We
got
back
to
the
schooner
in
good
time,
and
then
sailed
down
to
Kau,
where
we
disembarked
and
took
final
leave
of
the
vessel.
Next
day
we
bought
horses
and
bent
our
way
over
the
summer-clad mountain-terraces,
toward
the
great
volcano
of
Kilauea (Ke-low-way-ah).
We
made
nearly a
two
days'
journey
of
it,
but
that
was
on
account
of
laziness.
Toward
sunset
on
the
second
day,
we
reached
an
elevation
of
some
four
thousand
feet
above
sea
level,
and
as
we
picked
our
careful
way
through
billowy
wastes
of
lava
long
generations
ago
stricken
dead
and
cold
in
the
climax
of
its
tossing fury,
we
began
to
come
upon
signs
of
the
near
presence
of
the
volcano—signs
in
the
nature
of
ragged
fissures
that
discharged
jets
of
sulphurous
vapor
into
the
air,
hot
from
the
molten
ocean
down
in
the
bowels
of
the
mountain.
Shortly
the
crater
came
into
view. I
have
seen
Vesuvius since,
but
it
was
a
mere
toy, a child's volcano, a soup-kettle,
compared
to
this.
Mount
Vesuvius
is
a shapely
cone
thirty-six
hundred
feet high;
its
crater
an
inverted
cone
only
three
hundred
feet deep,
and
not
more
than
a
thousand
feet
in
diameter,
if
as
much
as
that;
its
fires
meagre, modest,
and
docile.—But
here
was
a vast, perpendicular, walled cellar,
nine
hundred
feet
deep
in
some
places,
thirteen
hundred
in
others, level- floored,
and
ten
miles
in
circumference!
Here
was
a
yawning
pit
upon
whose
floor
the
armies
of
Russia
could
camp,
and
have
room
to
spare.
Perched
upon
the
edge
of
the
crater,
at
the
opposite
end
from
where
we
stood,
was
a small look-out house—say
three
miles
away.
It
assisted us,
by
comparison,
to
comprehend
and
appreciate
the
great
depth
of
the
basin—it
looked
like
a tiny martin-box
clinging
at
the
eaves
of
a cathedral.
After
some
little
time spent
in
resting
and
looking
and
ciphering,
we
hurried
on
to
the
hotel.
By
the
path
it
is
half
a
mile
from
the
Volcano
House
to
the
lookout- house.
After
a hearty
supper
we
waited
until
it
was
thoroughly
dark
and
then
started
to
the
crater.
The
first
glance
in
that
direction
revealed a
scene
of
wild beauty.
There
was
a heavy fog
over
the
crater
and
it
was
splendidly
illuminated
by
the
glare
from
the
fires
below.
The
illumination
was
two
miles
wide
and
a
mile
high, perhaps;
and
if
you
ever,
on
a dark
night
and
at
a distance beheld
the
light
from
thirty
or
forty
blocks
of
distant
buildings
all
on
fire
at
once,
reflected
strongly
against over-hanging clouds,
you
can
form
a
fair
idea
of
what
this
looked
like. A
colossal
column
of
cloud
towered
to
a
great
height
in
the
air immediately
above
the
crater,
and
the
outer
swell
of
every
one
of
its
vast
folds
was
dyed
with
a
rich
crimson luster,
which
was
subdued
to
a
pale
rose
tint
in
the
depressions
between.
It
glowed
like
a muffled
torch
and
stretched
upward
to
a
dizzy
height
toward
the
zenith. I
thought
it
just
possible
that
its
like
had
not
been
seen
since
the
children
of
Israel
wandered
on
their
long
march
through
the
desert
so
many
centuries
ago
over
a
path
illuminated
by
the
mysterious
"pillar
of
fire."
And
I
was
sure
that
I
now
had a
vivid
conception
of
what
the
majestic "pillar
of
fire"
was
like,
which
almost
amounted
to
a revelation.
