CRATER HOUSE, KILAUEA. June 4th.
Once more I write with the splendours of the quenchless fires in
sight, and the usual world seems twilight and commonplace by the
fierce glare of Halemaumau, and the fitful glare of the other and
loftier flame, which is burning ten thousand feet higher in lonely
Mokua-weo-weo.
Mr. Green and I left Hilo soon after daylight this morning, and made
about "the worst time" ever made on the route. We jogged on slowly
and silently for thirty miles in Indian file, through bursts of
tropical beauty, over an ocean of fern-clad pahoehoe, the air hot
and stagnant, the horses lazy and indifferent, till I was awoke from
the kind of cautious doze into which one falls on a sure-footed
horse, by a decided coolness in the atmosphere, and Kahele breaking
into a lumbering gallop, which he kept up till we reached this
house, where, in spite of the exercise, we are glad to get close to
a large wood fire. Although we are shivering, the mercury is 57
degrees, but in this warm and equable climate, one's sensations are
not significant of the height of the thermometer.
It is very fascinating to be here on the crater's edge, and to look
across its deep three miles of blackness to the clouds of red light
which Halemaumau is sending up, but altogether exciting to watch the
lofty curve of Mauna Loa upheave itself against the moon, while far
and faint, we see, or think we see, that solemn light, which ever
since my landing at Kawaihae has been so mysteriously attractive.
It is three days off yet. Perhaps its spasmodic fires will die out,
and we shall find only blackness. Perhaps anything, except our
seeing it as it ought to be seen! The practical difficulty about a
guide increases, and Mr. Gilman cannot help us to solve it. And if
it be so cold at 4000 feet, what will it be at 14,000?
KILAUEA. June 5th.
I have no room in my thoughts for anything but volcanoes, and it
will be so for some days to come. We have been all day in the
crater, in fact, I left Mr. Green and his native there, and came up
with the guide, sore, stiff, bruised, cut, singed, grimy, with my
thick gloves shrivelled off by the touch of sulphurous acid, and my
boots nearly burned off. But what are cuts, bruises, fatigue, and
singed eyelashes, in comparison with the awful sublimities I have
witnessed to-day? The activity of Kilauea on Jan. 31 was as child's
play to its activity to-day: as a display of fireworks compared to
the conflagration of a metropolis. THEN, the sense of awe gave way
speedily to that of admiration of the dancing fire fountains of a
fiery lake; NOW, it was all terror, horror, and sublimity,
blackness, suffocating gases, scorching heat, crashings, surgings,
detonations; half seen fires, hideous, tortured, wallowing waves. I
feel as if the terrors of Kilauea would haunt me all my life, and be
the Nemesis of weak and tired hours.
We left early, and descended the terminal wall, still as before,
green with ferns, ohias, and sandalwood, and bright with clusters of
turquoise berries, and the red fruit and waxy blossoms of the ohelo.
The lowest depression of the crater, which I described before as a
level fissured sea of iridescent lava, has been apparently partially
flooded by a recent overflow from Halemaumau, and the same agency
has filled up the larger rifts with great shining rolls of black
lava, obnoxiously like boa-constrictors in a state of repletion. In
crossing this central area for the second time, with a mind less
distracted by the novelty of the surroundings, I observed
considerable deposits of remarkably impure sulphur, as well as
sulphates of lime and alum in the larger fissures. The presence of
moisture was always apparent in connexion with these formations.
The solidified surges and convolutions in which the lava lies, the
latter sometimes so beautifully formed as to look like coils of wire
rope, are truly wonderful. Within the cracks there are
extraordinary coloured growths, orange, grey, buff, like mineral
lichens, but very hard and brittle.
The recent lava flow by which Halemaumau has considerably heightened
its walls, has raised the hill by which you ascend to the brink of
the pit to a height of fully five hundred feet from the basin, and
this elevation is at present much more fiery and precarious than the
former one. It is dead, but not cold, lets one through into cracks
hot with corrosive acid, rings hollow everywhere, and its steep
acclivities lie in waves, streams, coils, twists, and tortuosities
of all kinds, the surface glazed and smoothish, and with a metallic
lustre.
Somehow, I expected to find Kilauea as I had left it in January,
though the volumes of dense white smoke which are now rolling up
from it might have indicated a change; but after the toilsome,
breathless climbing of the awful lava hill, with the crust becoming
more brittle, and the footing hotter at each step, instead of
laughing fire fountains tossing themselves in gory splendour above
the rim, there was a hot, sulphurous, mephitic chaos, covering, who
knows what, of horror?
So far as we could judge, the level of the lake had sunk to about 80
feet below the margin, and the lately formed precipice was
overhanging it considerably. About seven feet back from the edge of
the ledge, there was a fissure about eighteen inches wide, emitting
heavy fumes of sulphurous acid gas. Our visit seemed in vain, for
on the risky verge of this crack we could only get momentary
glimpses of wallowing fire, glaring lurid through dense masses of
furious smoke which were rolling themselves round in the abyss as if
driven by a hurricane.
After failing to get a better standpoint, we suffered so much from
the gases, that we coasted the north, till we reached the south
lake, one with the other on my former visit, but now separated by a
solid lava barrier about three hundred feet broad, and eighty high.
Here there was comparatively little smoke, and the whole mass of
contained lava was ebullient and incandescent, its level marked the
whole way round by a shelf or rim of molten lava, which adhered to
the side, as ice often adheres to the margin of rapids, when the
rest of the water is liberated and in motion. There was very little
centripetal action apparent. Though the mass was violently agitated
it always took a southerly direction, and dashed itself with fearful
violence against some lofty, undermined cliffs which formed its
southern limit. The whole region vibrated with the shock of the
fiery surges. To stand there was "to snatch a fearful joy," out of
a pain and terror which were unendurable. For two or three minutes
we kept going to the edge, seeing the spectacle as with a flash,
through half closed eyes, and going back again; but a few trials, in
which throats, nostrils, and eyes were irritated to torture by the
acid gases, convinced us that it was unsafe to attempt to remain by
the lake, as the pain and gasping for breath which followed each
inhalation, threatened serious consequences.
With regard to the north lake we were more fortunate, and more
persevering, and I regard the three hours we spent by it as
containing some of the most solemn, as well as most fascinating,
experiences of my life. The aspect of the volcano had altogether
changed within four months. At present there are two lakes
surrounded by precipices about eighty feet high. Owing to the smoke
and confusion, it is most difficult to estimate their size even
approximately, but I think that the diameter of the two cannot be
less than a fifth of a mile.
Within the pit or lake by which we spent the morning, there were no
fiery fountains, or regular plashings of fiery waves playing in
indescribable beauty in a faint blue atmosphere, but lurid, gory,
molten, raging, sulphurous, tormented masses of matter, half seen
through masses as restless, of lurid smoke. Here, the violent
action appeared centripetal, but with a southward tendency.
