letter xvi.] A STAGNANT LIFE. 



163 



mate is probably not an excessive one, for nearly the whole 

 valley is suitable for the culture of kalo, and a square mile of 

 kalo will feed 15,000 natives for a year. 



Two women were shrimping in the river, the children were 

 primming to school, blue smoke curled up into the still air, 

 kalo was baking among the stones, and a group of women sat 

 sewing and making lets on the ground. The Waimanu day 

 had begun ; and it was odd to think that through the long 

 summer years days dawned like this, and that the people of 

 the valley grew grey and old in shrimping and sewing and 

 kalo baking. All Waimanu shook hands with me, the kindly 

 f Aloha " filled the air, and the women threw garlands over us 

 both. I could hardly induce my host to accept a dollar and a 

 half for my entertainment. From the dizzy summit of the ftali, 

 where the sun was high and hot, I looked my last on the dark, 

 cool valley, slumbering in an endless calm, the deepest, 

 greenest, quaintest cleft on all the island. 



The sun was fierce and bright, the ocean had a metallic 

 glint, the hot breath of the kona was scorching. My hands, 

 swollen from mosquito bites, could not be stuffed into my 

 gloves, and inflamed under the sun, and my wet boots baked 

 and stiffened on my feet. Hananui plaited a crown of leaves 

 for my hot head, which I found a great relief. I was still 

 minded to linger, for one side of each glorious gulch was cool 

 with shadow and dripping with dew. The blue morning 

 glories were yet unwilted, rivulets dropped down into ferny 

 grottoes and lingered there, rose ohia blossoms lighted shady 

 places, orange flowers gleamed like stars amidst the dense 

 leafage, and the crimped-leaved coffee shrubs were white with 

 their mimic snow. It was my last tropical dream, and I was 

 rudely roused by finding myself on the unsightly verge of the 

 great bluff on the north side of this valley, which plunges to 

 the sea with an uncompromising perpendicular dip of 2000 

 feet, and carries on its dizzy brow a shelving trail not more 

 than two feet wide ! 



I felt that I must go back and live and die in Waimanu 

 rather than descend that scathed steep, and being stupid with 

 terror flung myself from my horse, forgetting that it was much 

 safer to trust to his four feet than to my two, and to an animal 

 without " nerves," dizziness, or " the fore-knowledge of death," 

 than to my palsied, cowardly self. I had intended to go into 

 details of the horrible descent, but the " pilikia " is over now, 



M 2 



