Chapter X: Part THREE (7)

Mr. Von appreciated and consented; and when the order of march was arranged, the Welshman proved his right to leadership; without hesitation, wise muzzle between his exact feet, sniffing, feeling each narrow plank of the unsteady way. It was an experience big with thought—carrying with it an intense sense of aloneness, aloofness from aid in event of disaster, trusting the vaunted human of me without reserve to the instinct and intelligence of a “lesser animal.” The blessed Welshman!—with chaos all about the insecure foothold, trembling but courageous, he won slowly step by step across the white destruction and struck his small fine hoofs into firm ground once more.

With brave, set face Harriet Thurston, who was little accustomed to horses, came next after Mr. Von, and her ambitious but foolhardy steed, midway of the passage, began jogging with eagerness to be at the end, setting up a swaying rhythm of the bridge that sent sick chills over the onlookers, and it was with immense relief we watched him regain solid earth. Pontius Pilate bore Jack sedately, followed by the little girls.

A conception may be gained of the scariness of this adventure through an incident related by Mr. Von. One of his cowboys, noted on Maui for his fearlessness, always first in the pen with a savage bull, and first on the wildest bucking bronco off range, absolutely balked at riding this final test of all our nerve: “I have a wife and family,” he expostulated; then led his horse across.[7]

Kaleinalu, Maui, July 23.

Kaleinalu (Kah-lay-e-nah’-lu), “Wreath of Surf,” the seaside retreat of the Von Tempskys, is but another illustration of the ideal conditions that compose existence in these fabulous isles. We become almost incoherent on the subject of choice of climates and scenery and modes of living to be found from mountain top to shore. One may sleep none too warmly under blankets at Ukulele and Paliku, with all the invigoration of the temperate zone; enjoy mild, variable weather at 2000 to 3000 feet, as at the Ranch house; or lie at sea level, under a sheet or none, caressed by the flowing trade wind. “Watch out, Mate,” Jack warns; “I’m likely to come back here to live some day, when we have gone round the world and back—if I don’t get too attached to the Valley of the Moon.” One ceases not to marvel that the shore-line is not thronged with globe trotters bickering for sand lots. It is an enviable place for old and young, with finest of sand for the babies to play in, and exciting surfing inside protecting reef, for swimmers.

And here we malihinis are resting, after one day of tennis and colt-breaking up-mountain, from our six days in the saddle. Nothing more arduous fills the hours than swinging in hammocks in a sheltered ell of the beach-house, reading, playing whist, swimming in water more exhilarating than at Waikiki, romping, sleeping—and eating, fingering our poi and kukui-nut and lomi’d salmon with the best.

To-morrow we bid good-by to these new friends, who must have sensed our heart of love for them and their wonderland, for they beg us to return, ever welcome, to their unparalleled hospitality. By now we have proudly come into our unexpected own, with a translation of our name into the Hawaiian tongue, worked out by Kakina (Mr. Thurston) and Mr. Von, who speak like natives with the natives, and sometimes with each other, while the speech of the lassies abounds in the pretty colloquialisms of their birth-land.

Always they say _pau_ for connotation of “finish,” “that will do,” “enough”; _kokua_ for help, noun or verb—or, in the sense of approval, or permission; _hapai_ is to carry; _hiki no_, as we should say “all right,” “very well”; _hele mai_, or _pimai_, come here, or go up; one oftenest hears _pilikia_ for trouble, difficulty, or _aole pilikia_ for the harmonious negative; the classic _awiwi_, hurry, has been superseded by expressive and sharply explosive synonym, _wikiwiki_; and when the hostess orders a bath prepared, she enunciates _auau_ to the Japanese maids. Most commands, however, are given in mixed English-Hawaiian. The old pure word for food, and to eat, _paina_, is never heard, for the Chinese kowkow—_kaukau_ in the Hawaiian adaptation—has likewise come to stay.

Peremptory commands often trail off into the engaging _eh?_ that charmed our ears the first day at Pearl Lochs. And so, as I say, upon us has been bestowed the crown of all graciousness accorded upon Maui—the Hawaiian rendering of London, which is _Lakana_; although how London can be transmuted into Lakana is as much a mystery as the mutation of Thurston into Kakina. At any rate, my pleased partner struts as Lakana Kane (Kane means literally _male_), while meekly I respond to Lakana Wahine.

Aboard _Claudine_, Maui to Honolulu, July 24.

From Kahului the passengers were towed on a big lighter to the _Claudine_ rocking well offshore; and, watching Louis von Tempsky’s lean, military figure growing smaller on the receding wharf, we felt a surge of emotion at parting. “He’s all man, that Von,” Jack said, hastily turning away and lighting a cigarette. And in my ears still rang the quaint cadences of his voice, rising from the cinder-slopes of Haleakala, or heard from smoking corral, or hammock on the beach, in little hulas of his own devising.

From the deck we saw his fine beef-cattle towed swimming to the steamer and crowded in the main-deck forward, bound for the Honolulu market. And when the _Claudine_ swept out of the roadstead, we gazed our last, through daylight into dark, upon hoary Haleakala, whose stern head only once looked out from a red sunset smother.

The moon came up like a great electric globe, spilling pools of brilliant light in the pitchy water. At Lahaina the steamer lay off to take aboard a few passengers, and again we saw the infrequent lights of the little quiet town. We could have wished nothing better than once more to disembark at Sleepy Lahaina, and repeat the whole holiday.

Nuuanu Valley, August 1.

