All Cases Are A Mistake, - At Least I Think So, As I Contemplate My Light Equipment With Complacency.

Yesterday's dawn was the reddest I have seen on the mountains, and the day was all the dawn promised.

A three-mile gallop down the dewy grass, and slackened speed through the bush, brought me once again to the breezy slopes of Hamakua, and the trail I travelled in February, with Deborah and Kaluna. Though as green then as now, it was the rainy season, a carnival of rain and mud. Somehow the summer does make a difference, even in a land without a winter. The temperature was perfect. It was dreamily lovely. No song of birds, or busy hum of insects, accompanied the rustle of the lauhala leaves and the low murmur of the surf. But there is no hot sleep of noon here - the delicious trades keep the air always wakeful.

When the gentleman who guided me through the bush left me on the side of a pali, I discovered that Kahele, though strong, gentle, and sure-footed, possesses the odious fault known as balking, and expressed his aversion to ascend the other side in a most unmistakable manner. He swung round, put his head down, and no amount of spurring could get him to do anything but turn round and round, till the gentleman, who had left me, returned, beat him with a stick, and threw stones at him, till he got him started again.

I have tried coaxing him, but without result, and have had prolonged fights with him in nearly every gulch, and on the worst pali of all he refused for some time to breast a step, scrambled round and round in a most dangerous place, and slipped his hind legs quite over the edge before I could get him on.

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