Chapter XVI: Part THREE (13)

There were times when we twain were included in affairs that were solely Hawaiian except for the few who had married into the families—as at Charles W. Booth’s beautiful house, Halewa, one night in Pauoa Valley. There a hundred sat down to a great banquet, with a dance to follow in the vine-screened lanai to music from instruments invisible in the fragrant shrubbery; from which one could see up the valley the hundreds of tended acres that were as a back-garden of the estate. Mrs. Booth, herself part Hawaiian, and daughter of a Maui chief, let us roam about the absorbing apartments, each a veritable museum of treasure trove inherited from her aunt, Malie Kahai, a celebrated beauty—feather leis, tapas, calabashes, finest of mats, and, prize of all, a feather cape that had belonged to her princely father. Some of the furniture had come from the palace of the king and from Queen Emma’s residence. Here we met Stella Keomailani, Mrs. Kea, “Stella” to her intimates, last living descendant of the high chiefs of the Poohoolewaikala line—a sort of royal Hawaiian clan descended from kings. Blue-blooded pure Hawaiian, she is a remarkable type—tall, slender with brown hair and hazel eyes and a skin as of ivory washed with pale gold. On her father’s side she is cousin to Queen Emma, and one of the heirs mentioned in the Queen’s will.

But there—to mention all who blessed us with their friendship would be almost to quote our Honolulu telephone directory, which hangs now at my elbow, with its markings desolately reminiscent of the roof under which Jack London dwelt those seven months on Kalia Road.

Eager for the criticism of Honoluluans upon certain stories he Was writing at this period, “On the Makaloa Mat,” “The Water Baby,” “When Alice Told Her Soul,” “The Bones of Kahekili,” Jack often had me telephoning for a party to come for luncheon or drop around for tea under the hau, for the reading, with a swim to follow. Other new stories he wrote and read aloud—“The Kanaka Surf,” “The Message,” “The Princess,” and “Like Argus of the Ancient Times.” With the exception of “The Kanaka Surf,” which was a haole tale placed in Honolulu, none of these latter are Hawaiian fiction. The next novel he contemplated settling down to was to bear the title of “Cherry”—a Japanese heroine with an Islands setting and a potent racial motif. And this work, “Cherry,” was the broken thing he left behind when he died on November 22.

One morning Jack was obliged to have me call in Doctors Herbert and Walters, for he had been seized with the agonies of kidney stone. Shortly before, he had been very ill all night, as if from ptomaine poisoning. “Don’t worry,” he would usually brush aside attempts to diagnose or to call in medical advice. “It will pass—look at me: I am in good weight, and shall live many happy years, my dear.” But there was that in his face which brought me white nights, and caused his friends to ask, “What ails Jack? He looks well enough, but there’s something about him... his eyes...”

And so the gay wheel turned in Honolulu, as the golden days and star-blue nights came and went. And yet, for all Jack courted more or less excitement—I quote from my pocket diary, and the date is June 14, 1916: “Mate said to-night that this has been the happiest day he ever spent in the Islands. And what did he do? Write, read me what he had composed; and we lunched and dined conjugally alone together, with a little swim in between whiles; and in the evening he read to me from George Sterling’s latest book of poems, ‘The Caged Eagle,’ just received from George, and broke down in the reading before the deathless beauty of the poem called ‘In Autumn.’”

Before we sailed for home, which was on July 26, that Jack might attend the Bohemian Jinks, we put our heads together with Mary Low’s for the planning of a luau, just before our departure, under our own roof and hau tree for our own Hawaiian friends, with a night of dancing and music and cards to follow. The only haoles to be bidden were their close connections. Forty they sat at the great board that was entirely covered with deep layers first of ti-leaves and then ferns, strewn with flowers and fruit of every description, native and imported. It was a feast served by Hawaiian women whose business it was to see that every detail was in the most approved native fashion.

To Mary Low must be given the praise for the success of this occasion, for under her superintendence it was produced. And upon her unerring wisdom and tact the place-cards, bearing embossed the royal coat-of-arms of Hawaii, were laid. The ends of the enormous table were seated in this wise: Jack center, with Princess Cupid to his right, and Mrs. Stella Kea left. Myself at opposite end, with Prince Cupid on my right, and Mayor Lane at my other side, while his wife, Alice, sat at the Prince’s right—she of the beautiful hands that are her husband’s pride, exquisitely modeled by a mother’s early manipulation, lomilomi, after the charming Hawaiian practise. A characteristic of many well-born Hawaiians is the straight, high back-head; and the mothers here, as with the hands, have exercised their patient modeling. Full thighs were also deemed a mark of superior beauty, and much attention was given to massaging and developing the limbs of the young wahines.

Our friends will not, I am sure, be offended if I mention a laughable incident that all took in jovial good part. Next the Princess, Senator “Bob” Shingle, best of toastmasters, had concluded his opening speech, and sat down amidst hearty applause. But his sitting was not of a permanence that was to be expected, being in fact an entire disappearance to those at my end of the long table, and alarm widened the eyes of Muriel, his wife, sister to Princess David Kawananakoa. Alack, the floor of the aged lanai had not upborne such weight of Polynesian aristocracy these many years, and the hind-legs of even this medium-sized haole’s chair had gone incontinently through the rotten planking.

Hardly had the bubble of merriment subsided when, to my speechless horror, Prince Cupid vanished from my side in a clean back-somersault. He was on his nimble feet almost before he struck the sand nearly a foot below the lanai-level—not for nothing had he learned football tactics in his university days. His good-natured mirth put all at ease, and the alert nervousness of Senator Charles Chillingworth and others of his stature and avoirdupois called forth much funning. There were fortunately no more accidents, and the speech-making in appreciation of Jack and his services to Hawaii was gratifying in the extreme.

