r for the bread-fruit or the
cocoa-palm. Mangoes, on the other hand, attained a splendid bigness,
many of them discoloured on one side with a purplish hue which struck
the note of autumn. The same note was repeated by a certain aerial
creeper, which drops (you might suppose) from heaven like the wreck of
an old kite, and roosts on tree-tops with a pendent raffle of air-roots,
the whole of a colour like a wintry beech's. These are clannish plants;
five or six may be quartered on a single tree, thirty or forty on a
grove; the wood dies under them to skeletons; and they swing there, like
things hung out from washing, over the death they have provoked.

We had now turned southward towards Kaa, following a shapeless
bridle-track which is the high road of Hawaii. The sea was on one hand.
Our way was across--the woods we threaded did but cling upon--the vast
declivity of the island front. For long, as we still skirted the margin
of the forest, we kept an open view of the whole falling seaboard, the
white edge of surf now soundless to our ears, and the high blue sea
marbled by tide rips, and showing under the clouds of an opalescent
milky white. The height, the breeze, the giddy gradient of the isle,
delighted me. I observed a spider plant its abhorred St. Andrew's cross
against the sea and sky, certainly fifty yards from where I rode, and
five feet at least from either tree: so wide was its death-gossamer
spread, so huge the ugly vermin.

Presently the sea was lost, the forest swallowed us. Ferns joined their
fronds above a horseman's head. High over these, the dead and the living
rose and were hung with tattered parasites. The breeze no longer reached
us; it was steaming hot; and the way went up and down so abruptly, that
in one place my saddle-girth was burst and we must halt for repairs. In
the midst of this rough wilderness, I was reminded of the aim of our
excursion. The schoolmaster and certain others of Hookena had recently
bought a tract of land for some four thousand dollars; set out coffee;
and hired a Chinaman to mind it. The thing was notable in itself;
natives selling land is a thing of daily custom; of natives buying, I
have heard no other instance; and it was civil to show interest. "But
when," I asked, "shall we come to your coffee plantation?" "This is it,"
said he, and pointed down. Their bushes grew on the path-side; our
horses breasted them as they went by; and the gray wood on every hand
enclosed and over