THE SANDWICH ISLANDS.

NUMBER III.-HAWAII AND MAUI.

H. B. A.

HAWAII.

A TRIP around the Island of Hawaii, in these modern times, can be made with great ease in a small screw steamer of about four hundred tons burthen, which leaves Honolulu every tenth day, stopping at Lahaina, on the Island of Maui, and making the circuit of Hawaii; calling off every native village, and anchoring at Hilo and Kealekeakua-for a full day at each place. It is certainly the most agreeable, as well as the most expeditious, way to obtain a correct idea of the coast; for to travel through the Island on horseback, crossing mountains fourteen thousand feet high, would be very fatiguing, and the information to be gained would repay no one for his trouble-unless he was about to settle there.

Horseback-riding in volcanic countries is a very different affair from the same exercise on the plain. The mountains are so intersected by ravines, between the mighty streams of lava that at some early period rushed towards the sea in diverging but nearly parallel lines, that the journey is slow and laborious. The ascent of one steep hill is made only to plunge into a deeper valley. On Hawaii the roads lead in zig-zag lines up precipices almost perpendicular. Between Waipio and Hilo, a distance of only forty miles, there are no less than seventy-eight cañons, flanked by perpendicular walls, and some of them are two thousand one hundred feet deep.

The effect of so bold and rocky a coast, seen from the sea, is very fine. The lava-streams, which in ages past have formed the precipitous walls of the Island, ran from the mountains, Mauna Loa, Mauna Kea, and Mauna Hualalai, nearly parallel towards the sea; and, being arrested suddenly by the water, they stand apart from each other like Dutch houses with their gable ends towards the street. The appearance of having been cut or broken off, while in full tide, is the most singular phenomenon presented by these cliffs. Possibly the sea ran many hundred feet higher at the time this lava was flowing than it does at present; under any other supposition it is difficult to account for the smoothness and perpendicu larity of the cliff. It is easy to trace the ridges in their flow from above, until all reached a point where the motion suddenly ceased, and to fullow the course of some gigantic river of lava, rising in its banks several hundred feet, if not several thousand, in its course down the mountain. From some inequality in the land it has divided, and the two branches form a delta as they approach the sea, with a fertile valley between them; they do not sink gradually to its level, but terminate in a smooth façade, nearly a thousand feet above the surf. Innumerable water-falls tumble over these cliffs into the sea. The country rises gradually for twenty miles from the coast, and is covered with a growth of hard timber on the eastern side of Hawaii. Over this ridge of timbered land the tops of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa rise to the clouds. The traveller is fortunate if he can VOL. LI.-NO. III.

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see their summits through the mists that hang around them, or catch a glimpse of the patches of snow on Mauna Kea. Mauna Kea is the northern half of Hawaii; it would be incorrect to say that it is in it, for its base is the sea-shore. So gradual is the ascent that the eye is deceived in regard to its height, its actual base appearing to be twenty miles from the sea, where it has already attained the height of four thousand feet. As it rises it gradually loses all traces of verdure, and assumes a dull, red color, spotted on the summit with patches of snow. The crater has not

been active for many years.

The steamer stops off Waipio just long enough to send a boat ashore and to catch a glimpse of the waterfall in the charming valley of that name. The village is nestled in one of the grandest of mountain gorges, the walls of which are two thousand five hundred feet high, and covered with verdure to the top. At the very base of these hills, which are so nearly perpendicular that it remains a mystery how the inhabitants can ever leave their valley, is a neat church, painted white, and on the left hand, hidden partially by the hill, is a waterfall, never dry, and, in the rainy season, of considerable breadth and volume. Pouring from the overhanging precipice, it throws a silver spray over the valley, twelve hundred feet below, and in its dark setting of green, with a rainbow hovering about its base, it gives a charm to this little resting-place among the hills, that has made Waipio famous among the Hawaiians. It is their favorite valley, and RASSELAS, Prince of Abyssinia, might have found a model retreat, for discontented individuals like himself, under the waterfall of Hilawi.