I can see Jack now, as he rose, all in white save for his black soft tie, hesitating half-diffidently with the fingers of one hand absently caressing the flowers on the ti-leaves, before lifting his eyes, black-blue and misted with feeling. At first his voice, low and clear, shook slightly, but gathered, with his beautiful, Greek face, a solemnity that increased as he spoke his heart to these people among whom he loved to dwell.

Secondarily to the pure aloha motive of this luau, we had assembled our friends for the christening of the Jack London Hula, chanted stanza by stanza, each repeated by Ernest Kaai and his perfect Hawaiian singers with their instruments. Mary Low was the mother of this _mélé_, for in her fertile brain was conceived the idea of immortalizing, for Hawaii, Jack London himself and more specifically his progress around the Big Isle of Mounts, as was done for the chiefs of old by their bards and minstrels.

The Hawaiian woman best fitted, in Mary’s judgment, to recite the saga, was Rosalie (Lokalia) Blais-dell, who had helped in the versifying; and all Lokalia asked in return for the long evening’s effort, which with lofty sweetness she assured us was her honor and pleasure, was a copy each of Jack’s “Cruise” and my “Log” of the _Snark_.

Thus, during the eating of the hundred and one tropic delicacies that a swarm of pretty girls prepared and served from the kitchen, never was the gayety so robust that it did not silence instantly when Lokalia’s voice rose intoning above the lilting wash of reef waters against the sea wall thirty feet away, followed by the succession of Kaai’s lovely music to the mele. Each long stanza, carrying an incident of the progress around Hawaii and those who welcomed Jack, closed with two lines:

“Hainaia mai ana ka puana,
No Keaka Lakana neia inoa.”

“This song is then echoed,
’Tis in honor of Jack London.”

Listened critically all those qualified to judge, and now and again a low “Good,” or “Perfect,” or “Couldn’t be better, Mary,” or “All honor to Mary Kipikane!” would be forthcoming from Prince or Mayor or Senator. And there was in the mélé a swaying Spanish dance song for Lakana Wahine—Kaikilani Poloku, which is myself; for kind hearts gave me that name of a beloved queen of the long gone years, whose meaning is passing sweet to me.

Laden to the eyes with no false leis by the hands of Hawaii, we looked down from the high steamer deck into the upturned faces of the people of our Aloha Land, standing ankle-deep in flowers and serpentine. The _Matsonia_ cast off hawsers, and, moving ahead majestical-slow, parted the veil of serpentine and flowers woven from her every deck to the quay.

“Of all lands of joy and beauty under the sun...” Jack began, the words trailing into eloquent silence. He had approached Hawaii with gifts of candor and affection in hands, and eyes, and lips. And real Hawaii, impermeable to meanness or harboring of grudge over franknesses that had but voiced a grave interest in her, has been the greater giver, in that she granted him the joy and satisfaction of realizing that they had not known each other in vain.

HAWAII, 1920.

I went back, alone, and in that aloneness there was something very solemn. Of course I went back. One who knows Hawaii always goes back. The old lure abides; nor does it abate when the vessel’s forefoot, spurning the silver flying-fish, is heard _thripping_ into the azure silken sea-level which betokens nearness to remembered isles. Again “The old lost stars wheel back”; again the yard-arm of the Southern Cross leans upon the night-purple horizon; again, the old, lovely approach to Oahu, with Molokai sleeping to the southeast.

It was the _Maui’s_ first sailing for Honolulu since her war service in the Atlantic. Long will sound in the ears of her passengers the mighty conching of her deep-sea siren, as the battle-grey hull warped in to the quay. Every brazen throat, every clangorous bell of Honolulu joined in swelling the deafening, triumphal paean. Never had the many wharves been so obliterated by waving, flower-bedecked throngs. It must have been a proud and happy day for Captain Francis Milner Edwards. The approximate number of men under arms in Hawaii during the war, as given by the American Legion, was 8,500. This included practically every nationality represented in the Islands, and included army and navy. A large proportion of this total were in the federalized national guard, which took over the local garrison and released the regular troops for service on the mainland or over-seas.

How strange, to be arriving alone in Honolulu! Not a soul in the city knew that I was aboard. Sheltered by a life-boat, I waited, watching the concourse as it welcomed, and bound with embraces and cables of blossoms, its disembarking friends. There is no welcome so rare as Honolulu’s. Do I not know? But on that day, not a familiar face could I pick out in the vast bouquet of upturned faces, though in it were a score of old friends.

I have since wondered at my lack of emotion. Nature, as if to bear me across a void, seemed to have congealed all thrills and tears. What I remember is a sense of almost creeping, half-diffidently, half-curiously, between two walls of humanity that formed a lane through the sheds to the street.

“But aren’t you Mrs. Jack?”

Startled, I looked up into a fresh, young face.

