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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We Are Prepared For To-Morrow,
Having Engaged A Native Named Upa, Who Boasts A Little English, As
Our Guide.
He provides three horses and himself for three days for
the sum of thirty dollars.
I.L.B.
LETTER V.
VOLCANO OF KILAUEA, Jan. 31.
Bruised aching bones, strained muscles, and overwhelming fatigue,
render it hardly possible for me to undergo the physical labour of
writing, but in spirit I am so elated with the triumph of success,
and so thrilled by new sensations, that though I cannot communicate
the incommunicable, I want to write to you while the impression of
Kilauea is fresh, and by "the light that never was on sea or shore."
By eight yesterday morning our preparations were finished, and Miss
Karpe, whose conversance with the details of travelling I envy,
mounted her horse on her own side-saddle, dressed in a short grey
waterproof, and a broad-brimmed Leghorn hat tied so tightly over her
ears with a green veil as to give it the look of a double spout.
The only pack her horse carried was a bundle of cloaks and shawls,
slung together with an umbrella on the horn of her saddle. Upa, who
was most picturesquely got up in the native style with garlands of
flowers round his hat and throat, carried our saddle-bags on the
peak of his saddle, a bag with bananas, bread, and a bottle of tea
on the horn, and a canteen of water round his waist. I had on my
coarse Australian hat which serves the double purpose of sunshade
and umbrella, Mrs. Thompson's riding costume, my great rusty New
Zealand boots, and my blanket strapped behind a very gaily
ornamented brass-bossed demi-pique Mexican saddle, which one of the
missionary's daughters had lent me. It has a horn in front, a low
peak behind, large wooden stirrups with leathern flaps the length of
the stirrup-leathers, to prevent the dress from coming in contact
with the horse, and strong guards of hide which hang over and below
the stirrup, and cover it and the foot up to the ancles, to prevent
the feet or boots from being torn in riding through the bush. Each
horse had four fathoms of tethering rope wound several times round
his neck. In such fashion must all travelling be done on Hawaii,
whether by ladies or gentlemen.
Upa supplied the picturesque element, we the grotesque. The morning
was moist and unpropitious looking. As the greater part of the
thirty miles has to be travelled at a foot's-pace the guide took
advantage of the soft grassy track which leads out of Hilo, to go
off at full gallop, a proceeding which made me at once conscious of
the demerits of my novel way of riding. To guide the horse and to
clutch the horn of the saddle with both hands were clearly
incompatible, so I abandoned the first as being the least important.
Then my feet either slipped too far into the stirrups and were cut,
or they were jerked out; every corner was a new terror, for at each
I was nearly pitched off on one side, and when at last Upa stopped,
and my beast stopped without consulting my wishes, only a desperate
grasp of mane and tethering rope saved me from going over his head.
At this ridiculous moment we came upon a bevy of brown maidens
swimming in a lakelet by the roadside, who increased my confusion by
a chorus of laughter.
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