Charmian London

“ But when a dart of sun through a decklight woke me from brief sleep, we were spanking along smartly in a cobalt sea threshed white on every rushing wave, with the green and gold island of Oahu shifting its scenery like a sliding screen as we swept past tawny Diamond Head and palm-dotted Waikiki toward Honolulu Harbor. After an oddly fishless voyage of four weeks from San Francisco (called by the natives Kapalakiko—pronounced Kah-pah-lah-ke-ko) , we were joyously excited over a school of big porpoises, “puffing-pigs,” intent as any flock of barnyard fowl to cross our fleeing forefoot. ”

“ Eye and brain are possessed of the bewildering actuality, and having expected Heaven knows what lugubrious prospect, we are all at sea. Certain it is that our preconceptions were far removed from the joyous sunny scene now before us, as I rock in a hammock on the Superintendent’s lanai, shaded from the late sunshine by a starry screen of white jasmine. Jack stretches at length on a rattan lounge, cigarette in one hand and long cool glass in the other; and what we see is a serene pasture of many acres, a sort of bulging village green, in the center a white bandstand breathing of festivity. ”

“ And with that day, meeting the breezes of Windward Hawaii, there passed my Blue Flush into the limbo of heavenly memories.
Leaving the later flow, we traversed a land of lava so eternally ancient that it blossoms with fertile growth. Beautiful color of plant life springs from this seared dust of millenniums—cactus blossoming magenta and reddish-gold and snow-white; native hibiscus, flaunting tawny flames on high, scraggly trees of scant foliage; lehua’s crimson-threaded paint brushes; blue and white morning-glories and patches of crimson flowers, flung about like velvet rugs. ”

“ If it is not the exalted Mauna Kea, it is surely the hardly less lofty Mauna Loa, or Hualalai.
At any moment in these Islands one may look off to the sea, whether calm or blue-flushed; or, as here, deep-blue and white-whipped, driven like a mighty river by the strong and steady trade wind. One never grows fully accustomed to the startling height of the horizon, which seems always above eye-level, cradling one’s senses in a vast blue bowl.
At last the road dipped seaward to the bluffs where lies red-roofed, tree-sheltered Honokaa, headquarters of a great sugar plantation. ”

“ Such content is ours here at Waikiki, that it is a shame to press it all into one life, for it could be spread over several incarnations. We sleep like babies, in the salt night airs wafting through mosquito canopies. Before breakfast, it is into the blissful warm tide, diving through bubbling combers, coming up eyes level with tiny sails of fishermen beyond the barrier reef. All hours one hears the steady, gentle boom and splash of the surf—not the disturbing, ominous gnashing and roaring of the Pacific Coast rollers, nor the carnivorous growlings off the rock-jagged line of New England. ”

“ Another caller crossed the springy turf of our garden—one who, having been told we were looking for saddle animals, came to suggest that we bring up our saddles the first of next week, and ride two of his horses back to the peninsula, where we are welcome to them as long as we please. Truly, the face of Hawaii hospitality is fair to see. What a place to live, with the gift of a roof from the rain, tree tops from the noonday sun, a peaceful space in which to work, strange pleasant foods irreproachably set forth, a warm vast bowl of jade for swimming, and fleet steeds for less than the asking! ”

“ Beside my own California mountain-side, there is one place above all others that I should love to have and cherish. It is Ahuimanu, Refuge of Birds.
I have descanted upon the outdoor sports of Hawaii. And if you would have the fever of city life in a rigorless climate, no city so gay as Honolulu. The hotel life is a dream of leisure, dining, teas, bridge, bathing, canoeing, and dancing in the immense lanais to the swooning Hawaiian strains or the latest mainland jazz, from stringed instruments and native voices. ”

“ When a gloriously bodied Hawaiian, naked but for a loin-cloth carved against his shining bronze, takes form like a miracle in the down-rushing smother of a breaking wave, arms outstretched and heels winged with backward-streaming spray, you watch, stricken of speech. It is not the sheer physical splendor of the thing that so moves one, for, lighting and informing this, is an all dominating spirit of joyful fearlessness and freedom that manifests an almost visible soul, and lends a slow thrilling of awe to one’s contemplation of the beauty and wonder of the human. ”

