Part 3

Here I had the misfortune to find that the usual trick of bad work and poor paper in my blocks would prevent my making any adequate record. (I say adequate--what I mean is plausible.) But we both sat and worked until sunset and after hours, each not daring to look at anything but in one direction, there was so much to prevent one’s _doing_ anything. And at the last moment I went down part of the road toward the base, to see the entire distance lost as in a dream, great long streamers of mist apparently blowing away from the face of the Pali. And we returned in the afterglow, which now that the moon has left us, keeps the whole sky and landscape in tones like those of some old picture clear and apparently distinct, but intensely coloured, however colourless it may seem, for we have no names for tones--so coloured that the lamp-light, inside the room where I am, seems no warmer than the twilight without, as if they were painted together, as in one picture the sky is merely a beautiful background.

Then comes, alas! the great hum of the mosquito, if we are in the wind, and we have to resort to burning powders if we do not sit in the draught that blows them away.

Day after to-morrow we shall go to Hawaii in the steamer _Hall_, land on the south coast, go to the volcano Kilauea and down from there to Hilo. This afternoon we have heard talk of the situation politically, of the wrongdoing of demagogues; and also we have seen one of the extraordinary yellow and red capes that the chiefs wore, made of small rare feathers, and each little tuft sewed on to plaited fibres and also a _lei_ or neck-wreath of the same bird feathers, with the addition of some soft green ones, in divisions all very rare and valuable; and a beautiful wooden polished spittoon with handle of some exquisite wood light and dark, which has served to preserve the exuviæ of some chief from the great danger of capture for incantation or working harm through sorcery.

HAWAII

Off Island of Hawaii, 13th September, 8 A.M.

We are lying off a little place, Keauhou, while people are landing in boats from the small steamer that carries us. The shore is broken with black lava rock, in beds that do not seem high, so flat are they on top. It is about eight o’clock, and the impression is of full sunlight on the green of everything. Behind the fringe of shore rises the big slope of the mountain seen in profile, so gigantic that one only sees a slice of it at a time; there are, of course, ravines up the hills, and trees and grass, but from my focus of the square, between the pillars of the roof of the upper deck, and seated by the guards I see rather shade broken with sunlight. The sea, of course, at the shore is glittering blue, but everything else that can cast a shade throws its edges upon the next; so that I see a black seaside broken up by lava rocks, and near them cocoa and palm, and some small wharves, or jetties, built out to protect the smaller beaches, that run back between the rocks. Each break of projection or recess has its trees, that make the fringe of shade with patches of sun, which the eye takes in along the water.

There are a few houses strung along, half in light, half in shadow; three of them are tall grass huts, hay-coloured in the half-shade of the cocoanuts beside them. Above them are patches of sun on the green slope where the upper bank or slope behind first flattens into the strong light. In the shadow, faint whites and pinks and blacks on the dresses of people waiting for their friends, or watching the steamer. Their horses and mules and donkeys stand in rows along the houses--or walls--occasionally they pass into the sunshine. One girl in red runs (why, heaven only knows--time seems of no possible use), and as she rises over a rock in the sand, the sun catches her brown feet and legs and the folds of her floating gown.

These people, I am told, have many of them ridden some miles from our last landing, at dawn, to meet us again. But there are special deliveries of people and freight at each place--so many and so much on board that one can hardly realize where they are stowed. Three full boatloads at the last place, and one here, of people jammed--dark Spanish faces, peacock feathers, and red veils on hats; coloured neckerchiefs, and head and shoulders covered with flowers or leaves that hang to the waist. There is loud objurgation and chattering, and keeping the children together, and holding up odds and ends of things not sent ashore by the other boats that carry goods and household furniture.

