Eruption of Loa in iSSj. 167 



There is some contradidlion as to the exact time that the lava came to the sur- 

 face ill Kau from a fissure about six thousand five hundred feet above the sea, but it was 

 observed early in the morning of the i8th. Mr. Spencer, who visited the most active 

 source on the 20th, says that there were fifteen fountains of molten lava, the highest 

 estimated at two hundred feet. Rocks weighing tons were thrown up or borne along 

 the stream, and while the flow was slow the first twenty-four hours, the formation being 

 mostly aa and clinkers, and explosions occurred at intervals sending up columns of 

 smoke five hundred feet high. Fortunately Mr. Furneaux was on hand and painted 

 the scene from which the illustration is made. Many photographs were taken, two of 

 which are given by Dana, but they fail to give an impression of the outflow at all 

 satisfaAory. Thej- might represent a dead lava bed as well. I feel that the three views 

 made by Furneaux show more completely than any pictures I have seen, the beginning, 

 course and end of an Hawaiian lava flow : even without the color, as we have them 

 here, the}? show better the sublimity of the scene. While the rate of progress at first 

 was only a mile and a half an hour, when the lava moved as pahoehoe its course was 

 rapid, and on the agtli it reached the sea, after a course of twenty miles, nearly four 

 miles west of the flow of 1S68, adding another very disagreeable interruption to the 

 many that cross the government road west of the south cape Ka Lae. 



Mr. Furneaux again caught the stream as it flowed rapidly between the walls 

 it made for itself where the slope was considerable and the ground fairly clear. The 

 beauty of the green herbage in the foreground contrasting with the black walls within 

 which this Phlegethon rushed with almost the liquidity of water, canopied by the 

 murky pall above, removes the terror a volcanic eruption awakes in many minds when 

 impressions are caught from those spasmodic outbursts in thickly peopled lands where 

 the loss of life and property adds horror to the thought. Here little damage was done, 

 the beauty and variet}' of the display will never be forgotten by those fortunate enough 

 to see the flow of 1887. 



B3' noon of the 24th the flow had nearly stopped, after extending the shores 

 from three to five hundred feet, according to Dr. S. E. Bishop, who was in this region 

 on the second of Februarj^ As the shore was not abrupt the flow built up no mounds 

 of black sand or ash, and the scene as viewed from a steamer off shore was simply a 

 clear struggle between fire and water for possession of the shore line. 



Earthquakes were renewed on the 23rd, the day before the flow ceased, and con- 

 tinued on the 24th. These threw down walls that had a northeast and southwest 

 direction — the walls falling to the southeast — and moved light wooden houses eight or 



ten inches on a slope in the same direction. Slight damage was done in Kahuku, and 



[545] 



