The choice of the plain of Kalawao as the spot on which to seclude the lepers from all the Islands was very happy.  It can not be said that to an agile native the place is inaccessible, for there are, no doubt, several points in the great precipice where men and women could make their way down or up; and there are instances of women swimming around the precipitous and surf-beaten shore, seven or eight miles, to reach husbands or friends in the settlement to whom they were devotedly attached.  But it is easily guarded, and, for all practical purposes, the seclusion is perfect.

A singular tradition, related to me on the island, points to its use for such a purpose and gives a sad significance to the leper settlement.  It is said that in the time of the first Kamehameha, the conqueror and hero of his race, upon an occasion when he visited Molokai, an old sorceress or priestess sent him word that she had made a garment for him—­a robe of honor—­which she desired him to come and get.  He returned for answer a command that she should bring it to him; and when the old hag appeared, the king desired her to tell him something of the future.  She replied that he would conquer all the Islands, and rule over them but a brief time; that his own posterity would die out; and that finally all his race would be gathered together on Molokai; and that this small island would be large enough to hold them all.

It is probable, of course, that this tale is of recent origin, and that no priestess of Kamehameha the First possessed so fatal and accurate a gift of prophecy; but the tale, told me in the midst of the leper asylum, pointed to the gloomy end of the race with but too plain a finger.  The Hawaiians, once so numerous as to occupy almost all the habitable parts of all the Islands, have so greatly decreased that they might almost find their support on the little island of Molokai alone.  Happily the decrease has now ceased.

The great Pali of Molokai, one of the most remarkable and picturesque sights of the Islands, stretches for a dozen miles along its windward coast.  It is a sheer precipice, in most parts from a thousand to two thousand feet high, washed by the sea at its base, and having, in most parts, not a trace of beach.  This vast wall of rock is an impressive sight; here the shipwrecked mariner would be utterly helpless; but would drown, not merely in sight of land, but with his hands vainly grasping for even a bush, or root, or a projecting rock.

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA: 

ITS AGRICULTURAL VALLEYS, DAIRIES, FORESTS,

FRUIT-FARMS, ETC.

[Illustration:  NORTHERN CALIFORNIA.]

[Illustration:  A CALIFORNIA VINEYARD.]

CHAPTER I.

THE SACRAMENTO VALLEY:  A GENERAL VIEW, WITH HINTS TO TOURISTS AND
SPORTSMEN.

The State of California extends over somewhat more than ten degrees of latitude.  If it lay along the Atlantic as it lies along the Pacific coast, its boundaries would include the whole shore-line from Cape Cod to Hilton Head, and its limits would take in the greater portion of ten of the original States.