By and by, after a rugged¹ climb, we halted on the summit of a hill which commanded a far-reaching view. The moon rose and flooded mountain and valley and ocean with a mellow² radiance, and out of the shadows of the foliage³ the distant lights of Honolulu glinted like an encampment of fireflies. The air was heavy with the fragrance⁴ of flowers. The halt was brief.—Gayly laughing and talking, the party galloped⁵ on, and I clung to the pommel and cantered after. Presently we came to a place where no grass grew—a wide expanse of deep sand. They said it was an old battle ground. All around everywhere, not three feet apart, the bleached⁶ bones of men gleamed white in the moonlight. We picked up a lot of them for mementoes. I got quite a number of arm bones and leg bones—of great chiefs, may be, who had fought savagely⁷ in that fearful battle in the old days, when blood flowed like wine where we now stood—and wore the choicest of them out on Oahu afterward⁸, trying to make him go. All sorts of bones could be found except skulls⁹; but a citizen said, irreverently, that there had been an unusual number of “skull-hunters” there lately—a species of sportsmen I had never heard of before.