Prince Akuli's limousine had broken an axle a quarter of a mile
away, and he and I had sought shelter from the sun in this
veritable bowery of a mountain home. Humble and grass-thatched was
the house, but it stood in a treasure-garden of begonias that
sprayed their delicate blooms a score of feet above our heads, that
were like trees, with willowy trunks of trees as thick as a man's
arm. Here we refreshed ourselves with drinking-coconuts, while a
cowboy rode a dozen miles to the nearest telephone and summoned a
machine from town. The town itself we could see, the Lakanaii
metropolis of Olokona, a smudge of smoke on the shore-line, as we
looked down across the miles of cane-fields, the billow-wreathed
reef-lines, and the blue haze of ocean to where the island of Oahu
shimmered like a dim opal on the horizon.
Maui is the Valley Isle of Hawaii, and Kauai the Garden Isle; but
Lakanaii, lying abreast of Oahu, is recognized in the present, and
was known of old and always, as the Jewel Isle of the group. Not
the largest, nor merely the smallest, Lakanaii is conceded by all
to be the wildest, the most wildly beautiful, and, in its size, the
richest of all the islands.
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