ERUPTION OF THE HAWAIIAN VOLCANOES. 565 



continued at intervals nearly eight months. The shocks commenced early in the morning ; 

 the first was followed at an interval of an hour by a second, and then by others at shorter 

 intervals and with increasing violence, until at one o'clock p. M. a very severe shock was 

 felt all through Ka-u and Kona, the districts which have suffered most by these disturb- 

 ances. From this time until the 10th of April the earth was in an almost constant tremor. 

 In the district of Kona as many as fifty or sixty distinct shocks were counted in one day; 

 in Ka-u over three hundred in the same time ; while near Kilauea and about Kapapala it 

 was difficult to count them. It is said that during the early part of April two thousand 

 distinct shocks occurred in Ka-u, or an average of one hundred and forty or more each day. 

 The culminating shock occurred on Thursday, April 2d, at twenty minutes before four in 

 the afternoon. Every stone wall, almost every house, in Ka-u, was overturned, and the 

 whole was done in an instant. A gentleman riding found his horse lying flat under him 

 before he could think of the cause, and persons were thrown to the ground in an equally 

 unexpected manner. Mr. F. S. Lyman was at Keaiwa, near the point where the motion was 

 greatest, between that and the centre of vibration, which was not very distant, as the angle 

 of emergence was almost 90°, or nearly coincident with the seismic vertical, and he reports 

 as follows : — 



" First the earth swayed to and fro north and south, then east and west, round and round, 

 then up and down and in every imaginable direction, for several minutes; everything crash- 

 ing around us ; the trees thrashing about as if torn by a mighty rushing wind. It was im- 

 possible to stand, we had to sit on the ground, bracing with hands and feet to keep from 

 rolling over. In the midst of it we saw burst out from the pali, about a mile and a half to 

 the north of us, what we supposed to be an immense river of molten lava (which after- 

 wards proved to be red earth), which rushed down its headlong course and across the plain 

 below, apparently bursting up from the ground, throwing rocks high in the air, and swal- 

 lowing up everything in its way, trees, houses, cattle, horses, goats, and men, all in an in- 

 stant, as it were. It went three miles in not more than three minutes' time, and then ceased. 

 Some one pointed to the shore, and we ran to where we could see it. After the hard shaking 

 had ceased, and all along the sea-shore, from directly below us to Punaluu, about three or 

 four miles, the sea was boiling and foaming furiously, all red, for about an eighth of a mile 

 from the shore, and the shore was covered by the sea. We went right over to Nahala's hill 

 with the children and our natives, to where we could see both ways; expecting every 

 moment to be swallowed up by the lava from beneath ; for it sounded as if it was surging 

 and rushing under our feet all the time, and there were frecpient shakes. In places the 

 ground was all cracked up, and every rock or pali that could fall had fallen. At Hilea we 

 saw a small stream of black smoking lava, ami outside of Punaluu a long black point of 

 lava slowly pushed out to sea and soon disappeared." 



Ten miles to the southwest of Keaiwa, at Waiohinu, the great stone church was levelled 

 to the ground, and nearly all the other buildings were destroyed. The earth opened all 

 through the district, and often left dangerous fissures, although it usually closed. The 

 meizoseismic curve (or that of maximum overthrow) seems to have been elliptical, with 

 a major axis of about ten miles in a southwest and northeast, direction, while the isoseismic 

 curves were rather crescent shaped, having their convexity towards Mauna L6a. 1 lie plain 

 between the mountains of Hawaii contains a structure well adapted to indicate the direc- 

 tion, force, and emergence of an earthquake wave — the Temple of I'mi. but no one has 



MEMOIRS BOST. SOC. NAT. HIST. Vol. I, I't. 4. ' ' -' 



