64. CHAPTER LXIV.
IN my diary of our third day in Honolulu, I find this:
I am probably the most sensitive man in Hawaii
to-night—especially about sitting down in the presence of my
betters. I have ridden fifteen or twenty miles on horse-back since
5 P.M. and to tell the honest truth, I have a delicacy about sitting
down at all.
An excursion to Diamond Head and the King's Coacoanut
Grove was planned to-day—time, 4:30 P.M.—the party to consist of
half a dozen gentlemen and three ladies. They all started at the
appointed hour except myself. I was at the Government prison,
(with Captain Fish and another whaleship-skipper, Captain
Phillips,) and got so interested in its examination that I did not
notice how quickly the time was passing. Somebody remarked
that it was twenty minutes past five o'clock, and that woke me up.
It was a fortunate circumstance that Captain Phillips was along
with his "turn out," as he calls a top-buggy that Captain Cook
brought here in 1778, and a horse that was here when Captain
Cook came. Captain Phillips takes a just pride in his driving and
in the speed of his horse, and to his passion for displaying them I
owe it that we were only sixteen minutes coming from the prison
to the American Hotel—a distance which has been estimated to be
over half a mile. But it took some fearful driving. The Captain's
whip came down fast, and the blows started so much dust out of
the horse's hide that during the last half of the journey we rode
through an impenetrable fog, and ran by a pocket compass in the
hands of Captain Fish, a whaler of twenty-six years experience,
who sat there through the perilous voyage as self-possessed as if he
had been on the euchre-deck of his own
ship, and calmly said, "Port your helm—port," from time to time,
and "Hold her a little free—steady—so-o," and "Luff—hard down to
starboard!" and never once lost his presence of mind or betrayed
the least anxiety by voice or manner. When we came to anchor at
last, and Captain Phillips looked at his watch and said, "Sixteen
minutes—I told you it was in her! that's over three miles an hour!"
I could see he felt entitled to a compliment, and so I said I had
never seen lightning go like that horse. And I never had.
The landlord of the American said the party had been gone
nearly an hour, but that he could give me my choice of several
horses that could overtake them. I said, never mind—I preferred a
safe horse to a fast one—I would like to have an excessively gentle
horse—a horse with no spirit whatever—a lame one, if he had such
a thing. Inside of five minutes I was mounted, and perfectly
satisfied with my outfit. I had no time to label him "This is a
horse," and so if the public took him for a sheep I cannot help it. I
was satisfied, and that was the main thing. I could see that he had
as many fine points as any man's horse, and so I hung my hat on
one of them, behind the saddle, and swabbed the perspiration from
my face and started. I named him after this island, "Oahu"
(pronounced O-waw-hee). The first gate he came to he started in;
I had neither whip nor spur, and so I simply argued the case with
him. He resisted argument, but ultimately yielded to insult and
abuse. He backed out of that gate and steered for another one on
the other side of the street. I triumphed by my former process.
Within the next six hundred yards he crossed the street fourteen
times and attempted thirteen gates, and in the meantime the
tropical sun was beating down and threatening to cave the top of
my head in, and I was literally dripping with perspiration. He
abandoned the gate business after that and went along peaceably
enough, but absorbed in meditation. I noticed this latter
circumstance, and it soon began to fill me with apprehension. I
said to my self, this creature is planning some new outrage, some
fresh deviltry or other—no horse ever thought over a subject so
profoundly as this one is doing just for nothing. The more this
thing preyed upon my mind the more uneasy I became, until the
suspense became almost unbearable and I dismounted to see if
there was anything wild in his eye—for I had heard that the eye of
this noblest of our domestic animals is very expressive.
I cannot describe what a load of anxiety was lifted from my mind
when I found that he was only asleep. I woke him up and started
him into a faster walk, and then the villainy of his nature came out
again. He tried to climb over a stone wall, five or six feet high. I
saw that I must apply force to this horse, and that I might as well
begin first as last. I plucked a stout switch from a tamarind tree,
and the moment he saw it, he surrendered. He broke into a
convulsive sort of a canter, which had three short steps in it and
one long one, and reminded me alternately of the clattering shake
of the great earthquake, and the sweeping plunging of the Ajax in a
storm.
And now there can be no fitter occasion than the present to
pronounce a left-handed blessing upon the man who invented the
American saddle. There is no seat to speak of about
it—one might as well sit in a shovel—and the stirrups are nothing
but an ornamental nuisance. If I were to write down here all the
abuse I expended on those stirrups, it would make a large book,
even without pictures. Sometimes I got one foot so far through,
that the stirrup partook of the nature of an anklet; sometimes both
feet were through, and I was handcuffed by the legs; and
sometimes my feet got clear out and left the stirrups wildly
dangling about my shins. Even when I was in proper position and
carefully balanced upon the balls of my feet, there was no comfort
in it, on account of my nervous dread that they were going to slip
one way or the other in a moment. But the subject is too
exasperating to write about.
