Following the northerly shore of Mokapu Point, the trail mounted the outer shell of the little mountain, until, entering at the open south side, we were in a half-crater where cattle and horses grazed. Tying our animals, we lay heads-over the sea wall of the broken bowl, looking down and under, two hundred feet and more—“Kahekili’s Leap”—where the ocean surged against the forbidding cliff, from which our scrutiny frightened nesting seabirds.
So far, we have met no one who has taken this journey of a day; but it is easily accessible and more than worth while. Nothing can surpass the view one has of the blue Pacific, white-threshed by the glorious trade wind; and the prospect, landward to the Mirrored Mountains, is indescribably uplifting.
Returning to Honolulu by motor a few days later, after heavy rains, we thrilled to the sight of those same mountains curtained with rainbowed waterfalls. Once in the pass, the mighty draft of the trades revealed fresh cataracts behind torn cloud-masses, and looped and dissipated them before ever they could reach the bases of the dark-green palisades.
One of the most attractive means of recreation here is under the auspices of the Trail and Mountain Club of Hawaii, founded by Alexander Hume Ford. It is allied with the local activities of the Pan-Pacific Union, and associated with the American Mountaineer Club of North America, central information offices in New York City. It is proposed to establish a center of information in Honolulu, to act as a clearing house so that a member of one Pacific outing club may automatically become a visiting member of any other similar Pacific organization, should he travel in other lands than his own. Mr. Ford pursues a commendable if rather startling course in promoting this branch of his work for the Islands. When a new trail is required, it is projected, named for some citizen of means, who is then notified that it will be his duty to bear the expense of building. Once completed, the Club keeps the trail in order, the actual labor being done by the Boy Scouts, who are advised which particular patriotic member of society will pay them for their work. It is understood that the money goes toward the equipment expenses of the Scout troop which clears the path and puts it in order.
The outcome of all this agitation is that there are scores of different mountain trails on the island of Oahu alone. Officers of the project have spent thousands of dollars in erecting rest-houses, some of which, as on the rim of Haleakala, contain bunks and camp accommodations. Mr. Ford explains his method of drafting money and personal interest by the fact that the Club’s annual dues of $5.00 are not adequate for its upkeep and expansion, and so well has he presented his arguments that his fellow citizens are convinced of the worth to the territory of his unremitting drive to open up the lofty wonders of its interior to the world at large.
Auto buses are used to transport hikers to points from which they may radiate into the fastnesses, and steamers are sometimes chartered to convey them to other islands, as say to a strategic harbor for the reaching of Haleakala’s crater.
Occasionally a patron of the Club, alive to the opportunity for increased health, mentally and physically, in a latitude wherein the sea-level climate does not induce muscular effort except for water sports, places funds at the disposal of the officers. And it may be the Chinese, Filipino, or Japanese branch of the organization that is eager to cut the trail. The animating spirit among these inter-racial limbs of the body proper is one of mutual service.
The Associated Outing Clubs of Hawaii have selected Haleiwa—Waialua—as the location for the first of their rest houses. To the dabblers in sugar stocks, I have it from Mr. Ford, Haleiwa means little, and Waialua everything. For Waialua means “two waters,” and the length of the streams of Oahu that pour from the mountains to the sea at Waialua spells millions of dividends; for here there is never a drought. So, to the kamaaina Haleiwa is Waialua. He loves both. Waialua dividends make Haleiwa, “House Beautiful,” week ends possible for him. On the bank of the Anahula river, that flows into the sea near by, where the swimming is so fine, there is left a wing of the old Emerson homestead, built of coral in a grove of breadfruit. This has been secured by the Outing Clubs to fit up for a camping place; and none lovelier can be imagined. A fleet of canoes will be maintained upon the river. At the head of navigation are the rapids where the natives net the opae which they use for bait in the ocean a few hundred yards away.
From Waialua there are splendid motor trips. One in especial leads uphill at an unvarying five per cent grade through canefields to Opaeula, nearly 2000 feet above the sea on the edge of a great canyon, in the bottom of which there is a well-ordered rest-house in a tropical grove by a large natural swimming pool. From this point one may follow the well-cut ditch trails into the heart of the range. And this is but a sample of the opportunities offered the visitor to Oahu and its neighboring isles.
One evening we became acquainted with Colonel and Mrs. C. P. Iaukea, part-Hawaiian, and looking aristocrats to their finger tips. He had been Chamberlain to King Kalakaua, and accompanied Kalakaua’s queen Kapiolani (probably named after the illustrious defier of Pélé), to London at the time of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee. At present Colonel Iaukea is one of the trustees of Liliuokalani’s estate. He stated that the Queen had expressed a wish to meet London, and Jack, pleased that the meeting should come about in this way, arranged to be present at a private audience the following Thursday, March 11.