or sixty foreigners was made up to visit the eruption, then about six
miles from the town. A United States frigate with her commodore was in
our harbor, and seven or eight whale-ships. Visitors were also here
from Honolulu, and eight wives of ship-masters were boarders in the
town. It was a great muster; the cavalcade of ladies and gentlemen
included the commodore and his suite, lawyers, judges, sheriff,
merchants, ship-masters, etc.
A way had been opened for horses through the thicket by natives hired
for the occasion, so that we might ride nearly to the margin of the
flow.
The morning on which we started was radiant with beauty; and as we
advanced, natives, catching the inspiration, turned out in troops, and
it was supposed a hundred joined us.
[Sidenote: _A Pleasure Party Demoralized._]
We met in an opening in the forest, some distance from the main
stream, but opposite an active flow of lava that had shot ahead down
the channel of a rivulet. A number of the company desired to see the
main flow in its breadth, and with these I proposed to advance two or
three miles, while those who remained were to follow a trail which the
natives would open, and prepare a camp near the margin of the stream.
We returned about sunset and found the camp demoralized. The party had
pursued the trail as directed, but at sight of the glowing fires which
were rushing down in volume had taken fright, turned back on their
track and fled deeper into the forest.
The commodore retreated at discretion, ordered his horse hastily,
vaulted into the saddle, and taking one or two of his officers sped
down the hill, out of the woods, over the rocks and through streams and
mud, never halting until he had reached the shore.
The frightened ladies and children wandered here and there, bewildered
in the forest, and it was midnight before the stragglers were all
brought into camp. Most of them were then so terrified that they could
not be persuaded to approach nearer to the burning river; but those
who were reassured and ventured to join the party of observation were
well repaid. Through the energy of a ship-master, a fine topsail canvas
tent had been set up on a high bank of the water-channel overlooking
a deep basin, into which a cascade was falling from a height of
thirty-nine feet, and our position commanded the channel for half a
mile. The fiery stream, perhaps seventy-five feet wide, filled the
whole channel and drove the boiling water before it, burning the bushes
and vines and ferns along the banks as it approached the fall. Down
plunged the molten lava, moving like a serpent into the depths of the
basin, covering the whole surface with enormous bubbles. A dense steam
which rolled upward in convolving clouds of fleecy whiteness floated
away upon the wind. Sometimes the glare of the fire would so fall upon
the cloud of vapor as to produce the appearance of flame mingled with
blood, and again the quivering and dancing of countless prismatic
colors. By break of day there was not a drop of water left in this
basin; the space was filled with smouldering lavas, and the precipice,
which had reared itself at an angle of 80°, was converted into a gently
sloping plane. A large slab of lava crust was tilted, and stood as a
monument of the accomplished work; the flow ceased, a little red-hot
lava was seen amidst the smouldering heaps of rocky coal, and from that
day the fearful flood did not come another foot toward Hilo.
This was six months after the commencement of the eruption on the
mountain. Above this pool, where the action ceased so suddenly, was the
broad river of one to two miles wide which supplied the flow; and this
also ceased to move toward Hilo, at the same time leaving a breastwork
of indurated lava some twenty-five feet high across the whole terminus
of the stream.
[Sidenote: _The Course of the Lava-Flow._]
But what is most marvelous, confounding our geology, is the fact that
for nine months longer, or until November, 1856, after the arrest of
the flow toward our town, the great terminal furnace on Mauna Loa was
in full blast, sending down billions of cubic feet of molten rock in
covered channels, and depositing it near the lower end of the stream,
but without pushing beyond its breastworks. This lava gushed out
laterally along the margins of the stream, or burst up vertically,
rending the crust, throwing it about in wild confusion, or heaping it
into cones and ridges a hundred feet high, as monuments of its fury.
I have mounted some of these cones, finding them cracked from base to
top in fissures six to eight feet apart, but so firm that I could walk
to their summits and look down in the seams on the right and left, and
see the red-hot lava glow like burning coals in a coal-pit, sending out
deadly blasts of acid gases.
