Roughing It
on the other side also. I had the bow seat, and Billings sat amidships
and faced the Kanaka, who occupied the stern of the craft and did the
paddling. With the first stroke the trim shell of a thing shot out from
the shore like an arrow. There was not much to see. While we were on the
shallow water of the reef, it was pastime to look down into the limpid
depths at the large bunches of branching coral—the unique shrubbery of
the sea. We lost that, though, when we got out into the dead blue water
of the deep. But we had the picture of the surf, then, dashing angrily
against the crag-bound shore and sending a foaming spray high into the
air.
There was interest in this beetling border, too, for it was honey-combed
with quaint caves and arches and tunnels, and had a rude semblance of
the dilapidated architecture of ruined keeps and castles rising out of
the restless sea. When this novelty ceased to be a novelty, we turned
our eyes shoreward and gazed at the long mountain with its rich green
forests stretching up into the curtaining clouds, and at the specks of
houses in the rearward distance and the diminished schooner riding
sleepily at anchor. And when these grew tiresome we dashed boldly into
the midst of a school of huge, beastly porpoises engaged at their
eternal game of arching over a wave and disappearing, and then doing it
over again and keeping it up—always circling over, in that way, like so
many well-submerged wheels. But the porpoises wheeled themselves away,
and then we were thrown upon our own resources. It did not take many
minutes to discover that the sun was blazing like a bonfire, and that
the weather was of a melting temperature. It had a drowsing effect, too.
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In one place we came upon a large company of naked natives, of both
sexes and all ages, amusing themselves with the national pastime of
surf-bathing. Each heathen would paddle three or four hundred yards out
to sea, (taking a short board with him), then face the shore and wait
for a particularly prodigious billow to come along; at the right moment
he would fling his board upon its foamy crest and himself upon the
board, and here he would come whizzing by like a bombshell! It did not
seem that a lightning express train could shoot along at a more hair-
lifting speed. I tried surf-bathing once, subsequently, but made a
failure of it. I got the board placed right, and at the right moment,
too; but missed the connection myself.—The board struck the shore in
three quarters of a second, without any cargo, and I struck the bottom
about the same time, with a couple of barrels of water in me. None but
natives ever master the art of surf-bathing thoroughly.
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At the end of an hour, we had made the four miles, and landed on a level
point of land, upon which was a wide extent of old ruins, with many a
tall cocoanut tree growing among them. Here was the ancient City of
Refuge—a vast inclosure, whose stone walls were twenty feet thick at the
base, and fifteen feet high; an oblong square, a thousand and forty feet
one way and a fraction under seven hundred the other. Within this
inclosure, in early times, has been three rude temples; each two hundred
and ten feet long by one hundred wide, and thirteen high.
In those days, if a man killed another anywhere on the island the
relatives were privileged to take the murderer’s life; and then a chase
for life and liberty began—the outlawed criminal flying through pathless
forests and over mountain and plain, with his hopes fixed upon the
protecting walls of the City of Refuge, and the avenger of blood
following hotly after him!
Sometimes the race was kept up to the very gates of the temple, and the
panting pair sped through long files of excited natives, who watched the
contest with flashing eye and dilated nostril, encouraging the hunted
refugee with sharp, inspiriting ejaculations, and sending up a ringing
shout of exultation when the saving gates closed upon him and the
cheated pursuer sank exhausted at the threshold. But sometimes the
flying criminal fell under the hand of the avenger at the very door,
when one more brave stride, one more brief second of time would have
brought his feet upon the sacred ground and barred him against all harm.
Where did these isolated pagans get this idea of a City of Refuge—this
ancient Oriental custom?
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This old sanctuary was sacred to all—even to rebels in arms and invading
armies. Once within its walls, and confession made to the priest and
absolution obtained, the wretch with a price upon his head could go
forth without fear and without danger—he was _tabu_, and to harm him was
death. The routed rebels in the lost battle for idolatry fled to this
place to claim sanctuary, and many were thus saved.
Close to the corner of the great inclosure is a round structure of
stone, some six or eight feet high, with a level top about ten or twelve
in diameter. This was the place of execution. A high palisade of
cocoanut piles shut out the cruel scenes from the vulgar multitude. Here
criminals were killed, the flesh stripped from the bones and burned, and
the bones secreted in holes in the body of the structure. If the man had
been guilty of a high crime, the entire corpse was burned.
The walls of the temple are a study. The same food for speculation that
is offered the visitor to the Pyramids of Egypt he will find here—the
mystery of how they were constructed by a people unacquainted with
science and mechanics. The natives have no invention of their own for
hoisting heavy weights, they had no beasts of burden, and they have
never even shown any knowledge of the properties of the lever. Yet some
of the lava blocks quarried out, brought over rough, broken ground, and
built into this wall, six or seven feet from the ground, are of
prodigious size and would weigh tons. How did they transport and how
raise them?
