2S0 



HA WAIL 



[letter XXX. 



house flowers grow in rank profusion round every house, and 

 tea-roses, fuchsias, geraniums fifteen feet high, Nile lilies, 

 Chinese lantern plants, begonias, lantanas, hibiscus, passion- 

 flowers, Cape jasmine, the hoya, the tuberose, the beautiful but 

 overpoweringly sweet ginger plant, and a hundred others : 

 while the whole district is overrun with the Datura brug- 

 mansia (?), here an arborescent shrub fourteen feet high, bearing 

 seventy great, trumpet-shaped, white blossoms at a time, which 

 at night vie with those of the night-blowing Cereus in filling the 

 air with odours. 



Pineapples and melons grow like weeds among the grass, 

 and everything that is good for food flourishes. Nothing can keep 

 under the redundancy of nature in Kona ; everything is profuse,, 

 fervid, passionate, vivified and pervaded by sunshine. The 

 earth is restless in her productiveness, and forces up her hot- 

 house growth perpetually, so that the miracle of Jonah's gourd 

 is almost repeated nightly. All decay is hurried out of sight,, 

 and through the glowing year flowers blossom and fruits ripen ; 

 ferns are always uncurling their young fronds, and bananas 

 unfolding their great shining leaves, and spring blends her 

 everlasting youth and promise with the fulfilment and maturity 

 of summer. 



" Never comes the trader, never floats a European flag, 

 Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag : 

 Droops the heavy blossom'd bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree — 

 Summer isles of Eden lying in dark purple spheres of sea. " 



HUALALAI, Jllly 28//1. 



I very soon left the languid life of Kona for this sheep 

 station, 6000 feet high on the desolate slope of the dead 

 volcano of Hualalai, ("offspring of the shining sun,") on the 

 invitation of its hospitable owner, who said if I " could eat his 

 rough fare, and live his rough life, his house and horses were 

 at my disposal." He is married to a very attractive native 

 woman who eats at his table, but does not know a word of 

 English, but they are both away at a wool-shed eight miles off, 

 shearing sheep. 



This house is in the great volcanic wilderness of which I 

 wrote from Kalaieha, a desert of drouth and barrenness. 

 There is no permanent track, and on the occasions when I 

 have ridden up here alone, the directions given me have been 

 to steer for an ox bone, and from that to a dwarf ohia. There 



