OF THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. 385 



Mauna Loa. We went nearly east until we struck the flow of 1859, and then followed that 

 up more than eight miles. The surface was black and shining and quite brittle, and as we 

 walked over it, it sounded like a hard frozen crust of snow. The outer surface to the depth 

 of half an inch, was very porous and readily separated from the harder interior. In many 

 places the lava had flowed up hill, dammed up behind by its rapidly hardening crust ; and 

 it sometimes attained an elevation of twenty-five or thirty feet without breaking from its 

 pipe. Bubbles of great size, some still perfect, others broken in, were very common, and in 

 some of the caves thus formed, ferns were growing in the moist atmosphere. On the sur- 

 face cracks also we found a PoJypodium, but lichens were scarce. Here and there we came 

 to a deep round hole, and by its side lay the bleaching tree that had been burned off. The 

 clumps of shrubs often approached within twenty feet of the flow, but in other places they 

 had been killed to a distance of fifty feet, probably by gases, as they were not at all charred. 



Immense beds of a-a with almost perpendicular sides, crossed our way, sometimes at the 

 edge, sometimes directly across the flow, but always more or less level on top. The rough- 

 ness of this a-a was greater than any we had met before ; and we needed the raw-hide 

 sandals we had prepared for such places, as well as thick buckskin gloves to protect our 

 hands from the sharp needle-like points. Often the deep canal which the fiery river had 

 burned for itself, was visible through large breaks in the covering crust, and on approaching 

 a hole of this nature, I found myself on the verge of a gulf a hundred feet deep, of un- 

 known length, and, as nearly as I could see, two hundred feet wide. The bottom was rough 

 and cracked, and covered with the fragments from the roof and sides, fallen since the lava 

 had ceased to flow. The crust on which I stood was but a few inches thick, and although I 

 had tested it with my staff before, I thought it safest to lie down and crawl until I had got 

 several rods from the hole, and I did not venture near another. 



The roughness of this flow at last turned us aside to the right on to the old pahoehoe, 

 which is covered thinly with grass and small bushes along the numerous cracks. Mauna 

 L6a remained clear all day, and the summit did not seem very far off. Indeed, at seven 

 o'clock in the evening when we decided to camp for the night, had it not been that we were 

 still within the limit of vegetation, I should have been inclined to push on and reach the 

 summit that night. The whole surface of the mountain is undulating, and as we reached 

 what seemed to be the top, we found a shallow valley and another hill beyond, and so it 

 was all the way. We got the most sheltered place we could find, as we had no tent, and 

 there were not enough bushes to make a hut ; Kaakakawai shot a goat, and we ate our 

 supper. The wind was quite cold, and we were not warm enough to sleep well, and while 

 we were awake we saw a most novel sight, — what I may call an inverted sunset. The clouds 

 had risen rapidly until they quite covered the plain and dashed their misty van against the 

 base of the three giants, quite cutting them off from the rest of the world except Haleakala 

 which towered above the mist. The surface of the clouds was rough and in constant motion, 

 and as the sun sank into it, it seemed to kindle into flames of the most brilliant colors. AH 

 the golden canopy we usually see above the sun, was below it here, and above, all was clear 

 The clouds swept up nearly eight thousand feet, but no higher, and we were soon asleep 

 beyond their limits. 



The morning was clear and not very cold, and the view of Hualalai and Kea was very 

 grand. At seven o'clock we had eaten our morning meal, put out our fire, and started on 

 our way. The craters of 1859 were just on our left as we went up, and for two miles the 



MEMOIKS BOST. SOC. NAT. HIST. Vol. I. Pt. 3. 98 