“Joe!” It was Alexander Hume Ford’s ward. Never before had I beheld in him any striking resemblance to an angel. Assuring me he was not meeting any one, into his car he tucked me. I hardly had to explain that I wanted to drive about the city, and to Waikiki, before letting any one know I had come. I would have it all over with first; I would acquaint myself thoroughly with the event—that I had returned to Jack’s Loveland. Before I had gone to the hotel, I had dared to look into my long garden on Kalia Road; at the Beach Walk cottage of earlier memory; once more at the Outrigger Club, had again shaken hands with David and Duke Kahanamoku, and met two other champion sea-gods, Norman Ross and Rudy Langer. Then I had been whirled up Honolulu’s incomparable background, upon a new and perfect serpentine of road, in and out of the canyons that opened enchanting vistas in every direction. The last dash was out to Nuuanu Pali, to marvel afresh at the undisappointing grandeur of Oahu’s windward sea-prospect, Oahu’s dimming miles of green pineapples upon rolling, rosy prairie, Oahu’s eroded mountains, my Mirrored Mountains, their bastions like green waves, frothing and curling with kukui foliage that flooded cliff and gorge.

For that one day and night I went in the same lightly frozen state, observing the world in a detached way. I telephoned surprised acquaintances, and gradually oriented myself. One never knows what factor will thaw the ice. Next morning, upon the breakfast tray it was the golden sickle of the papaia that cut my controls and loosed the gate of tears. Why the papaia? Why not the coco palms, the fragrance of the plumeria, the clinging caress of the ilima lei, the sight of the long garden beneath its palms, or, above all, the wet eyes of Jack’s friends and mine? Why the mild breakfast melon from the carven papaia tree? I do not know. But thence on I was myself again, myself in my own Hawaii, aware of the compensations of life.

After the tears, the joy of knowing more than ever surely how kind are the hearts of Hawaii. Haole, hapa-haole, and all-Hawaiian, they flocked to me, dear friends all, and gave me to know that I “belonged,” that I was kamaaina, not less but more—in double measure for myself and our lost one.

I had made Honolulu my first port because of the uncertainty of post-war sailings from San Francisco for Hilo. I was tired, body and soul, from a year spent in writing my Book of Jack London. The gaieties of Honolulu were not for me. Hilo, and the arms of my Mother Shipman, and a quiet winter upon the Big Island, should precede my stay on Oahu. So I planned to continue the next day on the _Maui_ to Hilo. But Mother Shipman happened to be in town, and I delayed for a week. For old sake’s sake, after a night in the Alexander Young, I put up at the Seaside Hotel, in one of its white cottages beneath the lofty coco palms. My rooms were soon full of flowers; and there were no paper leis among these. Conspicuous upon the lanai was a basket of sweet peas and maidenhair from Yoshimatsu Nakata, nine years our domestic familiar, on land and sea; now prosperous dentist, a man of family.

I lunched purposely by myself in the well-remembered lanai circle at the Seaside, looking out across the rainbow reef where the mad, white-maned sea-horses tore beachward as of yore. Memories of twelve years marched across my vision—a lovely pageantry in which the white sails of the doughty small _Snark_ appeared most often and vividly. Many brown peoples were in the procession. Then the salt savor of the warm spray upon my lips invited me to breast at least the wahine surf, the little inshore breakers. But when I had passed the shallows, to where the Bearded Ones reared, green and menacing, I did not find myself as courageous as once with my Strong Traveler at hand.

Thursday was my birthday, and on Thanksgiving for the first time in many years. There was a lovable rush of my Hawaiian family to gather native kaokao for me. Mary Low had been the first to hear my voice over the wire. Her sister, Hannah Hind, and Aunt Carrie Robinson, saw to it that I lacked not for the peculiar delicacies than which in long wanderings, I had found nothing more to my taste. Aunt Carrie’s home on the Peninsula, near my one-time acre of Paradise, was the scene of a feast the like of which is seldom known in these degenerate days. Senator “Robbie” Hind and I vied in attention to the greatest number of viands. I won. Nor can I be ashamed of the fact. Which leads me to believe that the most complicated luau in these friendly isles is a “balanced ration” for my otherwise sensitive organism! Midway of the repast, I noticed across the flower-mounded table that one sylph-like maiden gazed out of window with the far-away look of repletion. “Weakening?” I queried scornfully. “Oh, no; I should say not!” amiably she disclaimed. “Only resting!”

But here I am, again writing about Hawaiian food. In conclusion, I must repeat that he or she who fails to approach with open mind and appetite a Sandwich Islands (no pun intended) banquet, misses the ultimate of normal gustatory blessings. For the casual sojourner there are special tourists’ luaus, tickets for which can be purchased at the news-stands of the large hotels. These native feasts include a hula dance.

* * * * *

Very softly I went down the red road, to pass through the little wicket into our old Elysian acre, for the first time since 1907, when our white ketch had swung at anchor in the jade tide off the jetty. Oh, the pity of it! A storm of a ferocity seldom before known in this part of the ocean, had snapped short the giant algarobas; while a new owner had elevated by a whole story the once low bungalow. The world, for a few moments, seemed as out of joint as the proportions of tree and house. I grieved that I had come. Miss Frances Johnson, across the way, was very full of years; and I thought, as I responded to her emotion, that it might be our last meeting. She has since died.

In these days there is much talk, by way of book and periodical, about the South Seas; South Seas meaning, for the most part, Tahiti, Samoa, Tonga, and other Polynesian isles, with little reference to the still raw and adventurous Melanesian region farther west, familiar to us of the _Snark_. But many who long to step upon the coralline sands of the east South Pacific, and cannot go that far, forget our own sub-tropics, whose spell works so wonderfully within five or six days’ sail from California. For one who would see Oahu in short order, the great Kamehameha Highway is well under way. “Hammer on federal aid for roads,” is the slogan of those interested in publicity for the Territory. Hawaii, they saw, has contributed vast sums to the federal government since annexation, but has never been included in federal appropriations for roads. Yet millions are being spent by the government in Alaska for this purpose. President Harding is hopefully regarded in this particular. A glance at the week-end automobile sections of Honolulu’s leading papers leaves no doubt of the charms of motoring about the group.