A mile and a half from town, I came to a grove of tall
cocoanut trees, with clean, branchless stems reaching straight up
sixty or seventy feet and topped with a spray of green foliage
sheltering clusters of cocoa-nuts—not more picturesque than a
forest of collossal ragged parasols, with bunches of magnified
grapes under them, would be.
I once heard a grouty northern invalid say that a cocoanut tree
might be poetical, possibly it was; but it looked like a
feather-duster struck by lightning. I think that describes it better
than a picture—and yet, without any question, there is something
fascinating about a cocoa-nut tree—and graceful, too.
About a dozen cottages, some frame and the others of native
grass, nestled sleepily in the shade here and there. The grass
cabins are of a grayish color, are shaped much like our own
cottages, only with higher and steeper roofs usually, and are
made of some kind of weed strongly bound together in bundles.
The roofs are very thick, and so are the walls; the latter have
square holes in them for windows. At a little distance these cabins
have a furry appearance, as if they might be made of bear skins.
They are very cool and pleasant inside. The King's flag was flying
from the roof of one of the cottages, and His Majesty was probably
within. He owns the whole concern thereabouts, and passes his
time there frequently, on sultry days "laying off." The spot is
called "The King's Grove."
Near by is an interesting ruin—the meagre remains of an
ancient heathen temple—a place where human sacrifices were
offered up in those old bygone days when the simple child of
nature, yielding momentarily to sin when sorely tempted,
acknowledged his error when calm reflection had shown it him,
and came forward with noble frankness and offered up his
grandmother as an atoning sacrifice—in those old days when the
luckless sinner could keep on cleansing his conscience and
achieving periodical happiness as long as his relations held out;
long, long before the missionaries braved a thousand privations to
come and make them permanently miserable by telling them how
beautiful and how blissful a place heaven is, and how nearly
impossible it is to get there; and showed the poor native how
dreary a place perdition is and what unnecessarily liberal facilities
there are for going to it; showed him how, in his ignorance he had
gone and fooled away all his kinfolks to no purpose; showed him
what rapture it is to work all day long for fifty cents to buy food
for next day with, as compared with fishing for pastime and lolling
in the shade through eternal Summer, and eating of the bounty that
nobody labored to provide but Nature. How sad it is to think of
the multitudes who have gone to their graves in this beautiful
island and never knew there was a hell!
This ancient temple was built of rough blocks of lava, and was
simply a roofless inclosure a hundred and thirty feet long and
seventy wide—nothing but naked walls, very thick, but not much
higher than a man's head. They will last for ages no doubt, if left
unmolested. Its three altars and other sacred
appurtenances have crumbled and passed away years ago. It is
said that in the old times thousands of human beings were
slaughtered here, in the presence of naked and howling savages. If
these mute stones could speak, what tales they could tell, what
pictures they could describe, of fettered victims writhing under the
knife; of massed forms straining forward out of the gloom, with
ferocious faces lit up by the sacrificial fires; of the background of
ghostly trees; of the dark pyramid of Diamond Head standing
sentinel over the uncanny scene, and the peaceful moon looking
down upon it through rifts in the cloud-rack!
When Kamehameha (pronounced Ka-may-ha-may-ah) the
Great—who was a sort of a Napoleon in military genius and
uniform success—invaded this island of Oahu three quarters of a
century ago, and exterminated the army sent to oppose him, and
took full and final possesion of the country, he searched out the
dead body of the King of Oahu, and those of the principal chiefs,
and impaled their heads on the walls of this temple.
Those were savage times when this old slaughter-house was in
its prime. The King and the chiefs ruled the common herd with a
rod of iron; made them gather all the provisions the masters
needed; build all the houses and temples; stand all the expenses, of
whatever kind; take kicks and cuffs for thanks; drag out lives well
flavored with misery, and then suffer death for trifling offences or
yield up their lives on the sacrificial altars to purchase favors from
the gods for their hard rulers. The missionaries have clothed them,
educated them, broken up the tyrannous authority of their chiefs,
and given them freedom and the right to enjoy whatever their
hands and brains produce with equal laws for all, and punishment
for all alike who transgress them. The contrast is so strong—the
benefit conferred upon this people by the missionaries is so
prominent, so palpable and so unquestionable, that the frankest
compliment I can pay them, and the best, is simply to point to the
condition of the Sandwich Islanders of Captain Cook's time, and
their condition to-day. Their work speaks for itself.