Apparently, huge bulging masses of a lurid-coloured lava were
wallowing the whole time one over another in a central whirlpool,
which occasionally flung up a wave of fire thirty or forty feet.
The greatest intensity of action was always preceded by a dull
throbbing roar, as if the imprisoned gases were seeking the vent
which was afforded them by the upward bulging of the wave and its
bursting into spray. The colour of the lava which appeared to be
thrown upwards from great depths, was more fiery and less gory than
that nearer the surface. Now and then, through rifts in the smoke
we saw a convergence of the whole molten mass into the centre, which
rose wallowing and convulsed to a considerable height. The awful
sublimity of what we did see, was enhanced by the knowledge that it
was only a thousandth part of what we did not see, mere momentary
glimpses of a terror and fearfulness which otherwise could not have
been borne.
A ledge, only three or four feet wide, hung over the lake, and
between that and the comparative terra firma of the older lava,
there was a fissure of unknown depth, emitting hot blasts of
pernicious gases. The guide would not venture on the outside ledge,
but Mr. Green, in his scientific zeal, crossed the crack, telling me
not to follow him, but presently, in his absorption with what he
saw, called to me to come, and I jumped across, and this remained
our perilous standpoint. {388}
Burned, singed, stifled, blinded, only able to stand on one foot at
a time, jumping back across the fissure every two or three minutes
to escape an unendurable whiff of heat and sulphurous stench, or
when splitting sounds below threatened the disruption of the ledge:
lured as often back by the fascination of the horrors below; so we
spent three hours.
There was every circumstance of awfulness to make the impression of
the sight indelible. Sometimes dense volumes of smoke hid
everything, and yet, upwards, from out "their sulphurous canopy"
fearful sounds rose, crashings, thunderings, detonations, and we
never knew then whether the spray of some hugely uplifted wave might
not dash up to where we stood. At other times the smoke partially
lifting, but still swirling in strong eddies, revealed a central
whirlpool of fire, wallowing at unknown depths, to which the lava,
from all parts of the lake, slid centrewards and downwards as into a
vortex, where it mingled its waves with indescribable noise and
fury, and then, breaking upwards, dashed itself to a great height in
fierce, gory, gouts and clots, while hell itself seemed opening at
our feet. At times, again, bits of the lake skinned over with a
skin of a wonderful silvery, satiny sheen, to be immediately
devoured; and as the lurid billows broke, they were mingled with
misplaced patches as if of bright moonlight. Always changing,
always suggesting force which nothing could repel, agony
indescribable, mystery inscrutable, terror unutterable, a thing of
eternal dread, revealed only in glimpses!
It is natural to think that St. John the Evangelist, in some Patmos
vision, was transported to the brink of this "bottomless pit," and
found in its blackness and turbulence of agony the fittest emblems
of those tortures of remorse and memory, which we may well believe
are the quenchless flames of the region of self-chosen exile from
goodness and from God. As natural, too, that all Scripture phrases
which typify the place of woe should recur to one with the force of
a new interpretation, "Who can dwell with the everlasting burnings?"
"The smoke of their torment goeth up for ever and ever," "The place
of hell," "The bottomless pit," "The vengeance of eternal fire," "A
lake of fire burning with brimstone." No sight can be so fearful as
this glimpse into the interior of the earth, where fires are for
ever wallowing with purposeless force and aimless agony.
Beyond the lake there is a horrible region in which dense volumes of
smoke proceed from the upper ground, with loud bellowings and
detonations, and we took our perilous way in that direction, over
very hot lava which gave way constantly. It is near this that the
steady fires are situated which are visible from this house at
night. We came first upon a solitary "blowing cone," beyond which
there was a group of three or four, but it is not from these that
the smoke proceeds, but from the extensive area beyond them, covered
with smoke and steam cracks, and smoking banks, which are probably
formed of sulphur deposits. I only visited the solitary cone, for
the footing was so precarious, the sight so fearful, and the
ebullitions of gases so dangerous, that I did not dare to go near
the others, and never wish to look upon their like again.
The one I saw was of beehive shape, about twelve feet high, hollow
inside, and its walls were about two feet thick. A part of its
imperfect top was blown off, and a piece of its side blown out, and
the side rent gave one a frightful view of its interior, with the
risk of having lava spat at one at intervals. The name "Blowing
Cone" is an apt one, if the theory of their construction be correct.
It is supposed that when the surface of the lava cools rapidly owing
to enfeebled action below, the gases force their way upwards through
small vents, which then serve as "blow holes" for the imprisoned
fluid beneath. This, rapidly cooling as it is ejected, forms a ring
on the surface of the crust, which, growing upwards by accretion,
forms a chimney, eventually nearly or quite closed at the top, so as
to form a cone. In this case the cone is about eighty feet above
the present level of the lake, and fully one hundred yards distant
from its present verge.
The whole of the inside was red and molten, full of knobs, and great
fiery stalactites. Jets of lava at a white heat were thrown up
constantly, and frequently the rent in the side spat out lava in
clots, which cooled rapidly, and looked like drops of bottle green
glass. The glimpses I got of the interior were necessarily brief
and intermittent. The blast or roar which came up from below was
more than deafening; it was stunning: and accompanied with heavy
subterranean rumblings and detonations. The chimney, so far as I
could see, opened out gradually downwards to a great width, and
appeared to be about forty feet deep; and at its base there was an
abyss of lashing, tumbling, restless fire, emitting an ominous
surging sound, and breaking upwards with a fury which threatened to
blow the cone and the crust on which it stands, into the air.
The heat was intense, and the stinging sulphurous gases which were
given forth in large quantities, most poisonous. The group of cones
west of this one, was visited by Mr. Green; but he found it
impossible to make any further explorations. He has seen nearly all
the recent volcanic phenomena, but says that these cones present the
most "infernal" appearance he has ever witnessed. We returned for a
last look at Halemaumau, but the smoke was so dense, and the sulphur
fumes so stifling, that, as in a fearful dream, we only heard the
thunder of its hidden surges. I write thunder, and one speaks of
the lashing of its waves; but these are words pertaining to the
familiar earth, and have no place in connection with Kilauea. The
breaking lava has a voice all its own, full of compressed fury. Its
sound, motion, and aspect are all infernal. Hellish, is the only
fitting term.
We are dwelling on a cooled crust all over Southern Hawaii, the
whole region is recent lava, and between this and the sea there are
several distinct lines of craters thirty miles long, all of which at
some time or other have vomited forth the innumerable lava streams
which streak the whole country in the districts of Kau, Puna, and
Hilo. In fact, Hawaii is a great slag. There is something very
solemn in the position of this crater-house: with smoke and steam
coming out of every pore of the ground, and in front the huge
crater, which to-night lights all the sky. My second visit has
produced a far deeper impression even than the first, and one of awe
and terror solely.
