Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands Part 2

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 sh.o.r.e 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 ma.s.ses 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 gla.s.s.

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 G.o.ddess 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 circ.u.mference, 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 a.s.sist her over the rougher places, and up the steep ascent. The greater part of the crater was, when I saw it, a ma.s.s 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HAWAIIAN TEMPLE, FROM A RUSSIAN ENGRAVING, ABOUT 1790.]

The G.o.ddess Pele, who, according to the Hawaiian mythology, presides over Kilauea, is, as some say all her s.e.x 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 ma.s.s, 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 circ.u.mference bent down, but clinging at the outside to the dish.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 ma.s.s 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 l.u.s.trous and beautiful gray, and this, which was a cooling and tolerably solid sc.u.m, 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 sh.o.r.e, moved more or less rapidly toward the centre, where, at intervals of perhaps a minute, the whole ma.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e before the old was ingulfed; and not unfrequently the ma.s.s 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 circ.u.mference. 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 sh.o.r.es 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 ma.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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 ma.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mference, 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 stalact.i.tes, like ma.s.ses 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;

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 panda.n.u.s trying to subsist; and by-and-by, after a descent to the sea-sh.o.r.e, you are rewarded with the pleasant sight of groves of cocoa-nuts and umbrageous arbors of panda.n.u.s, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HILO.]

It will surprise you to find people living among the lava, making potato-patches in it, planting coffee and some fruit-trees in it, fencing in their small holdings, even, with lava blocks. Very little soil is needed to give vegetation a chance in a rainy reason, and the decomposed lava makes a rich earth. But except the cocoa-nut which grows on the beach, and seems to draw its sustenance from the waves, and the sweet-potato, which does very well among the lava, nothing seems really to thrive.

It will add much to the pleasure of your journey to Kilauea if you carry with you, to read upon the spot and along the road, Brigham's valuable Memoir on the Hawaiian Volcanoes. With this in hand, you will comprehend the nature, and know also the very recent date of some important changes, caused by earthquakes and lava flows, on the Puna coast. Near and at Kaimu, for instance, there has been an apparent subsidence of the land, which is supposed in reality, however, I believe, to have been caused rather by the breaking off of a vast lava ledge or overhang, on which, covered as it was with earth and trees, a considerable population had long lived. In front of the native house in which you will sleep, at Kaimu, part of a large grove of cocoa-nut-trees was thus submerged, and you may see the dead stumps still sticking up out of the surf.

Kaimu is twenty-five miles from the Volcano House. The native house at which you will pa.s.s the night is clean, and you may there enjoy the novelty of sleeping on Hawaiian mats, and under the native cover of tapa.

You must bring with you tea or coffee, sugar, and bread, and such other food as is necessary to your comfort. Sweet-potatoes and bananas, and chickens caught after you arrive, with abundant cocoa-nuts, are the supplies of the place. The water is not good, and you will probably drink only cocoa-nut milk, until, fifteen miles farther on, at Captain Eldart's, you find a pleasant and comfortable resting-place for the second night, with a famous natural warm bath, very slightly mineral. Thence a ride of twenty-three miles brings you back to Hilo, all of it over lava, most of it through a sterile country, but with one small burst of a real paradise of tropical luxuriance, a mile of tall forest and jungle, which looks more like Brazil than Hawaii.

One advantage of returning by way of the Puna coast, rather than by the direct route from Kilauea, is that you have clear, bright weather all the way. The configuration of the coast makes Puna sunny while Hilo is rainy.

If you desire a longer ride than that by the Puna coast, you can cross the island, from the Volcano House, by way of Waiahino and Kapapala to Kauwaloa on the western coast, whence a schooner will bear you back to Honolulu. A brief study of the map of Hawaii in this volume will show the different routes suggested in this chapter.

Moreover, when you are at Kilauea, you have done something toward the ascent of Mauna Loa; and guides, provisions, and animals for that enterprise can be obtained at the Volcano House, as well as such ample details of the route that I will not here attempt any directions. It is not an easy ride; and you must carry with you warm clothing. A gentleman who slept at the summit in September, 1873, told me the ice made over two inches thick during the night.

If Mauna Loa is active, a traveler on the Islands ought by all means to see it; for Dr. Coan a.s.sures me that it is then one of the most terrific and grand sights imaginable. I did not visit it, as it was not active while I was on the Islands, though its fires were alive. The crater is a pit about three miles in circ.u.mference, with precipitous banks about two thousand feet deep. At the bottom is the burning lake, which has a curious habit of throwing up a jet, more or less constant, of fiery lava, to the height, this last summer, of four or five hundred feet from the surface of the lake. It is a fine sight, but, of course, somewhat distant. I am told that this jet has at times reached nearly to the summit level of the crater; and it must then have been a glorious spectacle.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SURF BATHING.]