CHAPTER III.
MAUI, AND THE SUGAR CULTURE.
Maui lies between Oahu and Hawaii, and is somewhat larger than the first-named island.

It contains the most considerable sugar-plantations, and yields more of this product than any one of the other islands.

It is notable also for possessing the mountain of Haleakala, an extinct volcano ten thousand feet high, which has the largest crater in the world--a monstrous pit, thirty miles in circumference, and two thousand feet deep.
There is some reason to believe that Maui was originally two islands, the northern and southern parts being joined together by an immense sandy plain, so low that in misty weather it is hardly to be distinguished from the ocean; and some years ago a ship actually ran aground upon it, sailing for what the captain imagined to be an open passage.
Maui has also the famous Wailuku Valley, a picturesque gorge several miles deep, and giving you a very fair example of the broken, verdure-clad, and now lonely valleys of these islands; which are in reality steep, narrow canons, worn out of the mountains by the erosion of water.

The old Hawaiians seem to have cared little how difficult a piece of country was; they not only made their taro patches in the streams which roar at the bottoms of such gorges, but they fought battles among the precipices which you find at the upper ends of these valleys, where the defeated usually met their deaths by plunging down into the stream far below.
After seeing a live or burning crater like Kilauea, Haleakala, I thought, would be but a dull sight; but it is, on the contrary, extremely well worth a visit.

The islands have no sharp or angular volcanic peaks.
Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, on Hawaii, though 14,000 feet high, are mere bulbs--vast hills, not mountains; and the ascent to the summit of Haleakala, though you surmount 10,000 feet, is neither dangerous nor difficult.