Chapter XVII: Part THREE (14)

I rein down into the channel, and negotiate the stream of stone and the farther bank, marveling upon the puissance of my square and honest pony. On over a descent of rough lava country, with clinking shoes the horses leap like goats, landing bunched from mound to mound with perfect precision, or scampering like rabbits in the wider spaces. We stop where a stout plain-wire boundary is reached, by which the government protects the young koa forestage, rooted in large bracken and tree ferns. From among this undergrowth the collies’ smiling faces, bright-eyed, point up at us, where they have come upon the quarry accounted for by the first shot. A cowboy swings from his horned saddle, and dexterously, without a waste movement, skins the bristly beast, whose lips in death snarl away from yellowed tusks. The butchering is unpleasant and malodorous, but interesting. The knife releases the entrails, and a small rough boot is planted conveniently midmost of the smoking ruins that seem to shrink from contact with an inimical outer world. All of the once vicious wild-pig is left on the ground save the four quarters, except in case of especially fine ribs. When the boys are out for longer periods, they roast the meat, wrapped in koa leaves, in a bed of hot stones lined with koa branches. The meat remains all day in this primitive tireless cooker.

Sometimes we trailed after the hunters into deep gulches, crowded with ferns, where the victims were brought to bay and dispatched in places from which it was difficult to retrieve their bodies.

Caroline and I turned homeward by way of an obscure trail she knew upon the long acclivity. Part of the distance was over pahoehoe lavas of antiquity, patterned in grey-green lichen and a rich, tawny-tiger moss deep and yielding as Wilton carpet. The sky was wonderful as the earth—a satsuma sky of blue and white, the fleck of clouds giving the effect of delicate cracked surfaces.

A roaring fireplace greeted our return. The smiling Ondera bustled about like an old nurse making us comfortable, and set upon the koa table, already holding his vase of dewy blue violets, a steaming roast of ranch beef, and steaming vegetables from his garden. Later, while we read cozily in the warmth, out of the windy night we heard the hunters and pack animals coming in with the slain porkers; and presently their laconic expressions of satisfaction as they sat to meat in Ondera’s domain.

Under a tortoise sky this time, a dome of large close patches of lead and white, we swung down-mountain to move into certain paddocks a drove of cattle which had come all the way from Keaau by the sea. To an American, the word paddock sounds so futile to designate the seemingly immeasurable acres between fences or gates. Moment by moment I marveled at the variety of that sage-green obliquity. Large areas are so rich and friable that it must have puzzled the owner where, in some practically desirable spot, as PuuOO, to find a place firm enough to bear a house.

It is saddening to come upon so much fallen timber. A pest of moss has overspread and destroyed great numbers of the large growth. Among living trees, I saw a few of the _naia_, false sandalwood, pricked out bright-green by stray sunbeams.

Over the tussocks of grass we raced, senses aching with very pleasure of motion in so boundless a survey. The declining earth stretches in an unbroken expanse; then suddenly, under a clearing sky, an unguessed deep serration yawns at our feet. The little horses drop easily from the prairie into tropic ferns and flowering lehua, where the ground is lush, the air hot as a greenhouse. Just as one notices that the fern-edges are frost-bitten to brown, a cloud rolls majestically overhead, and coats are drawn on without delay. Shortly afterward the torrid sunshine floods down, and one pants in the rarefied air, while the toughest pony breaks out in sweat.

We would ride through a living greenwood of large koa, and the next paddock would shock as the veriest boneyard of blanched trunks and limbs, erect or prone. In one such, we moistened our throats with thimble-berries, less insipid than our California ones, and quite juicy and refreshing.

Resting loosely in saddle, we followed with our eyes the red cattle deploying with soft impact of tired hoofs. Next we would be over-edge driving into some wet ruddy gulch, where the ponies, machine-like but more reliable than any machine, slid steeply upon braced fours, into fainting depths and dauntlessly up the opposite walls, keeping the beeves in line.

