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<h2> CHAPTER LXXIII. </h2>
<p><br/></p>
<p>At noon, we hired a Kanaka to take us down to the ancient ruins at
Honaunan in his canoe—price two dollars—reasonable enough, for
a sea voyage of eight miles, counting both ways.</p>
<p>The native canoe is an irresponsible looking contrivance. I cannot think
of anything to liken it to but a boy's sled runner hollowed out, and that
does not quite convey the correct idea. It is about fifteen feet long,
high and pointed at both ends, is a foot and a half or two feet deep, and
so narrow that if you wedged a fat man into it you might not get him out
again. It sits on top of the water like a duck, but it has an outrigger
and does not upset easily, if you keep still. This outrigger is formed of
two long bent sticks like plow handles, which project from one side, and
to their outer ends is bound a curved beam composed of an extremely light
wood, which skims along the surface of the water and thus saves you from
an upset on that side, while the outrigger's weight is not so easily
lifted as to make an upset on the other side a thing to be greatly feared.
Still, until one gets used to sitting perched upon this knifeblade, he is
apt to reason within himself that it would be more comfortable if there
were just an outrigger or so on the other side also. I had the bow seat,
and Billings sat amidships and faced the Kanaka, who occupied the stern of
the craft and did the paddling. With the first stroke the trim shell of a
thing shot out from the shore like an arrow. There was not much to see.
While we were on the shallow water of the reef, it was pastime to look
down into the limpid depths at the large bunches of branching coral—the
unique shrubbery of the sea. We lost that, though, when we got out into
the dead blue water of the deep. But we had the picture of the surf, then,
dashing angrily against the crag- bound shore and sending a foaming spray
high into the air.</p>
<p>There was interest in this beetling border, too, for it was honey-combed
with quaint caves and arches and tunnels, and had a rude semblance of the
dilapidated architecture of ruined keeps and castles rising out of the
restless sea. When this novelty ceased to be a novelty, we turned our eyes
shoreward and gazed at the long mountain with its rich green forests
stretching up into the curtaining clouds, and at the specks of houses in
the rearward distance and the diminished schooner riding sleepily at
anchor. And when these grew tiresome we dashed boldly into the midst of a
school of huge, beastly porpoises engaged at their eternal game of arching
over a wave and disappearing, and then doing it over again and keeping it
up—always circling over, in that way, like so many well- submerged
wheels. But the porpoises wheeled themselves away, and then we were thrown
upon our own resources. It did not take many minutes to discover that the
sun was blazing like a bonfire, and that the weather was of a melting
temperature. It had a drowsing effect, too.</p>
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<p>In one place we came upon a large company of naked natives, of both sexes
and all ages, amusing themselves with the national pastime of
surf-bathing. Each heathen would paddle three or four hundred yards out to
sea, (taking a short board with him), then face the shore and wait for a
particularly prodigious billow to come along; at the right moment he would
fling his board upon its foamy crest and himself upon the board, and here
he would come whizzing by like a bombshell! It did not seem that a
lightning express train could shoot along at a more hair-lifting speed. I
tried surf-bathing once, subsequently, but made a failure of it. I got the
board placed right, and at the right moment, too; but missed the
connection myself.—The board struck the shore in three quarters of a
second, without any cargo, and I struck the bottom about the same time,
with a couple of barrels of water in me. None but natives ever master the
art of surf-bathing thoroughly.</p>
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<p>At the end of an hour, we had made the four miles, and landed on a level
point of land, upon which was a wide extent of old ruins, with many a tall
cocoanut tree growing among them. Here was the ancient City of Refuge—a
vast inclosure, whose stone walls were twenty feet thick at the base, and
fifteen feet high; an oblong square, a thousand and forty feet one way and
a fraction under seven hundred the other. Within this inclosure, in early
times, has been three rude temples; each two hundred and ten feet long by
one hundred wide, and thirteen high.</p>
<p>In those days, if a man killed another anywhere on the island the
relatives were privileged to take the murderer's life; and then a chase
for life and liberty began—the outlawed criminal flying through
pathless forests and over mountain and plain, with his hopes fixed upon
the protecting walls of the City of Refuge, and the avenger of blood
following hotly after him!</p>
<p>Sometimes the race was kept up to the very gates of the temple, and the
panting pair sped through long files of excited natives, who watched the
contest with flashing eye and dilated nostril, encouraging the hunted
refugee with sharp, inspiriting ejaculations, and sending up a ringing
shout of exultation when the saving gates closed upon him and the cheated
pursuer sank exhausted at the threshold. But sometimes the flying criminal
fell under the hand of the avenger at the very door, when one more brave
stride, one more brief second of time would have brought his feet upon the
sacred ground and barred him against all harm. Where did these isolated
pagans get this idea of a City of Refuge—this ancient Oriental
custom?</p>
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<p>This old sanctuary was sacred to all—even to rebels in arms and
invading armies. Once within its walls, and confession made to the priest
and absolution obtained, the wretch with a price upon his head could go
forth without fear and without danger—he was tabu, and to harm him
was death. The routed rebels in the lost battle for idolatry fled to this
place to claim sanctuary, and many were thus saved.</p>
<p>Close to the corner of the great inclosure is a round structure of stone,
some six or eight feet high, with a level top about ten or twelve in
diameter. This was the place of execution. A high palisade of cocoanut
piles shut out the cruel scenes from the vulgar multitude. Here criminals
were killed, the flesh stripped from the bones and burned, and the bones
secreted in holes in the body of the structure. If the man had been guilty
of a high crime, the entire corpse was burned.</p>
<p>The walls of the temple are a study. The same food for speculation that is
offered the visitor to the Pyramids of Egypt he will find here—the
mystery of how they were constructed by a people unacquainted with science
and mechanics. The natives have no invention of their own for hoisting
heavy weights, they had no beasts of burden, and they have never even
shown any knowledge of the properties of the lever. Yet some of the lava
blocks quarried out, brought over rough, broken ground, and built into
this wall, six or seven feet from the ground, are of prodigious size and
would weigh tons. How did they transport and how raise them?</p>
<p>Both the inner and outer surfaces of the walls present a smooth front and
are very creditable specimens of masonry. The blocks are of all manner of
shapes and sizes, but yet are fitted together with the neatest exactness.
