424 



TV. T. BRIGHAM ON THE VOLCANIC PHENOMENA 



than a foot below the surface, so that we could work it with our sticks. It was blood-colored 

 and very viscid, and exhibited the same motions as the larger lake, — the currents to the 

 sides, and the cracking and bubbling, but on a much smaller scale. Fire was visible at night 

 at various points between this and the Halemaumau. Near this lake my kanaka picked 

 and brought me a poor Rumex which was growing in a steam crack on the hard black lava 

 which had run over from this lake last winter. 



The next night I slept on the upper bank, while several of our party spent the night in 

 the crater. They could not approach the place where we had slept the night before, owing 

 to the change of wind, and during the night the whole shelf fell in with a loud noise. This 

 formed a small island which was soon broken and melted by the boiling lava. 



August 22d, I returned to Kilauea from Hilo, having since my last visit explored the 

 district of Puna, and the pit craters on the flow of 1840. I brought with me surveying 

 instruments and a photographic apparatus, and after spending a day in selecting stations and 

 drilling my kanakas in chaining, commenced the survey from the house on the northern 

 bank. Going eastward the ground was covered with bushes and full of steam cracks which 

 made chaining very difficult. Waldron's Ledge, so called after the purser of the United States 

 Exploring Expedition, is a continuation of the wall which bounds the plain near the northern 

 sulphur banks, and on meeting the crater's edge it turns to the east towards a large lateral 

 crater called Poli-o-Kehioe} enclosing this with a circular wall four thousand feet in diameter, 



Fig. 41. Poli-o-Keawe from the Western bank of Kilauea. 



and deeper than the main crater at present. Descending the steep precipice we came upon 

 the gravelly isthmus which connects the two craters. In the midst of this a lava stream 

 issued in 1832, and ran down into both. Its appearance is still fresh, and where it 

 descended into Kilauea over a precipice of 60° and more than two hundred feet high, it has 

 formed a fine lava-fall perfectly continuous, although for a short distance it is nearly per- 

 pendicular. It is hollow, and of small volume. 



The ascent from this isthmus is not so steep on the southern side, and above, the soil is 

 gravelly and barren, supporting but few plants. The wall of Kilauea is much cracked and 

 broken on this side and is also much lower. The second lateral crater, Kilauea iki, on the 



1 This is the crater called Little Kilauea on Wilkes' chart. 



