While on the subject of wonderful volcanoes, we must not omit to notice
one that has been called the “Niagara of volcanoes,” and the “king of
volcanoes,” =viz.=, Kilauea, the great volcano of the Sandwich islands,
which is on the island of Hawaii, about thirty miles from Hilo bay. One
of the missionaries, from whom we have the account, started to visit it
on horseback; but the way being rough and the animal unshod, he severely
felt the inconvenience of the lava, became discouraged, and moved so
slowly, that he was given up, and the missionary and his associate
proceeded on foot.
“Toward evening,” he continues, “we reached Olaa, an inland settlement;
and the next day, before noon, had arrived at an elevation of some four
thousand feet, at a distance of twenty miles from Hilo bay.
“Approaching the great crater of Kilauea, we had a fine view of the
magnificent dome of Mauna Loa, stretching on some twenty miles beyond
it, and rising above it to the lofty hight of ten thousand feet.
Evidences of existing volcanic agency multiplied around us; steam, gas
and smoke, issued from the sulphur banks on the north-east and
south-east sides of the crater, and here and there, from deep and
extended fissures connected with the fiery subterranean agency; and as
we passed circumspectly along the apparently depressed plain that
surrounds the crater, we observed an immense volume of smoke and vapor
ascending from the midst of it. At the same time, and from the same
source, various unusual sounds, not easily described or explained, fell
with increasing intensity on the ear. Then the angry abyss, the fabled
habitation and throne of _Pele_, the great idol goddess whom the
Hawaiians formerly worshiped, opened before us.
“Coming near to the rim, I fell upon my hands and knees, awe-struck, and
crept cautiously to the rocky brink; for with all my natural and
acquired courage, I was unwilling at once to walk up to the giddy verge,
and look down upon the noisy, fiery gulf beneath my feet. Shortly,
however, I was able to stand very near, and gaze upon this wonder of the
world, which I wish I could set before my readers, in all its mystery,
magnitude and grandeur. It is not a lofty cone, or mountain-top pointing
to the heavens, but a vast chasm in the earth, five or six times the
depth of Niagara falls, and seven or eight miles in circumference. It is
situated on the flank of a vast mountain, which has been gradually piled
up by a similar agency during the course of ages. Such is the immense
extent and depth of Kilauea, that it would take in, entire, the city of
Philadelphia or New York, and make their loftiest spires, viewed from
the rim, appear small and low. But neither cities nor meadows, nor water
nor vegetation, can be found in this chief of the deep places of the
earth, but a lake of lava, some black and indurated, some fiery and
flowing, some cooling as a floating bridge over the fathomless molten
abyss, seven times hotter than Nebuchadnezzar’s hottest furnace, and
some bursting up through this temporary incrustation, rending it here
and there, and forming mounds and cones upon it. The immense mass,
laboring to escape, pressed against the great crater’s sides, which
consist not of a frail ‘Chinese wall,’ built by human hands to resist
human strength, but an irregularly elliptical wall of basaltic rocks,
extending a thousand feet above the surface of the lava lake, and to
unknown depths below. Six hundred feet below, the verge stretches around
horizontally, a vast amphitheater gallery of black indurated lava, once
fluid but now solid, and on which an army of a hundred thousand men
might stand to view the sublime spectacle beneath, around, and above
them.
“While through the eye, the impressions of grandeur, strong at first,
increased till the daylight was gone, the impressions received through
the ear, were peculiar, and by no means inconsiderable. The fiercely
whizzing sound of gas and steam, rushing with varying force through
obstructed apertures in blowing cones, or cooling crusts of lava, and
the laboring, wheezing, struggling, as of a living mountain, breathing
fire and smoke and sulphurous gas from his lurid nostrils, tossing up
molten rocks or detached portions of fluid lava, and breaking up vast
indurated masses with varied detonations, all impressively bade us stand
in awe. When we reached the verge, or whenever we came from a little
distance to look over, these strange sounds increased, as if some
intelligent power, with threatening tones and gestures, indignant at our
obtrusiveness, were forbidding us to approach. The effect of all this on
aboriginal visitors, before the true God was made known to them, may
have been to induce or confirm the superstition, that a deity or family
of deities dwelt there, and recognized the movements of men, and in
various ways expressed anger against them. If my native fellow-travelers
had not been cured of their superstition, or had not known me to be
opposed to all idolatry, and particularly to the worship of Pele, the
goddess whom they once supposed dwelt there, they might naturally have
mistaken my almost involuntary prostration, as an act of religious
homage to this discarded Hawaiian deity. But the missionaries had set at
naught the _tabus_ of this deity, and Kapiolani had openly invaded the
same, and descending into this crater had, in a fearless and Christian
manner, there acknowledged Jehovah as the only true God, and proclaimed
to her countrymen that this was but one of the fires which he has
kindled and controls. So that the natives now with me were ready
devoutly to acknowledge all this.
