Our sleeping-place,
a neat room with a matted floor opens from this, and on the other
side there is a similar room, and a small eating-room with a grass
cookhouse beyond, from which an obliging old Chinaman who
persistently calls us "sir," brings our food. We have had for each
meal, tea, preserved milk, coffee, kalo, biscuits, butter, potatoes,
goats' flesh, and ohelos. The charge is five dollars a day, but
everything except the potatoes and ohelos has to be brought twenty
or thirty miles on mules' backs. It is a very pretty picturesque
house both within and without, and stands on a natural lawn of
brilliant but unpalatable grass, surrounded by a light fence covered
with a small trailing double rose. It is altogether a most magical
building in the heart of a formidable volcanic wilderness. Mr.
Gilman, our host, is a fine picturesque looking man, half Indian,
and speaks remarkably good English, but his wife, a very pretty
native woman, speaks none, and he attends to us entirely himself.
A party of native travellers rainbound are here, and the native
women are sitting on the floor stringing flowers and berries for
leis. One very attractive-looking young woman, refined by
consumption, is lying on some blankets, and three native men are
smoking by the fire.
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