For the first four miles the country was open and uneven, and beautifully sprinkled with clumps, groves, and single trees of the bread fruit, pandanus, and candle tree. We then came to a wood, four miles in width, the outskirts of which exhibited a rich and delightful foliage. It was composed principally of the candle tree, whose whitish leaves and blossoms afforded a fine contrast to the dark green of the various parasitical plants which hung in luxuriant festoons and pendants from their very tops to the ground, forming thick and deeply shaded bowers round their trunks. The interior was far less interesting, presenting nothing but an impenetrable thicket, on both sides of the path. This was[64] excessively rough and fatiguing, consisting entirely of loose and pointed pieces of lava, which from their irregularity and sharpness, not only cut and tore our shoes, but constantly endangered our feet and ankles. The high brake, ginger, &c., which border and overhung the path, were filled with the rain of the night, and added greatly, from their wetness, to the unpleasantness of the walk. An hour and a half, however, saw us safely through, and refreshing ourselves in the charming groves with which the wood was here again bordered. The whole of the way from this place to within a short distance of the volcano, is very much of one character. The path, formed of black lava, so smooth in some places as to endanger falling, and still showing the configuration of the molten stream as it had rolled down the gradual descent of the mountain, leads midway through a strip of open uncultivated country, from three to five miles wide, skirted on both sides by a ragged and stinted wood, and covered with fern, grass, and low shrubs, principally a species of the whortleberry. The fruit of this, of the size of a small gooseberry, and of a bright yellow color, tinged on one side with red, was very abundant, and though of insipid taste, refreshing from its juice. There are no houses near the path, but the thatch of a cottage was occasionally observed peeping from the edge of the wood; and here and there the white smoke of a kindling fire curled above the thick foliage of the trees. Far on the right and west, Mounaloa and Mounakea were distinctly visible; and at an equal distance, on the left, and east, the ocean, with its horizon—from the height at which we viewed it, mingling with the sky. [65]