As we approach Hilo, the coast gradually sinks, and allows of numerous sugar plantations on the slopes towards the sea. The Bay of Hilo, called also Waiakea, is surrounded by them. It is the best harbor in Hawaii, always accessible, and bordered by a country that, with a little Yankee enterprise, might quickly become the garden spot of the Sandwich Islands. Owing to the peculiar shape of the coast, Kilauea and Mauna Loa half encircling it to the west and south-west, while Mauna Kea rises to the north-west, the north-east trades, blowing across the ocean, and full of moisture, seem to part with it over the district of Hilo. "The rain of Hilo" is the Hawaiian simile for a gentle, refreshing shower; and so frequent are these showers, that Hilo, proverbially, has but two in a year, one of which lasts five months, another four. Yet a ride of fifty miles to the westward brings us to a barren district, where rain does not fall for six months or more at a time. Every plant that can be grown in the torrid zone flourishes in the rich moist soil around the Bay of Waiakea. I have seen here, within the space of two or three acres, the cocoa-nut, palm, the banana, bread-fruit, mango, tamarind, lime, cocoa, coffee, sugar-cane, papeia, taro, sweet potato, tomato, maize, orange, lemon, African date, century plant, strawberry, wild apple, alligator pear or agua-carte, cherimoya, pine-apple, and trees and shrubs such as Pride of India, rattoon, and Floraponda, and flowers without number.

With all this capacity of the soil to yield rich returns, Hilo remains but a trifling village, very few foreigners residing there. For a long time it has been one of the stations of the A. B. C. F. M., and the missionaries, Rev. Messrs COAN and LYMAN, still remain here. As the place is principally known by the descriptions of Commodore WILKES, of the U. S.

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Exploring Expedition, it is worth while noticing his gross slander that these gentlemen, by their narrow-minded bigotry, had caused all the coffee trees to be rooted up. Taking some pains to inquire into the merits of this story, it appeared from the testimony of persons in no way connected with the mission, both at Hilo and Honolulu, that the statement was entirely without foundation. On the contrary, Mr. COAN had coffee trees growing in his yard at the time, and the officers of the expedition drank coffee, gathered from them, at Mr. CoAN's table. A grove of older trees than any on the Island, is certainly growing there now. It would have been very easy to have ascertained the truth of any idle stories afloat, before entering so damaging a slander on the records of a work supposed to aim at great precision. Possibly the vexation the Commodore gives vent to in his history on finding that no bribes could persuade the natives to set out on a journey on the Sabbath, owing to the influence of the missionary, (an influence which he has retained, by the way, to this day over five thousand natives) may account for the Commodore's credulous insertion of the stories of runaway sailors and licentious strangers, and for the singular fact that no correction of it has ever appeared, although the whole tale is notoriously false. From Hilo to Kealekeakua Bay, on the opposite side of Hawaii, there is very little of interest to be seen. The coast is bleak; bare lava-rocks and extinct craters skirt the sea-shore. Some of these lava-rocks have been hollowed out by the sea into caves, like what are technically called spouting-horns, and through them the water is thrown high into the air with every dash of the surf. A few miles from the shore, generaily at five miles or there-abouts, is a belt of forest and fertile soil on which sugar, coffee and oranges are raised.

Kealekeakua Bay, where Capt. Cook met his death, is in the district of Kona, and has seen very little change since the time of that tragedy. The cocoa-nut grove, near the rock where he fell, is standing yet; a few straggling houses have been put up on one side of the Bay, and a roadhas been cut to the top of the hill, where the savages are believed to have roasted and eaten the body. Here a pitiful pile of stones has been erected as a monument, while on the beach is the rude strip of copper fastened to a cocoa-nut stump, which does not even have the merit of being on the spot where the great sailor fell. Rudely punched in the copper, and rendered nearly illegible by verdigris, is the legend of how certain English captainsplaced it there, and the final pathetic appeal to

"GIVE THIS A coat of tar."

A little pile of lava boulders is heaped up around the post, which is not a straight post, but has an ugly slant of sixty degrees. Every old chart of the world has a single line below the uncouth name of this Bay, telling that Capt. Cook, the great discoverer, was murdered here; but when one sees this miserable monument, it is hard to believe that it marks anything more memorable than the burial place of some favorite dog. He met a dog's death, and he has a dog's grave!

It is a disgrace to the Hawaiian Government, and the English residents of Honolulu, that a decent stone has not been put up on this beach. The least that the Government could do would be to erect a light-house in the harbor and call it Cook's. Any one who has made the land here on a dark night knows that it is needed.

After leaving Kealekeakua Bay there is no other place of interest until we reach Kawaihae, a desolate spot in Kohala, on the side of Mauna Hualalai. Lava boulders of enormous size, like the drift one sees scattered over New England, are dropped down the side of the mountain, and little can be grown there. Provisions are brought from the other side of the Island, with the exception of potatoes, the place being a famous depot where, in former times, before it was found how much superior California potatoes were to any grown in the tropics, the whalers supplied themselves annually.

