The steamer _Kilauea_ left Honolulu one evening at half-past five o'clock,
and dropped several of us about two o'clock at night into a whale-boat
near a point on the lee side of Molokai. Here we were landed, and
presently mounted horses and rode seven or eight miles to the house of a
German, Mr. Meyer, who is the superintendent of the leper settlement, and
also, I believe, of a cattle farm which belongs to the heirs of the late
king.

Mr. Meyer has lived on Molokai since 1853. He is married to a Hawaiian,
and has a large family of sons and daughters who have been carefully and
excellently brought up, I was told. Mrs. Meyer, who presided at breakfast,
is one of those tall and grandly proportioned women whom you meet among
the native population not infrequently, who enable you to realize how it
was that in the old times the women exercised great influence in Hawaiian
politics. She seemed born to command, and yet her benevolent countenance
and friendly smile of welcome showed that she would probably rule gently.

From Mr. Meyer's we rode some miles again, until at last we dismounted at
the top or edge of the great precipice, at the foot of which, two thousand
feet below, lies the plain of Kalawao, occupied by the lepers. At the
top we four dismounted, for the trail to the bottom, though not generally
worse than the trail into the Yosemite Valley, has some places which would
be difficult and, perhaps, dangerous for horses.

From the edge of the Pali or precipice the plain below, which contains
about 16,000 acres, looks like an absolute flat, bounded on three sides by
the blue Pacific. Horses awaited us at the bottom, and we soon discovered
that the plain possessed some considerable elevations and depressions. It
is believed to have been once the bottom of a vast crater, of which the