It will fascinate many an older person than a child in years to learn, whatever we know or do not know about fairies, that in truth there is a foundation, in the lore of Hawaii, for the belief in Brownies. Tradition says that they were the original people of these Islands—an adventurous and nomadic tribe known as Menehunes, sprightly, cunning, and so industrious that it was their rule that any work undertaken must be entirely accomplished in one night. If it were not, it would never be finished, since they would not put their hand twice on one task. An ancient uncompleted wall of a fish-pond, on Kauai, is by credulous natives laid to the fact that the Menehunes neglected to begin work until midnight, and dawn found them but half done. To those who may smile at this legend, I can only point out the Little Peoples whom Martin Johnson has but lately discovered in both the Solomons and New Hebrides, moving-pictures of which I have seen: veritable Brownies, if better-proportioned than our fairy-tale books would have us believe of Menehunes.
We are going to rest upon our hikie (hik-e-a), the same being a contrivance of hard boards, seven feet square, laid deep, native fashion, with lauhala mats, and haole quilts made to measure, with warmer covering at hand for the crisp small hours.
Paliku, Crater of Haleakala, July 17.
And it’s ho! for the crater’s rim, to look over into the mysterious Other Side from the tantalizing skyline that promises what no other horizon in all the world can give. Hail, Haleakala! It’s boots and saddles for the unroofed House of the Sun, the largest extinct crater in existence! What will it be like? (“Nothing you’ve ever seen or dreamed,” assures one.) Shall we be disappointed? (“Not if you’re alive!” laughs another.) Jack gives me a heaving hand into the saddle, and my Welshman strikes a swinging jog-trot that plays havoc with the opu-full—opu being stomach—with which my terrible mountain appetite has been assuaged.
Rolling grasslands give place to steep and rugged mountain, with sparse vegetation. Here and there gleams a sheaf of blades, the “silver-sword,” with a red brand of blossoms thrusting from the center; or patches of “silver verbena,” a velvet flower that presses well and serves as edelweiss for Haleakala. Stopping to breathe the horses, we nibble ohelo berries, like cranberries, but with a mealy-apple flavor, like the manzanita-berries of California. There is wild country up here, where sometimes cattle and ranging horses are pulled down by wild dogs; and back in the fastnesses, even mounted cowboys, rounding up the stock, have been attacked.
Somebody is singing all the time. If it is not Mr. Von’s tenor, one hears Mr. Thurston’s pleasant voice on the breeze, attempting a certain climacteric note that eludes his range at the end of “Sweet Lei Lehua.”
Over the sharp, brittle lavas of antiquity our horses, many barefooted, their hoofs like onyx, scramble with never a fall on the panting steeps; on and on, up and up, we forge, with a blithe, lifting feel in the thin and thinner air, while the great arc of the horizon seems ever above eye level. Rings a thrilling call from ahead that the next rise will land us on the jagged edge of the hollow mountain. I am about to join the charge of that last lap when a runaway packhorse—none other than Louisa—diverts my attention to the rear. When I turn again, the rest are at the top—all but Jack, who faces me upon his Pontius Pilate, until I come up. “I wanted to see it with you,” he explains, and together we follow to Magnetic Peak—so-called what of its lodestone properties. And then...
More than twenty miles around its age-sculptured brim, the titanic rosy bowl lay beneath; seven miles across the incredible hollow our eyes traveled to the glowing mountain-line that bounds the other side, and, still above, across a silver sea, high in the sky ... we could not believe our vision that was unprepared for such ravishment of beauty. Surely we beheld very Heaven, the Isles of the Blest, floating above clouds of earth—azure, snow-crowned peaks so ineffably high, so ungraspably lovely, that we forgot we had come to see a place of ancient fire, and gazed spellbound, from our puny altitude of ten thousand feet, upon peaks of snow all unrelated to the burned-out world on which we stood.
It was only Mauna Kea—Mauna Kea and its twin, Mauna Loa, on the Big Island of living fire, half again as high as our wind-swept position; but so remote and illusive were they, that our earthborn senses were incapable of realizing that their sublimity was anything more than a day-dream, and that we looked upon the same island, the loftiest on the globe, that had greeted our eyes from the Snark.
“It never palls,” Armine whispered solemnly, the dew in her forget-me-not-blue eyes. And her father, who had stood here uncounted times, soberly acquiesced. I knew, with certitude birthed of the magic moment, that my memory, did I never return, would remain undimmed for all my days.