It gives an odd sensation to realize that one is traversing miles literally inside a high mountain. We thought of friends we should have liked to transport abruptly into this unguessable cavity. Oddly enough, as we progressed, it turned out that the warm color, so vivid from the summit, flushes only one side of the cones, like a fever not burned out; although ahead, on the opposite wall, there is a giant scar of perfect carmine.
At last we commenced to wind among crateresque hillocks, clothed with rough growths by the healing millenniums, until, far on, we could just glimpse the Promised Rest of verdure—clustered trees and smiling pasture, where our tents were to be pitched for two nights, while the beasts should graze. But the distance was as deceptive as a mirage, and we had still to endure many a sharp trail across fields of clinking lava, black and fragile as jet, swirled smoothly in the cooling process, and called pahoehoe; while the a-a lava, twisted and tormented into shapes of flame, licked against the blue-enamel sky. I never cease to feel a sense of aghastness before these stiff, upstanding waves of the slow, resistless molten rock, flung stark and frozen like the stilled waters of the Red Sea of old; and here, at the bases of the carven surges, are smooth sandy levels, dotted with shrubs, where one may gallop in and out as if at the bottom of a recessant ocean.
Involved in a maze of lava-flows among small gray cones, the vast aspect of the crater was lost. Still, turning, we could yet discern Magnetic Peak. In every direction the vistas changed from moment to moment; and wonder surged as we tried to grasp the immensity of the moribund volcano and its astounding details. Once we halted at the Bottomless Pit itself—a blowhole in the ground that had leisurely spat liquid rock, flake upon flake, until around its jagged mouth a wall piled up, of material so glassy light that large pieces could easily be broken off. And one must have a care not to lean too heavily, for judged by its noiseless manner of swallowing dropped stones, a human body falling into the well would never be heard after its first despairing cry.
There is but one chance to water animals until camp-ground is reached, and we found the pool dry—auwe! But the kanakas, carrying buckets, scaled the crater wall to a higher basin, from which they sent down a thin stream. One by one the horses drank while we rested in an oasis of long grass, cooling our flaming faces in the shade.
A mile or two more, and we reined up, to the cracking of rifle-shots, under the cliff at Paliku, a fairy nook of a camping spot where Mr. Von and the cowboys, having outdistanced us, were bringing down goat-meat for supper. I was guilty of inward treacherous glee that only one was killed, as that was plenty for our needs; and the spotted kids looked so wonderful upon a wall where we could see no foothold.
Camp had been planned in a luxuriant grove of opala and kolea trees close to the foot of the pali; but the ground being soggy from recent rains, we found better tent-space in the open, where sleek cattle grazed not far off, getting both food and drink from lush grass that grows the year round in this blossoming pocket of the desert. There are sections on the “dry” side of Maui where herds flourish entirely upon prickly cactus, having no other food or moisture. Only the weaker ones succumb to the spines of the cactus, and it is said that there are no finer cattle on the islands than the survivors.
All took a hand in settling camp, we women filling sacks with ferns, to serve as mattresses. The change of exercise was the best thing that could happen to us malihinis, else we might have stiffened from the many hours in saddle.
It was a starved company that smacked its lips at Von’s jerked beef broiling on a stick over a fire at the open tent-flap, behind which the rest of us sat and made ready the service on a blanket. For it is right cold of an evening, nearly 7000 feet in the air—a veritable refrigerating plant in the mansion of the Sun.
I hope, if ever I land in heaven, and it is anything half as attractive as this earth I go marveling upon, that it will not be incumbent upon me to keep a journal. Seeing and feeling are enough to keep one full occupied.
Paliku, to Hana, Maui, July 18.