The rainfall in Kona is heavy,
but there is no standing water, and only one stream in a distance of
100 miles.
This district is famous for oranges, coffee, pineapples, and
silence. A flaming palm-fringed shore with a prolific strip of
table land 1,500 feet above it, a dense timber belt eight miles in
breadth, and a volcano smoking somewhere between that and the
heavens, and glaring through the trees at night, are the salient
points of Kona if anything about it be salient. It is a region
where falls not
". . . Hail or any snow,
Or ever wind blows loudly."
Wind indeed, is a thing unknown. The scarcely audible whisper of
soft airs through the trees morning and evening, rain drops falling
gently, and the murmur of drowsy surges far below, alone break the
stillness. No ripple ever disturbs the great expanse of ocean which
gleams through the still, thick trees. Rose in the sweet cool
morning, gold in the sweet cool evening, but always dreaming; and
white sails come and go, no larger than a butterfly's wing on the
horizon, of ships drifting on ocean currents, dreaming too! Nothing
surely can ever happen here: it is so dumb and quiet, and people
speak in hushed thin voices, and move as in a lethargy, dreaming
too! No heat, cold, or wind, nothing emphasised or italicised, it
is truly a region of endless afternoons, "a land where all things
always seem the same.
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