CHAPTER XIII.
“The world and men are just reciprocal,
Yet contrary. Spirit invadeth sense
And carries captive Nature. Be this true,
All good is Heaven, and all ill is Hell.”
Bailey.
The southern and most eastern portion of Hawaii was, at the period of this tale, in great part, a sterile, volcanic region, with but scanty vegetation and a scanty supply of water. Mauna Loa occupied the larger part, with its immense dome and volcano. It threw off on its flanks, vast rivers formed by the flow from its summit of torrents of lava, which, in cooling, broke up into a myriad of fantastic forms. In some places they presented large tracks of volcanic rock, in easy slopes, as smooth as if a sluggish stream of oil had been suddenly changed to stone,—in others, the sharp vitrified edges, broken, basaltic masses, and savage look of the whole, suggested the thought of a black ocean petrified at the instant when a typhoon begins to subside, and the waves running steeple high toss and tumble, break and foam, into a thousand wild currents and irregular shapes. No verdure of any kind found root in these wastes. The sole nourishment they offered was an occasional supply of rain-water, left in the hollows of the rocks. It was impossible to traverse them, unless the feet were protected by sandals, impenetrable to the heat which was reflected from the glassy surfaces of the smooth rock, or the knife-like edges of the jagged lava, which formed a path as unpleasant as if it had been freshly macadamized with broken beer bottles. Fresh currents of lava yearly flowed over the old, adding to the blackness of its desolation. The fumes of sulphur and other poisonous gases, the lurid glare of liquid rock, explosions and mutterings, belchings and heavings, the quaking and trembling of the fire-eaten ground and jets of mingled earth and water,—the very elements fuzed into whirlpools and fountains of nature’s gore, redder and more clotted than human blood, while fiery ashes obscured the sky, and heavy rocks shot up as if from hell’s mortars, burst high in the air, or fell far away from their discharging craters with the crash and roar of thunderbolts,—such at times were the scenes and atmosphere of much of this district.
Still the coasts and many of the valleys afforded sufficient arable ground to support quite a numerous population. The climate was as variable as the variety of altitudes it covered. On the seaside, to the leeward of the fire-mountains, it was burning with the heat of Sahara, and all but rainless, while the highest portions were almost continually enveloped in clouds and dense vapors. The natives were familiar with both the tropical palm and the frigid lichens, perpetual heat and perpetual cold, boiling springs and never melting ice, the precocious luxuriance and the utter sterility of nature, all within a circuit of not over one hundred and fifty miles.