If you start on Monday evening you will reach Hilo on Wednesday—and "about this time expect rain," as the almanac-makers say. They get about seventeen feet of rain at Hilo during the year; and as they have sometimes several days without any at all, you must look for not only frequent but heavy showers. A Hilo man told me of a curious experiment which was once made there. They knocked the heads out of an oil-cask—so he said—and it rained in at the bung-hole faster than it could run out at the ends. You may disbelieve this story if you please; I tell it as it was told me; but in any case you will do well to provide yourself for Hilo and the volcano journey with stout water-proof clothing.
Hilo, on those days when the sun shines, is one of the prettiest places on the Islands. If you are so fortunate as to enter the bay on a fine day you will see a very tropical landscape—a long, pleasant, curved sweep of beach, on which the surf is breaking, and beyond, white houses nestling among cocoa-nut groves, and bread-fruit, pandanus, and other Southern trees, many of them bearing brilliant flowers; with shops and stores along the beach. Men and boys sporting in the surf, and men and women dashing on horseback over the beach, make up the life of the scene.
Hilo has no hotel; it has not even a carriage; but it has a very agreeable and intelligent population of Americans, and you will find good accommodations at the large house of Mr. Severance, the sheriff of Hawaii. If his house should be full you need not be alarmed, for some one will take you in.
This is the usual and most convenient point of departure for the volcano. Here you hire horses and a guide for the journey. Having gone to Hilo on the steamer, you will do best to return to Honolulu by schooner, which leaves you at liberty to choose your point and time of departure. Hawaii lies to windward of Oahu; and a schooner, which might need four or five days to beat up to Hilo, will run down from any part of Hawaii in twenty-four hours. If you are an energetic traveler, determined to see every thing, and able to endure a good deal of rough riding, you may spend six weeks on Hawaii. In that time you may not only see the active volcano of Kilauea, but may ascend Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, whose immense slopes and lofty and in the winter snow-clad summits show gloriously on a clear day from Hilo; and you may ride from Hilo along the north-eastern coast, through the Hamakua and Kohala districts, ending your journey at Kealakeakua Bay where Captain Cook was killed. There you can take schooner for Honolulu; or if your energies hold out ride through Kau and Puna back to Hilo.
The Hamakua and Hilo coasts you will see from the steamer, which sails close along this bold and picturesque shore on her way to Hilo. This part of the island is but an extension of the vast slope of Mauna Kea; and all the waters which drain from its cloud-laden summit pour into the sea through numerous deep channels, or gorges which they have worn for themselves, and occasionally dash into the ocean from high cliffs, forming water-falls visible from the ship's deck. Of the gorges or cañons, there are seventy-nine in a distance of about thirty miles; many of them are from five to eight hundred feet deep; and as you ride along the coast, you have no sooner emerged from one of these deep pits than you descend by a road seldom easy, and often very steep indeed, into another. The sides of these gorges are lined with masses of the most magnificent ferns, and at their bottoms you find sparkling streams; and as you look up the cañons you see picturesque water-falls. In short, to the lover of bold and strange scenery this ride offers many pleasures; and that its difficulties may not be exaggerated to any one's apprehension, I will mention that during the spring of 1873 an English lady, taking with her only a native woman as guide, made the tour of the whole seventy-nine gulches, and thought herself amply rewarded for her toils by what she saw. As for myself, I must confess that four of these gulches—the four nearest Hilo—satisfied me; these I saw in visiting some sugar-plantations.
If you do not intend such a thorough exploration of Hawaii, but mean only to see the volcano of Kilauea, your pleasantest plan is to ride from Hilo by the direct road to the crater, and return by way of Puna. You will have ridden a trifle over one hundred miles through a very remarkable and in some parts a beautiful country; you will have slept one night in a native house, and will have seen much of Hawaiian life, and enjoyed a tiring but at the same time a very novel journey, and some sights which can not be matched outside of Iceland. To do this, and spend two or three days in pleasant sight-seeing near Hilo, will bring you back to Honolulu in from twelve to fourteen days after you left it.
Your traveling expenses will be sufficiently moderate. At Hilo you pay for board and lodgings eight dollars per week. The charge for horses is ten dollars each for the volcano journey, with a dollar a day for your guide. This guide relieves you of all care of the animals, and is useful in various ways. At the Volcano House the charge for horse and man is five dollars per day, and you pay half-price for your guide. There is a charge of one dollar for a special guide into the crater, which is made in your bill, and you will do well to promise this guide, when you go in, a small gratuity—half a dollar, or, if your party is large, a dollar—if he gives you satisfaction. He will get you specimens, carry a shawl for a lady, and make himself in other ways helpful.