It seems that we are to know many homes in Hawaii Nei. Now it is with Mr. and Mrs. Thurston, who have lifted us, bag and baggage, from the August fervency of Waikiki to a cooler site within the “first shower” level of Nuuanu. Here, at the end of a short side street, their roomy house[8] juts from the lip of a ravine worn by a tumultuous watercourse from the Koolau Mountains. And here, on the edge of the city, from the windows, we can see, across fertile plains broken with green hillocks, the blue, velvet masses of the Waianae Range, and, below, can pick out Pearl Lochs and the silvered surf-line of the coast around to Honolulu Harbor.

At table, on a broad lanai, morning, noon and night, can be observed the life of the port, the movement of ships to and from the storied harbors of all the world. One cannot rave too earnestly over this lanai existence, in the ideal climate of Hawaii. Jack, at work, must needs sit with back resolute against the distracting windows that set him dreaming of the future of the _Snark_.

We are accorded the perfect entertainment of freedom to come and go at our own sweet will, which is the way of the land. At meals, and afterward lounging in hanging-couches and great reclining chairs, we listen rapt to Kakina’s memories of the old regime, from his missionary childhood on through the variable fortunes of the doomed monarchies, in which he bore his important part. And he, wisely reticent except with those he knows are deeply appreciative of the romance and tragedy of the Hawaiian race and dynasties, delves into his mine of information with never a relaxing of attention from us.

Of a late afternoon, Mrs. Thurston and I drive down palmy Nuuanu avenue into the architectural jumble of the business center, picturesque despite its unbeautiful buildings, what of foreign shops and faces and costumes. Here we abstract her husband from the _Advertiser_ editorial sanctum, and Jack from the barber’s shop; afterward driving for an hour in the bewilder of wandering hibiscus byways and narrow streets, where hide, in a riot of foliage, the most exquisite old cottages of both native and foreign citizens. Thus we become acquainted with the city known and loved until death by travelers like Isabella Bird, whose book still holds place, with me, as the sweetest interpretation of the Hawaii we have so far seen.

One evening we left behind the homes that stray over the lower slopes of the purple-rosy, time-worn crater of Punch Bowl, Puowaina; wound up past the Portuguese settlement that hangs, overgrown with gayest flowers, on haphazard rock terraces, and ascended through a luxuriant growth of blossoming, fruiting cactus, to the height of five hundred feet, where we stood at the mouth of the perfect crater basin that had suggested the name of Punch Bowl. This cone, blown out by a comparatively recent, final upheaval between the spurs of the older peaks and the Pacific, standing isolated as it does, we now realize should be visited early in one’s sojourn in Honolulu, for it is a remarkable point from which to orient oneself to the city’s topography. And lo, a white speck on the water-front, we could make out the _Snark_, moored opposite a leviathan black freighter. From the mauka edge of the Bowl we looked up Pauoa, one of the wooded vales that rend Honolulu’s lofty background, flanked with sharp green ridges.

For the present, although we miss the convenient swimming of Waikiki, welcome indeed is this chance to acquaint ourselves with other phases of this Paradise at the cross-roads of the Pacific.

August 4.

“Mate, you know, or I think you know, how little figure fame cuts with me, except in so far as it brings you and me the worth-while things—the free air and earth, sky and sea, and the opportunities of knowing worth-while people.” Thus Jack, descanting upon some of the rare privileges that money cannot buy but which his work has earned him in all self-respect. This leads to the observation that in this community composed of groups of the closest aristocracies in the world, bar none, to quote Jack’s sober judgment, mere wealth cannot buy the favor of their hospitality. It is a well-recommended tourist who ever sees behind into the kamaaina social atmosphere of Honolulu. And of all the exclusive spirit manifested by the kamaainas, none is more difficult to conquer than that of the elder Hawaiian and part-Hawaiian families.

So it was with quiet gratification that we two set out upon an invitation to the out-of-town retreat of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Macfarlane, members of the same family with whom we have come in contact from time to time, since the day we first shook the Commodore’s hand in Pearl Lochs.

Our way lay over the Pali, and this second view lost none of the glamorous memory of the former. Now that I have seen other parts of Hawaii, I find that no comparison can be made. Nuuanu Pali stands unique.

Descending the zigzags to the main drive, we soon turned off to the left and rolled over the red loops of a branch road to the very base of the Mirrored Mountains, where nestles Ahuimanu, “Refuge of Birds.” It is a beauteous spot, more than faintly Spanish in suggestion, where an old house, in sections connected by arbors, rambles about a court of green lawn that terraces down to the hospitable gate. The Spanish-mission effect of the low architecture is enhanced by the fact that it occupies the site of a Catholic institution, built by the first French Bishop of Honolulu as a place where he might retire for meditation and prayer. A short distance behind the present buildings the precipitous mountain rises until its head is lost in the clouds. Somewhere on its face, reached by a stiff trail, hides a pocket, a small, green solitude, called the Bishop’s Garden. From this the climb is so steep that it is said none but the olden natives could surmount it, and one young priest lost his life making the attempt.

Adown the terraced walk, with this background of romance and stern beauty, stepped our part-Hawaiian hostess with the inimitable stately bearing of her chiefly kind, clad in flowing white holoku; and a little behind walked her daughter, Helen, as stately and graceful if more girlishly slender. Our welcome was of a warmth and courtesy that still further bore out the Spanish air of the place. But Hawaiian manners and hospitality were never patterned upon the Spanish nor any other; they are original, and as natural to these gracious souls as the breath of their nostrils.

In bathing attire we all emerged from our rooms that opened upon a low flagged veranda, and went barefoot along a grassy pathway wet with a fresh rain shot from the near clouds which hid the upstanding heights, to a large cement pool fed from a waterfall. The sun had dropped untimely behind the valley wall, while the air was anything but summery in this nook where daylight is of short duration; but the shock of cold water sent blood and spirit a-tingling. Before we had finished a game of water-tag, there was a merry irruption of young cousins from the city, several of whom we greeted as acquaintances. Boys and girls, in haole swimming suits or muumuus, they turned the tranquil late-afternoon into a rollicking holiday, some making directly for the pool, others playing hand ball, and all wasting no moment of their youth and high spirits while the light lasted.

