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.
