. "On, Leo, he went 15 226 2C ALOHA!" this way! " and down we plunge from rock to rock, over an incline as steep as the roof of a third-pitch house, and only safe from precipitation by the innumerable pitfalls and endless extent of the roof. "Ah! the fellow is badly hit. See, here is more blood, and there a bit of fat!" On we go, and now, across a gully, we catch a glimpse of our victim. There he stands, taking one long breath, or rather a long succession of short breaths, before he renews his plunge for life. "And what is that hanging from his side?" Leo says he has been struck in the bowels. "Ah! that explains the blood-drops and the bits of flesh. Run for him, he must fall at length! " And run we do, across the gully, up the hillock, over it, down the dry watercourse which the panting, bleeding, staggering creature has chosen for his path. "There he is again! He stops longer now. See! he is waiting under that thicket of sdrub ohias." I see; Leo sees. "Stop! let me give him another shot," says the young Nimrod; and he loads and shoots. "No use. There he goes;" and then we go after him, hot, panting, tired, but unconscious of it all in the excitement of the chase. We are evidently gaining on him. We see him now at shorter intervals. The gory signals grow more frequent. He cannot hold out much longer. "See I there he tumbles over that big rock, only a rod before us." Like HUALALAI. 227 the young lion he is, Leo is after him. I see his tawny mane disappear where the goat went over. The sound of a brief struggle; then a sad bleat, ending in a gurgle, and all is over. I look over the rock, and there is Leo kneeling by the goat, and wiping his knife. He has cut his throat. The goat is dead, then. "Thank God!" "Thank Leo! you mean," do I hear my reader saying? No. Thank God! Thank him for death, and its ending of the poor brute's fear and torture. I protest that in all this bloody business, from the moment I saw the red spot on the black lava-rock to the merciful gash in the throat, which set him free, I have had but one motive. Laugh at me, if you will, for a soft-hearted fool; I have been running that poor brute to his death, out of simple pity and love. The sight of him, with that dangling vital by his side, turned all my.fury into mercy. He should not escape to linger in pain and make his piteous appeal to Heaven against man's inhumanity. We would heal his wound with death, poor brute,death, speedy and sure. I protest, in spite of every appearance to the contrary, that I hunted that goat to his death in pureness of love and pity. I more than suspect that hunting, after all, is gentlemanly butchery, or a fashionable way of committing murder without social injury. At all events, I am clear in this opinion, that only dead-shots have an undoubted 228 C "ALOHA!" moral right to shoot at living things. If you say, the perfect marksman is only made by his early blunders, then I say, let him blunder over some inanimate mark, and get his skill in hitting birds by first hitting things. I am bound to say of Leo that he proved himself a legitimate hunter afterwards, by the certainty of his aim and the success of his foraging among the California quail which frequent these uplands. And in the case of the goat, although the risk of the long shot was great and the effect cruel, he showed the true hunter's conscience, and brought his prey to death. The next day we broke camp,- no slight labor with all these traps. But the retinue was equal to the equipage, and these strong natives and enduring mules made easy work of it. Over the very top of Hualalai we took our course, the surveyor, Leo, and myself, with one or two attendants, leaving the rest to go by a lower course to the place of our encampment on the other side the mountain. The work of surveying could not begin until the train reached a fixed point on the further side; and, as it must take the men all the forenoon to pack and move to this spot, we had that time free for leisurely travel and curious exploration. It takes a volcano as long to die as it does a man to live. It is a little more than threescore years and ten since Hualalai gave its last lively spasm, and at last it is regarded as quite HUALALAI. 229 extinct. It is one immense mass of collapsed cones, as like and as unlike each other as two peas. The truncated cone, the ragged rim, the inner precipice, on whose side nothing less tenacious than the wild ohia and the mountain goat could stand, the mound of pumice and ashes in the centre, - this all multiplied one or two hundred times, makes upper Hualalai. We plodded over it, without accident or incident even, beyond the occasional sight of wild goats and the lighting of fires in the bushes, to show our distant followers the route we had taken. By eleven o'clock they caught up with us, and then began the triangulating and surveying on a scale I had never seen before. These hundred cones, it seems, had been known and distinguished in times past, by the natives, by special names, and the old surveys were full of these special appellations. Hardly.anybody of the present generation knew one from another, and nothing but the sole possession of nearly all that region by one proprietress - the Princess Ruth - prevented this obscurity as to boundaries from becoming a source of jealousy and contention. Indeed, it was fast coming to that, as the lands were being leased or sold to various tenants or owners; and this survey, on which we were at work, was designed to settle some vexed questions of boundary and privilege. One alone of all the native company seemed familiar with the landmarks and their ancient titles. 230 " ALOHA!" Old Jacko, a patriarchal kanaka of perennial vigor and memory, unvexed by varied or much learning, was the prose Virgil of our passage through this superficial Inferno. With absolute precision he distinguished Upupu from Pupuu, and Puupu from Uupu, and all the other possible combinations of u and p. He knew them all by name, and with his guidance the signals were set up on one hill and another, and their bearing and distances taken or calculated, and all plotted with admirable exactness. The surveyor expected, before his work was finished, to send a party up Mauna Loa, to set up his signal there. When a former survey was taken, the summit crater was in action, and the surveyor sighted its column of smoke. Old Mokuaweoweo is not engaged in this enterprise, however, and Jacko, with his servitors, must do as they can without Mauna Loa's help. What audacity it seemed to make that superb mountain a partner in this little business of laying out the boundaries of mine and thine! As I stood on the side of Hualalai that clear April day, and saw the height and depth and length and breadth of the great mountain, and knew that, while it mused there so calmly in the broad noon, the fire was burning in its heart, I could almost hear the answer of a greater than Mauna Loa, when the appeal of competing selfishness was made to him: "Who made me a judge or a divider over you? Well, we lunched in the wilderness, and, if the HUALALAI. 231 fires had not cooked our food, the sun would have done as well. Then for a long and slow defile still further down the mountains. I shall never blush or retaliate if I am ever called a donkey. After that trip, in which the highest human virtues-courage, patience, self-sacrifice, long-suffering, the bearing of others' burdens, and meekness altogether super-Mosaic - were so conspicuously shown by the little beasts that conveyed us through that limbo of wrought-iron and clinkers, I should feel honored by comparison with them. " Is there no water in this wilderness to cool their innocent tongues?" I am mentally asking. "Oh for some miracle by which my cupful could be made to water them all! I would gladly give it to them." " Yes, there is water,"- " wai no," -Jacko says, "a few miles away." "Let us go there." "Yes, we are going." The surveyor gives the order. And how I longed, every step of that wrenching, racking, twisting, crucifying way, to have my old mule and his fellows know that we were going to get them water! We found it at last, - a great bubble cavern, in whose cool depths the waters. found a natural cistern. The barrels and portable tanks were filled with it. The horses, mules, donkeys, and men drank all they would, and then, before night came on, we all made the best of our way, or, better, the worst 232 "ALOHA!" of our way, to a scrub grove three or four miles away, and under its sandal-wood trees we pitched our tents and rested through the night. "Jacko," said the surveyor, speaking in the strangled Italian which is called the Hawaiian tongue, "this haole" (meaning me) "has never seen a lava-burst; can't you tell something about the big flow of '59?" We were sitting at our tent door in the full moonlight, with Mauna Kea before us and Mauna Loa on our right, their indistinctness to the eye borrowing even larger proportions and grander beauty from the imagination; the camp-fire had fallen into the gray old age which precedes dissolution; Jacko, too, was old and gray. But the fire had not yet gone out in that old body. Life sparkled in his still active eyes. In liquid-guttural (if you do not believe in such a contradiction in sound, go and hear Hawaiian spoken) he told how the air stood still, the mountain thundered inwardly, the pillar of flame and smoke stood high above Mokuaweoweo; the river of fire poured from Mauna Loa's summit, a mile and more in width and forty miles in length, before it reached the sea. The black serpent we had passed in our ride that day was one of its branches. The main stream went further north. You may see it from the ocean, when you are coasting Hawaii, a stone river, black and glistening, from the sea to the very rim of the summit crater. All this my host interpreted to me. Jacko HUALALAI. 233 was a living chronicle of the volcanic eruptions. Every one of them had seared a path in his memory. He was a boy when Hualalai had its last scrape. And all the great lava flows of Mauna Loa, from '52 down to the last in '68, were as familiar to him as his own housekeeping. " What about '68, Jacko?" " '68, by Pele, that was a stunner! " (Jacko was -in Kau that spring.) "Shaky place. Earthquake every five minutes. Houses all broken down. Stone walls laid flat. Horses and cattle just mad with fear. Everybody sea-sick on land. Had to sit down to hold up. So! All at once, mountain get throwed into sea. Jacko see him. Side of mountain shoot straight out. Then big mud-river flow over every thing, bury houses, bury men, bury children, bury cattle, bury every thing in its way. Just one poor woman saved, because too weak to run away. Mud skipped her house. She all safe. Jacko had tried to get to Kona to see if his friends there were safe. No go. Big lava river, hissing hot there in Waiohinu. No getting round or over it. Captain Brown, he just have time to run with his folks, before the lava reached his place. See big fire in woods; think strange; no htop to see why; ten minutes later, no get away. Few men and beefies saved. Got caught on islands, where lava river got broke up. Took 'em off when lava cooled. Pele, how red the sea was all the way 234 2C ALOHA!" to Punaluu, and how it steamed and roared when the lava poured into it there beyond Kalae! But the big wave was the worst. All the way from Kahuku to Kapoho one big sea. Villages swept away like sea-weed." How long Old Jacko would have spun his lava yarns, if weariness and sleep had not put in their claims upon us, I know not. IIe ceased. What is that heaving, rumbling, half-moaning, half-exultingsound which, distantly or near (who can calculate distances by sound in this thin, still, upper atmosphere?), invades my ear? Is it possible that Kilauea's roaring can be heard thus far, in spite of Mauna Loa's intervening bulk, or do I hear the waves breaking on the rocks of Kealakakua? Romantic reader, would that I could indulge your fancy; but the truth must be told, - our kanakas were asleep, as we should be, and this was the sound of their snoring. IAO. 235 IAO. AFTER the Hawaiian Channel, the desert itself were a paradise. But Maui is no desert. Forbid it, waving cane-fields of Wailuku, mango groves of Lahaina, broad uplands of Makawao, where the coffee and sugar agree as sweetly in the beginning as in the end of their destined course, and cows may be had for the catching. There was no visible promise of such abundance, however, in the sterile beach of Maalea Bay. A sea-convolvulus in the sand, with no morning glory about it, except in its name, was all the vegetation that greeted our longing eyes as we peered through the early twilight in search of some green thing. A toy wharf and a miniature warehouse were the only signs of a settlement. A group of people on the pier showed that the steamer's arrival had been expected. Was anybody in the group expecting us? We were uncertain of this, as we had not fully decided to stop at Maui, and had sent no word of our coming. It seemed hazardous to venture ashore, on the double uncertainty, first, as to our reception, and second, as to our getting away in time to catch the next steamer for America. 