Homeward bound, to show me more of the endless novelty we rode leisurely by a round-about way that led through a stretch of Kentucky bluegrass which would make a golfer’s paradise. This close lawn spread into the most beautiful wood I have ever seen. It was of thriving koa and ohia lehua, and would serve for the scene of legend or fairy tale. The lehua are of as great girth and height as the koa; the fair green gloom, trickled through with showers of sunrays, making the white-grey trunks gleam as in a dream forest, or like the spirits of trees. That a red-fibered plant may be so white outside, is of a piece with the wonder of white-skinned humanity. One looked for pure, exquisite wood-sprites to step into the emerald clearings and challenge the invader. Then, like a shot, the lovely tranquillity was shattered by the spurring of a pony after a frightened wild-pig, and I found myself very much occupied staying with the bounding, darting pursuit of my own steed. The black boar, at bay, almost underneath a mounted hunter, stood motionless except for the savage glint of eye, bristling crest along neck and back, and gnashing of tusks—the strangest, wildest note I have ever heard outside a nightmare. In this posture, with all outdoors around him offering a fighting chance, the animal menaced death and received it at full gaze.

Puaakala—akala blossom—is the eastern ranch house of PuuOO, and thither we rode for our last sleep on Mauna Kea. Raincoats and our few traveling effects were strapped behind on the saddles, and thus we set out, over an entirely different route, upon the return journey to the east coast.

Puaakala, roofed in red corrugated iron, was otherwise even more picturesque, more hand-made in appearance than the PuuOO eyrie, even the washing-bowl and the bath-tub being dubbed out of koa. That tub, long and narrow and sloped at one end, was unavoidably reminiscent of a stout coffin. The living room had an aged and mellow look, walled with beautifully seasoned wood. There were well filled bookcases and cupboards of koa, stands of rifles and shotguns, small koa tables bearing pots of flowers; and a large couch covered with a scarlet shawl that I fancied was an heirloom. The fireplace shed its warmth and glow upon the splendid woods, which gave back the cheer. Cooking and serving was done by another Nipponese cowboy, with a face like weathered mahogany, and whose usefulness in the saddle had passed. He, like Ondera, busied himself with our welfare like an old family nurse. Unlike Ondera, various small replicas of himself played charmingly upon the greensward outside.

The low front lanai, wreathed with honeysuckle, faced mauka. Makai of the house we wandered on foot at sunset through a grove of koa rooted in uneven velvet turf pastured by Holstein Frisian and Hereford cattle that made pictures at every turn.

That night, when I shut the koa panel that was my bedroom door, I became aware that Gauguin had not been the only young painter who left his mark upon wood. I found on the inner side an oil, manifestly not new, of a spray of akala berries and leaves. It had been done as long ago as 1882, on a visit by Howard Hitchcock, who has since attracted much attention by his fine canvases of Hawaii.

In a crisp dawn that tingled cheeks and gloved fingers, we took to the homeward trail, fifty miles down-mountain to the railroad. There we were to board train for Hilo, leaving the cowboys to lead our mounts back to PuuOO. It is the sort of traveling that only a seasoned rider should undertake. Not that it demands special horsemanship, for the ponies are surefooted and docile. But the approved gait is that steady jog-trot which one must, with at least simulated composure, maintain to the bitter end. This for five times ten miles, downhill at that, unrelieved by even a stop for lunch, and paced, mile in and mile out, by chunky little Japanese whose one duty was to see that we did not miss our train... I, fortunately, was a seasoned rider.

But every foot of the way was of a beauty and interest never to be forgotten. The start, for instance: did I say dawn? It was barely more than the beginning of the end of morning twilight. The sky was deep blue in contrast to a crescent moon bright as any star. The day grew, and beetling cloud-masses, slate-blue, stood up, solid, the lightning streaking athwart, like fantastic mountains against the heavenly hyacinth dome. I almost listened for grand music to usher in this creation of a new day. Music there was not wanting, however, of birds on earth and in the scintillating air. Then a Gargantuan cloud-zeppelin sailed on its tremendous way above the horizon, raining reflected fire over a burning cloud-city of sunrise upon a cobalt sea.

How different the vision upon our left—shadowy Mauna Kea’s snows flushing rosier, shade by shade, to the sun’s ardency; but in some towering fields it was that the color of the snow is occasioned by the red volcanic soil.

Dipping in and out of gulches, the clawing, sliding hoofs uncovered earth as yellow as rusty iron. In a light rain, the warm breath of the dust rose fog-like in the frosty air. While the sun dispersed the mists and sent them drifting, drifting, in opal veils, we noted the semblance of a Japanese print in the dead and dying koa trees, stark and gray against a pearl-white curtain.

