Hiwa: A Tale of Ancient Hawaii

Hiwa: A Tale of Ancient Hawaii

THE first glimmering of dawn rested on Waipio Valley. The moi kane, his great nobles and chief officers of state, his personal attendants, his guards, heralds, priests, diviners, bards, story-tellers, dancers, and buffoons, the whole aialo, even to the lowest menials of the court, slept the deep sleep that follows a night of heavy eating and heavier drinking. All slept except Aa, the terrible high-priest, and a few score men [Pg 2] of his personal following. The royal city was silent. It lay among surroundings both lovely and grand. The valley itself, only a few feet above sea-level and flat as a Western prairie, was, then as now, rich almost beyond exaggeration, and green with all edible products of the lowlands. It was thickly dotted with grass huts, for in those times, before the great wars and centuries before the white strangers came with their loathsome diseases that consumed flesh and bone, the population was dense. The valley fronted on the open ocean, unobstructed by land for thousands of miles. On every other side it was shut in by rock walls from two to three thousand feet high. At the southwest extremity the Waipio River, cold from the mountain-side, clear and sparkling, fell six hundred feet to a narrow shelf of rock, and then, dropping a thousand feet more at a single plunge, suddenly became a sluggish stream, with a current hardly perceptible, winding its tortuous way to the sea. To the northwest were the Saw-Teeth of the Gods, wild and picturesque [Pg 3] verdure-clad mountains that to this day form impenetrable barriers between the plantations of Hamakua and North Kohala. To the southeast, stretching along the coast for a hundred miles, were the rich highlands of Hamakua, Hilo and Puna, rising, ever rising, as they recede from the sea until they reach the dizzy heights of Mauna Kea, and of Mauna Loa, where eternal winter wages intermittent war with rock fires from the bowels of the earth. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 61148
Author: Dole, Edmund P. (Edmund Pearson)
Release Date: Jan 11, 2020
Format: eBook
Language: English