Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands written by Charles Nordhoff

C >> Charles Nordhoff >> Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands

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As for the common people, they are by nature or long custom, or both, as
kindly and hospitable as men can be. If you ask for lodgings at night-fall
at a native hut, you are received as though you were conferring a favor;
frequently the whole house, which has but one room, is set apart for you,
the people going elsewhere to sleep; a chicken is slain in your honor, and
for your exclusive supper; and you are served by the master of the house
himself. The native grass-house, where it has been well built, is a very
comfortable structure. It has but a single room, calico curtains serving
as partitions by night; at one end a standing bed-place, running across
the house, provides sleeping accommodations for the whole family, however
numerous. This bed consists of mats; and the covers are either of tapa
cloth--which is as though you should sleep under newspapers--or of
blankets. The more prosperous people have often, besides this, an enormous
bedstead curtained off and reserved for strangers; and you may see the
women take out of their chests, when you ask hospitality, blankets,
sheets, and a great number of little pillows for the bed, as well as often
a brilliant silk coverlet; for this bed appears to be like a Cape Cod
parlor--for ornament rather than use. The use of the dozen little pillows
puzzled me, until I found that they were intended to tuck or wedge me in,
so that I should not needlessly and uncomfortably roll about the vast bed.
They were laid at the sides, and I was instructed to "chock" myself with
them. On leaving, do not inquire what is the cost of your accommodations.
The Hawaiian has vague ideas about price. He might tell you five or ten
dollars; but if you pay him seventy-five cents for yourself and your
guide, he will be abundantly and thoroughly satisfied.

[Illustration: THE CRATER OF KILAUEA--ONE PHASE.]

CHAPTER II.

HILO, WITH SOME VOLCANOES.

Hilo, as you will perceive on the map, lies on the eastern or windward
side of the Island of Hawaii. You get there in the little inter-island
steamer _Kilauea_, named after the volcano, and which makes a weekly tour
of all the Islands except far-off Kauai, which it visits but once a month.
The charge for passage is fifteen dollars from Honolulu to Hilo, and
twenty-five dollars for the round trip.

The cabin is small; and as you are likely to have fine weather, you will,
even if you are a lady, pass the time more pleasantly on deck, where the
steward, a Goa man and the most assiduous and tactful of his trade, will
place a mattress and blankets for you. You must expect to suffer somewhat
from sea-sickness if you are subject to that ill, for the passage is not
unlikely to be rough. On the way you see Lahaina, and a considerable part
of the islands of Maui and Hawaii; in fact, you are never out of sight of
land.

If you start on Monday evening you will reach Hilo on Wednesday--and
"about this time expect rain," as the almanac-makers say. They get about
seventeen feet of rain at Hilo during the year; and as they have sometimes
several days without any at all, you must look for not only frequent but
heavy showers. A Hilo man told me of a curious experiment which was once
made there. They knocked the heads out of an oil-cask--so he said--and it
rained in at the bung-hole faster than it could run out at the ends. You
may disbelieve this story if you please; I tell it as it was told me; but
in any case you will do well to provide yourself for Hilo and the volcano
journey with stout water-proof clothing.

Hilo, on those days when the sun shines, is one of the prettiest places on
the Islands. If you are so fortunate as to enter the bay on a fine day
you will see a very tropical landscape--a long, pleasant, curved sweep of
beach, on which the surf is breaking, and beyond, white houses nestling
among cocoa-nut groves, and bread-fruit, pandanus, and other Southern
trees, many of them bearing brilliant flowers; with shops and stores along
the beach. Men and boys sporting in the surf, and men and women dashing on
horseback over the beach, make up the life of the scene.

Hilo has no hotel; it has not even a carriage; but it has a very
agreeable and intelligent population of Americans, and you will find good
accommodations at the large house of Mr. Severance, the sheriff of Hawaii.
If his house should be full you need not be alarmed, for some one will
take you in.

