a perpetual rain. And yet even on my first
sight, beholding so little and that through a glass from the deck of the
_Casco_, the rude plutonic structure of the isle was conspicuous. Here
was none of the accustomed glitter of the beach, none of the close
shoreside forests of the typical high island. All seemed black and
barren, and to slope sheer into the sea. Unexpected movements of the
land caught the attention, folds that glittered with a certain
vitreosity; black mouths of caves; ranges of low cliffs, vigorously
designed awhile in sun and shadow, and that sank again into the general
declivity of the island glacis. Under its gigantic cowl of cloud, the
coast frowned upon us with a face of desolation.

On my return I passed from a humming city, with shops and palaces and
busy wharves, plying cabs and tramcars, telephones in operation and a
railway in the building; mounted a strong and comfortable local steamer;
sailed under desolate shores indeed, but guided in the night by sea and
harbour lights; and was set down at last in a village uninhabited by any
white, the creature of pure native taste--of which, what am I to say but
that I know no such village in Europe? A well-to-do western hamlet in
the States would be the closest parallel; and it is a moderate prophecy
to call it so already.

Hookena is its name. It stands on the same coast which I had wondered at
before from the tossing _Casco_; the same coast on which the far voyager
Cook ended a noble career not very nobly. That district of Kona where he
fell is one illustrious in the history of Hawaii. It was at first the
centre of the dominion of the great Kamehameha. There, in an unknown
sepulchre, his bones are still hidden; there, too, his reputed
treasures, spoils of a buccaneer, lie, and are still vainly sought for,
in one of the thousand caverns of the lava. There the tabus were first
broken, there the missionaries first received; and but for the new use
of ships and the new need of harbours, here might be still the chief
city and the organs of the kingdom. Yet a nearer approach confirmed the
impression of the distance. It presents to the seaward one immense
decline. Streams of lava have followed and submerged each other down
this slope, and overflowed into the sea. These cooled and shrank, and
were buried under fresh inundations, or dislocated by fresh tremors of
the mountain. A multiplicity of caves is the result. The mouths of caves
are everywhere; the lava i