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76 - Roughing It by Mark Twain · Roughing It

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  Speaker 1: This is chapter seventy six of Roughing It. This is
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  Speaker 1: Roughing It by Mark Twain, Chapter seventy six. We rode
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  Speaker 1: horseback all around the island of Hawaii the crooked road,
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  Speaker 1: making the distance two hundred miles, and enjoyed the journey
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  Speaker 1: very much. We were more than a week making the
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  Speaker 1: trip because our Kanaka horses would not go by a
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  Speaker 1: house or a hut without stopping. Whip and spur could
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  Speaker 1: not alter their minds about it, and so we finally
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  Speaker 1: found that it economized time to let them have their way.
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  Speaker 1: Upon inquiry, the mystery was explained the natives are such
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  Speaker 1: thorough going gossips that they never pass a house without
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  Speaker 1: stopping to swap news, and consequently their horses learned to
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  Speaker 1: regard that sort of thing as an essential part of
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  Speaker 1: the whole duty of man and his salvation, not to
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  Speaker 1: be compassed without it. However, at a former crisis of
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  Speaker 1: my life, I had once taken an aristocratic young lady
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  Speaker 1: out driving behind a horse that had just retired from
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  Speaker 1: a long and honorable career as the moving impulse of
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  Speaker 1: a milk wagon. And so this present experience awoke a
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  Speaker 1: reminiscent sadness in me in place of the exasperation more
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  Speaker 1: natural to the occasion. I remembered how helpless I was
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  Speaker 1: that day, and how humiliated, how ashamed I was of
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  Speaker 1: having intimated to the girl that I had always owned
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  Speaker 1: the horse and was accustomed to grandeur. How hard I
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  Speaker 1: tried to appear easy and even vivacious under suffering that
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  Speaker 1: was consuming my vitals. How placidly and maliciously the girls
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  Speaker 1: smiled and kept on smiling, while my hot blushes baked
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  Speaker 1: themselves into a permanent blood pudding in my face. How
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  Speaker 1: the horse ambled from one side of the street to
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  Speaker 1: the other and waited complacently before every third house two
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  Speaker 1: minutes and a quarter, while I belabored his back and
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  Speaker 1: reviled him in my heart. How I tried to keep
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  Speaker 1: him from turning corners and failed. How I moved heaven
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  Speaker 1: and earth to get him out of town and did
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  Speaker 1: not succeed. How he traversed the entire settlement and delivered
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  Speaker 1: imaginary milk at one hundred and sixty two different domiciles
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  Speaker 1: and how he finally brought up at a dairy depot
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  Speaker 1: and refused to budge further, thus rounding and completing the
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  Speaker 1: revealment of what the plebeian service of his life had been.
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  Speaker 1: How in eloquent silence I walked the girl home, and
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  Speaker 1: how when I took leave of her, her parting remarks
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  Speaker 1: scorched my soul and appeared to blister me all over.
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  Speaker 1: She said that my horse was a fine, capable animal,
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  Speaker 1: and I must have taken great comfort in him in
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  Speaker 1: my time, But that if I would take along some
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  Speaker 1: milk tickets next time and appear to deliver them at
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  Speaker 1: the various halting places, it might expedite his movements a little.
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  Speaker 1: There was a coolness between us after that. In one place,
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  Speaker 1: in the island of Hawaii, we saw a laced and
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  Speaker 1: ruffled cataract of limpid water leaping from a sheer precipice
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  Speaker 1: fifteen hundred feet high. But that sort of scenery finds
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  Speaker 1: its staunchius ally in the arithmetic rather than in spectacular effect.
