Eruption of [840^ Kilauca. 



51 



one dared to approach near it, and travellers on the main road, which lay along the verge of the crater, 

 feeling the ground tremble beneath their feet, fled and passed by at a distance. I should be inclined 

 to discredit these statements of the natives, had I not since been to Kilauea and examined it minutely 

 with these reports in view. Every appearance, however, of the crater confirms these reports. 

 Every thing within the cauldron is new. Not a particle of lava remains as it was when I last visited it. 



All has been melted down and recast I will now give a short history of the eruption itself. 



On the 30th of May, the people of Puna obser^-ed the appearance of smoke and fire in the 

 interior, a mountainous and desolate region of that district. Thinking that the fire might be the 

 burning of some jungle, they took little notice of it until the next day. Sabbath, when the meetings 

 in the different villages were thrown into confusion by sudden and grand exhibitions of fire, on a 



,■;i^•:^>^^^5i-^--• 

 Vn'^-"" ' 



FIG. 42. M.\P OF THE REGION OF THE ERUPTION. .\FTER WILKES. 



scale so large and fearful as to leave them no room to doubt the cause of the phenomenon. The fire 

 augmented during the day and night; but it did not seem to flow off rapidly in any direction. All 

 were in consternation, as it was expected that the molten flood would pour itself down from its height 

 of four thousand feet to the coast, and no one knew to what point it would flow, or what devastation 

 would attend its fiery course. On Monday, June ist, the stream began to flow off in a northeasterly 

 direction, and on the following Wednesday, June 3rd, at evening, the burning river reached the sea, 

 having averaged half a mile an hour in its progress. The rapidity of the flow was very unequal, 

 being modified by the inequalities of the surface, over which the stream passed. Sometimes it is 

 supposed to have moved five miles an hour, and at other times, owing to obstructions, making no 

 apparent progress, except in filling up deep valleys, and in swelling over or breaking away hills 

 and precipices. 



But I will return to the source of the eruption. This is in a forest, and in the bottom of an 

 ancient wooded crater, about four hundred feet deep, and probably eight miles ea.st of Kilauea. 

 The region being uninhabited and covered with a thicket, it was some time before the place was dis- 



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