There are hosts of people who journey like restless spirits round and about this earth in search of seascapes and landscapes and the wonders and beauties of nature.They overrun Europe in armies; they can be met in droves and herds in Florida and the West Indies, at the Pyramids, and on the slopes and summits of the Canadian and American Rockies; but in the House of the Sun they are as rare as live and wriggling dinosaurs.Haleakala is the Hawaiian name for "the House of the Sun." It is a noble dwelling, situated on the Island of Maui; but so few tourists have ever peeped into it, much less entered it, that their number may be practically reckoned as zero.Yet I venture to state that for natural beauty and wonder the nature-lover may see dissimilar things as great as Haleakala, but no greater, while he will never see elsewhere anything more beautiful or wonderful.Honolulu is six days' steaming from San Francisco;Maui is a night's run on the steamer from Honolulu; and six hours more if he is in a hurry, can bring the traveller to Kolikoli, which is ten thousand and thirty-two feet above the sea and which stands hard by the entrance portal to the House of the Sun.Yet the tourist comes not, and Haleakala sleeps on in lonely and unseen grandeur.
Not being tourists, we of the Snark went to Haleakala.On the slopes of that monster mountain there is a cattle ranch of some fifty thousand acres, where we spent the night at an altitude of two thousand feet.The next morning it was boots and saddles, and with cow-boys and pack-horses we climbed to Ukulele, a mountain ranch-house, the altitude of which, fifty-five hundred feet, gives a severely temperate climate, compelling blankets at night and a roaring fireplace in the living-room.Ukulele, by the way, is the Hawaiian for "jumping flea" as it is also the Hawaiian for a certain musical instrument that may be likened to a young guitar.It is my opinion that the mountain ranch-house was named after the young guitar.We were not in a hurry, and we spent the day at Ukulele, learnedly discussing altitudes and barometers and shaking our particular barometer whenever any one's argument stood in need of demonstration.Our barometer was the most graciously acquiescent instrument I have ever seen.Also, we gathered mountain raspberries, large as hen's eggs and larger, gazed up the pasture-covered lava slopes to the summit of Haleakala, forty-five hundred feet above us, and looked down upon a mighty battle of the clouds that was being fought beneath us, ourselves in the bright sunshine.
Every day and every day this unending battle goes on.Ukiukiu is the name of the trade-wind that comes raging down out of the north-east and hurls itself upon Haleakala.Now Haleakala is so bulky and tall that it turns the north-east trade-wind aside on either hand, so that in the lee of Haleakala no trade-wind blows at all.On the contrary, the wind blows in the counter direction, in the teeth of the north-east trade.This wind is called Naulu.And day and night and always Ukiukiu and Naulu strive with each other, advancing, retreating, flanking, curving, curling, and turning and twisting, the conflict made visible by the cloud-masses plucked from the heavens and hurled back and forth in squadrons, battalions, armies, and great mountain ranges.Once in a while, Ukiukiu, in mighty gusts, flings immense cloud-masses clear over the summit of Haleakala; whereupon Naulu craftily captures them, lines them up in new battle-formation, and with them smites back at his ancient and eternal antagonist.Then Ukiukiu sends a great cloud-army around the eastern-side of the mountain.It is a flanking movement, well executed.But Naulu, from his lair on the leeward side, gathers the flanking army in, pulling and twisting and dragging it, hammering it into shape, and sends it charging back against Ukiukiu around the western side of the mountain.And all the while, above and below the main battle-field, high up the slopes toward the sea, Ukiukiu and Naulu are continually sending out little wisps of cloud, in ragged skirmish line, that creep and crawl over the ground, among the trees and through the canyons, and that spring upon and capture one another in sudden ambuscades and sorties.And sometimes Ukiukiu or Naulu, abruptly sending out a heavy charging column, captures the ragged little skirmishers or drives them skyward, turning over and over, in vertical whirls, thousands of feet in the air.
But it is on the western slopes of Haleakala that the main battle goes on.Here Naulu masses his heaviest formations and wins his greatest victories.Ukiukiu grows weak toward late afternoon, which is the way of all trade-winds, and is driven backward by Naulu.