Trackless, glaring, choking, a guide
is absolutely necessary to a stranger, for the footprints or wheel-
marks of one moment are obliterated the next. I crossed the isthmus
three times, and the third time was quite as incapable of shaping my
course across it as the first, and though I had recklessly declined
a guide, was only too thankful for the one who was forced upon me.
It is a hateful ride, yet anything so hideous and aggressively
odious is a salutary experience in a land of so much beauty. Sand,
sand, sand! Sand-hills, smooth and red; sand plains, rippled,
whites and glaring; sand drifts shifting; sand clouds whirling; sand
in your eyes, nose, and mouth; sand stinging your face like pin
points; sand hiding even your horse's ears; sand rippling like
waves, hissing like spin-drift, malignant, venomous! You can only
open one eye at a time for a wink at where you are going. Looking
down upon it from Heiku, you can see nothing all day but the dense
brown clouds of a perpetual sand-storm.
My charming hostess and her husband made Heiku so fascinating, that
I only quitted it hoping to return. The object which usually
attracts strangers to Maui is the great dead volcano of Haleakala,
"The house of the sun," and I was fortunate in all the circumstances
of my ascent.
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