reaches the Sea at Nanawale--Lava Chimneys--Destruction of a
Village._
It is widely known that the Hawaiian Islands are all of volcanic
origin. They are the summits of mountains whose bases are far down
in the sea. Their structure is plutonic, and the marks of fire are
everywhere visible. They are scarred with hundreds and hundreds of pit
and cone craters, most of which are extinct.
Mauna Loa is a vast volcanic dome, subject to igneous eruptions at any
time, either from its extended summit or sides. Prof. Dana estimates
that “there is enough rock material in Mauna Loa to make one hundred
and twenty-five Vesuviuses.”[1] About midway from its summit to the
sea on the eastern flank of the mountain and on a nearly level plain
is Kilauea, the largest known active crater in the world. The brink of
this crater is 4,440 feet above the sea level; its depth varies from
700 to 1,200 feet, and its longer diameter is about three miles. Grand
eruptions have issued from it in past ages, covering hundreds of square
miles in different parts of Puna and Kau.
[1] _Am. Journal of Science_, May, 1859, p. 415.
The first eruption from Kilauea which occurred after my arrival in
Hilo, began on the 30th of May, 1840. To my regret, I was then absent
at the annual General Meeting of this mission in Honolulu, a meeting
which I have always attended. I therefore record a portion of the facts
as given by the natives and foreigners who saw the eruption, adding my
own observations on a visit to the scene after my return from Honolulu.
There had been no grand eruption from this crater for the previous
seventeen years, so that the lavas in the crater had risen several
hundred feet, and the action had, at times, been terrific.
The volcano is thirty miles by road from Hilo, and under favorable
conditions of the atmosphere we could see the splendid light by night,
and the white cloudy pillar of steam by day. It was reported that, for
several days before the outburst, the whole vast floor of the crater
was in a state of intense ebullition; the seething waves rolling,
surging, and dashing against the adamantine walls, and shaking down
large rocks into the fiery abyss below. It was even stated that the
heat was so intense, and the surges so infernal, that travelers near
the upper rim of the crater left the path on account of the heat, and
for fear of the falling of the precipice over which the trail lay, and
passed at a considerable distance from the crater. Kilauea is about
half in Puna and half in Kau, and all travelers going from Kau to Hilo
by the inland road pass the very brink of this crater.
[Sidenote: _A Subterranean Fire-Stream._]
The eruption was first noticed by the people of Puna, who were
living only twenty miles from it. The light appeared at first like
a highland jungle on fire; and so it was, for the fiery river found
vent some 1,200 to 1,500 feet below the rim of Kilauea, and flowing
subterraneously in a N.E. direction, for about four miles, marking its
course by rending the superincumbent strata and throwing up light puffs
of sulphurous steam, it broke ground in the bottom of a wooded crater
about 500 feet deep, consuming the shrubs, vines, and grasses, and
leaving a smouldering mass instead.
The great stream forced its way underground in a wild and wooded region
for two miles more, when it again threw up a jet of fire and sulphur,
covering about an acre. At this point, a large amount of brilliant
sulphur crystals continued to be formed for several years.
Only a little further on, and an old wooded cone was rent with fissures
several feet wide, and about half an acre of burning lava spouted up,
consuming the trees and jungle. This crevasse emitted scalding vapor
for twenty-five years.
Onward went the burning river, deep underground, some six miles more,
when the earth was rent again with an enormous fissure, and floods of
devouring fire were poured out, consuming the forest and spreading over
perhaps fifty acres. And still the passage seaward was underground for
about another six miles, when it broke out in a terrific flood and
rolled and surged along henceforth upon the surface, contracting to
half a mile, or expanding to two miles in width, and moving from half a
mile to five miles an hour, according to the angle of descent and the
inequalities and obstructions of the surface, until it poured over the
perpendicular sea-wall, about thirty feet high, in a sheet of burning
fusion only a little less than one mile wide.
