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A man wearing a malo was up on the roof of one, thatching it with grass. Riding near, we hailed him and inquired about a quicksand which lay just ahead and which we must cross. He told us to avoid the makai side and keep to the mouka side. We followed his directions, and crossed in safety.
Long ago many, many years before the haole came to plant his sugar cane in their deep, rich soil these hills were the homes of several beautiful goddesses. The makai and largest hill, called Halai, was the home of Hina Keahi, eldest daughter of the goddess Hina, who lived at Waianuenue the cave behind Rainbow Falls in the Wailuku River and sister of Maui the demi-god.
For all practical purposes there are but two directions in the islands mouka, meaning toward the mountains, and makai, toward the sea. We rode all the forenoon over a level strip of grassy open country bordering the sea, with here and there a native hut near a clump of cocoanuts or a taro-patch.
Hou- hou, meaning "in a huff," I hear on all sides; and two words, makai, signifying "on the sea-side," and mauka, "on the mountain side." These terms are perfectly intelligible out of doors, but it is puzzling when one is asked to sit on "the mauka side of the table." The word aloha, in foreign use, has taken the place of every English equivalent.
Her town-house, a few miles away in Honolulu, on Nuuanu Drive between the first and second "showers," was a palace. Hosts of guests had known the comfort and joy of her mountain house on Tantalus, and of her volcano house, her mauka house, and her makai house on the big island of Hawaii. Yet this Waikiki house stressed no less than the rest in beauty, in dignity, and in expensiveness of upkeep.
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