Kilauea is altogether different from the European volcanoes which
send lava and stones into the air in fierce sudden spasms, and then
subside into harmlessness. Ever changing, never resting, the force
which stirs it never weakening, raging for ever with tossing and
strength like the ocean: its labours unfinished and possibly never
to be finished, its very unexpectedness adds to its sublimity and
terror, for until you reach the terminal wall of the crater, it
looks by daylight but a smoking pit in the midst of a dreary stretch
of waste land.
Last night I thought the Southern Cross out of place; to-night it
seems essential, as Calvary over against Sinai. For Halemaumau
involuntarily typifies the wrath which shall consume all evil: and
the constellation, pale against its lurid light, the great love and
yearning of the Father, "who spared not His own Son but delivered
Him up for us all," that, "as in Adam all die, even so in Christ
shall all be made alive."
AINEPO, HAWAII, June 5th.
We had a great fright last evening. We had been engaging mules, and
talking over our plans with our half-Indian host, when he opened the
door and exclaimed, "There's no light on Mauna Loa; the fire's gone
out." We rushed out, and though the night was clear and frosty, the
mountain curve rose against the sky without the accustomed wavering
glow upon it. "I'm afraid you'll have your trouble for nothing,"
Mr. Gilman unsympathisingly remarked; "anyhow, its awfully cold up
there," and rubbing his hands, reseated himself at the fire. Mr. G.
and I stayed out till we were half-frozen, and I persuaded myself
and him that there was a redder tinge than the moonlight above the
summit, but the mountain has given no sign all day, so that I fear
that I "evolved" the light out of my "inner consciousness."
Mr. Gilman was eloquent on the misfortunes of our predecessors, lent
me a pair of woollen socks to put on over my gloves, told me
privately that if anyone could succeed in getting a guide it would
be Mr. Green, and dispatched us at eight this morning with a lurking
smile at our "fool's errand," thinly veiled by warm wishes for our
success. Mr. Reid has two ranches on the mountain, seven miles
distant from each other, and was expected every hour at the crater-
house on his way to Hilo, but it was not known from which he was
coming, and as it appeared that our last hope of getting a guide lay
in securing his good will, Mr. G., his servant, and packmule took
the lower trail, and I, with a native, a string of mules, and a
pack-horse, the upper. Our plans for intercepting the good man were
well laid and successful, but turned out resultless.
This has been an irresistibly comical day, and it is just as well to
have something amusing interjected between the sublimities of
Kilauea, and whatever to-morrow may bring forth. When our
cavalcades separated, I followed the guide on a blind trail into the
little-known regions on the skirts of Mauna Loa. We only travelled
two miles an hour, and the mules kept getting up rows, kicking, and
entangling their legs in the lariats, and one peculiarly malign
animal dealt poor Kahele a gratuitous kick on his nose, making it
bleed.
It is strange, unique country, without any beauty. The seaward view
is over a great stretch of apparent table-land, spotted with
craters, and split by cracks emitting smoke or steam. The whole
region is black with streams of spiked and jagged lava, meandering
over it, with charred stumps of trees rising out of them.
The trail, if such it could be called, wound among koa and
sandalwood trees occasionally, but habitually we picked our way over
waves, coils, and hummocks of pahoehoe surrounded by volcanic sand,
and with only a few tufts of grass, abortive ohelos, and vigorous
sow thistles (much relished by Kahele) growing in their crevices.
Horrid cracks, 50 or 60 feet wide, probably made by earthquakes,
abounded, and a black chasm of most infernal aspect dogged us on the
left. It was all scrambling up and down. Sometimes there was long,
ugly grass, a brownish green, coarse and tufty, for a mile or more.
Sometimes clumps of wintry-looking, dead trees, sometimes clumps of
attenuated living ones; but nothing to please the eye. We saw
neither man nor beast the whole way, except a wild bull, which,
tearing down the mountain side, crossed the trail just in front of
us, causing a stampede among the mules, and it was fully an hour
before they were all caught again.
The only other incident was an earthquake, the most severe, the men
here tell me, that has been experienced for two years. One is
prepared for any caprices on the part of the earth here, yet when
there was a fearful internal throbbing and rumbling, and the trees
and grass swayed rapidly, and great rocks and masses of soil were
dislodged, and bounded down the hillside, and the earth reeled, and
my poor horse staggered and stopped short; far from rising to the
magnitude of the occasion, I thought I was attacked with vertigo,
and grasped the horn of my saddle to save myself from falling.
After a moment of profound stillness, there was again a subterranean
sound like a train in a tunnel, and the earth reeled again with such
violence that I felt as if the horse and myself had gone over. Poor
K. was nervous for some time afterwards. The motion was as violent
as that of a large ship in a mid-Atlantic storm. There were four
minor shocks within half an hour afterwards.
After crawling along for seven hours, and for the last two in a
dripping fog, so dense that I had to keep within kicking range of
the mules for fear of being lost, we heard the lowing of domestic
cattle, and came to a place where felled trees, very difficult for
the horses to cross, were lying. Then a rude boundary wall
appeared, inside of which was a small, poor-looking grass house,
consisting of one partially-divided room, with a small, ruinous-
looking cook-house, a shed, and an unfinished frame house. It
looked, and is, a disconsolate conclusion of a wet day's ride. I
rode into the corral, and found two or three very rough-looking
whites and half-whites standing, and addressing one of them, I found
he was Mr. Reid's manager there. I asked if they could give me a
night's lodging, which seemed a diverting notion to them; and they
said they could give me the rough accommodation they had, but it was
hard even for them, till the new house was put up. They brought me
into this very rough shelter, a draughty grass room, with a bench,
table, and one chair in it. Two men came in, but not the native
wife and family, and sat down to a calabash of poi and some strips
of dried beef, food so coarse, that they apologised for not offering
it to me. They said they had sent to the lower ranch for some
flour, and in the meantime they gave me some milk in a broken bowl,
their "nearest approach to a tumbler," they said. I was almost
starving, for all our food was on the pack-mule. This is the place
where we had been told that we could obtain tea, flour, beef, and
fowls!
By some fatality my pen, ink, and knitting were on the pack-mule; it
was very cold, the afternoon fog closed us in, and darkness came on
prematurely, so that I felt a most absurd sense of ennui, and went
over to the cook-house, where I found Gandle cooking, and his native
wife with a heap of children and dogs lying round the stove. I
joined them till my clothes were dry, on which the man, who in spite
of his rough exterior, was really friendly and hospitable, remarked
that he saw I was "one of the sort who knew how to take people as I
found them."
