73. CHAPTER LXXIII.
AT noon, we hired a Kanaka to take us down to the ancient
ruins at Honaunau in his canoe—price two dollars—reasonable
enough, for a sea voyage of eight miles, counting both
ways.
The native canoe is an irresponsible looking contrivance. I
cannot think of anything to liken it to but a boy's sled runner
hollowed out, and that does not quite convey the correct idea.
It is about fifteen feet long, high and pointed at both ends, is a
foot and a half or two feet deep, and so narrow that if you
wedged a fat man into it you might not get him out again. It
sits on top of the water like a duck, but it has an outrigger
and does not upset easily, if you keep still. This outrigger
is formed of two long bent sticks like plow handles, which
project from one side, and to their outer ends is bound a curved
beam composed of an extremely light wood, which skims along
the surface of the water and thus saves you from an upset on
that side, while the outrigger's weight is not so easily lifted as
to make an upset on the other side a thing to be greatly feared.
Still, until one gets used to sitting perched upon this knife-blade,
he is apt to reason within himself that it would be more
comfortable if there were just an outrigger or so 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,
[ILLUSTRATION]
SURF-BATHING—FAILURE.
[Description: 504EAF. Page 526. In-line image of a person caught in a wave and about to be drowned.]
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.
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.
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,
[ILLUSTRATION]
THE CITY OF REFUGE.
[Description: 504EAF. Page 527. In-line image of a group of natives running around the perimetere of
a building.]
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?
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 seenes
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
[ILLUSTRATION]
THE QUEEN'S ROCK.
[Description: 504EAF. Page 529. In-line image of a person beneath a boulder table with some
one standing on top of the table with a spear.]
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.
On the other side of the
temple is a monstrous seventon
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.
