This coast looked beautiful from the deck of the Kilauea, but I am
now convinced that I have never seen anything so perfectly lovely as
it is when one is actually among its details. Onomea is 600 feet
high, and every yard of the ascent from Hilo brings one into a
fresher and purer air. One looks up the wooded, broken slopes to a
wild volcanic wilderness and the snowy peaks of Mauna Kea on one
side, and on the other down upon the calm blue Pacific, wrinkled by
the sweet trade-wind, till it blends in far-off loveliness with the
still, blue, sky; and heavy surges break on the reefs, and fritter
themselves away on the rocks, tossing their pure foam over ti and
lauhala trees, and the exquisite ferns and trailers which mantle the
cliffs down to the water's edge. Here a native house stands, with
passion-flowers clustering round its verandah, and the great
solitary red blossoms of the hibiscus flaming out from dark
surrounding leafage, and women in rose and green holukus, weaving
garlands, greet us with "Aloha" as we pass. Then we come upon a
whole cluster of grass houses under lauhalas and bananas. Then
there is the sugar plantation of Kaiwiki, with its patches of bright
green cane, its flumes crossing the track above our heads, bringing
the cane down from the upland cane-fields to the crushing-mill, and
the shifting, busy scenes of the sugar-boiling season.
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