At many points for miles above the terminus, pools, lakes, and streams
of liquid fire were scattered over the square miles of _aa_ and immense
fields of _pahoehoe_, boiling, seething, and flowing during the nine
months that followed February 13th. During all this time the water of
the Wailuku was so discolored, and so offensive in taste and smell,
that ships refused it, and it was disused by the residents--and in some
of the lovely woodland rills the water became black like ink.
During this eruption Prof. J. D. Dana wrote to me requesting that I
would ascertain on how great an angle of descent lavas would flow
without breaking, as some scientists affirmed that a continuous stream
could not flow down an angle of more than five degrees. I took pains
to measure accurately on one of my excursions, and found lava flowing
continuously on declivities of from one to ninety degrees. I also noted
that our Hawaiian volcanoes send out streams of such perfect fusion
that they will run like oil down any angle, and even cleave like paste
to an inward curve of the rock and form a thin veneering upon it.
Another question arose: Can a lava stream flow for many miles
longitudinally upon the surface, without being fed by vents or fissures
from below? Of course no one will dispute the fact that fusion pouring
down a steep mountain-side will rush for miles with such rapidity that
it can not cool in its descent so as to stop its progress. But can it
push forward over broad fields of almost level surface? I have answered
this question thus: 1st, On ascending the mountain to view an eruption
I see no evidence of deep fractures until we are more than two-thirds
the way to the summit.
2d. Where there is an opening extending down to the fiery abyss below,
there will, I think, always be a column of mineral smoke ascending to
mark the spot, so long as action continues. This is true of Kilauea,
and it is also true of all the eruptions I have observed. We see
continuous volumes of smoke ascending from the terminal crater on Mauna
Loa, and others near the terminus of the stream where the fusion is
gushing out from under its hardened surface. The smoke at the fountain
is mineral, while that below is from vegetable matter. These two kinds
of smoke are distinguishable by the smell; and the mineral smoke is
nowhere continuously emitted along the line of the lava-stream, however
extended that may be; it is characteristic of the lava-source.
[Sidenote: _The Supply of Lava Streams._]
3d. I have often surveyed, for distances of five to twenty miles,
the ground upon which eruptions were approaching, and have seen the
burning floods come on, covering to-day the ground on which I traveled
yesterday, and consuming the hut where I slept. Their manner of
progress is so familiar to me that it is difficult to see how I can be
mistaken in thinking that our longest lava-streams maintain themselves
wholly from the source, and are not fed from fissures beneath their
course.
This eruption of 1855-6 gave us an example of the law of compensation.
Repeated efforts had been made to open a road for horses through the
great central forest of Hawaii. It is probably a moderate estimate to
say that ten thousand days of native labor had been expended on the
enterprise. But the road was abandoned long ago, after having been
carried about ten miles from the shore, and in a few years it was
covered with jungle. This eruption consumed the forest to within a
mile of the lower skirt of it, and a bridle-path has been made to the
flow, and upon this hardened stream animals have been taken through an
opened passage to Waimea and Kohala. With proper effort a convenient
road might be made upon this lava-field, so as to shorten greatly the
distance to the western side of the island.
As before mentioned, surface lava exposed to the atmosphere crusts
over before running very far, unless it is moving with great velocity,
as down steep descents. This process of refrigeration so protects the
liquid below that it flows onward at white-heat, it may be, until
obstructed, when it gushes out on the margins, or bursts up vertically.
On plains where the movement is slow the obstructions are more numerous
and the force required to overcome them is less; this accounts for the
lateral spreadings, the upliftings and the thousand irregularities
which diversify the ever-changing surface of the lava-flow.
XXII.
_The Eruption of 1868 from Kilauea--The March and April
Earthquakes--Land-Slips--Destruction of Life and Property--The
Lava-Stream Bursts from Underground--The Volcanic Waves of
August, 1868, and of May, 1877._
From time immemorial earthquakes have been common on Hawaii. We have
felt the jar of thousands. Most of these shocks have been harmless. A
few have broken a little crockery, cracked plastering, and thrown down
stone walls.
