Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-x5cpj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-25T22:30:22.407Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

LETTER XXII

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2012

Get access

Summary

I rode from Makaueli to Dr. Smith's, at Koloa, with two native attendants, a luna to sustain my dignity, and an inferior native to carry my carpet-bag. Horses are ridden with curb-bits here, and I had only brought a light snaffle, and my horse ran away with me again on the road, and when he stopped at last, these men rode alongside of me, mimicking me, throwing themselves back with their feet forwards, tugging at their bridles, and shrieking with laughter, exclaiming Maikai! Maikai! (good).

I remained several days at Koloa, and would gladly have accepted the hospitable invitation to stay as many weeks, but for a cowardly objection to “beating to windward” in the Jenny. The scenery in the Koloa woods is exquisitely beautiful. Such supreme beauty produces on me some of the effects which fine music has upon those who have an exquisite sense of it. It speaks in a language of its own, like music, and is equally untranslatable.

One day, the girls asked me to go with them to the forests and return by moonlight, but they only spoke of them as the haunts of ferns, because they supposed that I should think nothing of them after the forests of Australia and New Zealand! They were not like the tropical woods of Hawaii, and owe more to the exceeding picturesqueness of the natural scenery. Hawaii is all domes and humps, Kauai all peaks and sierras.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011
First published in: 1875

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • LETTER XXII
  • Isabella Bird
  • Book: Six Months among the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes of the Sandwich Islands
  • Online publication: 05 April 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511920431.028
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • LETTER XXII
  • Isabella Bird
  • Book: Six Months among the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes of the Sandwich Islands
  • Online publication: 05 April 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511920431.028
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • LETTER XXII
  • Isabella Bird
  • Book: Six Months among the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes of the Sandwich Islands
  • Online publication: 05 April 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511920431.028
Available formats
×