Though
This Sea Rolled Over The Crest Unceasingly, It Never Blotted Out Nor
Dimmed The Moon, For The Heat Of The Crater Dissolved The Clouds As
Fast As They Rolled In.
Through the moonlight, attracted by the
camp-fire, came the crater cattle to peer and challenge.
They were
rolling fat, though they rarely drank water, the morning dew on the
grass taking its place. It was because of this dew that the tent
made a welcome bedchamber, and we fell asleep to the chanting of
hulas by the unwearied Hawaiian cowboys, in whose veins, no doubt,
ran the blood of Maui, their valiant forebear.
The camera cannot do justice to the House of the Sun. The
sublimated chemistry of photography may not lie, but it certainly
does not tell all the truth. The Koolau Gap may be faithfully
reproduced, just as it impinged on the retina of the camera, yet in
the resulting picture the gigantic scale of things would be missing.
Those walls that seem several hundred feet in height are almost as
many thousand; that entering wedge of cloud is a mile and a half
wide in the gap itself, while beyond the gap it is a veritable
ocean; and that foreground of cinder-cone and volcanic ash, mushy
and colourless in appearance, is in truth gorgeous-hued in brick-
red, terra-cotta rose, yellow ochre, and purplish black. Also,
words are a vain thing and drive to despair. To say that a crater-
wall is two thousand feet high is to say just precisely that it is
two thousand feet high; but there is a vast deal more to that
crater-wall than a mere statistic.
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