OF THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. 



429 



bushes I came to a precipice forming the edge of a crater nearly three quarters of a mile 

 in diameter and seven hundred feet deep. The sides were quite perpendicular, and in 



Fig. 44. Pit Crater in Piinn. 



most places impassable. The bottom was level and gravelly, with a thin growth of ohia, and 

 at the western end, directly under the wall, was a much deeper pit, indeed the deepest I 

 have seen on Hawaii. Beyond this was a cone of some size, near which the eruption of 1840 

 reached the surface first, passing under the cone ; (see Fig. 44). Half a mile beyond this is 

 another pit crater, smaller, and covered on the bottom with black lava. Following the line 

 down in a south-easterly direction, I came to the steam cracks, which extend for several 

 hundred feet, and since tradition existed have furnished the natives of the neighborhood 

 with the means of cooking. The pahoehoe has been decomposed into a soft red muddy 

 soil, covered with a hard crust, which may be raised in slabs. Under these are most beau- 

 tiful crystals of sulphur in clusters, but of too fragile a nature to be 

 removed. 



Beyond these cracks was a much larger crater, being elliptical, with 

 a major axis a mile long, and about five hundred feet deep. The 

 perpendicular walls were prismatic in various places, and at the west 

 end were rent asunder, affording an easy descent to the bottom, which 

 was gravelly, level, and free from cracks or holes. The walls of all 

 the craters were compact gray clinkstone in deep strata, like the 

 walls of Kilauea, and no recent lava was visible. Several dykes were 

 seen at right angles to a line from Kilauea to Kapoho. 



Fig. 45. Sulphur crystals. 



MEMOIRS HOST. SOC. MAT. HIST. Vol. I. Pt. 3. 



100 



