i68 



THE MUSEUM. 



bank snuggling in the shade under the 

 eastern wall. No doubt now as to 

 the volcano or its whereabouts. You 

 feel giddy when you see almost at 

 your feet a vast pit, 500 feet deep, 

 the bottom of which has fairly drop- 

 ped out from the most solid thing you 

 know, the time honored standard of 

 comparison for solidity, the solid 

 earth itself and a mountain of rock. 

 Some one recites the statement of the 

 guide book that the crater is so many 

 miles long and so many miles wide 

 and has a depth of so many feet on 

 the lava floor. But what meaning 

 has all that; what does it amount to! 

 Figures are an impertinence in the 

 presence of nature operating in its 

 grand method. Down below there in 

 that abyss which has sunk straight 

 down from the mountain slope there 

 may be a certain number of square 

 miles. But what is a square mile to 

 you.' Who would reel off a tape 

 measure to make a record of the mag- 

 nificence of the fire and fury v/hich 

 made that pit.' Mile after mile, if a 

 tale of miles be needed for the seeing 

 of power in its infinite degree, the eye 

 sees the cliff square cut above the 

 crater floor, square cut with the moun- 

 tain slope, above which they do not 

 rise a single inch; one cannot make 

 too clear that impression of a vast 

 dropping down; there is a thrill of fear 

 that it may drop still further while you 

 are below there. Black, green, red 

 these walls bound a floor all black 

 which from the distance seems as 

 level as a floor of carpentry. It is 

 only when you get down to it that you 



see how 



But before you see that you have to 

 face the getting down. Only one 

 path exists through all that sweep of 

 precipice, a breakneck place of scram- 

 bling in and out in fearsome zigzags 

 down a sheer face of rock. They tell 

 you that the horse is surefooted, that 

 he has carried blank hundreds of peo- 

 ple up and down that trail. There 

 are times when arithmetic loses its 

 power to console; this is one of them. 



and you feel that your own feet are 

 surer on such a ladder, and disregard- 

 ing that difficult matter of mounting 

 again on the other kind of saddle you 

 dismount and make the descent afoot, 

 and if truth be told, letting yourself 

 over certain steepnesses with a hand 

 clutched on the ohelo bushes which 

 knot their roots in every rock cranny. 

 It is only on the return trip hours lat- 

 er — and perhaps just as well that it is 

 so — that you see the wayside cross 

 that marks the death spot of one for 

 whom that scramble proved too much, 

 the only death recorded for Kilauea 

 since the heathen days when Goddess 

 Pelo's incandescent wrath sometimes 

 refused to be appeased with her usual 

 sacrifice of a red hen and a black pig 

 and a bunch of ohelo berries, when 

 she could be pacified only by some- 

 thing that gave a despairing scream 

 when it was tossed into the fire lake 

 in which Pelo lived. Cruel days of 

 heathenism! It is well that they have 

 passed away, that Kapiolaui made an 

 end of the last of Kilauea's "kapus;" 

 we order things so much better now- 

 adays. Still you may happen to see 

 the Hawaiian guide, Albert, as he 

 helps you down the slide, pick a twig 

 of ohelo and slip it into his pocket, 

 and you may chance to see a little 

 sprig of green floating down through 

 the hot air into the pit where Pelo 

 once lived, the Halema'uma'u; and, 

 though Albert walks about thirty miles 

 every Sunday to go to church and sing 

 hymns, you feel a stray wonder as to 

 whether the old gods are after all 

 quite dead. 



At last and out of breath you have 

 scrambled down to the floor of the 

 crater, and with the assistance of a 

 rock you find that the Lee girl was 

 right when she told you Albert knew 

 how. Level as that lava floor looked 

 from the brink of the precipice, you 

 find that now it has its ridges and its 

 hollows, and rarely can you see far 

 ahead. At the very beginning is a 

 bridge across a deep gorge in the 

 rock, a split in the lava reaching to 



