The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-08-18
I'm A HAWAIIAN
WALfHALLA.
BY JOAQUIN MILLER,

| had called back for the others, but they
we're not in hearing nor in sight. Yes, she
knew place further on where there was
some precious sandaIwood.. She would get
| it for me.
The classic and odorous sandalwood is
OF stately tree tipped with a pale pink
flower. In its perfection it attains to the
height of sixty or seventy feet and three
| feet in diameter. But it has persisted from
the islands, is ashes now, as a rule. In a
| few remote places, inaccessible to wild
goats, wild hogs and wild cattle, and these
places are few indeed that can be ap-
preached by man, you can find the pretty
little flower struggling up out of some
crevice in the lava crags, and you may
sometimes be able to pluck an odorous
| branch, not bigger than hazel but that is
about all you can find of what was once
worth a veritabe gold mine to traders.
! The story of this Biblical trees destruc-
| ton is a sad one. The Chinese first be-
gan to gather it about the beginning of
this century, giving silks and all sorts of
costly fabrics in exchange. The cruel ma.
tive chiefs, who claimed all the lands of
the islands, made the submissive SUBJ
| jects, women as well as men, bear the wood
| down from the mountains on their backs
BY the end of the first quarter of Unseen
fury nearly all of the sandalwood was in
ashes or in foreign ports, or found only in
I
of great chiefs were buried. The precious
wood laid away with their dead, the ma
tives told me, was first saturated with
sharks oil. This made it comparatively
imperishable when hidden far away from
the light and changes of air in the deep
hot hearts of the lava mountains.
sat down facing countless skulls on
shelves of stone. Other bones were in
heaps on either side. There was no artis-
tic arrangement of them as with the old
brown bones of the Capuchin monks at
Rome, but they were all strangely white
and bright and ghostlv. More than once
fancied / saw lanterns burning before
us and behind US, but these dim and fitful
lights were of the dead.
mo one comes here, none but the two"
said the girl.
"But your friends will comes? I asked.
"No, they don't know the way here.
They have gone by the main way"
"And has this cavern branches and
cross-roads?"
PLENTY, plenty-dozens! This one has
a way out. About mile farther on is
little hole where the two old women and
| can get through, but you will have to go
back. I must go on into another branch
of the cave to get sandalwood. l dare not
take anybody there. You wait; / will be
back soon," and taking my lantern she
was gone as a shadow goes.
1t was grewsome, ghostly place at best,
but to be left alone there in the dark was
dreadful. / shivered now as never before.
| began to think of my sins. and they were
many enough. Dim lights began to come
out all along the rows of skulls like the
early lighting of electric lamps. | recalled
how we are required to hold on to string,
when in the catacombs of Rome, so that
we might be able to grope back again if
the lamp fails or we take the wrong way.
T !, torr h1,,%
parties who got lost and were never found
in the old burial grounds of Rome.
That girls lantern was already nearly
burned out. What did she mean to do ?
Pass out by the other way and leave my
bones to the two old witches? The place
was hot and close. 1t was horrible. L be-
gan TO want air. Even the air of the terri
would gladly have traded for all time the
whole court of kings for five minutes of
the wild and hated winds outside.
One hour, two hours! l had ceased to
shiver and shake and was now burning up
with fever
At last there was a cat-like tread in the
soft, crunching dust of the dead. then a
hand on my shoulder, and | nearly Ieaped
out of my skin with terror.
1.-The lamp has gone out, but l got two
sticks of sandalwood. We can light them
if we have to; but You better carry the
wood and l will lead YOU"
Did ever a strong, gruff, burly and bully
ing old man, with bad case of malaria,
submit to the slightest hint of child and
be glad to do it? | have some slight ac-
quaintance with one who did it then and
there.
1t was dark, except for the ghostly and
ftful light of bones, all the way out, and
dark when we got out, except that the
evening star burned on Der high altar from
each of her five horns. like ship on fire in
sapphire sea. Swiftly other stars lighted
up, then slowly, stately and full-faced the
moon swept up, as If it were an imperial
glory to draw the mighty tides of these
half-world waters after her.
And the winds were at rest! Was ever
the world so still, so stately so entirely
great? The trade winds were at rest for
the first time in forty days and forty
nights.
| And there at the mouth of the cavern
were the gentle young men and the pretty
brown girls of the party who had turned
back. They had gone and brought poi
and baked fish and bananas and mangoes
and many another fruit, and we gathered
around a great lava rock near the mouth
of the cave, and the women and l ate
while the young men played and sang and
sang and played on sweet-stringed instru-
ments, all of their own make, as if they
1t was worthy the night, worthy the moon
and the stars, the Pleiades and the belt of
Orion, the soul and the center of the
mighty American ocean!
Then the little brown girl took up and
lighted the sandalwood and laid the sticks
blazing on the top of the big rock; and
then we all gathered around close, and
then with the weird. dim light on their
sad, earnest faces and the sweet perfume
from the fame of the tombs thew sang the
low, soft, tender and far-away songs Of the
dead.
Let us pause here. 1t were almost like
profanity to say more, to dare attempt to
describe the pathos of these perishing chill
dren of the great, warm waters. They
sang as if they knew, as they surely knew
that they too, would soon be of the dead
| and that none of all their race would sur
vive to burn sandalwood or sing the song
of the dead for them.
| 49,