choolmaster, I asked of him the question. Yes, the
Hawaiians knew of Nelesona; there had been a story in the papers where
he figured, and the portrait had been given for a supplement. So he was
known as a character of Romance! Brave men since Agamemnon, like the
brave before, must patiently expect the "inspired author." And nowhere
has fiction deeper roots than in the world of Polynesia. They are all
tellers and hearers of tales; and the first requisite of any native
paper is a story from the English or the French. These are of all sorts,
and range from the works of good Miss Porter to _The Lightning
Detective_. Miss Porter, I was told, was "drawing" in Hawaii; and Dumas
and the _Arabian Nights_ were named as having pleased extremely.

Our homeward way was down the hill and by the sea in the black open. We
traversed a waste of shattered lava; spires, ravines, well-holes showing
the entrance to vast subterranean vaults in whose profundities our
horse-hooves doubtless echoed. The whole was clothed with stone
_fiorituri_ fantastically fashioned, like debris from the workshop of
some brutal sculptor: dog's heads, devils, stone trees, and gargoyles
broken in the making. From a distance, so intricate was the detail, the
side of a hummock wore the appearance of some coarse and dingy sort of
coral, or a scorched growth of heather. Amid this jumbled wreck, naked
itself, and the evidence of old disaster, frequent plants found root:
rose-apples bore their rosy flowers; and a bush between a cypress and a
juniper attained at times a height of twenty feet.

The breakneck path had descended almost to the sea, and we were already
within sound of its reverberations, when a cliff hove up suddenly on the
landward hand, very rugged and broken, streaked with white lichen,
laddered with green lianas, and pierced with the apertures of half a
hundred caves. Two of these were piously sealed with doors, the wood
scarce weathered. For the Hawaiian remembers the repository of the bones
of old, and is still jealous of the safety of ancestral relics. Nor
without cause. For the white man comes and goes upon the hunt for
curiosities; and one (it is rumoured) consults soothsayers and explores
the caves of Kona after the fabled treasures of Kamehameha.

CHAPTER III

THE CITY OF REFUGE

Our way was northward on the naked lava of the coast. The schoolmaster
led the march on a trumpeting black stallion; not without anxious
thought, I followed