416 W- T. BRIGIIAM ON THE VOLCANIC PHENOMENA 



the night. Old Vulcan seemed to have forsaken his furnace, buried his fires, and retired to 

 his deep, dark caverns, leaving his awful forge surrounded with smouldering masses of scoriae 

 and slag. At the time of my visit in August, the great dome was so elevated as almost to 

 overtop the lower parts of the outer walls of Kilauea and look out upon the surrounding 

 country. 



"In April and May 1849, travellers upon the borders of Kilauea were startled by 

 explosions and detonations from cones on the great dome. A party lodging in the 

 hut on the upper banks were greatly terrified during one whole night, by hissings, bellow- 

 ings, and sharp and loud detonations, sometimes like the discharge of whole ranks of 

 musketeers, sometimes like field artillery, and sometimes like awful deep-toned thunder, 

 roaring and reverberating around the adamantine walls of the dark cavern. These bellow- 

 ings were repeated hourly through the night, and were attended by a brilliant column of 

 red hot lava thrown perpendicularly from an orifice in the apex of the dome to the height of 

 some fifty or sixty feet. At other times red-hot stones were projected with great force into 

 the air and sent whizzing like fiery meteors through the gloom of night. As the glow of 

 this scene a little abated, a stream of burning- lava was disgorged from the orifice of a lateral 

 cone on the ridge of the dome, flowing down to its base and winding along upon the dark 

 substratum like a fiery serpent. Fire was seen through some of the fissures in the dome, 

 and nearly the whole bottom of Kilauea was quivering and cracking with heat ; so much so, 

 that travellers feared to descend into any part of the crater. 



"Since the time just mentioned no remarkable phenomena have been noticed in the 

 crater. It has been for the most part in a quiescent state, with more or less steam and 

 smoke, and occasionally opening a small red eyelid, or letting loose a few fire-flies upon the 

 wings of the night. 1 



"During December of 1850, the smoke and steam are said to have much in- 



creased ; and the occasional throe of an earthquake indicates that all subterranean 



action has not ceased. The sulphur beds remain much as formerly, except, perhaps, that the 



bank within the crater has less heat and activity, and the one above, or near the hut, has a 



little increase of heat. 



"There is now one cone feebly active at a little distance from the dome in the 

 crater. Those on the dome are inactive." 2 



Mr. Coan, after a visit to Kilauea the next year, writes under date of July 30th : 

 " I had visited Kilauea in March and found the action in the crater much increased. 

 On this occasion the action was still more intense. The great dome, one mile and a half in 

 circuit and several hundred feet high, has now lost its keystone, and the massive arch is 

 fallen in. The orifice on the summit is two hundred feet in diameter, and through this 

 orifice you look directly upon the raging fire below. On one side the dome is rent from 

 the base to the summit, and through this fissure smoke and lava pass off from the boiling 

 cauldron. 



" This fiery lake, so long concealed by the ponderous dome, is gradually rising and lifting 

 and rending the superincumbent strata of which the great dome is composed, and threaten- 



1 In a letter from Lieut. Henry Eld who accompanied the nearly extinguished. Silliman's Journal [n. s.]. vol. ix., p. 



United States Exploring Expedition in 1840, and again re- 362. 



visited the crater this year, we find that the bottom was much 2 Silliman's Journal [n. s.], vol. xii., p. 80 

 raised, the lava had subsided in the great lake and seemed 



1851. 



1852. 