When the sharp, hot sunlight became obscured by clouds through which we plodded, our coats had to be unrolled. The changes of temperature were startling. But as the morning wore, the heat settled down, and jerseys were added to the saddle bundles. In and out of forest and descending plain jogged we; and many were the views of the mountain—red, upturned profiles of burned-out craters against the enamel-blue sky, and the sharp-edged summit blotched with snow. The drouth was very apparent where we had come again into the Parker Ranch, which reaches over the shoulders and about both sides of Mauna Kea, into and around other tracts. Reforesting has been done by setting out eucalyptus. I saw some well-grown groves, of a kind bearing blossoms which drenched the breeze with fragrance.

The last few miles, by highway along the ocean bluffs, were painful, I will admit; but I was not the only “seasoned rider” who dismounted stiffly. A short walk, and the restful trip to Hilo in an open railway coach, put us into condition for a dance. But I was bothered much by the sudden wrenching from transcendent heights of which I had been a thankful and very humble part for the past days. It was hard again to tread city pavement, to gaze upon buildings of wood and stone instead of fronded tree and the extravagant bulks of God’s mountains. Even when contemplating the Shipmans’ string of automobiles, I harked back regretfully to my friends up yonder on Mauna Kea’s shoulder—the funny, fuzzy, excellent philosophers, the square, true little horses of PuuOO.

Yet for all the stupendousness of my late surroundings, and the wholesome excitements of the chase, the memory of it remained a quiet thing, something serenely happy.

At one o’clock of another morning, I arrived at Lahaina, on Maui, to spend Christmas holidays upon Haleakala Ranch. Not long after leaving Hilo, the _Mauna Kea_ had run into a succession of violent squalls, through which she threshed steadily for hours. But when the ship’s boat landed, it was under a sky of low-hanging stars, and I could see the loom of West Maui’s valleyed heights.

Louis von Tempsky, debonair as of old, and the sonsy Armine, stood peering down in the uncertain light. Without trace of yawn from interrupted sleep, they reached to me the hands of perfect welcome one fails not to clasp in these sweet isles. Never, should I embark and depart a thousand times, can Hawaii’s landings become commonplace. Day or night, they remain the most unspoiled of travel blessings.

If there is one thing lovelier than sea-level on Maui, it is her temperate zone. I slept and woke for a month in the wing of a new house on the ranch, set in thick, wild lawns where before breakfast one romps barefoot with an adorable sprawl of puppies. By day, it was the old story of bird-song, of sunshine and shadow, of illimitable mountain rim above blue-shadowed clouds. And rainbows. Such rainbows! Conflagrations of rainbows; the air afire with drifting rainbows; rainbows against cloudrack of West Maui; through a veil of rainbowed mist, all the centuried lapse of green-clothed lava below. Each morning, my own pet rainbow frayed itself out in a dewy meadow just beyond my window. And once, on a day’s ride of fifty miles, I saw at sunset, across a vast bowl of pale-green cane, an old burial ground turned into a glittering city of the dead, with a huge slanting shaft of rainbow piercing a low, leaden pall of cloud.

During that same ride on the mountain, above the cactus plains, we could make out the island of Kahoolawe. And Armine told me how once she had found, in a rocky interstice, an old tambourine—so old it fell to dust in her fingers. Lanai was visible to the northwest, and I planned some day to go there from Lehaina. One reads that the ages have exposed on Lanai a strata of soil of every conceivable shape and color, as remarkable as the Garden of the Gods.

Christmas and New Year came and went, with all the gay observance of tree and feast and dancing. On both days, a swarm of men and women who had for years worked under Von, came like retainers to share in the holiday spirit—Hawaiian, Portuguese, Chinese and Japanese. And all played their part in music and merriment. The New Year’s Eve ball opened the new hall at Kahului’s race-track. Then there were the New Year’s races. In an unguarded moment I let fall that I had always been ambitious to ride in a race. Promptly Von took me up, and it was arranged that I should be one in the cow-girls’ contest on polo ponies. I demanded further practice in the required “cowboy” saddle, being used to the English tree. But almost incessant storms prevented much preparation, and none whatever on the race-course.

