It has been held that the flesh of Captain Cook was devoured, but this rumor is disproved by written accounts of officers of the Resolution and the Discovery. What probably gave rise to the impression of gustatory propensities in the Hawaiians at that time is the story that three hungry youngsters, prowling about during the ghastly ceremonial, picked up the heart and other organs that had been laid aside, and made a hearty lunch, taking them to be offal of some sacrificial animal. It is not recorded whether or not these gruesome giblets were already roasted! The three children lived to be old men in Lahaina. There seems to be no proof that the Hawaiians ever were cannibals—with the exception of the man on Oahu, before mentioned, where he was named Aikanaka, Man-Eater; whereas there is indisputable evidence that in extremity many Caucasians have eaten their fellows.
Always a rebellious memory will be mine that I allowed myself to be dissuaded by the Doctor from climbing the avalanched slope at the base of the pali in which those canoe-coffined bones of Kealakekua’s dead are shelved. It is even said that Kekupuohe, wife of Kalaniopuu, who was king of Hawaii at the time of its discovery by Captain Cook, is interred here. Such a burial place is rare in the Islands, for more frequently human relics were secreted beyond discovery, as in the case of the mighty warrior Kahekili, who died at Waikiki less than twenty years after Cook’s passing, and whose blanched bones were effectively hidden in some cave near Kaloko on the North Kona coast. Mine was a perfectly healthy yearning to brave the face of the cliff and peer into sunless cobwebby recesses to see what I could see. The open mouths of these aerie tombs were once barred by upright stakes. The fact that so few are now thus grated is said to be due to warships having used them as targets; while sailors rifled the lower caves.
Back on the lava masonry of the steamboat landing at Napoopoo, in the shade we ate luncheon, dangling our happy heels overside; after which Mr. Leslie carried us off again to his house, where he showed us the original Cook “monument,” the slab of vert, sea-worn copper, bearing the old scratched inscription. A man of deep content is the wealthy Mr. Leslie, who declares that he prefers life in this dreamy Polynesian haven, with his tranquil-sweet part-Hawaiian wife, to any place on earth. Perhaps his philosophy of happiness is somewhat like that of our Jack, who always comes back to this:
“A man can sleep in but one bed at a time; and he can eat but one meal at a time. The same with cigarettes, drink, everything. And, best of all, he can only love one woman at a time ... a long time, if he is lucky.”
August 26.
Mr. White, debonair and gay, on a nimble cattle pony, led up a guava-wooded trail that leads to a fair free range of upland, where we could give rein to the impatient horses, as on the Haleakala pasture-lands. Higher still, near the edge of the umbrageous woods we rounded in with a flourish at an inclosure containing a very old frame house, or connected group of houses of various periods. Here lives Mrs. Roy, Mrs. White’s part-Hawaiian mother of chiefly lineage.
Never were ranch-house precincts so bewitchingly harmonious. The garden is terraced shallowly, its grassy divisions hedged with flowering hibiscus, white and blush, coral, and crimson flame; and all about the rambling structure, bounded castle-like with a great barrier of eucalyptus, grows a tended riot of plants—red amaryllis, and glooms of heliotrope; young bananas, their long leaves like striped ribbons; tree-ferns in the deep, short-clipped sod; a sober cypress or two; tawny lilies, with splashes of blood in their hearts; a merry blow of Shirley poppies, white and crinkly and scarlet-edged like bonbons, and double rosettes of white and mauve and twilight-purple; steep gables of the dwelling smothered under climbing roses; and rarest roses blooming about the steps; flagged walks bordered with violets white and blue, distilling perfume.
And begonias amazingly everywhere. Begonias big, begonias little; begonias in sedate rows, pink and white; begonias in groups, and singly; begonias standing a dozen feet tall swaying like reeds in the wind; why, the very entrance to the charmed garden is by a gateway of withy begonias, afire like lanterns dripping carmine; wrist-thick and twenty feet in length, bent and bound into a triumphal arch of welcome. What had seemed the enormity of the Molokai begonias receded before these that were twice their height and girth. And speaking of Molokai reminds me that a guest at the Whites to-day is a relative of the Myers family—a magnificent woman, high-featured, high-breasted, with the form and presence of a goddess and the indefinable Hawaiian hauteur that dissolves before a smile.
The old house seems made of crannied nooks, and contains curious and antique furnishings that fared across the Plains or around Cape Horn; little steps up, little steps down, from room to room; or rooms joined by short paved walks drifted with flowers.
Later, continuing up Hualalai, we edged along lehua woods that would make a lumberman dream of untold wealth of sawmills; and I for one yearned toward the forest primeval of koa, still above, which we had not time to penetrate. Once this mountain was the property of the Princess Ruta Keelikolani, granddaughter of Kamehameha.