236 "' ALOHA!" But one may venture where three could not go. A hurried conference in the dim cabin settled the question in favor of my landing, while the rest of the family sailed on. Madame approved. Our son silently consented in his sleep. They would reach Honolulu that evening. Meantime our friends on board would give them every needed attention until they were safely at home. There was no time to lose in uncertain consultation. Already the long-boat was chafing on the swelling waters by the " Kilauea's " side, the baggage for Maui, human and otherwise, was going over the side, accompanied by excited commands, authoritative directions, jocular farewells, neighborly messages, incessant laughter, and intermittent scolding, all in the half-guttural, half-liquid tongue of Hawaii; the agent, mate, steward, supercargo, - it was difficult to settle his office, so altogether useful was he, - was about to deposit his bulk (he was big enough to carry all the ship's offices in his single body) in the boat, a proceeding which always gave the boat the advantage of the sea; in another minute they would be off. Fortunately my pack had been prepared at Kona, in anticipation of this possible diversion at Maui, and with equal lack of ceremony my bundle and myself were dropped into the brimming boat, when we disappeared like lumps of sugar in a cup of chocolate. Once on land, however, we recovered our identity, and looked among the people on 237 IAO. the wharf for some inquiring face which might recognize us and bid us welcome. None such appearing, we were glad to find an express-wagon bound for Wailuku, in which we could have a seat. Our stay on Hawaii, where carriage-roads give up discouraged as soon as they begin, and where a vehicle on wheels was almost unknown, gave an air of grandeur to the wagon in which we were seated; and the promise of passable roads, which these carriages suggested, was not unpleasantly indicative of an older civilization than we had left behind us. There was nothing in the nature of the country immediately surrounding us to prevent good roads. A broad plain between the mountains of East and West Maui seems made for level grading and easy transportation from one side of the island to the other. We are soon on our way. Before proceeding half a mile, however, we meet a carriage drawn by a pair of fine horses, and driven by a gentleman who stops our wagon and inquires for me. This turns out to be Captain Wilfong, superintendent of the Brewer plantation at Wailuku. We need no urging to change vehicles, and, turning his horses, the captain takes me over the road at a pace and in a style worthy of the Boston mill-dam. The scenery along this road is not remarkable for beauty or sublimity, at least it did not seem so, after the picturesque scenes of Oahu and the majesty of the views on Hawaii. The road runs too 238 cc ALOHA! near the foot of Haleakala, and the ascent of this great mountain is too gradual for the spectator at this point to apprehend its dignity, and on the other side the cliffs and chasms of West Maui hardly hint the grandeur which is to be revealed when you reach Wailuku and look up the overwhelming valley of Iao. We ride along the smooth road, almost repelled by the flat expanse around us, with its sparse and uninviting vegetation, and only moved by courtesy to admire the rugged hill-sides beyond, where even the bold kukui hesitates to plant its roots. It was not until we reached the plantations and saw the great fields of cane, patiently tended and watered by Chinese and Hawaiian laborers, and caught glimpses of comfortable houses, built and inhabited by AngloSaxon thrift and taste, and at length found ourselves driving through the streets of a tidy farming village, and before we were ready to stop brought to the door of a vine-embowered dwelling, and hospitably welcomed to its genuine New England comfort, graced with tropical abundance and variety, that we began to feel the beauty and attraction of this island; and when we were taken to our room on the western side of Captain Wilfong's house, and found ourselves standing at its open doorway and looking straight up the great valley which rends in two the mountainwall of West Maui, our admiration was too genuine for words. The captain had built a broad walk all IAO. 239 around the second story of his house. He called it his quarter-deck, and from this platform, as from the ships he used to sail, he could look abroad in every direction and sight the changing world. At his feet the clustering roofs and chimneys of his large sugarmill lay directly under his provident eye; below, the houses of his workmen were scattered far and wide. Beyond these flowed the river, its impetuous youth subdued now to a temperate old age, as it neared the end of its course and joined the sea. Then the ocean carding the white beach, and laying neverceasing rolls of snowy fleece upon the shore. Here in this sheltering roadstead the ships drop anchor, and the captain, with his glass, gets the first signal of their coming as they break the distant blue with their white sails, and grow while you look. So a cloud-speck in the sky gathers size, sails landward, and brings the riches of the sea to clothe Iao in perpetual green. We inquire for the "Moi," the regular packet between Honolulu and Wailuku, as we stand with the captain looking seaward, and are assured that she will arrive on the following Tuesday, and return to Honolulu before the week is gone. That will exactly suit us. It will give us time to explore Iao, ride to Makawao, take the excursion to the summit of Haleakala, and return to Wailuku in time for our return to Oahu, where we shall have three or four days before the steamer for America arrives from Australia. The 240 "ALOHA!" captain proposes that we ride up the valley that very afternoon. Nothing loath, we agree, and soon after dinner we are mounted on our horses and pointed for lao. A gallop through the town, and we are soon at the entrance of the valley. From the brow of a steep hill we look down upon the river-basin, a flat, uninteresting plain, which the shabby houses and indifferent cultivation of the natives do little to improve. But the upward look already begins to hint the coming of a true grandeur. The mountainwalls on either side stand up like risen giants that before seemed sitting. They shut the door behind you as you drive down the steep hill and pass their portal. Surely the helpless and yet perfectly fearless feeling which comes over a man when he is brought face to face with the mightiest works of nature is an evidence of faith in a Providence transcending nature. There was something forbidding if not intimidating in these massive walls, ten or twelve times as high as Niagara, on whose tops the sky rested, dropping its clouds like curtains down their straight sides, and sprinkling the sanctuary they enclosed with the "continual dew" of its presence. It needed all the freshness of coloring which the unbroken vegetation carried from base to summit of these walls to relieve them of their austerity, and even the threads of light which came from the waterfalls with which the black clefts on either side were adorned could only dimly IAO. 241 suggest the redeeming love which faith discerns running through the power of creation. Despite its beauty, Iao is an appalling place. It is so narrow, that the traveller feels at the same moment the impending majesty of both its sides. The Yosemite, with which this valley is sometimes compared (they ought rather to be contrasted), seldom afflicts a poor mortal with an equal view of its parallel immensities at one and the same time. But Iao knows no mercy. Whichever way you look, you are confronted by cliffs, whose prodigious height gets a supernatural impressiveness as the sweeping clouds trail over them and help the imagination to believe that they extend above the clouds as far as they are seen below. The Wailuku (Water of Destruction) River, which runs down the valley, leaping from rock to rock of lava, and after frequent rainfalls swelling to a resistless flood, breaks without relieving the silence of this mighty pause in creation. What it whispers the tall cliffs shout. After a mile or two of riding along the bridle-path which keeps its narrow footing between the river and the mountains on the left, we cross the stream, and are soon brought into the centre of a perfect amphitheatre, its walls from one to two thousand feet high, green with fresh foliage from turret to foundation-stone, roofed with the sky, hung with fleecy clouds, chased with silver waterfalls springing from cornice to floor, and relieved of too great 16 242 2" ALOHA!" uniformity by a lateral ravine on the left, high as the wall itself and deep beyond vision, and on the right by a ponderous needle of rock, on whose side Cleopatra's obelisk would look no larger than a small palm tree. This mountainous boulder, though it had broken from the hold of the neighboring cliff, could not escape the lighter chains of vegetation. It was robed with the unwithering foliage and laced by the graceful vines which never fail in this moist valley. So fruitful is it, and so favorable to all kinds of vegetation, that my host, the captain, had leased the entire valley, and planted various trees and grasses there difficult of cultivation elsewhere. He took me through a low forest of guavas, and suddenly we were in a garden of roses, whose great bushes competed successfully with the rough growth around them. In order to protect his experimental crops, he was obliged to tabu the valley to the natives and their cattle. But I suspect he was not a hard landlord, for we met a native woman coming down the road as we went up, with a basket filled with forbidden produce and a deprecating smile on her handsome face, which would have disarmed anybody less exacting than the angel wards of Eden. I wish I could picture this woman as she appeared to us that day. If I were a painter, and wished to put into one figure and one scene Hawaii herself, in all the buxom beauty, easy mirth, roving industry, and festive taste IAO. 243 of her sons and daughters, with all the bravery and grace of her natural scenery as a background, I would paint that woman coming down the vale of Iao. Her face should be of the same rich color which old mahogany displays, only of a lighter tint. Just so much red should show in either cheek as if it had caught the reflection of the roses that enwreathed her neck. Her eyes were black as onyx, soft as moonstone, and bright as diamonds. She had found the glossy-leaved, sweet-scented maild in her walk, and garlands of it hung from her shoulders, set off by the dull dark blue of her flowing holoku. In her hair, whose youthful jet was beginning to show the softening silver of full maturity, she wore a crown of fern leaves. She held a long basket, shaped like a cornucopia, in one hand. It was filled with forest roots and leaves, and, rising above her head, redeemed the inferiority of her curt figure. With the other hand she gathered up the folds of her long, loose robe, to give her footstep freedom in the rough road; and as she came towards us, walking under a wide-branching bread-fruit tree, with all the mystery and majesty of lao behind her, she seemed the very genius of the land. The good-natured confidence with which she met the landlord's inquiry as to her errand here, and the smiling confession of her fault as she displayed among her spoils the root "of the forbidden tree," were 244 " ALOHA t" characteristic of the Hawaiian Eve. We owe her far more than the value of her theft that day for putting into the awful perfection of the scene the bit of imperfection with whose faults our poor humanity could find something akin and social. It was a positive relief from the mighty condescension of the hills to meet somebody who was not above us. Her smiling presence helped also to dispel the gloom which settles on these waters of destruction, as we recall the slaughter of extermination with which Kamehameha choked the valley in the day of his conquest of Maui. For it was in this terrible strait that Kahekili's army was utterly destroyed. There on the sides of the great rock in this Coliseum of nature they fought and fell, and the Wailuku dragged their