i6 Kilama and Maitiia Loa. 



the flow of 1859, aud then followed that up more than eight miles. The surface was 

 black and shining and quite brittle, and as we walked over it, it sounded like a hard 

 frozen crust of snow. The outer surface to the depth of nearly half an inch was \^ry 

 porous and readily separated from the harder interior. In many places the lava had 

 flowed up hill, dammed up behind b^- its rapidlv hardening crust; and it sometimes 

 attained an elevation of twenty-five or thirty feet without breaking from its pipe. 

 Bubbles of great size, some still perfect, others broken in, were verj- common, and in 

 some of the caves thus formed ferns were growing in the moist atmosphere. On the 

 surface cracks also we found a Polypodium^ but lichens were rare. Here and there 

 we came to a deep round hole, and by its side la}^ the bleaching tree that had been 

 burned off. The clumps of shrubs often approached within twenty feet of the flow, 

 but in other places they had been killed to a distance of fifty feet, probably by gases, 

 as the}^ were not at all charred. 



Immense beds of a-a with almost perpendicular sides, crossed our way, some- 

 times at the edge, sometimes directly across the flow, but always more or less level on 

 top. The roughness of this a-a was greater than anj- we had met before; and we 

 needed the raw-hide sandals we had prepared for such places, as well as thick buckskin 

 gloves to protect our hands from the sharp needle-like points. Often the deep canal 

 which the fiery river had made for itself, was visible through large breaks in the 

 covering crust, and on approaching a hole of this nature I found myself on the verge 

 of a gulf a hundred feet deep, of unknown length, and, as nearly as I could see, two 

 hundred feet wide. The bottom was rough and cracked, and mainly covered with the 

 fragments from the roof and sides, fallen since the lava had ceased to flow. The crust 

 on which I stood was but a few inches thick, and although I had tested it with my 

 staff before, I thought it safest to lie down and crawl until I had got several rods from 

 the hole, and I did not venture near another. 



The roughness of the flow at last turned us aside to the right on to the old 



pahoehoe which is covered thinly with grass and small bushes along the numerous 



cracks. Mauna Loa remained clear all day, and the summit did not seem very far off. 



Indeed at seven o'clock in the evening when we decided to camp for the night, had it 



not been that we were still within the limit of vegetation, I should have been inclined 



to push on and reach the summit that night. The whole surface of the mountain is 



undulating, and as we reached what seemed to be the top, we found a shallow valley 



and another hill beyond, and so it was all the way. We got the most sheltered place 



we could find, as we had no tent, and there were not enough bushes to make a hut; 



Kaakakawai shot a goat, and we ate our supper. The wind was quite cold, and we 



were not warm enough to sleep well, and while we were awake we saw a most novel 



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