It is saddening to come upon so much fallen timber. A pest of moss has overspread and destroyed great numbers of the large growth. Among living trees, I saw a few of the naia, false sandalwood, pricked out bright-green by stray sunbeams.
Over the tussocks of grass we raced, senses aching with very pleasure of motion in so boundless a survey. The declining earth stretches in an unbroken expanse; then suddenly, under a clearing sky, an unguessed deep serration yawns at our feet. The little horses drop easily from the prairie into tropic ferns and flowering lehua, where the ground is lush, the air hot as a greenhouse. Just as one notices that the fern-edges are frost-bitten to brown, a cloud rolls majestically overhead, and coats are drawn on without delay. Shortly afterward the torrid sunshine floods down, and one pants in the rarefied air, while the toughest pony breaks out in sweat.
We would ride through a living greenwood of large koa, and the next paddock would shock as the veriest boneyard of blanched trunks and limbs, erect or prone. In one such, we moistened our throats with thimble-berries, less insipid than our California ones, and quite juicy and refreshing.
Resting loosely in saddle, we followed with our eyes the red cattle deploying with soft impact of tired hoofs. Next we would be over-edge driving into some wet ruddy gulch, where the ponies, machine-like but more reliable than any machine, slid steeply upon braced fours, into fainting depths and dauntlessly up the opposite walls, keeping the beeves in line.
Homeward bound, to show me more of the endless novelty we rode leisurely by a round-about way that led through a stretch of Kentucky bluegrass which would make a golfer’s paradise. This close lawn spread into the most beautiful wood I have ever seen. It was of thriving koa and ohia lehua, and would serve for the scene of legend or fairy tale. The lehua are of as great girth and height as the koa; the fair green gloom, trickled through with showers of sunrays, making the white-grey trunks gleam as in a dream forest, or like the spirits of trees. That a red-fibered plant may be so white outside, is of a piece with the wonder of white-skinned humanity. One looked for pure, exquisite wood-sprites to step into the emerald clearings and challenge the invader. Then, like a shot, the lovely tranquillity was shattered by the spurring of a pony after a frightened wild-pig, and I found myself very much occupied staying with the bounding, darting pursuit of my own steed. The black boar, at bay, almost underneath a mounted hunter, stood motionless except for the savage glint of eye, bristling crest along neck and back, and gnashing of tusks—the strangest, wildest note I have ever heard outside a nightmare. In this posture, with all outdoors around him offering a fighting chance, the animal menaced death and received it at full gaze.
Puaakala—akala blossom—is the eastern ranch house of PuuOO, and thither we rode for our last sleep on Mauna Kea. Raincoats and our few traveling effects were strapped behind on the saddles, and thus we set out, over an entirely different route, upon the return journey to the east coast.
Puaakala, roofed in red corrugated iron, was otherwise even more picturesque, more hand-made in appearance than the PuuOO eyrie, even the washing-bowl and the bath-tub being dubbed out of koa. That tub, long and narrow and sloped at one end, was unavoidably reminiscent of a stout coffin. The living room had an aged and mellow look, walled with beautifully seasoned wood. There were well filled bookcases and cupboards of koa, stands of rifles and shotguns, small koa tables bearing pots of flowers; and a large couch covered with a scarlet shawl that I fancied was an heirloom. The fireplace shed its warmth and glow upon the splendid woods, which gave back the cheer. Cooking and serving was done by another Nipponese cowboy, with a face like weathered mahogany, and whose usefulness in the saddle had passed. He, like Ondera, busied himself with our welfare like an old family nurse. Unlike Ondera, various small replicas of himself played charmingly upon the greensward outside.
The low front lanai, wreathed with honeysuckle, faced mauka. Makai of the house we wandered on foot at sunset through a grove of koa rooted in uneven velvet turf pastured by Holstein Frisian and Hereford cattle that made pictures at every turn.
That night, when I shut the koa panel that was my bedroom door, I became aware that Gauguin had not been the only young painter who left his mark upon wood. I found on the inner side an oil, manifestly not new, of a spray of akala berries and leaves. It had been done as long ago as 1882, on a visit by Howard Hitchcock, who has since attracted much attention by his fine canvases of Hawaii.
In a crisp dawn that tingled cheeks and gloved fingers, we took to the homeward trail, fifty miles down-mountain to the railroad. There we were to board train for Hilo, leaving the cowboys to lead our mounts back to PuuOO. It is the sort of traveling that only a seasoned rider should undertake. Not that it demands special horsemanship, for the ponies are surefooted and docile. But the approved gait is that steady jog-trot which one must, with at least simulated composure, maintain to the bitter end. This for five times ten miles, downhill at that, unrelieved by even a stop for lunch, and paced, mile in and mile out, by chunky little Japanese whose one duty was to see that we did not miss our train... I, fortunately, was a seasoned rider.