The gradual narrowing of the wall from the base upward is accurately
preserved.</p>
<p>No cement was used, but the edifice is firm and compact and is capable of
resisting storm and decay for centuries. Who built this temple, and how
was it built, and when, are mysteries that may never be unraveled. Outside
of these ancient walls lies a sort of coffin-shaped stone eleven feet four
inches long and three feet square at the small end (it would weigh a few
thousand pounds), which the high chief who held sway over this district
many centuries ago brought thither on his shoulder one day to use as a
lounge! This circumstance is established by the most reliable traditions.
He used to lie down on it, in his indolent way, and keep an eye on his
subjects at work for him and see that there was no "soldiering" done. And
no doubt there was not any done to speak of, because he was a man of that
sort of build that incites to attention to business on the part of an
employee.</p>
<p>He was fourteen or fifteen feet high. When he stretched himself at full
length on his lounge, his legs hung down over the end, and when he snored
he woke the dead. These facts are all attested by irrefragable tradition.</p>
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<p>On the other side of the temple is a monstrous seven-ton rock, eleven feet
long, seven feet wide and three feet thick. It is raised a foot or a foot
and a half above the ground, and rests upon half a dozen little stony
pedestals. The same old fourteen-footer brought it down from the mountain,
merely for fun (he had his own notions about fun), and propped it up as we
find it now and as others may find it a century hence, for it would take a
score of horses to budge it from its position. They say that fifty or
sixty years ago the proud Queen Kaahumanu used to fly to this rock for
safety, whenever she had been making trouble with her fierce husband, and
hide under it until his wrath was appeased. But these Kanakas will lie,
and this statement is one of their ablest efforts—for Kaahumanu was
six feet high—she was bulky—she was built like an ox—and
she could no more have squeezed herself under that rock than she could
have passed between the cylinders of a sugar mill. What could she gain by
it, even if she succeeded? To be chased and abused by a savage husband
could not be otherwise than humiliating to her high spirit, yet it could
never make her feel so flat as an hour's repose under that rock would.</p>
<p>We walked a mile over a raised macadamized road of uniform width; a road
paved with flat stones and exhibiting in its every detail a considerable
degree of engineering skill. Some say that that wise old pagan, Kamehameha
I planned and built it, but others say it was built so long before his
time that the knowledge of who constructed it has passed out of the
traditions. In either case, however, as the handiwork of an untaught and
degraded race it is a thing of pleasing interest. The stones are worn and
smooth, and pushed apart in places, so that the road has the exact
appearance of those ancient paved highways leading out of Rome which one
sees in pictures.</p>
<p>The object of our tramp was to visit a great natural curiosity at the base
of the foothills—a congealed cascade of lava. Some old forgotten
volcanic eruption sent its broad river of fire down the mountain side
here, and it poured down in a great torrent from an overhanging bluff some
fifty feet high to the ground below. The flaming torrent cooled in the
winds from the sea, and remains there to-day, all seamed, and frothed and
rippled a petrified Niagara. It is very picturesque, and withal so natural
that one might almost imagine it still flowed. A smaller stream trickled
over the cliff and built up an isolated pyramid about thirty feet high,
which has the semblance of a mass of large gnarled and knotted vines and
roots and stems intricately twisted and woven together.</p>
<p>We passed in behind the cascade and the pyramid, and found the bluff
pierced by several cavernous tunnels, whose crooked courses we followed a
long distance.</p>
<p>Two of these winding tunnels stand as proof of Nature's mining abilities.
Their floors are level, they are seven feet wide, and their roofs are
gently arched. Their height is not uniform, however. We passed through one
a hundred feet long, which leads through a spur of the hill and opens out
well up in the sheer wall of a precipice whose foot rests in the waves of
the sea. It is a commodious tunnel, except that there are occasional
places in it where one must stoop to pass under. The roof is lava, of
course, and is thickly studded with little lava-pointed icicles an inch
long, which hardened as they dripped. They project as closely together as
the iron teeth of a corn-sheller, and if one will stand up straight and
walk any distance there, he can get his hair combed free of charge.</p>
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