Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

kingdom. There is splendid pasturage; and herds of wild cattle, branded, roam over the plains and up into the valleys and ravines. At night they gather down toward the sea, and "cattle views" can then be seen that are worth one's while.

Fancy nearly all the sugar made on these islands. being handled by natives, in bags, passed from hand to hand into the small boats, thence on to the steamers! They are so expert, patient, and faithful, that almost never is there an accident to passengers, goods, or to the sugar. And so rough are the breakers, often it seems a fearful thing to try to make a landing. It is not uncommon for the steamers to have to leave one or more untouched on a trip; for the sea is so heavy that no boat (even though manned by natives) could make the shore, and no passenger would risk it. So they land where they can, and then take horses. There are quite good carriage-roads here and there; but in traveling around these islands a stout native horse and saddle-bags are the better reliance; for one is sure to meet many steep hills, ruts, gulches, streams, ferries, and likely shaky bridges. Indeed, no extended land trips can be made in any other way. Robbery or crime is almost an unknown thing in going from point to point.

You can travel from one plantation to the next, by taking a steamer as it comes along. But in going across country on horseback, there is much to be enjoyed if one be a good traveler-magnificent sunrises and sunsets; glorious moonlight nights, when one wishes

never to go indoors; immense pasture for herds of wild cattle; turf which is agreeable to ride over, and infrequently a human habitation; stretches of hills, wooded and green; beautiful valleys touching the sea; waterfalls, fields of rice, patches of kalo, flowering trees, and endless climbers. At a plantation all is life and activity from before sunrise to dark. The sugar-cane, you know, is a perennial, with a root sending up a number of stems which grow to a height of nine feet or more, and are filled two-thirds of their length with a sweet, juicy pith. At one time it looks like a field of waving corn. The field-hands may be Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and sometimes. a few natives, but the latter do not care much for such work. However, where they will engage there are none better, I was told. There are lunas (overseers), managers, bookkeepers, sugar-boilers, etc. And there are plantation owners-Spreckels, for instance! There is the mill, the meetin'-house, or church, the schoolhouse (for the schoolmaster is not "abroad" at these islands), the postoffice, the plantation store and dining-room, two or three small shops, may be, and the little homes of the employees. It is all in a nutshell-a tiny village. But the miles, the immense tracts of cane!

A busy little world of anxious cares and hopes, of joys and sorrows, of heart-burnings, of high ambitions, and of disappointments, of loves and hates! As great the joy, as bitter the grief; as strong the love, as sweet the friendship, or the piety, as in any of the Old

World's great centers! The sky and the clouds seem nearer than in the temperate zones, and the planets look much larger. This must be owing to the atmosphere and the vapor, the ranges of hills, and the many tall trees which help to break the distance to

the eye.

Music is the chief recreation at these islands, and there are many first-rate musicians.

At night on a plantation the horses are brought often, and ladies and gentlemen-for every one learns to ride for convenience--go galloping over the hills to call on friends, staying perhaps to a musicale and coming home

"When the fair moon, refulgent lamp of night,

O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene;
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole,
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,
And tip with silver every mountain's head;
Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies;
The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight,
Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light."

"Mais, ô Lune! que tu es belle dans ta tristesse! L'Ourse étoilée s'éclipse devant tes charmes, tes regards véloutent l'azur du ciel; ils rendent les nues diaphanes; ils font briller les fleuves comme des serpents; ils argentent la cime des arbres; ils couvrent de blancheur le sommet des montagnes; ils changent en une mer de lait les vapeurs de la vallée. C'est ta lumière, ô Lune! qui donne de grandes pensées aux sachems; c'est ta lumière qui remplit le cœur d'un amant du souvenir de sa maîtresse; à ta clarté, la mère veille au berceau de son fils; à ta clarté, les guerriers mar

chent aux ennemis de la patrie; à ta clarté, les chasseurs tendent des piéges aux hôtes des forêts; et maintenant, à ta clarté, chargés des dons du Grand-Esprit, nous allons revoir nos heureuses cabanes."

Life on a plantation cuts one off from much intercourse with the outside world, and an island life must ever be peculiar to itself, in any part of the world; but it has its compensations and its delights-here far more than on most islands.

It is about thirty miles from Hilo to the crater of Kilauea. On entering the crater the guide sounds the lava with his staff, to test its safety. Below is a mass of molten fire. At night there is a canopy of vapor over it all, like a cloud of fire, and lightning plays upon the surface of the burning lake. One is glad to see the crater, and glad to be away.

Every traveler who visits the crater of Kilauea is fain to pronounce it at once the most awful, sublime, and wonderful phenomenon in nature. Incomparable, language fails to describe it; words seem beggarly! It is not within the ken of the finite mind to understand or to comprehend its whys or its wherefores. It is a mystery—this awful, terrible, madly burning, boiling lake! this wild, tumultuous, rampant, roaring fire! this mammoth bowl of seething, bubbling, blood-red liquid lava! At the same time, to any one with the smallest bump of the ludicrous on his cranium, it does sound laughable, to say the least, to hear shouted in his ear as soon as ever he steps foot on Hawaiian soil, before he fairly has had time to swallow

[ocr errors]

a cup of coffee, "Have you been to the Volcano?" "No." "You're going, aren't you?" One is reminded of the zeal and haste seen often on entering a "revival meeting,"-" Have you been converted?"

"To stand on the brink of a white-hot, boiling, surging, roaring lake of molten lava, when the great, heaving mass dashes itself against the sides of the pit, throwing ten thousand jets of red-hot liquid lava into the air, like the waves of the sea dashing against a rocky coast, is the sublimest, most awe-inspiring scene on earth.

"There are two carriage-roads to the volcano, one of which-the Volcano Road-is a macadamized drive of thirty miles, built by the government at a cost of $100,000. This is the most beautiful carriage-drive in the world. There is not another like it. It winds and turns through fields of waving sugar-cane, rugged lava-beds, and the grandest tropical jungles in the world-woods covered with vines and creepers, and magnificent forests of tall ferns, cocoanut trees, and plumy palms of every variety-bananas and pineapples growing wild-strange and fantastic forms in vegetable life. The drive for miles is under overhanging palms and fern-trees that swing far out over the road, forming an archway. Their foliage is so thick as to exclude the rays of the sun, and the drive is cool and delightful.

"It is two years since the last disappearance of the molten lava in the crater of Kilauea. At that time, for about a month, there was no sign of activity; then the

« AnteriorContinuar »