lifeless bodies to the sea. It is this association of human tragedy with a tremendous scene in nature which turns awe into something like fear. I remember experiencing the same feeling at the foot of Niagara, on the Canada side, when, as I was standing looking upwards at its overpowering flood, a negro enveloped in water-proof suit suddenly came up from behind the falls, and, pointing to the deadly lip of the cataract, described the passage of a boat over it a few days before containing two men. "They rowed as long as they could," he said, "but when they saw that it was of no use, they threw their arms around IAO. 245 each other and went over the fall." At such a moment it was easy to invest this terrible element with personal ill-will, and I could conceive that man should endeavor to appease the monster with gifts and worship. Happily Iao was in a placable mood that afternoon; no rain descended from the threatening clouds that trailed along its jagged edge. The Wailuku ran shallow at the ford, and let our horses carry us over. The trees and shrubs and clambering vines were in their freshest green. Cliffs of maiden's-hair, hillsides of the geranium-fern (Pteris decipiens), ravines of the light-green kukui tree, plains of guava overrun with white blossoming passion-flowers, a wealth of foliage of which these are but the overflowing of the full cup, made the valley as beautiful and charming in its details as it was overwhelming in its total effect. It was like these lives of ours, where we endure and even enjoy in succession what would be insupportable if borne or even apprehended in the mass. Again and again I was off my saddle, tempted by the rare ferns which stretched out their hands to us from every clod or cranny of the rock. Surely this is the Paradise of that captivating Pteris which goes by the common name of the geranium-fern, from its resemblance to its leaf. It grew in tiny dimensions from every pore of the lava-rock, or spread in clusters of leaves, each as large as a man's hand, in the richer 246 2 ALOHA!" soil at the foot of the clifft. Nearly every leaf turned up a perfectly seeded specimen. The rapture of picking them became fairly breathless as each specimen seemed to surpass its predecessors, and we added to the joy of their discovery an anticipation of the pleasure they would give to our fern-enamoured spouse on our meeting again. Our fern-boards, although newly supplied with papers before we started, could not contain the riches of our " find." Probably we should never see so many or such perfect ferns of this species again. We excused our rapacity by remembering the many friends who would be pleased to get one of them. The supply was so abundant, that greed seemed like moderation. We recalled the toilsome expedition up Palolo, when we were at Waikiki, and the few and feeble specimens of the fern which greeted us there. It was the one opportunity in a lifetime to make one's self rich with the Pteris decipiens, and we improved it. I doubt if we should have been more elated, as we drove homeward, if the strap which went over our shoulders and supported our fern-press had carried a fortune in gold. There is something in the fern fever, when one gets it, so exciting and absorbing, that every thing that is not a fern seems of secondary importance. There is danger, unless one is on one's guard, lest this supreme interest should blind the traveller to the other beauties by the way. The search IAO. 247 for ferns becomes so habitual that the fascinated tourist has no eyes for any thing else. In vain the great Pacific rolls before him, in one unbroken flood from pole to pole, he spies a fern in the cranny of the rock, and have it he must. Is he walking to the high bridge which spans the deep-flowing Wailuku at Hilo, and are the deepening shades of evening lighting up the summit-fires of Mauna Loa, he is lost to the rare scene if he but thinks he sees a new fern growing out of the trunk of the old bread-fruit tree. All through the lively woods of Puna or along the forest-path to Kilauea, his eyes are searching the undergrowth for his peculiar prey. And even as he comes riding home from Iao, - Iao the terrible, the beautiful, the only, for surely the world has no other valley like it, - his thoughts are busier with the pressed volume of fern leaves which he hugs to his side, than with the majesty and wonder of the scenery he has been contemplating. Perchance, however, this harmless weakness may have its compensations. Perchance, without effacing the image of sublimity which the valley has left in his memory, this little leaf may relieve the mind of too long-continued tension. There is a point beyond which the impression of magnitude and beauty cannot go. We fly from the infinite to the infinitesimal. Get up, get up, Johnny Smoker (what a name for a horse!). The captain leads the way on his rocking steed, and I follow with a mild canter; and now 248 2"ALOHA!" we reach the dim portal of the vale again, now we bound over its threshold, now up the hill, now down the country road, now through the village by-ways, and again we are safe at home in the captain's dwelling. As I look from my chamber door, which opens directly upon the quarter-deck, I can see all that lao shows of her magnificence to the outer world. There stands the great green gulf, deepening to blackness as it retreats behind the mountains; clouds are hurrying from the sea to its crags, like eagles to their eyry; the fresh trade-wind stirs the glossy foliage of the mangoes, the wavy cane-fields, and the dishevelled fringes of the bananas, and rustles among the vines that overrun the house. What a close to the day which opened for me on the flat and cheerless sands of MaalaeaBay! We are glad now that we came ashore on Maui. MAKAWAO AND HALEAKAL A. 249 MAKAWAO AND HALEAKALA. O UR quarter-deck at Wailuku overlooked "the sandy tracts, And the hollow ocean ridges, roaring into cataracts." That way lay Makawao, and to Makawao we must go, if we wished to visit Haleakala, the House of the Sun. The captain fitted us out, and, foreseeing the difficulties of the way, he gave me a horse remarkable for what may fairly be called staying qualities. If I had chosen to indulge him, I have no doubt that " Johnny Smoker" (for this was his phlegmatic name) would have stayed in the captain's yard till this hour, immovably content. But my time was brief. Twelve miles of riding, first through the sands, and afterwards up two thousand feet by winding cliff roads, were before us, before we should reach Makawao. By dint of spur and scolding I managed to get started, and, once going in the gait peculiar to him, there was no danger of a relapse. It was fully as easy to the horse as standing still, and there seemed no reason why he should ever stop, except for food and water. In this mechanical fashion we got out of 250 A ALOHA the village and over the sand-hills to the stretch of shore beyond, and there the liveliness of the sea and the freshness of the breeze atoned for our steed's moderation. There was nothing tame in the cavalry of the sea, as they trooped landward, their white manes tossing in the air, and their hoofs tramping the beach in prolonged and ever-repeated thud. The only human life on this long stretch of sand was an occasional native urging his horse across the yielding soil with merciless impatience. On leaving the sandy reaches we struck a firmer land sparsely clothed with grass, and here we met at varying distances cattledrivers dashing away in pursuit of their wandering and unruly charge. Happily, among these native travellers there was one young man whose journey led him to Makawao, and we rode within call of each other all the way. How we ever got to know each other's purpose, and kept company, I cannot tell. My Hawaiian vocabulary was quite as scanty as his knowledge of English, and yet in spite of this tabu on conversation we had quite a sociable ride together. The substance of my remarks was the repetition of the word " Makawao? " in an interrogative way, at every new view we caught of plantation or settlement on the distant uplands; while my companion contented himself with a smiling negative and a gesture, which indicated that my goal was further on. A forenoon spent in this deaf and dumb way cannot be considered MAKAWAO AND HALEAKALA. 251 the perfection of social intercourse; but friendliness and companionship were there, and that was no small boon to an ignorant traveller in a foreign land. At last we reached a primitive store by the roadside, the trading-place, doubtless, of the dwellers in the far-scattered plantations, whose houses and mills had arrested our attention as we rode along, and here we found a man who could speak English. From him we received directions so explicit, that we no longer needed any other guide than our memories and eyesight in order to find our way to the house of Mr. A -, our destined resting-place. And when at length we made that last climb up the steep road which leads to the little village of Makawao, and turning to the left rode to our host's pretty cottage, embowered in trees and gay with flowers; when we felt that lifegiving breeze which always blows here, either from the ocean below or the mountains above, a breeze which wonderfully unites the vigor of the temperate zones with the softness of the tropics; when we found ourselves made welcome in this ideal resting-place by real friends, who an hour before were only strangers to us,- we only wanted the company of two people, then safe and happy in Honolulu, to make our contentment complete. Mr. A- had been a missionary teacher, and done admirable service in his days of health in the elevation and education of the natives. But at the time of my visit he was a confirmed inva 252 Cc ALOHA I" lid, imprisoned in his room, and only able to communicate with the outside world by proxy. He was happy, however, in having a family well fitted to continue and increase his influence for good. Some of them were in the "States," earning their education and their way to competence at the same time. But besides his intelligent and kindly wife there were two children at- home, whose goodness and capacity were enough to amply second all their father's plans. Thus aided, my host was conducting a large coffee plantation, raising cattle, and maintaining his family; and I should have to think long and search far to find a lovelier or more comfortable home than I found at Makawao. My reception and entertainment by these excellent people at that precise time was really an excess of hospitality on their part; for, as I afterwards learned, they were straining every nerve to get ready for a trip to America, where Mr. A- hoped to find relief from his disorder. But, in spite of these preoccupations, I was made so generously at home, that nothing was missing to my perfect entertainment. I like to dwell on such ungrudging hospitality, because it is not exceptional here. It is an island grace, throwing a comfort and happiness over the traveller's recollections of Hawaii, surpassing even the delight of its natural beauty and magnificence. Young F -, my host's daughter, was a precocious student and collector of ferns. Her collections and arrange MAKAWAO AND HALEAKALA. 253 ments were eagerly purchased by travellers of taste. She knew where every fern in that rarely gifted island of Maui had its home. No better guide for a fernhunter could be found. That very afternoon we were off with a neighbor, Mrs. H, also an enthusiast in this pursuit, ransacking the woods for new specimens. The best hunt, however, was on the succeeding day, when another neighbor, Miss F, and myself started for a ravine some distance up the side of Haleakala. It was immediately in the rear of the summer house which a fortunate Honolulu family has erected on this cool height. And such a rich vein surely exists nowhere else in fern-land. Tying our horses in the woods, we crept down the side of this mountain crack, one or two hundred feet deep. On shelving slopes of lateral d6bris, in crevices of the lava cliff, out of pockets in the bed of the evanescent mountain stream, amid jungles of coarse grass, on the limbs of old trees, everywhere in this long gorge, the most exquisite and uncommon ferns were growing in prodigal abundance. I saw a whole bank of Davallia Alexandri, that unique and perfect fern, found, I believe, nowhere else. In the cool moss, still dripping with water, although the rocky bed of the ravine was dry, we found the little hairy Polypodium Hookeri, no common specimen. Asplenia and Pterides, known and picked in other places, but never so beautifully developed as here, rewarded our search. And why should 254 " ALOHA!" I conceal the rapture-no other word is strong enough for the sensation - with which I came upon a thrifty bunch of my longed-for Gymnogramme Javanica, the cynosure of the choice collection we had studied at Hilo? There it was, growing familiarly with other ferns and grasses, as if it were not the queen it is, and worthy of a throne by itself. I doubt if any miner returning from successful digging in California or Australia ever felt richer than I did on my return from that day's ferning. And why not? What is the substance of wealth but its capacity to minister to our enjoyment? And here in my fern-press, clutched to my side as I galloped home that afternoon, were the means of as true enjoyment as any thing short of love and religion could furnish. Let no man despise this bloodless hunting in which we were engaged. I do not scruple to say that I prefer it to hunting wild goats on Hualalai. There is nothing tame or girlish about it. It has its spice of danger, indeed, if that is the necessary condition of manly sport. Scaling those cliffs and threading those deep cuts in Haleakala is something more than child's play, I assure you. If I chose to make the most of the peril of that venturesome climb of mine up the precipitous wall of the ravine in an attempt to reach the upper world again, I could make a very pretty story of risk encountered and accident narrowly escaped. Having the tree on which you are depending MAKAWAO AND HALEAKALA. 