Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands by Charles Nordhoff
page 43 of 346 (12%)
page 43 of 346 (12%)
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twelve to fourteen days after you left it.
Your traveling expenses will be sufficiently moderate. At Hilo you pay for board and lodgings eight dollars per week. The charge for horses is ten dollars each for the volcano journey, with a dollar a day for your guide. This guide relieves you of all care of the animals, and is useful in various ways. At the Volcano House the charge for horse and man is five dollars per day, and you pay half-price for your guide. There is a charge of one dollar for a special guide into the crater, which is made in your bill, and you will do well to promise this guide, when you go in, a small gratuity--half a dollar, or, if your party is large, a dollar--if he gives you satisfaction. He will get you specimens, carry a shawl for a lady, and make himself in other ways helpful. [Illustration: THE VOLCANO HOUSE.] When you get on your horse at Hilo for the volcano, leave behind you all hope of good roads. You are to ride for thirty miles over a lava bed, along a narrow trail as well made as it could be without enormous expense, but so rough, so full of mud-holes filled with broken lava in the first part of the journey, and so entirely composed of naked, jagged, and ragged lava in the remainder, that one wonders how the horses stand it. A canter, except for two or three miles near the Volcano House, is almost out of the question; and though the Hawaiians trot and gallop the whole distance, a stranger will scarcely follow their example. You should insist, by-the-way, upon having all your horses reshod the day before they leave Hilo; and it is prudent, even then, to take along an extra pair of shoes and a dozen or two horse-nails. The lava is extremely trying to the horse's shoes; and if your horse casts a shoe he will go |
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