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  Speaker 1: If one desires to be so stirred by a poem
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  Speaker 1: of nature wrought in the happily commingled graces of picturesque rocks,
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  Speaker 1: glimpsed distances, foliage, color, shifting lights and shadows, and falling
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  Speaker 1: water that the tears almost come into his eyes. So
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  Speaker 1: potent as the charm exerted, he need not go away
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  Speaker 1: from America to enjoy such an experience. The rainbow fall
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  Speaker 1: in Watkins Glen, New York, on the Erie Railway is
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  Speaker 1: an example. It would recede into pitiable insignificance if the
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  Speaker 1: callous tourists drew on arithmetic on it, but left to
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  Speaker 1: compete for the honors simply on scenic grace and beauty,
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  Speaker 1: The grand, the august, and the sublime being barred the contest,
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  Speaker 1: it could challenge the old world and the new to
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  Speaker 1: produce its peer. In one locality on our journey, we
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  Speaker 1: saw some horses that had been born and reared on
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  Speaker 1: top of the mountains, above the range of running water,
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  Speaker 1: and consequently they had never drank that fluid in their lives,
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  Speaker 1: but had been always accustomed to quenching their thirst by
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  Speaker 1: eating dew laden or shower wetted leaves. And now it
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  Speaker 1: was destructively funny to see them sniff suspiciously at a
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  Speaker 1: pail of water and then put in their noses and
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  Speaker 1: try to take a bite out of the fluid as
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  Speaker 1: if it were a solid. Finding it liquid, they would
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  Speaker 1: snatch away their heads and fall to trembling, snorting, and
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  Speaker 1: showing other evidences of fright. When they became convinced at
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  Speaker 1: last that the water was friendly and harmless, they thrust
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  Speaker 1: their noses up to their eyes, brought out a mouthful
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  Speaker 1: of water, and proceeded to chew it complacently. We saw
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  Speaker 1: a man coax kick and spur one of them five
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  Speaker 1: or ten minutes before he could make it cross a
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  Speaker 1: running stream. It spread its nostrils, distended its eyes, and
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  Speaker 1: trembled all over, just as horses customarily do in the
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  Speaker 1: presence of a serpent. And for aught, I know it
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  Speaker 1: thought the crawling stream was a serpent. In due course
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  Speaker 1: of time, our journey came to an end at Kowaihai
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  Speaker 1: usually pronounced to Ahi. And before we find fault with
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  Speaker 1: this elaborate orthographical method of arriving at such an unostentatious result,
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  Speaker 1: let us lop off the ug from our word. Though
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  Speaker 1: I made this horseback trip on a mule, I paid
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  Speaker 1: ten dollars for him at kou ka Ou added four
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  Speaker 1: to get him shod rode him two hundred miles, and
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  Speaker 1: then sold him for fifteen dollars. I marked the circumstance
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  Speaker 1: with a white stone in the absence of chalk, for
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  Speaker 1: I never saw a white stone that a body could
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  Speaker 1: mark anything with, though out of respect for the ancients,
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  Speaker 1: I have tried it often enough for up to that
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  Speaker 1: day and date. It was the first strictly commercial track
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  Speaker 1: action I had ever entered into and come out. Winter
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  Speaker 1: we returned to Honolulu, and from thence sailed to the
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  Speaker 1: island of Maui, and spent several weeks there. Very pleasantly
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  Speaker 1: I still remember, with a sense of indolent luxury, a
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  Speaker 1: picnicking excursion up a romantic gorge there called the Iaul Valley.
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  Speaker 1: The trail lay along the edge of a brawling stream
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  Speaker 1: in the bottom of the gorge, a shady route, for
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  Speaker 1: it was well roofed with the verdant domes of forest trees.
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  Speaker 1: Through openings in the foliage, we glimpsed picturesque scenery that
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  Speaker 1: revealed ceaseless changes and new charms with every step of
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  Speaker 1: our progress. Perpendicular walls from one to three thousand feet
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  Speaker 1: high guarded the way and were sumptuously plumed with varied
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  Speaker 1: foliage in places, and in places swathed in waving ferns,
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  Speaker 1: Passing shreds of cloud trailed their shadows across these shining fronts,
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  Speaker 1: motteling them with blots. Billowy masses of white vapor hid
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  Speaker 1: the turreted summits, and far above the vapor swelled a
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  Speaker 1: background of gleaming green crags and cones that came and
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  Speaker 1: went through the veiling mists, like islands drifting in a fog.
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  Speaker 1: Sometimes the cloudy curtain descended till half the cannon wall
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  Speaker 1: was hidden, then shredded gradually away till only airy glimpses
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  Speaker 1: of the ferny front appeared through it, then swept aloft
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  Speaker 1: and left it glorified in the sun again. Now and then,
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  Speaker 1: as our position changed, rocky bastions swung out from the wall,
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  Speaker 1: a mimic ruin of castellated ramparts and crumbling towers, clothed
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  Speaker 1: with mosses and hung with garlands of swaying vines. And
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  Speaker 1: as we moved on, they swung back again and hid
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  Speaker 1: themselves once more in the foliage. Presently, a verdure clad
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  Speaker 1: needle of stone a thousand feet high stepped out from
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  Speaker 1: behind a corner and mounted guard over the mysteries of
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  Speaker 1: the valley. It seemed to me that if Captain Cook
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  Speaker 1: needed a monument, here was one ready made. Therefore, why
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  Speaker 1: not put up his sign here and sell out the
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  Speaker 1: venerable cocoanut stump. But the chief pride of Maui is
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  Speaker 1: her dead volcano of Haleakala, which means translated, the house
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  Speaker 1: of the Sun. We climbed a thousand feet up the
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  Speaker 1: side of this isolated colossus one afternoon, then camped, and
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  Speaker 1: next day climbed the remaining nine thousand feet and anchored
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  Speaker 1: on the summit, where we built a fire and froze
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  Speaker 1: and roasted by turns all night. With the first pallor
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  Speaker 1: of dawn, we got up and saw things that were
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  Speaker 1: new to us. Mounted on a commanding pinnacle, we watched
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  Speaker 1: nature work her silent wonders. The sea was spread abroad
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  Speaker 1: on every hand, its tumbled surface seeming only wrinkled and dimpled.
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  Speaker 1: In the distance. A broad valley below appeared like an
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  Speaker 1: ample checkerboard, its velvety green sugar plantations alternating with done
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  Speaker 1: squares of barrenness and groves of trees diminished to mossy tufts.
