Fiercest, though loveliest, of all the gods is Pele, she whose home
is in Kilauea, greatest of the world's volcanoes. When this mountain
lights the heavens, when lava pours from its miles of throat, when
stone bombs are hurled at the stars, when its ash-clouds darken the sun
and moon, when there are thunders beneath the earth, and the houses
shake, then does this spirit of the peak, in robes of fire, ride the
hot blast and shriek in the joy of destruction,--a valkyrie of the
war of nature. Kanakas try to keep on the good side of this torrid
divinity by secret gifts, either of white chickens or of red ohelo
berries, and an old man once put into a guide's hand the bones of a
child that he might throw them down the inner crater,--Halemaumau,
the House of Eternal Burning, whose ruddy lava cones are homes of
the goddess and her family. The dogs sacrificed to Pele, when human
victims were scant, were nursed at the breasts of slaves, and the
priests and virgins received as their portion, after the killing,
the heart and liver. Next to her eyes, of piercing brightness,
the most striking thing in the aspect of this deity is her wealth
of hair, silky, shining red in the glow, and shaken from her head
in a cloud-like spread as of flame. When the eruption is at an end
and a sullen peace follows the outbreak, tufts _of_ this hair are
found in hollows for miles around. Birds gather it for their nests,
and unfearing visitors collect it for cabinets and museums.
Science tells us that Pele's hair is a molten glass; threads of
pumice: a stony froth. When a mighty blast occurs, or when steam
escapes through the boiling mass, particles of pumice shred off in
the upward flight, or are wire-drawn by winds that rage over the
earth. These viscid threads cool quickly in that chill altitude,
and float down again. They can be artificially made by passing
jets of steam through the slag of iron furnaces while it is in a
melted state, the product, which resembles raw cotton, being used,
in place of asbestos, for the packing of boilers, steam-pipes, and
the like. To such base uses might the goddess' shining locks be put,
if she tore them out in large enough handfuls during the carnival of
fire and earthquake; but they are not found in quantities to justify
this search by commercial-minded persons, and conservative Kanakas
might be alarmed by thought of revenges which Pele would visit on
them should they misuse her hair as the foreign heathen do.