This regular afternoon mist which sets in at a certain altitude,
blotting out the sun and sky, and bringing the horizon within a few
yards, makes me certain after all that the mists of rainless Eden
were a phenomenon, the loss of which is not to be regretted.
Still the afternoon hung on, and I went back to the house feeling
that the most desirable event which the future could produce would
be--a meal. Now and then the men came in and talked for a while,
and as the darkness and cold intensified, they brought in an
arrangement extemporised out of what looked like a battered tin
bath, half full of earth, with some lighted faggots at the top,
which gave out a little warmth and much stinging smoke. Actual,
undoubted, night came on without Mr. Green, of whose failure I felt
certain, and without food, and being blinded by the smoke, I rolled
myself in a blanket and fell asleep on the bench, only to wake in a
great fright, believing that the volcano house was burning over my
head, and that a venerable missionary was taking advantage of the
confusion to rob my saddle-bags, which in truth one of the men was
moving out of harm's way, having piled up the fire two feet high.
Presently a number of voices outside shouted Haole! and Mr. Green
came in shaking the water from his waterproof, with the welcome
words, "Everything's settled for to-morrow." Mr. Reid threw cold
water on the ascent, and could give no help; and Mr. G. being thus
left to himself, after a great deal of trouble, has engaged as guide
an active young goat-hunter, who, though he has never been to the
top of the mountain, knows other parts of it so well that he is sure
he can take us up. Mr. G. also brings an additional mule and pack-
horse, so that our equipment is complete, except in the matter of
cruppers, which we have been obliged to make for ourselves out of
goats' hair rope, and old stockings. If Mr. G. has an eye for the
picturesque, he must have been gratified as he came in from the fog
and darkness into the grass room, with the flaring fire in the
middle, the rifles gleaming on the wall, the two men in very rough
clothing, and myself huddled up in a blanket sitting on the floor,
where my friend was very glad to join us.
Mr. Green has brought nothing but tea from Kapapala, but Gandle has
made some excellent rolls, besides feasting us on stewed fowl,
dough-nuts, and milk! Little comfort is promised for to-night, as
Gandle says with a twinkle of kindly malice in his eye, that we
shall not "get a wink of sleep, for the place swarms with fleas."
They are a great pest of the colder regions of the islands, and like
all other nuisances, are said to have been imported! Gandle and the
other man have entertained us with the misfortunes of our
predecessors, on which they seem to gloat with ill-omened
satisfaction.
I.L.B.
LETTER XXIX.--Continued.
KAPAPALA, June 8th.
The fleas at Ainepo quite fulfilled Mr. Gandle's prognostications,
and I was glad when the cold stars went out one by one, and a red,
cloudless dawn broke over the mountain, accompanied by a heavy dew
and a morning mist, which soon rolled itself up into rosy folds and
disappeared, and there was a legitimate excuse for getting up. Our
host provided us with flour, sugar, and dough-nuts, and a hot
breakfast, and our expedition, comprising two natives who knew not a
word of English, Mr. G. who does not know very much more Hawaiian
than I do, and myself, started at seven. We had four superb mules,
and two good pack-horses, a large tent, and a plentiful supply of
camping blankets. I put on all my own warm clothes, as well as most
of those which had been lent to me, which gave me the squat, padded,
look of a puffin or Esquimaux, but all, and more were needed long
before we reached the top. The mules were beyond all praise. They
went up the most severe ascent I have ever seen, climbing steadily
for nine hours, without a touch of the spur, and after twenty-four
hours of cold, thirst, and hunger, came down again as actively as
cats. The pack-horses too were very good, but from the comparative
clumsiness with which they move their feet they were very severely
cut.
We went off, as usual, in single file, the guide first, and Mr. G.
last. The track was passably legible for some time, and wound
through long grass, and small koa trees, mixed with stunted ohias
and a few common ferns. Half these koa trees are dead, and all,
both living and dead, have their branches covered with a long hairy
lichen, nearly white, making the dead forest in the slight mist look
like a wood in England when covered with rime on a fine winter
morning. The koa tree has a peculiarity of bearing two distinct
species of leaves on the same twig, one like a curved willow leaf,
the other that of an acacia.
After two hours ascent we camped on the verge of the timber line,
and fed our animals, while the two natives hewed firewood, and
loaded the spare pack-horse with it. The sky was by that time
cloudless, and the atmosphere brilliant, and both remained so until
we reached the same place twenty-eight hours later, so that the
weather favoured us in every respect, for there is "weather" on the
mountain, rains, fogs, and wind storms. The grass only grows
sparsely in tufts above this place, and though vegetation exists up
to a height of 10,000 feet on this side, it consists, for the most
part, of grey lichens, a little withered grass, and a hardy
asplenium.
At this spot the real business of the ascent begins, and we
tightened our girths, distributed the baggage as fairly as possible,
and made all secure before remounting.
We soon entered on vast uplands of pahoehoe which ground away the
animals' feet, a horrid waste, extending upwards for 7000 feet. For
miles and miles, above and around, great billowy masses, tossed and
twisted into an infinity of fantastic shapes, arrest and weary the
eye, lava in all its forms, from a compact phonolite, to the
lightest pumice stone, the mere froth of the volcano, exceeding in
wildness and confusion the most extravagant nightmare ever inflicted
on man. Recollect the vastness of this mountain. The whole south
of this large island, down to, and below the water's edge, is
composed of its slopes. Its height is nearly three miles, its base
is 180 miles in circumference, so that Wales might be packed away
within it, leaving room to spare. Yet its whole huge bulk, above a
height of about 8000 feet, is one frightful desert, at once the
creation and the prey of the mightiest force on earth.
Struggling, slipping, tumbling, jumping, ledge after ledge was
surmounted, but still, upheaved against the glittering sky, rose new
difficulties to be overcome. Immense bubbles have risen from the
confused masses, and bursting, have yawned apart. Swift-running
streams of more recent lava have cleft straight furrows through the
older congealed surface. Massive flows have fallen in, exposing
caverned depths of jagged outlines. Earthquakes have riven the
mountain, splitting its sides and opening deep crevasses, which must
be leapt or circumvented. Horrid streams of a-a have to be
cautiously skirted, which after rushing remorselessly over the
kindlier lava have heaped rugged pinnacles of brown scoriae into
impassable walls. Winding round the bases of tossed up, fissured
hummocks of pahoehoe, leaping from one broken hummock to another,
clambering up acclivities so steep that the pack-horse rolled
backwards once, and my cat-like mule fell twice, moving cautiously
over crusts which rang hollow to the tread; stepping over deep
cracks, which, perhaps, led down to the burning fathomless sea,
traversing hilly lakes ruptured by earthquakes, and split in cooling
into a thousand fissures, painfully toiling up the sides of mounds
of scoriae frothed with pumice-stone, and again for miles
surmounting rolling surfaces of billowy ropy lava--so passed the
long day, under the tropic sun, and the deep blue sky.
