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Updated: May 17, 2025
The drooping plumes of the palms, the lance-shaped pandanus leaves, and the delicate, filmy foliage of the casuarina, were all accurately imaged there; the inverted shore below, with its fringe of trees and shrubbery, looking scarcely less substantial and real, than its counterpart above. But as the light increased, these reflections lost their softness, and the clearness of their outlines.
I should like to describe more particularly some of the trees of the wonderful forest through which we passed. In the lowlands near the shore were groves of cocoa-nut palms, of which I have already spoken. Near them was the curious pandanus or screw-pine. My uncle said he always called it a trunk with branches growing at both ends. There were two species of it. The one we saw had fragrant flowers.
A lady called Ui, and her brother Luamaa, fled from Papatea and reached Manu'a, but alas! the sun there too was demanding his daily victims. It went the round of the houses, and when all had given up one of their number it was again the turn of the first house to supply an offering. The body was laid out on a Pandanus tree, and there the sun devoured it.
From where we were we could see but seven of the chain of fifteen islands which comprised the atoll; all of these were thickly covered with coco palms, bearing an enormous crop of nuts, and here and there groves of jack-fruit and pandanus broke the monotonous beauty of the palms by their diversity of foliage.
The poor creatures were confined in a dark, close hut, without air or ventilation, in that stifling climate, which is as unendurable from heat as this one is from cold and damp and fogginess; and there they sat in cages, coarsely woven from broad leaves of the pandanus trees, so that no light could enter; for the people believed that light would kill them.
The song of the waters and the familiar disarray of boulders gave us a strong sense of home, which the exotic foliage, the daft-like growth of the pandanus, the buttressed trunk of the banyan, the black pigs galloping in the bush, and the architecture of the native houses dissipated ere it could be enjoyed.
The tree is tall and large, and the pinnated leaves very long. In the moist portions of the jungle toward the foot of the hill were whole groves of the fragrant pandanus, ferns of infinite variety, and a species of wild mignonette with a perfume like that of commingled strawberries and lemon.
Seeing that the natives had encamped here frequently, and some very lately, by the heaps of broken Pandanus fruit, I did not hesitate to pitch our tents; but, on examining the water, I was greatly disappointed in finding it so brackish that the horses and cattle would not drink it.
Almost every one strong enough to ride has a horse; for the Hawaiians can not well live without horses. Some of the people live on the shore and make salt, which you see stored up in pandanus bags under the shelter of lava bubbles. When I was there a number were engaged in digging a ditch in which to lay an iron pipe, intended to convey fresh water to the denser part of the settlement.
The pandanus furnishes him material for his mats, and of mats he makes his bed, as well as the floor of his house.
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