[Illustration: BEGINNING OF DESERT, ISLAND OF HAWAII]

Last night we were pretty full. Children and women lay in files on our deck by the guards, the children ill with the rolling, for we pass several channels between islands, each one a pretext for the wind to give us a dance. And in the steerage people lay like herrings. It was picturesque; a few Chinese, the rest Hawaiian, with much colour and abundance of flowers and leaves that they like, and all eating on the spot, apparently without moving--guitars playing--we had two guitars aboard, and part of the night and morning somebody strummed; sometimes a man appearing from a cabin, posing guitarero-way, touching a few chords and going away again. Once, some fellow playing, squatted on the deck, apparently for the baby, and the other babies, who inspected the guitar inquiringly and approvingly--sometimes some of the women. In the late afternoon, as the sun struck this mass of colour against a blue sea of unnamable blue, at least two dozen of the people all in colours were eating watermelon all red down to the rind. The appearance of a palette well littered was only a symbol to it. And there was one beauty with long nose and the rounded end suggesting the aquiline, the black eyebrows _under_ the frontal bone, the pouting lip, and heavy chin and long slope of jaw, and what they all have, even the ugly (like the Jap girls), a pretty setting of ears and neck and black-hair’s growth. But the children were prettier. We had a neighbour who had many and who looked so plaintive, and another, though sick, was jolly and smiling. And another was like a chieftain (or “chiefess”) with three great furrows down her forehead above her nose. But they all smiled with great sweetness, and I wish our women could do as much. All sullenness or sternness or disdain disappeared from the face. They talked in English,

## partly for convenience, but a little, I thought, for the gallery,

the children mixing their languages, and their mothers gliding back occasionally to it. But the talk was just what it is everywhere--schools, and how dear, and what ideas are put into the children’s heads and whether there is a distinction between those who pay more or less, or have scholarships and something about prices in general. One is reading “Sabina Zembra” and we talk a little while the ship rolls, rendered sympathetic by suffering, and I am sure that two of my good ladies do not consider themselves _kanaka_, at least if I am to judge by their reference to _kanaka_ and such like; but they are brown like berries, one light, the other sallow.

[Illustration: “The Chiefess”]

Later in the afternoon I go forward in the dance of our passage to the next island of Maui; the island lies before us across the sea, so sky-like that it is difficult to realize that the vast slopes are of earth; that the greenish hue, now and then, under the violet of the bank of heavy clouds, all brilliant and shining like satin, is not thicker air--just such tones make the island as with us make winter skies. Far off to the southeast stretches under clouds another line, that of the further Maui which ends above in Haleakala, the extinct volcano. As we draw near, the sun is setting, the jib and mainsail curving before us in shadow and light, as we drop a little to the south, repeat near to us the colours of the island and of the clouds. These hang far forward toward us, while the slope of green and peachy grey runs up behind it; and we glide soon into more quiet waters, and stop off the town of Lahaina. Then long hours are spent in unloading and loading, so that when we sail again, we only faintly see the mass of Haleakala. But in the morning, with the dawn which has no colour, but in which, to the east, stand up, in some sort of richer violet shade, the outlines of Hawaii, we see further the great slopes of Mauna Loa, so gentle that it is difficult to tell where the flat top is reached, and where the slopes begin again on the other side; and then we stop in the early sunlight. A fisherman comes up with fish; other boats (outriggers all) with fruit, and we see what I was telling you when I began to write. And later we have come to a great bank of black rock running out to sea, and precipices of black spotted with a green all of one colour, which is where Cook was killed, and where they have put up a little monument to him. This is Kaawaloa. We try the land, for the roll of the ship is disagreeable, as it waits, and we run in over the transparent water. It is too deep just by the landing for anchorage. The sea jumps from light aquamarine to the colour of a peacock’s breast in the shadow. We go up the black lava that looks as if it had been run out on the road, not under it, and sit in the shade a moment, and exchange a few words with our fellow passengers now on land--a little flock of tired children and mother, and our “chiefess.” And it is hot--the heights have shut off the wind, and all is baking. Horses and donkeys, saddled, stand about near the shadow of fences, left to themselves, while the cargo is landed. Higher up on the heights some planters tell us it is cool. They wear enormous hats, and have a planter-like appearance that suggests our being different.

As I look around on this green and black, and the few cocoanuts, and the dark blue-green olive water, I think that it is not an unlikely place for a man to have been killed in. The place has for Hawaiians another interest: it was once a great place, and the high cliffs have many holes where chiefs are buried, inaccessible and hidden. And a little way beyond was a city of refuge--that is to say, a sacred city--where none who took refuge could be injured. Even though the enemy came rushing up to the last outlying landmark, the moment that it had been passed, the pursued was safe, and after having sojourned according to due rite, could depart in peace and safety.