There is an old temple at Kawaihae, now in ruins, which was the last heathen temple built by KAMEHAMEHA the First, and the last on which human sacrifices were offered. Heathen temples are very rare in Hawaii, the natives having torn down immense numbers of them soon after the introduction of the Christian religion, and even before the landing of the missionaries, when, of their own accord, they renounced idolatry and broke the sacred tabus; but this temple appears never to have been disturbed, and not to have suffered more than might be expected after fifty years of exposure to the weather. It is built on the side of a hill, being only a series of platforms or steps, jutting out from the hill in semi-circles, and rising one above the other. These platforms consist of large lava rocks, the top-most rows of which are fitted neatly and cemented with mortar, which was evidently obtained from the coral reef, being full of minute shells. A floor as hard as Roman cement has thus been obtained, and it is, for the most part, as perfect as when laid down. Three grand platforms make the temple, the highest of the three having a ditch cut in the hill on the level of the platform, and beyond the ditch a wall, perpendicular on the side towards the temple, but sloping outwards towards the hill, so that its base is very broad. This peculiar arrangement enabled the people, standing upon the hill, and even scattered upon the sea in their boats, to have a full view of the sacrifices. Thousands-tens of thousands-could collect around the great temple of Kawaihae, and see every action of the priests. It is not improbable that on their solemn occasions priests occupied all the three platforms simultaneously, and that the sacrifices were accompanied by imposing ceremonies in the presence of a vast concourse of people.

The natives have a tradition that KAMEHAMEHA, who was distinguished by the energy he brought to bear on everything he undertook, employed all the males on the Island to build this great temple, that he laid the first stone himself, and that the whole work was completed in three days. Traditions are not worth much, but if this one tells the truth it proves that the ancient Hawaiians were an infinitely more industrious race than their descendants.

MAUI.

LAHAINA, in the island of Maui, was at one time the principal business town of the Sandwich group, and as many as a hundred whale-ships have been anchored at a time in the roadstead, formed by the leg of the mountains which overhang the town. All this is changed now, and scarcely twenty ships visit the place in a year. It is out of the track of Chinabound vessels; and these, in any case, do not like to touch at the islands

if it can be avoided, from the effect they have on the trade-winds, an ef fect which is felt for more than a hundred miles to the westward.

Whale ships looking for fresh provisions, and the few small craft engaged in the inter-island trade, are, therefore, the only vessels seen at Lahaina. What it may have been in former times it is difficult to say, but now it has the air of " having seen better days." Here, as elsewhere on the Sandwich Islands, are signs of a dense population in the past; the rich soil at the base of the volcanoes has been long and industriously cultivated. It is probably as rich as any in Maui, and although lack of rain often converts it into a dry red powder, which penetrates every where. If irrigation is used, this lava dust exceeds all other soils in fertility. The sugar-cane ripens here every year, and grows to a great height and thickness. Although not as extensively cultivated as it might be, the natives raise it in little patches. Their cane is ground in a small mill, erected by Americans, and the sugar-grinder is paid by a certain proportion of the product-generally one-half or three-fifths. This system has been adopted on account of the difficulty of obtaining any considerable tract of land in this locality, the native families clinging to their homes with unusual tenacity, and, I believe, that this is the only place in the Kingdom where any considerable tract of land is covered with cane belonging to natives. All the large plantations are owned by foreigners, generally Americans, a few are worked as joint stock companies, and some are held by Chinamen.

Approaching Lahaina from the sea, there is a grand view of the mountains behind the town. They are split by three immense gorges, and, at a distance, it appears as if the hills were split assunder, and the fragments tottering, so irregular are the vast crevices between them, and their angels at so many degrees from the perpendicular. On near approach these gorges are seen to be of origin similar to those already described on Hawaii, each mountain having been a volcano that discharged lava, not only from its top, but from holes and cones in every direction along its sides. There is no regular peak in the chain, each irregular shape stands off from the next, with a narrow chasm between. Their sides are bare, excepting on the slope near the base, where it approaches the sea, but the narrow gorges are watered by little streams.

These mountains are probably 6,000 feet high, and their summits five miles from Lahaina, but they appear to take their rise from the town itself, and in the clear air of that latitude their tops seem scarcely a mile

away.

The town is scattered for a mile along the beach, stretching back only a few hundred yards. It is a dingy, slovenly-looking place, the few better dwellings being on the beach, facing the grand surf that tumbles over the bar at all times, the tops of the waves blown off by the trade winds, and the line of spray running along the crests of the combers, glistening like the flowing mane of a horse at full gallop in the sunshine. They are shaded by cocoa-nut palms, and singular looking bread-fruit trees, with their leaves all twisted in contrary directions, like the feathers of that curious Javanese fowl which persist in growing the wrong way. The breadfruit and the banana are very plenty at Lahaina, more of the former being found here than in any other village on the windward Islands of the group.