“My dream is of an island place Which distant seas keep lonely;
A noble island, in whose face
The stars are watchers only.
Those bright still stars! they need not seem
Brighter or stiller in my dream.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
In the nineteenth degree of north latitude, and one hundred and fifty-five degrees west, lies a large and important island, one of a group stretching for several hundred miles in a north-westerly direction. At the date of this tale, it was wholly unknown, except to its aborigines. Situated in the centre of the vast North Pacific, not another inhabitable land within thousands of miles, it was quietly biding its destiny, when in the circumnavigating advance of civilization westward to its original seat in the Orient, it should become a new centre of commerce and Christianity; and, as it were, an Inn of nature’s own building on the great highway of nations.
Up to this time, however, not a sail had ever been seen from its shores. Nothing had ever reached them within the memories of its population, to disprove to them that their horizon was not the limits of the world, and that they were not its sole possessors. It is true, that in the songs of their[30] bards, there were faint traces of a more extended knowledge, but so faint as to have lost all meaning to the masses, who in themselves saw the entire human race.
Hawaii, for such was the aboriginal name of the largest and easternmost island, was a fitting ocean-beacon to guide the mariner to hospitable shores. Rising as it does fourteen thousand feet above the level of the sea, snow-capped in places, in others shooting up thick masses of fire and smoke from active volcanoes, it could be seen for a great distance on the water, except, as was often the case, it was shrouded in dense clouds. Generally, either the gigantic dome of Mauna Loa, which embosomed an active crater of twenty-seven miles in circumference on its summit, which was more than two and a half miles high, or the still loftier, craggy and frost-clad peaks of Mauna Kea, met the sight long before its picturesque coast-line came into view. As usually seen at a long distance, these two mountain summits, so nigh each other and yet so unlike in outline, seemingly repose on a bed of clouds, like celestial islands floating in ether. This illusion is the more complete from their great elevation, and coming as they do with their lower drapery of vapor, so suddenly upon the sight of the voyager, after weeks, and, as it often happens, months of ocean solitude.
Nowhere does nature display a more active laboratory or on a grander scale. At her bidding, fire and water here meet, and, amid throes, explosions, upheavings and submergings, the outpourings of[31] liquid rock, the roars of a burning ocean, hissing, recoiling and steaming at the base of fiery mountains, which amid quakings and thunders shoot up high into air, not only flame and smoke, but give birth to other mountains, which run in fluid masses to the shore forming new coast-lines, she gradually creates to herself fresh domains out of the fathomless sea, destined by a slower and more peaceful process to be finally fitted for the abode of man. For ages before the human race appeared, this fierce labor had been going on. Slowly decreasing in violence as the solid fabric arose from the sea, the vegetable and animal kingdom at last successively claimed their right to colonize the land thus prepared for them. Nature, however, had not yet finished the substructure; for although she had extinguished a portion of her fires and allowed the forests to grow in some spots in undisturbed luxuriance, yet there were others still active and on a scale to be seen nowhere else on the globe. At intervals, rarer as they became older, they belched forth ruin, to add in time greater stability and more fertility to the new-formed earth.
Even to this day, Hawaii continues in a transition state. The vast agencies to which the island owes its origin, not unfrequently shake it to its centre, giving a new impetus to its geological growth. Sometimes it rocks, so it seems, on its centre, and alternately rising and falling, the ocean invades the land, sweeping from the coast by its fast rushing tide,—piled up by its velocity into such a wall of water as in its recoil overwhelmed Pharaoh’s host[32] in the Red Sea,—whole villages, and carrying off numbers of their struggling population to perish in its vortex. So rapid is its reflux and over so vast a space, that it often leaves bare its own bed, with the finny tribes stranded amid its coral forests, or flapping helplessly on its sandy bottom. When this phenomenon occurs it is generally in quick successive waves, without previous warning, and so rapidly, that were it not for the amphibious habits of the islanders, the destruction of life would be great.
The sister islands further to the west have long since ceased to fear earthquake or volcanic eruption. Their surfaces are covered with extinct craters, lined in general with verdure and melodious with the notes of birds. Around each of the group, by the labors of the tiniest of her creatures, as if to show how the feeblest agencies at her bidding can control the strongest, Nature is slowly but surely constructing a coral frame, a fit setting to her sunny picture. The busy little zo?phyte, by its minute industry sets that bound to the ocean, which Canute in all his power was unable to do. Over its barriers and through its vegetable-like forms, trees and shrubs, blossoms and flowers, rich in every hue which gives beauty to the land, the rushing wave can pass only by giving toll to these water bees. They have not to seek their food, but they make the everlasting waters bring it to their door, and pour over them, in their struggle to reach the shore, a glad symphony of power and praise.
