The Tidal Wave. 113 



which bounds the plain on the southerly side shows clearly that some former subsi- 

 dence resulted in a rupture of the crust forming the floor of the plain from this wall, 

 it would have been well to note au}' change at this point. Mr. Coan observed none, 

 and the loose rocks knocked down by the protrafted earthquakes would perhaps ob- 

 literate any traces of so slight a dislocation as a fall of six feet would cause.'*'' 



At Kealakomo the salt-works are destroyed and the fountain on the shore sunk. Apua, the 

 last village in Puna, was swept clear [by the tidal wave of April 2nd] and sunk. Its pretty sand 

 beach and miniature bay rendering it a resort for fishermen, are no more; the sea stands some 

 six feet deep where the houses once stood. The same is true of Keauhou, the first village in Kau, 

 and an important pulu station ; coconut trees stand seven feet in the water, and all the buildings 

 were swept away by the tidal wave. Passing on to Punaluu, this wave rose twenty feet and swept 

 all before it. The great sand barrier which protected the beautiful pond and the cold, limpid spring, 

 was first .swept into the sea and then brought back and deposited in the pond, filling it up and chang- 

 ing the shore line. I got the height of this wave by measurement on a palm tree, and also upon the 

 surrounding ridge of scoriform lava, making the rise above common high water about twenty feet. 



From Punaluu onward to Honuapo, all houses were swept away except two standing on high 

 lava ridges. The road was strown with boulders and fragments of rocks, and in some places it has 

 sunk, so that it is with great difficult3\ and not without a guide, that the traveler threads his zigzag 

 way along this coast for five miles. Not a house remains in the considerable village of Honuapo : 

 the sea occupies the site of former dwellings. The wave here corresponded with that at Punaluu, 

 as shown by measurements on coconut trees. There were points where the influx of the sea was 

 greater than at other places, and this seems to have been caused by the approach of the wave from 

 the southwest, or at an angle of 45° to the shore, and by striking headlands and projecting points 

 causing the waters to heap up within the points of tangency, while the current swept on at a lower 

 mark where the coast presented no lateral obstructions.-'^ 



In crossing over the great lava fields from Puna to Kau, I passed about nine miles to the 

 south and leeward of Kilauea, the great volcano flanking us on the right. The countrj' through 

 which we passed was terribly rent by the earthquake of April 2nd, and in some places we were obliged 

 to deflect widely from the old track to avoid fissures. For several miles the cracks were so numerous 

 and so wide, that a stranger would be utterly unable to find his way through this mural network of 

 fractures. Our guide zigzagged us everywhere, our animals often demurring, trembling, and refusing 

 to go. The whole atmosphere was filled with sulphurous smoke, through which the sun shone with 

 sanguine rays. After passing most of these fissures, I requested my guide to turn to the left and 

 follow the line of fissure seaward, hoping to find the locality of a disputed eruption which it was 

 affirmed by some and denied by others had taken place in that wide and wild field of ancient lavas. 

 After an hour of hard search amid.st hills and ridges of aa and fields of pahoehoe, we found a veri- 

 table eruption The fused lavas had been thrown out of the fissures at five different points, on 



a line of less than a mile in length. The largest batch was one thousand feet long and six hundred 

 feet wide, with an average depth of ten feet, and with a steaming and tumulated surface. This series 

 of small eruptions is about eleven miles southwest of Kilauea, and it .shows distinctly the subter- 

 ranean path taken by the igneous flood which left that seething cauldron on the night after the rending 

 earthquake of April 2nd. That shock doubtless opened a pathway for the struggling fires, and 

 they went off in a southwestern course under the highlands of Kau, uniting with the subterranean 



''■' In cros.sing this plain twenty-five years later I found my surmise correct and the former wall had been covered 

 by the confused frat^mcnts. 



"'To the casual traveler no signs of this shore catastrophe remain. Wharves and villages replace those de- 

 stroj'ed, and even a sugar-mill and its surrounding hamlet occupies one of the points where the ravages were greatest. 



Memoirs B. P. B. Museum. Vol. II, No. 4.-8. L49 1 J 