Arrived
at
the
little
thatched
lookout house,
we
rested
our
elbows
on
the
railing
in
front
and
looked
abroad
over
the
wide
crater
and
down
over
the
sheer
precipice
at
the
seething
fires
beneath
us.
The
view
was
a startling
improvement
on
my daylight experience. I
turned
to
see
the
effect
on
the
balance
of
the
company
and
found
the
reddest-faced
set
of
men I
almost
ever
saw.
In
the
strong
light
every
countenance
glowed
like
red-hot iron,
every
shoulder
was
suffused
with
crimson
and
shaded rearward
into
dingy, shapeless obscurity!
The
place
below
looked
like
the
infernal
regions
and
these
men
like
half-cooled
devils
just
come
up
on
a furlough. I
turned
my
eyes
upon
the
volcano
again.
The
"cellar"
was
tolerably
well
lighted
up.
For
a
mile
and
a
half
in
front
of
us
and
half
a
mile
on
either
side,
the
floor
of
the
abyss
was
magnificently illuminated;
beyond
these
limits
the
mists
hung
down
their
gauzy
curtains
and
cast a
deceptive
gloom
over
all
that
made
the
twinkling
fires
in
the
remote
corners
of
the
crater
seem
countless leagues removed—made
them
seem
like
the
camp-fires
of
a
great
army
far
away.
Here
was
room
for
the
imagination
to
work!
You
could
imagine
those
lights
the
width
of
a
continent
away—and
that
hidden
under
the
intervening
darkness
were
hills,
and
winding
rivers,
and
weary
wastes
of
plain
and
desert—and
even
then
the
tremendous
vista
stretched on,
and
on,
and
on!—to
the
fires
and
far
beyond!
You
could
not
compass
it—it
was
the
idea
of
eternity
made
tangible—and
the
longest
end
of
it
made
visible
to
the
naked
eye!
The
greater
part
of
the
vast
floor
of
the
desert
under
us
was
as
black
as
ink,
and
apparently
smooth
and
level;
but
over
a
mile
square
of
it
was
ringed
and
streaked
and
striped
with
a
thousand
branching
streams
of
liquid
and
gorgeously
brilliant
fire!
It
looked
like
a
colossal
railroad
map
of
the
State
of
Massachusetts
done
in
chain
lightning
on
a
midnight
sky.
Imagine
it—imagine a coal-black
sky
shivered
into
a tangled net-
work
of
angry
fire!
Here
and
there
were
gleaming
holes
a
hundred
feet
in
diameter,
broken
in
the
dark crust,
and
in
them
the
melted
lava—the
color
a
dazzling
white
just
tinged
with
yellow—was
boiling
and
surging
furiously;
and
from
these
holes
branched
numberless
bright
torrents
in
many
directions,
like
the
spokes
of
a wheel,
and
kept a tolerably straight
course
for
a
while
and
then
swept round
in
huge
rainbow
curves,
or
made
a
long
succession
of
sharp worm-fence angles,
which
looked
precisely
like
the
fiercest
jagged
lightning.
These
streams
met
other
streams,
and
they
mingled
with
and
crossed
and
recrossed
each
other
in
every
conceivable direction,
like
skate
tracks
on
a
popular
skating ground. Sometimes
streams
twenty
or
thirty
feet
wide
flowed
from
the
holes
to
some
distance
without
dividing—and
through
the
opera-glasses
we
could
see
that
they
ran
down
small,
steep
hills
and
were
genuine
cataracts
of
fire,
white
at
their
source,
but
soon
cooling
and
turning
to
the
richest
red,
grained
with
alternate lines
of
black
and
gold.
