Emma L. Dillingham.

e stood shivering on the brink. At our very feet was the crater of Haleakala, the House of the sun, but that luminary had gone to his other realms and left his dwelling dark, unfathomable and void. No voice of nature was there, no murmuring breeze, no note of bird, no spirit of man or of God moved in those lone and abysmal depths. Only the brilliant stars kept watch above, and they were immeasurable miles away.

We, who stood there in the cool morning air did not add in any way to the majesty of the scene, wrapped as we were in blankets—red, white and gray.

"Like lost spirits waiting for waftage to the other shore," remarked the tourist.

"I am sure I have lost my spirits," said a shivering unfortunate, "I think the guide stole them."

"It seems to me we look more like a group of savage Apaches on a bleak mountain summit sketched by Remington," suggested the artist of the crowd.

"Ah, there she blows," cried the first speaker pointing toward the east where a shaft of light had just shot from the dark sea through the gray clouds. We all turned and looked except the newly married couple. They gazed into each others eyes as was their custom.

"I am so cold, dearest," she murmured.

I supposed he furnished her with a share of his red blanket though I was not watching.

"Ladies and gentlemen," said the humorist, "the grand cyclorama of sunrise on Haleakala is about to open, and as a preliminary, I move to throw the poet over the brink as a propitiatory sacrifice to the God of the Sun, who appears to be shocked by our appearance; and besides the poet will attempt to describe this scene and he can't."

"Describe nothing," retorted the poet, "my teeth are chattering so my tongue can't." "Let's throw the guide over, that will propitiate us anyway."

But William, the guide, looked so calm and peaceful as he sat with his back against a rock smoking a short black pipe, that we decided not to disturb him.

Meanwhile the sun rose. He has done this so often that it has become a matter of course with him. But rarely has he risen surrounded with such pomp of circumstance and kingly glory. It might well have been his coronation morning, with clouds of heavy gorgeousness upon his shining shoulders, and the quick heralds of light sent to glorify the distant mountain heights and to awaken the dark and slumbering sea. We seemed to be moving in worlds unrealized as the light swept across the reach of clouds at our feet, broken as a sea of tumbled ice, while around the outer rim rose forms strange or fantastic, the clouds shaping themselves into huge animals or rounding into noble palaces or turning into lofty pinnacles, and on every one the sun had set a crown of flame. The light with glowing hands pulled slowly back the shadows from the crater until it stood clearly revealed in its silence and vastness. From West Maui to Molokai stretched a heavy causeway of cloud beneath which lay the sea dark and glowing like polished porphyry. The sun was above the cloud and the common light of day lay round us.

"Tis past, the visionary splendor fades," remarked the poet, but the remark was not original with him.

Our party now adjourned to the stone house on the summit known as Cruyealece and after drinking some hot coffee and warming ourselves around the open fire, the humorist and myself testified to our intention of taking William and walking down into the crater. They all said that we were decided idiots, and they would take their exercise out in watching us. The newly married couple said nothing, but looked as I have stated.

"I think that haole can't go down," remarked William, pointing to the humorist. "His legs too thin, they break."

We all laughed except the humorist who could not see the joke.

"Break! you fat rascal," he exclaimed, "before I am done with you, you won't be anything but an animated brown shadow."

With sarcastic comments which did not disturb our serenity and much waving of handkerchiefs we began the descent. We went down at a very rapid gait, the loose dirt smoking at our heels and the canteen thumping against William's fat sides. In a half hour we reached the floor of the crater and stopped to take breath. After William had lighted his pipe we went on our way. First across the black lava flows and broken aa. In the days of its storm and stress this had been the hot and glowing life-blood of the great volcano, but now it was cold, black and congealed. Beyond the flows we came to long stretches of volcanic sands and the lofty cones rose above us, so perfect in form that it seemed the slightest breath of air would disturb their symmetry. Their coloring was wonderful, velvety black, gray and red shading into one another. And through the vast silence the silvery notes of a bird floated down to us from the far battlements of the crater.

After a toilsome tramp we reached the other side where the trees come down the slope, and throwing ourselves down in the shade we looked across the burning plain and enjoyed the coolness by way of contrast as we smoked and took chance shots at stray goats coming down the ridge.

"Do you know any stories or legends connected with Haleakala, William?" I asked.

"Yes, I know one, my grandma always telling."

"That's right, William," said the humorist, "take down your harp from the weeping lauhala trees, and sing to us of the departed glories of your race."

"You see my grandma great old woman, she kahuna, live at Hana. I hear this story every since I was keiki. She says it comes down from some old poets."

And after gazing across the crater for a while William began in his native tongue:

"In former times from the distant Islands of the southern sea came a strange people to Hawaii. On their spears were the great sharks' teeth, and their tabu staffs were crowned with kapa black or white. They were great of stature and became the mois of Hawaii. Then followed a people from beyond the rising sun. Small and broad they were, and came in ships such as were never before seen in Hawaiian seas. But stranger than these peoples was an alien race which came from out the distant north from whence the great trees come floating down upon the rivers of the sea, and the tradewinds take their rise, which come to cool our valleys and the burning sea.

It was in the days when Hua, the impious king reigned in Hana, on the third day before the feast of Lono in the early morning when the fishermen were returning, six canoes came from out a mist that floated on the sea, and moved quickly in even line toward the curving beach. The night before the omens had portended some dire event. The sacrifices had risen from the blood stained lele and stalked beyond the heiau gate, while, from the heights of Haleakala, issued the groanings of the Thunder God. As the aliens strode upon the beach they were taller than our tallest chiefs. Their skins were red as Pele blood that beats within our heart, but their eyes were black as is that blood when it cools upon the mountain sides, yet from them shot fire as the lightning from the thunder