This is the usual and most convenient point of departure for the volcano.
Here you hire horses and a guide for the journey. Having gone to Hilo on
the steamer, you will do best to return to Honolulu by schooner, which
leaves you at liberty to choose your point and time of departure. Hawaii
lies to windward of Oahu; and a schooner, which might need four or
five days to beat up to Hilo, will run down from any part of Hawaii in
twenty-four hours. If you are an energetic traveler, determined to see
every thing, and able to endure a good deal of rough riding, you may spend
six weeks on Hawaii. In that time you may not only see the active volcano
of Kilauea, but may ascend Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, whose immense slopes
and lofty and in the winter snow-clad summits show gloriously on a clear
day from Hilo; and you may ride from Hilo along the north-eastern
coast, through the Hamakua and Kohala districts, ending your journey at
Kealakeakua Bay where Captain Cook was killed. There you can take schooner
for Honolulu; or if your energies hold out ride through Kau and Puna
back to Hilo.

The Hamakua and Hilo coasts you will see from the steamer, which sails
close along this bold and picturesque shore on her way to Hilo. This part
of the island is but an extension of the vast slope of Mauna Kea; and
all the waters which drain from its cloud-laden summit pour into the
sea through numerous deep channels, or gorges which they have worn for
themselves, and occasionally dash into the ocean from high cliffs, forming
water-falls visible from the ship's deck. Of the gorges or canons, there
are seventy-nine in a distance of about thirty miles; many of them are
from five to eight hundred feet deep; and as you ride along the coast, you
have no sooner emerged from one of these deep pits than you descend by a
road seldom easy, and often very steep indeed, into another. The sides of
these gorges are lined with masses of the most magnificent ferns, and at
their bottoms you find sparkling streams; and as you look up the canons
you see picturesque water-falls. In short, to the lover of bold and
strange scenery this ride offers many pleasures; and that its difficulties
may not be exaggerated to any one's apprehension, I will mention that
during the spring of 1873 an English lady, taking with her only a native
woman as guide, made the tour of the whole seventy-nine gulches, and
thought herself amply rewarded for her toils by what she saw. As for
myself, I must confess that four of these gulches--the four nearest
Hilo--satisfied me; these I saw in visiting some sugar-plantations.

[Illustration: KEALAKEAKUA BAY, WHERE CAPTAIN COOK WAS KILLED.]

If you do not intend such a thorough exploration of Hawaii, but mean only
to see the volcano of Kilauea, your pleasantest plan is to ride from Hilo
by the direct road to the crater, and return by way of Puna. You will have
ridden a trifle over one hundred miles through a very remarkable and in
some parts a beautiful country; you will have slept one night in a native
house, and will have seen much of Hawaiian life, and enjoyed a tiring but
at the same time a very novel journey, and some sights which can not be
matched outside of Iceland. To do this, and spend two or three days in
pleasant sight-seeing near Hilo, will bring you back to Honolulu in from
twelve to fourteen days after you left it.

Your traveling expenses will be sufficiently moderate. At Hilo you pay for
board and lodgings eight dollars per week. The charge for horses is ten
dollars each for the volcano journey, with a dollar a day for your guide.
This guide relieves you of all care of the animals, and is useful in
various ways. At the Volcano House the charge for horse and man is five
dollars per day, and you pay half-price for your guide. There is a charge
of one dollar for a special guide into the crater, which is made in your
bill, and you will do well to promise this guide, when you go in, a small
gratuity--half a dollar, or, if your party is large, a dollar--if he gives
you satisfaction. He will get you specimens, carry a shawl for a lady, and
make himself in other ways helpful.

[Illustration: THE VOLCANO HOUSE.]

When you get on your horse at Hilo for the volcano, leave behind you all
hope of good roads. You are to ride for thirty miles over a lava bed,
along a narrow trail as well made as it could be without enormous expense,
but so rough, so full of mud-holes filled with broken lava in the first
part of the journey, and so entirely composed of naked, jagged, and ragged
lava in the remainder, that one wonders how the horses stand it. A canter,
except for two or three miles near the Volcano House, is almost out of the
question; and though the Hawaiians trot and gallop the whole distance, a
stranger will scarcely follow their example.

You should insist, by-the-way, upon having all your horses reshod the day
before they leave Hilo; and it is prudent, even then, to take along an
extra pair of shoes and a dozen or two horse-nails. The lava is extremely
trying to the horse's shoes; and if your horse casts a shoe he will go
lame in fifteen minutes, for the jagged lava cuts almost like glass.

Moreover, do not wait for a fine day; it will probably rain at any rate
before you reach the Volcano House, and your wisest way is to set out
resolutely, rain or shine, on the appointed morning, for the sun may
come out two or three hours after you have started in a heavy rain. Each
traveler should take his water-proof clothing upon his own saddle--it may
be needed at any time--and the pack-mule should carry not only the spare
clothing, well covered with India-rubber blankets, but also an abundant
lunch to be eaten at the Half-way House.

