HA WAIIAN G VIBE B OK. 107 



from hundreds to thousands of feet high, the brink 

 comes unheralded on the startled observer, who finds it 

 impossible to descend, except by a few passes. Near 

 the sea the valley widens, and the barrier walls decrease 

 in height, exhibiting masses of red columnar lava. 

 Here, close by the ocean, under the cocoanut trees, by 

 the mouth of the stream that runs down the valley, are 

 the dwellings of the natives, whose patches of taro and 

 bananas line the banks above. So much untilled land 

 and other indications of a former numerous population, 

 assure us that the estimates of Cook and Vancouver, 

 who placed the population in 1780 at 400,000, were not 

 far from correct. 



Hanapepe valley, like most others on this island, ex- 

 tends inland almost to its centre. As it recedes from the 

 shore, the mountains stretch upward, the valley walls 

 growing higher. Rocks become cliffs, changing their 

 form and appearance at every turn. Now a darkened 

 narrow gorge through which the river rushes violently, 

 now a miniature valley with just room for a tiny village, 

 and the cultivated plats of the inhabitants ; now a stone 

 viaduct, a flume through which one may look upward 

 as through a ventilator in a mountain tunnel. 



Some five or six miles inland, the level of the valley 

 begins rapidly to rise, creating some beautiful cas- 

 cades in the stream, before the Hanapepe Fall appears 

 in view. Jarves says, "As we approach, it is again 

 lost to sight, until, after turning a sharp angle in the 

 glen, it appears, and the visitor finds himself a few rods 

 from the fall on a narrow ledge of rocks. In that 

 direction nature's fiat proclaims i thus far shalt thou 

 come and no farther.' A perpendicular wall between 



