The Hawaiian Archipelago - Six Months Among The Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, And Volcanoes Of The Sandwich Islands By Isabella L. Bird
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I Had Not Time To Tell You Before That This Trip To Kauai Was
Hastily Arranged For Me By Several Of My Honolulu Friends, Some Of
Whom Gave Me Letters Of Introduction, While Others Wrote Forewarning
Their Friends Of My Arrival.
I am often reminded of Hazael's
question, "Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?"
There
Is no inn or boarding house on the island, and I had hitherto
believed that I could not be concussed into following the usual
custom whereby a traveller throws himself on the hospitality of the
residents. Yet, under the influence of Honolulu persuasions, I am
doing this very thing, but with an amount of mauvaise honte and
trepidation, which I will not voluntarily undergo again.
My first introduction was to Mrs. Smith, wife of a secular member of
the Mission, and it requested her to find means of forwarding me a
distance of twenty-three miles. Her son was at the landing with a
buggy, a most unpleasant index of the existence of carriage roads,
and brought me here; and Mrs. Smith most courteously met me at the
door. When I presented my letter I felt like a thief detected in a
first offence, but I was at once made welcome, and my kind hosts
insist on my remaining with them for some days. Their house is a
pretty old-fashioned looking tropical dwelling, much shaded by
exotics, and the parlour is homelike with new books. There are two
sons and two daughters at home, all, as well as their parents,
interesting themselves assiduously in the welfare of the natives.
Six bright-looking native girls are receiving an industrial training
in the house. Yesterday being Sunday, the young people taught a
Sunday school twice, besides attending the native church, an act of
respect to Divine service in Hawaiian which always has an influence
on the native attendance.
We have had some beautiful rides in the neighbourhood. It is a
wild, lonely, picturesque coast, and the Pacific moans along it,
casting itself on it in heavy surges, with a singularly dreary
sound. There are some very fine specimens of the phenomena called
"blow-holes" on the shore, not like the "spouting cave" at Iona,
however. We spent a long time in watching the action of one, though
not the finest. At half tide this "spouting horn" throws up a
column of water over sixty feet in height from a very small orifice,
and the effect of the compressed air rushing through a crevice near
it, sometimes with groans and shrieks, and at others with a hollow
roar like the warning fog-horn on a coast, is magnificent, when, as
to-day, there is a heavy swell on the coast.
Kauai is much out of the island world, owing to the infrequent
visits of the Kilauea, but really it is only twelve hours by steam
from the capital. Strangers visit it seldom, as it has no active
volcano like Hawaii, or colossal crater like Maui, or anything
sensational of any kind.
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