Will break their hearts ere bitted and made;
Will fight like fiends as the rope cuts hard,
And die dumb-mad in the breaking-yard.”
Ukulele, on Haleakala, July 16.
Thirteen strong, we rode out from the ranch house this morning, beginning a week’s trip in the crater and on around through the Nahiku “Ditch” country. Besides the cowboys, gladsome brown fellows, overjoyed to go along, there were seven in the party, with a goodly string of pack animals trailing out behind. And bless my soul! if there wasn’t Louisa, meekly plodding under a burden of tent-poles and other gear. For Mr. Von Tempsky had now allotted me his own Welshman, “the best horse on the mountain.”
Fifty-four hundred feet above sea level, we stopped here at Ukulele, the dairy headquarters of the ranch. Why Ukulele, we are at loss to know, for nothing about the place suggests that minute medium of harmony. However, there is a less romantic connotation, for the definition of ukulele is literally “jumping louse,” which name was given by the natives to the first fleas imported. Let us hope the place was called after the instrument!
The ascent was steeper than below the ranch house, but it worked no hardship on horse or rider. We were in good season to “rustle” supper, and went berrying for dessert. Of course, there had to be a berry-fight between Jack and the two husky girls, who soon became weird and sanguinary objects, plastered from crown to heel with the large juicy akalas, which resemble our loganberries. Jack asserts that they are larger than hens’ eggs; but lacking convenient eggs, there is no proving him in error. Nothing does him more good than a whole-hearted romp with young people, and these were a match that commanded his wary respect.
After supper, we reclined upon a breezy point during a lingering sunset over the wide, receding earth, lifted high above the little affairs of men, and, still high above, the equally receding summit. We felt light, inconsequential, as if we had no place, no ponderability, no reality—motes poised on a sliver of rock between two tremendous realities.
Louis Von Tempsky recounted old legends concerning the House of the Sun, and the naming thereof, and the fierce warfare that is ever going on about its walls, between the legions of Ukiukiu and Naulu, the Northeast Trade and the Leeward Wind; and until we were driven indoors by the chill, we lay observing the breezy struggle beneath among opposing masses of driven clouds.
There is a continual temptation to digress and dwell upon the rich folk-lore. I am glad to note that Thomas G. Thrum, of Honolulu, has compiled a book entitled Hawaiian Folk Tales.