In 1898, having nothing to detain me and knowing that my son Arthur could conduct my business better than I could, I decided to take an extensive tour around the world, taking as much time as I pleased in visiting the interior of countries to study the people in their natural condition, both physically and mentally.

When our boat passed through the Golden Gate into the open Pacific a wild storm was whistling down the coast from Alaska, which caused our steamer to roll and plunge worse than anything I have ever since experienced. For five days neither sun or stars appeared, and when we got our reckoning we were five hundred miles out of our course.

When we neared the Hawaiian Islands we saw whales, schools of pretty flying fish, sharks and porpoises, while large sea birds came near. Then, when we felt our cheeks fanned by the soft summer breeze, we forgot Columbia's wild Boreas and got our silver pieces, so that when the natives swam from shore to meet us we could throw the money into the deep sea, which they would dive for and usually bring up, even though they sometimes swam more than fifty feet to the spot where it went down.

We found the mid-Pacific Islands all in bloom. I stayed there five weeks, in which time I visited Kilanea Volcano on the Hawaiian Island and all the other islands, of which I will only mention my trip to Man Eating Rock, which, to me, was the most wonderful.

THE ANCIENT CITADEL

Paukoonea, a deserted, skillfully fortified prehistoric fortress on which the man-eating rock still can be seen, is seldom visited by tourists, and still it is undoubtedly the most ancient and beautifully located kings' palace grounds on our globe. To the thoughtless it is simply a rock on an island. To the thoughtful it is wonderful.

Vogue tradition has it that long ago a great world, a mid-Pacific continent, existed in this summer clime. One evening, as the sun was going down, their world sank into the ocean, leaving only the mountain top, on which more people were huddled together than could live. As a necessity the priestly clan, or kings, barricaded themselves on this protected island, where they shaped out a baking rock which would preserve all the juices of the flesh, and then ordered each tribe to furnish their portion of human beings, to be placed on the hot rock alive and cooked until palatable. This statement does not seem so inconsistent when we learn that when Cook discovered these islands the natives were allowed only a certain number of children to each pair of parents, and all the over-plus were killed at birth.

At Waialua I found a guide, Major Jankea, whose father, grandfather and great-grandfather spent their lives near the fort. We rode up the Helamano River about eight miles where, in a bend among the trees, he showed me a large deep footed stone covered with dots, diagonal lines and curves which he said no one could read and no one knew what it represented.

At the fort we crossed the chasm on the stone debris of an ancient dam, when we began hunting for the man-eating rock. We searched in the grass, about four feet tall, and found it in about the center of the field, half buried in the earth.

It was chipped and defaced all over. Originally it must have measured about three by nine feet, and would weigh several tons. As far as I saw there were no other rocks on the surface of the island. It is roughly carved out to receive the head, arm, legs and body of a man. My guide informed me that his grandfather said that the ancient custom was for four men each, at an arm or leg, to hold the victim on the heated rock until dead, and then let him be cooked for dinner.

The citadel, or fort of the cannibal kings, is near the source of the Helamano River, under the Koolauloa Mountain. It is about three or four miles in circumference, protected by a perpendicular rock chasm nearly one hundred feet high. The gully surrounding it must once have served as an aqueduct, the water having been held back by the dam, which now, and probably for ages, has served as a passageway into the ancient rendezvous.

Standing there in the latter half of February looking west, the scene is lovely beyond description. The green palms on the Koolauloa Mountains serve as a background, while the Helamano River, with its fringe of trees all in blossom, winds its way like a ribbon of white roses away to the dreamy old Pacific Ocean, plain in view, but many miles away. Then to feel the spell of silence, where tumult once arose, we can but ask, "Is life a reality or a myth?" and a voice comes back from the voiceless realms of the dead, they were like us, simply passing through earth life.