73. CHAPTER LXXIII.
AT noon, we hired a Kanaka to take us down to the ancient
ruins at Honaunan 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 knifeblade, 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,
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,
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 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.
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.