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Updated: May 17, 2025
For two days it lasted, when we emerged into rolling country, and, along an actual wagon-road, came home to the ranch at a gallop. I know it was cruel to gallop the horses after such a long, hard journey; but we blistered our hands in vain effort to hold them in. That's the sort of horses they grow on Haleakala.
This slope of Haleakala is like a whole township, diversified with farms and woods, valleys and hills, resting on its elbows, so to speak, and looking out over the Pacific. We could look up to the cloud-line, about seven thousand feet above the sea, and occasionally get a glimpse of the long line of the summit through rifts in the clouds.
It looked gentle and easy of ascent, wooded here and there, and here and there showing broad, black streaks from the lava overflows at the summit in recent years; but remembering that it was nearly four thousand feet higher than Haleakala, I had no desire to climb it. This mountain and its companion, Mauna Kea, are the highest island mountains in the world.
After seeing a live or burning crater like Kilauea, Haleakala, I thought, would be but a dull sight; but it is, on the contrary, extremely well worth a visit. The islands have no sharp or angular volcanic peaks.
In consequence, as fast as we climbed up the grim slope of Haleakala, still faster did Haleakala, ourselves, and all about us, sink down into the centre of what appeared a profound abyss. Everywhere, far above us, towered the horizon. The ocean sloped down from the horizon to us.
There is a familiar and strange illusion experienced by all who climb isolated mountains. The higher one climbs, the more of the earth's surface becomes visible, and the effect of this is that the horizon seems up-hill from the observer. This illusion is especially notable on Haleakala, for the old volcano rises directly from the sea without buttresses or connecting ranges.
Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, on Hawaii, though 14,000 feet high, are mere bulbs vast hills, not mountains; and the ascent to the summit of Haleakala, though you surmount 10,000 feet, is neither dangerous nor difficult. It is tedious, however, for it involves a ride of about twelve miles, mostly over lava, uphill.
Nearer the coast your eye, become familiar with the peculiar shape of these cones or craters, will notice yet others; and, indeed, to appreciate the peculiarities of Sandwich Island scenery, in which extinct craters and cones of all sizes have so great a part, it is necessary to have visited Kilauea and Haleakala.
The natives have no tradition of Haleakala in activity. There are signs of several lava flows, and of one in particular, clearly much more recent than the others. It must have presented a magnificent and terrible sight when it was in full activity. I did not ride into the crater, but it is possible to do so, and the natives have a trail, not much used, by which they pass.
Incidentally, we read that the Snark and all hands had been lost at sea, and that she had been a very unseaworthy craft anyway. And while we read this information a wireless message was being received by the congressional party on the summit of Haleakala announcing the safe arrival of the Snark. It was the Snark's first landfall and such a landfall!
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