India-rubber or leather leggings, and a long, sleeveless Mackintosh seemed
to me the most comfortable and sufficient guards against weather. Ladies
should ride astride; they will be most comfortable thus. There are no
steep ascents or abrupt descents on the way. Kilauea is nearly four
thousand feet higher than the sea from which you set out; but the rise
is so gradual and constant that if the road were good one might gallop a
horse the whole distance.

You should set out not later than half-past seven, and make up your mind
not to be hurried on the way. There are people who make the distance
in six hours, and boast about it; but I accomplished it with a party of
ladies and children in ten hours with very little discomfort, and did not
envy the six-hour people. There is nothing frightful, or dangerous, or
disagreeable about the journey, even to ladies not accustomed to riding;
and there is very much that is new, strange, and wonderful to Americans
or Europeans. Especially you will be delighted with the great variety and
beauty of the ferns, which range from minute and delicate species to the
dark and grand fronds of the tree-fern, which rises in the more elevated
region to a height of twenty feet, and whose stalk has sometimes a
diameter of three or four feet. From a variety of this tree-fern the
natives take a substance called pulu, a fine, soft, brown fuzz, used for
stuffing pillows and mattresses.

Your guide will probably understand very little English: let him be
instructed in your wishes before you set out. The native Hawaiian is the
most kind and obliging creature in the world, and you will find your guide
ready to do you every needful service. You can get nothing to eat on the
road, except perhaps a little sugar-cane; therefore you must provide a
sufficient lunch. At the Half-way House, but probably nowhere else, you
will get water to drink.

When you reach the Volcano House, I advise you to take a sulphur
vapor-bath, refreshing after a tedious ride; and after supper you will sit
about a big open fire and recount the few incidents and adventures of the
day.

The next day you give to the crater. Unless the night is very foggy you
will have gone to sleep with the lurid light of Kilauea in your eyes.
Madame Pele, the presiding goddess of the volcano, exhibits fine
fire-works at night sometimes, and we saw the lava spurting up in the air
above the edge of the smaller and active crater, one night, in a quite
lively manner. On a moderately clear night the light from the burning
lakes makes a very grand sight; and the bedrooms at the little Volcano
House are so placed that you have Madame Pele's fire-works before you all
night.

The house stands but a few feet from the edge of the great crater, and you
have no tedious preliminary walk, but begin your descent into the pit
at once. For this you need stout shoes, light clothing, and, if you have
ladies in your party, a heavy shawl for each. The guide takes with him a
canteen of water, and also carries the shawls. You should start about
nine o'clock, and give the whole day to the crater, returning to dinner at
five.

The great crater of Kilauea is nine miles in circumference, and perhaps
a thousand feet deep. It is, in fact, a deep pit, bounded on all sides
by precipitous rocks. The entrance is effected by a series of steps, and
below these by a scramble over lava and rock debris. It is not difficult,
but the ascent is tiresome; and it is a prudent precaution, if you have
ladies with you, to take a native man for each lady, to assist her over
the rougher places, and up the steep ascent. The greater part of the
crater was, when I saw it, a mass of dead, though not cold lava; and over
this you walk to the farthest extremity of the pit, where you must ascend
a tolerably steep hill of lava, which is the bank of the fiery lake. The
distance from the Volcano House to the edge of this lake is, by the road
you take, three miles.

[Illustration: HAWAIIAN TEMPLE, FROM A RUSSIAN ENGRAVING, ABOUT 1790.]

The goddess Pele, who, according to the Hawaiian mythology, presides over
Kilauea, is, as some say all her sex are, variable, changeable, mutable.
What I shall tell you about the appearance of the crater and lake is true
of that time; it may not have been correct a week later; it was certainly
not true of a month before. We climbed into the deep pit, and then
stood upon a vast floor of lava, rough, jammed together, broken, jagged,
steaming out a hot sulphurous breath at almost every seam, revealing rolls
of later lava injections at every deep crack, with caverns and high ridges
where the great mass, after cooling, was forced together, and with a steep
mountain-side of lava at our left, along the foot of which we clambered.

