As we were making the descent on one side we saw a party of natives on horseback winding down on the opposite. First rode three men, single file, with children perched in front of them, then three or four women in black or gay-colored holokus, then a boy who led two pack-mules laden with large baskets. All wore wreaths of ferns or flowers. When we met they greeted us with a hearty "Aloha!" ("Love to you!"), and in reply to a question in Hawaiian said that they were going to Honolulu with fresh fish, bananas and oranges.
We climbed the rocky pathway rising out of the valley, and found ourselves on the high table-land toward which we had shaped our course. It was smooth as a floor and covered with short rich grass. Instead of a broad road there were about twenty parallel paths stretching on before us as far as we could see, furrowed by the feet of horses and pack-mules. Miles away on either side was a line of lofty mountains whose serrated outlines were sharply defined against the evening sky. Darkness overtook us on this plateau, and the rest of the journey is a confused memory of steep ravines down whose sides we cautiously made our way, torrents of foaming water which we forded, expanses of dark plain, and at last the murmur of the ocean on the reef. After reaching sea-level again we passed between acres and acres of taro-patches where the water mirrored the large bright stars and the arrow-shaped leaves cast sharp-pointed shadows. We rode through the quiet little village of Waialua, sleeping beneath the shade of giant pride-of-India and kukui trees, without meeting any one, and forded the Waialua River just where it flows over silver sands into the sea. As we paused to let our horses drink I looked up at the cluster of cocoanut palms that grew upon the bank, and noticed how distinctly each feathery frond was pencilled against the sky, then down upon the placid river and out upon the gently murmuring sea, and thought that I had never gazed upon a more peaceful scene. Little did I think that it would soon be associated with danger and dismay. Beyond the river were two or three native huts thatched with grass, and a little white cottage, the summer home of Princess Lydia, the king's sister. Passing these, we rode over a smooth green lawn glittering with large bright dewdrops, and dismounted in front of the seminary-gate. The large whitewashed brick house, two stories and a half high, with wide verandas around three sides, looks toward the sea. In front of it is a garden filled with flowers and vines and shrubbery, the pride and care of the school-girls. There are oleander trees with rose-colored blossoms, pomegranate trees whose flowers glow amid the dark-green foliage like coals of fire, and orange and lime trees covered with fragrant white flowers, which the girls string and wear around their necks. Besides roses, heliotrope, geraniums, sweet-pea, nasturtium and other familiar flowers, there are fragrant Japanese lilies, and also plants and shrubs from the Micronesian Islands. On one side is a grove of tamarind and kukui-nut trees, mingled with tall cocoanut palms, which stretches to the deep, still river, a few rods away: on the other is the school-house, a two-story frame, painted white, shaded by tall pride-of-India trees and backed by a field of corn. My room opened on a veranda shaded with kukui trees, and as the "coo-coo-ee coo-coo-ee" of the doves in the branches came to my ears I thought that the trees had received their name from the notes of the doves, but afterward learnt that kukui in the Hawaiian language meant "light," and that the nuts, being full of oil, were strung on bamboo poles by the natives and used as torches.
The morning after my arrival I saw the girls at breakfast, and found them of all shades of complexion from deep chocolate-brown to white. Their glossy black hair, redolent of cocoanut oil, was ornamented with fresh flowers, and their bright black eyes danced with fun or languished with sullen scorn. The younger ones were bright and happy in their expression, but the older ones seemed already to realize the curse that rests upon their decaying race, and to move with melancholy languor, as if brooding over it in stifled rebellion or resigned apathy. Some would be called beautiful anywhere: they were graceful in form, had fine regular features and lovely, expressive eyes; others were attractive only on account of their animation; while one comical little negro girl, who had somehow got mixed with the Malay race, was as ugly as a Hottentot, and a veritable imp of darkness, as I afterward learned, so far as mischief was concerned. The girls were dressed in calico, and wore no shoes or stockings. When they had eaten their beef and poi, and we had finished our breakfast, each girl got her Hawaiian Testament and read a verse: then Miss G——, the principal, offered prayer in the same language. When this was over the routine work of the day began. Some of the older girls remained in the dining-room to put away the food, wash the dishes and sweep the floor; one went to the kitchen to wash the pots and pans; and the younger ones dispersed to various tasks—to sweep and dust the parlor, the sitting-room or the school-room, to gather up the litter of leaves and branches from the yard and garden-paths, or to put the teachers' rooms in order. The second floor and attic, both filled with single beds covered with mosquito-netting, were the girls' dormitories. Each girl was expected to make her own bed and hang up her clothes or put them away in her trunk. A luna, or overseer, in each dormitory superintended this work, and reported any negligence on the part of a girl to one of the teachers.
