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London, Jack, 1876-1916

"On the Makaloa Mat"

"You've seen it only from the decks of steamers. There
are valleys there, inhabited valleys, out of which there is no exit
by land, and perilously accessible by canoe only on the selected
days of two months in the year. When I was twenty-eight I was over
there in one of them on a hunting trip. Bad weather, in the
auspicious period, marooned us for three weeks. Then five of my
party and myself swam for it out through the surf. Three of us
made the canoes waiting for us. The other two were flung back on
the sand, each with a broken arm. Save for us, the entire party
remained there until the next year, ten months afterward. And one
of them was Wilson, of Wilson & Wall, the Honolulu sugar factors.
And he was engaged to be married.
"I've seen a goat, shot above by a hunter above, land at my feet a
thousand yards underneath. BELIEVE me, that landscape seemed to
rain goats and rocks for ten minutes. One of my canoemen fell off
the trail between the two little valleys of Aipio and Luno. He hit
first fifteen hundred feet beneath us, and fetched up in a ledge
three hundred feet farther down.


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