(pronounced like the word "away"
long drawn out). To our inquiry if any one was dead within, a woman
answered, "No, but that some friends had come from a distance on a
visit." I have frequently seen two Hawaiian friends or relations who had
not met for a long time express their emotions at seeing one another
again, not by kissing and laughing and joyful exclamations, but by
sitting down on the ground and wailing. Perhaps it was done in
remembrance of their long separation and of the changes that had taken
place during that time. The native mode of kissing consists in rubbing
noses together.

Not far from this place we passed a Mormon settlement, a little colony
sent out from Utah. The group of bare white buildings was some distance
back from the road, and we did not stop to visit them. Near by was a
_hou_-tree swamp, a spongy, marshy place where cattle were eating grass
that grew under water. They would reach down until their ears were
almost covered, take a mouthful and lift up their heads while they
chewed it. Thus far on our journey there had been a level plain two or
three miles wide between the sea and the mountains, but here the
mountains came close down to the sea, leaving only a little strip of
land along the beach. High, stern cliffs with strange profiles, such as
a lion, a canoe and a gigantic hen on her nest, frowned upon us as we
rode along their base. We passed a cold bubbling spring which had worn a
large basin for itself in the rock. It had formerly been the
bathing-place of a chief, and therefore taboo to the common people. In
one of our gallops along the beach my stirrup-strap broke, and we
stopped in front of a solitary hut to ask for a stout string. A squid
was drying on a pole and scenting the air with its fishy odors. In
answer to our call an old man in a calico shirt came out of the hut,
and, taking some strips of _hou_-bark, twisted them into a strong string
and fastened the stirrup. I gave him a real, and he exclaimed "Aloha!"
with apparently as much surprise and delight as if we had enriched him
for life.

We rode through a little village at the mouth of a beautiful green
valley, forded a river that ran through it, and passing under more high
cliffs came about four in the afternoon to Kahana, our stopping-place
for the night. It was a little cluster of houses at the head of a bay or
inlet of the sea, where the lovely transparent water was green as grass,
and stood in the opening of a valley en