Hawaiian Fireworks

These dried sticks were carried up the high cliffs to a ledge a thousand feet
or more above the sea. On a dark night the men climbed up to the ledge, built a
fire, and lighting the ends of the sticks, hurled them like javelins into space.
The two most famous oahi places on Kaua'i were Kamaile peak, rising 2500
feet over Nuuololo [Nu‘alolo] landing on the Na Pali Coast, and the high cliffs that
tower over the wet caves at Haena.

The cliffs being concave, the trade winds are forced upwards forming a sort
of air cushion from which the blazing hau sticks rise and fall. The force of the
wind and gravity together fan the burning end into a blazing ball of fire as the stick
works up and down in the air and away from the cliff until it reaches the outer edge
of the air cushion. There it comes tobogganning down, blazing fiercer and fiercer,
until like a great rocket it sails over the flats below and rushes out to sea.

Knudsen, Valdemar
1945 Teller of Hawaiian Tales. Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Honolulu, Ltd.

[Note: Valdemer Knudsen seems to have lived in the 19th century; double click on his name for more information]