Chap, xix.] ERUPTIONS AT HAWAII. 



435 



A.s the mouth of the cone contracts the jet is thrown higher 

 and higher, and the spray faUing all around, covers the lava 

 platform around with congealed drops of a lava rain, as it were. 

 Each of these drops forms, like the spray from the waves, a 

 Pele's hair.* 



Over one of the ranges of low cliffs in the crater, a cascade 

 of lava had poured, and cooling and setting as it flowed, had 

 been drawn out into long ropes and rounded ridges, which 

 were twisted one over another, and formed a curiously gnarled 

 and contorted mass. Everywhere were complex ripple marks 

 sharply moulded in the rapidly setting melted mass. 



Bubbles were to be met with all over the lava surfaces, many 

 of them large, 4 or 5 inches across, blown in the surface of the 

 hot lava by the escaping gases, and now set and covered by 

 convex films of thin transparent lava like thin-blown green 

 bottle-glass. 



The following is an account of a great eruption of Mauna 

 Loa, which has occurred since our visit, taken from the 

 Times of April 3rd, 1877. "Hawaiian Volcanoes. — The 

 ' Honolulu Gazette ' states that in the last 90 years there have 

 been 10 great eruptions on Hawaii. That of February, 1877, 

 is the eleventh of the series. On the 14th of that month 

 Mauna Loa, which is nearly 14,000 feet high, sent out an 

 immense volume of smoke that rose to a height of 16,000 feet, 

 and spread out, darkening the sky, over an area of 100 square 

 miles, and then a stream of lava started down the mountain 

 sides, but the source dried up at the end of six hours, and the 

 eruption ceased. The sight was grand while it lasted. Mr. 

 C. J. Lyons writes from Wainea that the columns of illuminated 

 smoke shot up with such velocity that the first 5,000 feet were 

 passed inside of a minute. Ten days afterwards, early on the 

 24th of P^ebruary, there was a submarine eruption 50 miles 

 from Mauna Loa, near Kealakeakua Bay. Flames were thrown 

 up from the sea, and numerous jets of steam arose on a line 

 about a mile long, where the sea was from 150 feet to 400 feet 

 deep, as if the crust of rock under the sea had been broken 

 in a fissure to let the internal fires out. In many places lumps 

 of lava were thrown up, and it was so porous, somewhat like 

 pumice-stone, that while hot it floated away, but sank as soon 

 as it became cold and saturated with water. Another rupture, 

 doubtless a continuation of the submarine fissure, was traced 

 inland from the shore nearly three miles, varying in width from 

 a few inches to 3 feet. In some places the water was seen 



* Mr. H. C. Sorby, F.R.S., had come to the conchision from the 

 observations on furnace slag that Pele's hair was probably formed in thid 

 manner with globules attached. " Nature " Vol. XVI 



