Then, sped by the warm “Aloha nui oe” we set our faces toward the expanse of lava that was to be our portion for a day. One’s principal impression, geographical as well as geological, of the journey, is of lava, and lava, and more lava—new lava of 1859, old lava, older lava, oldest lava, and wide waste of inexpressible ruin upon ruin of lava, lava without end. How present any conception of this resistless, gigantic fall of molten rock across which, mid-mountain, our road graded? The general aspect of stilled lava is little different from photographic portrayal of the living, fluid substance. It cools, and quickly, in the veriest shapes of its activity, and the traveler who misses the wonder of a moving mountain-side finds fair representation in the arrested flood. It needs little imagination to assist the eye to carry to the brain an illusion of movement in the long red-brown sweep from mountain top to sea margin. In many places we could see where hotter, faster streams had cut through slower, wider swaths; and again, following the line of least resistance, where some swift, deep torrent had burned its devastating way down between the rocky banks of a gully.
The pahoehoe lava preserves all its swirls and eddies precisely as they chilled in the long-ago or shorter-ago; while the a-a rears snapping, flame-like edges against obstructions, or has piled up of its own coolness in toothed walls. Incalculable, shimmering leagues below, purple-brown lava rivers lie like ominous shadows of unseen menaces upon plains of disintegrate eruptive stuff of our starry system that has for remote ages ceased to resemble lava.
Ribboning this strange, fire-licked landscape our road lay gray-white as ashes, at times spanning dreadful chasms where once had blown giant blisters and bubbles. These, chilling too suddenly, had collapsed, leaving caverns and bridges of material fragile as crystal, layer upon layer, which at close range looked to be molten metal, shining like grains of gold and silver mixed with base alloy.
Often our eyes lifted to the azure summer sea with its tracks like footprints of the winds, or as if the water had been brushed by great wings. And with that day, meeting the breezes of Windward Hawaii, there passed my Blue Flush into the limbo of heavenly memories.
Leaving the later flow, we traversed a land of lava so eternally ancient that it blossoms with fertile growth. Beautiful color of plant life springs from this seared dust of millenniums—cactus blossoming magenta and reddish-gold and snow-white; native hibiscus, flaunting tawny flames on high, scraggly trees of scant foliage; lehua’s crimson-threaded paint brushes; blue and white morning-glories and patches of crimson flowers, flung about like velvet rugs. And here one comes upon what remains of a sandalwood forest that was systematically despoiled by generations of traders from the time of its discovery somewhere around 1790, according to Vancouver. By 1816 the ill-considered deforesting of sandalwood had become an important industry of the Hawaiians, chief and commoner, with foreigners.
The wood was originally exported to India, though said to be rather inferior. Then the Canton market claimed the bulk of the aromatic timber, where it was used for carved furniture, as well as for incense. Even the roots were grubbed by the avaricious native woodsmen, and trade flourished until about 1835, when the government awoke to the imminent extermination of the valuable tree, and put a ban upon the cutting of the younger growth. But it is not surprising to learn that the tireless forethought of Kamehameha had long before protested against the indiscriminate barter, and particularly the sacrifice of the new growth.
The livelong day we had traveled upon privately owned ranches, and at last found ourselves on Parker Ranch, the largest in the Territory, approximately 300,000 acres, lying between and on the slopes of the Kohala Mountains to the north, knobby with spent blowholes, and great Mauna Kea, reaching into the vague fastnesses of the latter. This grand estate, estimated at $3,000,000, is the property of one small, slim descendant of the original John Parker who, with a beautiful Hawaiian maiden to wife, founded the famous line and the famous ranch, which is a principality in itself. Perhaps no young Hawaiian beauty, since Kaiulani, has commanded, however modestly, so conspicuous a place as that occupied by Thelma Parker.
Although we had gone with humane leisure, the horses fagged as the day wore. Often we walked to rest them and refresh our own cramped members, treading rich pasture starred with flowers we did not know, and keeping an eye to bands of Scotch beef-cattle, some of the 20,000 head with which little Thelma is credited. After the pampering climate of Kona, coats and carriage robes were none too warm at the close of day, when we neared the sizable post-office village of Waimea, headquarters of the enormous ranch.
Never shall be forgotten that approach to Waimea under Kohala’s jade-green mountains like California’s in showery springtime; nor the little craters in plain and valley—red mouths blowing kisses to the sun; nor yet tenderly painted foothills and sunset cloud-rack, and the sweet, cool wind and lowing herds.
“It seems like something I have dreamed, long ago,” Jack mused; for, year in and year out, often in sleep he wanders purposefully in a land of unconscious mind that his waking eyes have never seen.