Every
now
and
then
masses
of
the
dark
crust
broke
away
and
floated
slowly
down
these
streams
like
rafts
down
a river. Occasionally
the
molten
lava
flowing
under
the
superincumbent
crust
broke
through—split a
dazzling
streak,
from
five
hundred
to
a
thousand
feet long,
like
a
sudden
flash
of
lightning,
and
then
acre
after
acre
of
the
cold
lava
parted
into
fragments,
turned
up
edgewise
like
cakes
of
ice
when
a
great
river
breaks
up, plunged
downward
and
were
swallowed
in
the
crimson cauldron.
Then
the
wide
expanse
of
the
"thaw"
maintained
a
ruddy
glow
for
a while,
but
shortly
cooled
and
became
black
and
level
again.
During
a "thaw,"
every
dismembered
cake
was
marked
by
a
glittering
white
border
which
was
superbly
shaded
inward
by
aurora
borealis rays,
which
were
a flaming
yellow
where
they
joined
the
white
border,
and
from
thence
toward
their
points
tapered
into
glowing
crimson,
then
into
a rich,
pale
carmine,
and
finally
into
a faint blush
that
held
its
own
a
moment
and
then
dimmed
and
turned
black.
Some
of
the
streams
preferred
to
mingle
together
in
a tangle
of
fantastic
circles,
and
then
they
looked
something
like
the
confusion
of
ropes
one
sees
on
a ship's deck
when
she
has
just
taken
in
sail
and
dropped
anchor—provided
one
can
imagine
those
ropes
on
fire.
Through
the
glasses,
the
little
fountains
scattered
about
looked
very
beautiful.
They
boiled,
and
coughed,
and
spluttered,
and
discharged sprays
of
stringy
red
fire—of
about
the
consistency
of
mush,
for
instance—from
ten
to
fifteen
feet
into
the
air,
along
with
a shower
of
brilliant
white
sparks—a
quaint
and
unnatural
mingling
of
gouts
of
blood
and
snow-flakes!
We
had circles
and
serpents
and
streaks
of
lightning
all
twined
and
wreathed
and
tied
together,
without
a
break
throughout
an
area
more
than
a
mile
square
(that amount
of
ground
was
covered,
though
it
was
not
strictly "square"),
and
it
was
with
a feeling
of
placid
exultation
that
we
reflected
that
many
years
had
elapsed
since
any
visitor
had
seen
such
a
splendid
display—since
any
visitor
had
seen
anything
more
than
the
now
snubbed
and
insignificant "North"
and
"South"
lakes
in
action.
We
had been
reading
old
files
of
Hawaiian newspapers
and
the
"Record Book"
at
the
Volcano
House,
and
were
posted. I
could
see
the
North
Lake
lying
out
on
the
black
floor
away
off
in
the
outer
edge
of
our
panorama,
and
knitted
to
it
by
a web-work
of
lava
streams.
In
its
individual
capacity
it
looked
very
little
more
respectable
than
a schoolhouse
on
fire. True,
it
was
about
nine
hundred
feet
long
and
two
or
three
hundred
wide,
but
then,
under
the
present
circumstances,
it
necessarily
appeared
rather
insignificant,
and
besides
it
was
so
distant
from
us. I forgot
to
say
that
the
noise
made
by
the
bubbling
lava
is
not
great,
heard
as
we
heard
it
from
our
lofty perch.
It
makes
three
distinct
sounds—a rushing, a hissing,
and
a
coughing
or
puffing
sound;
and
if
you
stand
on
the
brink
and
close
your
eyes
it
is
no
trick
at
all
to
imagine
that
you
are
sweeping
down
a
river
on
a
large
low-pressure steamer,
and
that
you
hear
the
hissing
of
the
steam
about
her
boilers,
the
puffing
from
her
escape-pipes
and
the
churning
rush
of
the
water
abaft
her
wheels.
The
smell
of
sulphur
is
strong,
but
not
unpleasant
to
a sinner.
We
left
the
lookout
house
at
ten
o'clock
in
a
half
cooked condition,
because
of
the
heat
from
Pele's furnaces,
and
wrapping
up
in
blankets,
for
the
night
was
cold,
we
returned
to
our
Hotel.