i6o Kila7iea and Mauna Loa. 



side of the lava-flow of 1859. Our route led first through a narrow belt of forest, consisting of niamane, 

 ohia and sandalwood trees; then through a scanty vegetation of ohelos, and the beautiful Cyathodcs 

 Tamciamcia-, and at last be\oud the limits of vegetation, without a vestige of moss or lichen, over 

 a waste of pahoehoe lava, traversed by tracts of aa and deep chasms. 



At about two-thirds of the distance towards the summit we passed the rugged crater hill from 

 which the outbreak of 1859 had issued, and here our path was strewed with pumice and "Pele's hair" 

 from that eruption. An enormous quantity of lava was poured forth from the small fissure of this 

 crater, forming a stream from half a mile to two miles wide, and reaching nearh' thirty miles to the 

 ocean at Kiholo. L,ower down I counted eighteen species of ferns and a dozen kinds of phsenogamous 

 plants already growing on this flow. 



Reaching the brink of this vast crater, we found that along it were numerous deep fissures 

 filled with ice and water, making ready for avalanches into the crater. Here, and for a quarter of 

 a mile below, we observed many rocks of different kind from the surface lavas, solid, flinty fragments 

 of apparently the foundation walls, weighing from fifty i^ounds to a ton, which had formerlj' been 

 hurled out during eruptions. I noticed similar rocks around the summit craters of Hualalai. 



At evening the fog lifted and gave us a glimpse into the craters. The central crater [see the 

 plan] was surrounded by almost perpendicular walls, and had a pahoehoe floor streaked with gray 

 sulphur cracks, from hundreds of which there issued columns of steam, and in the south end stood 

 a still smoking cone. South of this central crater there was a high plateau (c), and beyond this 

 high plateau, still farther south, an opening into another crater small and deep (d)- In the opposite 

 direction, north of the central crater, appeared another higher crater, like an upper plateau (b) from 

 which a torrent of lava had once poured into the central crater, and north of this again, another crater 

 (a) like a still higher plateau, from which also lava had flowed southward. 



Thus it was evident, as appeared more clearly by subsequent investigation, that MokuaweoWeo 

 is not simply one crater, but a series of four or five craters, the walls of which have broken down, so 

 that they have flowed into each other. 



We erected a sun-ey signal for determining the location and height of the summit, and also of 

 an important land boundary in the crater, viz : the corner where the four lands of Keauhou, Kahuku, 

 Kapapala and Kaohe met, which is at the cone in the central crater. 



During the next month I ascended the mountain again, this time carrying an excellent en- 

 gineer's transit. In the clear frosty air of the summit station I was able to take the bearings of a 

 dozen survey signals on the slopes and summit of Hualalai. The new spherical signal which I had 

 erected was afterwards accurately determined by observations from more than twenty stations on 

 Mauna Kea, Hualalai and in South Koua, and thus a trigonometrical station was at last located on 

 the very summit of Mauna Loa. 



On the second day I descended into the central crater, and found much of the bottom to con- 

 sist of the most solid kind of pahoehoe ; but in some large tracts the pahoehoe was covered with 

 pumice, indicating the violence of the former surging and tossing of the lava. Just before reaching 

 the cone we came to a deeper basin ( E ) twenty or more feet below the rest of the crater bottom and 

 about 400 feet wide, covered with the most friable lava, swollen upward as if rai.sed by air bubbles, 

 and this basin extended into a lava flow (ll) northeastward along the side of the crater. Probably 

 this was the place of the last eruption and of most of the eruptions of this central crater."' The cone, 

 140 feet high, was composed of pumice and friable lava still hot and smoking. We ascended it and 

 set up a flag there for the boundary corner. 



I returned to the second plateau to the north (h), and thence clambered out to the east of 

 Mokuaweoweo by the route of a former cataract of lava from the summit into the crater, the black, 

 shining spray of which lay spattered on the surrounding rocks. Farther south there were the courses 



'"Mr. Alexander seems to have put too much faith in the permanent character of this cone as a boundary of 

 lands or a source of eruptions. In 1.S70 it did not exist, and has been succeeded b}' others, as will be seen later. 



[538] 



