Subsequently, after disobeying
orders, he lost his horse, which was a borrowed one, deserted his
mistress, and absconded!
The slopes over which we travelled were red, hot, and stony, cleft
in one place however, by a green, fertile valley, full of rice and
kalo patches, and native houses, with a broad river, the Hanapepe,
flowing quietly down the middle, which we forded near the sea, where
it was half-way up my horse's sides. After plodding all day over
stony soil in the changeless sunshine, as the shadows lengthened, we
turned directly up towards the mountains and began a two hours
ascent. It was delicious. They were so cool, so green, so varied,
their grey pinnacles so splintered, their precipices so abrupt,
their ravines so dark and deep, and their lower slopes covered with
the greenest and finest grass; then dark ohias rose singly, then in
twos and threes, and finally mixed in dense forest masses, with the
pea-green of the kukui.
It became yet lovelier as the track wound through deep wooded
ravines, or snaked along the narrow tops of spine-like ridges; the
air became cooler, damper, and more like elixir, till at a height of
1500 feet we came upon Makaueli, ideally situated upon an unequalled
natural plateau, a house of patriarchal size for the islands, with a
verandah festooned with roses, fuchsias, the water lemon, and other
passion flowers, and with a large guest-house attached.
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