144 



Kilauea and Manna Loa. 





o'clock and reached the summit at half-past ten. A rougher mass of lava I have 

 seldom seen and never before ridden over. Beds of aa were succeeded by piles of jagged 

 scoria in fragments from one to twenty cubic feet in bulk, and over these my niitle 

 jumped like a chamois. At last we came upon a level plain from which had poured 

 the lava that had hindered our ascent. 



Although we were on the summit, the 

 crater, Mokuaweoweo, did not at first appear, 

 but on everv side were rough piles of lava, some 

 recent, and abundant deposits of the vesicular 

 lava called liniii. This liniu is of a pale green 

 color presenting at a distance the appearance of 

 vegetation. Some fragments of it were a foot in 

 diameter, the exterior glazed and of a much 

 darker green, the whole verj^ vesicular and so 

 full of air as to float on water. In appearance 

 it was frozen froth. In the midst of this waste 

 plain we found the crater. vSince I saw it fifteen 

 years before great changes had occurred. Then 

 no change but the gradual decay of time seemed 

 imminent ; all was the repose of the dead. There 

 were some concentric cracks in the outer walls, 

 but the lava between these cracks and the crater 

 itself was so solid as to retain snow and ice all 

 the summer, and the descent into the crater 

 could be made only where the smaller craters 

 broke into the outer wall. On both the east 

 and west sides the precipices of gray, scarred 



and compact lava rose to the height of nearly a thousand feet, and seemed coeval 

 with the mountain. At the present time these ancient walls were cracked and totter- 

 ing to their fall ; in some places they much resembled a wall of loose stones artificiall}^ 

 laid. It was dangerous to approach the brink (of the south crater) so loose were the 

 lava blocks, and the vibrations caused by my approach seemed to extend downward 

 several hundred feet towards the talus which had been the result of a tremor more 

 severe than usual. By Ijang down I was able to look over and test the height by 

 timing the fall of stones. The bottom of this lateral pit, as of the main crater, was 



comparatively level, without cones, and gave no indications of the source whence the 



[522] 



Fig. 85. MOKUAwEwoEO. 



