LETTER XI.] 



CROSSING A TORRENT. 



in 



above the sea. In going to Waipio, on noticing the deep 

 holes and enormous boulders, some of them higher than a 

 man on horseback, I had thought what a fearful place it would 

 be if it were ever full ; but my imagination had not reached 

 the reality. One huge, compressed, impetuous torrent, leaping 

 in creamy foam, boiling in creamy eddies, rioting in deep, 

 black chasms, roared and thundered over the whole in rapids 

 of the most tempestuous kind, leaping down to the ocean in 

 three grand, broad cataracts, the nearest of them not more than 

 40 feet from the crossing. Imagine the Moriston at the Falls, 

 four times as wide and fifty times as furious, walled in by preci- 

 pices, and with a miniature Niagara above and below, and you 

 have a feeble illustration of it. 



Portions of two or three rocks only could be seen, and on 

 one of these, about 12 feet from the shore, a nude native, 

 beautifully tattooed, with a lasso in his hands, was standing 

 nearly up to his knees in foam ; and about a third of the way 

 from the other side, another native in deeper water, steadying 

 himself by a pole. A young woman on horseback, whose near 

 relative was dangerously ill at Hilo, was jammed under the 

 cliff, and the men were going to get her across. Deborah, to 

 my dismay, said that if she got safely over we would go too, as 

 these natives were very skilful. I asked if she thought her 

 husband would let her cross, and she said " No." I asked her 

 if she were frightened, and she said " Yes ; " but she wished so 

 to get home, and her face was as pale as a brown face can be. 

 I only hope the man will prove worthy of her affectionate 

 devotion. 



Here, though people say it is a most perilous gulch, I was 

 not afraid for her life or mine, with the amphibious natives to 

 help us ; but I was sorely afraid of being bruised, and scared, 

 and of breaking the horses' legs, and I said I would not cross, 

 but would sleep among the trees ; but the tumult drowned our 

 "voices, though the Hawaiians by screeching could make them- 

 selves understood. The nearest man then approached the 

 shore, put the lasso round the nose of the woman's horse, and 

 dragged it into the torrent ; and it was exciting to see a horse 

 creeping from rock to rock in a cataract with alarming possi- 

 bilities in every direction. But beasts may well be bold, as 

 they have not " the foreknowledge of death." When the nearest 

 native had got the horse as far as he could, he threw the lasso 

 to the man who was steadying himself with the pole, and urged 

 the horse on. There was a deep chasm between the two into 



