Charles Warren Stoddard

“ Finally, on the brow of what seemed to be the last hill in this life, I saw a cross,—a cross among the palms. Hoké saw it, and quickened his pace: he was not so great an ass but he knew that there was provender in the green pastures of Père Fidelis, and his heart freshened within him.
A few paces from the grove of palms I heard a bell swing jubilantly. Out over the solemn sea, up and down that foam-crested shore, rang the sweet Angelus. One may pray with some fervour when one's journey is at an end. ”

“ For here is the philosophy of mammon left to itself: when you get to be an old native, it is your business to die; if you don't know your business, you are left to find it out: what are you good for but to bury?
Let us slip over the smooth bay, for we must look into one of these caverns. Cross in this canoe, so narrow that we cannot get into it at all, but balance ourself on its rim and hold our breath for fear of upsetting. These odd-looking out-riggers are honest enough in theory, but treacherous in practice; and a shark has his eye on us back yonder. ”

“ The moonlight fills it with mystery; and along its rocky front, where the sea-flowers blossom and the sea-grass waves its glossy locks, the soul of the poet and of the artist meet and mingle between shadowless sea and cloudless sky, in the unsearchable mystery of that cypress solitude.
So have I seen it; so would I see it again. When I think on that beach at Monterey—the silent streets, the walled, unweeded gardens—a wistful Saturday-afternoon feeling comes over me. I hear again the incessant roar of the surf; I see the wheeling gulls, the gray sand; the brown, bleak meadows; the empty streets ”

“ The trains run out of Denver like quick-silver,—this is the prettiest thing I can say of Denver. They trickle down into high, green valleys, under the shadow of snow-capped cliffs. There the grass is of the liveliest tint—a kind of salad-green. The air is sweet and fine; everything looks clean, well kept, well swept—perhaps the wind is the keeper and the sweeper. All along the way there is a very striking contrast of color in rock, meadows, and sky; the whole is as appetizing to the sight as a newly varnished picture. ”

“ We slept again, and woke to a sense of silence broken only by the unceasing monody of the reef; slept and woke yet again in the waning light, for the moon had sunk to the ragged rim of an old crater, and seemed to have a large piece bitten out of her glorious disc. Then we broke camp by the shore,—for the air was a trifle chilly,—and withdrew into the seclusion of the Commodore's Lanai, where we threw ourselves into hammocks and swung until daybreak.
In those days we fed on lotus-flowers. Jack-ashore lives for the hour only, and the very air of such a latitude breathes enchantment. ”

“ Yet day by day the great tide of traffic poured through this subterranean passage, with muffled roar as of a distant sea.
She shone on all that was left of a once beautiful and imposing mansion. It crowned the very brow of the cliff; it proudly overlooked all the neighbors; it was a Gothic ruin girded about with a mantle of ivy and dense creepers, yet not all of the perennial leafage that clothed it, even to the eaves, could disguise the fact that the major portion of the mansion had been razed to the ground lest it should topple and go crashing into that gulf below. ”

“ We are to cross the lava southward where it is frescoed with a wilderness of palm-trees: for when the mountain came down to the sea, flowing red-hot, but cooling almost instantly, it mowed down the forests of palms, and the trunks were not consumed, but lay half buried in the cooling lava, and now you can mark every delicate fibre of the bark in the lava, as firm as granite.
Still farther south lies the green slope that was so soon to be shaken to its foundations. I wonder if we could discover any of the peculiar loveliness that bewitched us the evening we crossed it in silence. ”

“ So Kána-aná and the bark, and all that I ever knew of genuine, spontaneous, and unfettered love, sailed into the west, and went down with the sun in a glory of air, sea, and sky, trebly glorious that evening. I shall never meet the sea when it is bluest without thinking of one who is its child and master. I shall never see mangoes and bananas without thinking of him who is their brother, born and brought up with them. I shall never smell cassia, or clove, or jessamine, but a thought of Kána-aná will be borne upon their breath. ”

“ You may walk, ride or drive to it; in any case the surprise begins the moment you reach the ridge's top above Manitou, and ceases not till the back is turned at the close of the excursion—nor then either, for the memory of that marvel haunts one like a feverish dream. Fancy a softly undulating land, delicately wooded and decked with many an ornamental shrub; a landscape that composes so well one can scarcely assure himself that the artist or the landscape gardener has not had a hand in the beautifying of it. ”

