ERUPTION OF THE HAWAIIAN VOLCANOES. 581 



places we were obliged to deflect widely from the old track to avoid fissures. For several 

 miles the cracks were so numerous and so wide, that a stranger would be utterly unable to 

 find his way through the meshes of this mural net-work of fractures. Our guide zigzaged 

 us everywhere, our animals often demurring, trembling, and refusing to go. The whole 

 atmosphere was filled with sulphurous smoke, through which the sun shone with sanguine 

 rays. After passing most of these fissures, I requested my guide to turn to the left and 

 follow the line of fissure seaward, hoping to find the locality of a disputed eruption which 

 it was affirmed by some and denied by others had taken place in that wide and wild field 

 of ancient lavas. After an hour of hard search amidst hills and ridges of aa and fields of 

 pahoehoe, we found a veritable eruption. The fused lavas had been thrown out of the fis- 

 sures at five different points, on a line of less than a mile in length. The largest patch was 

 one thousand feet long and six hundred feet wide, with an average depth of ten feet, and 

 with a steaming and tumulated surface. This series of small eruptions is about eleven miles 

 southwest of Kilauea, and it shows distinctly the subterranean path taken by the igneous 

 flood which left that seething cauldron on the night after the rending earthquake of April 

 2d. That shock doubtless opened a pathway for the struggling fires, and they went off in 

 a southwestern course under the highlands of Ka-u, uniting with the subterranean fires of 

 Mauna Loa, and finding a fuller vent at Kahuku on the seventh of April. This is the theory, 

 and it is rendered probable by the great and constant trembling of the earth along that 

 whole line, by subterranean noises heard by the people of Kapapala, Keaiwa, Waiohinu, and 

 other places, and by the issuing of steam at several points from fissures along that line." 



When it was found that Kilauea had discharged its contents, the first supposition was that 

 the course of the eruption of 1840, or towards the southeast, had been followed, and this was 

 strengthened by the report of fire seen at the bottom of some of the numerous pit craters 

 on that line ; but while it is possible that lava may have been injected in earthquake fis- 

 sures opened in this direction even so far as the pit craters described on page 429, the prob- 

 able path was that indicated by Mr. Coan, which is apparently the same as that of the erup- 

 tion of 1823. When Rev. William Ellis went over the ground the next year he found deep 

 fissures extending in a southwest direction, some of them ten or twelve feet across, and 

 emitting sulphureous vapors at a high temperature. 1 In one place, where the chasm was 

 about three feet wide, a large quantity of lava had been recently vomited. 2 A native assured 

 him that the lava had first been noticed three weeks before his visit. I do not agree with 

 Mr. Coan in supposing that the lava from Kilauea and that from Mauna Lua effected a juncture 

 before reaching the surface. It seems more probable that the former passed into the sea 

 near Punaluu, as did that of 1823, not appearing above ground except at Kapapala, The 

 fact that the openings on the side of Mauna Lua above Kahuku were much higher than 

 those mentioned at Kapapala, seems to indicate conclusively that the lava of Kilauea did not 

 flow out in the stream that deluged the height above Kalae. The lava of both of these vol- 

 canic vents is so similar that nothing can be inferred of its individual source. The ancient, 

 commingled flows of lava which cover the ground for some ten or fifteen miles south and 

 west of Kilauea, came, some from that crater by vents similar to that near Kapapala, and 

 others from Mauna Lua, and they are so identical in substance and appearance, that their 

 position alone distinguishes them. 



1 Ellis's Polynesian Researches, Vol. IV, p. 220, et seq. 2 See plate in A Tour through Hawaii, by Rev. William 

 London, 1859. Ellis. London. 1827, p. 203. 



MEMOIKS BOST. SOC. NAT. HIST. Vol. I, Tt. 4. J4'j 



