After the conclusion of this novel entertainment, we all proceeded on horseback to the Falls, Baby going in front of Tom, and Muriel riding with Mr. Freer.  After a couple of miles we dismounted, and had a short walk through grass and ferns to a pretty double waterfall, tumbling over a cliff, about 100 feet high, into a glassy pool of the river beneath.  It fell in front of a fern-filled black lava cavern, over which a rainbow generally hangs.  As it was too wet to sit on the grass after the rain, we took possession of the verandah of a native house, commanding a fine view of the bay and town of Hilo.  The hot coffee and eggs were a great success eventually, though the smoke from the wood fire nearly suffocated us in the process of cooking.  Excellent also was some grey mullet, brought to us alive, and cooked native fashion,—­wrapped up in ti leaves, and put into a hole in the ground.

After taking a few photographs it was time to return; and we next went to a pretty garden, which we had seen on the night of our arrival, and, tying up our horses outside, walked across it to the banks of the river.  Here we found a large party assembled, watching half the population of Hilo disporting themselves in, upon, and beneath the water.  They climbed the almost perpendicular rocks on the opposite side of the stream, took headers, and footers, and siders from any height under five-and-twenty feet, dived, swam in every conceivable attitude, and without any apparent exertion, deep under the water, or upon its surface.  But all this was only a preparation for the special sight we had come to see.  Two natives were to jump from a precipice, 100 feet high, into the river below, clearing on their way a rock which projected some twenty feet from the face of the cliff, at about the same distance from the summit.  The two men, tall, strong, and sinewy, suddenly appeared against the sky-line, far above our heads, their long hair bound back by a wreath of leaves and flowers, while another garland encircled their waists.  Having measured their distance with an eagle’s glance, they disappeared from our sight, in order to take a run and acquire the necessary impetus.  Every breath was held for a moment, till one of the men reappeared, took a bound from the edge of the rock, turned over in mid-air, and disappeared feet foremost into the pool beneath, to emerge almost immediately, and to climb the sunny bank as quietly as if he had done nothing very wonderful.  His companion followed, and then the two clambered up to the twenty-feet projection, to clear which they had had to take such a run the first time, and once more plunged into the pool below.  The feat was of course an easier one than the first; but still a leap of eighty feet is no light matter.  A third native, who joined them in this exploit, gave one quite a turn as he twisted in his downward jump; but he also alighted in the water feet foremost, and bobbed up again directly, like a cork.  He was quite a young man, and we afterwards heard that he had broken several ribs not more than a year ago, and had been laid up for six months in the hospital.