196 
MISSIONARY TOUR 
chievous, and offend P616 or Nahoaarii, gods of the 
volcano, by plucking the ohelo, (sacred berries,) dig¬ 
ging 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 cer¬ 
tainly visit the volcano. 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 ol 
it; from thence he would descend to the sea-shore, 
and wait till we overtook him. The governor, 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, when they gradually fell behind. 
When they designed to leave us, they would run on a 
little way ahead, sit down on a rock, give us their 
parting aroha as we passed, and continue to follow us 
with their eyes till we were out of sight. After travel¬ 
ling some time over a wide tract of lava, in some 
places almost as rugged as any we had yet seen, we 
reached Hokukano. Here we found an excellent 
spring of fresh water, the first we had yet seen on our 
tour, though we had travelled upwards of a hundred 
