All Waimanu shook hands with me, the kindly "Aloha"
filled the air, and the women threw garlands over us both. I could
hardly induce my host to accept a dollar and a half for my
entertainment. From the dizzy summit of the pali, where the sun was
high and hot, I looked my last on the dark, cool valley, slumbering
in an endless calm, the deepest, greenest, quaintest cleft on all
the island.
The sun was fierce and bright, the ocean had a metallic glint, the
hot breath of the kona was scorching. My hands, swollen from
mosquito bites, could not be stuffed into my gloves, and inflamed
under the sun, and my wet boots baked and stiffened on my feet.
Hananui plaited a crown of leaves for my hot head, which I found a
great relief. I was still minded to linger, for one side of each
glorious gulch was cool with shadow and dripping with dew. The blue
morning glories were yet unwilted, rivulets dropped down into ferny
grottoes and lingered there, rose ohia blossoms lighted shady
places, orange flowers gleamed like stars amidst the dense leafage,
and the crimped-leaved coffee shrubs were white with their mimic
snow. It was my last tropical dream, and I was rudely roused by
finding myself on the unsightly verge of the great bluff on the
north side of this valley, which plunges to the sea with an
uncompromising perpendicular dip of 2000 feet, and carries on its
dizzy brow a shelving trail not more than two feet wide!
I felt that I must go back and live and die in Waimanu rather than
descend that scathed steep, and being stupid with terror flung
myself from my horse, forgetting that it was much safer to trust to
his four feet than to my two, and to an animal without "nerves,"
dizziness, or "the fore-knowledge of death," than to my palsied,
cowardly self.
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