There Were Several Gulches To Cross After The Sun Had Set, And A Silence, Which Was Almost Audible, Reigned In Their Leafy Solitudes.

It was quite dark when I reached the trail which dips over the great pali of Laupahoehoe, 700 feet in height; but I found myself riding carelessly down what I hardly dared to go up, carefully and in company, four months before.

But whatever improvement time has made in my health and nerves, it has made none in this wretched zoophyte village.

Leading Kahele, I groped about till I found the house of the widow Honolulu, with whom I had lodged before, and presently all the natives assembled to stare at me. After rubbing my horse and feeding him on a large bundle of ti leaves that I had secured on the road, I took my own meal as a spectacle. Two old crones seized on my ankles, murmuring lomi, lomi, and subjected them to the native process of shampooing. They had unrestrained curiosity as to the beginning and end of my journey. I said "Waimea, Hamakua," when they all chorused, "Maikai;" for a ride of forty miles was not bad for a wahine haole. I said, "Wai, lio," (water for the horse), when they signified that there was only some brackish stuff unfit for drinking.

In spite of the garrulous assemblage, I was asleep before eight, and never woke till I found myself in a blaze of sunshine this morning, and in perfect solitude. I got myself some breakfast, and then looked about the village for some inhabitants, but found none, except an unhappy Portuguese with one leg, and an old man who looked like a leper, to whom I said, "Ko" (cane) "lio" (horse), exhibiting a rial at the same time, on which he cut me a large bundle, and I sat on a stone and watched Kahele as he munched it for an hour and a half.

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