DESERTED BY OUR GUIDE. 207 
we should want more things there than we could 
conveniently carry. He objected strongly to our 
going thither, as we should most likely be mis¬ 
chievous, and offend Pele or Nahoaarii, deities of 
the volcano, by plucking the ohelo , (sacred berries,) 
digging up the sand, or throwing stones into the 
crater, and then they would either rise out of the 
crater in volumes of smoke, send up large stones 
to fall upon us and kill us, or cause darkness and 
rain to overtake us, so that we should never find 
our way back. We told him we did not apprehend 
any danger from the gods; that we knew there 
were none; and should certainly visit the vol¬ 
cano. If we were determined on going, he said, 
we must go by ourselves; he would go with us as 
far as Kapapala, the last village at which we 
should stop, and about twenty miles on this side 
of it; from thence he would descend to the sea¬ 
shore, and wait till we overtook him. The go¬ 
vernor, he said, had told him not to go there, and, 
if he had not, he should not venture near it, for it 
was a fearful place. 
We waited till after nine o’clock, when, the 
men not arriving with our baggage, we proceeded 
on our way, leaving Makoa to wait for them, and 
come after us as far as Kapapala, where we expected 
to spend the night. As we walked through the 
village, numbers of the people came out of their 
houses, and followed us for a mile or two, after 
which they gradually fell behind. When they 
designed to leave us, they would run on a little 
way before us, sit down on a rock, give their 
parting aroha as we passed, and continue to 
follow us with their eyes till we were out of sight. 
After travelling some time over a wide tract of 
lava, in some places almost as rugged as any we 
