420 W. T. BRIGHAM ON THE VOLCANIC PHENOMENA 



Passing over the high cliffs on the north-west, which are the highest part of the circuit, 

 the road leads down by a steep descent of fifty feet to a plain a mile long and three quar- 

 ters of a mile wide, gravelly and covered thinly with dwarf ohia and ohelos, and thickly 

 dotted with small oval or circular fumaroles, from which steam was issuing, not as at the 

 Geysirs in California with great noise, but as a quiet, respectable tea-kettle pours out its 

 vaporous offering. The steam had no odor, and ferns and other plants grew luxuriantly 

 over the openings. On the leeward side of these steam-holes the muddy and tenacious red 

 .soil retained pools of excellent water condensed from the steam. There was no trace of 

 sulphur or acid in it that could be detected by test papers or the taste. The rock through 

 which these cracks passed was completely decomposed from a hard gray clink stone to a red 

 loamy earth, soft and worn smooth by the ascending vapor. It was quite evident that these 

 fumaroles were not originally formed by the vapor, but were simply cracks, through which 

 the steam escaped, and the circular shape resulted from the falling in of the surface gravel 

 and soil. The steam was quite hot, and we saw the remains of several cattle who had gone 

 too near in search of water. 



On the northern edge of this plain are extensive sulphur banks, that is to say, they cover 

 a large space although containing but little sulphur, under a perpendicular ledge of clink 

 stone nearly a hundred feet high. They are simply great piles of the decomposed lava, 

 through which steam and sulphurous vapors constantly escape through a thousand aper- 

 tures, depositing beneath the crust the most beautiful, almost acicular crystals of sulphur 

 The soil formed by the decomposition of the rock by sulphurous vapors is quite unlike that 

 resulting from the action of steam alone ; it is light gray or yellow, and does not form a 

 plastic mud as easily as the latter, which is red and smooth to the touch. In some places 

 the sulphates of oxides of copper, iron, sulphates of soda, lime, and alumina were forming 

 within minute fissures, and the silica thus set free was gradually consolidating the earth into 

 a firm crust whenever the action of the steam ceased, and we could often raise large slabs 

 of this curious conglomerate. Metamorphism was progressing rapidly under the combined 

 influence of heat and moisture. Twigs and leaves were fast passing into the condition of 

 fossils in this hardening earth. All the sulphur found here is deposited from the vapor, and 

 seems to be tolerably pure and is of a light yellow color, indicating the absence of 

 selenium. There would seem at first to be no doubt that this plain has sunk to its present 

 position, as it is surrounded, except towards the crater, by a wall of the same material; but 

 this is not the case. Where the lava-beds of this portion adjoin the other walls of the 

 crater, there is no fault, the strata are continuous, and this plain was once the bed of Kilauea, 

 — a black ledge. 



As soon as our men came up with the blankets, we engaged guides and went down into 

 the crater. The descent was steep and winding, and we passed over several terraces, which 

 were the result of a sinking or falling in, as their strata were inclined and much broken, and 

 came under the grand pali of compact lava figured in the " Narrative of the United States 

 Exploring Exjoedition." 1 A descent of more than four hundred feet brought us to the 

 bottom, and we stepped from a gravelly shelving bank on to a black lava which had broken 

 out last year under the north bank, and overflowed this end of the crater. Where it touched 

 the gravel bank it had glued to its under surface the small fragments of stone, but had not 

 altered their appearance, and all along the edge it was cracked, and laid up on the bank as 



1 Narrative of United States Ex/itoring Expedition, vol. iv., p. 1.1. 



