But I saw and heard one thing on this walk that struck a different note:  it was one of the native birds, the Oahu thrush.  The moment I heard it I was reminded of our brown thrasher, though the song, or whistle, was much finer and richer in tone than that of our bird.  The glimpse I got of the bird showed it to be of about the size and shape of our thrasher, but much brighter in color.  It seems as though the two species must have had a common origin some time, somewhere.  I was attracted by no other native bird on this walk.  In the valley below we had seen and heard the Chinese workmen going about their rice-fields making strange sounds to drive away the rice-birds, a small, brown species that has been introduced from India.

When we reached the mountain-top, we found it enveloped in fog and mist, and the scene was cold and cheerless.  We looked down through a screen of foliage into a deep valley that seemed almost beneath us, and which is supposed to have been an ancient crater.  There, on the brink, the walkers had a rude cabin, where we ate our lunch beside a fire and tried to dry our bedraggled garments.

From this point some of the party continued their walk, looking for more unfrequented places, but some of us had longings the other way, and retraced our steps toward the sunlight and the drier winds we had left.  We reached town footsore and bedraggled, and the little Japanese who cleaned and pressed my suit of clothes, and made them look as good as new for seventy-five cents, well earned his money.

The walk of eight or ten miles which we took two weeks later with Governor Frear and his wife, up the new Castle trail to the mountain-top behind Tantalus, had some features in common with the first walk,—­the increasing mist and coolness as we entered the mountains, the dripping bushes, and the slippery paths,—­but we got finer views, and found a better-kept trail.  Our walk ended on the top of a narrow ridge of the mountain, where we ate our lunch in a cold, driving mist and were a bit uncomfortable.  I was interested in the character of the ridge upon which we sat.  It was not more than six feet wide, a screen of volcanic rock worn almost to an edge, and separated two valleys six or seven hundred feet deep.  The Governor said he could take me where the dividing ridge between the two valleys was so narrow that one could literally sit astride of it, so that one leg would point to one valley and the other to the other.  This is a feature of a new country geologically; the rains and other agents of erosion have whittled the mountains to sharp edges, but have not yet rounded or leveled them.

The northeast trade winds which blow upon these islands nine months in the year bring a burden of moisture from the Pacific which is condensed into rain and mist by the mountains, and which, with the rank vegetation that it fosters, carves them and sharpens them like a great grindstone revolving against their sides.  At a place called the Pali—­and at the Needles, on the island of Maui—­it has worn through the mountain-chain and made deep and very picturesque gorges where, in the case of the Pali, the wind is so strong and steady that you can almost lie down upon it.