HAWAII. 



[letter xvr. 



gotten my knife, and have had to help myself after the primi- 

 tive fashion of aborigines, not without some fear, for some of 

 them I am sure are in an advanced state of leprosy. The 

 brown tattooed limbs of one man are stretched across the mat, 

 the others are sitting cross-legged, making lauhala lets. One 

 man is making fishing-lines of a beautifully white and marvel- 

 lously tenacious fibre, obtained from an Hawaiian " flax " plant 

 (possibly Urtica argentea), very different from the New Zealand 

 Phormiwn tenax. Nearly all the people of the valley are out- 

 side, having come to see the wahine /mole : only one white 

 woman, and she a resident of Hawaii, having been seen in 

 Waimanu before. I am really alone, miles of mountain and 

 gulch lie between me and the nearest whites. This is a won- 

 derful place ; a ravine about three miles long and three-quarters 

 of a mile wide, without an obvious means of ingress, being 

 Availed in by precipices from 2000 to 4000 feet high. Five 

 cascades dive from the palis at its head, and unite to form a 

 placid river about up to a horse's body here, and deep enough 

 for a horse to swim in a little below. Dense forests of various 

 shades of green fill up the greater part of the valley, concealing 

 the basins into which the cascades leap, and the grey basalt of 

 the palis is mostly hidden by greenery. At the open end, two 

 bald bluffs, one of them 2000 feet in height, confront the 

 Pacific, and its loud booming surf comes up to within one 

 hundred yards of the house where I am writing, but is banked 

 off- by a heaped-up barrier of colossal shingle. 



Hot and silent, a sunset world of an endless afternoon, it 

 seems a palpable and living dream. And a few of these people, 

 I understand, have dreamed away their lives here, never having 

 been beyond their valley, at least by land. But it is a dream 

 of ceaseless speech and rippling laughter. They are the 

 merriest people I have yet seen, and doubtless their isolated 

 life is dear to them. 



I wish I could sketch this most picturesque scene. In the 

 verandah, which is formed of mats, two handsome youths, and 

 five women in green, red, and orange chemises, all with leis of 

 ferns round their hair, are reclining on the ground. Outside of 

 this there is a pavement of large lava stones, and groups in all 

 colours, wreathed and garlanded, including soms much disfigured 

 old people, crouching in red and yellow blankets, are sitting 

 and lying there. Some are fondling small dogs ; and a number 

 of large ones, with a whole tribe of amicable cats, are picking 

 bones. Surf-boards, paddles, saddles, lassos, spurs, gear, and 



