Three miles above this Fall there are the Pei-pei Falls, very
interesting geologically. The Wailuku River is the boundary between
the two great volcanoes, and its waters, it is supposed by learned
men, have often flowed over heated beds of basalt, with the result
of columnar formation radiating from the bottom of the stream. This
structure is sometimes beautifully exhibited in the form of Gothic
archways, through which the torrent pours into a basin, surrounded
by curved, broken, and half-sunk prisms, black and prominent amidst
the white foam of the Falls. In several places the river has just
pierced the beds of lava, and in one passes under a thick rock
bridge, several hundred feet wide. Often, where the water flows
over beds of dark grey basalt, masses of trachyte, closely
resembling syenite, have formed "potholes," and by mutual action
have been worn to pebbles. At Pei-pei there are three circular
pools, each about fifty feet in diameter, and separated by walls six
feet thick, in a bed of columnar basalt. {65} During freshets the
river sometimes rises thirty feet, and hides these pools, but during
the dry season the upper bed is bare, and after a succession of
cascades of various heights the stream pours into the first basin,
filling it with foam. From this there is no apparent outlet, but
leaves thrown in soon appear in the second basin, whose tranquillity
is only disturbed by a few bubbles. Between this and the third
there are two subterranean passages, and the water there leaps over
a fall about forty feet high, nearly covering a perfect Gothic arch
which is the entrance to a shallow cave. The scene is enclosed by
high and nearly perpendicular walls. {66}

Near the Anuenue Fall we stopped at a native house, outside which a
woman, in a rose-coloured chemise, was stringing roses for a
necklace, while her husband pounded the kalo root on a board. His