letter x.] BOLA-B 'OLA'S DWELLING. 



5i 



under some very tall palms in the open part of the gulch, but 

 it is a most wretched situation; the roar of the surf is deafen- 

 ing, the scanty supply of water is brackish, there are rumours 

 that leprosy is rife, and the people are said to be the poorest 

 on Hawaii. We were warned that we could not spend a night 

 comfortably there, so wet, tired, and stiff, we rode on other six 

 miles to the house of a native called Bola-Bola, where we had 

 been instructed to remain. The rain was heavy and ceaseless, 

 and the trail had become so slippery that our progress was 

 much retarded. It was a most unpropitious-looking evening, 

 and I began to feel the painful stiffness arising from prolonged 

 fatigue in saturated clothes. I indulged in various imagina- 

 tions as we rode up the long ascent leading to Bola-Bola's, 

 but this time they were not of sofas and tea, and I never 

 aspired to anything beyond drying my clothes by a good 

 fire, for at Hilo some people had shrugged their shoulders, and 

 others had laughed mysteriously at the idea of our sleeping- 

 there, and some had said it was one of the worst of native 

 houses. 



A single glance was enough. It was a dilapidated frame- 

 house, altogether forlorn, standing unsheltered on a slope of 

 the mountain, with one or two yet more forlorn grass-piggeries, 

 which I supposed might be the cook house, and eating-house 

 near it. 



A prolonged har-r-r-rouche from Kaluna brought out a man 

 with a female horde behind him, all shuffling into clothes as we 

 approached, and we stiffly dismounted from the wet saddles in 

 which we had sat for ten hours, and stiffly hobbled up into the 

 littered verandah, the water dripping from our clothes, and 

 squeezing out of our boots at every step. Inside there was 

 one room about 18 x 14 feet, which looked as if the people 

 had just arrived and had thrown down their goods promis- 

 cuously. There were mats on the floor not over clean, and 

 half the room was littered and piled with mats rolled up, 

 boxes, bamboos, saddles, blankets, lassos, cocoanuts, kalo roots, 

 bananas, quilts, pans, calabashes, bundles of hard j>oi in ti 

 leaves, bones, cats, fowls, clothes. A frightful old woman, 

 looking like a relic of the old heathen days, with bristling grey 

 hair cut short, her body tattooed all over, and no clothing but 

 a ragged blanket huddled round her shoulders ; a girl about 

 twelve, with torrents of shining hair, and a piece of bright 

 green calico thrown round her, and two very good-looking 

 young women in rose-coloured chemises, one of them holding 



