peak behind, large wooden stirrups with leathern flaps the length of
the stirrup-leathers, to prevent the dress from coming in contact
with the horse, and strong guards of hide which hang over and below
the stirrup, and cover it and the foot up to the ancles, to prevent
the feet or boots from being torn in riding through the bush. Each
horse had four fathoms of tethering rope wound several times round
his neck. In such fashion must all travelling be done on Hawaii,
whether by ladies or gentlemen.

Upa supplied the picturesque element, we the grotesque. The morning
was moist and unpropitious looking. As the greater part of the
thirty miles has to be travelled at a foot's-pace the guide took
advantage of the soft grassy track which leads out of Hilo, to go
off at full gallop, a proceeding which made me at once conscious of
the demerits of my novel way of riding. To guide the horse and to
clutch the horn of the saddle with both hands were clearly
incompatible, so I abandoned the first as being the least important.
Then my feet either slipped too far into the stirrups and were cut,
or they were jerked out; every corner was a new terror, for at each
I was nearly pitched off on one side, and when at last Upa stopped,
and my beast stopped without consulting my wishes, only a desperate
grasp of mane and tethering rope saved me from going over his head.
At this ridiculous moment we came upon a bevy of brown maidens
swimming in a lakelet by the roadside, who increased my confusion by
a chorus of laughter. How fervently I hoped that the track would
never admit of galloping again!

Hilo fringes off with pretty native houses, kalo patches and mullet
ponds, and in about four miles the track, then formed of rough hard
lava, and not more than 24 inches wide, enters a forest of the