This was on June 3, 1840. It reached the sea on the fifth day after
the light was first seen on the highlands, and at the distance of only
seventeen and a half miles from Hilo. As this grand cataract of fire
poured over the basaltic sea-wall, the sights and sounds were said to
be indescribable. Two mighty antagonistic forces were in conflict. The
sea boiled and raged as with infernal fury, while the burning flood
continued to pour into the troubled waves by night and by day for three
weeks. Dense clouds of steam rolled up heavenward, veiling sun and
stars, and so covering the lava flow that objects could not be seen
from one margin to the other. All communication between the northern
and southern portions of Puna was cut off for more than a month.
[Sidenote: _The Lava Reaches the Sea._]
The waters of the sea were heated for twenty miles along the coast, and
multitudes of fishes were killed by the heat and the sulphurous gases,
and were seen floating upon the waves.
During this flow, the sea-line along the whole breadth of the
fire-stream was pushed out many yards by the solidified lavas, and
three tufaceous cones were raised in the water where ships could once
sail. They were formed of lava-sand made by the shivering of the
mineral flood coming in contact with the sea, and standing in a line
200, 300, and 400 feet above the water, with their bases deep down in
the sea. These dunes have been greatly reduced by the waves thundering
at their bases and the winds and storms beating upon their summits. One
of them, indeed, is now entirely obliterated.
During this eruption most of the foreign residents in Hilo, and
hundreds of Hawaiians of Puna and Hilo, visited the scene where the
igneous river plunged into the sea, and they described it as fearfully
grand and awe-inspiring.
Imagine the Mississippi converted into liquid fire of the consistency
of fused iron, and moving onward sometimes rapidly, sometimes
sluggishly; now widening into a lake, and anon rushing through a narrow
gorge, breaking its way through mighty forests and ancient solitudes,
and you will get some idea of the spectacle here exhibited.
When the eruption was at its height night was turned into day in all
this region. The light rose and spread like morning upon the mountains,
and its glare was seen on the opposite side of the island. It was also
visible for more than a hundred miles at sea; and at the distance of
forty miles fine print could be read at midnight.
The brilliancy of the light was said to be like a blazing firmament,
and the scene one of unrivaled sublimity.
No lives were lost during this eruption. The stream passed under and
over an almost uninhabited desert. A few small hamlets were consumed,
and a few patches of taro, potatoes, and bananas were destroyed,
but the people walked off with their calabashes, kapas, and other
chattels to seek shelter and food elsewhere. During the eruption
some of the people of Puna spent much of their time in prayer and
religious meetings, some fled in consternation, and others wandered
along the margin of the lava stream, at a safe distance, marking
with idle curiosity its progress, while others still pursued their
daily avocations within a mile of the fiery river, as quietly as
if nothing strange had occurred. They ate, drank, bought, sold,
planted, builded, slept, and waked apparently indifferent to the roar
of consuming forests, the sight of devouring fire, the startling
detonations, the hissing of escaping steam, the rending of gigantic
rocks, the raging and crashing of lava waves, and the bellowings,
the murmurings, the unearthly mutterings coming up from the burning
abyss. They went quietly on in sight of the rain of ashes, sand, and
fiery scintillations, gazing vacantly on the fearful and ever-varying
appearance of the atmosphere illuminated by the eruption, the sudden
rising of lofty pillars of flame, the upward curling of ten thousand
columns of smoke, and their majestic gyrations in dingy, lurid, or
parti-colored clouds.
[Sidenote: _The Lava Stream._]
While the stream was flowing it might be approached within a few yards
on the windward side, while at the leeward no one could live within
a great distance on account of the smoke, the impregnation of the
atmosphere with pungent and deadly gases, and the fiery showers that
fell on all around, destroying all vegetable life.
Sometimes the intense heat of the stream would cause large boulders
and rocks to explode with great detonations, and sometimes lateral
branches of the stream would push out into some fissure, or work into
a subterranean gallery, until they met with some obstacle, when the
accumulating fusion with its heat, its gases, and its pressure would
lift up the superincumbent mass of rock into a dome, or, sundering it
from its surroundings, bear it off on its burning bosom like a raft
upon the water. A foreigner told me that while he was standing on a
rocky hillock, some distance from the stream, gazing with rapt interest
upon its movements, he felt himself rising with the ground on which he
stood. Startled by the motion, he leaped from the rock, when in a few
minutes fire burst out from the place where he had been.