255 suddenly give way, and falling a hundred feet, more or less, is sufficiently hazardous even for the most adventurous spirit. But I forbear. Enough that fern-hunting takes you into the same woods, over the same roads, out into the same wild, free, open life, as any other hunting, and at the same time you have the generous satisfaction of knowing that you shed nobody's blood but your own. But all this is but preliminary to the supreme piece of mountaineering which is before us, that for which, above all other purposes, we have come to Maui; namely, the ascent of Haleakala. Lorrin A — was my guide. We started at halfpast one o'clock in the morning. The only alternative, if one wishes to see the sun rise from the summit, is to go up and pass the night there. We chose the former, as the least of the two evils. How still the sleeping world was on that dim morning, when we mounted our horses at the stable door, pushed through the little lane into the open road, and, with no visible eye upon us but the sleepless stars', began our trip to the dwelling-place of Light, Haleakala, the Sun-house! The first stage of the ascent was but a repetition of yesterday's excursion, in other company, and by night instead of day. But when we had got out of the woods and were fairly on the intermediate stretch of demolished lava and scrub vegetation which leads to the utter desola " ALOHA!" tion of the top, the moon came out and brightened the way to sunrise. Was she wondering at us, toiling up this high mountain to see a big crater? Was she thinking of her own spent fires and extinct volcanoes, and priding herself on her supreme desolation? What a tramp she might set us, over topless mountains and bottomless pits, if we would extend our journey to her realm! We decline the invitation. Haleakala is quite enough for us. Ten thousand feet of rock, ashes, and stubble suffice. And now moonlight melts into day. The light of early morning is all around us, although no glimpse as yet of the sun appears. We do not know whether it has risen above the waves of the Pacific or not. Between us and the east this huge wall still stands and makes a second dawn. Lorrin prophesies a clear view from the main-top, if we can climb there before the sun is well up, - a mountainous "if," with our tired horses and this execrable going. The clouds already begin to hover around and below us. They will surely fill the bowl of the crater erelong. Making the best speed we can, we come at last to the usual camping-ground, and there leave our horses. Once on our own feet, we make quick time to the big rocks that overlook Haleakala, and at length it lies before us,- a disappointment seven miles long. Yes, the first impression is disappointing. Why house of the Sun? Better say, his tomb. This monstrous urn, with a heap of ashes MAKAWAO AND HALEAKALA. 257 within it, is all sepulchral in its suggestions. We were never partial to mummies, and the size of them does not make them more attractive. Volcanoes have no right to be extinct. They cease to be volcanoes when they cease to act. It may be that I was suffering at that moment from the effect of too highly colored representations of the scene. The descriptions of guide-books and travellers so often disconcert Nature, and substitute a startling sensation for a deepening impressiveness, which is her better and more customary way. For whatever reason, I am not at first very profoundly moved by the sight. I have looked down two thousand feet before, and into far more beautiful deeps than this. I have seen oceans of clouds, and the sun shining on their upper surfaces, from the top of Mount Washington, years ago. If the miracle of this view is in its fiery origin, what other origin had the peaks and vales of the Sierra Nevadas? Is this lapse of lava any more wonderful than the subsidence which made the valley of the Yosemite? And how unspeakably more beautiful and grand is that redeemed fall of nature than this penitential but not yet restored defaulter! I am giving only first impressions. By and by, as the magnitude of the pit, nineteen miles in circumference; the height of its distant cones, three to seven hundred feet, showing no more than anthills; the suggestiveness of its two black lava rivers escaping towards the east and north, and recalling the 17 258 " ALOHA!" fearful day of past judgment for Haleakala, when the secret of its fiery heart was disclosed, -were impressed upon us; and gradually, in the gray but not melancholy waste around us, now the great mountain-summits of Hawaii, now West Maui, now the sea of waters below the sea of clouds, and Lanai or Molokai, half hid in trailing mists, - these visions of a world of loveliness and fertility surrounding and compensating the lifeless pit below came to our relief, we began to feel some of the emotion proper to the place. Nevertheless, if we had to choose between the enjoyment of visiting Iao and that of ascending Haleakala, we should certainly* choose the former. Better take Haleakala on hearsay, than miss the indescribable glory of the great valley of Wailuku. On our way down the mountain we stopped and lunched near a scanty brook in one of the innumerable gulches that line its sides. But the refreshment of the repast was as nothing compared with the excitement of finding magnificent specimens of the Aspidium Haleakalense, - that rare and perfect fern, growing nowhere else in the world. We reached home in the early afternoon, sufficiently weary from our trip to thoroughly enjoy a bath, a bed, and, after sleep, the delicious supper which awaited us. Our friends from Wailuku, the captain and his wife, are spending the day with my entertainers. As we sit at table in the airy dining-room, all one side of it an MAKAWAO AND HALEAKALA. 259 open trellis-work, through which the appetizing breezes of Makawao come and go, and share the delicious coffee and varied fruits this comprehensive land and climate offer, it seems the spot above all others we have seen where a family of Northern birth, accustomed to bracing air, might thrive and be happy. True, the world of men and their exciting interests and daily news is far away. But every place has its local interests, and I find my host is as earnestly attentive to the wants and prospects of Hawaii as we in America are to our country's needs. Among these scattered plantations there are excellent, cultivated, interesting people; enough, no doubt, for social needs, unless one is wholly dependent upon frequent and general visiting. During the year, visitors from other islands, notably in the summer from Honolulu, come to Makawao, and every few days either the "Kilauea" on one side or the "Ka Moi" on the other brings letters and papers. The captain says that the regular sailing-vessel, the "Ka Moi," will arrive at Wailuku this very day. He cannot say when she will return, but assuredly within the week. The next morning I learn to my dismay that the "Moi" will not go to Honolulu before Tuesday. This will not suit my convenience, as the steamer for San Francisco, on which we must take passage, is expected to leave Honolulu on Wednesday. What other chance is there of getting to Honolulu this week? I hear 260 6 "ALOHA!" that a sloop lies at anchor in Maliko Bay, the port of Haiku. So I ride down to Haiku plantation, and learn that this sloop, the "Live Yankee," will sail to-morrow evening. Hurrying on to Wailuku, over the "sandy tracts" again, I collect my luggage for the next day's departure. A little shopping, a little visiting, and one more ride to the portal of lao, to collect some more of the geranium-fern, and take one last look at the awful beauty of that incomparable valley, and I am ready to depart.. A native horseman accompanies me to bring back my horse from Maliko Bay. Encouraged by his companionship and spurred on by the native's familiar voice, Johnny Smoker made such unusual time that we were at Maliko Bay at least six hours before the sloop was ready to set sail. All that afternoon we waited in solitary enjoyment of the bold headlands, the retreating beach, the crisp and sparkling waves, the droves of cattle pasturing in the green intervale between the hills, the easy industry of the native stevedores, filling the boat again and again with barrels of sugar and rowing it to the sloop. Would that our admiration had embraced the "Live Yankee" itself! But enthusiasm has its limits, and mine stopped short of that weatherbeaten craft, tossing ominously in the offing, and daring me to come on board. With tolerable weather the vessel ought to reach Honolulu the next forenoon. We were assured of that. What sorrow might MAKAWAO AND HALEAKALA. 261 not be borne for a night, with the joy of Honolulu and its welcome coming in the morning? I was more than ready to embark, in spite of the doubtful complexion and temper of this sugar-laden sloop. It added greatly to my satisfaction, however, to find that I should not be the only white or English-speaking passenger. Young Mr. B- of Wailuku would take the trip with me; he, like myself, being ready for any sacrifice that would bring him to his wife and family the next day. The captain and his wife and two seamen, all Hawaiians, and one poor vagabond Chinaman, made up the ship's list. How my fellowwhite, Mr. B —, ever found courage to descend into that sugar-scented, bug-frequented hold which passed for a cabin, or, having gone down, how he ever got the strength to come up again, is to this day a conundrum to me. Less venturesome, I threw myself fulllength among the luggage, my head resting on my saddle-bags, and with one hand clutching the companion-way, to keep from rolling into the sea at some lurch of the sloop, I entered upon the watches of the night. Sleep, if it had been possible, would have been dangerous; at least the hand that kept me on board must be awake. The heavily laden vessel shipped water so plentifully, that I had only to fall to the deck to find a tolerable sea on board; but the same hand which kept me from the ocean kept me from the deck. Every moment of that wretched "c ALOHA!" night between Maui and Oahu is soaked into my memory: the rush of the sliding, slippery water over the deck, - ugh! I hear it now; the suffocating sugar bilge from the neighboring cabin,-paugh! the dead calm at midnight, and the helpless floating of the sloop on the black waters. So have I seen the cork of an ink-bottle that had gone the wrong way miserably floating on the ink within. Then, at length, the breeze, stiff and heady, and plunging the bow under water now and then. I more than suspect the helmsman of shipping those seas for the special disadvantage of the poor little Chinaman, curled up like a dried fish under cover of the longboat, and silently enduring a worse than Californian persecution. The latent grudge which the Hawaiian always has against the Chinaman showed itself in this mischievous aggravation of my fellow-passenger's miseries. I had seen the ghostly figure flitting uneasily about in the dim starlight, seeking rest and finding none, until he finally settled himself under the lee of the sloop's boat. Even in my depth of misery I had room for pity towards his woe-begone condition. But the suppressed chuckle of the helmsman just behind me when an extra wave leaped over the bow and drenched the wretched Celestial proved that there was no pity in his heart, and more of human design than accident in the seas we shipped. Well, the longest night must have an end. This MAKAWAO AND HALEAKALA. 