He might go around it by water, but he could not cross it.

It was well sprinkled with pagan temples and stocked with awkward, homely idols carved out of logs of wood.

There was a temple devoted to prayers for rain--and with fine sagacity it was placed at a point so well up on the mountain side that if you prayed there twenty-four times a day for rain you would be likely to get it every time.

You would seldom get to your Amen before you would have to hoist your umbrella.
And there was a large temple near at hand which was built in a single night, in the midst of storm and thunder and rain, by the ghastly hands of dead men! Tradition says that by the weird glare of the lightning a noiseless multitude of phantoms were seen at their strange labor far up the mountain side at dead of night--flitting hither and thither and bearing great lava-blocks clasped in their nerveless fingers--appearing and disappearing as the pallid lustre fell upon their forms and faded away again.

Even to this day, it is said, the natives hold this dread structure in awe and reverence, and will not pass by it in the night.
At noon I observed a bevy of nude native young ladies bathing in the sea, and went and sat down on their clothes to keep them from being stolen.
I begged them to come out, for the sea was rising and I was satisfied that they were running some risk.