“When seven years before our visit, Messrs. Ellis, Thurston, Bishop and
Goodrich, accompanied by Mr. Harwood, visited this yawning gulf, they
said of it: ‘The bottom was filled with lava, and the south-west and
northern parts of it were one vast flood of liquid fire, in a state of
terrific ebullition, rolling to and fro its fiery surge and flaming
billows. Fifty-one craters of various forms and sizes, rose, like so
many conical islands from the surface of the burning lake. Twenty-two
constantly emitted columns of gray smoke and pyramids of brilliant
flame, and many of them at the same time vomited from their ignited
mouths, streams of fluid lava, which rolled in blazing torrents down
their black, indented sides, into the boiling mass of fire below.’ The
surface of this body of lava is subject to unceasing changes from year
to year; for ‘deep calleth unto deep’ continually, and the fiery billows
of this troubled ocean never rest.
“As night came on we took our station on the north side of the very
brink, where we supposed we should be able most securely and
satisfactorily to watch the action of this awful laboratory during the
absence of the light of the sun. Though the spot where we spread our
blanket for a lodgment had been considered as the safest in the
neighborhood, there was room for the feeling of insecurity which some
who had preceded us have thus described. ‘The detachment of one small
stone beneath, or a slight agitation of the earth, would have
precipitated us, amid the horrid crash of falling rocks, into the
burning lake.’ Had I thought the danger so imminent, I should have
deemed it prudent to take a position somewhat further off. The mass
which supported us had doubtless been shaken a thousand times, and was
liable every hour to be shaken again; but being in the short curvature
of the crater, like the key-stone of an arch, it could not easily be
thrown from its position by any agitation that would naturally occur
while this great safety-valve is kept open, or the numerous fissures
round it, reaching to the very bowels of the mountain, convey harmlessly
from unknown depths, gases and volumes of steam, generated where water
comes in contact with intense volcanic heat. Our position was about four
thousand feet above the level of the sea, and one thousand above the
surface of the lake below us.
“The great extent of the surface of this lava lake; the numerous places
in it where the fiery element was displaying itself; the conical mouths
here and there discharging glowing lava overflowing and spreading its
waves around, or belched out in detached and molten masses that were
shot forth with detonations, perhaps by the force of gases struggling
through from below the surface, while the vast column of vapor and smoke
ascended up toward heaven, and the coruscations of the emitted brilliant
lava, illuminating the clouds that passed over the terrific gulf, all
presented by night a splendid and sublime panorama of volcanic action,
probably nowhere surpassed, if ever equaled, and which to be imagined
must be seen. Had Vulcan employed ten thousand giant Cyclops, each with
a steam-engine of a thousand horse-power, blowing anthracite coal for
smelting mountain minerals, or heaving up and hammering to pieces the
everlasting rocks and hills, their united efforts would but begin to
compare with the work of Pele here.
“There was enough of mystery connected with the wonderful experiments
going on before our eyes, to give ample employment to fancy and
philosophy, and materially to enhance the sublimity of the fearful
scene. For it might be asked, how can such an immense mass of rocks and
earth be kept incessantly in a state of fusion without fuel or
combustion? Or by what process could such solid masses be fused at all,
in accordance with any mode of generating heat with which we are
acquainted? If there be combustion in the crater adequate to the melting
of such vast masses of substances so hard, rocky and earthy, why is
there an accumulation and increase of the general mass, so that millions
of cubic fathoms are, from time to time, added to the solid contents of
the mountain? But if the bowels of the mountain are supposed to be
melted by intense heat in some way generated, could they be heaved up by
the expansion of steam or gas, while an orifice equal to three or four
square miles, like that of Kilauea, or the terminal crater on the same
mountain, is kept open; for steam and gas might be supposed to pass
through the fluid masses and escape, instead of raising them from a
depth, just as steam issues from the bottom of a boiling caldron,
without materially elevating the surface of its contents.
“But if with one class of geologists, we suppose the interior of the
earth to be in a molten and fluid state, as perhaps originally created,
and that Kilauea and other volcanoes are but the openings and
safety-valves of that subterranean, fiery, central ocean of red or
white-hot matter, then we have here no faint illustration of the bold
imagery used by the sacred writers, and of their phraseology, which to
some seems hyperbolical and even paradoxical, as when they speak of the
‘bottomless pit,’ the ‘fire that is not quenched,’ ‘the lake that
burneth with fire and brimstone,’ ‘the smoke of their torment which
ascendeth up forever and ever.’ If such a vast mass of fiery fluid
constitutes the main portion of the interior of the earth, it is
literally ‘bottomless;’ and the opened surface, like that of Kilauea,
may be strictly called a ‘lake of fire;’ and as sulphur and particles of
the sulphuret of iron are present, it may well be called ‘a lake that
burns with fire and brimstone.’