On the great day, after dancing all night, I entered the event on a horse and saddle I had never tried nor even seen before that day, upon a new track so deep in mud that several jockeys had already been hurt from falling horses. But the worst of it was that two “dark horses” proved to be rangy thoroughbreds. Armine and I, indignant but determined, managed despite to pass second and third under the wire, very close to the winner. The other thoroughbred was at our rear, along with the beaten ponies.

The weather did not permit the Haleakala camping I had so longed to repeat. I was especially disappointed, because the von Tempskys had some time previously made the startling discovery of heiaus in many of the interior cones of the main crater. They had so far guarded their fascinating secret; but in September, 1920, conducted to the treasure-trove the scientists of the new Polynesian Research Society. In all but two of the entire number of cones were found structures. These were of three descriptions—the first a sort of prayer heiau; the second, a type of burial heiau, “the passing place of priests,” in some of which skeletons were still preserved. The Kaupo natives say that the gray cinder-cone was for women, the black for men. A third variety, of which there were dozens in more or less demolished condition, were of the kind once used by Maui troops when they tried to hold Red Hill against an invading army from the Big Island. The floor of one cone held several small heiaus in a perfect state, while another crater bore nearly a dozen temples terraced upon its inner slopes. A sling-stone of antique pattern was the only relic they came across. I cannot imagine any exploration in Hawaii more alluring than this in Haleakala, and shall continue to burn for the chance, on horseback, to make at the side of cone after cone in the great House of the Sun.

I was to enjoy a new revelation of Hawaii, the Kona coast in winter. Gone was the Blue Flush, except the opalescent ghost of it at dawn or sunset. Instead, the horizon was keen as a steel-blue knife, though at times hardly darker than the deep blue sky. Seldom was the ocean like the streaked mirror I remembered. Winds blew fresh and stirred the surface into a semblance of more turbulent waters of the group.

Over the highway from the Volcano House, on through the Kau district, we drove close-protected as in a tent, in warm deluging rain-flurries that lightened to misty showers; out of rain-curtain into blazing sunshine that tore splendid vistas in the clouds mauka and to the crawling indigo sea far below. Lava from underneath Kilauea had broken out, in a fine spectacle, upon a bygone flow. The yacht _Ajax_, one hundred and ninety miles off-shore, had reported as plainly visible the glow from this Kau desert stream as well as from Halemaumau. But seeing the lower outburst entailed arduous tramping over sharp aa, and I, for one, having been a spectator of Samoa’s similar eruption on Savaii, decided not to spare the time and effort.

The Paris ranch was our goal. There we visited our friend Ethel who, with her brother, was administering the ranch. On the velvet lap of the mountain, the house rests in a close of natural lawn and rioting flowers. Oh, these gardens of Hawaii! It would seem that here the main effort might be not to stimulate growth, but to curb it from getting out of hand. This garden is inclosed by a low stone wall, above which rises a hedge bearing a profusion of rusty-orange flowers that make an arbor of the gate-arch. I loved to stroll down the pave of broad, flat volcanic flags, moss-grown, edged with amaryllis and iris, and then wander in the tree shade over the springy grass, breathing perfume of plumeria, magnolia, orange, my eyes full of the creamy color of their blooms and the scarlet and coral of tall hibiscus. The deep, rich loam in beds close to the house foundations was planted in luxuriant, tall begonias, red, pink, and blush, and many another flower that flourishes in this ardent clime; while the brilliant magenta Bougainvillea clambered up the pillars, screened the lanai, and banked upon its roof. In a leafy, damp ell of the building, I came upon an old well-top of mossy cement, that looked more like a beautiful miniature mausoleum.

Outside the garden, on the natural terraces, were untended coffee plants, with their green and red beans; the air-plant cassia (kolu), with bell-shaped flowers, tinged with pink. This is a native of Africa, and is a well known curiosity. Its leaf, allowed to lie on a table, will continue to grow from the crenate notches along its edges, deriving life from the air—hence, air-plant.

It was to this very spot where now stands the Paris home that from earliest times the missionaries came as a health resort when the tropical coast proved too warm for their New England blood.

Coffee raising in Kona, as in other sections of the Big Island, goes on apace. The tobacco industry can hardly be said to be firmly established, but its prospects are excellent. The leaf has the tropical flavor and quality, classing with “Havana” rather than with any of our “domestic” varieties. The 1920 crop was disposed of to a New York firm, who express faith that at no distant day the Hawaiian “weed” will occupy a permanent place in the American market.

