LETTER XXX.] 



LIFE ON IIUALALAI. 



2S1 



is no coming or going ; it is seventeen miles from the nearest 

 settlement, and looks across a desert valley to Mauna Loa. 

 Woody trailers, harsh, hard grass in tufts, the Asplenium 

 trichomanes in rifts, the Pellea ternifolia in sand, and some 

 ohia and mamane scrub in hollow places sheltered from the 

 wind, all hard, crisp, unlovely growths, contrast with the lavish 

 greenery below. A brisk cool wind blows all day ; every 

 afternoon a dense fog brings the horizon within 200 feet, but it 

 clears off with frost at dark, and the flames of the volcano 

 light the whole southern sky. 



My companions are an amiable, rheumatic, native woman, 

 and a crone who must have lived a century, much shrivelled 

 and tattooed, and nearly childish. She talks to herself in 

 weird tones, stretches her lean limbs by the fire most of the 

 day, and in common with most of the old people has a pre- 

 judice against clothes, and prefers huddling herself up in a 

 blanket to wearing the ordinary dress of her sex. There is 

 also a dog, but he does not understand English, and for some 

 time I have not spoken any but Hawaiian words. I have 

 plenty to do, and find this a very satisfactory life. 



I came up to within eight miles of this house with a laughing, 

 holiday-making rout of twelve natives, who rode madly along 

 the narrow forest trail at full gallop, up and down the hills, 

 through mire and over stones, leaping over the trunks of pros- 

 trate trees, and stooping under branches with loud laughter, 

 challenging me to reckless races over difficult ground, and 

 when they found that the wahine haole was not to be thrown 

 from her horse they patted me approvingly, and crowned me 

 with Ms of maile. I became acquainted with some of these at 

 Kilauea in the winter, and since I came to Kona they have 

 been very kind to me. 



I thoroughly like living among them, taking meals with 

 them on their mats, and eating " two-fingered " fioi as if I had 

 been used to it all my life. Their mirthfulness and kindliness 

 are most winning ; their horses, food, clothes, and time are all 

 bestowed on one so freely, and one lives amongst them with 

 a most restful sense of security. They have many faults, but 

 living alone among them in their houses as I have done so 

 often on Hawaii, I have never seen or encountered a dis- 

 agreeable thing. But the more I see of them the more im- 

 pressed I am with their carelessness and love of pleasure, their 

 lack of ambition and a sense of responsibility, and the time 

 which they spend in doing nothing but talking and singing as 