263 ended in a fair, clear day, with hardly a ripple upon the ocean. It was worse than the night, for then we could not clearly see ourselves or our destination, and with a short exception we were moving all the time towards the end. But to lie almost stationary opposite the inviting shores of Oahu, and feel that no power but the listless wind of a mid-Pacific noon can take you there, is, to speak mildly, a lavish expenditure of patience. It was like going to the panorama and having the machinery refuse to act, so that one scene stands before you like a tiresome, albeit a magnificent, drop-curtain. The drooping pennon feebly lapped the upright mast. The sails withered and wrinkled in the hot sun. The flying-fish skipped mockingly past us. The little Chinaman lay in a heap, rough-dry, like a bundle of clothing in the laundry waiting for the ironing. Tears of molasses began to ooze from the barrels of sugar. Our Hawaiian skipper smiled and waited. We waited and sighed. It came at last, the longed-for breeze, and took us to the pier in time for a bath before the noontide lunch with our dear old friends in Honolulu. " ALOHA I" HONOLULU AGAIN. T IIE thought of our speedy departure makes us greedy to pick up every crumb of memory. Recalling the single chapter which we have given to the story of our visit in Honolulu, we see that the half has not been told. Here we are, on the last week of our sojourn in the Islands, with hardly time to shake our friends by the hand and say "Farewell," and Honolulu, the capital, and compend of the whole archipelago, has its praises only half sung. A dozen interesting and characteristic incidents of which we were a part come freshly to mind, and beg for a word of description. "Have you forgotten the Sunday morning when you worshipped in my sanctuary?" old Kaumakapili seems to say. And I, remembering the great native church, -a mountain of roof set upon a pedestal of concrete hardly ten feet high; its whitewashed inner walls, and canopy of thatch; its rude but not unsightly pews and pulpit; its congregation of native Hawaiians and their noble minister, Kuaea, - am glad to fix the image of that Sunday's service. The novelty of the place and its company, and the unknown tongue in which the service was conducted, HONOLULU AGAIN. 265 must share with me the blame of a wandering mind and an observation of my neighbors more curious than devout. From my seat near the door I can command a view of the whole congregation. I see Kuaea looming above his little pulpit like a pillar in the house of our God, as he is, the choir in the uppermost seats on one side the pulpit, and the heads of the worshipping assembly, in every attitude of attention, negligence, or devotion, as it happens. The preacher is a marked man. His six feet or more of height and goodly proportions give him a commanding presence of body. But the terror of his size is wholly dispelled by the amiable expression of his countenance and the gracious simplicity of his speech and action. His manner was both devotional and natural, - a rare union, - and when he was aroused by the greatness of his message, he was a magnificent orator. He has been called the " Webster " of Hawaiian speakers, and I could see enough of the weight of his address and the richness of his eloquence, without understanding what he said, to believe the comparison not unjust. One singular custom of this church showed that the wisdom of the serpent was not wanting in Oahu, if the serpent himself was unknown there. The church tithes were collected in a manner calculated to secure both promptness and fulness. The clerk called out the names of the parishioners in open meeting, and each one, on being summoned, walked up to the desk 266 " ALOHA!" and laid the expected tribute there, in full sight of the whole congregation. No obliging contribution box concealed the poverty of the offering in its promiscuous store, but there it lay, large or small, by itself, before the church collector and the assembled people. The Hawaiian complexion is so inconvenient for blushing that modesty or shame had to express itself in some other way, and the spirit of the giver must be inferred from his bearing or gesture as he pays the necessary tax. I could see no sign of unwillingness or embarrassment on the part of these native contributors. They gave as if they were accustomed to giving. Evidently their natural generosity does not fail them when they enter the church. No more do some of their less admirable traits, if I may judge by the little unpleasantness which has arisen in the pew in front of me. A small boy, impatient of the service, and angry with the maternal rebuke pitilessly given, is showing his disgust by butting his mother with his unruly head. Every attack calls forth an answering push from the indignant mother, and a mischievous-looking woman in front turns around in evident enjoyment of the scene, and provokes the boy to'renewed hostility by her frowns and jeers. The combat thickens, until finally, in wrathful majesty, the woman rises, drags the child to his feet, and goes sweeping down the aisle, pushing the little shadow of her own temper before her, and wholly unconscious that it is her own shadow. HONOLULU AGAIN. 267 At Kawaiahao, the other native church of Honolulu, Rev. H. H. Parker preaches. The church is of stone, very large, and interesting for the missionary associations which cluster about it. The interment of the late King Lunalilo in its burial-ground, and the stately tomb erected over his remains, add to its interest. Eight or ten immense kahilis, or feather standards, such as are borne in the royal processions, stand around the king's last resting-place, their vanished glory telling sadly the last triumph of a king. In the vestry behind the church I find a lively Sunday school, superintended by Mr. S. B. Dole, who, like so many of the sons of missionaries, maintains the work of the fathers, although belonging himself to the legal profession. Interpreted by him, I speak to the children, and am delighted by their quick responsiveness. Their singing of the " Armor-Bearer" and " Lei Rose" was as spirited and perhaps as unspiritual as the best of our home Sunday schools could offer. On another Sunday I attended the services of the Bethel and the Fort Street Church, the worshippingplace of the resident foreigners who prefer the Congregational order. There is an English cathedral of modest proportions in the city, and a Roman Catholic church. Apropos of the English Church, I can think of nothing better to tell than a story of one of its former clergymen. The bishop, on his return to London, went one evening to a grand reception. Full of 268 8C ALOHA I" that inverted self-respect which official position so commonly confers, he approached the reception-room, passed its august portal, and, to his mingled horror and amusement, heard himself announced by the stentorian usher as the " Bishop of Hullabaloo! " If the English Episcopal Church were less sure than it is of its own importance, I should have little expectation of its success in these islands. Its faith in itself may awaken faith in others. In Honolulu, if anywhere, it should prosper. The English residents and visitors might sustain it there. But it may prevail after all, if Congregational Protestantism should lose the sense of its priceless liberty or omit the safeguards of its traditional order. The form of Episcopacy, however, which has been imported into Honolulu, being what is called highchurch, will have no advantage over Romanism in its appeal to the natives. Already the Church of Rome has made many converts among the impressionable Hawaiians, and it may be that its firm hand will yet take hold of the people whom the Congregational Church holds with ever-loosening grasp. If all the prelates of the Roman Church have as much candor and common-sense as one of whom I heard the following anecdote, their personal influence might go far to neutralize the superstitious influences of their church. There was a famous game-cock in Honolulu, able to whip any competitor which might be HONOLULU AGAIN. brought against him. He had proved his prowess and superiority in many a fight. But this cock had one singular trait. He would never fight on Sunday. Any chick in the coop could make him duck his head and run away on the Christian's day of rest. This was no mere accident or casual occurrence. It was an invariable custom, and seemed to show a fixed principle in the bird not to fight on that day. When the singular fact was made known to the priest, he said: "I can explain it to you. On Sundays my church bell is ringing. It is the sound of that which frightens the cock. Watch him on any feast-day when the bell rings, and see if it is not so." And sure enough, it was the bell and not the day which lay at the bottom of this athletic rooster's Sabbatarian scruples. I owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Damon, the veteran minister of the Bethel, less perhaps for the privileges of Sunday worship in his church - much as I enjoyed his preaching on the one occasion when I was able to worship there-than for the polite attentions and useful courtesies which he bestowed upon me. It was he who took me to visit the school or college at Punahou, where the youth of the Islands receive their higher education. While there I listened to an admirable recitation in Greek conducted by Mr. Damon's son and his small but intelligent class, and then in the large upper hall I " ALOHA!" heard a succession of themes and recitations, which were no worse and no better than such performances in a school of the same grade are at home. The value of compulsory writing never seemed to me very great, and I saw nothing in these exercises to change my opinion. But the school itself, with its earnest teacherr and scholars, was a worthy evidence of the homebred love of learning which New England colonists always carry with them wherever they may go; and when I recalled the intelligent people I had met, now taking the lead in the society and business of Hawaii, and reflected that many of them were educated here, especially when I considered that some of our own best citizens in America were graduates from this college, and among them our friend Armstrong, of Hampton, Va., who learned in the Hawaiian Islands the secret of his successful treatment of the freedmen of the South, I felt that this institution stood the real test of excellence, in the character and services of its graduates. I was much amused and not at all indignant to hear one of the students, in a composition upon "Boston," describe the inhabitants of that familiar city as inclined to think themselves superior to all other people. It reminded me of a brilliant schoolmate of mine who once asked me in all frankness if it was conceited in a man to be clever and to know it. But every school must have an end, like the other HONOLULU AGAIN. 271 troubles of life, and Punahou dismisses its pupils and us punctually at twelve. Then the boys and girls drive off in their Hawaiian omnibus or in private vehicles to their several homes, and Father Damon and I follow their example. In visiting a new country I like to see the people in three places,- in theatres or places of amusement, where they forget themselves; in churches, where they remember themselves; and in schools, where they remember their children. Of course the home would be the best post of observation, because there the people do all three and show themselves as they are. But homes are castles which travellers cannot always enter. The schools, churches, and theatres are the indices which all may study. I have already described the Hawaiians in their churches, and we saw some of them at school in Hilo; but where shall we find them at play? There is only one theatre in the Islands, and that is a foreign importation, very small, seldom opened, and only patronized by the white population of Honolulu. But there will be no difficulty in finding the Hawaiians at play. Their work is chiefly sport. Go to their fishing villages, their taro patches, the street corners where they congregate, or better still to their great fishmarket in the city, and you will see the real theatre of Honolulu. Reserve is not a Hawaiian failing, and here the people let themselves out with a freedom 272 "ALOHA!" which leaves nothing to be desired in the way of self-revelation. The place itself is shabby, as fishmarkets have a right to be, its main recommendation being its openness to sun and air. Covering was given the fish in small booths, and the people wandered about in an unconscious spectacular glory of brilliant coloring and effective grouping such as is seldom seen upon the stage. The brilliancy of the colored holokus, - crimson, blue, yellow, black, and brown, - and the blazonry of the gaudy leis were only equalled by the dresses in which nature had robed the fishes themselves. Pink, purple, yellow, green, orange, black, or all these colors combined, and dazzling the eye with a sheen of the mother-of-pearl thrown over all, they lay in piles or rows, awaiting a purchaser. It needed all the glory of their covering to redeem the ugliness of their forms and features. Such whimsical shapes and odd expressions are never seen in the fish of our North Atlantic coast. Looking at them, I recall a book of colored drawings of the fishes of the South Pacific, owned by Dr. Wetmore of Hilo, but prepared originally, I believe, for Agassiz, in which the combined ugliness and splendor of submarine evolution is fully exhibited. I also remember the charming effect of these gayly colored fishes as they lay in the deep blue waters of Kealakakua Bay, and swayed gently to and fro above the brown rocks or over the tufts of coral. But HONOLULU AGAIN. 