Page:Diary of One Month in Honolulu.pdf/30



Went up the Kaliuwaa Gorge this morning. That is what we came here for. It is called "the sacred gorge," and is just a crack in the mountains, a mile or so long and with green walls several thousand feet high. There is a little stream, and the trail crosses it, back and forth, all the way up. It is a weird place, and there are weird legends hanging over it, and everyone who goes up the trail must place two crossed ohia leaves pointing up the gorge, if the powers that be are to permit him to reach his destination in safety. And these crossed leaves, some fresh and some withered, lie all along the way, held in place by little pebbles.

At the upper end a waterfall jets out from a narrow crevice, high up in the mountain, and falls sheer into a broad, deep black pool with strangely water-carved walls, and great wet ferns and long vines swinging out from the dripping niches. There is a curious bare mark on one of the perpendicular mountain sides, where a giant demi-god of the old days dragged up a canoe of thirty-foot beam.

Back to Honolulu this afternoon We were going to the Japanese theater this evening, but I couldn't go in out of the moonlight.