Undismayed By Three Days Of Sea-Sickness, And The Prospect Of The Tremendous Journey To The Volcano To-Morrow, She Extemporised A Ride To The Anuenue Falls On The Wailuku This Afternoon, And I Weakly Accompanied Her, A Burly Policeman Being Our Guide.

The track is only a scramble among rocks and holes, concealed by grass and ferns, and we had to cross a stream, full of great holes, several times.

The Fall itself is very pretty, 110 feet in one descent, with a cavernous shrine behind the water, filled with ferns. There were large ferns all round the Fall, and a jungle of luxuriant tropical shrubs of many kinds.

Three miles above this Fall there are the Pei-pei Falls, very interesting geologically. The Wailuku River is the boundary between the two great volcanoes, and its waters, it is supposed by learned men, have often flowed over heated beds of basalt, with the result of columnar formation radiating from the bottom of the stream. This structure is sometimes beautifully exhibited in the form of Gothic archways, through which the torrent pours into a basin, surrounded by curved, broken, and half-sunk prisms, black and prominent amidst the white foam of the Falls. In several places the river has just pierced the beds of lava, and in one passes under a thick rock bridge, several hundred feet wide. Often, where the water flows over beds of dark grey basalt, masses of trachyte, closely resembling syenite, have formed "potholes," and by mutual action have been worn to pebbles. At Pei-pei there are three circular pools, each about fifty feet in diameter, and separated by walls six feet thick, in a bed of columnar basalt. {65} During freshets the river sometimes rises thirty feet, and hides these pools, but during the dry season the upper bed is bare, and after a succession of cascades of various heights the stream pours into the first basin, filling it with foam. From this there is no apparent outlet, but leaves thrown in soon appear in the second basin, whose tranquillity is only disturbed by a few bubbles. Between this and the third there are two subterranean passages, and the water there leaps over a fall about forty feet high, nearly covering a perfect Gothic arch which is the entrance to a shallow cave. The scene is enclosed by high and nearly perpendicular walls. {66}

Near the Anuenue Fall we stopped at a native house, outside which a woman, in a rose-coloured chemise, was stringing roses for a necklace, while her husband pounded the kalo root on a board. His only clothing was the malo, a narrow strip of cloth wound round the loins, and passed between the legs. This was the only covering worn by men before the introduction of Christianity. Females wore the pau, a short petticoat made of tapa, which reached from the waist to the knees. To our eyes, the brown skin produces nearly the effect of clothing.

Everything was new and interesting, but the ride was spoiled by my insecure seat in my saddle, and the increased pain in my spine which riding produced.

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