In going to
Waipio, on noticing the deep holes and enormous boulders, some of
them higher than a man on horseback, I had thought what a fearful
place it would be if it were ever full; but my imagination had not
reached the reality. One huge compressed impetuous torrent, leaping
in creamy foam, boiling in creamy eddies, rioting in deep black
chasms, roared and thundered over the whole in rapids of the most
tempestuous kind, leaping down to the ocean in three grand broad
cataracts, the nearest of them not more than forty feet from the
crossing. Imagine the Moriston at the Falls, four times as wide and
fifty times as furious, walled in by precipices, and with a
miniature Niagara above and below, and you have a feeble
illustration of it.
Portions of two or three rocks only could be seen, and on one of
these, about twelve feet from the shore, a nude native, beautifully
tattooed, with a lasso in his hands, was standing nearly up to his
knees in foam; and about a third of the way from the other side,
another native in deeper water, steadying himself by a pole. A
young woman on horseback, whose near relative was dangerously ill at
Hilo, was jammed under the cliff, and the men were going to get her
across.
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