On the northeast of Hawaii lies a deep bay,[33] fringed with coral reefs, but in many places presenting high cliffs, precipitous masses of volcanic rock, rent by deep chasms, or forming valleys through which pour streams of fresh water along banks of surpassing fertility. Everywhere the soil is good and the vegetation profuse. Numerous cascades tumble from the hills in all directions, giving life and music to the scene. Some are mere threads of water lost in spray amid rainbow arches, before reaching the rocky basins underneath. Others shoot from precipices, waving, foaming torrents, which thunder over stream-worn rocks, far away beneath in sunless and almost inaccessible dells. Emerging from these into placid rivers, they flow quietly on till meeting the incoming surges of the ocean, which, as they struggle over the coral bars at their mouths, whiten their surfaces with foam and break into eddies and uncertain currents, creating trying navigation for the frail canoes of the islanders.
The vegetation was unequal in luxuriance. In some spots it pushed its verdure quite into the brine, which not unfrequently watered the roots of trees that overhung it. In others, broad belts of sand came between the grasses and the water. These glistened in the sun’s rays in contrast with the back ground of dense green, like burnished metal. Earth, the provident mother, had not, however, so overdone her good works, as in some of the more southern groups to provide a meal without other labor than plucking. There were fine groves of the different species of food-bearing palms,—orchards[34] of bread-fruit and other kinds of trees, from which man could derive both sustenance and material to clothe and house him; but for these purposes and the culture of the taro plant, which was his main resource, no little labor and skill were necessary.
Metals were unknown. The animal and feathered creature were scanty in species and numbers, and much of the island surface was still a wilderness of basaltic rock or fields of lava and cinders. But such was the salubrity of the climate and the activity of nature, that its resources for the comfort, and to a considerable degree of the civilization of man, were making rapid development; not sufficient as yet to release him from the active exercise of his faculties, and thus induce a sensual repose, but just enough to reward him for exertion, while indolence was sure to beget actual want.
The little caravel with her famished and sickly crew that we left in the midst of the North Pacific, rolling before a fresh breeze from the northeast, which proved to be the regular trade-wind, had continued her course for several days in the same direction. During this time, several others of the ship’s company had died and been cast overboard. Frequent showers, and the occasional catching of flying-fish, and now and then a dolphin or porpoise, did somewhat to restore the physical energies of the survivors, while the balmy condition of the air, the exhilaration of rapid motion, and the prospect of novel adventure, had much weight in raising the spirits of all.
[35]
Still there were no indications of land. The sun had set for the tenth time behind the same purple canopy of clouds; the same birds screamed and flew overhead; the waves rose and toppled after them with gushing foam, just so high and no higher; the sails bellied out with monotonous fulness; not a rope was stirred nor oar moved; on, on, rolled the caravel, now dipping this bulwark, now that, surging aside the water and trailing it in her wake with the noise of a mill-course; no variety, except that the north-star sank lower each night, until the very evenness of their way, hour answering to hour and day to day, began to beget in them a feeling of doubt as to the actual existence of land in the direction they were heading. This, combined with the weariness which inevitably steals over the senses when long at sea without change, led to greater carelessness in the night-watches. They fancied themselves borne onward by a fate which their own precautions could neither alter nor avert. Hence it was, that having worn out conjecture and argument as to their positive and probable destiny, they had on the tenth evening more than ordinarily abandoned themselves to chance. The day had been thicker than usual, and there was no light at night except the uncertain twinkling of stars through driving masses of clouds.
All except the helmsman slept. He dozed. Habit kept him sufficiently awake to keep the caravel to her course, but nothing more. Suddenly a dull, weighty sound was heard, like the roll of[36] heavy waters, dying slowly away in the distance. Another; then another; quicker and quicker, each louder and nearer. The caravel was lifted high on one sea and fell heavily into the trough of another, rolling so uneasily as to start up all on board. At this moment the pilot, catching the gleam of a long line of breakers, hoarsely shouted “all hands, quick, or by the saints we are lost,” at the same moment putting the helm hard down to bring her into the wind. He was too late. The craft fell broadside into the rollers and became unmanageable. The mast snapped off close to the deck, and was pitched into the water to the leeward. At the same instant a grinding, crushing sound was heard underneath, as the caravel was lifted and thrown heavily upon the reef, breaking in the floor timbers and flooding her hold with water. It was too dark to distinguish anything but the white crest of the breakers all around, while their noise prevented any orders being distinctly heard. Indeed so sudden and complete was the disaster, that there was nothing to be done by the crew but to cling to the wreck and passively await their fate. Death came soon to a number, who were washed overboard and taken by the undertow seaward, where sharks fed upon them. Waves washed over the vessel in quick succession, gradually breaking her up. The after cabin held together longest, affording some shelter to its occupants. In a little while, however, even this was gone. All left on board were floated off, they knew not whither, clinging to whatever they could grasp, and rolled over in the surf until[37] most of them became insensible. Beatriz, however, retained her presence of mind, and aided by the almost superhuman efforts of Tolta, a Mexican captive, was finally cast upon a soft beach, without other injury than a few skin bruises and the swallowing of a little water, of which she was soon relieved. It was too dark to learn the fate of the others. Dragging themselves beyond the wash of the breakers, in anxious suspense they awaited daybreak to disclose more fully their situation.