The Scenery Between Vieiras's (Where The Kaupo Gap Empties Into The
Sea) And Lana, Which We Covered In Half A
Day, is well worth a week
or month; but, wildly beautiful as it is, it becomes pale and small
in
Comparison with the wonderland that lies beyond the rubber
plantations between Hana and the Honomanu Gulch. Two days were
required to cover this marvellous stretch, which lies on the
windward side of Haleakala. The people who dwell there call it the
"ditch country," an unprepossessing name, but it has no other.
Nobody else ever comes there. Nobody else knows anything about it.
With the exception of a handful of men, whom business has brought
there, nobody has heard of the ditch country of Maui. Now a ditch
is a ditch, assumably muddy, and usually traversing uninteresting
and monotonous landscapes. But the Nahiku Ditch is not an ordinary
ditch. The windward side of Haleakala is serried by a thousand
precipitous gorges, down which rush as many torrents, each torrent
of which achieves a score of cascades and waterfalls before it
reaches the sea. More rain comes down here than in any other region
in the world. In 1904 the year's downpour was four hundred and
twenty inches. Water means sugar, and sugar is the backbone of the
territory of Hawaii, wherefore the Nahiku Ditch, which is not a
ditch, but a chain of tunnels. The water travels underground,
appearing only at intervals to leap a gorge, travelling high in the
air on a giddy flume and plunging into and through the opposing
mountain.
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