144 



HAWAII. 



[letter XV. 



our berths, and putting on a sweetly apologetic manner, as if 

 penitent for the gross misbehaviour of the ship. Such a 

 man would reconcile me to far greater discomfort than that of 

 the " Kilauea." I wonder if he is ever unamiable, or tired, or 

 perturbed ? 



The next day was fine, and we were all much on deck to dry 

 our clothes in the sun. The southern and leeward coasts of 

 Hawaii as far as Kaawaloa are not much more attractive than 

 coal-fields. Contrasted with the shining shores of Hilo, they 

 are as dust and ashes ; long reaches of black lava and miles of 

 clinkers marking the courses of lava-flows, whose black desola- 

 tion and deformity nature, as yet, has done almost nothing to 

 clothe. Cocoa-nut trees usually, however, fringe the shore, 

 but were it not for the wonderful colour of the ocean, like 

 liquid, transparent turquoise, revealing the coral forests 

 shelving down into purple depths, and the exciting proximity 

 of sharks, it would have been wearisome. After leaving the 

 bay where Captain Cook met his death, we passed through a 

 fleet of twenty-seven canoes, each one hollowed out of the 

 trunk of a single tree, from fifteen to twenty-five feet long, 

 about twenty inches deep, hardly wide enough for a fat man, 

 and pointed at both ends. On one side there is an outrigger 

 formed of two long, bent sticks, to the outer ends of which is 

 bound a curved beam of light wood, which skims along the 

 surface of the water, rendering the canoe secure from an upset 

 on that side, while the weight of the outrigger makes an upset 

 on the other very unlikely. In calms they are paddled, and 

 shoot over the water with great rapidity, but whenever there is 

 any breeze a small sprit-sail is used. They are said to be able 

 to stand very rough water, but they are singularly precarious 

 and irresponsible looking contrivances, and for these, as well 

 as for all other seas, I should much prefer a staunch whale- 

 boat We sailed for some hours along a lava coast, stream* 

 less, rainless, verdureless, blazing under the fierce light of a 

 tropical sun, and some time after noon anchored in the 

 scorching bay of Kawaihae. 



A foreign store, a number of native houses, a great heiau, or 

 heathen temple on a height, a fringe of cocoa-nut palms, and 

 a background of blazing hills, flaring with varieties of red, 

 hardly toned down by any attempt at vegetation, a crystalline 

 atmosphere palpitating with heat, deep, rippleless, clear water, 

 with coral groves below, and a view of the three great 

 Hawaiian mountains, are the salient features of this outlet of 



