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On the slope of Mauna Loa is the crater of Kilauea, and in its centre the "pit," called Haleamaumau, the most awe-inspiring and in other ways the most remarkable volcano in the world. Landing at Hilo, by train and stage we went to see it. My visit was made at night when the illumination is greatest.
It only required some suggestion of decay, and the rustle of a fallen leaf now and then, to make it an exact reproduction of a fine day in our English October. The forest was enlivened by many natives bound for Hilo, driving horses loaded with cocoa-nuts, bread-fruit, live fowls, poi and kalo, while others with difficulty urged garlanded pigs in the same direction, all as presents for the king.
Hilo is a lively place for such a mere village; so many natives are stirring about, and dashing along the narrow roads on horseback. This is a large airy house, simple and tasteful, with pretty engravings and water-colour drawings on the walls.
More than once he had killed a man for the sake of food and clothes not worth fifty cents. He was a thoroughly wicked savage. Curiosity attracted him into one of the Hilo meetings, and the bad giant fell under the resistless, mysterious influence which was metamorphosing thousands of Hawaiians.
As you sail along the green coast of Hawaii from its northern point to Hilo, you will be surprised at the number of quaint little white churches which mark the distances almost with the regularity of mile-stones; if, later, you ride through this district or the one south of Hilo, you will see that for every church there is also a school-house; you will see native children reading and writing as well as our own at home; you may hear them singing tunes familiar in our own Sunday-schools; you will see the native man and woman sitting down to read their newspaper at the close of day; and if you could talk with them, you would find they knew almost as much about our late war as you do, for they took an intense interest in the war of the rebellion.
The more thoughtful among the natives acquiesce helplessly and patiently in their advancing fate; but the less intelligent, as I had some opportunity of hearing at Hilo, are becoming restive and irritable, and may drift into something worse if the knowledge of the annexationist views of the foreigners is diffused among them.
So the good people of Hilo have been decorating their houses anew with ferns and flowers, furbishing up their clothes, and holding mysterious consultations regarding etiquette and entertainments, just as if royalty were about to drop down in similar fashion on Bude or Tobermory.
No matter how high the Wailuku rises, it never has covered the little plot of pili grass which still grows on the long, low rock at the river's mouth. Maui, the eldest son of the goddess Hina, lived with his mother and two brothers in the cave behind Rainbow Falls, in the Wailuku River Gorge, a short distance mauka of what is today the town of Hilo.
Though the region was very thinly peopled, 200 houses and 100 lives were sacrificed in this week of horrors, and from the reeling mountains, the uplifted ocean, and the fiery inundation, the terrified survivors fled into Hilo, each with a tale of woe and loss.
People put their ears to the quivering ground, and heard, or thought they heard, the surgings of the imprisoned lava sea rending its way among the ribs of the earth. Five days after the destructive earthquake of April 2, the ground south of Hilo burst open with a crash and roar which at once answered all questions concerning the volcano.
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