In the absence of her husband, Mrs. Macfarlane presided at the head of a long table that nearly filled the low-ceilinged, oblong room in a wing of the old house, and the more racket the hungry swarm raised, the more benignly she beamed. The greater the number of guests and their appetite, the greater the content of the Hawaiian-born.

Following dinner, we sat or lay about in the soft-illumined living-room, gone all the bashful reserve that unknowing ones mistake for superciliousness in the Hawaiian. Mrs. Macfarlane we coaxed from smiling confusion to talk of her family’s interesting present and past, members of whom, Cornwells and Macfarlanes, served in honored capacities under the crowned heads of the country, as late as Queen Liliuokalani’s interrupted reign.

In a comprehensive window seat some of the young men sprawled reading magazines, and a quartet at the card-table was oblivious to all comforts of deep easy-chairs, pillowed floor-nooks, and indoor hammocks. One golden-eyed boy on a scarlet hassock strummed an ukulele to a low song to his lady-love. She, from the cushioned recess of a hanging-chair, gazed back langurously out of great soft Hawaiian eyes—lovely as an exotic blossom, in her long, clinging holoku of rose-flowered silken stuff. Oh, we were very Spanish this night—and all-Hawaiian.

And yet, there is but a trace of the Hawaiian stock in any of these—like Jack’s French, or my own Spanish strain—an eighth, perhaps, a sixteenth, a thirty-second; but the modicum of native blood that they are heir to lends them their pleasant lack of sharp edges. Among such one is gentled and loved into thinking well of oneself and all mankind.

“I have _Aloha nui loa_ for them, forever,” Jack murmured as we pattered over the brick pave of the fragrant arbor to the quaint bedroom whose small-paned windows might have looked out upon a New England landscape.

At six we were roused by the shouting clan trooping to the pool, and the indefatigable Jack rose to write for a couple of hours before breakfast, on his Maui article, “The House of the Sun.” By nine, with dewy cables of roses about our shoulders, unwillingly we bade farewell to the household, and drove under a lovely broken sky to the foot of the Nuuanu Pali. Here, as much for the experience of climbing the up-ended ridges as to ease the burden of the horses, we left the carriage to meet it at the pass. Except for a short climb I once made at Schynige Platte in Switzerland, this wet path, lying straight up an extremely narrow hog-back, was the steepest and most difficult of my life. The ground drops with startling suddenness on either hand—or foot; and for me it was not infrequently both hand and foot. But we won over the horses, and had leisure at the drafty platform once more to feast our unsatiated eyes on the wide beauty of that scene which never can tire.

My husband, who holds that it is a waste of valuable effort to shave himself when he might be enjoying the soothing ministrations of a specialist, went to the barber in town while I shopped in the fascinating Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, and East Indian stores, always with an eye to the fine Filipino and other embroideries, pina or pineapple cloth, of exquisite tints, and unusual and gorgeous stuffs worn by the oriental women in Honolulu—silk and wool and mysterious fibers impossible to buy in the States, as there is no demand. And the heart feminine thrills not in vain over kimonos and mandarin coats, for the prices are absurdly cheap, and the colors food for the eye, with untold possibilities for household as well as personal decoration.

From little houses and huts on the rolling fields, parties of natives, men, women, old and young, and naked brown imps of babies, gather to bathe—always the favorite sport—in a rocky basin of the verdant ravine. From the balconies of the big house often we watch them playing, in gaudy, wet-clinging muumuus, unaware of any haole observer—their carefree, childlike selves, splashing, diving, laughing and singing, laundering their hair, and calling to one another in wild, sweet gutturals. This afternoon we were struck with a new note—a strange, savage chanting. In it there was distinct, accentuated rhythm, but no music as we understand the term—only the harsh, primitive voicing of a man with the noble, grayed head of the old Hawaiians. Listening to the curious untamed note, the like of which we had never heard, Mr. Thurston said: “You are lucky to hear it under these circumstances—when the old fellow thinks no one but his own people are listening. He is probably intoning the _oli_, genealogy of one of the swimmers. There _was_ no music, what we would call music, until the missionaries brought it here.”

In the sudden transition from the ancient tabu system to an entirely changed order that came with the death of Kamehameha I in 1819, followed by the arrival from Boston a year later of the first missionaries, the old “singing” became obsolescent. The new music, with its pa, ko, li, conforming to our do, re, mi, was taken up by everyone, soon becoming universal with these people who learned with such facility; and out of the simple, melodious Christian hymning, the natives evolved a music inoculated with their primal rhythms, that has become uniquely their own. Captain James King, who sailed with Captain Cook on his disastrous last voyage, makes the interesting statement that the men and women chanted _in parts_.

The predominance of vowel and labial sounds lends a distinct character to the tone-quality of Polynesian language, lacking, as it does our consonants, _b_, _c_, _s_ and _d_, _f_, _g_, _j_, _q_, _x_, and _z_, so that the upper cavities of the throat are not called into full play. Therefore the voice, with its Italian vowels, developed a low and sensuous quality that, when strained for dramatic or passional expression, breaks into the half-savage, barbaric tones that stir the ferine blood lying so close to the outer skin of the human. Sometimes there is a throaty musical gurgle that seems a tone-language out of the very tie-ribs of the human race.