“ On this island as well as on Molokai, Maui, and Hawaii, it has changed large tracts of rocky desert into abundantly wooded lands. The algaroba shades the ground with a dense brush, and attains all heights up to fifty and sixty feet—as these in our garden, where the boles have been kept trimmed and show their massive twisted trunks and limbs in contrast to their light and feathery foliage. The wood is of splendid quality, the pods are a most useful stock feed, while bees love the sweet of the blossoms and distill excellent honey. ”

“ Alighting, we pressed against a wall of wind that eternally drafts through the gap, and threading among a score of small pack-mules resting on the way to Honolulu, gained the railed brink of the Pali. In the center of a scene that had haunted me for years, since I beheld it in a painting at the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, I looked a thousand feet into an emerald abyss. Over its awful pitch Kamehameha a century ago forced the warriors of the King of Oahu, Kalanikupule—a “legion of the lost ones” whose shining skulls became souvenirs for strong climbers in succeeding generations. ”

“ Hail, Haleakala! It’s boots and saddles for the unroofed House of the Sun, the largest extinct crater in existence! What will it be like? (“Nothing you’ve ever seen or dreamed,” assures one.) Shall we be disappointed? (“Not if you’re alive!” laughs another.) Jack gives me a heaving hand into the saddle, and my Welshman strikes a swinging jog-trot that plays havoc with the opu-full—opu being stomach—with which my terrible mountain appetite has been assuaged.
Rolling grasslands give place to steep and rugged mountain, with sparse vegetation. ”

“ There is small need for residents of Kona to plan special entertainment for guests, provided those guests have eyes. First, one’s imagination is set in motion by this unheard-of gradient vastness of molten rock so ancient that it has become rich soil overspread in the higher reaches with bright sugar cane, coffee, bracken and forestage. Below this belt of vegetation, barren, seamy lava stretches to the coast line, lost in distance to right and left, all its miniature palm-feathered bays pricked out by a restless edge of pearly surf in dazzling contrast to the vivid turquoise water inshore. ”

“ Tochigi, Nipponese and poet-browed cabin boy of the Snark, is to live ashore with us and resume his erstwhile household service, while the rest of the yacht’s complement will retain their accommodations aboard. In these protected waters, the boat lies at least as steady as a house on wheels, as she swings to ebb and flow.
Strangely content are we in the unwonted tranquillity of motion and sound, lacking wish to venture afield, even to Honolulu, about twelve miles distant by the railroad. Enough just to rest and rest, and gaze around upon the beautiful, long-desired world of island. ”

“ Jack asserts that they are larger than hens’ eggs; but lacking convenient eggs, there is no proving him in error. Nothing does him more good than a whole-hearted romp with young people, and these were a match that commanded his wary respect.
After supper, we reclined upon a breezy point during a lingering sunset over the wide, receding earth, lifted high above the little affairs of men, and, still high above, the equally receding summit. We felt light, inconsequential, as if we had no place, no ponderability, no reality—motes poised on a sliver of rock between two tremendous realities. ”

“ One lolls in hammocks on the high lanai, until an irruption of young things carrying bathing suits stirs one’s delicious languor.
Swimming at Keaau is inside a surf-pounded lava-rock barrier. The high breakers spill over and through crevices into this sheltered play-ground. We descended steps in a stone wall, to frolic on the sand, across which a fresh stream, never by the same route, finds its way to the sea. One has to hunt for places to swim among lava hummocks, and at high tide it is lively work battling with miniature currents that wash in and out the crevices. ”

“ The name Hawaii calls to memory vague dots on a map of the Pacific Ocean, bearing a vaguely gastronomic caption that in no wise reminds him of the Earl of Sandwich, Lord of the British Admiralty, and patron of the intrepid discoverer, Captain Cook, whose valiant bones even now rest on the Kona Coast. Savage, remote, alluring, adventurous, are the impressions. Few have grasped the fact that that pure Polynesian, Kamehameha I, the Charlemagne of Hawaii, deserves to rank as one of the most remarkable figures of all time for his revolutionary genius, unaided by outland influences. ”

“ The diversification is endless, from the lava shores of South Puna to the barking sands of Kauai. On every island break-neck mountain climbing abounds. One can shiver above timber-line on the snow-caps of Mauna Kea or Mauna Loa, swelter under the banyan at sleepy old Lahaina, swim in clear ocean water that effervesces like champagne on ten thousand beaches, or sleep under blankets every night in the upland pastures of the great cattle ranges and awaken each morning to the song of sky-larks and the crisp, snappy air of spring. ”

