Note 1 — XXIII “CHIEF MAN-EATER”

It was a wild and wonderfully beautiful spot that Kokoa chose for his final home. It was a small plateau, or mesa, of from two to three hundred acres on the top of a small mountain surrounded by other higher and more precipitous cliffs. It was luxuriantly covered with tropical growth and blessed with abundant rains. The Hawaiians have given the name Halemanu (house-of-the-hand) to this plateau. Its sides, sloping down into the valleys, were so precipitous as to be absolutely inaccessible. It could be entered only along a narrow ridge. The pandanus drooped its long leaves and aërial rootlets along the edges. The uluhe,1 or tangle-fern, massed and matted itself into a thick disguise for the cannibals’ secret paths through the valleys below. Native flowers bordered the paths and crowned the plateau, as if man’s worst nature could never wither the appeal of things beautiful. A magnificent koa, or native mahogany, tree spread its protecting branches by the spot chosen by Kokoa for his grass house. Kukui-trees furnished their oily nuts for his torches. The ohia, or native apple, and the bread-fruit and wild sugar-cane gave generously of their wealth to the support of the cannibal band. They easily cultivated taro, the universal native food, and captured birds and sometimes unwary hunters who penetrated the forest recesses in search of the birds with rare yellow feathers. It was a beautiful den into which, spider-like, he dragged his victims.