The phrasing was made by old Hawaiians to suit the verse of the _mélé_, a sort of chanted saga, and not to express a musical idea. The cadencing was marked by a prolonged trilling or fluctuating movement called _i’i_, in which the tones rose and fell, touching the main note that formed the framework of the chant, repeatedly springing away for short intervals—a half-step or even less. In the hula the verses are shorter, with a repetitional refrain of the last phrase of each stanza. That full-throated, lissom-limbed girl at the christening feast on the peninsula illustrated much of the foregoing when she sang for the dancers.

* * * * *

With a pleasant thrill I looked forward to meeting Alice Roosevelt Longworth at a dinner and dance given this evening at the Seaside. In one’s imagination she seems the epitome of the American Girl, and I found her far more beautiful than her pictures, with eyes wide apart, unafraid and level, looking like topazes from across the table in a glow of yellow candleshades upon yellow roses. And when “Princess Alice” smiles, she smiles, with eyes as well as lips. There is inner as well as outer poise about her brown-golden head, and she is straight as a young Indian and fair as a lily.

She and Jack were in no time cheek-by-jowl in a heated argument upon “nature-faking” that would have delighted, by proxy, her illustrious father, with whom Jack has all these weeks been tilting in the press; and I heard him offering to back a bull-dog against the Colonel’s wolf-dog, in the latter’s back yard!

I sat between Nicholas Longworth and “Jack” Atkinson, and our talk at table—strange subject for a banquet—was largely concerned with the welfare of the Leper Settlement, in which both Mr. Longworth and Mr. Atkinson are extraordinarily interested.

The Longworths were scheduled to serve on the committee receiving Secretary Strauss and his party from Washington; and though Jack and I first begged off from attending the formal occasion, when we learned it was to be in the old throne room of the Palace, we decided to go. Mr. Atkinson whirled us away to the Executive Building, standing in its illuminated gardens, and soon we were passing along the dignified line of those receiving, out of which Mrs. Longworth, who is refreshingly unbound by convention, temporarily strayed to bombard Jack with a new argument in favor of the wolf-dog she had essayed to champion against his imaginary bull-pup.

But what snared our fancy on this occasion was not the gathering of American statesmen and their bejeweled ladies, nor the impressive meeting between Secretary Strauss from Washington and Governor Carter of Hawaii. Our eyes were most often with the throng of high-caste Hawaiians in the lofty hall, more especially the queenly women, gowned in their distinguishing and distinguished white holokus, standing proud-bosomed, gazing with their beautiful eyes of brown at the white-and-gold girl who is the daughter of their alien ruler, President Theodore Roosevelt. We wondered what memories were in their brains as they recalled other brilliant occasions when they had filed by the imposing crimson throne yonder, to bow kissing the hands of their hereditary kings, and their last queen. She, H. R. H. Liliuokalani, has resolutely declined all invitations whatsoever to this house of her royal triumph and her humiliating imprisonment, since 1895, the year of her formal renouncement of all claim to the crown, and her appeal for clemency to those who had taken part in the insurrection.

Honolulu, August 6.

A few kamaainas of Honolulu have long since discovered the climatic and scenic advantages of Tantalus, Puu Ohia, one of the high, wooded ridges behind the city, more particularly in the sultry summer months. Tantalus is ideal for suburban nests, overlooking as it does the city and Waikiki District, well-forested, with opportunity for vigorous exercise on the steep sides of Makiki and Pauoa valleys, and to their rustic eyry at the head of Makiki Valley, the Thurstons carried us by saddle.

One afternoon, while I languished with a headache, Jack returned gleefully from a tramp, bringing me some of the wild fruits and nuts of the mountain, among them water-lemons and rose-apples. The former are round balls of about two-inch diameter, with greenish-brown, crisp rind full of tart, pulpy, spicy seeds. Although quite different in flavor and color, the formation reminds one of pomegranates and guavas. But the rose-apple!—evergreen native of the West Indies, it is too good to be true, for the edible shell has a flavor precisely like the odor of attar of roses, which is my favorite perfume. Almost it makes one feel native to the soil of a strange country, to nourish the blood of life with its vegetation.

Last night, back in town, Jack, at the request of Mr. Thurston and the Research Club of which he is a member, delivered his much-bruited lecture, “Revolution.”

This paper of Jack’s, an arraignment of the capitalist class for its mismanagement of human society, was originally a partly extempore flare of the spirit delivered in 1905 before an audience of nearly five thousand at the University of California, where he himself had studied during part of a Freshman year.

Hawaii knows little of socialism, for she lacks the problems that confront the United States and other great countries. Sugar is her backbone, labor is almost entirely imported, and handled in a patriarchal way that makes for comparative contentment, especially in so rigorless a climate. Feudal Hawaii is; but the masters are benevolent.

And Jack, who stepped before the Research Club with the blue fire of challenge in his eyes, his spirited head well back, and a clarion in his voice, found these gentlemen to be their own vindication of the name they had chosen for their Club. For with open minds they hearkened to this passionate youngster, insolent with righteous certitude of his solution of the wrongs of the groaning old earth; and presently, sensing unexpected atmosphere of intelligent and courteous attention, Jack muted his trumpets.

Discussion lasted into the small hours, and Lorrin Thurston, no mean antagonist with his lightning-flash arguments, who laid every possible gin and pitfall for Jack’s undoing, beamed upon the rather startling guest he had introduced among his tranquil fellows, and whispered to me:

“That boy of yours is the readiest fellow on his feet in controversy that I ever laid eyes upon!”

Honolulu, August 14.

To-morrow we embark once more upon our Boat of Dreams, for the Big Island. Thence, if the engines prove satisfactory, and our new skipper, Captain James Langhorne Warren of Virginia, measures up to Jack’s judgment, we shall sail from Hilo in earnest for the South Seas. Captain Rosehill and the crew had failed to assimilate.

And now, a few notes upon these latter days on Oahu.