Towards afternoon, clouds heaped themselves in brilliant snowy
masses, all radiance and beauty to us, all fog and gloom below,
girdling the whole mountain, and interposing their glittering screen
between us and the dark timber belt, the black smoking shores of
Kau, and the blue shimmer of the Pacific. From that time, for
twenty-four hours, the lower world, and "works and ways of busy men"
were entirely shut out, and we were alone with this trackless and
inanimate region of horror.
For the first time our guide hesitated as to the right track, for
the faint suspicion of white smoke, which had kept alive our hope
that the fire was still burning, had ceased to be visible. We
called a halt while he reconnoitred, tried to eat some food, found
that our pulses were beating 100 a minute, bathed our heads,
specially our temples, with snow, as we had been advised to do by
the oldest mountaineer on Hawaii, and heaped on yet more clothing.
In fact, I tied a double woollen scarf over all my face but my eyes,
and put on a French soldier's overcoat, with cape and hood, which
Mr. Green had brought in case of emergency. The cold had become
intense. We had not wasted words at any time, and on remounting,
preserved as profound a silence as if we were on a forlorn hope,
even the natives intermitting their ceaseless gabble.
Upwards still, in the cold bright air, coating the edges of deep
cracks, climbing endless terraces, the mules panting heavily, our
breath coming as if from excoriated lungs,--so we surmounted the
highest ledge. But on reaching the apparent summit we were to all
appearance as far from the faint smoke as ever, for this magnificent
dome, whose base is sixty miles in diameter, is crowned by a ghastly
volcanic table-land, creviced, riven, and ashy, twenty-four miles in
circumference. A table-land, indeed, of dark grey lava, blotched by
outbursts, and torn by streams of brown a-a, full of hideous
crevasses and fearful shapes, as if a hundred waves of lava had
rolled themselves one on another, and had congealed in confused
heaps, and been tortured in all directions by the mighty power which
had upheaved the whole.
Our guide took us a little wrong once, but soon recovered himself
with much sagacity. "Wrong" on Mauna Loa means being arrested by an
impassable a-a stream, and our last predecessors had nearly been
stopped by getting into one in which they suffered severely.
These a-a streams are very deep, and when in a state of fusion move
along in a mass 20 feet high sometimes, with very solid walls.
Professor Alexander, of Honolulu, supposes them to be from the
beginning less fluid than pahoehoe, and that they advance very
slowly, being full of solid points, or centres of cooling: that a-
a, in fact, grains like sugar. Its hardness is indescribable. It
is an aggregate of upright, rugged, adamantine points, and at a
distance, a river of it looks like a dark brown Mer de Glace.
At half-past four we reached the edge of an a-a stream, about as
wide as the Ouse at Huntingdon Bridge, and it was obvious that
somehow or other we must cross it: indeed, I know not if it be
possible to reach the crater without passing through one or another
of these obstacles. I should have liked to have left the animals
there, but it was represented as impossible to proceed on foot, and
though this was a decided misrepresentation, Mr. Green plunged in.
I had resolved that he should never have any bother in consequence
of his kindness in taking me with him, and, indeed, everyone had
enough to do in taking care of himself and his own beast, but I
never found it harder to repress a cry for help. Not that I was in
the least danger, but there was every risk of the beautiful mule
being much hurt, or breaking her legs. The fear shown by the
animals was pathetic; they shrank back, cowered, trembled, breathed
hard and heavily, and stumbled and plunged painfully. It was
sickening to see their terror and suffering, the struggling and
slipping into cracks, the blood and torture. The mules with their
small legs and wonderful agility were more frightened than hurt, but
the horses were splashed with blood up to their knees, and their
poor eyes looked piteous.
We were then, as we knew, close to the edge of the crater, but the
faint smoke wreath had disappeared, and there was nothing but the
westering sun hanging like a ball over the black horizon of the
desolate summit. We rode as far as a deep fissure filled with
frozen snow, with a ledge beyond, threw ourselves from our mules,
jumped the fissure, and more than 800 feet below yawned the
inaccessible blackness and horror of the crater of Mokuaweoweo, six
miles in circumference, and 11,000 feet long by 8,000 wide. The
mystery was solved, for at one end of the crater, in a deep gorge of
its own, above the level of the rest of the area, there was the
lonely fire, the reflection of which, for six weeks, has been seen
for 100 miles.
Nearly opposite us, a thing of beauty, a perfect fountain of pure
yellow fire, unlike the gory gleam of Kilauea, was regularly playing
in several united but independent jets, throwing up its glorious
incandescence, to a height, as we afterwards ascertained, of from
150 to 300 feet, and attaining at one time 600! You cannot imagine
such a beautiful sight. The sunset gold was not purer than the
living fire. The distance which we were from it, divested it of the
inevitable horrors which surround it. It was all beauty. For the
last two miles of the ascent, we had heard a distant vibrating roar:
there, at the crater's edge, it was a glorious sound, the roar of an
ocean at dispeace, mingled with the hollow murmur of surf echoing in
sea caves, booming on, rising and falling, like the thunder music of
windward Hawaii.
We sat on the ledge outside the fissure for some time, and Mr. Green
actually proposed to pitch the tent there, but I dissuaded him, on
the ground that an earthquake might send the whole thing tumbling
into the crater; nor was this a whimsical objection, for during the
night there were two such falls, and after breakfast, another quite
near us.
We had travelled for two days under a strong impression that the
fires had died out, so you can imagine the sort of stupor of
satisfaction with which we feasted on the glorious certainty. Yes,
it was glorious, that far-off fire-fountain, and the lurid cracks in
the slow-moving, black-crusted flood, which passed calmly down from
the higher level to the grand area of the crater.
This area, over two miles long, and a mile and a half wide, with
precipitous sides 800 feet deep, and a broad second shelf about 300
feet below the one we occupied, at that time appeared a dark grey,
tolerably level lake, with great black blotches, and yellow and
white stains, the whole much fissured. No steam or smoke proceeded
from any part of the level surface, and it had the unnaturally dead
look which follows the action of fire. A ledge, or false beach,
which must mark a once higher level of the lava, skirts the lake, at
an elevation of thirty feet probably, and this fringed the area with
various signs of present volcanic action, steaming sulphur banks,
and heavy jets of smoke. The other side, above the crater, has a
ridgy broken look, giving the false impression of a mountainous
region beyond. At this time the luminous fountain, and the red
cracks in the river of lava which proceeded from it, were the only
fires visible in the great area of blackness. In former days people
have descended to the floor of the crater, but owing to the breaking
away of the accessible part of the precipice, a descent now is not
feasible, though I doubt not that a man might even now get down, if
he went up with suitable tackle, and sufficient assistance.