On returning from Honolulu I soon started for Puna, with arrangements
to make as thorough explorations and observations on this remarkable
eruption as my time would allow. I spent nearly two days on the stream.
It was solidified and mostly cooled, yet hot and steaming in many
places. I went up the flow to where it burst out in volume and breadth
from its subterranean chambers and continued on the surface to the
sea, a distance of about twelve miles, making the entire length of the
stream about thirty miles. In a letter published in the _Missionary
Herald_ of July, 1841, I called it forty miles, but later measurements
have led me to correct this and some other statements made on first
sight.
I found the place of final outburst a scene where terrific energy had
been exerted. Yawning crevasses were opened, the rocks were rent, and
the forests consumed; the molten flood had raged and swirled and been
thrown high into the air, and there had been a display of titanic fury
which must have been appalling at the time of the outbreak.
[Sidenote: _The Lava in the Forest._]
In pursuing its course the stream sometimes plunged into caverns and
deep depressions, and sometimes it struck hills which separated it into
two channels, which uniting again after having passed the obstruction,
left islands of varied sizes with trees scorched and blasted with the
heat and gases.
Along the central line of the stream its depth could not be measured
accurately, for there was no trace of tree or ancient rock or floor.
All was a vast bed of fresh, smouldering lava. On the margins, however,
where the strata were thinner, I was able to measure with great
accuracy. In passing through forests, while the depth and heat of the
middle of the stream consumed everything, on the margins thousands of
green trees were cut down gradually by the fusion around their trunks;
but this was done so slowly that the surface of the stream solidified
before the trees fell, and on falling upon the hot and hardened
crust, the tops and limbs were only partly consumed, but all were
charred, and the rows and heaps were so thick and entangled as to form
_chevaux-de-frise_ quite impassable in some places. But the numerous
holes left in the hot lava bed by the gradual reduction of the trunks
to ashes afforded the means of measuring the depth of the flow. With a
long pole I was enabled to measure from a depth of five to twenty-five
feet. Some of these trunk-moulds were as smooth as the calibre of a
cannon. Some of the holes were still so hot at the bottom as to set my
pole on fire in one minute.
I had seen fearful ragings and heard what seemed the wails of infernal
beings in the great crater of Kilauea, but I had never before seen the
amazing effects of a great exterior eruption of lava, and I returned
from this weary exploration, after a missionary tour through Puna, with
a deepened sense of the terrible dynamics of the fiery abyss over which
we tread.
Since then, in crossing and re-crossing the wild highlands of my
parish I have found in the consumed openings of forests a new class
of volcanic monuments, consisting in numerous stacks of lava chimneys
standing apart on the floor of an ancient flow. These chimneys measure
from five to twenty-five feet in height, and five to ten feet in
diameter. I gazed at them at first sight as the work of human art, not
knowing that they were cylindrical. On climbing them I found that they
were hollow, and that they were as clearly tree moulds as the holes I
had measured in the flow of 1840.
Then came the question, how were they formed? The solution soon
came--that an ancient eruption had passed through this forest at
the height of many feet above the present surface, the fiery river
surrounding large trees, but while it consumed all smaller growths, the
waves subsided to their present level before these trunks were fully
consumed, thus leaving partially-cooled envelopes of lava adhering to
them. These moulds or chimneys now stand as monuments of the volcanic
action of an unknown age.
[Sidenote: _Obdurate Villagers._]
Here I leave this subject for a while, purposing to return to it.
In early years Hawaiian hospitality was generous, and on my tours
among the natives I found them ready to provide liberally, according
to their ability, for me and the helpers who accompanied me. To this
good feeling there was one notable exception. There was a small village
about eighteen miles from Hilo, where I had taken special pains to
tame and Christianize the people. They rarely provided even a cup of
cold water until I arrived and begged them to go to a somewhat distant
spring to fetch it; and for this I would have to wait two hours,
perhaps, while parched with thirst, burning with the heat of a midday
sun, and weary with walking over long miles of scorching lava fields.
