Volcanic Character of the Island of Hawaii. 215 



ly interested. They sat most of the night, talking of the 

 achievements of Pele, and regarding with a superstitious fear, 

 (at which we were not surprised,) the brilliant exhibition. 

 They considered it the primeval abode of their volcanic deities. 

 The conical craters, they said, were their houses, where they 

 frequently amused themselves by playing at konane. The 

 waving of the furnaces and the crackling of the flames, were 

 the Jcaui of their fiura, (music of their dance,) and the red 

 flaming surge was the surf wherein they played, sportively 

 swimming on the rolling wave." 



The natives said, that, according to tradition, the volcano 

 had been burning from chaos, or night, till now — for they re- 

 fer the origin of the world, and even of their gods, to chaos, 

 or night ; and the creation was, in their view, a transition 

 from darkness to light. They stated that, in earlier ages, the 

 volcano " used to boil up, to overflow its banks, and inundate 

 the adjacent country ; but that, for many kings' reigns past, 

 it had kept below the level of the surrounding plain, con- 

 tinually extending its surface, and increasing its depth, and 

 occasionally throwing up, with violent explosion, huge rocks, 

 or red hot stones. These eruptions, they said, were always 

 accompanied by dreadful earthquakes, loud claps of thunder, 

 and vivid and quick succeeding lightning. No great explo- 

 sion, they added, had taken place since the days of Keona, 

 but many places near the sea-shore had been overflowed, on 

 which occasions, they supposed that Pele went, by a road un- 

 der ground, from her house in the crater to the shore. 



The mythology of Hawaii is much interwoven with the 

 phenomena of their volcanoes and earthquakes, and with the 

 thunder and lightning by which they are accompanied. It is 

 easy to trace in their absurd and extravagant fables respecting 

 the contests of Pele, the goddess of volcanoes, with opposing 

 powers, the physical conflict of fire and water, and of the va- 

 rious elemental agents, and certainly these fables are recom- 

 mended to a poetical imagination, by much that is splendid 

 and grand. 



Whenever the natives spoke of those gods of fire, it was as 

 " dreadful beings. ,, They reside in all the volcanoes, but 

 chiefly in that of Kirauea. They never travelled on journies 



