LETTER XXVII.] 



PUNA. 



243 



bright sunshine, all tossed, jagged, spiked, twirled, thrown heap 

 on heap, broken, rifted, upheaved in great masses, burrowing in 

 ravines of its own making, full of broken bubble caves, and torn 

 by a-a streams. Close to the track, crystals of olivine lie in 

 great profusion, and in a few of the crevices there are young 

 plants of a fern which everywhere has the audacity to act as 

 the herald of vegetation. 



Beyond this desert the country is different in its features 

 from the rest of the island, a green, smiling land of Beulah, 

 varied by lines of craters covered within and without with 

 vegetation. For thirty miles the track passes under the deep 

 shade of coco palms, of which Puna is the true home ; and from 

 under their feathery shadow, and from amidst the dark leafage 

 of the breadfruit, gleamed the rose-crimson apples of the 

 eugenia, and the golden balls of the guava. I have not before 

 seen this exquisite palm to advantage, for those which fringe 

 the coast have, as compared with these, a look of tattered, 

 sombre, harassed antiquity. Here they stood in thousands, 

 young as well as old, their fronds gigantic, their stems curving 

 every way, and the golden light, which is peculiar to them, 

 toned into a golden green. They were loaded with fruit in all 

 stages, indeed it is produced in such abundance that thousands 

 of nuts lie unheeded on the ground. Animals, including dogs 

 and cats, revel in the meat, and in the scarcity of good water 

 the milk is a useful substitute. 



Late in the afternoon we reached our destination, a comfort- 

 able frame house, on one of those fine natural lawns in which 

 Hawaii abounds. A shower' at seven each morning keeps Puna 

 always green. Our kind host, a German, married to a native 

 woman, served our meals in a house made of grass and bamboo ; 

 but the wife and children, as is usual in these cases, never 

 appeared at table, and contented themselves with contemplating 

 us at a great distance. 



The next afternoon we rode to one of the natural curiosities 

 of Puna, which gave me intense pleasure. It lies at the base 

 of a cone crowned with a heiau and a clump of coco palms. 

 Passing among bread-fruit and guavas into a palm grove of 

 exquisite beauty, we came suddenly upon a lofty, wooded cliff 

 of hard basalt, with ferns growing out of every crevice in its 

 ragged but perpendicular sides. At its feet is a cleft about 

 60 feet long, 16 wide, and 18 deep, full of water at a tempera- 

 ture of 90 . This has an absolute transparency of a singular 

 kind, and perpetrates wonderful optical illusions. Every thing 



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