Phillips. — On the Volcanoes of the Pacific. 207 



reached its climax. " The dark clouds and heavy fog that 

 after sunset had settled over the volcano gradually cleared 

 away, and the fires of Kirauea, darting their fierce light 

 athwart the midnight gloom, unfolded a sight terrible and 

 sublime beyond all we had seen. The agitated mass of liquid 

 lava, like a flood of melted metal, raged with tumultuous 

 whirl. The lively flame that danced over its undulating sur- 

 face, tinged with sulphurous blue or glowing with mineral 

 red, cast a broad glare of dazzling light on the indented sides 

 of the insulated craters, whose roaring mouths, amidst rising 

 flames and eddying streams of fire, shot up at intervals, with 

 very loud detonations, spherical masses of fusing lava or 

 bright ignited stones. The dark, bold outline of the perpen- 

 dicular and jutting rocks around formed a striking contrast 

 with the luminous lake below, whose vivid rays, thrown on 

 the rugged promontories and reflected by the overhanging 

 clouds, combined to complete the awful grandeur of the 

 scene." 



From Miss Bird's " Haw^aiian Archipelago" I extract the 

 following description of the great lava-flow of Kilauea of the 

 2nd April, 1868 (I think it only right to include it here) : "I 

 could fill many sheets with what I have heard, but must con- 

 tent myself with telling you very little. In 1855 the fourth 

 recorded eruption of Mauna Loa occurred. The lava flowed 

 directly Hilo- wards, and for several months, spreading through 

 the dense forests which belt the mountain, crept slowly shore- 

 wards, threatening this beautiful portion of Hawaii with the 

 fate of the cities of the plain. Mr. C. made several visits to 

 the eruption, and on each return the simple people asked how 

 much longer it would last. For five months they watched the 

 inundation, which came a little nearer every day. Should they 

 fly or not ? Would their beautiful homes become a waste of 

 jagged lava and black sand, like the neighbouring district of 

 Puna, once as fair as Hilo ? Such questions suggested them- 

 selves as they nightly watched the nearing glare, till the 

 fiery waves met with obstacles which piled them up in 

 hillocks, eight miles from Hilo, and the suspense was 

 over. Only gigantic causes can account for the gigantic 

 phenomena of this lava-flow. The eruption travelled forty 

 miles in a straight line, or sixty including sinuosities. It was 

 from one to three miles broad, and from 5 ft. to 200 ft. deep, 

 according to the contours of the mountain-slopes over which it 

 flowed. It lasted for thirteen months, pouring out a torrent 

 of lava which covered nearly three hundred square miles of 

 land, and whose volume was estimated at 38,000,000,000 

 cubic feet ! In 1859 lava-fountains 400 ft. in height, and 

 with nearly equal diameter, played on the summit of Mauna 

 Loa. This eruption ran fifty miles to the sea in eight days, 



