ERUPTION OF THE HAWAIIAN VOLCANOES. 575 



the side of the pali, burying in a minute thirty-one human beings, many hundred head of 

 cattle, and entire flocks of goats, and ending, four miles from its beginning, in a mighty 

 river of mud. Before reaching this mud-flow from Reed's house, we passed two considerable 

 streams of muddy water, of a reddish-yellow color, emitting a strong odor of clay, such as 

 may be perceived in potteries. Both streams have their origin in the land-slide of the first 

 valley. When we passed them again, two days later, they had nearly disappeared ; they 

 evidently owed their origin to the drainage of the fallen mass. The mud-flow is met with 

 three miles from Reed's. It projects itself from the spurs of the hills two miles down in the 

 plain ; begins at once with a thickness of six feet, which, towards the middle, where it forms 

 a small hill, rises to thirty feet; averages about three fourths of a mile in width, and con- 

 tracts towards its end. From this end a long queue of boulders bears witness to the violent 

 action of a torrent which shot out of the mud after it was deposited, and which has since 

 perpetuated itself in a stream of some size, quite muddy, and emitting the above-mentioned 

 pottery odor when we saw it first, on April 20th, but perfectly clear and inodorous when we 

 passed it three days later. A little higher up a koa grove gives still stronger evidence of 

 the strength of the propelling force. The trees first seized are snapped off and prostrate, 

 yet the mud in that place is only a few feet deep. The mass itself is nothing but the loose 

 red soil of the mountain-side, with a good sprinkling of round boulders, with here and there 

 stumps of trees, ferns, hapuu and amaumau, and entire lehua trunks. Near the lower end 

 a vigorous, healthy taro-plant stood erect in the mud, as if it had been planted there. From 

 the sides of the mass protruded portions of the bodies of many cattle and goats, over- 

 whelmed in their flight ; a gain of one second in time might have saved them. The surface 

 of the mud in this lower course was rather smooth, as if it had been forced down by the 

 agency of water, and it was still so soft that the feet sank deep into it. 



" After we had flanked it for some distance along the side of the hill, the mud became 

 solid enough to bear our weight, and we walked upon it to the head of the pali. The sur- 

 face gradually became more rough ; the boulders increased, and detached portions of earth 

 and stone were scattered beyond its borders, which also flattened out gradually. The as- 

 cent soon became steep, and here, on a short spur, just in the middle of the mud, stands 

 a native house on an island of grass and kalo, flanked by two trees. A poor woman who 

 happened to be in it at the time of the outbreak, escaped the awful fate which doomed the 

 remaining members of her family, and was removed from her perilous situation a few days 

 after, when the crust had become solid enough to bear a man's weight. 



" As we went on, the mass became more rough and hard, tree trunks and boulders in- 

 creased, even angular rocks appeared, until at last the mud ceased entirely and gave place 

 to a sea of huge rocks, all angular and exhibiting fresh fractures, large trunks of trees 

 crushed between and under them, and streamlets of fresh clear water meandering between 

 them. This continued for the last three hundred feet of rise, and ended in a perpendicular 

 wall of solid rock, some twenty feet high, after having climbed which, we reposed under the 

 refreshing shade of tall fern trees, for we had entered at once the great pulu forest. Seated 

 on the trunk of a prostrate tree, we could survey the whole field of devastation we had 

 just traversed. Immediately at our feet the rocky frame-work of the pali was torn up, and 

 its contents turned topsy-turvy in dire confusion. The rocky wall we had just climbed, 

 continued itself until it reached the sides of the two flanking hills. A perpendicular cut in 

 the sides of the latter laid open some forty feet of red earth and conglomerate. On look- 



