344 W. T. BRIGHAM ON THE VOLCANIC PHENOMENA 



rough, and water drips through in many places. The floor is tolerably even and level and 

 covered thinly with a black mould. This seems to have been one of those gigantic bubbles 

 common in all lava streams ; but half a mile beyond are two caves of less simple form, both 

 occurring in the solid compact lava a few rods apart and half a mile west of the first cave. 

 The more westerly one contains a pool of fine cool water, perfectly fresh, although on a level 

 with the sea and but a few hundred feet from the shore. As the water extends the whole 

 width of the cave, about one hundred feet, it is not easily accessible, but at a short distance 

 from the entrance, which is fifty feet perhaps in height, the walls contract until only a low arch 

 is left, hardly high enough to admit the passage of a canoe. The water is said to be forty 

 feet deep, natives diving and bringing up stones from that depth. The other cave between 

 the two former is much more remarkable ; the water which fills it is of a most remarkable 

 clearness. A scum of some insoluble white substance, of such tenuity as to render futile all 

 attempts to collect it for analysis, usually covers the surface when the wind does not blow 

 into the mouth of the cave. A few yards from the shore, where the water was thirty feet 

 deep, the smallest pebbles could be seen with great distinctness. The shore-line of this 

 reservoir was one hundred and eighty feet long. The entrance was formed by a low arch 

 traversed by a narrow dyke, and seemed to have been opened by the falling away of a mass 

 of rock which now forms an embankment of the pool which is above the sea-level. At 

 Haena the shore road ends in rock wall, and the only passage along the western coast is by 



water. 



The district of Halelea which extends from Haena to Mauna Pueo, a distance of fifteen 

 miles, is the most fertile and best watered on the Hawaiian Islands ; and eastward of Waibli 

 the valleys are wider and the ridges lower, more rounded and covered with a deeper soil, 

 rendering this a region admirably adapted for agricultural purposes, although the frequent 

 rains, extending over nine months of the year, are said to injure certain crops. Hanalei is 

 reputed the place on all the group where the rain falls oftenest and most abundantly. The 

 upper ridges are heavily timbered, and four or five miles above Hanalei the soil becomes 

 black and marshy, and the Ohia trees (Metrosideros polymorpha) attain a circumference of 

 twenty-five feet three feet from the ground. Further than this the natives consider the way 

 to the summit impracticable, owing to the closeness of the vegetation and the swampy 

 nature of the ground. 



Kalihikai and Kalihiwai are valleys of little depth, well adapted to the cultivation of rice 

 and kalo from the deep fertile soil, and abundant supply of water. Here, as elsewhere when 

 not occupied by trees, the soil of the ridges is red, and when wet is very clayey and slip- 

 pery ; it supports a coarse grass, not very nourishing to the cattle. 1 At Kilauea, six miles 

 east of Hanalei in the district of Koolaii, the coast is an abrupt pali of inconsiderable height, 

 and of an intense red color ; a small island near the shore has been considered the remains 

 of an ancient coast crater, but is probably only a portion of the cliff which has been cut ofi 

 by the waves, an agent which the natives say is constantly reducing its size. In many 



l In the Journal of the Boston Soc. of Nat. Hist., vol. iv. but that the reef has been elevated, and the inclined strata of 



r, 147 Mr J P Couthouyhas described the stratification in coral refuse, sand, and soil are the combined result of wash irom 



this neighborhood near the shore, and expresses the opinion the valleys and sand and coral fragments driven in from the 



that "These lamina were evidently formed by successive sea by storms of unusual violence. It must be remembered 



horizontal depositions, but have since been tilted up so as to that this is on the windward shore, and peculiarly liable to 



dip about 5° north to the sea." From a careful examination incursions of the sea as well as rain torrents, 

 of the place I am convinced that no tilting has taken place, 



