Waialeale, its highest mountain, is 4,800 feet high, but little is
known of it, for it is swampy and dangerous, and a part of it is a
forest-covered and little explored tableland, terminating on the sea
in a range of perpendicular precipices 2,000 feet in depth, so steep
it is said, that a wild cat could not get round them. Owing to
these, and the virtual inaccessibility of a large region behind
them, no one can travel round the island by land, and small as it
is, very little seems to be known of portions of its area.
Kauai has apparently two centres of formation, and its mountains are
thickly dotted with craters. The age and density of the vegetation
within and without those in this Koloa district, indicate a very
long cessation from volcanic action. It is truly an oddly contrived
island. An elevated rolling region, park-like, liberally ornamented
with clumps of ohia, lauhala, hau, (hibiscus) and koa, and
intersected with gullies full of large eugenias, lies outside the
mountain spurs behind Koloa. It is only the tropical trees,
specially the lauhala or "screw pine," the whimsical shapes of
outlying ridges, which now and then lie like the leaves in a book,
and the strange forms of extinct craters, which distinguish it from
some of our most beautiful park scenery, such as Windsor Great Park
or Belvoir.
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