Christmas and New Year came and went, with all the gay observance of tree and feast and dancing. On both days, a swarm of men and women who had for years worked under Von, came like retainers to share in the holiday spirit—Hawaiian, Portuguese, Chinese and Japanese. And all played their part in music and merriment. The New Year’s Eve ball opened the new hall at Kahului’s race-track. Then there were the New Year’s races. In an unguarded moment I let fall that I had always been ambitious to ride in a race. Promptly Von took me up, and it was arranged that I should be one in the cow-girls’ contest on polo ponies. I demanded further practice in the required “cowboy” saddle, being used to the English tree. But almost incessant storms prevented much preparation, and none whatever on the race-course.
On the great day, after dancing all night, I entered the event on a horse and saddle I had never tried nor even seen before that day, upon a new track so deep in mud that several jockeys had already been hurt from falling horses. But the worst of it was that two “dark horses” proved to be rangy thoroughbreds. Armine and I, indignant but determined, managed despite to pass second and third under the wire, very close to the winner. The other thoroughbred was at our rear, along with the beaten ponies.
The weather did not permit the Haleakala camping I had so longed to repeat. I was especially disappointed, because the von Tempskys had some time previously made the startling discovery of heiaus in many of the interior cones of the main crater. They had so far guarded their fascinating secret; but in September, 1920, conducted to the treasure-trove the scientists of the new Polynesian Research Society. In all but two of the entire number of cones were found structures. These were of three descriptions—the first a sort of prayer heiau; the second, a type of burial heiau, “the passing place of priests,” in some of which skeletons were still preserved. The Kaupo natives say that the gray cinder-cone was for women, the black for men. A third variety, of which there were dozens in more or less demolished condition, were of the kind once used by Maui troops when they tried to hold Red Hill against an invading army from the Big Island. The floor of one cone held several small heiaus in a perfect state, while another crater bore nearly a dozen temples terraced upon its inner slopes. A sling-stone of antique pattern was the only relic they came across. I cannot imagine any exploration in Hawaii more alluring than this in Haleakala, and shall continue to burn for the chance, on horseback, to make at the side of cone after cone in the great House of the Sun.
I was to enjoy a new revelation of Hawaii, the Kona coast in winter. Gone was the Blue Flush, except the opalescent ghost of it at dawn or sunset. Instead, the horizon was keen as a steel-blue knife, though at times hardly darker than the deep blue sky. Seldom was the ocean like the streaked mirror I remembered. Winds blew fresh and stirred the surface into a semblance of more turbulent waters of the group.
Over the highway from the Volcano House, on through the Kau district, we drove close-protected as in a tent, in warm deluging rain-flurries that lightened to misty showers; out of rain-curtain into blazing sunshine that tore splendid vistas in the clouds mauka and to the crawling indigo sea far below. Lava from underneath Kilauea had broken out, in a fine spectacle, upon a bygone flow. The yacht Ajax, one hundred and ninety miles off-shore, had reported as plainly visible the glow from this Kau desert stream as well as from Halemaumau. But seeing the lower outburst entailed arduous tramping over sharp aa, and I, for one, having been a spectator of Samoa’s similar eruption on Savaii, decided not to spare the time and effort.
The Paris ranch was our goal. There we visited our friend Ethel who, with her brother, was administering the ranch. On the velvet lap of the mountain, the house rests in a close of natural lawn and rioting flowers. Oh, these gardens of Hawaii! It would seem that here the main effort might be not to stimulate growth, but to curb it from getting out of hand. This garden is inclosed by a low stone wall, above which rises a hedge bearing a profusion of rusty-orange flowers that make an arbor of the gate-arch. I loved to stroll down the pave of broad, flat volcanic flags, moss-grown, edged with amaryllis and iris, and then wander in the tree shade over the springy grass, breathing perfume of plumeria, magnolia, orange, my eyes full of the creamy color of their blooms and the scarlet and coral of tall hibiscus. The deep, rich loam in beds close to the house foundations was planted in luxuriant, tall begonias, red, pink, and blush, and many another flower that flourishes in this ardent clime; while the brilliant magenta Bougainvillea clambered up the pillars, screened the lanai, and banked upon its roof. In a leafy, damp ell of the building, I came upon an old well-top of mossy cement, that looked more like a beautiful miniature mausoleum.
Outside the garden, on the natural terraces, were untended coffee plants, with their green and red beans; the air-plant cassia (kolu), with bell-shaped flowers, tinged with pink. This is a native of Africa, and is a well known curiosity. Its leaf, allowed to lie on a table, will continue to grow from the crenate notches along its edges, deriving life from the air—hence, air-plant.
It was to this very spot where now stands the Paris home that from earliest times the missionaries came as a health resort when the tropical coast proved too warm for their New England blood.
Coffee raising in Kona, as in other sections of the Big Island, goes on apace. The tobacco industry can hardly be said to be firmly established, but its prospects are excellent. The leaf has the tropical flavor and quality, classing with “Havana” rather than with any of our “domestic” varieties. The 1920 crop was disposed of to a New York firm, who express faith that at no distant day the Hawaiian “weed” will occupy a permanent place in the American market.
One novel trip to me was on horseback to Kaawaloa, where is the Cook monument. The trail lies down a rocky ridge, on which one sees the site of that small heiau where Captain Cook’s body was dismembered, and where one may turn aside to look upon Lord Byron’s 1825 oaken cross with tablet to the memory of his slain countryman.