I was overjoyed to note that work was projected upon the red leagues to Waimanalo on windward Oahu. There, besides other indestructible glories of God, is that great beach, once before mentioned, the finest in all Hawaii.

One day, returning from Waimanalo, we angled aside to the old Irwin place, Maunawili, in an enchanting pocket on a mountainside. Here, long years ago, Queen Liliuokalani composed her sweet and simple song, now so widely known and associated with Hawaii, “Aloha Oe.” James Boyd, hapa-haole, and a close friend of the royal family, had then been the owner. With one who knew of the old days, I wandered about the original house, now occupied by a caretaker, where the alii had journeyed merrily over the Pali from Honolulu to rest and play; when there was no thought of time; when the heady air trembled with fragrance, and melody from happy, care-free throats. It was a quaint experience, stepping up or down from one built-on room to another; peering into musty wardrobes; contemplating the vast hikiés that had lulled long rows of Hawaiian noblemen to child-like slumber; musing above the remnants of furniture brought by clippers around Cape Horn. All the time in my ears the rich lore of a generation now silent in death.

Another day I was again at Refuge of Birds, Ahuimanu, hard against the Mirrored Mountains. Old as it had seemed before, now it looked far more than thirteen years older. Then it had been an inhabited and tended decline. Now the mossy roofs lay unrepaired beneath sun and star, cloud and rain, silent, deserted. But the few hours in which we awakened the echoes in that long dining-room and remembered chambers, and in garden and swimming pool, brought out the hospitable spirit of other days. Beside my own California mountain-side, there is one place above all others that I should love to have and cherish. It is Ahuimanu, Refuge of Birds.

* * * * *

I have descanted upon the outdoor sports of Hawaii. And if you would have the fever of city life in a rigorless climate, no city so gay as Honolulu. The hotel life is a dream of leisure, dining, teas, bridge, bathing, canoeing, and dancing in the immense lanais to the swooning Hawaiian strains or the latest mainland jazz, from stringed instruments and native voices.

One new activity I noticed was by way of well-coached companies in Little Theatres. The Lanai Players and the Footlight Players are notable among these. Talent is recruited from both amateur and professional material, even some of the older and most exclusive kamaainas taking enthusiastic part now and again in the excellent plays that are produced. Musical instruction and entertainments are kept at high standard in Honolulu. It is hardly necessary to mention that there are the best of moving picture houses throughout the islands.

In these latter days of the South Seas proper, one’s heart is wrung by the decadence of the natives through the ills of white civilization; and the influenza reaped its ghastly harvest everywhere. But Hawaii fared not so ill from the dread scourge. The all-Hawaiians, though not holding their own in fecundity, are far from presenting a puny appearance—the splendid creatures! Thus, the traveler who would gaze upon the pure Polynesian in his native haunt, may still have curiosity gratified. If he be in San Francisco, New York, or Los Angeles, he may step out and secure steamship reservations at branch offices of the Hawaii Tours Company. And here let me say it is in sheer good will that I pass along this information, unbeknown to said Tours Company. My pleasure it is to share My Hawaii with the whole world. Many is the letter that weights my morning mail, telling me _Our Hawaii_ has sent the writer out upon the blue Pacific. Never was I more gratified in this connection than upon a day when we went to meet Princess David Kawananakoa and her children, arriving from New York. Stepping from the gangplank to the wharf, a bright-faced woman made straight for myself, stretching out her hand: “You are Mrs. Jack London? Charmian London? Well, I want to tell you I am here to-day because I read your book, _Our Hawaii_. Oh, yes, and your _Log of the Snark_, too. I fully expect to get to the South Seas because of _that_! And there are others aboard who can tell you the same story.”

It saddens me to read the cold, hard figures of the official census of 1920. The only race registering a decrease is the native. The total pure-Hawaiians are given as 23,723—a decrease of 2,318 in ten years. The Asiatic-Hawaiian has doubled, However; and the Caucasian-Hawaiian risen from 8,772 to 11,072. Total population of the Territory, 255,912, of which 109,274 were Japanese.

Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalananaole has announced that at the end of his present term he will end his service as Hawaii’s representative in Congress, which began twenty years ago.

“I can best serve the ends of my own people by acting as a member of the Hawaiian Rehabilitation Act Commission,” he says. “I feel that I have done my duty to my country and my people in the past twenty years in Washington. I want to use what knowledge and influence I have in making the Hawaiian home laws a success. I succeeded in getting the Rehabilitation Act through Congress, and will continue to work on the successful carrying out of the law. The rest depends on the Hawaiian people.”

The Rehabilitation Act provides homesteads on the islands for people of Hawaiian blood as an aid to the rebuilding and perpetuation of the race. The act was passed on the ground that foreigners were taking up all available land and crowding out the natives.

When Princess David returned that winter of 1919-1920, she said it was to stay. For years she had lived in the eastern capitals, or sometimes in California, more especially San Diego, where once I visited her. She has made good her intention, busying herself with affairs in Honolulu.

Vividly there arises the memory of the great reception staged at her own house on that day of her landing. Owing to another engagement, I arrived in the latter part of the festivities. The sumptuous beauty, in a princess-like holoku of black charmeuse and lace, crowned and garlanded with golden ilima, sat in state near one end of her enormous lanai, still receiving the homage of her people. All official Honolulu dropped in during the afternoon. The orchestra played incessantly but unobtrusively, its haunting airs threading into the universal loveliness of low laughter, fragrance of jasmine and plumeria, exquisite tints of hibiscus, and the gentle pomp and happiness of the occasion.

