GEOLOGY AND TOPOGRAPHY OP^ HAWAII. 137 



they arc ofti'ii three (ii- fimr himdrcd feet in lieii^lit. It .ijipears that neither 

 Lanai nm- Kahoohnve have e^-er lieen carefully studied liy geologists. 



Kalioolawe, the smallest of the inhabited islands, is about twelve miles 

 long and has an area of sixty-nine square miles. Owing to its slight elevation,^ 

 and the fact that it lies in the lee of Maui, whose high mountains wring the 

 ram-clouds dry, the surface shows lint little wash and is almost level. There 

 being no important streams or springs on the island it has never l)een con- 

 sidered of much value. In consequence it has been given over to a few goats, 

 sheep and cattle that roam over its barren red lands at will. Plans have been 

 considered l\v the Territorial government, however, which contemplate refor- 

 esting the island, as an experiment in conservation, with a view to securing 

 scientific data on the increasing and storing of v.ater through the agency of 

 plant growth. 



Like Lanai, the island of Kahoi>lawe has high, steep sea cliffs on the lee 

 shore. Enough of the underlying strata is exposed to foster the belief that 

 neither of these small i.slands was ever more closely connected with each other 

 or with the nearby and larger island of ilaui than the.y are now unless it was 

 by their normal slopes, now hidden beneath the sea. The larger island of I\Iaui 

 is separated from the smaller of tlie two islands by seven miles of placid water 

 known as the Alalakeiki channel which, together with the Auau channel between 

 ijanai and Maui, forms the ilaui channel; a waterway which no dimlit has been 

 formed by the subsidence of all three islands just mentioned. 



;\L\rl, THE V.\LLEY ISLE. 



It is the custom to regard ]Molokai, Lanai, Kahoolawe and ^laui as form- 

 ing a natural group of islands, there being about the same distance between the 

 nearest points on the neighboring islands of ]Molokai and Oahn ■* in the north- 

 west, that there is between the nearest ppints of Maui and Hawaii ■' at the 

 southeast end of the central cluster of islands, the combined area of which is 

 placed at 7.2S9 scpiare miles. ^laui is the largest island in the middle group 

 and is the second largest in size of the inhabited islands. However, it is con- 

 siderably less than one-fifth the size of Hawaii, which boasts of its area of 4,015 

 square miles. 



To the mere traveler Jlaui is but a synonym fur the name of the great 

 extinct crater which forins one of the chief objective points of his round-the- 

 world joiirne.v. But to the geologist the splendid double island, aptly named 

 the Valle.v Isle, is no less interesting in its topograjihy and history than Kauai 

 or Oahn are. 



Like Molokai and Oahn, it has been produced from two distinct centers of 

 volcanic activity. West Maui with its highest peak" corresponds in age with 

 the western group of mountains on Oahu. As on Oahn, the advanced disintegra- 

 tion, shown by the deep wonderful valle.ys dissected into its mass, makes it un- 

 mistakably the older end of the island. In fact it has every evidence of being 

 as old as Kauai, the Waianae Range on Oahu, the western end of Molokai, or 

 the Kohala mountains on Hawaii. 



= 1472 feet. < 23 miles. = 21) miles. " Pull Kukui. :i788 feet. 



10 



