390 



DISTRIBUTION OF PLANTS. 



our party landed at Waiarua. — On the 4 th, Mr. Peale and myself 

 walked over the barren plain or wide intervening valley, and at the 

 end of "eighteen miles" arrived at Ewa. — On the 5th, we continued 

 on " twelve miles" farther to Honolulu. 



MoLOKAi. On the 3d of December, the Vincennes left Honolulu ; and 

 sailing Eastward passed Molokai on the 4th. Molokai, the first island 

 of the Eastern Division of the Group, being in the neighborhood of 

 the large island of Maui, is regarded as of only secondary importance. 

 Yet it is more than "a long narrow ridge, sloping on one side and 

 nearly precipitous on the other;" its line of mountain-peaks including 

 some that seemed hardly less than three thousand feet high, with inter- 

 vening pleasant and quite extensive valleys. The ancient coral-shelf, 

 only twent}^ feet out of the water around Oahu, is according to Rev. 

 Mr. Hitchcock, in some places around Molokai "a hundred feet above 

 the sea-level." 



Maui. Next beyond Molokai, the Vincennes passed Maui ; two im- 

 mense mountain-lumps rising out of the sea, connected together by a 

 low alluvial isthmus; so low as in the night, to be sometimes mistaken 

 by navigators for an open channel. 



The Western mountain-lump has a cnast-cniter, projecting half- 

 buried at the base of the Western slope near Lahaiua: a town visited 

 by a party from the Vincennes some weeks later. From Laliaina, our 

 party proceeded by land South, along the sea-shore of the Leeward 

 PORTION of West Maui. The vegetable growth almost exactly the 

 same as on the Leeward side of Oahu and Tauai : thinly-scattered 

 grasses prevailing, principally the Heteropogon, with a hairy Panicum 

 next in frequency ; here and there giving place to single herbaceous 

 and sub-herbaceous plants, to the Acliyranthes, the purple-flowered 

 Portulaca, the velutinous Gossypium, the Gampylotheca ? with multifid 

 leaves, the prostrate small-flowered Ipoynoea, the Dolichos with linear 

 leaflets and yellow flowers, and the shrubby Wedelia ? with canescent 

 or whitish foliage. 



By degrees the coast led Eastward, and at length Northward, and 

 at the close of day we arrived at Wailuku ; on the opposite side of 

 the mountain-lump. Our way hither was partly over the low al- 

 luvial ISTHMUS ; which, when more extensively examined, was 

 found to contain tracts of drifting sand, and interesting plants growing 

 thereon: as a tortuous procumbent Portulaca-like Sccevola ; a pro- 

 cumbent shrubby Solamim ; gen. Grewioid, an unsightly shrub a foot 