“ Not far off, in a wind-ruffled, reef-sheltered place, swam a dozen men and women. They wore loincloths and white or red muumuus, and threshed the water, brilliant blue even close inshore, with overhand breast-strokes from brown arms smooth-shining against the lava background of rougher bronze surface. The unrestrained laughter and exclamations were too much for me, and I went out upon the piled lava shore for a nearer view of their gambols. While I sat, feet trailing in the brine-washed sand, a sumptuous wahine strolled by with the correct, straight-front poise of the heaviest Hawaiians. ”

“ Nor can one fitly characterize the climate—the zephyrs warm and the wind-puffs cool that poured over us where we lay on a table-land, reached by trail through a sylvan jungle of ferns, in matted grass so deep and dense that we never felt the solid earth.
Long we rested, speaking little, surrounded by impregnable fastnesses, marveling at this superlatively grand and beautiful cleft, at its head, lord of all lesser peaks and spires and domes, Puu Kukui piercing nearly 6000 feet into the torn sky. There are other valleys back of Puu Kukui, as beautiful as Iao, but more difficult of access. ”

“ Toward Diamond Head, when the south wind drives, swift breakers, like endless charges of white cavalry, leap and surge shoreward, flinging back long silver manes. The thrill of these landward races never palls at Waikiki. One seems to vision Pharaoh’s Horses in mighty contest with backwashing waters, arriving nowhere, dying and melting impotent upon the sand.
Jack, to whom beauty is never marred by knowledge of its why and wherefore, has explained to me the physics of a breaking wave.
“A wave is a communicated agitation,” he says. “The water that composes a wave really does not move. ”

“ That night, when the first vivid crack broke the oily dark surface, Jack, with a gasp of delight, seized my hand, lighted a match above it, and peered closely at a big black opal, precious loot of Australia’s Lightning Ridge, that I had named “Kilauea” before ever we had seen Pélé’s colors. Tipping the stone from slanting plane to plane, its blue-gray dull face cracked into flaming lines for all the world like the phenomenon before us in the wounded side of Mauna Loa—a truer replica of Halemaumau than any painting. ”

“ Already the glow from Kilauea’s raging furnace was coloring the dark clouds beyond Mauna Loa’s long incline. Any time of the night one could reckon upon that intense, lurid wine-glow to the southeast.
Breakfasts were mainly of plumpest plover, proudly served to the queen’s taste by Ondera, the Japanese cook, a broken-down cowboy. For some reason it had been hard for me to think of the Japanese as cowboys; but men who are fortunate enough to get and keep them say there are none more able nor more faithful. ”

“ One who knows Hawaii always goes back. The old lure abides; nor does it abate when the vessel’s forefoot, spurning the silver flying-fish, is heard thripping into the azure silken sea-level which betokens nearness to remembered isles. Again “The old lost stars wheel back”; again the yard-arm of the Southern Cross leans upon the night-purple horizon; again, the old, lovely approach to Oahu, with Molokai sleeping to the southeast.
It was the Maui’s first sailing for Honolulu since her war service in the Atlantic. ”

“ Somewhere on the coast there is an old battlefield where countless human bones still whiten; and on the rocky coast to the south can be seen in shallow water the ruins of miles of ancient fish ponds equaled nowhere in the group. To the northwest Oahu disturbs the horizon, cloud-capped and shimmering in the blue; while Haleakala bulks ten thousand feet in air on Maui to the east.
This ranch home is buried in flowers, and my unbelief in begonias a dozen feet high underwent rude check. A fairy forest of these surrounds the guest cottage, casting a rosy shadow on window and lanai. ”

“ Louis von Tempsky, debonair as of old, and the sonsy Armine, stood peering down in the uncertain light. Without trace of yawn from interrupted sleep, they reached to me the hands of perfect welcome one fails not to clasp in these sweet isles. Never, should I embark and depart a thousand times, can Hawaii’s landings become commonplace. Day or night, they remain the most unspoiled of travel blessings.
If there is one thing lovelier than sea-level on Maui, it is her temperate zone. ”