HA WAIIAN Q UIBE BOOK 79 



trip to and from the crater via Olaa can be accomplislied 

 in three days, which will give one day and two nights 

 at the volcano house. 



The Puna route leaves Hilo by way of the bay beach, 

 through cocoanut groves, bamboo thickets and fish 

 ponds across the Waiahuma and the Waiakea bridge, 

 through the bread-fruit orchard, out of Hilo village into 

 the uneven pasture land of Waiakea, whose broad acres 

 soon become thickly set with the pandanus, (screw 

 palm,) and after four or five miles enters the forest that 

 stretches from the ocean to the limit of vegetation on 

 Mauna Loa. The vegetation throughout this tract 

 is fully as luxuriant as that near Panama or on 

 the borders of the Amazon ; it is perhaps the most ac- 

 cessible to strangers of any tropical jungle on the islands 

 and forms one of the wonders of the volcanic trip. In 

 its flowering season the forest is gay with red and yel- 

 low, and the parasitic creepers, the ieie, seem aflame 

 with color. Birds, native and imported, keep this flower 

 garden alive with motion and with song : noteworthy 

 the black oo whose wings hide the rare, yellow feathers 

 used for the royal mantles of the ancient chiefs. Some 

 of the ohia trees are 60 or 80 feet high, and are often 

 seen in full bloom to the very tops, while the under- 

 growth of strawberries and ferns is next to impenetra- 

 ble. This continues for three or four miles, and then 

 follow groves of the pandanus, and at Kaea the ocean 

 appears and the houses in Puna. Cocoanut trees here 

 begin to form a prominent part of the landscape, clus- 

 tered in groups of hundreds and thousands. 



Twenty-five miles of fair riding will carry the traveler 

 to the comfortable ranch of Capt. Eldarts, who enter- 