One novel trip to me was on horseback to Kaawaloa, where is the Cook monument. The trail lies down a rocky ridge, on which one sees the site of that small heiau where Captain Cook’s body was dismembered, and where one may turn aside to look upon Lord Byron’s 1825 oaken cross with tablet to the memory of his slain countryman.

How certain faces and scenes stand out clear, definite, as if challenging to be forgotten! One head I saw on the cape persists in my impressions of that dreamy day. Its owner was vouched for as pure Hawaiian—yet why, when he flashed his eyes sidewise, did I fancy they were grey? He was the alii type, nobly tall, with straight-backed skull and waving iron-grey hair. The Hawaiian lofty sweetness was not wanting, softening the sternness of a large mouth and aquiline nose—reminiscent of the carven lineaments of the fast-disappearing Marquesan.

The scene that is stamped upon my recollection is of the peacock-blue, deep water at foot of that dull-gold burial cliff. Here some grand specimens of Polynesians, nude save for bright loin-cloths, were fishing as of old from a small fleet of the savage black and yellow outrigger canoes. The noonday sun beat hot upon them, and their skins glistened like wet copper and bronze. Now and again a fixed, silent statue became alive and went overboard with a perfect grace that left hardly a ripple upon the intensely blue current. Then two or more would pull in a tawny net, and spill into the canoes their catch of sentient silver. Or, if some were colored fish of unedible sorts, these were flung like autumn leaves back into their element.

Unwatched so far as they knew, untrammeled, utterly at one with their native environment, they gave me unwittingly a look into the past of their race. Often I feel again beneath my head the cast-up spar, sun-whitened, of a forgotten wreck, and see from beneath drowsy lashes that vision of the golden age of Polynesia, and hear the desultory chatter and young, care-free laughter of those children of the sun who little knew the priceless worth of their gift to one white visitor on their shore.

Doubtless I heard and listened to the same natives, but in their unlovely modern clothes, at a church convention song-festival in Napoopoo, part of the centennial commemoration of Opukahaia. The best voices on the island were there, sweet, pure, true, melodious. I sat on a bench with my back to the singers, but more particularly, to the glaring lanterns; swinging my feet over a small surf and dreaming into the starry night. “What dreams may come,” when one revisits lands where one’s own romance has been enacted. I thought I saw the _Snark’s_ headsails come questing through the gloom around the point—my little ship of dreams-realized.

Upon the outskirts of Napoopoo village lie the well-preserved remains of Hikiau heiau where the monument to the famous young Hawaii Christian of a century ago was unveiled with day-long song and prayer and genuine Hawaiian oratory. This temple, which has been cleared of debris, shows half a dozen shallow terraces rising to the final shrine. Here one can see the very holes where once stood the idol-posts. In the middle of this level is a divided wall inclosure. A short distance southeast of the savage edifice, one comes upon a small stone platform where was the house of Opukahaia’s uncle, with its family chapel—I should say heiau; and two tall coconut palms which the boy is supposed to have planted.

The new monument stands hard against the outer southwest corner of the impressive Hikiau temple, that point being nearest to where Opukahaia had lived, and from where he sailed quite literally for the bourne whence there was no return for him. The Anglicized inscription follows:

IN MEMORY OF
HENRY OPUKAHAIA
Born in Kau 1792.
Resided at Napoopoo 1797-1808
Lived in New England Until His Death at Cornwall,
Conn., in 1818.
His Zeal for Christ and Love for His People Inspired
the First American Board Mission to Hawaii in 1820.

Standing or sitting in the grass, without boredom for hours on end I listened to the exercises. The oratory of the Hawaiian leaders, several of them government officials, is like music. There is nothing they would rather do than launch into speechmaking upon public occasions; and with good reason, for there is nothing they do better. Their rounded periods, their intonations, are impressive in the extreme. They know the value of emphasis, of pause, of repose. I was transported to Bora-Bora, the Jolly Isle, and heard again the ringing improvisations of the Talking Men. Not the least among the speakers at Napoopoo that day was our good friend Mr. Kawewehi. Some of the old men of the district, perspiring patiently in resurrected frock-coats that were moss-green with age and damp, delivered themselves of word and gesture with volume and fervor that betokened they had been long-pent.

