letter xx.] PHYSICAL FEATURES OF KAUAI. 191 



in Hawaiian which, always has an influence on the native 

 attendance. 



We have had some beautiful rides in the neighbourhood. 

 It is a wild, lonely,? picturesque coast, and the Pacific moans 

 along it, casting itself on it in heavy surges, Avith a singularly 

 dreary sound. There are some very fine specimens of the 

 phenomena called " blow-holes " on the shore, not like the 

 p spouting cave " at Iona, however. We spent a long time in 

 watching the action of one, though not the finest. At half 

 tide this " spouting horn " throws up a column of Avater over 

 sixty feet in height from a very small orifice, and the effect of 

 the compressed air rushing through a crevice near it, sometimes 

 with groans and shrieks, and at others Avith a hollow roar like 

 the warning fog-horn on a coast, is magnificent, when, as to-day, 

 there is a heavy swell on the coast. 



Kauai is much out of the island world, OAving to the infre- 

 quent visits of the Kilauea, but really it is only twelve hours by 

 steam from the capital. Strangers visit it seldom, as it has no 

 active volcano like Hawaii, or colossal crater like Maui, or 

 anything sensational of any kind. It is called the " Garden 

 Island," and has no great wastes of black lava and red ash 

 like its neighbours. It is queerly shaped, almost circular, with 

 a diameter of from twenty-eight to thirty miles, and its area 

 is about 500 square miles. Waialeale, its highest mountain, 

 is about 6000 feet high, but little is known of it, for it is 

 swampy and dangerous, and a part of it is a forest-covered and 

 little explored table-land, terminating on the sea in a range of 

 perpendicular precipices 2000 feet in depth, so steep, it is 

 said, that a wild cat could not get round them. Giving to 

 these, and the virtual inaccessibility of a large region behind 

 them, no one can travel round the island by land, and small 

 as it is, very little seems to be known of portions of its 

 area. 



Kauai has apparently two centres of formation, and its moun- 

 tains are thickly dotted with craters. The age and density of 

 the vegetation Avithin and without those in this Koloa district, 

 indicate a A r ery long cessation from volcanic action. It is truly 

 an oddly contrived island. An elevated rolling region, park- 

 like, liberally ornamented Avith clumps of ohia, /au/ia/a, hau, 

 (hibiscus) and koa, and intersected with gullies full of large 

 eugenias, lies outside the mountain spurs behind Koloa. It 

 is only the tropical trees, specially the lauhala or" screAV pine," 

 the whimsical shapes of outlying ridges, which noAV and then 



