Hitherto, I have only
travelled over the green coast which faces the trade winds, where
clouds gather and shed their rains, and this desert, which occupies
a great part of leeward Hawaii, displeases me. It lies burning in
the fierce splendours of a zone, which, until now, I had forgotten
was the torrid zone, unwatered and unfruitful, red and desolate
under the sun. The island is here only twenty-two miles wide, and
strong winds sweep across it, whirling up its surface in great brown
clouds, so that the uplands in part appear a smoking plain, backed
by naked volcanic cones. No water, no grass, no ferns. Some
thornless thistles, a little brush of sapless-looking indigo, and
some species of compositae struggle for a doleful existence. There
is nothing tropical about it but the intense heat. The red soil
becomes suffused with a green tinge ten miles from the beach, and at
the summit of the ascent the desert blends with this beautiful
Waimea plain, one of the most marked features of Hawaii. The air
became damp and cool; miles of fine smooth green grass stretched out
before us; high hills, broken, pinnacled, wooded, and cleft with
deep ravines, rose on our left; we heard the clash and music of
falling water: to the north it was like the Munster Thal, to the
south altogether volcanic.
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