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Walter E. Traprock - The Cruise of the Kawa
were our exertions before we bagged an additional pair for our loved ones.
Thus sporting on our way, crowned with alova and girdled with tontoni (a gorgeous type
of flannel-mouthed snapdragon which kept all manner of insects at bay), we wound toward the summit,
stopping ever and anon to admire the cliffs of mother-of-pearl, sheer pages of colorful history thrown up
long ago by some primeval illness of mother earth.
Swank was so intoxicated by it all that I made almost the only break of our island experience.
"You've been drinking," I accused.
"You lie," he answered hotly, "it's these colors! Wow-wow! Osky-wow-wow! Skinny wow-wow
Illinois!"
"Oh, shut up!" I remonstrated, when I saw Tilaana advancing toward me, fluttering her taa-taa in
the same menacing way in which Kippy had attacked the wak-wak.
"I beg your pardon," I said. "I was wrong. I apologize."
We stood in a circle and chinned each other until peace was restored.
The view from the summit was, as authors say, indescribable. Nevertheless I shall describe it, or rather I
shall quote Whinney who at this moment reached his highest point. We were then about three thousand
feet above sea-level.
I wish I could give his address as it was delivered, in Filbertese, but I fear that my readers would skip, a
form of literary exercise which I detest.
Try for a moment to hold the picture; our little group standing on the very crest of the mountain as if
about to sing the final chorus of the Creation to an audience of islands. Far-flung they stretched, these
jeweled confections, while below, almost at our very feet, we could see the Kawa and Triplett, a tiny
speck, frantically waving his yard-arm! Even at three thousand feet he gave me a chill.... But let Whinney
speak.
"It is plain," he said, "that the basalt monadnock on which we stand is a carboniferous upthrust of
metamorphosed schists, shales and conglomerate, probably Mesozoic or at least early Silurian."
At this point our wives burst into laughter. In fact, their attitude throughout was trying but Whinney
bravely proceeded.
"You doubtless noticed on the shore that the deep-lying metamorphic crystals have been exposed by
erosion, leaving on the upper levels faulted strata of tilted lava-sheets interstratified with pudding-stone."
"We have!" shouted Swank.
"Evidently then," continued the professor, "the atoll is simply an annular terminal moraine of detritus
shed alluvially into the sea, thus leaving a geosyncline of volcanic ash embedded with an occasional
trilobite and the fragments of scoria, upon which we now stand."
We gave Whinney a long cheer with nine Yales at the close to cover the laughter of the women, for the
discourse was really superb. In English its melodic charm is lost, but you must admit that for an
indescribable thing it is a very fine description.
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