No one interested should fail to visit the Entomological and Sugar Cane Experiment Station, where the clear-eyed and sometimes weary-eyed scientists are glad to explain the remarkable work being done in coping with all pestiferous enemies of profitable agriculture in the Territory. Mr. “Joe” Cooke, midway in a drive to the polo field, allowed us a fascinating hour or two with our eyes glued to wondrous microscopes that showed us an undreamed world of infinitesimal life.

In the open air once more, we set out for Moanalua Valley, to see the polo ponies that were being conditioned for the great game, which we attended two days later. The players of Hawaii cherish a widespread and enviable reputation for their keen, clean game.

Saturday dawned clear and fine, after a hard rain. The beautiful course around the slippery field was lined with automobiles, while an upper terrace furnished the parked carriages an unobstructed view. Miss Rose Davison, astride a mighty red roan, officer of the S. P. C. A., and a splendidly efficient character, marshaled the crowd, with the assistance of a staff of mounted Hawaiian police—magnificent fellows all. Every one loves the Hawaiian police for their ability, courtesy, and distinguished appearance.

Mr. and Mrs. Longworth declared that this tournament, set in the exquisite little valley, and played so inimitably, was quite the most exciting they had ever witnessed anywhere.

We had heard of the Bishop Museum as being one of the world’s best, embracing exhibits from every isle in the Pacific Ocean, historical, geographical, ethnological, zoological; and hither one afternoon we went. Despite the exalted repute of this storehouse of antiquity, we had passed it by, for the idea of wandering through a stuffy public building on a hot day, concerning ourselves with lifeless relics, when we might be out in the open-air world of the quick, had never appealed.

Once inside the portals of koa wood, as ornamental as precious marbles, we knew no passing of time until the hour of their closing for the day. The building alone is worthy of close inspection, finished as it is throughout with that incomparable hardwood. In the older sections, the timber has been fantastically turned, much of its splendid grain being lost in convolutions of pillar and balustrade; but modern architects have utilized the timber in all its beauty of rich gold, mahogany-red, maple-tints, and darker shades, with sympathetic display of its traceries that sometimes take the form of ships at sea, heads of animals, or landscapes.

The Curator of the Museum, Dr. William T. Brigham, spends his learned years in the absorbing work of sustaining and adding to the excellence of his charge.

Of all the treasures of this passing race, we lingered most enchanted before the superb feather cloaks, or capes, long and short, of almost unbelievable workmanship; as well as helmets, fashioned of wicker and covered with the same tiny feathers, yellow or scarlet, of the _oo_, _mamo_, _iiwi_, and _akakani_, birds now practically extinct, and modeled on a combined Attic and Corinthian pattern. The cloaks, robes of state, called _mamo_, were the costly insignia of high rank; a wondrous surface of feathers, black, red, red-and-black, yellow, yellow-and-black, upon a netting of _olona_, native hemp. Some notion of the value of these kingly garments may be gained by the statement that nine generations of kings lapsed during the construction of one single mantle, the greatest of all these in the Bishop Museum, that fell upon the godlike shoulders of the first Kamehameha. Among the others, remarkable though they be, this woof of _mamo_, of indescribable flame-yellow, like Etruscan gold, stands out “like a ruby amidst carrots.”

All this royal regalia, blood-inherited by Mrs. Pauahi Bishop, together with the kahilis, formed the starting point for the Museum. And the kahilis! Their handles are inlaid cunningly with turtle shell and ivory and pearl, some of them ten to thirty feet in height, topped by brilliant black or colored feather cylinders fifteen or eighteen inches in diameter. In 1822, one of the second party of missionaries went into ecstacies over these feather devices of Hawaii royalty:

“So far as the feather mantles, helmets, coronets and kahilis had an effect, I am not fearful of extravagance in the use of the epithet (splendid). I doubt whether there is a nation in Christendom which at the time letters and Christianity were introduced, could have presented a _court dress_ and insignia of rank so magnificent as these; and they were found here, in all their richness, when the islands were discovered by Cook. There is something approaching the _sublime_ in the lofty noddings of the kahilis of state as they tower far above the heads of the group whose distinction they proclaim; something conveying to the mind impressions of greater majesty than the gleamings of the most splendid banners I ever saw unfurled.”

Dr. Brigham comments upon the foregoing:

“Not in the least does the excellent missionary exaggerate in his eulogy on the grand kahilis. Those of us who, in these latter days of the degeneration of all good native works and customs, have seen the kahilis wave above royalty, however faded—the finely built and naked bronze statues that bore the kahilis replaced by clumsy, ill-dressed, commonplace bearers of neither rank nor dignity—even the withered rose, most of its fragrance gone, has yet appealed strongly to our admiration and sympathy. The powerfully built chiefs, head and shoulders above the common crowd, free from all sartorial disfigurements, sustained easily the great weight of these towering plumes; but the modern bearer, stranger alike to the strength and virtue of his predecessors, has to call in the aid of stout straps of imported leather to bear the much smaller kahilis of the modern _civilized_ days.”

A bit of heraldry would not be out of place here. I borrow Mary S. Lawrence’s description of the Royal Hawaiian coat-of-arms. The device is extensively reproduced in jewelry, its colors pricked up in enamel, and is a handsome souvenir of these islands.

“It is divided into quarters. The first and fourth quarters of the shield contain the eight red, white and blue stripes which represent the inhabited islands.

“Upon the yellow background of the second and third quarters are the _puloulou_, or tabu sticks—white balls with black staffs. These were a sign of protection, as well as of tabu.

“In the center is found a triangular flag, the _puela_, lying across two _alia_, or spears. This also was a sign of tabu and protection.

