The distracting beauty of this coast is what are called gulches--
narrow deep ravines or gorges, from 100 to 2,000 feet in depth, each
with a series of cascades from 10 to 1,800 feet in height. I
dislike reducing their glories to the baldness of figures, but the
depth of these clefts (originally, probably, the seams caused by
fire torrents), cut and worn by the fierce streams fed by the snows
of Mauna Kea, and the rains of the forest belt, cannot otherwise be
expressed. The cascades are most truly beautiful, gleaming white
among the dark depths of foliage far away, and falling into deep
limpid basins, festooned and overhung with the richest and greenest
vegetation of this prolific climate, from the huge-leaved banana and
shining breadfruit to the most feathery of ferns and lycopodiums.
Each gulch opens on a velvet lawn close to the sea, and most of them
have space for a few grass houses, with cocoanut trees, bananas, and
kalo patches. There are sixty-nine of these extraordinary chasms
within a distance of thirty miles!
I think we came through eleven, fording the streams in all but two.
The descent into some of them is quite alarming. You go down almost
standing in your stirrups, at a right angle with the horse's head,
and up, grasping his mane to prevent the saddle slipping.
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