Miss G—— was the life and soul of the institution—principal and housekeeper and accountant, all in one. She had a faithful and devoted assistant in Miss P——, a young woman of twenty-two, the daughter of a missionary then living in Honolulu. My duties were to teach classes in English in the forenoon and to oversee the sewing and some departments of housekeeping in the afternoon. Miss P—— had the smaller children, Miss G—— taught the larger ones in Hawaiian and gave music-lessons.
The routine of the school-room from nine to twelve in the forenoon and from one till four in the afternoon was that of any ordinary school, except that the girls who prepared the meals were excused earlier than the others. One day in the week was devoted to washing and ironing down on the river-bank and in the shade of the tamarind trees.
The girls had to be taught many things besides the lessons in their books. At home they slept on mats on the floor, ate poi out of calabashes with their fingers and wore only the holoku. Here they were required to eat at table with knife and fork and spoon, to sleep in beds and to adopt the manners and customs of civilization. Now and then, as a special privilege, they asked to be allowed to eat "native fashion," and great was their rejoicing and merrymaking as they sat, crowned with flowers, on the veranda-floor and ate poi and raw fish with their fingers, and talked Hawaiian. They were required to talk English usually until the four-o'clock bell sounded in the afternoon. From that until supper-time they were allowed to talk native, and their tongues ran fast.
On Wednesday afternoons the girls went to bathe in the river, and on Saturday afternoons to bathe in the sea. It usually fell to my lot to accompany them. The river, back of the house a few rods, had steep banks ten or fifteen feet high and a deep, still current. The girls would start to run as soon as they left the house, race with each other all the way and leap from the bank into the river below. Presently their heads would appear above water, and, laughing and blowing and shaking the drops from their brown faces, they would swim across the river. The older girls could dive and swim under water for some distance. They had learned to swim as soon as they had learned to walk. They sometimes brought up fish in their hands, and one girl told me that her father could dive and bring up a fish in each hand and one in his mouth. The little silver-fish caught in their dress-skirts they ate raw. The girls were always glad when the time came to go swimming in the sea, for they were very fond of a green moss which grew on the reef, and the whole crowd would sit on rocks picking and eating it while the spray dashed over them.
Waialua means "the meeting of the waters," or, literally, "two waters," and the place is named from the perpetual flow and counterflow of the river and the ocean tide. The river pours into the sea, the sea at high tide surges up the river, beating back its waters, and the foam and spray of the contending floods are dashed high into the air, bedewing the cluster of cocoanut palms that stand on the bank above watching this perpetual conflict. In calm weather and at low tide there is a truce between the waters, and the river flows calmly into the sea; but immediately after a storm, when the river is flooded with rains from the mountains and the sea hurls itself upon the reef with a shock and a roar, then the antagonism between the meeting waters is at its height and the clash and uproar of their fury are great.
Sometimes we went on picnic excursions to places in the neighborhood—to the beach of Waiamea, a mile or two distant, where thousands of pretty shells lay strewn upon the sand and branches of white coral could be had for the picking up, or to the orange-groves and indigo-thickets on the mountain-sides, where large sweet oranges ripened, coming back wreathed with ferns and the fragrant vine maile.
But we had plenty of oranges without going after them. For half a dollar we could buy a hundred large fine oranges from the natives, who brought them to the door, and we usually kept a tin washing-tub full of the delicious fruit on hand. A real (twelve and a half cents) would buy a bunch of bananas so heavy that it took two of us to lift it to the hook in the veranda-ceiling, and limes and small Chinese oranges grew plentifully in the front yard. Of cocoanuts and tamarinds we made no account, they were so common. Guavas grew wild on bushes in the neighborhood, and made delicious pies. For vegetables we had taro, sweet potatoes and something that tasted just like summer squash, but which grew in thick, pulpy clusters on a tree. The taro was brought to us just as it was pulled, roots and nodding green tops, and of the donkey who was laden with it little showed but his legs and his ears as his master led him up to the gate. Another old man furnished boiled and pounded taro, which the girls mixed with water and made into poi. He brought it in large bundles wrapped in broad green banana-leaves and tied with fibres of the stalk. He had two daughters in the school, and always inquired about their progress in their studies. One day, happening to look out of the front door, I saw him coming up the garden-walk. He had nothing on but a shirt and a malo (a strip of cloth) about his loins: the malo was all that the natives formerly wore. Neither the girls who were weeding their garden, nor the other teachers who were at work in the parlor, seemed to think that there was anything remarkable in his appearance. He talked with Miss G—— as usual about the supply of taro for the school, and inquired how his girls were doing. When he was going away she said, "Uncle, why do you not wear your clothes when you come to see us? I thought you had laid aside the heathen fashion." He replied that he had but one suit of clothes, and that he must save them to wear to church, adding that he was anxious to give his daughters an education, and must economize in some way in order to pay for their schooling.