Both the inner and outer surfaces of the walls present a smooth front
and are very creditable specimens of masonry. The blocks are of all
manner of shapes and sizes, but yet are fitted together with the neatest
exactness. The gradual narrowing of the wall from the base upward is
accurately preserved.
No cement was used, but the edifice is firm and compact and is capable
of resisting storm and decay for centuries. Who built this temple, and
how was it built, and when, are mysteries that may never be unraveled.
Outside of these ancient walls lies a sort of coffin-shaped stone eleven
feet four inches long and three feet square at the small end (it would
weigh a few thousand pounds), which the high chief who held sway over
this district many centuries ago brought thither on his shoulder one day
to use as a lounge! This circumstance is established by the most
reliable traditions. He used to lie down on it, in his indolent way, and
keep an eye on his subjects at work for him and see that there was no
“soldiering” done. And no doubt there was not any done to speak of,
because he was a man of that sort of build that incites to attention to
business on the part of an employee.
He was fourteen or fifteen feet high. When he stretched himself at full
length on his lounge, his legs hung down over the end, and when he
snored he woke the dead. These facts are all attested by irrefragable
tradition.
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On the other side of the temple is a monstrous seven-ton rock, eleven
feet long, seven feet wide and three feet thick. It is raised a foot or
a foot and a half above the ground, and rests upon half a dozen little
stony pedestals. The same old fourteen-footer brought it down from the
mountain, merely for fun (he had his own notions about fun), and propped
it up as we find it now and as others may find it a century hence, for
it would take a score of horses to budge it from its position. They say
that fifty or sixty years ago the proud Queen Kaahumanu used to fly to
this rock for safety, whenever she had been making trouble with her
fierce husband, and hide under it until his wrath was appeased. But
these Kanakas will lie, and this statement is one of their ablest
efforts—for Kaahumanu was six feet high—she was bulky—she was built like
an ox—and she could no more have squeezed herself under that rock than
she could have passed between the cylinders of a sugar mill. What could
she gain by it, even if she succeeded? To be chased and abused by a
savage husband could not be otherwise than humiliating to her high
spirit, yet it could never make her feel so flat as an hour’s repose
under that rock would.
We walked a mile over a raised macadamized road of uniform width; a road
paved with flat stones and exhibiting in its every detail a considerable
degree of engineering skill. Some say that that wise old pagan,
Kamehameha I planned and built it, but others say it was built so long
before his time that the knowledge of who constructed it has passed out
of the traditions. In either case, however, as the handiwork of an
untaught and degraded race it is a thing of pleasing interest. The
stones are worn and smooth, and pushed apart in places, so that the road
has the exact appearance of those ancient paved highways leading out of
Rome which one sees in pictures.
The object of our tramp was to visit a great natural curiosity at the
base of the foothills—a congealed cascade of lava. Some old forgotten
volcanic eruption sent its broad river of fire down the mountain side
here, and it poured down in a great torrent from an overhanging bluff
some fifty feet high to the ground below. The flaming torrent cooled in
the winds from the sea, and remains there to-day, all seamed, and
frothed and rippled a petrified Niagara. It is very picturesque, and
withal so natural that one might almost imagine it still flowed. A
smaller stream trickled over the cliff and built up an isolated pyramid
about thirty feet high, which has the semblance of a mass of large
gnarled and knotted vines and roots and stems intricately twisted and
woven together.
We passed in behind the cascade and the pyramid, and found the bluff
pierced by several cavernous tunnels, whose crooked courses we followed
a long distance.
Two of these winding tunnels stand as proof of Nature’s mining
abilities. Their floors are level, they are seven feet wide, and their
roofs are gently arched. Their height is not uniform, however. We passed
through one a hundred feet long, which leads through a spur of the hill
and opens out well up in the sheer wall of a precipice whose foot rests
in the waves of the sea. It is a commodious tunnel, except that there
are occasional places in it where one must stoop to pass under. The roof
is lava, of course, and is thickly studded with little lava-pointed
icicles an inch long, which hardened as they dripped. They project as
closely together as the iron teeth of a corn-sheller, and if one will
stand up straight and walk any distance there, he can get his hair
combed free of charge.
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CHAPTER LXXIV.
We got back to the schooner in good time, and then sailed down to Kau,
where we disembarked and took final leave of the vessel. Next day we
bought horses and bent our way over the summer-clad mountain-terraces,
toward the great volcano of Kilauea (Ke-low-way-ah). We made nearly a
two days’ journey of it, but that was on account of laziness. Toward
sunset on the second day, we reached an elevation of some four thousand
feet above sea level, and as we picked our careful way through billowy
wastes of lava long generations ago stricken dead and cold in the climax
of its tossing fury, we began to come upon signs of the near presence of
the volcano—signs in the nature of ragged fissures that discharged jets
of sulphurous vapor into the air, hot from the molten ocean down in the