LEPER COLONY, ISLAND OF MOLOKAI.
At first the lepers resisted the attempt to banish them to the colony, and their relatives, who seemed to have no fear of the disease, concealed those who were afflicted, but this opposition decreased as the natives learned that the lepers were to be supported in comfort by the Government. They have a school, a library, newspapers, musical instruments, a theater, even moving-picture shows now, I am told—in short, everything is done to make their lives as pleasant and comfortable as possible.
Mark Twain writes of a beautiful custom in the colony. "Would you expect," he says, "to find in that awful leper settlement a custom worthy of transplanting to your own country? When death sets open the prison door of life there the band salutes the very soul with a burst of golden music."
On this island where the natives have retained their primitive habits and beliefs more than on the others of the group, the Poison God was saved at the time the idols were destroyed, a hundred years ago. It was kept here in charge of kahunas until near the end of the last century, and it is not definitely known whether it may not even now be in existence. This hideous image seems to have had the power to kill those who handled it. It has been suggested that it was made of some poisonous wood, and only the priests knew how to hold it without harm.
The boat reeled on through another rough passage to the double island of Maui, consisting of two great mountain peaks joined by a low isthmus of lava, which by degrees filled up the channel between the two original islands. We made endless stops, and by means of small boats took on and off freight, cattle, and passengers—native, Chinese and Japanese.
Our first landing was at Lahaina, once the capital of the group and the rendezvous for all the whaling ships in the Pacific. Now it is a dilapidated village, attractive only for its beautiful situation.
At Wailuku, at the northern end of the isthmus, was the home of "Father Alexander," well known as one of the early missionaries. The name Wailuku means "Water of Destruction." A great battle was fought near here by Kamehameha the Great.
Unfortunately we were unable to see the Ditch Trail, so well described by Jack London, or visit the famous Iao Valley, of which we had read such glowing descriptions. The entrance to this "gulch" is by a dark, wooded gorge that broadens out into an amphitheater surrounded by precipices as lofty as those of the Yosemite. These cliffs are covered with masses of trees, shrubs, and graceful, feathery ferns, which are veiled in turn by the mists from a thousand waterfalls. At the head of the valley stands the Needle, a natural watch-tower—of rock, but green with a luxuriant vegetation—to which the defeated army retreated in the battle of the Wailuku.
East Maui consists entirely of the huge extinct volcano of Haleakala, "house built by the sun." This, the largest extinct volcano on the surface of the globe, lifts its enormous crater, twenty miles in circumference, to the height of ten thousand feet above the sea. Some titanic eruption blew off the top of the mountain and scooped it out to the depth of two thousand feet. From the bottom of this vast cavity rise many cones—the largest a hill of seven hundred feet—and there are two great gaps in the walls, through which lava flows once made their way down to the plain. Here and there on the desert that forms the floor of the crater are scattered clumps of silversword, with long leaves shining in the sun. This plant grows only at a high altitude. Hunting for it is like hunting for the edelweiss in Switzerland. Its nearest botanical relative is found in the Himalaya Mountains. From the highest point of the rim of Haleakala these plants are said to appear about the size and brightness of silver dollars.