There Was Light Without
Heat, Leaves And Streams Sparkled, And There Was Nothing Of The
Half-Smothered Sensation Which Is
Often produced by the choking
greenery of the main island, for frequently, far below, the Pacific
flashed in all its
Sunlit beauty, and occasionally we came down
unexpectedly on a little cove with abrupt cedar-crested headlands
and stacks, and a heavy surf rolling in with the deep thunder music
which alone breaks the stillness of this silent land.
There was one tremendous declivity where I got off to walk, but
found it too steep to descend on foot with comfort. You can
imagine how steep it was, when I tell you that the deep groove
being too narrow for me to get to the side of my horse, I dropped
down upon him from behind, between his tail and the saddle, and so
scrambled on!
The sun had set and the dew was falling heavily when the track
dipped over the brow of a headland, becoming a waterway so steep
and rough that I could not get down it on foot without the
assistance of my hands, and terminating on a lonely little bay of
great beauty, walled in by impracticable-looking headlands, which
was the entrance to an equally impracticable-looking, densely-
wooded valley running up among densely-wooded mountains. There was
a margin of grey sand above the sea, and on this the skeleton of an
enormous whale was bleaching. Two or three large "dug-outs," with
planks laced with stout fibre on their gunwales, and some bleached
drift-wood lay on the beach, the foreground of a solitary,
rambling, dilapidated grey house, bleached like all else, where
three Japanese men with an old Aino servant live to look after
"Government interests," whatever these may be, and keep rooms and
horses for Government officials - a great boon to travellers who,
like me, are belated here.
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