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  Speaker 1: Beyond the valley were mountains picturestically grouped together, but bare
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  Speaker 1: in mind, we fancied that we were looking up at
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  Speaker 1: these things, not down. We seemed to sit in the
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  Speaker 1: bottom of a symmetrical bowl ten thousand feet deep, with
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  Speaker 1: the valley and the skirting sea lifted away into the
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  Speaker 1: sky above us. It was curious, and not only curious,
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  Speaker 1: but aggravating, for it was having our trouble all for nothing,
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  Speaker 1: to climb ten thousand feet toward heaven and then have
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  Speaker 1: to look up at our scenery. However, we had to
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  Speaker 1: be content with it and make the best of it.
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  Speaker 1: For all we could do, we could not coax our
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  Speaker 1: landscape down out of the clouds. Formerly, when I had
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  Speaker 1: read an article in which Poe treated of this singular
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  Speaker 1: fraud perpetrated upon the eye by isolated great altitudes, I
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  Speaker 1: had looked upon the matter as an invention of his
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  Speaker 1: own fancy. I have spoken of the outside view, but
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  Speaker 1: we had an inside one too. That was the yawning
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  Speaker 1: dead crater into which we now and then tumbled rocks
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  Speaker 1: half as large as a barrel from our perch, and
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  Speaker 1: saw them go careening down the almost perpendicular sides, bounding
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  Speaker 1: three hundred feet at a jump, kicking up cast clouds
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  Speaker 1: wherever they struck, diminishing to our view as they sped
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  Speaker 1: farther into distance, growing invisible finally, and only betraying their
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  Speaker 1: course by faint little puffs of dust, and coming to
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  Speaker 1: a halt at last in the bottom of the abyss,
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  Speaker 1: two thousand, five hundred feet down from where they started.
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  Speaker 1: It was magnificent sport. We wore ourselves out at it.
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  Speaker 1: The crater of Vesuvius, as I have before remarked, is
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  Speaker 1: a modest pit, about a thousand feet deep and three
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  Speaker 1: thousand in circumference. That of Kilauea is somewhat deeper and
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  Speaker 1: ten miles in circumference. But what are either of them
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  Speaker 1: compared to the vacant stomach of hale A Calla. I
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  Speaker 1: will not offer any figures of my own, but give
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  Speaker 1: official ones those of Commander Wilkes, U. S. Navy, who
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  Speaker 1: surveyed it and testifies that it is twenty seven miles
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  Speaker 1: in circumference. If it had a level bottom, it would
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  Speaker 1: make a fine sight for a city like London. It
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  Speaker 1: must have afforded a spectacle worth contemplating in the old days,
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  Speaker 1: when its furnaces gave full rein to their anger. Presently,
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  Speaker 1: vagrant white clouds came, drifting along high over the sea
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  Speaker 1: and the valley. Then they came in couples and groups,
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  Speaker 1: then in imposing squadrons, gradually joining their forces. They banked
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  Speaker 1: themselves solidly together a thousand feet under us, and totally
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  Speaker 1: shut out land and ocean. Not a vestige of anything
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  Speaker 1: was left in view, but just a little of the
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  Speaker 1: rim of the crater, circling away from the pinnacle, whereon
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  Speaker 1: we sat for a ghostly procession of wanderers from the
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  Speaker 1: filmy hosts without had drifted through a chasm in the
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  Speaker 1: crater wall and filed round and round, and gathered and
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  Speaker 1: sunk and blended together, till the abyss was stored to
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  Speaker 1: the brim with a fleecy fog. Thus banked, motion ceased,
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  Speaker 1: and silence reigned clear to the horizon. League on league,
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  Speaker 1: the snowy floor stretched without a break, not level, but
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  Speaker 1: in rounded folds, with shallow creases between and with here
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  Speaker 1: and there stately piles of vapory architecture, lifting themselves aloft
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  Speaker 1: out of the common plain, some near at hand, some
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  Speaker 1: in the middle distances, and others, relieving the monotony of
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  Speaker 1: the remote solitudes. There was little conversation for the impressive scene,
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  Speaker 1: over awed speech. I felt like the last man, neglected
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  Speaker 1: of the judgment, and left pinnacled in mid heaven, a
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  Speaker 1: forgotten relic of a vanished world. While the hush yet brooded,
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  Speaker 1: the messengers of the coming resurrection appeared in the east.
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  Speaker 1: A growing warmth suffused the horizon, and soon the sun
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  Speaker 1: emerged and looked out over the cloud, waist flinging bars
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  Speaker 1: of ruddy light across it, staining its folds and billow
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  Speaker 1: caps with blushes, purpling the shaded troughs between, and glorifying
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  Speaker 1: the massy vapor palaces and cathedrals with a wasteful splendor
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  Speaker 1: of all blendings and combinations of rich coloring. It was
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  Speaker 1: the sublimest spectacle I ever witnessed, and I think the
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  Speaker 1: memory of it will remain with me always. End of
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  Speaker 1: Chapter seventy six.