A volcanic exhibit unrivaled in the world is embraced in the Hawaii
National Park, which was created in 1916. This Park consists of two
volcanic sections in the Hawaiian Islands, with a total area of one
hundred and seventeen square miles. Within this territory are two
active volcanoes, Kilauea and Mauna Loa on the island of Hawaii; and
one sleeping volcano, Haleakala on the island of Maui.
The celebrated and unequaled Hawaiian volcanoes are a national scenic
asset, unique of their kind and famous in the world of science.
Apparently, the ocean has been filled in and the entire group of
Hawaiian Islands built by the lava-outpourings of volcanoes. In this
National Park we may see volcanic topography in the course of
construction; some landscapes just cast in the process of cooling;
others that are beginning to show the erosion of the elements; also
those which vegetation is just possessing.
The Hawaii National Park has about the same latitude as the City of
Mexico. There are about a dozen islands in the group, with a total
area of seventy-five hundred square miles. Honolulu, the capital city,
is on the island of Oahu, near the middle of the island chain, which
extends from northwest to southeast. From San Francisco it is about
twenty-one hundred miles to Honolulu.
Kilauea is more than two hundred miles southeast of Honolulu, and
thirty miles inland from the port of Hilo. Twenty miles to the west
from Kilauea is Mauna Loa. The crater of Haleakala is on a different
island from Kilauea and Mauna Loa, about midway between these and
Honolulu.
The active rim of Kilauea is four thousand feet above the sea. The
slopes of this volcano have an exceedingly flat grade. It is the most
continuously active of the three volcanoes in this Park. It has a pit
in which the molten lava rises and falls and is boiling all the time.
For a century Kilauea has been almost continuously active with a lake
or lakes of molten lava. The crater of Kilauea is not a steep
mountain-top, but a broad, forested plateau, beneath which is a lava
sink three miles in diameter, surrounded by cliffs three hundred feet
high. Several times during the last century the active crater was
upheaved into a hill. In a little while it collapsed into a deep pit
with marvelously spectacular avalanches, fiery grottos, and clouds of
steam and brown dust. Through many years the crater was overflowing.
Frequently large pieces of the shore fall into the molten lake,
forming islands.
The magnificent spectacle of the lake of lava at Kilauea is
indescribable. Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard
University, visited the crater and pronounced it the most wonderful
scene he had ever watched. It is a lake of liquid fire one thousand
feet across, splashing on its banks with a noise like the waves of the
sea. Great high fountains boil up through it, sending quantities of
glowing spray over the shore. There are fiery, molten cascades,
whirlpools, and rapids, with hissing of gases, rumbling, and blue
flames playing through the crevices. It is ever changing, and
the record of these changes is being kept from day to day,
photographically and otherwise, by the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.
Mauna Loa is an active crater, 13,675 feet above sea-level. It is an
enormous mountain mass, covering a wide area with its very gentle
slopes. This volcano erupts about once every decade. Of the three
volcanoes in the Park, Mauna Loa is the most productive of new rock,
which it pours out on the surface of the land. Its activities start
with outbursts on the summit and culminate after a number of years in
a flow which floods the whole country for many months.
Perpetual snow crowns Mauna Loa, and ice may be found in cracks even
in summer. In the winter-time there is a variety of climate from
sea-level to the summit--from the warmth of the tropics to arctic
blizzards on the mountain-top.
An interesting and somewhat amusing story is told in regard to an
eruption of Mauna Loa in 1881. The flow of lava at that time was so
heavy that it seriously threatened to wipe out the town of Hilo. When
the lava ran down to within a mile of the place, the natives urged
their Princess Ruth to go and conjure the goddess of the volcano,
Pele, to stop the flow. She went--so the tales goes--with all her
retinue, and threw into the crater some berries, a black hen, a white
pig, and a bottle of gin, as sacrifices. The lava-flow stopped, and
the natives believed their escape due to the odd offering, although
some people have expressed the opinion that such a collection of
stuff thrown into an active volcano's crater would make the eruption
more violent, if it had any effect at all.
Mauna Loa forces columns of liquid lava hundreds of feet into the air,
and every few years pours forth billions of tons of lava in a few
days. There is a wonderful rift-line, from which eight or ten flows
poured forth during the last century. These burst out on the slopes of
the mountain, not from the summit crater. After the first explosion at
the summit, a period of quiet intervenes, and then the rifts open and
lava flows down.
The lava cools quickly and changes through colors of red, purple,
brown, and gray as it cools. Areas of each of these are seen at one
time, with red-hot liquids showing in the cracks of the lava. Trees of
lava are formed at one place by the flow of lava rushing through a
forest and congealing around the trunks. Fields of "Pele's
hair"--lava--are blown out by the wind, like spun glass, as the fiery
spray is dashed into the air on the surface of the molten lake. In the
large craters are numerous smaller ones with endless lava forms,
colors, and volcanic structures.
The crater of Haleakala, ten thousand feet high, is near the middle of
the island of Maui. It is eight miles in diameter and three thousand
feet deep. While Haleakala has not erupted for two hundred years, the
entire crater is sometimes full of active fire fountains, and the
fiery glow mounts to the clouds like an immense conflagration.
Professor Thomas A. Jaggar says, "The crater of Haleakala at sunrise
is the grandest volcanic spectacle on earth."
No photograph can give any adequate idea of the view from its summit,
often above the clouds. It is a good place from which to see the sun
come up through the clouds in the crater. This event has been
described as being like the birth of a new world. From here one can
look down on the island and on the sea, and see the neighboring
island of Oahu.
Sidney Ballou says: "A number of people who have been to the top of
Haleakala pronounce the sensation there, although somewhat indefinable
and indescribable, as the chief scenic attraction of the world. Men
like John Muir, who have been all over the world, go up there and say
that it is the greatest spectacle in the world."
In addition to the variety of volcanic displays and lava landscapes,
the Hawaiian Park contains splendid tropical groves and forests of
sandalwood and magnificent Hawaiian mahogany trees with trunks over
twenty feet in circumference. There are forests of tree ferns up to
forty feet in height, with single leaves twenty feet long; tropical
jungles with scores of varieties of the most exquisite and delicate
ferns and mosses, many of them found nowhere else in the world. There
are numerous song-birds of brilliant hues, many of them found nowhere
but in Hawaii, and nearly extinct except in this Park. There are
rolling grassy meadows, dotted with tropical trees, shrubs, and ferns,
giving a parklike effect. Many of the trees are botanical treasures,
known only in this Park region, and of great rarity.
The views from the slopes and summits of the volcanic peaks are a
mingling of wild magnificence and tropical splendor. The craters
themselves are weird spectacles that awe visitors into silence as they
watch the wonderful action of the liquid fire fountains, boiling
lakes, flaming lava, and other demonstrations of the Fire King.
L. A. Thurston, of Honolulu, appears to have first proposed this Park,
and he did much toward its acquisition.