We rode past cane-plantations fenced with palm-tree trunks or hedged with huge prickly pear; past thickets of wild indigo and castor bean; through guava-jungles, where we pulled and ate the ripe fruit, yellow outside and pink within; past large fish-ponds that had been constructed for the chiefs in former days; past rice-fields where Chinese were scaring away the birds; past threshing-floors where Chinese were threshing rice; past kamani trees (from Tahiti) that looked like umbrellas slanting upward; past a flock of mina-birds brought from Australia; past aloe-plants and vast thickets of red and yellow lantana in blossom, reaching as high as our horses' necks.
We dismounted in front of a little grass hut where we heard the sound of a tappa-pounder, and went to the door. An old native woman, with her arms tattooed with India-ink, was sitting on a mat spread on the ground, with a sheet of moist red tappa lying over a beam placed on the ground in front of her, and a four-sided mallet in her hand. Beside her sat a young half-white girl with a large tortoise-shell comb in her hair and a fat little dog in her arms. We asked if we could come in and see the tappa. The old woman said "Yes," and displayed it with some pride. She was making it to give to Queen Emma, hence the pains she was taking with the coloring and the pattern. The bark of a shrub resembling our pawpaw tree is steeped in water until it becomes a mass of pulp. Then it is laid on the heavy beam and beaten with the tappa-pounder, and pulled and stretched until it becomes a square sheet with firm edges, about as thick as calico and six or eight feet square. The juice of berries or dye from the bark of trees furnishes the coloring, and the pattern is determined by the figures cut in the tappa-pounder. Some fine mats rolled-up in one corner and some braided baskets on the wall were also the work of this tappa-maker.
We passed through several villages as we neared our journey's end, and the scenery grew more interesting. The palm trees on the beach framed views of little islands bathed in sea-mist which lay half a mile or more from the shore. Narrow green valleys with high steep walls, down whose sides flashed bright waterfalls, opened to view one after another on the mouka or inland side. At the mouth of one we saw a twig of ohia, or native apple tree, placed carefully between two stones. Some superstitious native had put it there as an offering, that the goddess of that valley might not roll down rocks on him and kill him. The Pali, a stupendous perpendicular cliff four thousand feet high, faces the sea a few miles from Honolulu. We came in sight of it early in the afternoon, and stopped on a grassy knoll near a clear stream to eat our lunch and allow our horses to graze. The hardest part of the whole journey lay immediately before us. A zigzag path has been cut up the face of the cliff, but it is so steep and narrow that carriages cannot pass over it, and it is with much exertion and heavy panting that it can be climbed by man or beast. The face of the cliff is hung with vines and ferns, and at its base grow palms and the rich vegetation of the tropics. It is the grandest bit of scenery on Oahu. We rode our horses to the foot of the Pali: then, out of compassion for them, dismounted and led them up the long steep path, stopping several times to rest. On the way some natives passed us on horseback, racing up the Pali! At the top we stood a while in silence, gazing at the magnificent prospect spread out below us. We could see miles of the road we had come—silvery-green cane-plantations, little villages with white church-spires, rich groves of palm, kukui and koa, and the sea rising like a dark blue wall all around the horizon. Then we mounted and turned our faces toward Honolulu. On either side were lofty mountain-walls, with perpendicular sides clothed with vivid green and hung with silvery waterfalls. We were entering the city by Nuannu ("Cold Spring") Valley, the most delightful and fashionable suburb. Here were Queen Emma's residence, set in the midst of extensive and beautiful grounds, the Botanical Gardens, the residence of the American minister, the royal mausoleum and the house and gardens once occupied by Kalumma, a former queen. Crowds of gayly-dressed natives galloped past us as we neared the city, wearing wreaths of fern and flowers. One man carried a half-grown pig in a rope net attached to his stirrup: it looked tired of life. So, under the arching algaroba and monkey-pod trees that shade Nuannu Avenue, and past the royal palms that grace the yards, we rode into beautiful Honolulu.
Louise Coffin Jones.
FINDELKIND OF MARTINSWAND: A CHILD'S STORY.
