LETTER XXIV.] 



CLOUDLAND. 



22'] 



hideous desolation of the crater below, and those blue and 

 jewelled summits rising above the shifting clouds. 



After some time the scene shifted, and through glacial rifts 

 appeared as in a dream the Eeka mountains which enfold 

 the Iao valley, broad fields of cane 8000 feet below, the 

 flushed, palm-fringed coast, and the deep blue sea sleeping in 

 perpetual calm. But according to the well-known fraud 

 which isolated altitudes perpetrate upon the eye, it appeared 

 as if we were looking up at our landscape, not down • and no 

 effort of the eye or imagination would put things at their proper 

 levels. 



But gradually the clouds massed themselves, the familiar 

 earth disappeared, and we were " pinnacled in mid-heaven " in 

 unutterable isolation, blank forgotten units, in a white, won- 

 derful, illuminated world, without permanence or solidity. 

 Our voices sounded thin in the upper air. The keen, incisive 

 wind that swept the summit, had no kinship with the soft 

 breezes which were rustling the tasselled cane in the green 

 fields of earth which had lately gleamed through the drift. It 

 was a new world and without sympathy, a solitude which 

 could be felt. Was it nearer God, I wonder, because so far 

 from man and his little works and ways? At least they 

 seemed little there, in presence of the tokens of a catastrophe 

 which had not only blown off a mountain top, and scattered it 

 over the island, but had disembowelled the mountain itself to 

 a depth of 2000 feet. 



Soon after noon we began to descend ; and in a hollow of 

 the mountain, not far from the ragged edge of the crater, then 

 filled up with billows of cloud, we came upon what we were 

 searching for; not, however, one or two, but thousands of 

 silverswords, their cold, frosted silver gleam making the hill-side 

 look like winter or moonlight. They can be preserved in their 

 beauty by putting them under a glass shade, but it must be of 

 monstrous dimensions, as the finer plants measure 2 ft. by 

 18 in. without the flower stalk. They exactly resemble the 

 finest work in frosted silver, the curve of their globular mass of 

 leaves is perfect, and one thinks of them rather as the base of 

 an epergne for an imperial table, or as a prize at Ascot or Good- 

 wood, than as anything organic. A particular altitude and 

 temperature appear essential to them, and they are not found 

 straggling above or below a given line. 



We reached Makawao very tired, soon after dark, to be 

 heartily congratulated on our successful ascent, and bearing 



