On a few of these tracks a false step means death, but the
vegetation which clothes the pali below, blinds one to the risk. I
don't think anything would induce me to go up a swinging zigzag--up
a terrible pali opposite to me as I write, the sides of which are
quite undraped.
All the gulches for the first twenty-four miles contain running
water. The great Hakalau gulch we crossed early yesterday, has a
river with a smooth bed as wide as the Thames at Eton. Some have
only small quiet streams, which pass gently through ferny grottoes.
Others have fierce strong torrents dashing between abrupt walls of
rock, among immense boulders into deep abysses, and cast themselves
over precipice after precipice into the ocean. Probably, many of
these are the courses of fire torrents, whose jagged masses of a-a
have since been worn smooth, and channelled into holes by the action
of water. A few are crossed on narrow bridges, but the majority are
forded, if that quiet conventional term can be applied to the
violent flounderings by which the horses bring one through. The
transparency deceives them, and however deep the water is, they
always try to lift their fore feet out of it, which gives them a
disagreeable rolling motion.
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