“After gazing at the wonderful and wonderfully sublime scene for some
twenty hours, taking but a little time for repose, we found the sense of
fear subsiding, and curiosity prompting to a closer intercourse with
Pele, and a more familiar acquaintance with her doings and habits. Many
who try the experiment, though at first appalled, are ready after a few
hours, to wend their way down the steep sides of the crater. Thus we
descended into the immense pit from the north-east side, where it was
practicable, first to the black ledge or amphitheater gallery, and
thence to the surface of the lava lake. This we found extremely
irregular, presenting cones, mounds, plains, vast bridges of lava
recently cooled, pits and caverns, and portions of considerable extent
in a movable and agitated state. We walked over lava which, by some
process, had been fractured into immensely large slabs, as though it had
been contracted by cooling, or been heaved up irregularly by the
semi-fluid mass below. In the fissures of this fractured lava, the slabs
or blocks two feet below the surface, were red-hot. A walking-stick
thrust down would be set on fire and flame instantly.
“Passing over many masses of such lava, we ventured toward the more
central part of the lake, and came near to a recent mound which had
probably been raised on the cooling surface, after our arrival the day
before. From the top of it flowed melted lava, which spread itself in
waves to a considerable distance, one side or the other, all around. The
masses thrown out in succession moved sluggishly, and as they flowed
down the inclined plane, a crust was formed over them, which darkened
and hardened, and became stationary, while the stream still moved on
below it. The front of the mass, red-hot, passed along down, widening
and expanding itself, and forcing its way through a net-work, as it
were, of irregular filaments of iron, which the cooling process freely
supplied. This motion of a flowing mass, whether smaller or larger, seen
from the rim of the crater by night, gives the appearance of a fiery
surf, or a rolling wave of fire, or the dancing along of an extended
semicircular flame on the surface of the lake. When one wave has
expended itself, or found its level, or otherwise become stationary,
another succeeds and passes over it in like manner, and then another,
sent out as it were, by the pulsations of the earth’s open artery, at
the top of the mound. This shows how a mound, cone, pyramid, or
mountain, can be gradually built of lava, and wide plains covered at its
base with the same material.
“We approached near the border of some of these waves, and reached the
melted lava with a stick two yards long; and thus obtained several
specimens red-hot from the flowing mass. I have since had occasion to be
surprised at the absence of fear in this close contiguity with the
terrible element, where the heat under our feet was as great as our
shoes would bear, and the radiating heat from the moving mass was so
intense that I could face it only a few seconds at a time at a distance
of two or three yards. Yet having carefully observed its movements
awhile, I threw a stick of wood upon the thin crust of a moving wave
where I believed it would bear me, even if it should bend a little, and
stood upon it a few moments. In that position, thrusting my cane down
through the cooling, tough crust, about half an inch thick, I withdrew
it, and forthwith there gushed up of the melted, flowing lava under my
feet, enough to form a globular mass two and a half or three inches in
diameter, which, as it cooled, I broke off and bore away as spoils from
the ancient domain and favorite seat of the great idol goddess of the
Hawaiians. Parts that were in violent action we dared not approach.
“There is a remarkable variety in the volcanic productions of Hawaii; a
variety as to texture, form and size, from the vast mountain and
extended plain, to the fine-drawn and most delicate vitreous fiber, the
rough clinker, the smooth stream, the basaltic rock, and masses compact
and hard as granite or flint, and the pumice or porous scoriæ, or
cinders, which, when hot, probably formed a scum or foam on the surface
of the denser molten mass. Considerable quantities of capillary glass
are produced at Kilauea, though I am not aware that the article is found
elsewhere on the islands. Its production has been deemed mysterious. In
its appearance it resembles human hair, and among the natives is
familiarly called ‘=Lauoho o Pele=,’ the hair of Pele. It is formed, I
presume, by the tossing off of small detached portions of lava of the
consistence of melted glass, from the mouths of cones, when a fine
vitreous thread is drawn out between the moving portion, and that from
which it is detached. The fine-spun product is then blown about by the
wind, both within and around the crater, and is collected in little
locks or tufts.
“Sulphur is seen, but in small quantities, in and around the crater; and
at a little distance from the rim there are yellow banks, on which
beautiful crystals of sulphur may be found. In one place, a pool of pure
distilled water, condensed from the steam that rises from a deep
fissure, affords the thirsty traveler a beverage far better than that of
the ordinary distiller. There is, however, a kind of sulphurous gas
produced by the volcano, which is highly deleterious if breathed often
or freely. This is one source of danger to the visitor, which, while I
was down a thousand feet below the rim, produced a temporary coughing.