The one disappointment was that this extraordinary fire-fountain was
not only 800 feet below us, but nearly three-quarters of a mile from
us, and that it was impossible to get any nearer to it. Those who
have made the ascent before have found themselves obliged either to
camp on the very spot we occupied, or a little below it.
The natives pitched the tent as near to the crater as was safe, with
one pole in a crack, and the other in the great fissure, which was
filled to within three feet of the top with snow and ice. As the
opening of the tent was on the crater side, we could not get in or
out without going down into this crevasse. The tent walls were held
down with stones to make it as snug as possible, but snug is a word
of the lower earth, and has no meaning on that frozen mountain top.
The natural floor was of rough slabs of lava, laid partly edgewise,
so that a newly macadamised road would have been as soft a bed. The
natives spread the horse blankets over it, and I arranged the
camping blankets, made my own part of the tent as comfortable as
possible by putting my inverted saddle down for a pillow, put on my
last reserve of warm clothing, took the food out of the saddle bags,
and then felt how impossible it was to exert myself in the rarified
air, or even to upbraid Mr. Green for having forgotten the tea, of
which I had reminded him as often as was consistent with politeness!
This discovery was not made till after we had boiled the kettle, and
my dismay was softened by remembering that as water boils up there
at 187 degrees, our tea would have been worthless. In spite of my
objection to stimulants, and in defiance of the law against giving
liquor to natives, I made a great tin of brandy toddy, of which all
partook, along with tinned salmon and dough-nuts. Then the men
piled faggots on the fire and began their everlasting chatter, and
Mr. Green and I, huddled up in blankets, sat on the outer ledge in
solemn silence, to devote ourselves to the volcano.
The sun was just setting: the tooth-like peaks of Mauna Kea, cold
and snow slashed, which were blushing red, the next minute turned
ghastly against a chilly sky, and with the disappearance of the sun
it became severely cold; yet we were able to remain there till 9.30,
the first people to whom such a thing has been possible, so
supremely favoured were we by the absence of wind.
When the sun had set, and the brief red glow of the tropics had
vanished, a new world came into being, and wonder after wonder
flashed forth from the previously lifeless crater. Everywhere
through its vast expanse appeared glints of fire--fires bright and
steady, burning in rows like blast furnaces; fires lone and
isolated, unwinking like planets, or twinkling like stars; rows of
little fires marking the margin of the lowest level of the crater;
fire molten in deep crevasses; fire in wavy lines; fire, calm,
stationary, and restful: an incandescent lake two miles in length
beneath a deceptive crust of darkness, and whose depth one dare not
fathom even in thought. Broad in the glare, giving light enough to
read by at a distance of three-quarters of a mile, making the moon
look as blue as an ordinary English sky, its golden gleam changed to
a vivid rose colour, lighting up the whole of the vast precipices of
that part of the crater with a rosy red, bringing out every detail
here, throwing cliffs and heights into huge black masses there,
rising, falling, never intermitting, leaping in lofty jets with
glorious shapes like wheatsheaves, coruscating, reddening, the most
glorious thing beneath the moon was the fire-fountain of
Mokuaweoweo.
By day the cooled crust of the lake had looked black and even sooty,
with a fountain of molten gold playing upwards from it; by night it
was all incandescent, with black blotches of cooled scum upon it,
which were perpetually being devoured. The centre of the lake was
at a white heat, and waves of white hot lava appeared to be
wallowing there as in a whirlpool, and from this centre the fountain
rose, solid at its base, which is estimated at 150 feet in diameter,
but thinning and frittering as it rose high into the air, and
falling from the great altitude to which it attained, in fiery
spray, which made a very distinct clatter on the fiery surface
below. When one jet was about half high, another rose so as to keep
up the action without intermission; and in the lower part of the
fountain two subsidiary curved jets of great volume continually
crossed each other. So, "alone in its glory," perennial, self-born,
springing up in sparkling light, the fire-fountain played on as the
hours went by.
From the nearer margin of this incandescent lake there was a mighty
but deliberate overflow, a "silent tide" of fire, passing to the
lower level, glowing under and amidst its crust, with the brightness
of metal passing from a furnace. In the bank of partially cooled
and crusted lava which appears to support the lake, there were rifts
showing the molten lava within. In one place heavy white vapour
blew off in powerful jets from the edge of the lake, and elsewhere
there were frequent jets and ebullitions of the same, but there was
not a trace of vapour over the burning lake itself. The crusted
large area, with its blowing cones, blotches and rifts of fire, was
nearly all visible, and from the thickness and quietness of the
crust it was obvious that the ocean of lava below was comparatively
at rest, but a dark precipice concealed a part of the glowing and
highly agitated lake, adding another mystery to its sublimity.
It is probable that the whole interior of this huge dome is fluid,
for the eruptions from this summit crater do not proceed from its
filling up and running over, but from the mountain sides being
unable to bear the enormous pressure; when they give way, high or
low, and bursting, allow the fiery contents to escape. So, in 1855,
the mountain side split open, and the lava gushed forth for thirteen
months in a stream which ran for 60 miles, and flooded Hawaii for
300 square miles. {411}
From the camping ground, immense cracks parallel with the crater,
extend for some distance, and the whole of the compact grey stone of
the summit is much fissured. These cracks, like the one by which
our tent was pitched, contain water resting on ice. It shows the
extreme difference of climate on the two sides of Hawaii, that while
vegetation straggles up to a height of 10,000 feet on the windward
side in a few miserable blasted forms, it absolutely ceases at a
height of 7,000 feet on the leeward.
It was too cold to sit up all night; so by the "fire light" I wrote
the enclosed note to you with fingers nearly freezing on the pen,
and climbed into the tent.
It is possible that tent life in the East, or in the Rocky
Mountains, with beds, tables, travelling knick-knacks of all
descriptions, and servants who study their master's whims, may be
very charming; but my experience of it having been of the make-shift
and non-luxurious kind, is not delectable. A wooden saddle, without
stuffing, made a very fair pillow; but the ridges of the lava were
severe. I could not spare enough blankets to soften them, and one
particularly intractable point persisted in making itself felt. I
crowded on everything attainable, two pairs of gloves, with Mr.
Gilman's socks over them, and a thick plaid muffled up my face. Mr.