On one occasion, returning from a circuit tour of more than a hundred
miles, I stopped at this place and preached and conversed with the
villagers. I had been absent from home over two weeks and had consumed
all the food I had taken with me, except a little stale biscuit. I
had nothing for the two good men, members of the Hilo church, who had
traveled all the distance with me. Evening closed in, and I asked the
occupants of the house and some of the neighbors who had come in if
they could not furnish my two companions with a little food before
they slept. The answer was, “We have no food.” “Perhaps you can give
them a potato, a kalo, a breadfruit, or a cocoanut.” They answered as
before, “We have _nothing_ to eat, not even for ourselves.” So, weary
and hungry, we lay down upon the mats for the night, and when we were
supposed to be asleep, we heard the family under the cocoanut trees
eating heartily, and conversing in an undertone that we might not hear
them.
After years of kind instructions with the hope of leading them to
appreciate the love of God and the value of a true Christianity, they
remained the same hardened beings. My patience and desire to lead them
to “the Lamb of God” continued; but thinking of what the Saviour said
to His disciples about “shaking off the dust of their feet,” I resolved
on a trial, hoping to win them into a better way.
In a meeting when “the _hearers_ but not the _doers_ of the word” were
assembled, I said to them, “These three years have I come seeking
fruit on this fig-tree, and find none. I will, therefore, leave you to
reflect on what you have heard from the Lord; and, whenever you repent
and desire to hear the Gospel again, send for me and I will hasten
to you with joy.” But they never sent. Time passed on and down came
the fiery torrent of which I have written, and covered the village,
consuming the cocoa-palm grove, the potato and banana patches, with
the thatched meeting-house and school-house, leaving nothing but a
blackened field of lava. The people took their little all and fled.
[Sidenote: _The Scourge._]
They settled near the borders of the lava stream, and in the year 1853
the small-pox fell among them (the only place in Puna where the disease
went), and a large part of them died. There was no physician within
eighteen miles, and the poor creatures knew not what to do. Some bathed
in the sea to cool the burning heat, and perished, and some crawled
out into the jungle and there died, and were torn and partly eaten by
swine. They had fled from the devouring fire only to meet, if possible,
a more painful doom, and it reminds one of the words of Jeremiah
uttered against the stubborn Moabites: “He that fleeth from the fear
shall fall into the pit, and he that getteth up out of the pit shall be
taken in the snare.”
That the small-pox should find them and no one else in Puna seems
remarkable; but these are the facts. A number of these villagers were
visiting in Honolulu when the fearful disease raged there. They thought
to escape it by returning home, but unknown to them the destroyer had
already seized them and they perished in their wild, secluded jungle.
I visited this scene of sorrow and desolation, gathered the stricken
remnant of the sufferers, spoke words of condolence, and encouraged
them to come with their sins and sorrows to the Saviour. They seemed
subdued, welcomed their pastor, and were, I trust, “saved yet so as by
fire.”
VII.
_More Church-Building--Commodore Jones’s Visit--Progress of
Conversions--The Sacraments under New Conditions._
Of church buildings we had at one time not less than fifty, and of
school-houses sixty or more. These were all built by the free will of
the people, acting under no outward constraint. Some of these houses
would accommodate 1,000 persons, others 500, 300, and 150, according to
the population for which they were erected. They were, of course, built
in native style, on posts set in the ground, with rafters fastened
with cords, and the whole thatched with the leaf of the pandanus, the
sugar-cane, or dried grass. They were frail, needing rethatching once
in three to five years, and rebuilding after about ten years. They were
usually well-kept, and with open doors and holes for windows, they were
light and airy.
In this list I do not include the great buildings at Hilo.