There was a little boy a year or two since who lived under the shadow of Martinswand. Most people know, I should suppose, that the Martinswand is that mountain in the Oberinnthal where, several centuries ago, brave Kaiser Max lost his footing as he stalked the chamois and fell upon a ledge of rock, and stayed there, in mortal peril, for thirty hours, till he was rescued by the strength and agility of a Tyrol hunter—an angel in the guise of a hunter, as the chronicles of the time prefer to say. The Martinswand is a grand mountain, being one of the spurs of the greater Sonnstein, and rises precipitously, looming, massive and lofty, like a very fortress for giants, where it stands right across that road which, if you follow it long enough, takes you on through Zirl to Landeck—old, picturesque, poetic Landeck, where Frederic of the Empty Pockets rhymed his sorrows in ballads to his people—and so on, by Bludenz, into Switzerland itself, by as noble a highway as any traveller can ever desire to traverse on a summer's day. The Martinswand is within a mile of the little burg of Zirl, where the people, in the time of their kaiser's peril, came out with torches and bells, and the Host lifted up by their priest, and all prayed on their knees underneath the gaunt pile of limestone, which is the same to-day as it was then, whilst Kaiser Max is dust. The Martinswand soars up very steep and very majestic, bare stone at its base and all along its summit crowned with pine woods; and on the other side of the road that runs onward to Zirl are a little stone church, quaint and low, and gray with age, and a stone farm-house and cattle-sheds and timber-sheds of wood that is darkly brown from time; and beyond these are some of the most beautiful meadows in the world, full of tall grass and countless flowers, with pools and little estuaries made by the brimming Inn River that flows by them, and beyond the river the glaciers of the Sonnstein and the Selrain and the wild Arlberg region, and the golden glow of sunset in the west, most often seen from here through a veil of falling rain.
At this farm-house, with Martinswand towering above it and Zirl a mile beyond, there lived, and lives still, a little boy who bears the old historical name of Findelkind. His father, Otto Korner, was the last of a sturdy race of yeomen who had fought with Hofer and Haspinger, and had been free men always.
Findelkind came in the middle of seven other children, and was a pretty boy of nine years old, with slenderer limbs and paler cheeks than his rosy brethren, and tender, dreamy, dark-blue eyes that had the look, his mother told him, of seeking stars in midday—de chercher midi à quatorze heures, as the French have it. He was a good little lad, and seldom gave any trouble from disobedience, though he often gave it from forgetfulness. His father angrily complained that he was always in the clouds—that is, he was always dreaming—and so very often would spill the milk out of the pails, chop his own fingers instead of the wood, and stay watching the swallows when he was sent to draw water. His brothers and sisters were always making fun of him: they were sturdier, ruddier and merrier children than he was, loved romping and climbing and nutting, thrashing the walnut trees and sliding down snow-drifts, and got into mischief of a more common and childish sort than Findelkind's freaks of fancy. For indeed he was a very fanciful little boy: everything around had tongues for him, and he would sit for hours among the long rushes on the river's edge, trying to imagine what the wild green-gray water had found in its wanderings, and asking the water-rats and the ducks to tell him about it; but both rats and ducks were too busy to attend to an idle little boy, and never spoke, which vexed him.
Findelkind, however, was very fond of his books: he would study day and night in his little ignorant, primitive fashion. He loved his missal and his primer, and could spell them both out very fairly, and was learning to write of a good priest in Zirl, where he trotted three times a week with his two little brothers. When not at school he was chiefly set to guard the sheep and the cows, which occupation left him very much to himself, so that he had many hours in the summer-time to stare up to the skies and wonder, wonder, wonder about all sorts of things; while in the winter—the long, white, silent winter, when the post-wagons ceased to run, and the road into Switzerland was blocked, and the whole world seemed asleep except for the roaring of the winds—Findelkind, who still trotted over the snow to school in Zirl, would dream still, sitting on the wooden settle by the fire when he came home again under Martinswand. For the worst—or the best—of it all was that he was Findelkind also.