“ He touched the heights of the Misty City and the sea-fog that had walled it in through the night as with walls of unquarried marble—albeit the eaves had dripped in the darkness as after a summer shower—and anon the opaque vapors dissolved and fled away. There she lay, the Misty City, in all her wasted and scattered beauty; she might have been a picture for Poets to dream on and Artists to love—their wonder and their despair—but she is not; she is hideous to look upon save in the sunset or the after-glow when you cannot see her, but only the dim vision of what she might have been. ”

“ Great was the astonishment of the islanders, who looked upon him as one possessed of the Evil Spirit, and special sacrifices were offered in his behalf; but the gods were inexorable; and, after several days upon the solitary sea, a shadow, a mote, drifted toward the valley,—a canoe, with a famishing and delirious voyager, that was presently tossed and broken in the surges; then, a dark body glistened for a moment, wet with spray, and sank for ever, while the shining coral reef was stained with the blood of the first-born. ”

“ At the farther side of the house lay the natives, as thick as sheep in a pen, one of them a glossy black fellow, as sleek as a eunuch, born in the West Indies, but whose sands of life had been scattered on various shores. This sooty fellow twanged a quaint instrument of native workmanship, and twanged with uncommon skill. His art was the life of that savage community at the other end of the house. Again and again, during the night, I awoke and heard the tinkle of his primitive harp, mingled with the ejaculations of delight wrung from the hearts of his dusky and sleepless listeners. ”

“ In my mind's eye I see the Alaska of the future—and the not far-distant future. Among the most beautiful of the islands there will be fine openings; lawns and flowers will carpet the slopes from the dark walls of the forest to the water's edge. In the midst of these favored spots summer hotels will throw wide their glorious windows upon vistas that are like glimpses of fairy land. Along the beach numerous skiffs await those who are weary of towns; steam launches are there, and small barges for the transportation of picnic parties to undiscovered islands in the dim distance. ”

“ So we came to Fort Point and the Golden Gate; and beyond the Fort there was more flume and such a stretch of sea and shore and sunshine as caused us to leap with gladness. We could follow the beach for miles; it was like a pavement of varnished sand, cool to the foot and burnished to the eye. And what sea-treasure lay strewn there! Mollusks, not so delicate or so decorative as the shells we had brought with us from the Southern Seas, but still delightful. Such starfish and cloudy, starch-like jelly-fish, and all the livelier creeping and crawling creatures that populate the shore! ”

“ Fair weather and foul; sunlight, moonlight, and starlight; moments of confidence; oaths of eternal fidelity; plans for the future long enough to crowd a century uncomfortably; relapses, rows, recoveries; then, after many days, the water subsided, and we saw land at last.
Land, God bless it! Long, low coral reefs, with a strip of garden glorifying them; rocks towering out of the sea, palm-crowned, foam-fringed; wreaths of verdure cast upon the bosom of the ocean, for ever fragrant in their imperishable beauty; and, beyond and above them all, gorgeous and glorious Tahiti. ”

“ I watch the mountains, cleft with green, fern-cushioned chasms, where an occasional stream silently distills. Far up on a sun-swept ledge a white, scattering drift, looking like a rose-garden after a high wind, I know to be a flock of goats feeding. But the wind-dried and sunburnt grass under foot, the intangible dust that pervades the air, the rain-cloud in the distance, trailing its banners of crape in the sea as it bears down upon us,—these are what fret me a little, and make life a burden for the time being ”

“ Lone Mountain was our Calvary—a green hill that loomed above the graves where slept so many who were dear to us. The cross upon its summit we had often visited in our holiday pilgrimages. They were holydays, when our childish feet toiled hopefully up that steep height; for that cross was the beacon that lighted the world-weary to everlasting rest.
And so we crossed the desert, over our shoetops in sand; climbing one hill after another, only to slide or glide or ride down the yielding slope on the farther side. Meanwhile the fog came in like a wet blanket. ”

“ A very long day's journey brought us out of the green and fertile land that lies with its face to the trade-wind; there the clouds gather and shed their rains; but all of the earth lying in the lee of the great central peak of the island is as dust and ashes,—unwatered, unfruitful, and uninteresting, save as a picture of deep and dreadful desolation. No wonder that Kahéle longed to tarry in the small Eden of Méha, knowing that we were about to journey into the deserts that lie beyond it. ”