LETTER XVI.] 



A DIZZY "PALI. 



out this region, trampling, grubbing, and rending, grinding 

 .the bark of the old trees and eating up the young ones. 

 This ravaging is threatening at no distant date to destroy the 

 beauty and alter the climate of the mountainous region of 

 Hawaii. The cattle are a hideous breed — all bones, hide, and 

 horns. 



We were at the top of the Waipio pali at eight, and our bare- 

 footed horses, used to the soft pastures of Waimea, refused to 

 carry us down its rocky steep, so we had to walk. I admired 

 this lonely valley far more than before. It was full of infinite 

 depths of blue — blue smoke in lazy spirals curled upwards j it 

 was eloquent in a morning silence that I felt reluctant to break. 

 Against its dewy greenness the beach shone like coarse gold, 

 and its slow, silver river lingered lovingly, as though loth to 

 leave it, and be merged in the reckless, loud-tongued Pacific. 

 Across the valley, the track I was to take climbed up in thready 

 zigzags, and disappeared round a bold headland. It was 

 worth a second visit just to get a glimpse of such a vision of 

 peace. 



Halemanu, with hospitable alacrity, soon made breakfast 

 ready, after which Mr. S., having arranged for my further 

 journey, left me here, and for the first time I found myself 

 alone among natives ignorant of English. For the Waimanu 

 trip it is essential to have a horse" bred in the Waimanu Valley 

 and used to its dizzy palls, and such a horse was procured, and 

 a handsome native, called Hananui, as guide. We were away 

 by ten, and galloped across the valley till we came to the 

 nearly perpendicular pali on the other side. The sight of this 

 air-hung trail from Halemanu's house has turned back several 

 travellers who were bent on the trip, but I had been told that 

 it was quite safe on a Waimanu horse ; and keeping under my 

 fears as best I could, I let Hananui precede me, and began the 

 ascent, which is visible from here for an hour. The pali is as 

 nearly perpendicular as can be. Not a bush or fern, hardly a 

 tuft of any green thing, clothes its bare, scathed sides. It 

 terminates precipitously on the sea at a height of 2000 feet. 

 Along this shelving wall, something like a sheep track, from 

 thirty to forty-six inches broad, goes up in great swinging zig- 

 zags, sometimes as broken steps of rock breast high, at others 

 as a smooth ledge with hardly foothold, in three places carried 

 away by heavy rains — altogether the most frightful track that 

 imagination can conceive. It was most unpleasant to see the 

 guide's horse straining and scrambling, looking eveiy now and 



