362 Joiirtial of Travel and Natural History 



Roa are all heavy and compact, and some as much so as tiuo 

 basalt. Most remarkable in the present eruption was the enormous 

 mass of an exceedingly light brownish friable pumice, ejected before 

 and during the same. 



The incandescent matter of it filled the air like so many stars, 

 and came down so slowly and leisurely, cooling in the descent, 

 that people did not know what to make of it, and were hardly 

 aware of them when they fell down on their bodies. 



Another peculiarity was the amount of steam and gas thrown 

 off. On Hawaii, people could not see objects at forty paces dis- 

 tant, and the gas (suljDhurous acid) was so irritating to the lungs 

 that it caused universal cough and dyspnoea. On the 9th, and for 

 five days after, the sky in Honolulu was so hazy that the sun ap- 

 peared like a blood-red round disk, and the hills, five miles off, 

 were invisible. Ships that were a thousand miles off at sea, to the 

 south and north-east, had the foggy haze for a day or two. 



The extraordinary liquidity of the lava was another remarkable 

 phenomena. It was over a distance of fifteen miles, down a slope 

 of not more than six degrees, in less than four hours. Captain 

 Brown, on whose estate the eruption broke out, and who, with 

 his family, had to fly for dear life, says that it ran at the rate of 

 ten miles an hour. His residence was buried under the lava. 



