.MTA3Nw.NzI3MTA

From Newberry Transcribe
Jump to navigation Jump to search

to loose the keys. We arrived at Onomea at 12 1/2 P.M. and I was warmly welcomed by Mrs. Austen and her family of six boys. I could not but feel grateful for her to take so much trouble to have me come to her place, and I a stranger. I had met her a few times during the few days I was in Hilo. On these plantations we do not often find more than one white family. If other white men are employed they usually have a native wife. After I had rested awhile, Mrs. Austin took me through the sugar mill. They were finishing up a short job of grinding. This was very interesting to me. The next day we walked up one of those deep gulches. These are simply cuts through the land, through a continued bluff from 100 to 400 feet above the sea. They are often very beautiful, though rather hard to get over, as in riding along we come to one and it is just as steep as we could possibly climb down or up. The horses are sure footed, and used to it, and get along easily, and soon did not mind it. The banks are sometimes bare rock, but usually are covered with beautiful tropical vegetation. They do not have the variegated vegetation of which you in America can boast in Autumn, yet it is variegated and lovely to look at. Ferns, small and large, are the chief and most ornamental. The change of colour is mostly owing to the age of the leaf. In some, when they first come out, they are the most delicate green, then as they advance, they change to the different shades of green, and some to a dark purple. Some when they first shoot out, are a delicate brown, then change to light green, and so they vary; and in these Onomea gulches it seems as if they did try to outshine the vegetation of other countries. We went to the head of this ravine, then down to the point of the bluff which overlooks the bay below, which, with its varied landscape surrounding it, makes it the loveliest picture of its kind I ever saw. There is the sea with its surf, beating and lashing its foam against the high, steep rocks, that shut it in. Then here is the mouth of two rivers, (so they call them) and these two gulches terminating with their beautifully bordered banks 400 feet high, and a point of bluff which ends here, as if not willing to separate the stream any longer, but they are here allowed to flow peacefully a little