We have had some beautiful rides in the neighbourhood. It is a
wild, lonely, picturesque coast, and the Pacific moans along it,
casting itself on it in heavy surges, with a singularly dreary
sound. There are some very fine specimens of the phenomena called
"blow-holes" on the shore, not like the "spouting cave" at Iona,
however. We spent a long time in watching the action of one, though
not the finest. At half tide this "spouting horn" throws up a
column of water over sixty feet in height from a very small orifice,
and the effect of the compressed air rushing through a crevice near
it, sometimes with groans and shrieks, and at others with a hollow
roar like the warning fog-horn on a coast, is magnificent, when, as
to-day, there is a heavy swell on the coast.
Kauai is much out of the island world, owing to the infrequent
visits of the Kilauea, but really it is only twelve hours by steam
from the capital. Strangers visit it seldom, as it has no active
volcano like Hawaii, or colossal crater like Maui, or anything
sensational of any kind. It is called the "Garden Island," and has
no great wastes of black lava and red ash like its neighbours. It
is queerly shaped, almost circular, with a diameter of from twenty-
eight to thirty miles, and its area is about 500 square miles.
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