But on the 27th of March, 1868, a series of remarkable earthquakes
commenced. Kilauea was unusually full and in vehement action. Day after
day from March 27th and onward, shocks were frequent, and growing
more and more earnest. At 4 +P.M.+, April 2d, a terrific shock rent
the ground, sending consternation through all Hilo, Puna, and Kau. In
some places fissures of great length, breadth, and depth were opened.
Rocks of twenty to fifty tons were sent thundering down from the walls
of Kilauea, and massive boulders were torn from hill-sides and sent
crashing down upon the plains and valleys below. Stone houses were rent
and ruined, and stone walls sent flying in every direction. Horses and
men were thrown to the ground; houses tilted from their foundations;
furniture, hardware, crockery, books and bottles, and all things
movable in houses were dashed hither and thither, as of no account. It
seemed as if the ribs and the pillars of the earth were being shattered.
I was sitting, as at the present moment, at my study-table, when a
fearful jerk startled me, and before I could arise, a jar still more
terrible caused me to rush for the stairs, and while going down, such a
crash shook the house that I supposed the roof had fallen.
Going out of doors, I found my wife standing at a distance from the
house, watching with an intense gaze its swaying and trembling, while
the ground rose and sank like waves, and there was no place stable
where hand or foot could rest.
When the shocks intermitted a little, I went upstairs to witness a
scene of wild confusion. A large bookcase, seven feet high by four
wide, with glass doors, and filled with books, lay prostrate on the
floor near where I had been sitting, with the glass broken into a
thousand pieces.
My study-table, eight feet long, and loaded with large volumes, was
thrown out from the wall into the center of the room, with one leg
broken square off, and the books and papers scattered on the floor.
Another bookcase, fastened to the wall, was rent from its fastenings
and thrown out near the table, and three of the sleepers which
supported the floor were broken by the fall of the case.
[Sidenote: _The Hill-Tops Shaken Off._]
The shaking continued all night, and most or all of the Hilo people
spent the night out of doors, fearing to remain in their houses. Some
said they counted a thousand shocks before morning, and so rapid were
these shocks, that the earth seemed to be in a continuous quiver, like
a ship in a battle.
But the heaviest blows fell on Kau, the district lying south of us
on the other side of Kilauea. There the earth was rent in a thousand
places, and along the foot-hills of Mauna Loa a number of land-slips
were shaken off from steep places, and thrown down with soil, boulders,
and trees. In one place a slide of half a mile in width was started on
a steep inclined plane, till, coming to a precipice of some 700 feet,
on an angle of about seventy degrees, the vast avalanche, mixing with
the waters of a running stream and several springs, was pitched down
this precipice, receiving such fearful momentum as to carry it three
miles in as many minutes. Ten houses, with thirty-one souls and five
hundred head of cattle were buried instantly, and not one of them has
been recovered.
I measured this avalanche and found it just three miles long, one-half
a mile wide at the head, and of a supposed average depth of twenty feet.
At the same time the sea rose twenty feet along the southern shore of
the island, and in Kau 108 houses were destroyed and forty-six people
drowned, making a loss of 118 houses and seventy-seven lives in that
district, during this one hour. Many houses were also destroyed in
Puna, but no lives were lost. During this awful hour the coast of Puna
and Kau, for the distance of seventy-five miles, subsided seven feet
on the average, submerging a line of small villages all along the
shore. One of my rough stone meeting-houses in Puna, where we once
had a congregation of 500 to 1,000, was swept away with the influx
of the sea, and its walls are now under water. Fortunately there was
but one stone building in Hilo, our prison; that fell immediately.
Had our coast been studded with cities built of stone and brick, the
destruction of life and property would have been terrific.
This terrible earthquake was evidently caused by the subterraneous
flow of the lavas from Kilauea, for the bottom of the crater sank
rapidly hundreds of feet, as ice goes down when the water beneath it is
drawn off. The course and the terminus of this flow were indicated by
fissures, steam, and spouting of lava-jets along the whole line from
Kilauea to Kahuku in Western Kau, a distance of forty miles, and I have
found foldings and faults in several places.