This floor of lava, which seems likely to be a more or less permanent
feature, was, three or four years ago, upon a level with the top of the
high ridge, or ledge, whose base you skirt. The main part of the crater
was then a floor of lava vaster even than it now is. Suddenly one day, and
with a crash which persuaded one or two persons at the Volcano House that
the whole planet was flying to pieces, the greater part of this lava floor
sank down, or fell down, a depth of about five hundred feet, to the level
whereon we now walked. The wonderful tale was plain to us as we examined
the details on the spot. It was as though a top-heavy and dried-out
pie-crust had fallen in in the middle, leaving a part of the circumference
bent down, but clinging at the outside to the dish.

[Illustration: LAVA FIELD, HAWAII--FLOW OF 1868.]

After this great crash the lava seems from time to time to have boiled up
from beneath through cracks, and now lies in great rolls upon the surface,
or in the deeper cracks. It is related that later the lake or caldron at
the farther end of the crater boiled over, and sent down streams of lava
which meandered over the black plain; that, continuing to boil over at
intervals, this lake increased the height of its own banks, for the lava
cools very rapidly; and thus was built up a high hill, which we ascended
after crossing the lava plains, in order to look down, in fear and wonder,
upon the awful sight below. What we saw there on the 3d of March, 1873,
was two huge pits, caldrons, or lakes, filled with a red, molten, fiery,
sulphurous, raging, roaring, restless mass of matter, to watch whose
unceasing tumult was one of the most fascinating experiences of my life.

The two lakes were then separated by a narrow and low-lying ledge
or peninsula of lava, which I was told they frequently overflow, and
sometimes entirely melt down. Standing upon the northern bank we could see
both lakes, and we estimated their shortest diameter to be about 500 feet,
and the longest about one-eighth of a mile. Within this pit the surface of
the molten lava was about eighty feet below us. It has been known to sink
down 400 feet; last December it was overflowing the high banks and sending
streams of lava into the great plain by which we approached it; and since
I saw it, it has risen to within a few feet of the top of the bank,
and has forced a way out at one side, where, in September, 1873, it was
flowing out slowly on to the great lava plain which forms the bottom of
the main crater.

What, therefore, Madame Pele will show you hereafter is uncertain. What we
saw was this: two large lakes or caldrons, each nearly circular, with
the lower shelf or bank, red-hot, from which the molten lava was repelled
toward the centre without cessation. The surface of these lakes was of a
lustrous and beautiful gray, and this, which was a cooling and tolerably
solid scum, was broken by jagged circles of fire, which appeared of a
vivid rose-color in contrast with the gray. These circles, starting at
the red-hot bank or shore, moved more or less rapidly toward the centre,
where, at intervals of perhaps a minute, the whole mass of lava suddenly
but slowly bulged up, burst the thin crust, and flung aloft a huge, fiery
wave, which sometimes shot as high as thirty feet in the air. Then ensued
a turmoil, accompanied with hissing, and occasionally with a dull roar as
the gases sought to escape, and spray was flung in every direction; and
presently the agitation subsided, to begin again in the same place, or
perhaps in another.

Meantime the fiery rings moved forward perpetually toward the centre, a
new one re-appearing at the shore before the old was ingulfed; and not
unfrequently the mass of lava was so fiercely driven by some force from
the bank near which we stood, that it was ten or fifteen feet higher
near the centre than at the circumference. Thus somewhat of the depth was
revealed to us, and there seemed something peculiarly awful to me in the
fierce glowing red heat of the shores themselves, which never cooled with
exposure to the air and light.

Thus acted the first of the two lakes. But when, favored by a strong
breeze, we ventured farther, to the side of the furthermost one, a still
more terrible spectacle greeted us. The mass in this lake was in yet more
violent agitation; but it spent its fury upon the precipitous southern
bank, against which it dashed with a vehemence equal to a heavy surf
breaking against cliffs. It had undermined this lava cliff, and for a
space of perhaps one hundred and fifty feet the lava beat and surged into
glaring, red-hot, cavernous depths, and was repelled with a dull, heavy
roar, not exactly like the boom of breakers, because the lava is so much
heavier than water, but with a voice of its own, less resonant, and, as we
who listened thought, full of even more deadly fury.

