6o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



to the ocean, but as wave after wave of fluid lava or steam-charged ash 

 swept downward, more and more territory was devastated, while the 

 lava, already cooled to form ridges and hillocks, diverted the later lava 

 rivers into irregular and wider-spreading channels. Reaching the ocean, 

 the molten rock poured into the depths of the sea over the coral reef, 

 building ever outward, at the same time that it followed the reef and 

 shore so as to spread laterally over a sector of the island with a shore- 

 ward arc of five miles. Naturally the seaward wall of the whole lava 

 field is highest near its center (Fig. 4) where it measures eighty or 

 ninety feet. This wall displays a regular series of strata of prismatic 

 blocks or tables, formed by the cooling of successive sheets of flowing 

 lava. These strata sometimes lie between masses of cinders, showing 

 how the eruptive output varied in character during succeeding weeks 

 and months. Toward either side, the whole field gradually thins out, 

 and at its western edge (Fig. 2) it ends in a series of rough rocky 

 billows, seared and broken by their contraction in cooling. Yet their 

 materials reached this point as red-hot fluid lava, having traversed a 

 route that must have been nearly fifteen miles in length. 



As the molten lava swept down the valley and along the strand, its 

 destructive effects were rapid and complete. The wooden huts of the 

 seaside villages were entirely consumed and only where there were 

 walls of coral limestone, like those of the churches and traders' ware- 

 houses (Fig. 5), was there anything to withstand the flood of rock. 

 Yet so quickly did the surface of the plastic mass become cool, that the 

 cocoanut and other trees, felled by the burning through of their bases, 

 were rarely consumed. 



We began the ascent of the volcano early in the afternoon in 

 order to reach the crater before dusk. Proceeding through the unde- 

 stroyed woods of a neighboring valley we entered upon the lava field at 

 a point some miles from the coast, thus obviating the necessity of tra- 

 versing its whole extent from sea to crater. Our natives, bearing food 

 and water, now tied the husks of cocoanuts to their naked feet for pro- 

 tection in walking over the broken lava, and after a final pause for rest, 

 we left the shade and tempered heat of the tropical forest for the open 

 glare of the volcano's slope. Viewed from afar, this slope seems even 

 and smooth, but in reality it is like a tempestuous ocean suddenly ar- 

 rested in its movements and turned into stone. Here and there wide 

 sheets of lava with corrugated rippling surfaces formed still rivers be- 

 tween massive banks of cinders through which their molten substance 

 had earlier ploughed its way; larger and smaller tables of crust, like 

 broken floes of the Arctic Ocean, were tilted up and piled in strange 

 heaps. And so vitreous was the material of this sea of black broken 

 rock that the light was reflected from millions of crystal surfaces and 

 facets as from so many fragments of ice or glass. 



Progress over this field was necessarily slow, but by following the 