Green and the natives, buried in blankets, occupied the other part
of the tent. The phrase, "sleeping on the brink of a volcano," was
literally true, for I fell asleep, and fear I might have been
prosaic enough to sleep all night, had it not been for fleas which
had come up in the camping blankets. When I woke, it was light
enough to see that the three muffled figures were all asleep,
instead of spending the night in shiverings and vertigo, as it
appears that others have done. Doubtless the bathing of our heads
several times with snow and ice-water had been beneficial.
Circumstances were singular. It was a strange thing to sleep on a
lava-bed at a height of nearly 14,000 feet, far away from the
nearest dwelling, "in a region," as Mr. Jarves says, "rarely visited
by man," hearing all the time the roar, clash, and thunder of the
mightiest volcano in the world. It seemed all a wild dream, as that
majestic sound moved on. There were two loud reports, followed by a
prolonged crash, occasioned by parts of the crater walls giving way;
vibrating rumblings, as if of earthquakes; and then a louder surging
of the fiery ocean, and a series of most imposing detonations.
Creeping over the sleeping forms, which never stirred even though I
had to kneel upon one of the natives while I untied the flap of the
tent, I crept cautiously into the crevasse in which the snow-water
was then hard frozen, and out upon the projecting ledge. The four
hours in which we had previously watched the volcano had passed like
one; but the lonely hours which followed might have been two minutes
or a year, for time was obliterated.
Coldly the Pole-star shivered above the frozen summit, and a blue
moon, nearly full, withdrew her faded light into infinite space.
The Southern Cross had set. Two peaks below the Pole-star, sharply
defined against the sky, were the only signs of any other world than
the world of fire and mystery around. It was light, broadly,
vividly light; the sun himself, one would have thought, might look
pale beside it. But such a light! The silver index of my
thermometer, which had fallen to 23 degrees Fahrenheit, was ruby
red; that of the aneroid, which gave the height at 13,803 feet (an
error of 43 feet in excess), was the same. The white duck of the
tent was rosy, and all the crater walls and the dull-grey ridges
which lie around were a vivid rose red.
All Hawaii was sleeping. Our Hilo friends looked out the last
thing; saw the glare, and probably wondered how we were "getting
on," high up among the stars. Mine were the only mortal eyes which
saw what is perhaps the grandest spectacle on earth. Once or twice
I felt so overwhelmed by the very sublimity of the loneliness, that
I turned to the six animals, which stood shivering in the north
wind, without any consciousness than that of cold, hunger, and
thirst. It was some relief even to pity them, for pity was at least
a human feeling, and a momentary rest from the thrill of the new
sensations inspired by the circumstances. The moon herself looked a
wan unfamiliar thing--not the same moon which floods the palm and
mango groves of Hilo with light and tenderness. And those palm and
mango groves, and lighted homes, and seas, and ships, and cities,
and faces of friends, and all familiar things, and the day before,
and the years before, were as things in dreams, coming up out of a
vanished past. And would there ever be another day, and would the
earth ever be young and green again, and would men buy and sell and
strive for gold, and should I ever with a human voice tell living
human beings of the things of this midnight? How far it was from
all the world, uplifted above love, hate, and storms of passion, and
war, and wreck of thrones, and dissonant clash of human thought,
serene in the eternal solitudes!
Things had changed, as they change hourly in craters. The previous
loud detonations were probably connected with the evolutions of some
"blowing cones," which were now very fierce, and throwing up lava at
the comparatively dead end of the crater. Lone stars of fire broke
out frequently through the blackened crust. The molten river,
flowing from the incandescent lake, had advanced and broadened
considerably. That lake itself, whose diameter has been estimated
at 800 feet, was rose-red and self-illuminated, and the increased
noise was owing to the increased force of the fire-fountain, which
was playing regularly at a height of 300 feet, with the cross
fountains, like wheat-sheaves, at its lower part. These cross-
fountains were the colour of a mixture of blood and fire, and the
lower part of the perpendicular jets was the same; but as they rose
and thinned, this colour passed into a vivid rose-red, and the spray
and splashes were as rubies and flame mingled. For ever falling in
fiery masses and fiery foam: accompanied by a thunder-music of its
own: companioned only by the solemn stars: exhibiting no other
token of its glories to man than the reflection of its fires on mist
and smoke; it burns for the Creator's eye alone. No foot of mortal
can approach it.
Hours passed as I watched the indescribable glories of the fire-
fountain, its beauty of form, and its radiant reflection on the
precipices, eight hundred feet high, which wall it in, and listened
to its surges beating, and the ebb and flow of its thunder-music.
Then a change occurred. The jets, which for long had been playing
at a height of 300 feet, suddenly became quite low, and for a few
seconds appeared as cones of fire wallowing in a sea of light; then
with a roar like the sound of gathering waters, nearly the whole
surface of the lake was lifted up by the action of some powerful
internal force, and rose three times with its whole radiant mass, in
one glorious, upward burst, to a height, as estimated by the
surrounding cliffs, of six hundred feet, while the earth trembled,
and the moon and stars withdrew abashed into far-off space. After
this the fire-fountain played as before. The cold had become
intense, 11 degrees of frost; and I crept back into the tent; those
words occurring to me with a new meaning, "dwelling in the light
which no man can approach unto."
We remained in the tent till the sun had slightly warmed the air,
and then attempted to prepare breakfast by the fire; but no one
could eat anything, and the native from Waimea complained of severe
headache, which shortly became agonizing, and he lay on the ground
moaning, and completely prostrated by mountain sickness. I felt
extreme lassitude, and exhaustion followed the slightest effort; but
the use of snow to the head produced great relief. The water in our
canteens was hard frozen, and the keenness of the cold aggravated
the uncomfortable symptoms which accompany pulses at 110 degrees.
The native guide was the only person capable of work, so we were
late in getting off, and rode four and a half hours to the camping
ground, only stopping once to tighten our girths. Not a rope,
strap, or buckle, or any of our gear gave way, and though I rode
without a crupper, the breeching of a pack mule's saddle kept mine
steady.
The descent, to the riders, is far more trying than the ascent,
owing to the continued stretch of very steep declivity for eight
thousand feet; but our mules never tripped, and came into Ainepo as
if they had not travelled at all. The horses were terribly cut,
both again in the a-a stream, and on the descent. It was sickening
to follow them, for at first they left fragments of hide and hair on
the rocks, then flesh, and when there was no more hide or flesh to
come off their poor heels and fetlocks, blood dripped on every rock,
and if they stood still for a few moments, every hoof left a little
puddle of gore. We had all the enjoyment and they all the misery.
I was much exhausted when we reached the camping-ground, but soon
revived under the influence of food; but the poor native, who was
really very ill, abandoned himself to wretchedness, and has only
recovered to-day.
