That night we slept in Kapoho, to the north, the beautiful old home of Henry K. Lyman, whom we had known for some time, Road Supervisor of the Puna District, and part-Hawaiian, descended from the old missionary stock, and a most interesting personality. At the Chicago Convention of Delegates, he was affectionately known as Prince of Kapoho. And right princely does the tall, suave-mannered gentleman live in the lovely house of his childhood.
Not far away is a famous spring in the lava-rock, always at blood heat, which forms a bath sixty feet long by thirty wide, and twenty-five deep. Also near Kapoho is Green Lake, a “bottomless” pond in a volcanic emerald cup, in which it is said the bodies of swimmers under water show brilliant in shades of blue and green.
Many lava trees are to be seen in the Puna District—trees once surrounded and preserved by upstanding lava—great vases sprouting from their tops with living growths of fern or parasite. Certain deep-green hills seen from the lanai showed as if sculptured by the hand of man; and it is not considered unlikely that they were fortifications in their day. This Puna coast is packed with beauty and historical interest. Sitting on the fragrant lanai at dusk, listening to a serenade by the plantation boys after their day in the canefields, Jack assured me we should come back to explore Puna to heart’s content.
In the morning we drove to Hilo, in a steady downpour that almost made a motorboat of the automobile. The loops of that old road that wound over the aged lava through the magnificent jungle into Hilo’s suburbs, are now cut across by a perfect highway, carved through stone and solid tropical forest that does its best to encroach upon the asphalt. Rolling along, one who remembers the old leisurely way cannot help casting regretful glances upon the rambling lane that now and again comes into view, fast falling into decay.
At the same time, let no malihini think that the straight-away engineering of the modern motor track is an innovation in the old Kingdom of Hawaii. I have traveled, horseback, many miles on the Shipman holdings along Puna’s ironbound coast, from their beach retreat Keaau, to Papae, a sheep camp, upon a road straight as a moonbeam, that was built by hands dust this hundred years and more. It was Kamehameha’s edict that it be laid in a direct line across the turbulent surface of rotting a-a lava, so his fleet runners might lose no dispatch in carrying his commands and news. Where caverns from cooled bubbles were encountered, masonry of the same lavish material was reared from the depths to support that unswerving, level pave which was to bear the feet of him who did the great monarch’s bidding.
At Hilo we boarded the train for Paauilo, the end of the railroad, and were confirmed in our belief that it is one of the world’s wonder routes. An observation-car, carrying a buffet, has since been added for the convenience of tourists.
From Paauilo, the young manager of two big sugar plantations took us to Honokaa above the sea, whence we had ascended to Louissons eight years before. Next day we journeyed on to the second plantation home at Kukuihaele, an enormous house, sedately paneled the height of its walls, and set in a terraced park of lawns and umbrageous trees. We wondered at such an inappropriate structure in this sub-tropic land, and were told that the original happy bungalow, built by a Scotch architect, had been demolished by a later German manager, who preferred the present stately pile. But the gravest architecture could not dampen our spirits, and a contented time we had in the sober interior playing cards by a large fireplace of an evening, and working by day, meanwhile delaying for the unobliging weather to clear, that we might visit Waipio and Waimanu valleys near at hand.
From the deck of the Kilauea the previous spring, I had been pointed out these grand clefts, which by old travelers have been called the Eden of the Hawaiian Islands; and I was urged, rather than enter by trail, to surf in from seaward in canoes. This we had hoped to do; but the natives reported too great a swell from the continued rough weather. Moreover, the trail up the pali out of Waipio into Waimanu was little safer than the beach. But one day, riding in a drizzle, Jack and I happened upon the broad, steep trail of the 2500-foot eastern scarp, into Waipio, and mushed through its mud down into a sunnier level, meeting strings of ascending mules laden with garden produce. An old chronicler referred to the condition of the “roads” hereabout as “embarrassing.” Our horses tried very fractiously to refuse the descent.
This was one of the prettiest little adventures we two ever had together, dropping into the sequestered vale that opened wondrously as we progressed to the lovely banks of a wooded river that wound to the sea, widening to meet the surf that thundered upon a two-mile shingle. On the banks of the stream we could see wahines at their washing, and hear the ringing sweet voices of children at play—survivors of a once thick population, as evidenced by remains that are to be found of fish-ponds, taro-patches, and the like. Here the last Hawaiian tapa cloth was made. That same chronicler says: “There was something about that valley so lovely, so undisturbed ... it seemed to belong to another world, or to be a portion of this into which sorrow and death had never entered.”
At the head of this great break in the coast nestles the half-deserted, half-ruined village of Waipio, and behind it there wedges into the floor of the valley a tremendous rock bastion veiled in waterfalls to its mid-hidden summit. A second river curved from beyond its feet, and joined the one that flowed into the sea. We rode on across reedy shallows to a pathway once sacred to the sorcerers, kahunas, the which no layman then dared to profane with his step. Only approaching twilight held us back from the beach trail that leads to a clump of tall coconuts, marking the site of a one-time important temple of refuge in this section of Hawaii, Puuhonua, built as long ago as the thirteenth century by a Kauai king. There is reason to believe that there were several lesser temples in the neighborhood. They do say that Kamehameha the Great was born here in Waipio. One would like to think that first seeing the light of day in so superlatively grand and beautiful a vale might make for greatness!