“The background represents a mantle or military cloak of royalty. At the sides are the supporters in feather cloaks and helmets. Kameeiamoku on the right carries an _ihe_, or spear, while Kamanawa, his twin brother, on the left, holds a _kahili_, or staff, used only upon state occasions.

“Above the shield is the crown, ornamented with twelve taro leaves. Below is the national motto taken from the speech of the king upon Restoration Day: ‘The life of the land is perpetuated by righteousness.’”

The coat-of-arms has not been used by the government since the islands have been a territory of the United States.

No tapa “cloth” is made in Hawaii to-day, though these people formerly excelled all Polynesia for fineness of the almost transparent, paper-like tissue, beaten from bark of the _wauke_, paper-mulberry. It was worn, several deep, for draping the human form. Now, for the most part, Hawaiian tapa can be seen only in the Museum, where rare samples are pasted carefully upon diamond-paned windows. Yards of it are stored in drawers. There is little resemblance between this delicate stuff and the handsome but heavy modern tapas of Samoa, with which one grows familiar in the curio shops of Honolulu.

A replica of the volcano Kilauea claimed especial attention, in view of our visit in the near future to the vent in Mauna Loa’s 14,000-foot flank; and we lingered over a model, worked out in wood and grass and stone, of an ancient temple and City of Refuge, or _heiau_, with its place of human sacrifice at one end of the inclosure. A gruesome episode took place shortly after this model was installed. A young Hawaiian, repairing the roof, lost balance and crashed through, breaking a gallery railing directly above the imitation sacrificial altar, where his real blood was spilled—Fate his executioner, _ilamuku_.

One more of the countless exhibits, and I am done. Here and there in the building, stages are set with splendid waxen Hawaiians engaged in olden pursuits, such as basket-weaving and poi-pounding. The figures, full-statured, are startlingly lifelike, except in the unavoidable deadness of the coloring. It is impossible to imitate the living hue, of which the natives say, “You can always see the blood of an Hawaiian under his skin.” The model for one of the best of these figures died some time ago; and to this day his young widow comes, and brings her friends, to admire the beautiful image.

No matter how the very thought of a museum aches your feet, and back, and eyes, do not pass by the Bishop Museum.

* * * * *

It was our good fortune to be bidden, with the Thurstons, to a New England breakfast at the Diamond Head seaside residence of Judge and Mrs. Sanford B. Dole. Judge Dole, who was President of the Provisional Republic (often called the Dole Republic) that followed the collapse of the monarchy, is a busy man; and so, rather than visit and be visited during the week, at eleven of a Sunday he and Mrs. Dole welcome their friends to déjeuner.

Imposingly tall, benignant and patriarchal, blue-eyed and healthy-skinned, with silver-white hair and long beard, the Judge is unaffectedly grand and courteous, making a woman feel herself a queen with his thought for her every comfort. He must have been another of the courtly figures of the old regime, and Jack always warms to the instance of the gallant resistance made by him and another man, holding the legislative doors against an infuriated mob during an uprising incident to a change of monarchs. “Can’t you see them? Can’t you see the two of them—the glorious youth of them risking its hot blood to do what it saw had to be done!” he cries in appreciation of the sons of men.

Anna Dole, the Judge’s wife, is a forceful, stately woman of gracious manner, with handsome eyes rendered more striking by her shining white hair and snowy garb—a diaphanous holoku of sheerest linen and rare lace.

And groaning board is just what it was, from alligator pears and big spicy Isabella grapes, papaias, luscious Smyrna figs, mangoes, pineapples, and “sour-sop,” a curious and pleasant fruit, of the consistency of cotton or marshmallow, and of a taste that might be described as a mixture of sweet lemonade and crushed strawberries.

Also we sampled our first breadfruit, roasted over coals, although not at its best in this season. I concluded that upon closer acquaintance I should like it as well as taro or sweet potatoes, for it resembles both potato and bread, broken open and steaming its soft shellful of tender meat, of the consistency of moist potato. The breadfruit has no seeds, being propagated by suckers.

But this exotic menu was not the half. We were expected to partake, and more than once, of accustomed as well as extraordinary breakfast dishes—eggs in variety, crisp bacon, and delicious Kona coffee from Leeward Hawaii—and, as if to bind us irrevocably to New England tradition, brown-bread and baked pork and beans!

This leisurely breakfasting was done to the animated conversation of two of the most representative of kamaainas, who talked unreservedly of their vivid years and their ambitions for the future of the Islands. Always and ever we note how devoted seem the “big” men of the Territory, old and young alike, above personal aggrandizement, to the interests of Hawaii. It looks to be an example of a benevolent patriarchy.

Following this matin banquet, which, it scarce need be urged, one should approach after a fast, we reclined about the awninged lanai, talking or listening to the phonographic voices of the world’s great singers, the while a high tide, driven by the warm Kona wind, broke upon coral retaining walls in a rhythmic obligato.

“The Doctorage,” Holualoa, Hawaii, August 21.

Long ago, when the building and purpose of the _Snark_ were first reported in the press, Dr. E. S. Goodhue, brother of our noble Dr. Will Goodhue on Molokai wrote to Jack, bidding us welcome when we should put in at Kailua, in the Kona District of the west coast of Hawaii. And here we are, surrounded with the loving-kindness of his family, in their home nestled a thousand feet up the side of Hualalai, “Child of the Sun,” a lesser peak on this surpassing isle of mounts—merely eight thousand feet in height, and an active volcano within the century.

There was a touching gathering of Honolulu acquaintance on the 15th, to bid the _Snark_ Godspeed for the Southern Seas, by way of Kailua and Hilo on Hawaii. Piled to the eyes with sumptuous leis, we waved farewell while the little white yacht, under power, moved out in response to the new skipper’s low, decisive commands. She was a very different craft, or so we thought, from the floating wreck that, praying to be unnoticed of yachtsmen, slipped by the same harbor four months earlier.

