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Severance, of Hilo, and the hasty doing of things which have been left to the last, make me a sharer in the spasmodic bustle, which, were it permanent, would metamorphose this dreamy, bowery, tropical capital. The undeserved and unexpected kindness shown me here, as everywhere on these islands, renders my last impressions even more delightful than any first.
No dissolvin' view wuz ever so entrancin', but like all others it had to dissolve. We reached Hilo the second day and we all went to a comfortable tarven, and the next mornin' bright and early we sot off on the stage for the volcano over, I state, and state it fearlessly, the most beautiful road that wuz ever built towards any volcano or anything else.
Once more I write with the splendours of the quenchless fires in sight, and the usual world seems twilight and commonplace by the fierce glare of Halemaumau, and the fitful glare of the other and loftier flame, which is burning ten thousand feet higher in lonely Mokua-weo-weo. Mr. Green and I left Hilo soon after daylight this morning, and made about "the worst time" ever made on the route.
Ten miles from Hilo we came in sight of the first sugar plantation, with its patches of yet brighter green, its white boiling house and tall chimney stack; then more churches, more plantations, more gulches, more houses, and before ten we steamed into Byron's, or as it is now called Hilo Bay. This is the paradise of Hawaii. What Honolulu attempts to be, Hilo is without effort.
Hawaii lies to windward of Oahu; and a schooner, which might need four or five days to beat up to Hilo, will run down from any part of Hawaii in twenty-four hours. If you are an energetic traveler, determined to see every thing, and able to endure a good deal of rough riding, you may spend six weeks on Hawaii.
There are hardly any young ladies, and very few young men, but plenty of rosy, blooming children, who run about barefoot all the year. Besides the Hilo residents, there are some planters' families within seven miles, who come in to sewing circles, church, etc.
The Duke, who had taken very nearly the same cruise himself in the 'Galatea' a few years ago, inquired very kindly after all his old friends at Tahiti, Hilo, Honolulu, and many other places. The Duke is very kind to everybody here. He is much liked by his brother officers in the squadron, and both H.R.H. and the Duchess seem to have made themselves most popular here during the winter.
Coan the day of his arrival; and when the flute band of Mr. Lyman's school serenaded him, he made the youths a kind address, in which he said he had been taught as they were, and hoped hereafter to profit by the instruction he had received. This has been a great day in Hilo. The old native custom of hookupu was revived, and it has been a most interesting spectacle.
Near Hilo, a jet-black cliff is shown, with the vitreous torrent apparently pouring over into the sea: just as it cooled after one of these supernatural eruptions. To these inland valleys, and the adjoining hillsides, which are clothed in the most luxuriant vegetation, Vancouver's bullocks soon wandered; and unmolested for a long period, multiplied in vast herds.
Going underground she made her way toward the sea, coming to the surface of the earth somewhere near the spot on which the Hilo Boarding School stands today. The place was marked by a bubbling spring. Once more she disappeared underground and again came to the surface, creating another spring near the present location of the Hilo Hotel.
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