I02 Kilauea a)id Manna Loa. 



whicli WHS not very distant, as the angle of emergence was almost 90°, or nearly coinci- 

 dent with the seismic vertical, and he reported as follows : 



First the earth swayed to and fro uorth and south, then east and west, round and round, then 

 up and down and in every imaginable direcftion, for several minutes; everythiug crushing around 

 us; the trees thrashing about as if torn b}' a mighty rushing wind. It was impossible to stand, we 

 had to sit on the ground, bracing with hands and feet to keep from rolling over. In the midst of it 

 we saw bur.st out from the pali [precipice] about a mile and a half to the north of us, what we sup- 

 posed to be an immense river of molten lava (which afterwards proved to be red earth), which rushed 

 down its headlong course and across the plain below, apparently bursting up from the ground, throw- 

 ing rocks high in the air, and swallowing up everything in its way, trees, houses, cattle, horses, 

 goats and men, all in an instant, as it were. It went three miles in not more than three minutes 

 time, and then ceased. Some one pointed to the shore, and we ran to where we could see it. After 

 the hard shaking had ceased, and all along the sea-shore, from directly below us to Punaluu, about 

 three or four miles, the sea was boiling and foaming furioush', all red, for about an eighth of a mile 

 from the shore, and the shore was covered by the sea. We went right over to Nahala's hill with the 

 children and our natives, to where we could see both ways ; expecting every moment to be swallowed 

 up by the lava from beneath ; for it sounded as if it was surging and rushing under our feet all the 

 time, and there were frequent shakes. In places the ground was all cracked up, and every rock or 

 pali that could fall had fallen. At Hilea we saw a small stream of black smoking lava, and outside 

 of Punaluu a long black point of lava slowly pushed out to sea and soon disappeared. 



Ten miles to the southwest of Keaiwa, at Waiohinii, the great stone church was 

 levelled to the ground (Fig. 68), and nearly all the other buildings were destroyed. 

 The earth opened all through the district, and often left dangerous fissures, although 

 it usually closed. The meizoseismic curve (or that of maximum overthrow) seems to 

 have been elliptical, with a major axis of about ten miles in a southwest and northeast 

 direction, while the isoseismic curves were rather crescent-shaped, having their con- 

 vexity towards Mauna Loa. In Kona the shocks were severe, but less so than in Kau; 

 At Kohala they did very little damage, not even injuring the tall chimney of the Kohala 

 sugar mill ; while at Hilo, on the other side of the mountains, the violence of the vibra- 

 tions was about the same as in Kona. The mountains seem to have deadened the 

 shock, and simply transmitted it through their solid cones to the axes of the other 

 islands of the group, where the shock of April 2nd was felt as a vibration from the 

 central mountain to the sea. This was the case even in Kauai, nearly- three hundred 

 miles distant from the supposed seismic vertical. No damage was done except in these 

 southern districts of Hawaii, where the undulations seemed to bend around the base 

 of the mountain, forcing the isoseismic curves far from the meizoseismic curve in Kau. 



At Hilo, although the shock was not so severe as at Waiohinu, more damage was 

 done, for the houses were larger and more numerous. A correspondent writes: "I was 

 coming from the tannery to my store, when I heard a loud, rumbling noise like a num- 

 ber of iron carriages drawn over a rough road by wild horses. Soon the shock came. 



The horses in the pasture took fright, and ran and snorted, the dogs howled, and the 



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