Between speeches, the choirs from various churches and Sunday schools about the island, including every adopted race, were heard in songs and hymns and recitations. School songs were also given, and I can only wish I had reels of motion-picture, in colors, to preserve the types, beautiful, comical, dark, fair, large and small, from royally-fleshed Hawaiian, on through the score of other nationalities, to the tiniest, bashfullest Chinese or Japanese maiden, or babe from sunny Portugal. Such a gathering may never be again upon the strand of storied Kealakekua.

One distinguished figure that mingled with the gathering was Miss Bertha Ben Taylor. Her official title is Supervising Principal of the West Hawaii government schools. For years this strong and capable woman has devoted her abilities to maintaining the high standard she has set for the schools under her charge.

“Do you approve of whipping children?” I once asked Miss Taylor.

“Not now,” she replied, breaking into a smile. Then, to my questioning look, she went on:

“The last time I ever spanked a child, it suddenly occurred to me to ask the little fellow if he knew why I had punished him. ‘Yes,’ he blubbered. ‘Why, then?’ said I. ‘Because you’re bigger’n me!’ Why else? it struck me. I have never laid hand on a child since that day.”

The collection plate was passed by the sheriff—could that have been unpremeditated by the committee in charge? The last hymn died away upon the seabreeze, and the amen of the final invocation to Deity floated up to blue heaven. The summery throng, so solemnly happy throughout the warm hours of attention, left chairs, stones, grass, and the walls of the heiau, and descended upon a huge feast in a half-open building at water’s edge. Preparations had been afoot for days. More than once, bound through for other points, we had noted the busy wahines and their men, and passed the time o’ day with them. That very morning our nostrils had dilated to delicious odors of roast pig.

We remained at the luau only long enough for a first course, because we had been invited by the head of the Captain Cook Coffee Company to dine at his cottage on the beach beyond the heiau. One could envy our host his location, tucked away back in the cool shadow of the hoary temple, half-surrounded by ponds, and with splendid swimming outside off the shelving sands. There seems to be no fear of sharks here; why, I could not unearth, for the ocean pours over no barrier reef. I never had finer swimming than out beyond in those large, billowing rollers that did not burst until close to the beach, and then mildly. But it is a wicked place, they promise, in stormy weather.

* * * * *

There is no part of the world I have seen that is so fascinating to me as Kona. Aside from its material beauty from surf-frilled coast to timberline, it is pervaded by a mysterious charm that links it with my oldest dreams. Back in childhood, in the beginnings of personal memory, my dreaming at intervals took me upon a mountain where dwelt a sophisticated people who lived for beauty and pleasure. There were dark rooms somewhere in the steeps, but I never fathomed their significance. Although the men and women were my kind—I saw no children—I seemed to wander among them in a sort of seclusion, with little attention paid me. For years I had not thought of this land of unconsciousness until that week on the Paris ranch. As soon as the clover-leaf had emerged upon the Kona slopes, its high ridge began to stir a remembrance that led to the all but forgotten dream mountain. That skyline was a constant lure. The tender wedges of young papaia groves and other crops, fingering into the primeval forest, did not lessen the impression of familiarity with older visits than my former ones here. By daylight and by dark the whole prospect retained its unreality. Twilight and dawn lent the mountain-side a perpendicularity, the depressions and shadows caverns of mystery. In the eerie gloom one was almost afraid to find the ghostly wall impalpable.

By far the most savage thing in the Kona district is a small Catholic church that clings to the precipitous land. Some holy brother of long ago had decorated every inch of this chapel with his conception of the Hereafter. I will say that his sense of fitness kept the scene in key with native surroundings, for the wooden pillars simulated coco palms, their fronds spreading upon the blue ceiling. The painted trunks were scrolled in the native with hopeful prophecies such as “You are going to hell.” The tormented souls depicted on the right-hand wall were indubitably Hawaiians, with a sprinkling of imported tillers of the soil. Most of them wore expressions of pained surprise at shrewd punishments for sins they wotted not of. It was an unfortunate skurrying paké, Chinaman, however, with a long and inconvenient queue, who seemed to be having a peculiarly unpleasant time of it, between fire and snakes and an extremely unstable equilibrium. The distinguished attention lavished upon his execution, artistically and spiritually, by a harrying, tailed demon with a red pitchfork, led one to hazard that the painter had “had it in” for his earthly prototype. An artist of old Salem could not have used more lurid and thrilling realism!