[Sidenote: _Dragging Timber._]
A mighty wind having prostrated our large meeting-house, we commenced,
during the winter of 1840-1, to collect materials for our first framed
building. All the men who had axes went into the highland forest to
fell trees and hew timber. When a large number of pieces were ready,
hundreds of willing men and women, provided with ropes made of the bark
of the hibiscus, with light upper garments, and with leggins of the
Adam and Eve style, such as never feared mud and water, went to bring
down these timbers. Arranged by a captain in two lines, with drag-ropes
in hand, ready to obey the command of their chosen leader, they stood
waiting his order. At length comes the command, “Grasp the ropes; bow
the head; blister the hand; go; sweat!” And away they rush, through mud
and jungle, over rocks and streams, shouting merrily, and singing to
measure. Then comes the order, “Halt, drop drag-ropes, rest!” This is
repeated at longer or shorter intervals according to the state of the
ground.
I often went up to the woods, on foot of course, and grasped the rope,
and hauled with the rest to encourage and keep them in heart. We had no
oxen or horses in those days, for the days were _primitive_, and the
work was pioneer work. The trees, the jungle, the mud, the streams, and
the lava-fields were all primordial.
When the materials were brought together, we employed a Chinese
carpenter at a reasonable price, to frame and raise the building,
all his pay to be in trade, for “the golden age” had not yet dawned
on Hawaii. The natives, men and women, soon covered the rough frame
with thatching. There was no floor but the earth, and the only
windows were holes about three feet square left in the thatching on
the sides and ends. This was the first framed church edifice built in
Hilo, and in this building, capable of seating about 2,000 people,
we first welcomed Commodore Ap Catesby Jones, of the frigate _United
States_, with his officers and brass band. The courteous commodore and
his chaplain consented to deliver each an address of congratulation
and encouragement to the people for their ready acceptance of the
Gospel, and for their progress in Christian civilization. He alluded
to a former visit of his to Honolulu by order of the United States
Government, to investigate certain complaints made by a class of
foreign residents against the American missionaries, stating that on a
patient and careful hearing of the parties, the missionaries came out
triumphantly, and their abusers were put to shame.
Our people at this time had never heard the music of a brass band, and
the commodore kindly gave them a treat. After playing several sacred
songs which delighted the natives beyond all music they had before
heard, the band, at a signal from the commodore, struck up “Hail
Columbia.” An electric thrill rushed through the great congregation,
and all sprang to their feet in amazement and delight. Since then they
have become familiar with the music of the United States’, the English
and French navies.
[Sidenote: _A Church Dedication._]
Perhaps the most perfect band we have heard in Hilo was that of the
Duke of Edinburgh, who visited us in the steam frigate _Galatea_ in
1869.
When our first framed church building became old and dilapidated, we
decided on replacing it with an edifice of stone and mortar. But after
a year’s hard toil in bringing stones on men’s shoulders, and after
having dug a trench some six feet deep for the foundations without
coming to the bed-rock, we, by amicable agreement, dismissed our mason
and engaged two carpenters.
The corner-stone was laid November 14, 1857, and the building was
dedicated on the 8th of April, 1859. The material was good, and the
workmanship faithful and satisfactory. The whole cost was $13,000.
It was then the finest church edifice on the islands. On the day of
the dedication, there was a debt on the house of some $600, and it was
our hope and purpose to cancel the debt on that day. But the day was
stormy, the paths muddy, and the rivers were without bridges. Things
looked dark, but we were happily surprised to see the people flocking
in from all points until the house was crowded to its utmost capacity.
Prayers and a song of praise were offered, but we had resolved, by the
help of God, not to dedicate the house until the debt was paid to the
last farthing. So the people were called on by divisions, according
to their villages, to come forward with their offerings; and this was
done with such promptness, such order, and such quietness that we soon
counted and declared a contribution of over $800. When the result was
announced, a shout of joy went up to heaven.
The debt was paid, the house was dedicated, $200 were left in the
treasury, and the people went home rejoicing and praising the Lord.
On the 27th a contribution of more than $400 was taken, making our
dedication offerings $1,239. Our treasury for the meeting-house has
never been empty, though we have expended several thousand dollars more
in purchasing a large bell, in painting and repairing the house, and in
keeping it and the grounds neat and in good condition.
It was an affecting scene to see the old and decrepit, the poor widow,
and the droves of little children come forward with their gifts which
they had been collecting and saving for months, and offering them with
such cheerful gladness to the Lord.