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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He Asked Me To Make The Ascent Of Mauna Kea
With Him, And We Have Satisfactorily Accomplished It To-Day.
The interior of the island, in which we have spent the last two
days, is totally different, not only from the luxuriant windward
slopes, but from the fiery leeward margin.
The altitude of the
central plateau is from 5,000 to 6,000 feet, there is not a single
native dwelling on it, or even a trail across it, it is totally
destitute of water, and sustains only a miserable scrub of mamane,
stunted ohias, pukeawe, ohelos, a few compositae, and some of the
hardiest ferns. The transient residents of this sheep station, and
those of another on Hualalai, thirty miles off, are the only human
inhabitants of a region as large as Kent. Wild goats, wild geese
(Bernicla sandvicensis), and the Melithreptes Pacifica, constitute
its chief population. These geese are web-footed, though water does
not exist. They build their nests in the grass, and lay two or
three white eggs.
Our track from Waimea lay for the first few miles over light soil,
destitute of any vegetation, across dry glaring rocky beds of
streams, and round the bases of numerous tufa cones, from 200 to
1500 feet in height, with steep smooth sides, composed of a very red
ash. We crossed a flank of Mauna Kea at a height of 6000 feet, and
a short descent brought us out upon this vast tableland, which lies
between the bulbous domes of Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa, and Hualalai, the
loneliest, saddest, dreariest expanse I ever saw.
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