After this, and the same story of like places below the edge of the green table that slopes up to the sky and further on to the clouds, we stop, and the white boat takes our last passengers in the blue water; its white keel looking as if washed with blue. The people wait on the shore under less and less shadow, and on the other side we have now the enormous ocean opposed to this big slope, not as last evening, when always we had an island, now before, now behind, now to our side, as if we were in some inland sea. That is to say that now the sea occupies more than half of the whole circle that we can sweep, though we are only a few rods from shore. Do you realize the difference?

At last we are on the outlying edge of the group, and will soon this afternoon round the island, and stop at the place where we take the road to the volcano of Kilauea.

Sunday night.

At the volcano of Kilauea.

As I wrote I had no notion of the importance and eventfulness of a landing at night. As we came around the hard black cape marked with lava flow it was already dark, so we could not distinctly see the shore, though above were great slopes and some buttresses and heavy hills standing out from the mass. We could see lights at the place called Punaluu, where we were to land. The steamer shrieked and stopped as we prepared to leave it and come down the companion ladder to the heavy boat dancing below it. Women were first dropped in, and one by one gradually we men jumped into the hollow, half packed with trunks and boxes and men balancing themselves in the rolling. Perhaps had I been more accustomed to these forms of landing I might have seen less of a picture; but when I had got down, and watched the next passengers from below, and danced high up to them, and heard them told “Now!” or “Not yet!” as we came too high or too low or struck the bottom of the ladder, (so as to make one wonder whether we should not capsize in a rougher sea), when I could look at their foreshortening, and saw the heavy lower forms of the _kanaka_ ladies, under their flowing drapery, and then saw them tuck their one long outer garment between those legs in a great bunch, to be untied at the next step and heard their discussions, I enjoyed the play, even if I was part of it.

The talk was in _kanaka_, but its meaning was plain: the two ladies objected to jumping just then or before or after, and it was now too high, now too low, and in general they expressed all possible doubts regarding the process. One of them especially, whom I had seen much of during the day, a massive archaic person, with the manners and features that might have belonged to an Eve of some other, more cannibalistic tradition than ours, poured all this out with a voice heavier than the roar of the water or the grinding of the boat’s gunwale against the companionway and her declamation was answered by a chorus from the boatmen, with the accompaniment of shifting lights, so that my simile of a play was but natural.

At length we were all stowed in and departed, one sailor still standing as he had from the beginning, balanced with a child in his arms. At the little wharf the scene was repeated on a small scale, while above us the one lantern lit the legs of an expectant multitude; and at length we were singled out by the host who was to take care of us, and who had the one single hotel or house, to which we were sent up with a lantern.

Then we rested. Adams had suffered very much from the tossing, so much so as to make me anxious, and I too was much the worse for the wear of the last two hours of resting in harbour while waiting for boats to go out and return. We had some food and rooms given us by the Chinaman factotum, major-domo, cook, servant, etc.; and later our host appeared in his shirt-sleeves, and asked our intentions and whether we were to go right off in the morning to the volcano. Having ascertained these facts, he selected one of the party--we were four, we three and some one else--and to this some one he poured out some information, mainly about the bad sides of the other way to the volcano--the Hilo way; its raininess, and in general all the wrongfulness of Hilo people. With that he also poured forth his bottom thoughts about the whole business that he had charge of, the idiotic way in which people travelled to see the volcano without sufficient practice on other volcanoes beforehand, so that invalids (he called them inwalids) found it difficult to ride on horseback, and some were sometimes thrown from mules, and in general he showed the folly of trusting to the advertisements of his own enterprise. For he is, I understand, a great man, who has this road and runs it. All this I absorbed before going to bed, so as to prepare for the next day, which began early with the Chinaman, and making for the train.

The train is a little engine with two platforms on wheels, that runs to a plantation some few miles off. One platform had a roof for the gentry; the other was loaded with the common people, consisting of some Swedish women and children, some Hawaiians, and one or two young people who belonged to our side, but preferred riding thus, thereby escaping the smoke that we got. We had a watchman and a Chinaman on the engine. At the start we were requested to trim our weights. The Hawaiian lady who had been a tragedy the evening before, was on our side, and whatever side she had taken, that would have been the heavy one. But still we risked it, and ran along the little road which occasionally passed over trestling and did have something of a reason for trimming.