Between the welcoming formalities, wahines, from young maidenhood to wrinkled age, approached wreathed in smiles and flowers, and made brief vowelly speeches before their princess. Not so brief, however, were those of one or two aged dames, who intoned the mele of their royal mistress. Some knelt to her, invoking blessings; some kissed her hands; others danced little hulas, archly chanting words that brought merry laughter to the lips of the princess.

“They love all this so,” she said, holding my hand with her own beautiful one. “And I love it, too. It makes them so happy. I am never going away again to live. Other times I have come home, this has lasted far into the night; and perhaps two hundred Hawaiians brought their mats or coverings and slept right here on this lanai. They will do the same to-night—sleep under my roof, you see.” I caught the unstudied regalness of her slight inclination to an old courtier, as she answered a question I had put:

“Am I tired? I am not. I rested all the way from San Francisco to Honolulu, in preparation for this day and night!—Ah, I want my children to know you—Kalakaua!” she raised her voice a little toward a tall youth, “bring your sisters!”

They are representative Hawaiians in appearance, the brother and two girls. Kalakaua, about sixteen, had the seeming of other dusky princes I had met in the world of Polynesia, with a lofty sweetness of expression and manner, and erect ease of carriage that made one’s eyes follow him as he moved about. The sisters, Kapiolani and Liliuokalani, were equally attractive. Despite their Caucasian blood and training in fashionable schools, and their latest word in summer modes, there was preserved an elusive wildness in their unfathomable eyes. I had seen the same untamable thing in the old Queen’s look of a dozen years before—though they were not related. The very pose of their young heads, from which rebellious curls seemed continually springing out of bonds, bore out this wholly charming island effect.

* * * * *

It had been my privilege at different times to have with me on the Jack London Ranch certain girl friends from Hawaii. And now I was again to meet some of these in Hilo in their own house—the Shipmans. Here I made home for the winter. A right royal welcome was mine, as always. Tranquil Hilo was what I most needed, and the days and nights were not long enough in which to rest, write letters, and drive about the country.

“Come—you’ve been quiet long enough for one day!” a bright voice would call, and Margaret, or Caroline, in summer lawns, stood beaming from the lanai through the French window. “Come on down to the Yacht Club for tea and a swim.” Or, “We’re off for Keaau—come with us; and we’ll swim and have supper there!” Keaau, as before mentioned, being their seaside retreat, and headquarters for the lower reaches of their cattle lands. It is pronounced Kay-ah-ah’-oo—quickly Kay-ah-ow’.

Such tropic jungle on the winding way! But first, last, and always, the cane, a jungle in itself, high above the big car: and often one had to be wary of the slicing thrusts of living green blades where the stalks had bent down the wire barriers which protect the road. Once at shady Keaau, Mother Shipman, knowing what I like, has a nimble Hawaiian scaling one of her fine palms for nuts. A clever swash of the heavy knife, and the chalice of fragrant cool water is ready to quaff. One lolls in hammocks on the high lanai, until an irruption of young things carrying bathing suits stirs one’s delicious languor.

Swimming at Keaau is inside a surf-pounded lava-rock barrier. The high breakers spill over and through crevices into this sheltered play-ground. We descended steps in a stone wall, to frolic on the sand, across which a fresh stream, never by the same route, finds its way to the sea. One has to hunt for places to swim among lava hummocks, and at high tide it is lively work battling with miniature currents that wash in and out the crevices. For a thorough swim, we would afterward wind up in a large fresh pond on the higher ground.

It was from here we made that ride on Kamehameha’s arrow-straight highway to the cowboys’ camp, Papae. Our supper was steak roasted on coals by lantern light. The native boys at first would not credit that I wanted raw fish, which I repeat is estimable above oysters. But after a little parleying among themselves, they prepared for me a morsel fresh-caught off the iron-bound coast. The night was far from tropic. Resting after supper, it was from under blankets where we lay in the moonlight on a cool swirl of age-old pahoehoe, that we watched the Pacific spouting high in gleaming spires against the lava cliffs. It was so beautiful, following the racing cloud-ships across an illumined sky where hung the few enormous stars the full moon let shine. Under the blanket, in the crook of my arm, a blooded young fox terrier moaned with the joy of white caresses—a white man’s dog, tolerated kindly enough by the cowboys.

We slept on a broad platform in the Japanese goat-herd’s hut. It did not look tempting. But noting that the Shipman girls were nothing loth, I made myself at home in the small, earth-floored room hung with quaint rags. Coming to examine these and the rest of the windowless apartment, I found it all immaculate, everything “sweet as a nut,” as if fresh laundered. The crisp night-wind flowed through the open doorways, and at intervals a pink glow suffused us from far Kilauea. We slept like children to the organ music of the surf; and there was a poignancy in the pleasure of awakening to the sunrise, an enormous orb, clear-cut as a harvest moon, red as wine, lifting out of a slate-blue, heaving plane. Then the snows of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa blushed from rose to fervid crimson above the fathomless mist-blues of their towering bulks.

* * * * *

Naturally, I had been eager to see the great eruption of Mauna Loa’s crater, Mokuoweoweo, down the Kau side of Hawaii; but it had ceased before my arrival. Kilauea, too, had joined in the general outburst, Halemaumau overflowing into the main crater, clear to the foot of the bluff below the Volcano House. The day before I landed, the lava had suddenly lapsed several hundreds of feet, carrying with it large sections of the pit walls. Before I had left Hilo, however, mine was the good fortune to see it risen to within twenty feet of the rim.

