The southern and most eastern portion of Hawaii was, at the period of this tale, in great part, a sterile, volcanic region, with but scanty vegetation and a scanty supply of water. Mauna Loa occupied the larger part, with its immense dome and volcano. It threw off on its flanks, vast rivers formed by the flow from its summit of torrents of lava, which, in cooling, broke up into a myriad of fantastic forms. In some places they presented large tracks of volcanic rock, in easy slopes, as smooth as if a sluggish stream of oil had been suddenly changed to stone,—in others, the sharp vitrified edges, broken, basaltic masses, and savage look of the whole, suggested the thought of a black ocean petrified at the instant when a typhoon begins to subside, and the waves running steeple high toss and tumble, break and foam, into a thousand wild currents and irregular shapes. No verdure of any kind found root in these wastes. The sole nourishment they offered was an occasional supply of rain-water, left in the hollows of the rocks. It was impossible to traverse them, unless the feet were protected by sandals, impenetrable to the heat which was reflected from the glassy surfaces of the smooth rock, or the knife-like edges of the jagged lava, which formed a path as unpleasant as if it had been freshly macadamized with broken beer bottles. Fresh currents of lava yearly flowed over the old, adding to the blackness of its desolation. The fumes of sulphur and other poisonous gases, the lurid glare of liquid rock, explosions and mutterings, belchings and heavings, the quaking and trembling of the fire-eaten ground and jets of mingled earth and water,—the very elements fuzed into whirlpools and fountains of nature’s gore, redder and more clotted than human blood, while fiery ashes obscured the sky, and heavy rocks shot up as if from hell’s mortars, burst high in the air, or fell far away from their discharging craters with the crash and roar of thunderbolts,—such at times were the scenes and atmosphere of much of this district.

Still the coasts and many of the valleys afforded sufficient arable ground to support quite a numerous population. The climate was as variable as the variety of altitudes it covered. On the seaside, to the leeward of the fire-mountains, it was burning with the heat of Sahara, and all but rainless, while the highest portions were almost continually enveloped in clouds and dense vapors. The natives were familiar with both the tropical palm and the frigid lichens, perpetual heat and perpetual cold, boiling springs and never melting ice, the precocious luxuriance and the utter sterility of nature, all within a circuit of not over one hundred and fifty miles.

I doubt if the earth’s surface affords elsewhere more rapid transitions of zones within a more limited territory than Hawaii. Her phenomena of all kinds, and even her productions, though limited in variety, are on no niggard scale. The active and extinct volcanoes are the largest known,—her mountains, not in chains, but isolated, are the more impressive to the eye, from their solitary grandeur, rising as they do directly from the ocean, which encircling them leads off the view into immensity. Thus the grandeur of this wonderful island becomes complete.

In the middle-ground between the hot country of the coast and the cold of the highest region, there is a neutral spot or belt, where the creative and destructive agencies of nature are in intimate contact. Here we find heavy forests with trees of immense size, growing upon a soil so thin, that earthquakes frequently tilted them to the ground, throwing roots and the clinging earth into the air, and leaving bare the rock beneath. Amid seas of cold lava arise islets of shrubbery; verdant spots, where the strawberry, raspberry, and other fruits grow, planted in ages past by the provident agency of birds, that have here rested in their flights from more prolific soils. Now they yield welcome harvests to the colonies of their first sowers and to man. Although fire so often lays them waste, they speedily recover their fertility, and, indeed, are gradually pushing vegetation into the increasing soil on all sides, thus adding slowly to the area of habitable earth.

The inhabitants of this region partook of its character. They were brave, hardy, fierce, and cruel; as uncertain as their volcanoes, and as savage as their soil. The sybaritic life of their more favored neighbors had no attractions for them, except as a temptation for foray. They loved to seize upon the luxuries they were too ignorant to create for themselves, and indeed which nature almost denied them. But the superior arms and discipline of Kiana’s people in general prevailed, and they were confined within their own borders, although sometimes a successful expedition supplied them with both slaves and victims for sacrifice to the gods of their terrible mythology. For they saw in the mighty agencies of nature around them, only malignant and sanguinary deities, whom they feared and sought to appease by rites as horrible as their own imagination.