LETTER III.] 



WINDWARD HAWAII. 



35 



good humour. After dark we called at Kawaihae (pronounced 

 To-wee-hye), on the north-west of Hawaii, and then steamed 

 through the channel to the east or windward side. I was only 

 too glad on the second night to accept the offer of " a mattrass 

 on the skylight," but between the heavy rolling caused by the 

 windward swell, and the natural excitement on nearing the 

 land of volcanoes and earthquakes, I could not sleep, and no 

 other person slept, for it was considered " a very rough passage," 

 though there was hardly a yachtman's breeze. It would do 

 these Sybarites good to give them a short spell of the howling 

 horrors of the North or South Atlantic, an easterly snowstorm 

 off Sable Island, or a winter gale in the latitude of Inaccessible 

 Island ! The night was cloudy, and so the glare from Kilauea 

 which is often seen far out at sea was not visible. 



When the sun rose amidst showers and rainbows (for this is 

 the showery season), I could hardly believe my eyes. Scenery, 

 vegetation, colour were all changed. The glowing red, the 

 fiery glare, the obtrusive lack of vegetation were all gone. 

 There was a magnificent coast-line of grey cliffs many hundred 

 feet in height, usually draped with green, but often black 

 and caverned at their bases. Into cracks and caverns the 

 heavy waves surged with a sound like artillery, sending broad 

 sheets of foam high up among the ferns and trailers, and 

 drowning for a time the endless baritone of the surf, which is 

 never silent through the summer years. Cascades in numbers 

 took impulsive leaps from the cliffs into the sea, or came 

 thundering down clefts or "gulches," which, widening at their 

 extremities, opened on smooth, green lawns, each one of 

 which has its grass house or houses, kalo patch, bananas, 

 and coco-palms, so close to the Pacific that its spray often 

 frittered itself away over their fan-like leaves. Above the cliffs 

 there were grassy uplands with park-like clumps of the screw- 

 pine, and candle-nut, and glades and dells of dazzling green, 

 bright with cataracts, opened up among the dense forests which 

 for some thousands of feet girdle Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, 

 two vast volcanic mountains, whose snow-capped summits 

 gleamed here and there above the clouds, at an altitude of 

 nearly 14,000 feet. Creation surely cannot exhibit a more 

 brilliant green than that which clothes windward Hawaii with 

 perpetual spring. I have never seen such verdure. In the 

 final twenty-nine miles there are more than sixty gulches, from 

 100 to 700 feet in depth, each with its cataracts, and wild 

 vagaries of tropical luxuriance. Native churches, frame-built 



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