Kalaupapa, Wednesday, July 3, 1907.
“Quick! First thought! Where are you?” Jack quizzed, as through the jasmine we peered at a score of vociferous lepers running impromptu horse races on the rounding face of the green. Remote, fearsome Molokai, where the wretched victims of an Asiatic blight try out their own fine animals for the prize events of the Glorious Fourth! And all forenoon we listened to no less than four separate and distinct brass bands practicing in regardless fervor for the great day. Laughing, chattering wahines bustled about the sunny landscape, carrying rolls of calico and bunting; for they, too, will turn out in force on the morrow to show how the women of Hawaii once rode throughout the kingdom, following upon that gift of the first horse by Captain Cook to Kamehameha, astride in long, flowing skirts of bright colors—the pa’u riders of familiar illustrations.
Mr. McVeigh, satisfaction limned upon his Gaelic countenance at all this gay preparation, is much occupied, together with his kokuas (helpers), in an effort to forestall another brand of conviviality that is sought by the lepers on their feast days; and, denied all forms of alcohol, they slyly distil “swipes” from anything and everything that will ferment—even potatoes.
But the lusty Superintendent was not too busy to plan for us a ride to the little valleys of the pali. There was an odd assortment of mounts—every one of which, despite the appearance of two I could name, was excellent in its way. Jack’s allotment was a stout, small-footed beastie little larger than a Shetland, and to me fell an undersized, gentle-seeming white palfrey. To my observant eye, Jack looked more than courtesy would allow him to express, for his appearance was highly ridiculous. Although of medium height, his feet hung absurdly near the ground, and his small Australian saddle nearly covered the pony.
We ambled along for a short distance, when our host’s huge gray suddenly bolted, followed by the others, and I as suddenly became aware that my husband was no longer by my side. The next instant I was in the thick of a small stampede across country, the meekness of the milk-white palfrey a patent delusion and snare, while Jack’s inadequate scrap, leaping like a jackrabbit, had outdistanced the larger horses. Every one was laughing, and Jack, now enjoying the practical joke, waved an arm and disappeared down Damien Road in a cloud of red dust.
Pulling up to a decorous gait through Kalawao, we left the peninsula and held on around the base of the pali till the spent breakers washed our trail, where a tremendous wall of volcanic rock rose abruptly on the right. The trail for the most part was over bowlders covered with seaweed, and we two came to appreciate these pig-headed little horses whose faultless bare hoofs carried us unslipping.
Skirting the outleaning black wall, we looked ahead to a coast line of lordly promontories that rise beachless from out the peacock-blue ocean, and between which are grand valleys inaccessible except by boat and then only in calm weather. Two of these valleys, Pelekunu and Wailau, contain settlements of non-leprous Hawaiians, who are said to live much as they did before the discovery of the Islands, although they now sell their produce to the Leper Settlement.
Turning into the broad entrance of a swiftly narrowing cleft called Waikolu, we rode as far as the horses could go, and some nice problems were set them on the sliding, crumbling trail. We overheard the Superintendent’s undertone to Dr. Goodhue: “No malihini riders with us to-day!” which is encouragement that we may be permitted to travel the coveted zigzag out of the Settlement. Then tethering the animals in the kukui shade, we proceeded on foot up a muddy steep where the vegetation, drenched overnight with rain, in turn drenched us and cooled our perspiring skins. Except for the trail—and for all we knew that might have been a wild-pig run—the valley appeared innocent of man; but presently we gained to where orderly patches of water taro with its heart-shaped leaves terraced the steep, like a nursery of lilies, and glimpsed idyllic pictures of grass-houses clinging to ferny ledges of the mountain side, shaded by large banana and breadfruit trees, and learned that in these upland vales live certain of the lepers who, preferring an agricultural life, furnish the Settlement with vegetables and fruit. And we tried some “mountain apples,” the ohia ai, as distinguished from the ohia lehua which furnishes a beautiful dark hardwood. This fruit is pear-shaped, red and varnished as cherries, and sweet and pulpy like marshmallows.
Here were also many pandanus trees (pandanus ordoratissimus), called lauhala or hala by the natives. Lest one fall into the misconception that the Hawaiian tongue is a simple one, or depreciate the manifold importance of the pandanus, it is interesting to note that the tree itself is known more strictly as puuhala; the flat, pointed knives of leaves, lauhala; the edible nut growing at the base, ahuihala; the flower from which leis are strung, hinana. Aakala are the many stilted aerial roots which uphold the tree and even branch downward from some of the limbs. These gradually lift the trunk, at the same time anchoring it to the ground in all directions. They bear a very slight resemblance to the mangrove, but are straight, while the other writhes into an inextricable tangle. The pandanus is also familiarly spoken of as the screw-pine, from the manner in which its sheaves of blades twist in a perfect spiral upon the hole.
The number of its benefits to mankind is rivaled only by the coconut. The puuhala, besides furnishing food in the shape of nuts and esthetic pleasure by its orange leis and its tropical beauty, is the staple for mat-, hat-, fan-, and cushion-weaving. Of old, strands of its fiber went to make deadly slings for warfare. The fibrous wood of the mature trees is hard and takes so high a polish that it is used in making the handsome turned bowls that have come to be known as calabashes.