OF THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. 347 



with black basaltic rock, lying in huge blocks, averaging more than a cubic foot in size. 

 There were no scorite about the crater. The lavas were ejected, and subsequently cinders 

 were thrown out, the decomposition of which covered the exterior with earth. The rock 

 resembles that about Koloa. 



"A little to the east of north from the old crater, there are two hills, of oblono- form, and 

 about one hundred and eighty feet high. The near one (B) contains three craters, and the 

 other (A) two. These are alike in their red, earth-covered declivities, unfurrowed by a single 

 ravine or depression. The central crater in B, has a diameter of a hundred yards. On one 

 side the lava is piled up in columns, somewhat as in the old crater ; the bottom of the cavity 

 is very evenly concave, and covered with red earth, like the exterior. The western crater 

 is about half the diameter of the central, and has an earthy margin around the shallow cup- 

 shaped cavity. The rock crops out in one place, and shows the same features as above 

 described. Ejected cinders probably covered the lavas, as in other instances ; the red color 

 is the result of decomposition setting free the iron in a state of red oxide. 



"In A, the larger crater of the summit is nearly two hundred feet across. The same red 

 earth characterizes it inside and out. The smaller crater lies adjoining, and is forty feet 

 across, and twelve deep. The walls around consist of cellular lava in layers which appear 

 to have flowed from the larger crater; the rock is the same as that of the plains below. On 

 one side of this small crater there is an entrance to a cavern which appeared to run down 

 the hill ; it could not be traced beyond thirty feet, on account of the rocks that had fallen 

 in from above. The entrance is eight feet high and fifteen wide, and the walls are, in part, 

 incrusted with lava stalactites. The cavity appears to indicate that a stream of lava had 

 flowed from the small crater. There is still another depression on the western slope of this 

 volcanic hill, that may have been a third crater." At present the large sand-hills on the 

 shore have reached D, and partly filled it. 



Near these craters the sand-drift has formed large deposits more or less consolidated, 

 which have been worn into the most grotesque forms, sometimes resembling branching coral 

 both in color and hardness. 



The blowholes on the shore cliffs have attracted the attention of all travellers. At half- 

 tide, during a heavy sea, the largest one throws up a column of water to a height of over 

 sixty feet, from an orifice five feet in diameter ; and the effect of the air rushing through 

 the small crevices is very startling to the bystander, who feels the rock tremble beneath him, 

 with groans and shrill shrieks, as the surf comes thundering into its midst. These caves are 

 sometimes bubbles in the lava stream, and sometimes seem to have been formed by the 

 washing away of loose scorice underlying the solid lava. 



All the lava of this neighborhood is dark-red or brownish-black ferruginous basalt of solid 

 appearance, and contains very little chrysolite. Near a small brook in the village of Kolda, 

 the lava assumes a prismatic structure, the prisms being from ten to eighteen inches in 

 diameter, having from five to seven sides, and are more regular than any others seen on 

 Kauai. 1 Horizontal fractures are flat instead of convex, and the part adjoining these trans- 

 verse fissures, is harder than the interior, and forms projections on the sides of the exposed 

 columns; but where the ends are exposed to the weather they are convex from the abrasion 

 of the edges. 



1 My friend Mr. Sanford B. Dole, a resident, informs me, since the above was written, that the columnar structure is 

 much more perfect near Huleia north of the Koloa Ridge. 