It was away and beyond all imagining from former views. Night after night I stood upon the crusted margin of the boiling shaft, prickly with Pélé’s strands of spun-glass hair, and ever the wonder accumulated. The circle of lava wall that had fallen in was raised by the powerful tide into the wreath-form of a south sea atoll, supporting tiny hills as does the surrounding reef of Bora-Bora in the Societies. Upon one arc the island bore a rugged miniature mountain with the silhouette of a castle on the Rhine. Inside this black lava circlet there moved and fountained a lake of fiery liquid, while between the ring and the crater walls there flowed and exploded a molten torrent. This would gradually sink a few feet, disclosing awful caverns at white heat along the lower edges of the island. The fountains, first bubbling up in domes of exquisite rose and lambent yellow, would swell to bursting point, and fling high into the burning night tons of molten fire-gold, which fell in great drops heavily back into the restless, roaring, hissing flood.

When one first leaves his car in the parking place, there is heard the peculiar soft-grinding, avalanching sound of the milling chaos. The sky is painted red above the pit, and clouds of pink steam rise and bend back and forth in the wind, or float away. But this illumination is no preparation, even to the very brink, for what impinges upon the eye when it looks over into the House of Fire. The brilliance is of an intensity so terrific that all the white-hot furnaces of the world could give little intimation of this glare that seems, like the eye of God, to pierce and light the innermost convolutions of one’s brain, rob the very spirit of its vain secrets.

By day the brilliance is more one of color, as if the solar spectrum dyed the earth-substance and vapor with fervid rose, red, and orange, and sulphurous greens and yellows.

Pélé has played fast and loose the past several years; and no man can count upon his pilgrimage being rewarded by her most spectacular performances. Although I continue to maintain that her serenest vaporings are worth the voyage.

In March of 1921, the big steamer _Hawkeye State_ made her first Baltimore to Hawaii trip, bringing a large list of eastern passengers to visit the volcanic marvel. The campaign of publicity which landed them at Hilo had been based more than all else upon the prayer that the fire goddess might be in wrathful mood. As the _Hawkeye State_ neared port, there was a disheartening lack of glow upon the side of Mauna Loa. The hopes of the promoters were faint when the hotels at Kilauea were reached, and grumbling arose at the insufficient accommodation and lethargic aspect of Halemaumau in the distance. This continued until the procession of motors was well on its way through the forest, bound for the pit.

And then it happened.

Abruptly, as if ordered for their benefit, Pélé broke loose upon the starry night; and by the time the excited scores had reached the verge of her dwelling, the ponderous surge, urged from beneath, was lashing tremendously against the battlements. These capitulated to the onslaught, and crashed into the molten mass, driving the tourists hastily to their cars and the safety and sight-seeing vantage of the bluffs around the main crater. I quote from an eye-witness:

“The lake broke through crevices and rushed with express speed out over the old lava surface, where flowing lava had not been known for forty years. A river formed on the side toward the Volcano House, plunged down the incline, covered the old horse corral where Professor Jaggar’s instruments were stored, sealing them forever. On and on the river spread until it stopped at the foot of the cliffs just below the Volcano House. All night and on St. Patrick’s day, which was also the birthday of Kamehameha III, the lava found new openings. It poured like a Niagara over the south side. A new fountain formed near the bluff southwest of Halemaumau and sent incandescent rockets into the air. Another fountain formed over toward the Kau road.”

Never in the history of personally conducted excursions had the volcano presented such a spectacle on schedule time. All discontented murmurings ceased. The goddess was surely working for the promotion committee; and a new hotel and enlargement of all present facilities, both there and in Hilo, were promptly on the way. To say nothing of improvements on the volcano highway.

Late tidings from this section of the territory augur that it will not in future be regarded as a mere amusement park. Its Titan energies are to be put to work. Professor Thomas Augustus Jaggar, Jr., volcanologist in charge (U. S. Department of Agriculture, Weather Bureau), has submitted that borings in search of heat for transformation into electric energy be made in the valley that lies between Kilauea—which he has found to be an independent mountain—and Mauna Loa. The idea, it seems, was suggested by John Brooks Henderson, zoologist from Washington, D. C., who backed up the proposal with a contribution of $1,500.00. These holes should be sunk at the base of the west bluff of Kilauea crater, in the bottoms of Kilauea and Kilauea Iki, and in the outer slopes of Kilauea and Mauna Loa. The Hawaii Volcano Research Association has approached the territorial legislature with this project, and funds have been appropriated. The borings are to be deep, to determine temperature, mineral and gas conditions, earthquake phenomena, and water underground at the volcanoes.

It is a fascinating thing to contemplate. Far more so than the invention of fast-obsolete war enginery and the squandering of dizzying billions on the same, while the victims of the infernal machines beg for bread and bed, or turn to crime. And think of the child-brains dulling in the factories of the land of the free and the home of the brave, because a time-dishonored law has been found constitutional in this day. Who knows that any one of these young brains might not be such an one as those of Henderson and the volcanologist on the slopes of Kilauea, who open up this vista of scientific romance for young and old. Not for nothing did Jack London, dying before the United States stepped into the “fight for democracy,” picture his native land “on her fat, helpless, lonely, unhonorable, profit-seeking way.” We got into the fight, wastefully, to be sure, but quickly and magnificently, and helped the rest of the world, temporarily, out of it. But look at us now, without conscience toward our educators, our children, our “heroes,” our “democracy.” One is tempted to indorse Shaw’s remark: “The longer I live, the more firmly I am convinced that the other planets use our earth as their lunatic asylum.”

