the beef or chicken, or whatever meat you may wish to cook, in
leaves, and lay it in the steam-crack. Soon it is thoroughly
cooked, and deliciously, too.

"She also keeps a tub of warm water always ready for bathers.

"She doesn't mean to be laughed at, though, for doing this kind of
work, and doing it in an original kind of way. After she has given
you one or two sound shakings, which she generally does, you'll
have great respect for the old lady, and feel quite like taking
off your hat to her. With the shakings and the thunderings
under-foot, and now and then the opening of a long steam-crack,
she keeps her visitors quite in awe of her powers, though she is
probably several hundred years old.

"Not far from the little hut where we sleep, close to the
precipice, is Pélé's great laboratory, where she makes sulphur. We
wear our straw hats to the sulphur banks, and she bleaches them
for us.

"Well, this is a strange, strange land, old Pélé being only one of
its many curiosities.

"I only hope you may all see the active old goddess before she
dies. She hasn't finished her work yet. Once in a while she runs
down to the shore, to bathe and look at the Pacific Ocean, and
when there she generally gives a new cape to Hawaii by running out
into the sea."

Majestic old Pélé! Long may she live!