The belt of cloud which was all radiance above, was all drizzling
fog below, and we reached Ainepo in a regular Scotch mist. The
ranchman seemed rather grumpy at our successful ascent, which
involved the failure of all their prophecies, and, indeed, we were
thoroughly unsatisfactory travellers, arriving fresh and complacent,
with neither adventures nor disasters to gladden people's hearts.
We started for this ranch seven miles further, soon after dark, and
arrived before nine, after the most successful ascent of Mauna Loa
ever made.
Without being a Sybarite, I certainly do prefer a comfortable pulu
bed to one of ridgy lava, and the fire which blazes on this broad
hearth to the camp-fire on the frozen top of the volcano. The
worthy ranchman expected us, and has treated us very sumptuously,
and even Kahele is being regaled on Chinese sorghum. The Sunday's
rest, too, is a luxury, which I wonder that travellers can ever
forego. If one is always on the move, even very vivid impressions
are hunted out of the memory by the last new thing. Though I am not
unduly tired, even had it not been Sunday, I should have liked a day
in which to recall and arrange my memories of Mauna Loa before the
forty-eight miles' ride to Hilo.
This afternoon, we were sitting under the verandah talking volcanic
talk, when there was a loud rumbling, and a severe shock of
earthquake, and I have been twice interrupted in writing this letter
by other shocks, in which all the frame-work of the house has yawned
and closed again. They say that four years ago, at the time of the
great "mud flow" which is close by, this house was moved several
feet by an earthquake, and that all the cattle walls which surround
it were thrown down. The ranchman tells us that on January 7th and
8th, 1873, there was a sudden and tremendous outburst of Mauna Loa.
The ground, he says, throbbed and quivered for twenty miles; a
tremendous roaring, like that of a blast furnace, was heard for the
same distance, and clouds of black smoke trailed out over the sea
for thirty miles.
We have dismissed our guide with encomiums. His charge was $10; but
Mr. Green would not allow me to share that, or any part of the
expense, or pay anything, but $6 for my own mule. The guide is a
goat-hunter, and the chase is very curiously pursued. The hunter
catches sight of a flock of goats, and hunts them up the mountain,
till, agile and fleet of foot as they are, he actually tires them
out, and gets close enough to them to cut their throats for the sake
of their skins. If I understand rightly, this young man has
captured as many as seventy in a day.
CRATER HOUSE, KILAUEA. June 9th.
This morning Mr. Green left for Kona, and I for Kilauea; the
ranchman's native wife and her sister riding with me for several
miles to put me on the right track. Kahele's sociable instincts are
so strong, that, before they left me, I dismounted, blindfolded him,
and led him round and round several times, a process which so
successfully confused his intellects, that he started off in this
direction with more alacrity than usual. They certainly put me on a
track which could not be mistaken, for it was a narrow, straight
path, cut and hammered through a broad horrible a-a stream, whose
jagged spikes were the height of the horse. But beyond this lie ten
miles of pahoehoe, the lava-flows of ages, with only now and then
the vestige of a trail.
Except the perilous crossing of the Hilo gulches in February, this
is the most difficult ride I have had--eerie and impressive in every
way. The loneliness was absolute. For several hours I saw no trace
of human beings, except the very rare print of a shod horse's hoof.
It is a region for ever "desolate and without inhabitant,"
trackless, waterless, silent, as if it had passed into the
passionless calm of lunar solitudes. It is composed of rough
hummocks of pahoehoe, rising out of a sandy desert. Only stunted
ohias, loaded with crimson tufts, raise themselves out of cracks:
twisted, tortured growths, bearing their bright blossoms under
protest, driven unwillingly to be gay by a fiery soil and a fiery
sun. To the left, there was the high, dark wall of an a-a stream;
further yet, a tremendous volcanic fissure, at times the bed of a
fiery river, and above this the towering dome of Mauna Loa, a
brilliant cobalt blue, lined and shaded with indigo where
innumerable lava streams had seamed his portentous sides: his whole
beauty the effect of atmosphere, on an object in itself hideous.
Ahead and to the right were rolling miles of a pahoehoe sea, bounded
by the unseen Pacific 3,000 feet below, with countless craters,
fissures emitting vapour, and all other concomitants of volcanic
action; bounded to the north by the vast crater of Kilauea. On all
this deadly region the sun poured his tropic light and heat from one
of the bluest skies I ever saw.
The direction given me on leaving Kapapala was, that after the
natives left me I was to keep a certain crater on the south-east
till I saw the smoke of Kilauea; but there were many craters.
Horses cross the sand and hummocks as nearly as possible on a bee
line; but the lava rarely indicates that anything has passed over
it, and this morning a strong breeze had rippled the sand,
completely obliterating the hoof-marks of the last traveller, and at
times I feared that losing myself, as many others have done, I
should go mad with thirst. I examined the sand narrowly for hoof-
marks, and every now and then found one, but always had the
disappointment of finding that it was made by an unshod horse,
therefore not a ridden one. Finding eyesight useless, I dismounted
often, and felt with my finger along the rolling lava for the
slightest marks of abrasion, which might show that shod animals had
passed that way, got up into an ohia to look out for the smoke of
Kilauea, and after three hours came out upon what I here learn is
the old track, disused because of the insecurity of the ground.
It runs quite close to the edge of the crater, there 1,000 feet in
depth, and gives a magnificent view of the whole area, with the pit
and the blowing cones. But the region through which the trail led
was rather an alarming one, being hollow and porous, all cracks and
fissures, nefariously concealed by scrub and ferns. I found a
place, as I thought, free from risk, and gave Kahele a feed of oats
on my plaid, but before he had finished them there was a rumbling
and vibration, and he went into the ground above his knees, so
snatching up the plaid and jumping on him I galloped away, convinced
that that crack was following me! However, either the crack thought
better of it, or Kahele travelled faster, for in another half-hour I
arrived where the whole region steams, smokes, and fumes with
sulphur, and was kindly welcomed here by Mr. Gilman, where he and
the old Chinaman appear to be alone.
After a seven hours' ride the quiet and the log fire are very
pleasant, and the host is a most intelligent and sympathising
listener. It is a solemn night, for the earth quakes, and the sound
of Halemaumau is like the surging of the sea.
HILO. June 11th.
Once more I am among palm and mango grove, and friendly faces, and
sounds of softer surges than those of Kilauea. I had a dreary ride
yesterday, as the rain was incessant, and I saw neither man, bird,
or beast the whole way. Kahele was so heavily loaded that I rode
the thirty miles at a foot's pace, and he became so tired that I had
to walk.
It has been a splendid week, with every circumstance favourable,
nothing sordid or worrying to disturb the impressions received,
kindness and goodwill everywhere, a travelling companion whose
consideration, endurance, and calmness were beyond all praise, and
at the end the cordial welcomes of my Hawaiian "home."
I.L.B.