But this is a book on Hawaii, and I have digressed—yet have I? This work of Tom Jaggar’s, on his heights geographically, creatively, head thrust forward into a golden age of scientific research for the good of man, stings one into swift realization of the cruel, wanton loss of strength and money that makes for destruction of body and mind, when it might be turned to account for the beautiful emancipations of life.

In July, 1921, Kilauea National Park, comprising a large area of Hawaii’s mountain land, including the fire-pit, was dedicated. The picturesque exercises included the recitation by a lineal descendant of a priest of Pélé, of a prayer to the fire goddess. This invocation, delivered in the full-toned chant of the old Hawaiians, was succeeded by an impressive recitation of the first Christian prayer delivered at the same brink by the spirited Kapiolani in olden days.

In connection with this National Park a road is to be built to the crater Mokuaweoweo at the summit of Mauna Loa. Owners of the land required for this highway are willing to donate the property. The possibilities of this road are set astir in one’s imagination by the popular watchword, “From Surfing to Ski-ing.”

The greatest volcanic event in Hawaii for the year 1919 was the activity of Mauna Loa itself. It was no surprise to the unsleeping keeper of Kilauea and the Long Mountain. That autumn, with its unruly flock of seismic disturbances, was a busy one for Professor Jaggar, who made more than one lofty ascent to the flaming pastures of his charge.

Back at Kilauea observatory, it was at 1:45 on the morning of Monday, September 29, that he noticed the fume and glow from Mauna Loa’s 13,675-foot crater, Mokuaweoweo, spreading to the southward along a route he knew well. By telephone he warned Kapapala and the other districts in the course the flow would take. Many is the account I have listened to from residents of those sections who saw destruction looming far above, and who hurried to pack their belongings in preparation for flight. Some thought they would go grey in a night, through the freaks played by the fluid avalanche, which would seem to skirmish in avoidance of an obviously doomed home. And I noticed a hesitance among these, as well as other island visitors who rushed to the ten-days’ wonder, about telling what they had seen.

“It’s like this,” they faltered. “We saw things that nobody would believe. How do we know? We tried it out when we got home. The thing was too big, too terrible, to impress those who had not seen it—in spite of the great smoke and glare that hid Hawaii from the other islands for days and days. Why, I stood on the hot bank of that burning cascade, and saw bowlders _as big as houses_, I tell you, perfectly incandescent, go rolling down to the sea; and—but there I go. I don’t think you’d believe the things I could tell you.”

Yet I find this in Professor Jaggar’s official report: “The lava ‘rafts’ or blocks of bench magma which rolled down the live channel, were seen to bob up [in the sea], make surface steam, and float out some distance from the shore without sinking at first, as though buoyed by the hot gas inflating them. Lightnings were seen in the steam columns. There was much muddying of the water, and fish were killed in considerable numbers.”

For the week previous the professor had kept a pack train in readiness, and by sun-up on September 29 he and Mr. Finch of the observatory, with two native packers, were on their difficult and perilous adventure over the lava deserts of other periods. The redoubtable scientist risked life and limb in the following days to secure his remarkable photographs and take samples of gas in vacuum tubes. The absorbing details of the journey and its observations are in his Bulletin of October, 1919—the high fountains of lava, the great detonations of explosions, the lake of fire on the mountain, and the final plunge of the melt over old lava bluffs into the sea in a river speeding five to ten miles an hour. This red torrent coursed for ten days. The heat of the stilled lava was not yet gone when, four months afterward, I motored upon it where it had crossed, a hundred yards wide, the highway in Alika district—a waste of _aa_ as upstanding as the wavelet of a tide-rip, _kupíkipíkio_. It had swept everything in its path, causing suffering, fear and death among the herds. A temporary restoration of the highway was begun as soon as the heat had sufficiently cooled; but it made one nervous, in an inflammable vehicle, to see how a light shower caused the lava to steam, and to feel warmth still rising from crevices. Through the courtesy of Professor Jaggar, I am able to present his photograph of the flowing lava-stream.

During the eruption there was a succession of short-period, shallow tidal waves ranging from three to fourteen feet in height. These kept in trepidation the passengers on vessels of all classes that swarmed off shore. An authentic tale is told of the wife of an islander being swept some distance off-shore by a subsiding tidal wave. Fortunately she was a swimmer. I have forgotten whether she was returned by the next landward billow or was rescued by a canoe.

As I write, at this late date, of Hawaii’s volcanoes quick and dead, it comes to me that they have new rivals in extent—Katmai in Alaska, and Svea crater in Iceland just discovered by the Swedish savants Yberg and Waddell. But the character and accessibility of Kilauea and Haleakala make them immune from neglect.

One morning at half past two we left Hilo for the Shipmans’ highest altitude on Mauna Kea. But not by way of their volcano house, which necessitates traversing the lava valley between Mauna Loa and its twin mountain. We motored up the coast, in and out the misty, moonlit gulches, breathing the odors of Eden, and trying to catch glimpses of the sleeping beaches at their mouths. The sky went every opal tint that dawn can paint; and when the sun rose it was a dull, blood-red globe that burned its way through the mist at our backs. By five we were breakfasting in substantial New England manner with friends in Waimea on Parker Ranch.

