| * | * | * | * | * | * |
For the first four miles the country was open and uneven, and beautifully sprinkled with clumps, groves, and single trees of the bread fruit, pandanus, and candle tree. We then came to a wood, four miles in width, the outskirts of which exhibited a rich and delightful foliage. It was composed principally of the candle tree, whose whitish leaves and blossoms afforded a fine contrast to the dark green of the various parasitical plants which hung in luxuriant festoons and pendants from their very tops to the ground, forming thick and deeply shaded bowers round their trunks. The interior was far less interesting, presenting nothing but an impenetrable thicket, on both sides of the path. This was excessively rough and fatiguing, consisting entirely of loose and pointed pieces of lava, which from their irregularity and sharpness, not only cut and tore our shoes, but constantly endangered our feet and ankles. The high brake, ginger, &c., which border and overhung the path, were filled with the rain of the night, and added greatly, from their wetness, to the unpleasantness of the walk. An hour and a half, however, saw us safely through, and refreshing ourselves in the charming groves with which the wood was here again bordered. The whole of the way from this place to within a short distance of the volcano, is very much of one character. The path, formed of black lava, so smooth in some places as to endanger falling, and still showing the configuration of the molten stream as it had rolled down the gradual descent of the mountain, leads midway through a strip of open uncultivated country, from three to five miles wide, skirted on both sides by a ragged and stinted wood, and covered with fern, grass, and low shrubs, principally a species of the whortleberry. The fruit of this, of the size of a small gooseberry, and of a bright yellow color, tinged on one side with red, was very abundant, and though of insipid taste, refreshing from its juice. There are no houses near the path, but the thatch of a cottage was occasionally observed peeping from the edge of the wood; and here and there the white smoke of a kindling fire curled above the thick foliage of the trees. Far on the right and west, Mounaloa and Mounakea were distinctly visible; and at an equal distance, on the left, and east, the ocean, with its horizon—from the height at which we viewed it, mingling with the sky.
We dined thirteen miles from the bay, under a large candle tree, on a bed of brake, collected and spread by a party of people who had been waiting by the wayside to see the "alii nui mai Perekania mai," the great chief from Britain. About two miles farther we came to the houses erected for our lodgings the first night. Thinking it, however, too early to lie for the day, after witnessing a dance performed by a company from the neighboring settlements, we hastened on, intending to sleep at the next houses, ten miles distant; but night overtaking us before we reached them, just as darkness set in we turned aside a few rods to the ruins of two huts, the sticks only of which remaining. The natives, however, soon covered them with fern, the leaves of the Kukui, &c., a quantity of which they also spread upon the ground, before spreading the mats which were to be our beds.
Our arrival and encampment produced quite a picturesque and lively scene; for the islanders, who are not fond of such forced marches as we had made during the day, were more anxious for repose than ourselves, and proceeded with great alacrity to make preparations for the night.
The darkness, as it gathered round us, rendered more gloomy by a heavily clouded sky, made the novelty of our situation still more striking.
Behind the huts, in the distance, an uplifted torch of the blazing kukuinut here and there indistinctly revealed the figures and costume of many, spreading their couches under the bushes in the open air; the more curious of our dusky companions, both male and female, meanwhile pressing in numbers round our circle, as if anxious to "catch the manners living as they rose."
A large fire of brush wood, at some distance in front, exhibited the objects of the foreground in still stronger lights and shadows. Groups of both sexes, and all ages, were seated or standing round the fire, wrapped up from the chillness of the evening air, in their large kiheis or mantles, of white, black, green, yellow, and red.
Some smoking, some throwing in, and others snatching from the embers, a fish or potato, or other article of food; some giving a loud halloo, in answer to the call of a straggler just arriving; others wholly taken up with the proceedings of the sailors cooking our suppers, and all chattering with the volubility of so many magpies.
By daylight the next morning we were on the road again.