Native cowboys, with shining eyes and teeth, gay in colored neckerchiefs, dashed about the pasture, working among the cattle. Upon the backs of detached ruminating cows sat the ubiquitous and impudent mynah birds, devouring pestiferous horn-flies. And we malihinis were amused and edified by the sworn statements of the men of our party, that the scraggly tails of the Kona horses, which had aroused our polite curiosity, are shaped by hungry calves patiently chewing this questionable fodder with scant protest from the larger beasts.
One feature of great human interest is a mammoth wall of large stones, four feet high, and more than wide enough to accommodate an automobile. It rose in a single day, by edict of Kamehameha, to inclose four hundred acres of choice grazing land. The people turned out en masse and toiled systematically under the genius of organization and the direction of his lieutenants.
One who has come to believe that the “trade winds make the climate of Hawaii,” cannot comprehend why, in Kona, lying north and south, where the trades are cut off by Mauna Loa’s bulk to the east and the dome of Hualalai to the north, this is the most “abnormally healthy” climate in the group. Explanation is found in the frequent afternoon and night rains resulting from the piling up, by a gentle west wind, of banks of cloud against the high lands. Toward sundown, whatever airs have been blowing from the west, die out, replaced by an all-night mountain breeze, chill and refreshing, which makes one draw the blankets close.
August 27.
“The little ship—the little old tub!” Jack fairly crooned, hanging up the telephone receiver. “It was Captain Warren, and they anchored last night in Hilo Bay. He says they ran into a stiff gale as soon as they got out of that Blue Flush calm of yours, and the big schooner that left Kailua the same day had to double-reef, while our audacious little tub weathered the big blow under regular working canvas. The captain’s voice was quite shaky with emotion when he said he was more in love with the Snark than ever.—Some boat, Mate-Woman, some boat!” And all during the drive to Kailua to call on Prince and Princess Kalanianaole he kept bubbling over with his joy in “the little tub.”
Prince Cupid had urged Dr. Goodhue to bring us to the Palace; but the meeting was doomed through carelessness of a Japanese servant who failed to deliver the Doctor’s telephoned message; and the couple, to our disappointment, were absent when we called.
We tied the team in the shade of banyan, and proceeded along the garden path between white-pillared royal palms to the mauka entrance, where we knocked again and again. Peering through the ajar door, we saw, at the farther end of a little reception hall, upon its man-high pedestal the marble head of King Kalakaua, heroic size, festooned with freshly made leis of the enamel-green mailé and glowing red roses. What furniture we could see was of koa and hair-cloth, reminiscent of our grand-parents.
So I was robbed of my opportunity to wander in the square wooden house of departed as well as deposed Polynesian royalty, that had surperseded the grass habitations of Hawaii’s undiscovered centuries. It was on the Kona coast, according to tradition, that the very first white navigators who flushed these Delectable Isles set their feet—the captain of a Spanish vessel that was wrecked at Keei, just below Kealakekua Bay. The only other survivor was his sister, and the natives received them kindly. Intermarrying, these Castilian castaways became the progenitors of well-known alii families, one of these being represented by Kaikioewa, a former governor of Kauai. There is also small doubt that the Sandwich Islands were discovered also by another Spaniard, Juan Gaetano, in 1555, since no other Europeans were navigating the Pacific at that early time.
The Princess’s garden is ravishing—a fragrant crush of heliotrope and roses and begonias, with shadowy bowers among tall vine-veiled trees. Our mind’s eye needed only the flower of all—the tropic grace of the Princess of the Palace.
August 29.