More than one gorgeous sunrise was ours while we wound southerly up Mauna Kea’s western side on tracks more fit for cow-ponies, and only lately attempted by automobiles. As the “clover-leaf” climbed, one felt less and less inclined to talk. The beauty, the enormousness of every prospect was almost stupefying. The first great valley we encountered lies several thousand feet high between the largest mountain’s broken knees and Hualalai lifting its head more than eight thousand feet to the right, with Mauna Loa visible ahead. It must be kept in mind that this highest island in the world is composed of three mountains, two of which are nearly twice the elevation of Hualalai. This valley had the effect of a desert basin, hemmed in by the three looped mountains. The rolling plain, broken by hills and lesser valleys, was tufted with tree-growths and half-dried, golden-green pili grass, blowing in the high wind. For the island was suffering from what was as near drouth as it ever experiences. But one knew that with abundant moisture the wavy plateau would be an incalculably rich one.

At Kalaieha, on the Humuulu tract, still on Parker Ranch, we watched the throwing and shearing of rams, while waiting for the Japanese cowboys to bring horses on which we rode to the Shipmans’ ranch, PuuOO. The ponies’ feet thudded softly in the meadow turf. The air was light and sweet, and full of bird voices—questioning whistle of plover, bickering and calling of mynah, and skylarks near the ground, with more of earth-earthy mellowness than that small feathered angel’s celestial strains from the thin blue ether. From time to time, on our curving path among hillocks high and low, we would have a glimpse, still six thousand feet overhead, of Mauna Kea’s pure snowy pinnacles, with their azure shadows.

“I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed in the buildings,” Caroline ventured. Disappointed? Never had I seen anything to equal this little ranch house, perched a mile and a quarter above sea level. It is built of hand-hewn koa—walls, roof, floors, lanais. Koa, red as Etruscan gold, is as common here as precious metal in heaven. The furniture, too, is of the same “Hawaiian mahogany,” fashioned long ago in quaintest of shapes. Outside, the house was grayed beautifully with age and weathers of many years. We slept in high koa beds, on fat wool mattresses carded by Jack’s “First lady of Hawaii,” Mother Shipman herself. And what sleep! What appetite! What life! It was snapping-cold at morn and eve, with a moon diamond-bright—never did I see moon so bright. I would wake to hear, as if in a Maine winter, the telephone wire humming and crackling, and the mynahs complaining of the cold; and another bird, with a benevolent warble low in the throat.

Before the moon had risen, we could make out afar, where the sea laved the foot of the valley, the twinkling lights of Hilo town, a little to south of east. Already the glow from Kilauea’s raging furnace was coloring the dark clouds beyond Mauna Loa’s long incline. Any time of the night one could reckon upon that intense, lurid wine-glow to the southeast.

Breakfasts were mainly of plumpest plover, proudly served to the queen’s taste by Ondera, the Japanese cook, a broken-down cowboy. For some reason it had been hard for me to think of the Japanese as cowboys; but men who are fortunate enough to get and keep them say there are none more able nor more faithful. The time came when none of the splendid Hawaiian horsemen were to be found who would stay on the upper reaches. A picturesque Japanese graveyard on a neighboring knoll attests the devotion of the transplanted labor.

I came to call it The Book of the Mountain, what I read into and out of it from saddle and from lanai at PuuOO. From dawn to dusk the pages were always turning. Sometimes twilight came short hours after high noon, with an infloat of cloud between earth and sun that seemed to rob one of weight and all relation to every-day sensations, giving great area to the imagination. Then would show the sudden etching, against thinning vapor, of the writhen, ghostly skeleton of a dead koa tree, or the large grace of a living lehua. But for the most part the satin-gray doorway framed a happy foreground of green touched with sun-gold.

What held me most in thrall was the breathtaking lap of earth between the two great mountains. For the first time I realized, only possible from such vantage, what a whale of a mountain is Mauna Loa, and why the ancients named it Loa, Long. It is that long, gradual slope to the sea. Upon its side, from the summit, miles upon miles of lava that had flowed from Mokuaweoweo in the early ’fifties and as late as 1880, glisten under the brassy sun like streaming fields of mica, hardly distinguishable from snow or ice.

Sometimes, at PuuOO, I seemed to be in a balcony looking upon a gigantic stage. The cloud-drop of tarnished silver rose and lowered upon the bright scene of flowing leagues of seaward-declining valley, with showers of sun-javelins falling inside the curtain. I wondered why the very vastness of it did not speak monotony. Perhaps the vastness was the answer. Movement depended upon sunshine and cloud-shadow, except when one picked out upon the colossal map a gliding herd of cattle, or a pack-train of mules crawling _con moto_ over the gray and fawn of lichened lava. What I do know is that never was the unearthly sweep of valley twice alike; always the vision was renewed with a difference; and never did it seem a tangible reality.

One day we spent following the pig-hunters. There was lacking the famed excitement of boar-sticking, for the boars were stunted and spiritless from the prolonged drouth. This sport is all in the day’s work for Otji and Muranka, immovable as sacks of meal in their saddles—efficient Japanese _vaqueros_, but far from graceful. They and their ponies are of a sort in appearance, stocky, short-legged, homely, with sagacious eyes. Good little philosophers, both, and kindly.

Exhilarating was the dash down the hummocky, slanting champaign, hoofs displacing dust only lightly laid by cloud-mist. Fear of monotony is dispelled in the first mile of closer acquaintance with the range. Quite suddenly the soft pasture-soil gives place to harder ground of half-decomposed lava forested in koa, standing and fallen. Then we come quite unexpectedly upon a large river between steep banks; but it is of long-arrested lava. Halting on the brink, we watch the hunters scrambling below after a boar, the collies stringing out eagerly in pursuit, bearing their plumed tails like kahilis, proudly.