We decided this was our opportunity to see a hula, and asked the coachman at the hotel to make arrangements for us at a native house. As part of the preparations, he gave the performers some wine, so the dance was in full swing when we arrived. They had made leis, which they put on us and also on themselves. A fat but good looking native woman in a holoku danced, while some others played. Another pretty native woman said she was dying to dance, but her husband, a white man, was not willing, and the last time she did it he beat her, so she did not dare to try again. It was a strange scene—the native house, the dim lights, and the wild, suggestive dance.
The trip back to Honolulu, though only two hundred miles in length, occupied two nights and a day of rough and tumble sailing, after which we were happy to get to our bungalow and Chinaman once more.
Now, the Inter-Island boats leave Honolulu twice a week for Hilo and once a week for Kona and Kau, on the lee side of the island. It is quite a different trip from that in the old days. On the way to Hilo the first landing is usually at Kawaihae, an insignificant village, of no interest except for the great heiau of Kamehameha I, the last heathen temple erected in the Islands, dating from 1791. It is over two hundred feet long and one hundred feet wide, and the walls are twelve feet thick at the base. When this temple was dedicated to the favourite war-god of the King, besides vast quantities of fruit and great numbers of hogs and dogs, eleven human beings were sacrificed on the altar.
Hilo is to-day a modern city of 10,000 people, and the shipping point for all the sugar raised on the windward side of the island. A breakwater now in process of construction will make its harbour a perfectly safe anchorage for merchant ships.
One may make the entire circuit of the island by motor from Hilo. On a branch road from the highway to Kilauea is Green Lake, an emerald-tinted sheet of water occupying an old crater. In the forest surrounding this lake the rare pink begonia, an exquisite plant, used to grow, but I am told by Mr. Castle it has become extinct.
Continuing to the southwest, the road passes through the district of Kau to Kona. Here, indeed, is the "Paradise of the Pacific." Protected from the trade winds by the huge mountain masses of Mauna Loa and Hualalai, it enjoys mild breezes from the west, which blow in from the sea all day long but give place at sunset to a wind from the mountain that cools the night. The Hawaiians have a saying that in Kona "people never die; they dry up and blow away." Daily showers toward sunset and at night keep the vegetation ever fresh and green, and make this a rich agricultural region.
Honaunau, in Kona, contains the largest of the "cities of refuge," in the walls of which are stones weighing several tons raised as high as six feet from the ground. Within these massive walls were three large heiaus, also houses for the priests and refugees. The gates were always open, and the fugitive who had crossed the threshold was absolutely safe. Old men, women, little children, defeated soldiers, all were received here, and when once the great gods had taken them under their protection, they were safe even, when they returned to their homes.
It was on the coast of Kona, at Kaawaloa, that Captain Cook was killed by the natives. A monument has been erected there, which bears this inscription: "In Memory of the Great Circumnavigator Captain James Cook, R. N., who discovered these islands on the 18th of January, A. D. 1778, and fell near this spot on the 14th of February, A. D. 1779. This monument was erected in November, A. D. 1874, by some of his fellow countrymen."
At Kailua, a seashore village further north, is the old palace of the kings of the islands. This is far from imposing in its appearance. At this place one may watch a primitive method of shipping cattle. With their horns tied to the side of a rowboat, the poor creatures are dragged through the water to the steamer, then are hoisted on board by pulleys.
The road passes next through the Kohala district, in which the town of that name is of interest as the birthplace of Kamehameha the Great. The Kohala ditch, twenty-five miles long, brings water from the mountains to the sugar plantations, fifteen miles of the way through tunnels. One may leave the main road here and take a horseback ride along this ditch, from which one can enjoy the magnificent scenery of the Waipio and Waimanu valleys, enormous "gulches," separated by sheer precipices hundreds of feet in height.