44 



Kih 



aiica a}i~ 



d A/. 



aiiiia 



r. 



t)a. 



hung — apparently so loosely as to threaten falling, at the agitation of a breath. In many places a 

 white curling vapor issued from the sides and summit of the precipice, and in two or three places 

 streams of clay-colored lava, like small waterfalls, extending almost from the top to the bottom, had 

 cooled evidently at a very recent period. 



Lieutenant Maiden, of H. B. M. S. Blonde, who accompanied Mr. Stewart, made 

 a plan of the crater which is here reproduced, with the sketch of the crater by Robert 

 Dampier, the artist of the Blonde. Maiden calculated the height of the upper cliff 

 from the black ledge at nine hundred feet, making the whole depth of the crater 1500 

 feet; and the circtimference of the crater at its bottom, from five to seven miles, and 

 at its top from eight to ten miles. On the evening of the twentj'-ninth, after terrific 



Pig. 37. DAMPIER'S VIEW OF KII.ArKA IN 1825. 



noises and tremblings of the ground, "a dense column of heavj' black smoke was seen 

 rising from the crater directly in front of us [ Lord Byron's camp was on the isthmus 

 between the main crater and Kilauea iki], the subterranean struggle ceased, and im- 

 mediatel}' after flames burst from a large cone, near which we had been in the morning, 

 and which then appeared to have been long inactive. Red-hot stones, cinders and 

 ashes, were also propelled to a great height with immense violence; and shortly after 

 the molten lava came boiling up, and flowed down the sides of the cone, and over the 

 surrounding scoriae, in two beautifully curved streams.""' At the same time a whole 

 lake opened over an extent two miles in circumference. 



In December of the same year Rev. Artemus Bishop found the crater much 

 fuller than when he had visited it with Rev. W. Ellis in 1823. There were many 

 cones from fifty to one hundred feet high on a surface about four hundred feet higher 



'- Byron, Narrative of the Voyage of H. M. S. Blonde to the Sandwich Islands in 1824-1.S25, p. 190. I^ondon, 1S27. 



[422] 



