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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Hawaii Is All Domes And
Humps, Kauai All Peaks And Sierras.
There were deep ravines, along
which bright fern-shrouded streams brawled among wild bananas,
overarched by Eugenias, with their gory blossoms:
Walls of peaks,
and broken precipices, grey ridges rising out of the blue forest
gloom, high mountains with mists wreathing their spiky summits, for
a background: gleams of a distant silver sea: and the nearer many-
tinted woods were not matted together in jungle fashion, but
festooned and adorned with numberless lianas, and even the prostrate
trunks of fallen trees took on new beauty from the exquisite ferns
which covered them. Long cathedral aisles stretched away in far-off
vistas, and so perfect at times was the Gothic illusion, that I
found myself listening for anthems and the roll of organs. So cool
and moist it was, and triumphantly redundant in vagaries of form and
greenery, it was a forest of forests, and it became a necessity to
return the next day, and the next; and I think if I had remained at
Koloa I should have been returning still.
This place is outside the beauty, among cane-fields, and is much
swept by the trade winds. Mr. Rice, my host, is the son of an
esteemed missionary, and he and his wife take a deep interest in the
natives. When he brought her here as a bride a few months ago, the
natives were so delighted that he had married an island lady who
could speak Hawaiian, that they gave them an ahaaina, or native
feast, on a grand scale.
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