[Sidenote: _The Outbursting of the Lava._]
During these days of subterranean passage, the earth was in a
remarkable state of unrest; shocks were frequent, and it was asserted
by trustworthy witnesses that, in several places, the ragings of the
subterranean river were heard by listeners who put their ears to the
ground.
On the 7th of April the lava burst out from the ground in Kahuku,
nine miles from the sea, and flowed rapidly down to the shore. The
place of outbreak was in a wood on one of the foot-hills of Mauna Loa.
Travellers bound to Hilo came up to this flow on the west side, and
were not able to cross it, but were obliged to return to Kona and come
_via_ Waimea, a circuit of one hundred and seventy miles. A fissure of
a mile long was opened for the disgorgement of this igneous river, and
from the whole length of this orifice the lava rushed up with intense
vehemence, spouting jets one hundred to two hundred feet high, burning
the forest and spreading out a mile wide. The rending, the raging,
the swirling of this stream were terrific, awakening awe in all the
beholders.
Flowing seaward, it came to a high precipice which ran some seven miles
toward the shore, varying in height from two hundred to seven hundred
feet, and separating a high fertile plain, of a deep and rich soil on
the left or eastern side, from a wide field of pahoehoe hundreds of
feet below on the right or western side.
Before the flow reached this precipice it sent out three lateral
streams upon the grassy plain above, which ran a few miles, and ceased
without reaching the sea. But the larger portion of the igneous river,
or its main trunk, moved in a nearly straight line toward the shore,
pouring over the upper end of the precipice upon the plain below,
and dividing into two streams which ran parallel to each other, some
hundred feet apart, until they plunged into the sea. These streams
flowed four days, causing the waves to boil with great violence, and
raising two large tufa cones in the water at their termini. They formed
a long, narrow island, on which they enclosed thirty head of cattle,
which were thus surrounded before they were aware of their danger,
and it was ten days before the lava was hard enough to allow them to
be taken out of their prison. During this time they had no water, and
were almost maddened by the smoke and heat. Several cattle were also
surrounded on the upper grassy plain, where they were lying down to
ruminate or to sleep.
The owner of the ranch, with his wife and a large family of children,
was living in a pleasant house surrounded by a wall, with a fine garden
of trees and plants, near the center of this beautiful grassy plain,
and while sleeping at night, unconscious of danger, one of these
lateral streams, came creeping softly and silently like a serpent
toward them, until within twenty yards of the house, when a sudden
spout of lava aroused them and all fled with frightened precipitation,
taking neither “purse or scrip,” but leaving all to the devouring fire.
The lady was so overwhelmed with terror that had it not been for her
husband on one side and another gentleman on the other, she must have
fallen and perished in the lava.
[Sidenote: _Shut In by the Lava._]
The family, crossing a small ravine, rested a few moments on a hill
near by. In ten minutes after crossing the ravine it was filled with
liquid fire. Their escape was marvelous. In a few minutes the house was
wrapped in flames, the garden was consumed, and all the premises were
covered with a burning sea.
A little farther down this green lawn was the hut of a native Hawaiian.
As the fiery flood came within fifty feet of it, it suddenly parted,
one arm sweeping around one side of the house and the other around the
opposite side, and uniting again left the building on a small plat of
ground, of some three-quarters of an acre, surrounded by a wall of
fusion. In this house five souls were imprisoned ten days with no power
to escape. All their food and water were exhausted. Small fingers of
lava often came under the house; it was a little grass hut, and they
were obliged to beat out the fire with clubs and stamp it with their
feet.
Piles of burning scoria were heaped around this house, as high as the
eaves, and in some places within ten feet of it. I afterward visited
this house, and found its inmates alive and rejoicing in their
deliverance.
A little further on, and this lava stream came near the ruins of a
stone church, which had been shaken down by the earthquake of April 2d.
The walls were a heap of ruins, and the roof and timbers were piled
upon the stones. Again the flood opened to the right and left, swept
close to the _débris_ of the church, and united again below, leaving
all unconsumed.
The same earthquake demolished a large stone church in Waiohinu, the
central and most important mission-station in Kau, and so rent the
house of the pastor, the Rev. John F. Pogue, that he, with his family,
fled to the hills, and soon after left the district to return no more.
