A queen of the island Maui had also a promise given by Aiwohikupua. In her anger she hastened to Kauai and in the midst of the Kauai festivities revealed herself and charged the [[59]]chief with his perfidy. Poliahu turned against her husband and forsook him.
The chief’s friends made reconciliation between the Maui chiefess and Aiwohikupua, but when the day of marriage came the chiefess found herself surrounded by an invisible atmosphere of awful cold. This grew more and more intense as she sought aid from the chief.
At last he called to her: “This cold is the snow mantle of Poliahu. Flee to the place of fire!” But down by the fire the sun-mantle belonging to Poliahu was thrown around her and she cried out, “He wela e, he wela!” (“The heat! Oh, the heat!”) Then the chief answered, “This heat is the anger of Poliahu.” So the Maui chiefess hastened away from Kauai to her own home.
Then Poliahu and her friends of the white mantle threw their cold-wave over the chief and his friends and, while they shivered and were chilled almost to the verge of death, appeared before all the people standing in their shining robes of snow, glittering in the glory of the sun; then, casting once more their cold breath upon the multitude, disappeared forever from Kauai, returning to their own home on the great mountains of the southern islands.
It may have been before or after this strange legendary courtship that the snow-maiden met [[60]]Pele, the maiden of volcanic fires. Pele loved the holua-coasting—the race of sleds, long and narrow, down sloping, grassy hillsides. She usually appeared as a woman of wonderfully beautiful countenance and form—a stranger unknown to any of the different companies entering into the sport. The chiefs of the different districts of the various islands had their favorite meeting-places for any sport in which they desired to engage.
ICE-CRESTED CHIMBORAZO, ECUADOR, S.A.
(20,498 feet high)
There were sheltered places where gambling reigned, or open glades where boxing and spear-throwing could best be practised, or coasts where the splendid surf made riding the waves on surf-boards a scene of intoxicating delight. There were hillsides where sled-riders had opportunity for the exercise of every atom of skill and strength.
Poliahu and her friends had come down Mauna Kea to a sloping hillside south of Hamakua. Suddenly in their midst appeared a stranger of surpassing beauty. Poliahu welcomed her and the races were continued. Some of the legend-tellers think that Pele was angered by the superiority, real or fancied, of Poliahu. The ground began to grow warm and Poliahu knew her enemy.