The ride was lovely except for the smoke. We had left the shore at which we had landed the night before, for the car ran to the little jetty, where the sand was as black as ink--volcano dust, with a fringe of white like teeth. Then we slowly gained some heights, and saw behind us the great blue sea and white headlands; black lava looking grey in the sunshine, and to our left the great hills and slopes. And we ran by the sugar-cane and through a country with few or no trees, a great surface of up and down of moors, until we came to the plantation, where we stopped. Everybody had reached home except ourselves, and our accidental companion. We found a covered wagon with two mules and two horses, into which we were packed with difficulty, as our luggage was bulkier than is customary, owing to my not having been able to persuade our host to allow me to reship some that we did not want. He could not “fuss with such matters.” In fact he was right. The whole affair is merely for the convenience of travellers; on the part of the people who undertake it, there is no need of it and one feels indebted to them for the courtesy they show in allowing one to pass through their place, even though they charge for the same.

So we rolled slowly over the great downs, upon some sort of a trail, occasionally perturbed by some stones, or perhaps banked up with no incident. The great mountain was being covered with clouds, but the sea spread far below us, the capes at the corner, and the east of the shore glistening as if silvered, and white upon their local blackness. It was as Newport beaches might look upon a gigantic scale. Here and there a few trees (the _ohia_), stood up, orange-brown butterflies, Parnassians, flew continually across our path, spotting the entire landscape all busy with their loves. A few birds, plovers, I believe, rose at a distance, or flew across, or with a cry, peewits waved to and fro on the slopes below us.

By and by, at noon, we came to more trees; the landscape became more shut in, the sea disappeared behind the slopes we were leaving, and we took lunch at a convenient shanty where we were well treated, and tasted the native _ohia_ berries. Then we entered a rockier soil, much broken up, with much black dust, and with many trees, all small and as if lost, something like little back country lanes--anywhere.

And this went on and on, and we walked sometimes, in despair of our mules and horses, driven by a driver who urged them with word and whip, and occasionally with stones, without being able to get them much out of a walk, broken by an occasional trot. Then things were colder, and on a landscape of no shape, with blocks of lava thrown over the soil as if by the spade of journeyman or maker of worlds; with ever so many queerly conventional trees,--the _ohia_ before mentioned, which has yellow trumpet flowers--and many others; and at last many ferns, and more ferns, and the tree ferns. We saw on our right some cloudy forms of smoke rising toward the clouds of only a little warmer tint than they, and that was the smoke and steam of Kilauea--which was really below us, hidden under the edge of the desolate plateau we were driving on.

Then we came to more vegetation and many ferns, and we suddenly saw the glance of a sulphur bank, yellow, green, and white, like the surface of certain beans; and we drove up toward the house that stands by the volcano. It was not yet dark, but dark enough to see confusedly the crater just below us, only a few yards away, a mass of black, and high walls around it, and three cones apparently in the distance, with steam about them, and steam issuing near them in many places, so that the further wall was dim. And steam near us came out of crevices at our feet, and on our road, and a little everywhere, where ferns grew richer--and we had arrived.

We went in to make our host’s acquaintance, and got our simple rooms in a sort of rough farmhouse, with doors opening on the verandah, and in front of the crater of the volcano. And we sat later at dinner, and after dinner by the fire (for a fire was pleasant in the damp, cold air), and heard him talk, and spoke to him about Mr. Dana’s book, and the changes in the crater, and all the volcano talk that can come out of the absorption of much reading and much hearing. Maby (our host) talks of danger to his children from the steam fissures just mentioned.

Kilauea--The Volcano.

Maby, the keeper of the hotel, is not the old gentleman of Dana’s book, but a person whom I should describe if I had the time. He is a New Yorker, and has been away since the early war, and has sailed about much in this part of the world. The type is a well known one to us, and amusing enough. He is married to a Hawaiian woman, also shrewd-looking, good-looking, reminding one of many people with us, with a high forehead and thick lips; and has many children who play about, and make the place seem less showlike.