273 there was one curious creature there which I did not see in the market at Honolulu, and yet he would not have been misplaced amidst these spoils of death and the fishermen. The natives called it a coffin-fish, and the name exactly described the creature. It was the exact shape of the thing which gave it its name, and, seen from above as it pushed its way through the waters with filmy and invisible fins, it seemed to enter the gay company of revellers in their heedless play like a melancholy warning of decay. Little do either people or fish reck of death, however, so long as they can revel in their natural elements. The noisy, joking, frolicking crowd-pricing and handling and tasting, now a ball of sea-weed (limu), delectable sauce to every fish, now a dried mullet, now a pink ohua or a bit of squid, all as nature serves them; or taking their slippery purchase home with them, swathed in broad bands of ti leaves, tied with the fibre of the cocoa-nut husk-take life carelessly in a glad and not unwarranted faith that besides their present bounty there are as good fish in the sea as ever were caught. I go home with my friend and guide through this Hawaiian festival of fish, bearing to our cook a bright pink ohua in leafy bondage. Of the two, Ah Me or the fish, I should have judged the former was to be sacrificed, so utterly had the melancholy of the kitchen and the oppression of past opium possessed him. 18 274 4C ALOHA I" Shall I add to this picture of the people at their play a description of election day, and the sights and sounds which invested the government buildings? Here, if anywhere, the earnestness of competition and the genuine passion of native ambition and suspicion of foreign influence will show themselves. I go with my friend, J. C, who is a government employd, and with his intelligent guidance and explanation I can understand the significance of the several groupings and excited speech-making. Surely the "Bishop of Hullabaloo" might find his parishioners in this crowd. An epidemic of gabble and gesture seemed to have seized the entire male portion of the city. Four representatives to the legislature were to be chosen, and there were twenty different tickets in the field. The candidates were urging their claims upon the voters with amusing shamelessness. From group to group they passed in familiar conversation, or, mounted in cheap-jack fashion on a cart, they harangued the undecided crowd. Inside the building every thing was most quiet and orderly. Each voter was obliged to show his receipted tax-bill before depositing his vote. A lively business was transacted under the very eaves of the government building in supplying delinquent tax-payers with receipted bills, the understanding being that they should vote as their banker desired. I should judge that civil-service reform had not progressed much HONOLULU AGAIN. 275 further in Honolulu than in Washington or New York, for government officials were very active in the electioneering. The king's men in their red Garibaldi shirts ran through the dark crowd like sparks over the backlog of an open wood-fire. Here, there, and everywhere they plied their loyal trade, and sought to fire the Hawaiian heart. Rather fiery material if once ignited, as former elections have shown! The leading men were by no means secure about the peaceful termination of that day's contest. My host at Waikiki did not return to his shelter that night, mistrusting some popular outbreak. The anger of these people when once aroused, as on the occasion of the choice of the last king, has no bounds to its ferocity, and is ready to tear its victims in pieces. Men talk of the probability of this people's dying out by gradual and peaceable decline. I could more easily conceive of its blowing up by violent irruption. Unless time and contact with the weaknesses of civilization have changed their nature, it would be denying their ancestry to succumb to any foreign yoke without a fight. "Hawaii for the Hawaiians l" is still their popular cry, and while enough of them live to constitute a nation, let no grasping power from abroad dispute their freedom or seek to woo them from their independence! I am dwelling upon the native population of Honolulu, as if they were its chief inhabitants, socially as 276 " ALOHA!" well as numerically. But Honolulu is socially the Paris of the Pacific, the most cosmopolitan city, perhaps, in the Western Hemisphere. At one of the afternoon concerts on Emma Square, the king's Hawaiian band, led by a Prussian, discourses music to the listening ears of every type of man, from the swarthy Papuan to the delicate Caucasian. Very naturally, during my brief stay in the city, I saw most of the American residents, and especially those of New England extraction. One party given in our honor by a Boston friend was composed exclusively of Boston people. It filled the large parlors of the host, it is needless to say, with most agreeable men and women. New England people bear transplanting well. Their variable climate makes them at home everywhere. If any place is hot, they have felt hotter weather at home; if cold, they have been where it is colder. They have the well-grounded assurance that they can endure any climate after weathering their own. They are recognized, wherever they go, as strong and sturdy forces in the culture, enterprise, and civilization of their adopted country. And if they could overcome that partiality for the land of their birth, - though Heaven send they never may! -that leaning towards Boston which gives them a little one-sided look wherever you find them, they might be as graceful as they are trustworthy members of the local society in which they dwell. HONOLULU AGAIN. 277 One eminently Americo-Hawaiian evening which I spent at the residence of my host at the capital must find a description in this chapter of farewell to Honolulu. The Cousins' Society held its monthly meeting, and I was an invited guest. This society was originally composed only of children, or other relatives, of the American missionaries. It now admits other eligible persons as members. They call each other "cousin,"-a relief from the conventional "brother" and "sister" of church associations. The best way of describing the objects and methods of the "Cousins' Society" will be to report the meeting I attended. It was opened by prayer by the President, Mir. George II. Dole. Then followed good old" Zion," heartily sung by the whole congregation. Then a written paper by Cousin C. J, containing the news of the past month, pithily told and wittily annotated, was read. This was followed by choice quartette singing; and then a paper on "Dr. Guthrie of Edinburgh," suggested by his recently published biography, was read by Cousin F. D. It was a paper well worthy of a place in one of our best magazines, and it showed how high the standard of workmanship was in this little society. It was happily succeeded by more music; and then Miss M — of Boston read a sparkling paper, concluding with a felicitous piece of verse on "Our Boston Tea Party." Still another paper and more music, followed by an earnest " ALOHA!" discussion of the question, " How to keep absent members - that is, our American cousins - familiar with the doings of the society; " and then a collection was taken up for the benefit of the Mission to the South Pacific Islands. Cousin C —, who had just returned from a visit to these islands, in the missionary barque, the " Morning Star," was expected to tell the story of his voyage to the society, but was kept away by illness. After some brief speech-making, the meeting closed with the Missionary Chant, sung by all. To me it was an evening of rare enjoyment and profit. I do not see why this "Cousins' Society" does not give a perfect example of the best method of combining social intercourse, humane sympathy, religious co-operation, literary and aesthetic enjoyment, and friendly feeling. It is far in advance of the meetings I have often attended at home, when one of these objects has been made the single purpose of the evening. Culture gets its needed counterpoise in humanity; and philanthropy feels the relief of song, as its earnest workers discuss together their endless labors and fatiguing plans. This resolute yet genial society could only have come from the missionary spirit and experience in which these young people had grown up. It was the natural outcome of the seed which went with the heralds of a Christian civilization from these New England shores half a century ago. Would it not be well for us to borrow the plans and methods HONOLULU AGAIN. 279 of these Hawaiian cousins for the reconstruction of our own societies? It would be only another instance of what has been repeatedly shown in the history of missions, namely, that the reaction of missionary zeal and enterprise upon the churches which send forth their gospel is as salutary as their direct influence upon foreign converts. But this meeting must not hold too long. It is time that the reader be dismissed. He shall only be summoned once again, ere this chapter closes, to follow us in sympathy as we start out to make our farewell calls upon the people who have been so kind to us. Kaaikaula brings the newly purchased horse and buggy to the door, and Madame and I set out upon our social pilgrimage. We get safely out of the home avenue, and into the road, when suddenly the horse stops; and no persuasion of word, insistance of whip, or derision of the passing natives can move him. Nuuanu Avenue rises just here, and the creature knows it. Mount it he will not. He is willing to turn and go in the easy direction, but that we do not wish. It is a contest of obstinacy, and I propose to fight it out. In other words, I get my book and a lunch, and sit in the carriage enjoying them, while the horse stands there. I have the better of him. I can eat, and he cannot. I can read just as comfortably in the carriage as in the house. I propose to starve the creature into submission. But after an " ALOHA!" hour or two of ineffectual waiting, finding that the calls would not be made in that way, and knowing that they must be made forthwith, I was led to take another and more pliable horse and go the rounds with him. Pohaku-nui, or the Big Stone, was not speedy, but he did not balk. We afterwards learned that the new horse had been harnessed with a checkrein, - a restraint he was not used to, and that that was the cause of all his obstinacy. Alas! how many of us are provoked to the same vice by over-restraint! I am sure I have seen children who balked at their elders' commands who only needed a little loosening of the check-rein to make them tractable. Our drive took us up the beautiful avenue, between the embowered houses, bright with the pink Mexican creeper and the flaming Bougainvilleas, and stately with palm trees, along an upland street which overlooked the garden-like city and the blue sea beyond it, down again into the unique streets, with their leisurely shops and retired houses, and groups of unambitious natives stringing leis and talking gossip, and home past the residence of ex-Queen Emma, where we saw a building whose entire roof was covered with an unbroken mass of the most brilliant magenta color, -the dazzling display of an immense Bougainvillea. And so the pageant closes; and the high festival of beauty, wit, good cheer, and friendly companionship in which we have been spending our HONOLULU AGAIN. 