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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The house is not far from the beach, and the surf, beyond
which a heavy mist hung, was coming
In with such a tremendous sound
that we had to shout at the top of our voices in order to be heard.
The sides of the great gulch rose like prison walls, cascades which
had no existence the previous night hurled themselves from the
summit of the cliffs directly into the sea, the rain, which fell in
sheets, not drops, covered the ground to the depth of two or three
inches, and dripped from the wretched, shivering horses, which stood
huddled together with their tails between their legs. My thin
flannel suit was wet through even before we mounted. I dispensed
with stockings, as I was told that wearing them in rain chills and
stiffens the limbs. D., about whom I was anxious, as well as about
the mule, had a really waterproof cloak, and I am glad to say has
quite lost the cough from which she suffered before our expedition.
She does not care about rain any more than I do.
We soon reached the top of the worst and dizziest of all the palis,
and then splashed on mile after mile, down sliding banks, and along
rocky tracks, from which the soil had been completely carried, the
rain falling all the time. In some places several feet of soil had
been carried away, and we passed through water-rents, the sides of
which were as high as our horses' heads, where the ground had been
level a few days before. By noon the aspect of things became so bad
that I wished we had a white man with us, as I was uneasy about some
of the deepest gulches. When four hours' journey from Onomea,
Kaluna's horse broke down, and he left us to get another, and we
rode a mile out of our way to visit Deborah's grandparents.
Her uncle carried us across some water to their cook-house, where,
happily, a kalo baking had just been accomplished, in a hole in the
ground, lined with stones, among which the embers were still warm.
In this very small hut, in which a man could hardly stand upright,
there were five men only dressed in malos, four women, two of them
very old, much tattooed, and huddled up in blankets, two children,
five pertinaciously sociable dogs, two cats, and heaps of things of
different kinds. They are a most gregarious people, always visiting
each other, and living in each other's houses, and so hospitable
that no Hawaiian, however poor, will refuse to share his last
mouthful of poi with a stranger of his own race. These people
looked very poor, but probably were not really so, as they had a
nice grass-house, with very fine mats, within a few yards.
A man went out, cut off the head of a fowl, singed it in the flame,
cut it into pieces, put it into a pot to boil, and before our feet
were warm the bird was cooked, and we ate it out of the pot with
some baked kalo.
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