United States or Saudi Arabia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
If ladies are of your party, and the stages must be shorter, you can ride the first day to Ewa, which is but ten miles; the next, to Waialua, eighteen miles further; the third, to the neighborhood of Kahuku, twelve miles; thence to Kahana, fifteen miles; thence to Kaalaea, twelve miles; and the next day carries you, by an easy ride of thirteen miles, into Honolulu.
I signified my willingness to go, and in a few days Miss G , accompanied by a native girl, came on horseback to meet me and conduct me to Waialua. A gentleman of Honolulu, his sister and a native woman called Maria, who were going to Waialua and beyond, joined us, so that our party consisted of six.
The sights of Honolulu had not lost their novelty the tropical foliage of palm, banana, bread-fruit, monkey-pod and algaroba trees; the dark-skinned, brightly-clad natives with flowers on their heads, who walked with bare feet and stately tread along the shady sidewalks or tore through the streets on horseback; the fine stone or wooden residences with wide cool verandas, or humbler native huts surrounded by walls of coral-rock instead of fences; the deep indigo-blue ocean on one hand and the rich green mountains on the other, dripping with moisture and alternately dark and bright with the gloom of clouds and the glory of rainbows, still wore for me their original freshness and interest when I received an urgent request to come to Waialua, a little village on the other side of the island.
P . Elizabeth Aukai was whipped on her bare feet and legs below the knee until she burst out crying and begged for mercy and asked Miss G 's forgiveness for biting her. Then she and the other rebels were expelled, and the sheriff took them away that night. Those who lived on other islands were sent home by the first schooner leaving Honolulu. Thus ended the rebellion at Waialua school.
The girls were always glad when the time came to go swimming in the sea, for they were very fond of a green moss which grew on the reef, and the whole crowd would sit on rocks picking and eating it while the spray dashed over them. Waialua means "the meeting of the waters," or, literally, "two waters," and the place is named from the perpetual flow and counterflow of the river and the ocean tide.
On the way you will see, near Ewa, the Pearl Lochs, which it has recently been proposed to cede as a naval station to the United States; and near Waialua an interesting boarding-school for Hawaiian girls, in which they are taught not only in the usual school studies, but in sewing, and the various arts of the housewife.
I come now to the rebellion which broke forth in Waialua school when I had been there three weeks. A month or two before one of the school-girls had died after a brief illness. The old heathen superstition about praying to Death had been revived by the lower class of natives in the place, who were not friendly to the school, and had been transmitted by them to the older girls.
Waialua, our destination, was about a third of the way around the island, but the road, instead of following the sea-coast all the way, took a short cut across an inland plateau, so that the distance was but twenty-seven miles.
If you are curious to see the high valley in which the famous Waialua oranges are grown, you must take a day for that purpose. Between Kahuku and Kahana it is worth while to make a detour into the mountains to see the Kaliawa Falls, which are a very picturesque sight. The rock, at a height of several hundred feet, has been curiously worn by the water into the shape of a canoe.
From the attic-windows the best view of the bay could be obtained, and it was my delight to lean out of them like "a blessed damosel" half an hour at a time, gazing seaward and drinking in the beauty of the scene. Waialua Bay was shaped like a half moon, the tips of which were distant headlands, and the curve was the yellow, palm-fringed beach.
Word Of The Day