281 winter vacation is at an end. Not quite, as the morrow will show. One more round of travel and exploration awaits me. If my arms had been long enough, I would have clasped the whole island in one last good-bye embrace; but, failing that, I took the circuit of Oahu on horseback, and the story of that ride shall fill our farewell chapter. 282 "ALOHA I" AROUND OAHU. MONDAY, April 24, 1876. T HE steamer from Australia for San Francisco is due on Wednesday. The tour around Oahu seems impossible. But we must see the great Pali, at the head of Nuuanu Avenue. Every enterprising traveller sees that, although he may stay in Honolulu less than one day. Here was I, on the verge of leaving Oahu for ever, and no sight of the Pali yet. So when H- came home this afternoon at two o'clock and proposed to ride to the Pali, I joyfully agreed; and away we went, he on his own horse, and I on Lupe, a free-and-easy creature, kindly loaned me by her owner, Miss J. Of course, we encountered the perennial showers which water the Avenue every hour of the day, and equally, of course, we were drenched to the skil before we arrived at the Pali. We passed " Sweet Home," the former residence of Dr. Judd, and still occupied by members of his family, - a domestic paradise, in whose making what varied gifts and graces of mind and heart had leagued together with -" the stones of the field " and all the AROUND OAHU. 283 trees of the forest Then came the rural burialground, unspoiled by ostentation, and further up the valley the stately mausoleum of the Hawaiian kings. The summer residence of the ex-Queen Emma succeeded, and tempting sites for summer homes, some of which have since been occupied by Honolulu merchants. There, too, was the manufactory of artificial ice, which Mr. Wilder, our host at Waikiki, was managing, with his universal and indomitable energy. Midway to the Pali, to my equal surprise and delight, we overtook Dr. Wetmore of Hilo, just starting on a tour around the island. My involuntary exclamation that I too would have gone if I had known his purpose, made the good doctor fairly eloquent in his persuasions that I should keep on with him. No persuasions would have been needed half an hour earlier and a few miles further back. Then I could have held a family consultation, packed my saddle-bags, dressed for the excursion, and gone with a clear understanding and good outfit. Possibly, however, I might not have gone at all. Many minds raise many obstacles. In a multitude of counsellors there may be wisdom, but there is seldom action. The very madness of the thing, setting out on a ride of eighty or ninety miles, wet to the skin, with no change of clothing, without consultation with the home government, and with the positive necessity of making the tour within forty-eight hours, in order CC ALOHA " to catch the steamer for America, — all this added to the charm of the excursion. I was in the mood for something venturesome. What if I did not catch the steamer! It would be a blessed accident that kept me longer in Hawaii nei. The doctor begged. H- -badgered and dared me to it. That settled the question. I went. He returned to my deserted family with the news that when he last saw me I was going over the Pali. The Pali, reader, is a cliff about a thousand feet in height, a sudden ending of the mountain up which you have been riding from Honolulu. Down the face of the cliff, a winding footpath for men, horses, and cattle has been cut, and H was right in saying that his last sight of me was a dissolving view as I went over the Pali. But we had had a peaceful and exuberant parting from each other at the summit. My wonder and delight at the prospect must have equalled his expectations. I do not remember any single view in any of the islands visited by me where the grandeur of mountain peaks above unites with the terror of an abyss so precipitous and profound below, while in the same look you get the sea dotted by boulders of basalt, each one of which is large enough to be called an island. Between the ocean and the perpendicular mountain rampart, two thousand feet in height and verdant to the clouds, lay the cane and rice fields, and spreading plains sprinkled with tiny dwellings. A scene so AROUND OAHIT. 285 peaceful seemed doubly sweet in contrast with the towering mountains above it and the restless sea beyond. In vain we try to realize that we are standing on one of nature's battle-grounds, as well as man's. Over this steep Kamehameha drove Kaiana and his followers in the final battle which made him master of O:hu. And unknown years before, in a mightier conflict of fire, air, and water, all the land below had been flung from the height where we stood. But the day is far spent. The doctor plans to stop at Mr. W —'s sugar plantation to-night. We must be going. H bids me a quizzical farewell, as if till this moment he had not believed in my enterprising intention, and down the narrow pathway we go, leading our horses and wondering what people do when they meet half-way on this single-file pathway, or - still likelier problem and harder to solve - what is done when a string of cattle meets you and they or you must take the outer edge. Happily we make the descent unchallenged by man or beast, and mounting again at the foot of the Pali, we canter briskly along the good carriage-road which extends around the remainder of the island. By making arrangements to meet your carriage at the foot of the Pali, you can make the circuit of Oahu with as much ease as if you were driving in New England. The ride to Mr. W-'s in the cool of the day, with the perfection of sea-views to the right, and 286 " ALOHA!" on the left a range of serrated mountains, now cloudcapped, now clear, and green with trees, ferns, and shrubbery to its very top, was all I had hoped. A little store at one of the scattered villages, kept by a Chinaman, furnished me with what extra clothing I needed for the trip, and thus supplied I had no other want which would not be met at Mr. W 's. We arrived there at tea-time, and were received with the same abounding welcome which has come to be a blessing like the sunshine. I wish I were sure that travellers in Hawaii, myself among the number, do not take this universal kindness as they take the sunshine, feeling no necessity for a suitable return. In truth, this costly hospitality to every comer is an unfair drain upon the people, and must in time be done away. More and more, as visitors from abroad increase in number, either boarding-houses must be opened at the attractive points, or the residents who receive travellers must consent to accept remuneration. Their company and attention will still leave the traveller in their debt after all fair dues are paid. We found a houseful of company at our host's when we arrived, but that made no difference to him or his amiable wife. They simply gave us rooms in another house, and the dining-room seemed capable of endless expansion. Mr. W- offered to furnish me with a fresh horse and send Lupe back to Honolulu. This removed my only disability in making the long tour. AROUND OAHU. 287 Lupe was not accustomed to such a journey, and I did not feel justified in taking the loan of a horse for an afternoon and keeping him for two days. Even the limitless kindness of Lupe's mistress would not justify that. The substitute which Mr. W - provided was a strong animal, apparently fresh from free-will pasturing, where his rearing and roving propensities might have unhindered play. The circles he described would have delighted a geometrician, and the original paths he struck out showed the fertility of his resources. But these little eccentricities soon yielded to the will of the rider and the taming effects of travel. Honesty compels me to state that the doctor was the rider, for with characteristic generosity he changed horses with me for the day. The exchange proved no robbery on my part after the first half-hour of travel, and we returned to our respective horses on the following day. Meantime what is passing, or what are we passing, as we gallop along this girdle of Oahu? Our plan is to stop at Punaluu, get a guide or some explicit direction to the famous ravine of Kaliuwaa, and having explored its wonders ride on to Kahuku, where we expected to spend the night. How to describe scenery which was changing at every turn of the circuitous road, and which was seen only in flashes as our galloping horses sped on their 288 "ALOHA!" way, I do not know. Not one of the splendid views afforded us remains fixed in my memory as a welloutlined picture. I only recall sea, islands, fish-ponds, rice-fields, cane-fields, pastures, cliffs, ravines, beaches, cattle, people, horses, here a church and there a school, all in ever-varied grouping and picturesque beauty. But Kaliuwaa, the great cleft in the mountain-range which faces the sea all along this northern side of Oahu, remains a unique and ever-memorable delight. A native boy picked up at Punaluu led the way, first through a swampy lowland, then up a hill-side, and after that the stream which threads the ravine was our sufficient clew to its secluded glories. So narrow is the gorge that there is hardly room for any other traveller than the stream itself. We crossed it eight times in making our trip to the heart of the Kaliuwaa. Ferns, vines, and trees in thick profusion joined with the stream in disputing our passage, and the loose rocks in the river-bed, all of which had fallen from the impending mountain-walls, showed us what reception we might expect from that quarter. "Man wants but little here below" we softly hummed to the good doctor, whose sense of humor still survived the deacon's orders which he wore so honorably in the Hilo church. That we were not alone in apprehensions of injury from this source was shown by the tokens of native superstition which we met with. AROUND OAHU. 289 Every little while we came to small bunches of ferns, carefully arranged, and having a small stone on them to keep them in place. These were offerings made by the natives to the god or goddess to whom the place had been consecrated by ancient tradition. Thus, in spite of Christian teaching, inborn faiths survive in these people, and show themselves in these instinctive appeals to their supplanted deities. The popular story goes that this very gorge was the work of Pele, the fire goddess, and here is one of the scenes of her numerous conflicts with rival gods and men. Our modern statement that the ravine is of volcanic origin is simply a scientific rendering of the old poem of Pele's wrath. The impressiveness of the place, however, is not dependent upon any theory of its origin. No man can stand in this awful break in creation, and feel the silent walls on either hand, heaven-high above him, without an emotion of wonder and praise; and when he penetrates to the head of the great chasm, and finds there a clear pool, into which a lovely fall of water leaps from the smitten rock, while all around the most exquisite ferns hang from the crevices of the rocks, or start from the moist banks of the perennial stream, he must be less than man if no tribute of admiration swells his bosom and makes him an unconscious worshipper of the God of nature. Something of the weight of this too great impressiveness was taken from me by the 19 c" ALOHA!" troop of native youth which we encountered far up the valley. They had been bathing in the pool, and were returning to their home full of laughter, coolness, freshness, and song. I wonder if they choose the fern for their propitiatory offering to Pele because they regard it as a surety of forgiveness and restoration, - a sort of vegetable rainbow, given to men to assure them that there shall be no more fire, as the rainbow in the clouds proclaimed the end of the flood. There is encouragement to this idea in the fact that the fern is the earliest form of vegetation which grows upon the lava. Hardly do its seams grow cool before this herald of another kingdom appears and takes possession. Even the black pit of Kilauea's terra infirma is invaded by the intrepid explorer. From the little Pellea on the top of Hualalai to the great plumes of the Sadleria along the sides of the Wailuku in Hawaii, the fern in some of its beautiful varieties may be found. Here in Kaliuwaa all the conditions of its perfect growth unite, —moisture, seclusion, and warmth. Old favorites, already well represented in my collection at home, grew here to such surpassing size and finish that I picked them as eagerly as if they were wholly new varieties, and two or three really new species rewarded our search. It is time to proceed on our tour of Oahu. But I cannot leave this place without one resolute glance at its unique wonders, if haply I AROUND OAHLU. 