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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D. Took Me Out To See Some Mango Trees, And A Pond
Filled With Gold-Fish, Which She Said Had Been Hers When She Was A
Child.
She seemed very fond of her relatives, among whom she looked
like a fairy princess; and I think they admired her very much, and
treated her with some deference.
The object of our visit was to
procure a le of birds' feathers which they had been making for her,
and for which I am sure 300 birds must have been sacrificed. It was
a very beautiful as well as costly ornament, {165} and most
ingeniously packed for travelling by being laid at full length
within a slender cylinder of bamboo.
We rode on again, somewhat unwillingly on my part, for though I
thought my apprehensions might be cowardly and ignorant, yet D. was
but a child, and had the attractive wilfulness of childhood, and she
was, I saw, determined to get back to her husband, and the devotion
and affection of the young wife were so pleasant to see, that I had
not the heart to offer serious opposition to her wishes, especially
as I knew that I might be exaggerating the possible peril. I
gathered, however, from what she said, that her people wanted us to
remain until Monday, especially as none of them could go with us,
their horses being at some distance. I thought it a sign of
difficulties ahead, that on one of the most frequented tracks in
Hawaii, we had not met a single traveller, though it was Saturday, a
special travelling day.
We crossed one gulch in which the water was strong, and up to our
horses' bodies, and came upon the incorrigible Kaluna, who, instead
of catching his horse, was recounting his adventures to a circle of
natives, but promised to follow us soon. D. then said that the next
gulch was rather a bad one, and that we must not wait for Kaluna,
but ride fast, and try to get through it. When we reached the pali
above it, we heard the roaring of a torrent, and when we descended
to its brink it looked truly bad, but D. rode in, and I waited on
the margin. She got safely across, but when she was near the
opposite side her large horse plunged, slipped, and scrambled in a
most unpleasant way, and she screamed something to me which I could
not hear. Then I went in, and
"At the first plunge the horse sank low,
And the water broke o'er the saddle bow:"
but the brave animal struggled through, with the water up to the top
of her back, till she reached the place where D.'s horse had looked
so insecure. In another moment she and I rolled backwards into deep
water, as if she had slipped from a submerged rock. I saw her fore
feet pawing the air, and then only her head was above water. I
struck her hard with my spurs, she snorted, clawed, made a desperate
struggle, regained her footing, got into shallow water, and landed
safely.
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