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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Here One Cannot Ride "Into
The Teeth Of A North-Easter," For Such The Trade-Wind Really Is,
Without Feeling At Once Invigorated, And Wrapped In An Atmosphere Of
Balm.
It is not here so tropical looking as in Hawaii, and though
there are not the frightful volcanic wildernesses which make a
thirsty solitude in the centre of that island, neither are there
those bursts of tropical luxuriance which make every gulch an
epitome of Paradise:
I really cannot define the difference, for
here, as there, palms glass themselves in still waters, bananas
flourish, and the forests are green with ferns.
We took three days for our journey of twenty-three miles from Koloa,
the we, consisting of Mrs. - -, the widow of an early missionary
teacher, venerable in years and character, a native boy of ten years
old, her squire, a second Kaluna, without Kaluna's good qualities,
and myself. Mrs. - - is not a bold horsewoman, and preferred to
keep to a foot's pace, which fretted my ambitious animal, whose
innocent antics alarmed her in turn. We only rode seven miles the
first day, through a park-like region, very like Western Wisconsin,
and just like what I expected and failed to find in New Zealand.
Grass-land much tumbled about, the turf very fine and green, dotted
over with clumps and single trees, with picturesque, rocky hills,
deeply cleft by water-courses were on our right, and on our left the
green slopes blended with the flushed, stony soil near the sea, on
which indigo and various compositae are the chief vegetation.
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