291 may carry with me, as a relief from tamer sights, the memory of its wild and awful beauty. Looking skywards, I find myself shut in by mountain walls, five or six times as high as Trinity Church spire in New York,- one gray and smooth and treeless, the other diversified by dwarf kukui trees and ferns. Between these walls a brook flows brokenly over a bed of splintered basaltic rock. Grasses, mosses, ferns, shrubs, trees, all crowd the banks and reach into the stream,- a pool at the heart of the ravine which an angelic waterfall is for ever troubling. There! that is Kaliuwaa. I, who have seen it, see it now and shall always see it in memory, unlike any other scene in all the world; and yet this description of it would answer perfectly well for any one of a hundred valleys with a brook running through it. The young guide who has showed us the way takes his fee as if money were ridiculous to him. He runs home to Punaluu, rich as Croesus, on the strength of a single shilling in his pocket. We canter on to Kahuku, where we plan to spend the night. What boots it to tell of black headlands facing silver sands and blue waves chasing landwards; or of grass houses here and there, picturesque and shabby; or of taropatches, where the essential root of the Hawaiian's daily life is growing in the water under the shade of the clustering lily leaves; or of rice-fields, wet and wavy, and cane-fields, wavy and wet; or of broad 292 " ALOHA!" pasture-lands, where sheep and cattle graze; of fishponds, where the lazy mullet fatten for the market; of islands, that surround the larger island of Oahu, as satellites around their parent planet? The mere mention of these things conveys no image to the eye that has not seen them, and he that has seen therm will grow impatient at the poverty of all wordpictures of scenes so radiant. At Kahuku we find a model ranch. Its present proprietor, Mr. R -, entertained us without stint. We found him the centre and governor of a little kingdom of his own. The ranch is twelve miles wide. It pastures three thousand sheep, twelve hundred cattle, two hundred horses, and furnishes employment and a livelihood to a whole settlement of people. Its former owner was an Englishman. He must have been a remarkable man, for he succeeded in impressing upon his Hawaiian dependants habits of industry and economy, which are the very last virtues to which the native Hawaiian inclines. Although under a new employer, these people retain in a marked degree the qualities drilled into them by Mr. M -. At least this is the testimony of Mr. R —, the present proprietor of the ranch. As we sit in his well-appointed dining-room, or on the open veranda, and converse about Hawaiian lands and people, I cannot but feel that the welfare of the country now, as earlier in its history, depends AROUND OAHU. 293 upon the honesty and intelligence of its accepted foreign leaders. It is too much to expect of a people only two generations removed from barbarism, that they should be equal to self-direction and self-control in the difficult paths of modern civilization. A curious evidence of the covert heathenism which only time and generations of culture can wholly root out, lay before us. In the grounds adjoining the house there were two odd images of stones,-the one an effigy apparently of some old English admiral, rudely sculptured; the other, a natural similitude of something semi-human, semi-brutal,-one of those accidental statues which are sometimes found in the fields or on the shore. Both of these images had been worshipped as idols in times past, and in front of the fish-god - as the ruder of the two was called -were some shells which the natives had recently brought as offerings. Many of them still believe the superstitions of their ancestors, or at least retain enough of the heathen faith to seek to propitiate their ancient divinities. I will not venture to say that his enlightened Majesty the King shares in these superstitions. On the contrary, he is credited with being remarkably emancipated from supernatural conceptions of all kinds; but he knows his people too well to venture too far upon their idolatrous sensibilities. On a visit to this ranch, he made a target of one of these idols, - the 294 " ALOHA " English dummy which was little heeded or revered by anybody; but the king was careful not to fire at the fish-god, for whom there still remains a popular underlying reverence. We slept that night in a dormitory proper, -a house by itself, devoted solely to sleep. This is the third time I have found my island hosts in Oahu provided with " many mansions," instead of the one overgrown establishment of other lands. It is vastly conducive to sleep and rest to be thus separated at night from household collisions and the hazards of a too early awakening. There was no fear, however, for us that we should awake too early. Our plan was to start at daybreak and get to Waialua in time for breakfast with the E s. The twelve-miles' ride would serve to whet our appetites, and the day would not prove too long to take us over the forty miles which still separated us from Honolulu. Every thing went as we had planned, excepting the arrival at Waialua by breakfast-time, and Waimea beach is to blame for that. It was not the sea-views, fine as they were, which detained us, but the quantity of delicate and beautifully tinted shells with which the beach was sprinkled. The doctor, who is a born naturalist, as enthusiastic and artless in his pursuit of nature as a child, cares as little for the lapse of time so happily employed as I do, and together we stroll across the beach, leading our horses with one hand and picking shells with the other. At AROUND OAHU. 295 Waialua, where we arrive in time for a late breakfast, kindly served by the most attentive of hostesses and her obliging son, we find a pretty settlement near a lively stream; with pasture and corn-fields around it, and a pleasant, balmy air. But one misses there the unique beauty of Waikiki and the imposing grandeur of Northern Oahu. Nevertheless, this must be a delightful resort for rest or renewal. And now for our last stretch of thirty miles to Honolulu. We find it the least interesting part of the tour. Better the restraint of the Higher Powers than the freedom of our own lower desires. Yesterday we rode between the high mountains and the deep sea, and felt ourselves compelled to go the narrow way between them. But to-day we can gallop freely in the path or out of it, over undulating pastures, only now and then straightened by a narrow ravine. The views of the mountains were all distant. They seemed retreating from us, never impending. The roar of ocean, too, was subdued by distance into a harmless murmur, and we were left to chat and canter at our leisure all the way home. By this time our horses began to show the natural weariness of the flesh, and, uninspired by the novelty of the scenery or the enthusiasm of their riders, were wholly dependent on the spur of necessity to keep them to their work. It seems to me this tour would culminate better if c ALOHA!" the traveller should reverse the journey and take the environs of Honolulu, with the public buildings, the Insane Asylum, the Reform School, and the Prison, first. The bright coral road over which you leave the city; the distant Waimea hills; the retreating valleys on your right; the curious, if not beautiful, salt lake; the famous Pearl River harbor, which has figured at a great price in former negotiations with the " States;" the indolent gangs of prisoners working out their easy penitence upon the public road; Ewa, the undiscoverable; and all the ups and downs of the road to Waialua, - these might have their interest to a traveller fresh upon the pleasure-path. But as the sequel to a story beginning with the Pali and leading up to Kaliuwaa, they are simply dull. Add a jaded horse and somewhat tired body of your own to the comparative tameness of the scenery, and you will share in the relief with which we sighted the familiar towers and groves of Honolulu, and urged our steeds to the haven of their rest and ours. At three o'clock we were at home again in our friend's refreshing house in Nuuanu Avenue, just forty-eight hours after setting out with him for an afternoon's ride to the Pali. Is there any weariness or ill which would not be cured in such a homelike, hospitable mansion? A dip in its perennial bathtub, a brief recline on its breezy veranda, a dinner of Ah Me's best cooking and Afi Well's best serving, and AROUND OAHU. 297 around and about and above all, the spice and sweetness of my host's and hostess's conversation and care, so renewed me, that I found myself making farewell calls that evening with unabated strength and interest. Yes, they were farewell calls, although I secretly hoped that some pitying angel would intervene to prevent our departure on the morrow. The Australian steamer had not yet arrived. Perhaps she would not come, or perhaps she would be delayed, or perhaps we might be taken comfortably sick, or- Alas, while we were calculating these delusive chances, and admiring Miss B- 's magnificent collection of ferns, the unwelcome news of the arrival of the "Zealandia " was brought to us. Our fate was sealed. We must leave on the morrow. But with the dawn of the morrow one gleam of fresh hope visited us. The steamer was said to be crowded with Australian passengers going to England by way of America, intending to visit the Centennial Exhibition on the way. All the first-class state-rooms were taken. We went early to the steamer and found the rumor true. But influende goes a long way on sea as on land. A sort of family state-room is begged, borrowed, bought, or stolen, into which my wife and boy are smuggled, together with the three ladies whose company at Hilo had been such a delight to us. I, meantime, am assigned a berth in a distant state-room, in which two young English travellers are already domesticated. I 298 C ALOHA!" am bound to say that they took the intrusion with commendable politeness, and before our voyage was over I was newly impressed with what I have experienced repeatedly before, that Englishmen make the best of fellow-travellers. I find them just sociable enough, neither intrusive nor repellent; and assuredly their conversation, if they have been commonly well-educated, is more replete with exact information and sensible inquiry than that of most travellers. All the way home I found myself renewedly glad of my English extraction, as I made the acquaintance of one and another gentleman from England or her colonies. And there was abundant opportunity for comparison with other nationalities. Every nation under the sun was represented in that ship's company. Travelling makes strange bedfellows. A priest of the Greek Church roomed with Rev. Mr. Bishop of the Hawaiian mission; a wealthy Jew was neighbor to a rigid Romanist. The smiling Chinaman, Ah Su, gave up his airy room on deck to his Americo-Hawaiian friends, the W —s. Every church, every nation, every profession, seemed ready with its characteristic member, and the " Zealandia" sailing across the broad Pacific seemed a world within a world, or sort of modern ark, from which the tribes of man, if not of other animals, might be recruited, although the whole world beside should be engulfed. It is needless to say we reached our home in safety. AROUND OAHU. 299 How else could the story of our Hawaiian visit have ever been written? Across half a world of land and sea, and after three years of absence which works no change in our regard except to give it added tenderness, we send this greeting to Hawaii, - the beautiful, the friendly,- heedless although the whole world should hear our salutation and smile at its vociferous love: " Aloha, Hawaii! Aloha nui!" e University Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. iial C BIa F,,i f ( ll-, i4P"-i' -:L ~;~~~- 7~~$~li-: -- - FIU c L P I I3 V 9 '",,,-; \ f" ' {,* *4' '~ \ '*;: ' ' i., 6 r.. r~ r ~ |. i!:. ' - " '' '- t L>._, ' -^ - * \ i, *''''1 ' '' - ] C, ri *t i~l d,.'i 's " i * v r "*- " f; r,^^.. -k ~;S '01. i.-y ^2..!, - -^ ^,^k.' I! '*'Sdi.t-,' "^ a ". 'XiR 4, I/ _. ^ - i;, t*'st < BOOK CARD DO NOT REMOVE A Charge will be made if this card is mutilated r-ii ~ or not returned with the book GRADUATE LIBRARY THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN I,~ t r.r r I t I r i i I i I I I I i t I I I, I I i I I. I-, I I r.;i I I t i ( I I,i I I I I " 111 r _ IL N K,/ p I . UNIVERSITY OF A M,IC A:N THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN DATE DUE ikr r;\C ~h;i"~ ta ~;~ ",.I j r p' i.a - ~;21 "r M~ rt " " -~-~ pi]l, cs Sir I~r I~~~~it 3,,,: *~ -:9 ~=*-' ' "k j,~*6 ":~\ "; t "S ~ l~c-i~.~,j "~-~iS':~~Q "J ii i? C 1~ -4-,. / At\ v f no