G., his servant, and packmule took
the lower trail, and I, with a native, a string of mules, and a
pack-horse, the upper. Our plans for intercepting the good man were
well laid and successful, but turned out resultless.
This has been an irresistibly comical day, and it is just as well to
have something amusing interjected between the sublimities of
Kilauea, and whatever to-morrow may bring forth. When our
cavalcades separated, I followed the guide on a blind trail into the
little-known regions on the skirts of Mauna Loa. We only travelled
two miles an hour, and the mules kept getting up rows, kicking, and
entangling their legs in the lariats, and one peculiarly malign
animal dealt poor Kahele a gratuitous kick on his nose, making it
bleed.
It is strange, unique country, without any beauty. The seaward view
is over a great stretch of apparent table-land, spotted with
craters, and split by cracks emitting smoke or steam. The whole
region is black with streams of spiked and jagged lava, meandering
over it, with charred stumps of trees rising out of them.
The trail, if such it could be called, wound among koa and
sandalwood trees occasionally, but habitually we picked our way over
waves, coils, and hummocks of pahoehoe surrounded by volcanic sand,
and with only a few tufts of grass, abortive ohelos, and vigorous
sow thistles (much relished by Kahele) growing in their crevices.
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