206 



HA WAIL 



[LETTER XXI. 



region which it fertilises, a stream several hundred feet wide, 

 with a soft, smooth bottom. But four miles inland the bed 

 becomes rugged and declivitous, and the mountain walls close 

 in, forming a most magnificent canon from iooo to 2500 feet 

 deep. Other cations of nearly equal beauty descend to swell 

 the Hanapepe with their clear, cool, tributaries, and there are 

 "meetings of the waters" worthier of verse than those of 

 Avoca. The walls are broken and highly fantastic, narrowing 

 here, receding there, their strangely-arched recesses festooned 

 with the feathery trichomanes, their clustering columns and 

 broken buttresses suggesting some old-world minster, and their 

 stately tiers of columnar basalt rising one above another in 

 barren grey into the far-off blue sky. The river in carving out 

 the gorge so grandly has most energetically removed all 

 rubbish, and even the tributaries of the lateral canons do 

 not accumulate any " wash " in the main bed. The walls as 

 a rule rise clear from the stream, which, besides its lateral 

 tributaries, receives other contributions in the form of water- 

 falls, which hurl themselves into it from the cliffs in one 

 leap. 



After ascending it for four miles all further progress was 

 barred by a pali which curves round from the right, and closes 

 the chasm with a perpendicular wall, over which the Hana- 

 pepe precipitates itself from a height of 326 feet, forming the 

 Koula Falls. At the summit is a very fine entablature of 

 curved columnar basalt, resembling the clam shell cave at 

 Staffa, and two high, sharp, and impending peaks on the other 

 side form a stately gateway for a stream which enters from 

 another and broader valley ; but it is but one among many 

 small cascades, which round the arc of the falls flash out in 

 foam among the dark foliage, and contribute their tiny warble 

 to the diapason of the waterfall. It rewards one well for pene- 

 trating the deep gash which has been made into the earth. It 

 seemed so very far away from all buzzing, frivolous, or vexing 

 things, in the cool, dark abyss into which only the noon-day 

 sun penetrates. All beautiful things which love damp ; all 

 exquisite, tender ferns and mosses ; all shade-loving parasites 

 flourish there in perennial beauty. And high above in the 

 sunshine, the pea-green candle-nut struggles with the dark oJiia 

 for precarious roothold on rocky ledges, and dense masses of 

 Eugenia, aflame with crimson flowers, and bananas, and all the 

 leafy wealth born of heat and damp fill up the clefts which 

 fissure the pali. Every now and then some scarlet tropic bird 