On the opposite wall, with a certain rude sublimity, was limned the Temptation in the Wilderness, besides scenes of heavenly reward for righteousness.

The story runs, if I remember aright, that when the earnest proselyter was called to another parish, his mural illuminations failing to meet with aught but contumely, he revenged himself by painting _brown_ the angels’ faces!

I was more than curious to learn if that three miles of new automobile road across the lava from Napoopoo had altered the native atmosphere of Honaunau. I record with thanksgiving that such is not to any grave extent the case. The pilgrim, approaching the beach village with open spirit and sympathy, may still find a bit of real Hawaii. Myself, I spent a perfect day, the abominable fumes and noise of gas-cars excepted. The church convention, taking the opportunity to revisit the heiau, motored over _en masse_. From what I observed, not a Hawaiian was guilty of the slightest levity within the pagan precincts.

It is a sweet spot, Honaunau, removed as far from the restless work-a-day world as may be in a machine age, considering its nearness to the continent. As all over the island, the old women, reminded of my identity, caressed me half-reverently for my widowhood. They recalled Jack London of the sea-gray eyes, and sunny curls as recalcitrant as their own, and that he wrote understandingly of their people. “A good man,” they murmured in the native; and _Auwe!_ and again Auwe! they repeated in the kindest voices I had heard since far days in Samoa.

Ethel Paris, unknown to me, also hinted to the villagers that Lakana Wahine favored, above haole oysters, raw tidbits of Hawaiian fish. I had found, in the stone-walled palm grove, a coconut frond twenty feet long that suited me well for a sylvan couch. With head on log, I was complete. I sharpened my pencil on a convenient lava bowlder, and went at making word-sketches of my environs, unwilling to lose one moment in entire forgetfulness. I wrote a few sentences, set down some of the colors. But I found my mood better fed by idly wondering why the drowsy interval between the impact of an ax wielded by a distant woodchopper, and the sound of it, seemed longer than in any other atmosphere. An old break in the stone wall opened up a deep bight, striped in peacock and green-turquoise, where rolled at anchor a dove-gray sampan that dully mirrored the gaudy tide. To either side, arms of lava embraced miniature bays. On a moss-green islet stood a native boy, in perspective a mere Tanagre figurine, tarnished with vert reflections. In his hand was a snow-white crust of coconut, and motionless he watched a green-crested, red-webbed duck nozzling in the shallows.

Not far off, in a wind-ruffled, reef-sheltered place, swam a dozen men and women. They wore loincloths and white or red muumuus, and threshed the water, brilliant blue even close inshore, with overhand breast-strokes from brown arms smooth-shining against the lava background of rougher bronze surface. The unrestrained laughter and exclamations were too much for me, and I went out upon the piled lava shore for a nearer view of their gambols. While I sat, feet trailing in the brine-washed sand, a sumptuous wahine strolled by with the correct, straight-front poise of the heaviest Hawaiians. With the slightest recognition of my presence, a diffident reticence often mistaken for hauteur, she rested at a distance, filled and smoked a small pipe at her ease, the while carelessly studying a salt pool near by. Pipe empty, it and her sack of Bull Durham were tucked jauntily into the band of a tattered straw of native weave that tilted at a killing angle over her pretty eyes and saucy nose. The up-ended back of the brim gave view of a generous toss of curls that made me envious of her very probable ignorance of its beauty. With a hand-net and bag she commenced hunting for seafood in the sandy places, planting her feet on lava hummocks as squarely and ponderously, with her mighty ankles, as might a quickened idol of stone. When she ventured in above the knees, her floating red holoku revealed limbs like trunks, laughably fat, yet pleasantly proportioned.

A bevy of young women came wading in from their swim, shaking out yards of splendid hair to dry in the sun along with their dripping muumuus—hair abundant, not coarse, breaking into wonderful red-bronze waves, ringleting at the long ends and about face and neck as if in sheer celebration of vital life. Some of these wahines and their men converged where a swift current poured through a wee channel from one rocky pool to another, and began netting colored fish. Joining them with my friends, half in and half out in the drifting sand and milk-warm water, I watched the pretty sport.

