Flow oj iS^g. J "J 



into the air which cooled in falling About three hours afterward we returned to the same 



place, and found that the action had greatly increased. Gases were escaping at two other points 

 [Fig. 52, B and c] a few rods below the point first seen. Pieces of lava were thrown as high as one 

 hundred and fifty feet, and at the lowest of the three points [Fig. 52, .\] there was a fountain twenty- 

 five feet high. The bits of lava thrown up cooled as they fell, and had already formed craters ten 

 feet high around two of the points where gases were escaping 



Prof. Haskell followed the stream down some distance, and was struck with the 

 great rapidity of its motion. The slope was considerable, and cascades and cataradls 

 followed each other. The width of the stream here was from twenty to one lumdred 

 feet. His description of the formation of aa (which he does not distingixish from 

 clinkers) is as follows: 



The clinkers are always [generally] formed by deep streams, and generally by wide ones, 

 which flow sluggishly, become dammed up in front by the cooling of the lava, and in some instances 

 cooled over the top, forming, as it were a pond or lake. As the stream augments beneath, the barriers 

 in front and the crust on the surface are broken up, and the pieces are rolled forward and coated over 

 with melted lava which cools and adheres to them more or less. Then from the force of the melted 

 lava behind and nnileriieath, the stream rolls over and over itself. In this way a bank of clinkers 



ten to forty feet high, resembling the embankment 

 of a railroad, is formed. Often at the end of the 

 stream no lifjuid lava can be seen, and the only evi- 

 dence of motion is the rolling of the jagged rocks 

 of all sizes, down the front of the embankment. '"^ 



In another letter Prof. Haskell writes 



under date of June 22, 1S59: 



I ha\e just returned from a second visit to the 

 scene of the lava-flood on Mauna Loa. There is 

 one fact which I observed that I desire to com- 

 FiG. 52. L.wA FOUNTAIN OF FKBRUARv lo, 1859. uiunicate to you. The real source of the flow is 



about four miles above the two craters which in 

 February seemed to be the source. From this point down to the two craters, a crack in the moun- 

 tain can be traced nearly all the way. At first it is no more than two inches in width, but gradually 

 increases to two feet. At the present time heat can be perceived in the crack within a few feet of the 

 higest point. But little lava has issued from this crack above the two craters. During the first 

 quarter of a mile lava has oozed out in different places a few rods apart, to the amount of three or 

 four cubic feet. Below this point there is a stream, now cold of course, a few rods in width. In this 

 flow, therefore, there is no doubt that there is a continuous crack in the side of the mountain for four 

 miles. How much farther this crack extends down the mountain cannot be ascertained, now at 

 least, for the craters are still sending forth immense volumes of sulphurous vapors, and the stream 

 of lava is still flowing below them. This stream, however, is much smaller than it was in February, 

 and is entirely subterranean for the first twenty-five or thirty miles, except that there are a few holes 

 where the running lava can he seen. In some instances this stream is as much as forty feet below 

 the surface. 



During this trip I went to the top of Mauna Loa. There is no perceptible action in the crater 

 of Mokuaweoweo. The source of the present flow is probably 1 1 ,000 feet above the level of the sea.''*' 



^•' .\nn.Ticun Journal, xxviii, 66. "Ibid, 284. [45s] 



