7^ . I'Cilaiiea and Manna Loa. 



widened by lateral outgushings, divided into several channels, swayed to the right and left, and 

 raised to great heights by pushing up from below and heaping mass after mass upon what had been its 

 upper stratum. Often when the stream had been flowing briskly and brilliantly at the end, it would 

 suddenly harden and cool, and for several days remain inactive. At length, however, immense areas 

 of the solidified lava, four, five or six miles above the end of tlie stream, are seeu in motion — cones 

 are uncapped — domes crack — hills and ridges of scoriae move and clink — immense slaVjs of lava are 

 raised vertically or tilted in every direction, while a low sullen crash is heard from below. While 

 you gaze in mute amazement, and feel tlie solid mass of rock, often thirty, fifty, or seventy feet thick, 

 moving under >our feet, the struggling lava oozes out through ten thousand orifices and fissures 

 over a field of some four or five square miles. More than once have I been on such a field, and 

 heard, and seen, and felt more than is here or can be described. And yet the action of the lava is 

 so slow, in the conditions described, that there is no fear, and little danger to one well acquainted 

 with such phenomena. 



During the night of the 29th of January, the molten stream poured continuoush- over a preci- 

 pice of fifty feet, into a deep, dry basin half filled with flood-wood. The angle down which this fire 

 cataract flowed, was about seventy-five degrees : the lava was divided into two, three, and sometimes 

 four channels from one to four yards wide, and two or three feet deep. The flow was continuous 

 down the face of this precipice from two p.m. until ten the next morning when we left. During the 

 night the immense basin under the fall was filled, the precipice converted into an inclined plane of 

 about four degrees, and the burning stream was urging its way along the rocky channel below. 

 But the scene on the night of the 12th of February was, in some respects, more gorgeous still, as it 

 combined the element of water with that of fire. A stream of lava from twenty to forty yards wide 

 had followed the rocky and precipitous bed of a river, until it was two miles in advance of the main 

 lava-flow, which was nearly two miles broad. Beating our way through the thicket we came upon 

 the terminus of this narrow stream of lava, near sunset. It was intensely active, and about to pour 

 over a precipice of thirty-nine feet (by measurement), into a basin of deep w^ater, large enough to 

 float a ship. Before dark the lava began to fall into the water, first in great broken masses, like 

 clots of blood ; but in a short time in continuous, incandescent streams, which increased from hour 

 to hour in volume, in brilliancy, and in rate of motion. [See Plate XLI, which represents exactly 

 similar action at a later period.] The water boiled and raged with fearful vehemence, raising its 

 domes and cones of ebullition ten feet high, and reflecting the red masses of fusion like a sea of 

 fire mingled with blood. 



We encamped on the bank of the river, about fifty feet below the fiery cataract, and exactly 

 opposite the basin of water into which the lava was flowing, twenty feet only from its rim. The face of 

 this precipice was an angle of about eighty degrees, and the lava flowed down it briskly and continuously 

 in streams from one to four feet deep, during the night. Before morning this whole body of water, some 

 twenty feet deep, was converted into steam, and the precipice became a genth' inclined plane. 



To make the fact that the fissure did not extend to the base of the mountain 

 more clear, Mr. Coan again writes under date of October 22, 1856; he had then visited 

 the flow seven times : 



A fracture or fractures occurred near the summit of the mountain, which extended in an 

 irregular line from the terminal point, say five miles down the northeast slope of the mountain. 

 From this serrated and yawning fissure, for two to thirty yards wide, the molten flood rushed out and 

 spread laterally for four or five miles, filling the ravines, flowing over the plains, and covering all 

 those high regions, from ten to one or two hundred feet deep. Along this extended fissure, elon- 

 gated cones were formed at the points of the greatest activity. These cones appear as if split through 

 their larger diameter, the inner sides being perpendicular or overhanging, jagged and hung with 



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