[19] Muli-wai, literally a river, a poetical exaggeration. [↑]
[20] Wa’a-wa’a, simple-minded; unsophisticated; “green;” the name of two youths mentioned in tradition, one of whom committed blunder after blunder from his soft-hearted stupidity. [↑]
[21] Pohaku o Kaua’i. The most audacious terrestrial undertaking of the demigod Mawi was his attempt to rearrange the islands of the group and assemble them into one solid mass. Having chosen his station at Kaena Point, the western extremity of Oahu, from which the island of Kaua’i is clearly visible on a bright day, he cast his wonderful hook, Mana-ia-ka-lani, far out into the ocean that it might engage itself in the foundations of Kaua’i. When he felt that it had taken a good hold, he gave a mighty tug at the line. A huge bowlder, the Pohaku o Kaua’i, fell at his feet. The mystic hook, having freed itself from its entanglement, dropped into Palolo Valley and hollowed out the crater, that is its grave. This failure to move the whole mass of the island argues no engineering miscalculation on Mawi’s part. It was due to the underhand working of spiritual forces. Had Mawi been more politic, more observant of spiritual etiquette, more diplomatic in his dealings with the heavenly powers, his ambitious plans would, no doubt, have met with better success. [↑]
CHAPTER XXII
HIIAKA ADDRESSES POHAKU-O-KAUA’I—THE TWO WOMEN RIG UP A CANOE—SHE SALUTES KAENA—SALUTE TO HAUPU—SEES LOHIAU’S SPIRIT FORM
Hiiaka had large acquaintance with the natural features of every landscape, and if those features were of volcanic origin she might claim them as kindred through her own relationship with Pele. It was hers to find friendship, if not sermons, in stones. This Pohaku-o-Kaua’i, to whom Hiiaka now addressed herself, though in outward form an unshapen bowlder, as we see it today,—the very one that Mawi drew from its ocean-bed with his magic hook Mana-ia-ka-lani—was in truth a sentient being, alive to all the honor-claims of kinship. To him, in her need, Hiiaka addressed herself:
E Pohaku o Kaua’i i kai, e,
A po Ka-ena i na pali,
I wa’a no maua