“Do you know that they’re after the right fish for _your_ lunch?” Margaret whispered to me. Repeating to the fishers in their tongue what she had said to me in mine, they all laughed, lowered their eyelids with the movement that caresses the cheek with the lashes, and bobbed their heads in delighted confusion.

I swam and frolicked in the racing brine, and once, floating face-down, spied a long shadow that sent me half-laughing, half-panicky, to win to safety ahead of an imaginary shark. But the natives knew that no sea-tiger comes into these lava-rimmed baylets, and I joined in the rippling explosion of mirth that went up at my discomfiture.

When I had returned to my shady coconut grove and palm-frond, ready to have lunch, a handsome elderly Hawaiian, with leonine gray mane above beautiful wide eyes of brown, approached with the grand air of a queen’s minister. In his shapely hand was a large leaf. Upon this natural platter lay freshly-snared game of the right varieties, white-fleshed and size of my palm, cleansed and sliced raw. Not a smile marred the high respectfulness of his manner; only the most formal ceremoniousness, without affectation, of service from one race to another. Without a word, he went as he had come, in unhurried and graceful stateliness. After I had eaten, curiously yet courteously observed by the passing dignified pilgrims to the ancient shrine, I joined my fish-host at the water’s edge, where he sat with the large wahine, who proved to be his wife. We waxed as chummy as our lingual disadvantage would permit. I was glad to learn that in these unprolific times the fine couple had at least one child; but he did not appear strong.

And thus, in all leisureliness, I linked with a chain of hours that seemed like days, in which there was enough of unspoiled human nature and habit to link one in turn with Hawaii’s yesterday. These child-people of the beach were pleased, too, in their way, that an outsider should love to be at one, as a matter of course, with their customs.

Ten days of reuniting with friends in Honolulu, and there came my sailing date. The four months’ vacation I had allotted myself was done. I must get home to the finishing of Jack London’s biography.

On the big wharf was scarcely standing room for those come to God-speed the ship. The faces of the passengers were regretful, no matter what their pleasure of home-going. Bedecked with wreaths, they struggled through the flowery crush to reinforce the crowded steamer rails that appeared like tiered garden walls.

The embracing was over, the eyes-to-eyes of farewells that tried to remain composed. Jack Atkinson, who at the last took charge of breasting a way for me to the gangplank, handed me through the gate. I was banked to the eyes with the rarest leis of roses, violets, plumeria, proud ilima and all. It being a warm March day, and the weight of flowers very palpable, one felt much as if in a perfumed Turkish bath!

Leaning over the topmost rail, trying to locate faces in the dense gathering, I realized again all the sweetness of my welcome and parting. Diffidently, desolately, I had approached Our Hawaii. As I had been welcomed for two, so I departed for two; and my speeding was two-fold. And now in my heart was gratitude and happiness for the renewed love and trust that made it My Hawaii.

The hawsers were cast off, the band melted into Aloha Oe, the streams of serpentine began to part and blossoms to fly, as the _Matsonia_ got under way. Something made me glance down at the stringer-piece of the pier. A handsome Hawaiian youth stood looking aloft at me in mute distress, holding up fathoms of pink cables made from stripped carnations. He had failed to get aboard with them in time. It was Kalakaua Kawananakoa. Princess David had sent him in her stead, for I had made her promise that she would not brave the exhaustion of the merry mob.

Then I lost track of the young prince. A few moments later, one of the music boys came to me bearing the royal ropes of flowers, five inches in diameter, which Kalakaua had somehow contrived to land on the lower deck across the widening gap. Still unable to detect his among the myriad faces, I swung the wondrous lariat, letting out its yards about my flower-crowned head, that he might know the gift was safely mine.

With a sob in the throat, I recalled Jack’s words, that last time I had stood in the same place at the _Matsonia’s_ hurricane rail:

“Of all lands of joy and beauty under the sun...”

But always the sob must turn to song, in contemplation of that beauty and joy.

Not alone because it was Jack London’s Loveland do I adore Hawaii and her people. To me, native and kamaaina alike, have they given their heart of sorrow, and their Welcome Home, in ways numerous and touching. To them, therefore, this book, _Our Hawaii_. To them, friends all, greeting and farewell.

“Love without end.”
“Aloha pau ole.”

Jack London Ranch,
In the Valley of the Moon,
1921.