Kilatiea Afte7- the Earthquake. I17 



Near the head of this fissure a small quantity of sulphur is found, as also alum, gypsum, 

 Glauber's and other salts ; none of these are abundant, and the products of this eruption are identi- 

 cal with those of all former eruptions on this island. Returning to the point whence I had sent the 

 men to line across the stream, I regretted to find that they had measured until they came to the great 

 fissure, and seeing no way of crossing it, had returned. They had measured half a mile, and thought 

 they were half way across, but from sight I judged they were only one-third across, giving a mile 

 and a half as the estimated width at this point, which was about the widest place of the undivided or 

 trunk stream. I would say that the average width of the fiow by uniting all the branches would be 

 one and a half miles, the length ten miles, and the average depth fifteen feet. Where it entered deep 

 basins and gorges it is fift}- to a hundred feet deep, but where it spread over grass fields and unbroken 

 surfaces, we find it from two to fifteen feet deep. The course of the main stream, the one that entered 

 the sea, is due south. The flow upon the surface was short and energetic, some say three and some 

 five daj'S, — we give it as four days. The scene was brilliant and awe-inspiring: obstructions along 

 the line of flow often opened vents through which fiery jets were thrown up to the height of five 

 hundred to seven hundred feet, with amazing brilliancy and a force which made the earth tremble. 

 All the southern coast of Hawaii was illuminated with the dazzling glare ; but the amount of matter 

 discharged is small compared with the eruption of 1855. 



Kilauea. — In going to Kau my route was along the shore road through Puna ; my return 

 was via Kilauea. At this place I spent a day and a night, and examined the changes. Previous to 

 the great earthquake, the fiery abysses of Kilauea had been in a raging condition as if seeking vent. 

 The molten sea had broken up vertically in the bottom of Little Kilauea, and had left a burning 

 stratum upon the old deposits of 1832. The terrible reudings of April 2nd tore up the earth, opened 

 great fissures everywhere around Kilauea, sent down thundering avalanches of rocks from the high 

 surrounding walls, and probably opened a subterranean passage for the igneous flood to the south- 

 west. That night Pele decamped in this underground passage, and the central area of the great 

 crater subsided about three hundred feet, leaving or rather forming a new Black Ledge of unequal 

 width, all around the crater. In some parts the centra! depression left the ledge a perpendicular or 

 beetling wall with a serrated line, but in most parts the centre sagged away gently forming a large 

 concave basin with an angle of 20° to 70°. The surface of this concave was once the crowning or 

 convex central portion of the crater, where ferns and ohelos have been growing for nearly twenty 

 years. This superincumbent plateau has been depressed so quietly that the surface is very little dis- 

 turbed, and the ferns and bushes are still growing in the basin three hundred feet below their position 

 on the first of April. Some parts, however, of this great area have been covered with fresh lava, 

 and some ferns have been killed by heat and gases. 



From the black ledge I passed down and across this depression (about a mile), and then up 

 the ascent on the other side for half a mile to the rim of Halemaumau. This is all changed ; it has 

 gone down some five hundred feet below the highest point on the black ledge, and about two hundred 

 feet below the depression in the basin before mentioned. The walls have fallen on all sides, and the 

 pit resembles a vast funnel, half a mile in diameter at the top and about fifteen hundred feet across 

 the bottom. There are two places where visitors can descend into this great pit, with some difficulty 

 and risk. Much of the time this pit is filled with smoke and sulphurous gases, with little visible 

 fire; occasionally explosions, detonations, and fiery demonstrations occur in this awful pit. 



On the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth of this month ( August) , the sea was agitated around 

 our entire group, rising and falling from two to four feet above and below the ordinary marks, once 

 in ten, fifteen and twenty-five minutes ; the accounts of rise and time vary as noted in different places 

 by different observers, and I give the range. 



The sea-waves of which Mr. Coan speaks were doubtless catised by the terrible 



earthquake which on the thirteenth of August shook the whole western coast of South 



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