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VALLEYS OF KOHAL A.

163

CHAPTER VIII.

ROMANCE OF TOURING AND PROSE OF WORKING.

WHO IS MY BROTHER? 'Tis not merely he

Who hung upon the same loved mother's breast;

But every one, whoever he may be,

On whom the image of a man's impress'd.
True Christian sympathy was ne'er design'd
To be shut up within a narrow bound;
But sweeps abroad, and in its search to find
Objects of mercy, goes the whole world round.
'Tis like the sun, rejoicing east and west,

Or beautiful rainbow, bright from south to north;
It has an angel's pinion, mounting forth

O'er rocks, and hills, and seas, to make men bless'd.
No matter what their color, name, or place,

It blesses all alike, the universal race.

T. C. UPHAM.

I AM just resting from the fatigue of a tour recently made with the pastor of Kohala, for an examination preparatory to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. The first day, after riding about eight miles up and down the sides of deep ravines, fertile with kalo, bananas, bread-fruit, and ohias, and over the fine arable lands between them, we arrived at the brow of a pali, or precipice, about one thousand feet high, and nearly perpendicular, down which we must go to be at the school-house in the beautiful valley at its base. Leaving our horses in charge of the last schoolmaster, at the rude seat of whose pedagogic sway a meeting

had just been held, we let ourselves down by the zigzag path as best we could.

The sight of the valley beneath was truly unique and beautiful; luxuriant kalo patches, irrigated by a crystal stream that here and there was made to form in ponds; native houses, and trees and men in miniature, from our overlooking, lofty position; a steep, twin pali, of the same height opposite, its almost rectangular sides verdant and blossoming with the kukui and convolvulus vine. At one end the ravine ran up for more than a mile, till the palis met where sprang the living fountain from the heart of the lava rock. Had it been in Scotland, it was a place which Sir Walter would have chosen for the appearance of the white Lady of Avenel; and Grecian imagination would have made it sacred to Nymphs and Naiads, and a recess for the sons of genius to implore the inspiration of the sacred Nine. But here in Hawaii nei, where there are no classic gods or goddesses, it is but a fountain of wai maole, as Nature and the afterthroes of her volcanoes made it, to irrigate the food patches, and fill the huewais of common kanakas.

At the other end this magnificent avenue opened upon the deep, with a beach of the finest black writing sand, over which the sea rolled in immense hoary breakers, nearly up to a wall made to prevent its incursions upon the kalo patches. Boys and girls, and athletic men were sporting among the billows, diving through the huge rollers as they rushed in from the ocean, and sometimes riding in upon them clear up on the beach, the boys and girls on little surf-boards, the men by dint of their own muscles.

VIEWS OF THE

SEA-COAST.

165

The meeting over in this romantic valley, it remained either to climb a precipice as high as that we had descended, or to pass round it by the sea, subject to be wet by the huge billows that beat, often to the perpendicular wall of the precipice. Choosing the latter, we had to disencumber ourselves of nether garments, and arranging our other apparel somewhat like a native malo, to watch the opportunity when the sea retreated, in order to get round a projecting point. Sans culottes as we were, we did not pass without a wetting to the waist by a violent wave, that came near to raising me from my feet. A company of natives attended us, one of whom waddled to my aid and held me by the arm, as a haole does his wahine, they said.

After passing thus the most difficult part, we coasted on over the wave-washed stones and masses of broken lava for more than a mile, the abrupt wall of cooled lava on one side five hundred feet high, the raging sea on the other, washing to its base. Here and there masses were broken off, which we would have to surmount. Now and then we could see holes in the face of the rock, where pent-up gases had burst out after the great mass was cooled, and left a space all around like a honeycomb. Sometimes the rock was completely vitrified; at other times we would meet with places whose solid rock seemed only cracked, not fused. Again it would be nothing but slag and scoria; in another place a formation plainly basaltic.

A mile of such walking brought us to another valley, where were gathered the inhabitants of that and of another valley, which we should have had to climb

four palis to get to, and which neither Mr. Bond nor any missionary had ever visited but once. It was a

valley yet more beautiful, if possible, than the other; the sides higher, and more densely covered with the hau-tree and other shrubs; the water more abundant, and the kalo more luxuriant. A native house-one of a thousand-gave us comfortable entertainment and rest for the night. We had an apartment to ourselves, and a part raised and covered with mats, called in Hawaiian hikiee, on which we lay with considerable comfort, after a supper of roasted kalo and ha, the latter being the butt end of kalo tops, and very much in taste like asparagus.

A good old man there, who lomilomi-ed my weary limbs with a surprisingly grateful sense of refreshment, and who seemed to regard our white feet with great admiration, kindly offered me his buxom daughter, and a kalo patch for a dowry, if I would stop with them as their kumu. Who knows but that some such liberal offer to one of the forthcoming celibates of the Mission will yet tempt them to abjure monastic vows, and yoke themselves here in Hawaii into the state they eschewed in America. Nous verrons.

The superiority of the white skin to the Hawaiian olive was matter of long conversation to the assembled natives, who came together, both young and old, and of both sexes, as many as could get into the house, to see the strangers, how they looked, and ate, and slept. In the morning, too, tawny faces were curiously peering in at our little window, and every motion was observed with an eager, savage interest. The man at whose house we stopped was one of uncom

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