With the exception of Nelson, a Scandinavian deep-water sailor, we all fell seasick in the rough channel. Next day, with a dead calm of which we had been warned, in Auau Channel between Maui and the low island of Lanai, the big engine was started, with high hopes of reaching Kailua by nightfall. But auwe! Something went immediately wrong, despite the months of expensive repair.

At sunset Haleakala vouchsafed a glimpse of its head two miles in the flushing ether, and on Sunday we sighted the island of Hawaii above a cloud-bank. Crippled with neither engine nor wind-power, we could only wonder when the few remaining miles would be covered; for still in our ears rang tales of schooners long becalmed off the Kona coast, and of one that drifted offshore for a sweltering month.

Monday night, four days from Honolulu, the _Snark_ wafted into Kailua. There Kamehameha died in 1819, at the age of eighty-two, his active brain to the last filled with curiosity about the world even to an interest in rumors of the Christian religion, which had found their way from the Society group. Three years after his death, Kaahumanu, favorite of his two wives (a remarkable woman whose career would make a great romance), together with her second husband, held a grand midsummer burning of idols collected from their hiding places.

Kailua is the first port into which our boat has made her own way under sail. It was an occasion of sober excitement, in a moonless night lighted softly by large stars that illumined the shifting cloud vapors. The enormous bulk of the island appeared twice its height against the starry night-blue sky, and a few unblinking lights strewn midway of the darkling mass hinted of mouths of caverns strewn in a savage wilderness.

When at last the searchlight was manned, fed by the five-horse-power engine that had been driving our blessed electric fans, we discovered the palm-clustered village on the shore, and, sweeping the water with the shaft of radiance, made out a ghostly schooner in our own predicament.

“Do you know where you are?—do you like it?” Jack breathed in the almost oppressive stillness, where we sat in damp swimming-suits, in which we had spent the afternoon, occasionally sluicing each other with canvas bucketfuls of water from overside. Ah, did I like it! I sensed with him all the wordless glamour of the tropic night; floating into a strange haven known of old to discoverer and Spanish pirate, the land a looming shadow of mystery; our masts swaying gently among bright stars so low one thought to hear them humming through space, and no sound but the tripping of wavelets along our imperceptibly moving sides, with a dull boom of breakers not too far off the port bow. As we drew closer in the redolent gloom, dimly could be seen melting columns and spires of white, shot up by the surf as it dashed against the rugged lava shore line.

Little speech was heard—the captain alert, anxious, the searchlight playing incessantly to the throbbing of the little engine, anchor ready to let go at an instant’s notice. Suddenly the voice of Nelson, who handled the lead-line, struck the tranquility, naming the first sounding, and continued indicating the lessening depth as we slid shoreward in a fan of gentle wind, until “Twelve!” brought “Let her go!” from the skipper. Followed the welcome grind of chain through the hawse pipe, the yacht swung to her cable as the fluke laid hold of bottom, the breakers now crashing fairly close astern; and we lay at anchor in a dozen fathoms in Kailua Bay, all tension relaxed, half-wondering how we had got there.

Hardly could we compose ourselves to sleep, for curiosity to see in broad daylight our first unaided landfall. And it was not disappointing, but quite our tropic picturing, simmering in dazzling sunlight. One could not but vision historical enactments in the placid open bay, say when the French discovery-ship _Uranie_ put in, the year of Kamehameha’s death, yonder, past the wharf, where heavy stone walls mark his crumbling fortifications. The _Uranie_ was received by a chief, Kuakine, popularly called Governor Adams, from a fancied resemblance to President Adams of the United States. The “palace” built by Kuakine still is to be seen, across from the stone church with its memorial arch to the first missionaries, who stepped ashore near the site of the wharf where we of the _Snark_ landed, with their three Hawaiian associates, Thomas Hopu, William Kenui, John Honolii, all returning from Connecticut. Besides the Thurstons, the other first missionaries were: Mr. and Mrs. Bingham, Mr. and Mrs. Chamberlain with their five children, Mr. and Mrs. Holman, Mr. and Mrs. Loomis, Mr. and Mrs. Ruggles, Mr. and Mrs. Whitney. George Kaumalii, son of the king of Kauai, was also with them, returning home. “Kuakine,” says the late Dr. Sereno E. Bishop in his _Reminiscences of Hawaii_, “was disposed to monopolize such trade as came from occasional whalers.... He possessed large quantities of foreign goods stored up in his warehouses, while his people went naked. I often heard my father tell of once seeing one of Kuakine’s large double canoes loaded deep with bales of broadcloths and Chinese silks and satins which had become damaged by long storage. They were carried out and dumped in the ocean. Probably they had been purchased by the stalwart Governor with the sandalwood which in the twenties was such a mine of wealth to the chiefs, but soon became extirpated.” And, later, the brig _Thaddeus_, long months from Boston Town with her pioneer missionaries, was greeted by the welcome tidings that the tabus were abolished, temples and fanes destroyed, and that peace reigned under Kamehameha the Second, Liholiho, who, among other radical acts, had broken the age-long tabu and sat at meat with his womenkind.

Aboard the _Thaddeus_ were Mr. and Mrs. Asa Thurston, grandparents of our Kakina. All must have suffered outlandish inconveniences, to say the least, in that primitive environment. I am minded of having read how, on one occasion, those early Thurstons made a passage from Kailua to Lahaina in a very small brig that scarcely furnished standing room for its four hundred and seventy-five passengers and numerous live stock; which was not considered an unusual overcrowding.