It seems a little absurd to couple the word "terrible" with any action of
mere inanimate matter, from which, after all, we stood in no very evident
peril. Yet "terrible" is the only word for it. Grand it was not, because
in all its action and voice it seemed infernal. Though its movement is
slow and deliberate, it would scarcely occur to you to call either the
constant impulse from one side toward the other, or the vehement and vast
bulging of the lava wave as it explodes its thin crust or dashes a fiery
mass against the cliff, majestic, for devilish seems a better word.

Meantime, though we were favored with a cool and strong breeze, bearing
the sulphurous stench of the burning lake away from us, the heat of the
lava on which we stood, at least eighty feet above the pit, was so great
as to be almost unendurable. We stood first upon one foot, and then on the
other, because the soles of our feet seemed to be scorching through thick
shoes. A lady sitting down upon a bundle of shawls had to rise because the
wraps began to scorch; our faces seemed on fire from the reflection of
the heat below; the guide's tin water-canteen, lying near my feet, became
presently so hot that it burned my fingers when I took it up; and at
intervals there came up from behind us a draught of air so hot, and so
laden with sulphur that, even with the strong wind carrying it rapidly
away, it was scarcely endurable. It was while we were coughing and
spluttering at one of these hot blasts, which came from the numerous
fissures in the lava which we had passed over, that a lady of our party
remarked that she had read an excellent description of this place in the
New Testament; and so far as I observed, no one disagreed with her.

After the lakes came the cones. When the surface of this lava is so
rapidly cooling that the action below is too weak to break it, the gases
forcing their way out break small vents, through which lava is then
ejected. This, cooling rapidly as it comes to the outer air, forms by its
accretions a conical pipe of greater or less circumference, and sometimes
growing twenty or thirty feet high, open at the top, and often with
openings also blown out at the sides. There are several of these cones on
the summit bank of the lake, all ruined, as it seemed to me, by some too
violent explosion, which had blown off most of the top, and in one case
the whole of it, leaving then only a wide hole.

Into these holes we looked, and saw a very wonderful and terrible sight.
Below us was a stream of lava, rolling and surging and beating against
huge, precipitous, red-hot cliffs; and, higher up, suspended from other,
also red or white hot overhanging cliffs, depended huge stalactites, like
masses of fiercely glowing fern leaves waving about in the subterraneous
wind; and here we saw how thin was in some such places the crust over
which we walked, and how near the melting-point must be its under surface.
For, as far as we could judge, these little craters or cones rested upon
a crust not thicker than twelve or fourteen inches, and one fierce blast
from below seemed sufficient to melt away the whole place. Fortunately
one can not stay very long near these openings, for they exhale a very
poisonous breath; and so we were drawn back to the more fascinating but
less perilous spectacle of the lakes; and then back over the rough lava,
our minds filled with memories of a spectacle which is certainly one of
the most remarkable our planet affords.

When you have seen the fiery lakes you will recognize a crater at sight,
and every part of Hawaii and of the other islands will have a new interest
for you;

[Illustration: VIEW OF THE CRATER OF SOUTH LAKE IN A STATE OF ERUPTION,
FROM THE CREST OF THE NORTH LAKE.]

for all are full of craters, and from Kilauea to the sea you may trace
several lines of craters, all extinct, but all at some time belching forth
those interminable lava streams over which you ride by the way of the Puna
coast for nearly seventy miles back to Hilo.

I advise you to take this way back. Almost the whole of it is a land of
desolation. A narrow trail across unceasing beds of lava, a trail which
in spots was actually hammered down to make it smooth enough for horses'
feet, and outside of whose limits in most places your horse will refuse to
go, because he knows it is too rough for beast or man: this is your road.
Most of the lava is probably very ancient, though some is quite recent;
and ferns and guava bushes and other scanty herbage grow through it.

In some of the cavernous holes, which denote probably ancient cones or
huge lava bubbles, you will see a cocoa-nut-tree or a pandanus trying to
subsist; and by-and-by, after a descent to the sea-shore, you are rewarded
with the pleasant sight of groves of cocoa-nuts and umbrageous arbors of
pandanus, and occasionally with a patch of green.

Almost the whole of the Puna coast is waterless. From the Volcano House
you take with you not only food for the journey back to Hilo, but water in
bottles; and your thirsty animals get none until you reach the end of
your first day's journey, at Kaimu. Here, also, you can send a more than
half-naked native into the trees for cocoa-nuts, and drink your fill
of their refreshing milk, while your jaded horses swallow bucketfuls of
rain-water.

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