He Made The Sun Slow Down Some; Also, He Broke The
Beam Short Off.
And he kept on roping and breaking off beams till
the sun said it was willing to listen to reason.
Maui set forth his
terms of peace, which the sun accepted, agreeing to go more slowly
thereafter. Wherefore Hina had ample time in which to dry her
kapas, and the days are longer than they used to be, which last is
quite in accord with the teachings of modern astronomy.
We had a lunch of jerked beef and hard poi in a stone corral, used
of old time for the night-impounding of cattle being driven across
the island. Then we skirted the rim for half a mile and began the
descent into the crater. Twenty-five hundred feet beneath lay the
floor, and down a steep slope of loose volcanic cinders we dropped,
the sure-footed horses slipping and sliding, but always keeping
their feet. The black surface of the cinders, when broken by the
horses' hoofs, turned to a yellow ochre dust, virulent in appearance
and acid of taste, that arose in clouds. There was a gallop across
a level stretch to the mouth of a convenient blow-hole, and then the
descent continued in clouds of volcanic dust, winding in and out
among cinder-cones, brick-red, old rose, and purplish black of
colour. Above us, higher and higher, towered the crater-walls,
while we journeyed on across innumerable lava-flows, turning and
twisting a devious way among the adamantine billows of a petrified
sea. Saw-toothed waves of lava vexed the surface of this weird
ocean, while on either hand arose jagged crests and spiracles of
fantastic shape. Our way led on past a bottomless pit and along and
over the main stream of the latest lava-flow for seven miles.
At the lower end of the crater was our camping spot, in a small
grove of olapa and kolea trees, tucked away in a corner of the
crater at the base of walls that rose perpendicularly fifteen
hundred feet. Here was pasturage for the horses, but no water, and
first we turned aside and picked our way across a mile of lava to a
known water-hole in a crevice in the crater-wall. The water-hole
was empty. But on climbing fifty feet up the crevice, a pool was
found containing half a dozen barrels of water. A pail was carried
up, and soon a steady stream of the precious liquid was running down
the rock and filling the lower pool, while the cow-boys below were
busy fighting the horses back, for there was room for one only to
drink at a time. Then it was on to camp at the foot of the wall, up
which herds of wild goats scrambled and blatted, while the tent
arose to the sound of rifle-firing. Jerked beef, hard poi, and
broiled kid were the menu. Over the crest of the crater, just above
our heads, rolled a sea of clouds, driven on by Ukiukiu. 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. The sun is ninety-three millions
of miles distant, but to mortal conception the adjoining county is
farther away. This frailty of the human brain is hard on the sun.
It is likewise hard on the House of the Sun. Haleakala has a
message of beauty and wonder for the human soul that cannot be
delivered by proxy. Kolikoli is six hours from Kahului; Kahului is
a night's run from Honolulu; Honolulu is six days from San
Francisco; and there you are.
We climbed the crater-walls, put the horses over impossible places,
rolled stones, and shot wild goats. I did not get any goats. I was
too busy rolling stones. One spot in particular I remember, where
we started a stone the size of a horse. It began the descent easy
enough, rolling over, wobbling, and threatening to stop; but in a
few minutes it was soaring through the air two hundred feet at a
jump. It grew rapidly smaller until it struck a slight slope of
volcanic sand, over which it darted like a startled jackrabbit,
kicking up behind it a tiny trail of yellow dust. Stone and dust
diminished in size, until some of the party said the stone had
stopped. That was because they could not see it any longer.
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