A good five-mile pull it is from the village to the “Doctorage,” through quaint Kailua, past Hackfeld’s old store, and the small, formal white palace where Prince Kalanianaole and his princess are staying; on, higher and higher, across a sloping desert of cactus blooming white and red and yellow, and laden with juicy-sweet “prickly pears,” called _papipi_, and sometimes _panini_, by the natives. In these, with care for the prickles, we eased a continuous thirst in the sapping noonday heat.

Shortly after quitting Kailua, we were pointed out a tumble-down frame dwelling, the home of the original Thurstons, which is now almost disintegrated by _termites_, borers, inaccurately termed “white ants,” whose undermining must ceaselessly be fought in the Islands. This house is a dreamfully pathetic reminder of those long-dead men and women who voyaged so courageously to a far land where, oh, savage association! a conch shell was the bell for the afternoon session of school. Their special interest in the Hawaiian people had been awakened in the New England missionaries by the acquaintance of several kanaka sailors brought to New Haven by Captain Brintnall in 1809, more especially one Opukahaia, whom they dubbed Obookiah. In 1817 the “Foreign Mission School” was instituted at Cornwall, Connecticut, for heathen youth, and five Sandwich Islanders were among the first pupils. Obookiah died in 1818, but three of his countrymen embarked for their native isles, with the missionaries, in 1819, in the _Thaddeus_, Captain Blanchard.

Presently we began to enjoy a cooler altitude, in which the vegetation changed to a sort of exotic orchard—a wilderness of avocado, kukui, guava, and breadfruit trees burdened with shining knobby globes of emerald, like those of Aladdin’s jeweled forest. And coffee—Kona coffee; spreading miles of glossy, green shrubbery sprinkled with its red, sweet berry inclosing the blessed bean.

At 1000 feet elevation the road emerged upon a variously level, winding highway which we pursued to the post office of Holualoa. From there we turned down an intricate lane between stone walls overhung with blossomy trees, that with sudden twist delivered us upon a verdant shelf of the long seaward lava incline. Here the Goodhues live and work and raise their young family of two in this matchless equable climate; and here with the unstudied graciousness of their adopted land welcomed us as we had been kinfolk.

“Now, this is what I call a white-man’s climate,” Jack enounces. “Few of us Anglo-Saxons are so made as to thrive in fervent spots like Kailua yonder,” indicating the far-distant and just-visible thumb-sketch of that storied hamlet, “no matter how beautiful they may be to the eye and mind.”

Dr. Goodhue agrees to this; but Jack will not follow him in the contention that, under the Hawaiian sun, even in this semi-temperate climate, said Anglo-Saxon should rest more than do we. “I wish you’d heed what I am advising,” almost wistfully the good Doctor urges. “You’ll last longer under the equator and have a better time on your voyage.—If I did not have such sweet responsibilities,” he smiled upon his wife and young ones, “I’d beg the chance to go along as ship’s physician!... And as for myself,” he added, “I _have_ to work too hard—largely prescribing for people like you and myself, who have not heeded my own warnings.”

There is small need for residents of Kona to plan special entertainment for guests, provided those guests have eyes. First, one’s imagination is set in motion by this unheard-of gradient vastness of molten rock so ancient that it has become rich soil overspread in the higher reaches with bright sugar cane, coffee, bracken and forestage. Below this belt of vegetation, barren, seamy lava stretches to the coast line, lost in distance to right and left, all its miniature palm-feathered bays pricked out by a restless edge of pearly surf in dazzling contrast to the vivid turquoise water inshore. Off to the south, the last indentation visible is historic Kealakekua Bay, where Captain Cook paid with his life for stupid mishandling of a people proud beyond that Englishman’s comprehension of a brown-skinned people. We have never seen anything like this azure hemisphere of sea and sky. For we have observed no horizon from the Kona Coast. The water lies motionless as the sky—a frosted blue-crystal plane, no longer a “pathless, trackless ocean,” for over its limitless surface run serpentine paths, coiling and intermingling as in an inconceivable breadth of watered silk. Ocean and dome overhead are wedded by cloud masses that rear celestial castles in the blue, which in turn are reflected in the “windless, glassy floor”; and the atmospheric and vaporous suffusion I can only call a _blue flush_. The very air is blue.

We can just make out our house-upon-the-sea, tiny pearl upon lapis lazuli, beyond the slender, white spire of Kailua’s church. Fair little Dorothy, her eyes the all-prevalent azure, glides white-frocked and cool to our side and lisps her father’s child-verse:

“There’s Jack London coming, see?
In a little white-speck boat;
He will wave his hands to me,
Then he’ll float and float and float;
So he said last time he wrote—
He is such a man of note!”

For three miles today we rode south along the fine road skirting the mighty sweep of mountain. On our saddles were tied raincoats, for smart rains are frequent of an afternoon, filling one’s nostrils with the smell of the good red earth.

“Oh, look—look at your yacht!” Jack suddenly cried; and there was she, the “white-speck boat,” in a whisper of wind crawling out across the level blue carpet of the open roadstead, growing dimmer and still dimmer in the Blue Flush, bound for Hilo, our port of departure for the Marquesas.

We turned downhill on a trail through guava and lantana shrubbery sparkling from the latest shower. Owing to the success of an imported enemy, large tracts of that beautiful pest, the lantana, have the appearance of having been burned.

One of our party bestrode a ridiculous dun ass, a pet that for the most part wreaked its own will upon its young rider, especially when its large braying, “a sound as of a dry pump being ‘fetched’ by water and suction,” elicited like responses from the “bush” where these Kona Nightingales, as they are known throughout the region, breed unchecked and are had for the catching. If not a favorite, they are an inexpensive and popular means of travel among the poorer natives and the long-legged _pakés_ (Chinese) on the roads of the district.