4 6 



HA WAIL 



[letter v. 



Upa supplied the picturesque element, we the grotesque. 

 The morning was moist and unpropitious looking. As the 

 greater part of the thirty miles has to be travelled at a foot's- 

 pace, the gu?de took advantage of the soft grassy track which 

 leads out of Hilo, to go off at full gallop, a proceeding which 

 made me at once conscious of the demerits of my novel way of 

 riding. To guide the horse and to clutch the horn of the 

 saddle with both hands were clearly incompatible, so I aban- 

 doned the first as being the least important. Then my feet 

 either slipped too far into the stirrups and were cut, or they 

 were jerked out ; every corner was a new terror, for at each I 

 was nearly pitched off on one side, and when at last Upa 

 stopped, and my beast stopped without consulting my wishes, 

 only a desperate grasp of mane and tethering rope saved me 

 irom going over his head. At this ridiculous moment we came 

 upon a bevy of brown maidens swimming in a lakelet by the 

 roadside, who increased my confusion by a chorus of laughter. 

 How fervently I hoped that the track would never admit of 

 galloping again ! 



Hilo fringes off with pretty native houses, kalo patches and 

 mullet ponds, and in about four miles the track, then formed of 

 rough, hard lava, and not more than 24 inches wide, enters a 

 forest of the densest description, a burst of true tropical jungle. 

 I could not have imagined anything so perfectly beautiful, 

 nature seemed to riot in the production of wonderful forms, as 

 if the moist, hot-house air encouraged her in lavish excesses. 

 Such endless variety, such depths of green, such an impassable 

 and altogether inextricable maze of forest trees, ferns, and lianas ! 

 There were palms, breadfruit trees, ohias, eugenias, candle-nuts 

 of immense size, Koa (acacia) bananas, hohi, bamboos, papayas, 

 (Carica papaya) guavas, ti trees (Cordyline terminalis), tree- 

 ferns, climbing ferns, parasitic ferns, and ferns themselves the 

 prey of parasites of their own species. The lianas were there 

 in profusion climbing over the highest trees, and entangling 

 them, with stems varying in size from those as thick as a man's 

 arm to those as slender as whipcord, binding all in an impass- 

 able network, and hanging over our heads in rich festoons or 

 tendrils swaying in the breeze. There were trailers, i.e., (Frey- 

 cinetia scandens) with heavy knotted stems, as thick as a 

 frigate's stoutest hawser, coiling up to the tops of tall ohias with 

 tufted leaves like yuccas, and crimson spikes of gaudy blossom. 

 The shining festoons of the yam and the graceful trailers of the 

 mail'e (Alyxia Olivaeformis), a sweet-scented vine, from which 



