HOLIDAYS IN HAWAII 



about the interior of these mountains. I neither saw 

 nor heard a bird or other Hve thing. Guava apples 

 lay on the ground all along the trail, and one could 

 eat them and not make faces. Some of the sharp, 

 knife-blade ridges that cut down toward us from the 

 higher peaks were very startling, and so steep and 

 high that they could be successfully scaled only by 

 the aid of ropes and ladders. A more striking object- 

 lesson in erosion by rain would be hard to find. 

 There were no naked rocks; short, thick vegetation 

 covered even the steepest slopes, and the vegetable 

 acids which this generated, and the perpetual rains, 

 weathered the mountains down. It soon became so 

 wet that we stopped far short of the head of the val- 

 ley, and turned back. I wished to look into the 

 great, deep, green amphitheatre which seems to lie 

 at the head, but had glimpses of it only from a dis- 

 tance. How many millenniums will it be, I said to 

 myself, before erosion will have completed its work 

 here, and these thin, high mountain-walls will be 

 in ruins? Surely not many. 



We returned to the hospitable home we had left, 

 and passed the midday there. In the afternoon Mr. 

 Aiken, guiding our eyes by the forms of trees that 

 cut the horizon-line on the huge flank of Haleakala, 

 pointed out the place of his own homestead, twenty 

 or more miles away. From this point the great 

 mountain appeared like a vast landscape tilted up 

 at an easy angle against the horizon. One could 



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