Other homes also were left desolate, the terrified inmates seeking
abodes elsewhere.
On the 14th of August, 1868, a remarkable rise and fall of the sea
commenced in our harbor, and continued for three days. The oscillation,
or the influx and efflux of the waves occupied only ten minutes, and
the rise and fall of the water was only three to four feet. What
rendered this motion of the water remarkable was its long continuance,
and the short intervals of the rise and fall with no apparent cause.
[Sidenote: _Another Volcanic Wave._]
Another volcanic wave fell upon Hilo on the morning of the 10th of May,
1877. From a letter written by my wife[2] I copy the following extracts
descriptive of the event: “A chilly, cheerless night shuts down upon
a day that has had no parallel in kind in my previous experiences. I
was just rousing from quiet slumbers this morning, not long after five,
when heavy knocking at our door hastened me to it. There stood Kanuku,
almost wild with excitement, and so breathless she could hardly give
form to the words she poured forth; but I gathered their substance. A
volcanic wave had swept in upon the shore; houses were going down, and
people were hurrying _mauka_ (inland) with what of earthly goods they
could carry.
[2] Mrs. L. B. Coan.
“We hastened to the beach. People on foot and on horseback were
hurrying in all directions; men with chests and trunks on their backs,
women with bundles of bedding and clothing under which they staggered,
grandmothers with three or four year old children on their shoulders,
and mothers with little babes, all in quest of safety and a place to
lodge their burdens. Arrived at the foot of our street what a sight we
beheld! Houses were lifted off their under-pinning and removed a fathom
or more--some had tumbled in sad confusion and lay prone in the little
ponds that remained of the sea in various depressed places. Riders at
breakneck speed from Waiakea brought word of still more complete ruin
there; the bridge, they said, was gone.
“We walked on toward the Wailama. Then a shout, and we looked back to
see the waves rising and surging landward, so we dared not linger, but
turned on our track, for a better chance of escape should the sea again
overpass its bounds.
“People wading in water where their homes had stood half an hour
before, gathering up goods soaked by the brine, and begrimed with mud,
men in wet garments who had had to swim for their lives, and women
with terror in their faces caught up the refrain of a death-wail that
reached our ears from the region of Kanae’s place, and the word flew
from lip to lip that old Kaipo was missing. Asleep, with Kanae’s babe
pillowed near her when the wave came upon them, she had wakened, and
hastening out of the house found herself in deep water. Holding the
little one above her head, she had courage and strength to keep it safe
till the mother swam for it, and then, no one knows how, the old woman
was swept out to sea, and hours after, the body was found at Honori.
“About nine o’clock, the rain which had come in infrequent light
flurries before, began to pour in earnest, and has fallen in such
pitiless inclemency through the day, that it has added to the
discomforts of the poor, homeless wanderers, and to the general gloom
that hangs over our little town.
“Mr. Coan has been out much of the time here and there with words of
sympathy and comfort. Rebecca Nakuina told me the natives said they
were safe wherever he was. One poor old man came to our door and asked
in most pathetic tones if it was true that Mr. Coan had said that at
noon there would be another and heavier wave, and went away comforted
when assured that he had not.
[Sidenote: _Havoc in Hilo Bay._]
“A large barque at anchor in our harbor was tossed about most
marvelously at the very mercy of every efflux and reflux wave. For
hours she writhed under this restless tossing, one moment pointing
her prow toward Puna, and the next in the opposite direction, running
back and forth the full length of her cable, like a weaver’s shuttle,
sometimes careening so far that we feared the next moment to see her on
her beam ends, and then struggling to right herself, and for a little
recovering her usual position, only to repeat these movements.
“May 11th. The birds sang and the sun shone this morning, as if there
were no sorrow here. But it was a great blessing that the day was
fair; the sunshine was needed for heart-warmth and for drying what of
clothing and household effects had been collected from the mud and
slime in which they were found.
“We went over the same ground on the nearest beach that we visited
yesterday, only to realize more fully the wild havoc that had been made.