“I was, perhaps, too venturesome, but other visitors have been far more
so. As one instance of this, Dr. Judd, having become familiar with the
volcanic power, in his ardor to secure valuable and recent specimens for
the United States exploring expedition, on the visit of Commodore Wilkes
and his company to this crater, descended to the surface of the lake,
and then into a _sub-crater_ in the midst of the larger. While he was
busily engaged there in collecting specimens, a sudden bursting up of a
huge volume of fluid lava from the bottom of the sub-crater, alarmed
him, and threatened speedily to overwhelm and destroy him. He sprang to
escape, but finding the rim overhanging, he could not scale it where he
was; and the flowing mass was now too near to allow him to return to the
place where he had descended; and its radiating heat was too intense to
be faced. Escape without assistance was utterly hopeless; and the
natives of the company who were about the brink, and from whom such help
might have been expected, alarmed for themselves, were flying for their
lives. Dr. Judd, giving himself up for lost, offered a prayer to heaven,
and was about to resign himself to his fate, when a friendly and
resolute Hawaiian, who had been a pupil at the mission seminary,
compassionating the exposed sufferer, faced the approaching fiery
volume, and braving its intense heat, exposed his own life, reached down
his strong hand, and firmly grasped the doctor’s, who thus, at the last
available moment, through their united exertions and the blessing of
heaven, escaped with his life from the horrible pit and a fiery grave! A
mighty current instantly overflowed the place where they had just been
standing, and they were obliged to run for their lives before the molten
flood; and being able to outstrip it, they ascended from the surface of
the abyss to the lofty rim, with heartfelt thanksgivings to their great
deliverer.[1] This proves the real danger of descending too far into the
crater of the volcano; and had it occurred in the days of unbroken
superstition, it would doubtless have been ascribed to the anger of
Pele, and tended to increase the number of her deluded worshipers. But
now such a deliverance was justly ascribed to the kind providence of
Jehovah, the knowledge of whose character, as displayed in the gospel,
has introduced the Hawaiian race into a new life.
-----
Footnote 1:
See United States Exploring Expedition, vol. iv., p. 173.
-----
“Kilauea may be regarded as one of the safety-valves of a bottomless
reservoir of melted earth, below the cooled and cooling crust on which
mountains rise, rivers flow, oceans roll, and cities are multiplied as
the habitations of men. It has been kept open from time immemorial,
always displaying more or less of its active power. The circumambient
air which carries off the caloric, sometimes aided by rain, is
incessantly endeavoring to shut up this valve, or bridge over this
orifice of three or four square miles of the fiery abyss. Sometimes the
imperfect bridge of cooling lava is pierced with fifty or sixty large,
rough, conical chimneys, emitting gas, smoke, flame, and lava; and
sometimes the vast bridge is broken up, and all these cones submerged
and probably fused again by the intense heat of the vast fluid mass
supplied fresh from the interior. The mass rises gradually higher and
higher, hundreds of feet, till by its immense pressure against the sides
of the crater, aided, perhaps, by the power of gas or steam, it forces a
passage for miles through the massive walls, and inundates with its
fiery deluge some portion of the country below, or passing through it,
as a river of fire, pours itself into the sea at the distance of
twenty-five miles, thus disturbing with awful uproar the domains of old
Neptune, and enlarging the dominions of the Hawaiian sovereign.
“The whole island, with its ample and towering mountains, is often
shaken with awful throes, and creation here ‘groaneth and travaileth in
pain.’ In July, 1840, a river of lava flowed out from Kilauea, and
passing some miles under ground, burst out in the district of Puna, and
inundated a portion of the country, sweeping down forests, carrying
everything in its way before it, and as a river a mile wide, falling
into the sea, and heating the waters of the ocean, making war upon its
inhabitants, and by the united action of this volcanic flood and the
sea, formed several huge, rough hills of sand and lava along the shore.
And still later than the above date, a similar flood has been poured
from the summit of Mauna Loa, flowing with terrific force for weeks, and
thus elevating a portion of the region between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea;
and so extensive and splendid was this exhibition, that it could be seen
from the missionary station at Hilo, a distance of about forty miles.
“After having spent some thirty hours on this king of all the volcanoes,
we set out to return. And on our journey we passed over several large
tracts of lava of different kinds, some smooth, vitreous and shining,
some twisted and coiled like huge ropes, and some consisting of sharp,
irregular, loose, rugged volcanic masses, of every form and size, from
an ounce in weight to several tuns, thrown, I could not conceive how,
into a chaos or field of the roughest surface, presenting a forbidding
area of from one to forty square miles in extent; and though not
precipitous, yet so horrid as to forbid a path, and to defy the approach
of horses and cattle. In the crevices of the more solid lava are found
the _ohelo_, which somewhat resembles the whortleberry, nourished by
frequent showers and dew. At ten o’clock we halted for breakfast, and by
the time the sun was setting had reached Waimea, thus completing our
excursion to this vast volcano, which is truly _one of the wonders of
the world_!”