1 92 



HA WAIL 



[LETTER XX. 



lie like the leaves in a book, and the strange forms of extinct 

 craters, which distinguish it from some of our most beautiful 

 park scenery, such as Windsor Great Park or Belvoir. It is a 

 soft tranquil beauty, and a tolerable road which owes little 

 enough to art, increases the likeness to the sweet home 

 scenery of England. In this part of the island the ground 

 seems devoid of stones, and the grass is as fine and smooth as 

 a race course. 



The latest traces of volcanic action are found here. From 

 the Koloa Ridge to, and into the sea, a barren uneven sur- 

 face of pahochoe extends, often bulged up in immense bubbles, 

 some of which have partially burst, leaving caverns, one of 

 which, near the shore, is paved with the ancient coral reef ! 



The valleys of Kauai are long, and widen to the sea, and 

 their dark rich soil is often ten feet deep. On the windward 

 side the rivers are very numerous and picturesque. Between 

 the strong winds and the lightness of the soil, I should think 

 that like some parts of the Highlands, "it would take a shower 

 every day." The leeward side, quite close to the sea, is flushed 

 and nearly barren, but there is very little of this desert region. 

 Kauai is less legible in its formation than the other islands. 

 Its mountains, from their impenetrable forests, dangerous 

 breaks, and swampiness, are difficult of access, and its ridges 

 are said to be more utterly irregular, its lavas more decom- 

 posed, and its natural sections more completely smothered 

 under a profuse vegetation than those of any other island in 

 the tropical Pacific. Geologists suppose, from the degrada- 

 tion of its ridges, and the absence of any recent volcanic pro- 

 ducts, that it is the oldest of the group, but so far as I have 

 read, none of them venture to conjecture how many ages it has 

 taken to convert its hard basalt into the rich soil which now 

 sustains trees of enormous size. If this theory be correct, the 

 volcanoes must have gone on dying out from west to east, and 

 from north to south, till only Kilauca remains, and its ener- 

 gies appear to be declining. The central mountain of this 

 island is built of a heavy ferruginous basalt, but the shore 

 ridges contain less iron, are more porous, and vary in 

 their structure from a compact phonolite, to a ponderous 

 basalt. 



The population of Kauai is a widely scattered one of 4900, 

 and as it is an out of the world region the people are probably 

 better, and less sophisticated. They are accounted rustics, or 

 " pagans," in the classical sense, elsewhere. Horses are good 



