LETTER XXII. 



Koloa Woods — Bridal Rejoicings — Native Peculiarities — Missionary- 

 Matters — Risks attending an exclusively Native Ministry . 



Lihue, Kauai. 



I rode from Makaueli to Dr. Smith's, at Koloa, with two 

 native attendants, a lima to sustain my dignity, and an in- 

 ferior native to carry my carpet-bag. Horses are ridden with 

 curb-bits here, and I had only brought a light snaffle, and my 

 horse ran away with me again on the road, and when he 

 stopped at last, these men rode alongside of me, mimicking 

 me, throwing themselves back with their feet forwards, tugging 

 at their bridles, and shrieking with laughter, exclaiming 

 Maikai ! Maikai ! (good). 



I remained several days at Koloa, and would gladly have 

 accepted the hospitable invitation to stay as many weeks, but 

 for a cowardly objection to "beating to windward" in the 

 Jenny. One day, the girls asked me to go with them to the 

 forests and return by moonlight, but they only spoke of them 

 as the haunts of ferns, because they supposed that I should 

 think nothing of them after the forests of Australia and New 

 Zealand ! They were not like the tropical woods of Hawaii, 

 and owe more to the exceeding picturesqueness of the natural 

 scenery. Hawaii is all domes and humps, Kauai all peaks 

 and sierras. There were deep ravines, along which bright, 

 fern-shrouded streams brawled among wild bananas, overarched 

 by Eugenias, with their gory blossoms : walls of peaks, and 

 broken precipices, grey ridges rising out of the blue forest 

 gloom, nigh mountains with mists wreathing their spiky 

 summits, for a background : gleams of a distant silver sea : 

 and the nearer, many-tinted woods were not matted together 

 in jungle fashion, but festooned and adorned with numberless 

 lianas, and even the prostrate trunks of fallen trees took on 



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