GEOLOGY AND TOPOGRAPHY OF HAWAII. 157 



mountain, in plain view from Ililo. Fountains leaped three or four hundred 

 feet in the air, presenting a brilliant spectacle, but within twenty-four hiuirs 

 the activity had apparently ceased. Three days later, February 20th, lava again 

 broke through the side of the mountain, much lower down towards Ililo, and the 

 stream of fire flowed for fifteen or twenty miles directly toward tli(> town. This 

 eruption was an especially violent one, the stream descending with Mstunishing 

 I'apidity. Activity lasted about five months and came to an end when its si ream 

 was about ten miles from Ililo Bay. It is a privilege, at this point, to ([note 

 from the vivid description of this eruption and flow given by the great mission- 

 ary. Rev. Titus Coan, to whose labors, observations and faithful chronicles 

 of the activities of Pele not only Hawaii but science and the world owes so much. 



On the morning of February 23rd, three days after the flow started on the 

 Ililo side, this experienced mountaineer started with a party to visit tlK- si>uri-e 

 of the flow. On the fifth day of battling with the tropical jungle he reached 

 the awful crater and stood at hist in the light of the fire at its source. 



"It was a moment of unutterable interest. I seeiiied to ]w standing in the 

 presence and before the throne of the eternal God, and. while all other voices 

 were hushed. His alone spoke. I was 10,000 feet above tlie sea. in a vast soli- 

 tudi' untrodden by the foot of man or beast; amid.st a silence unbroken !i\- an>- 

 living voice, and surrounded by scenes of terrific desolation. Here I stood — 

 almost blinded by the unsufferable brightness ; almost deafened with the startling 

 clangor; almost petrified with the awful scene. The heat was so intense that 

 the crater could not be approached within forty or fitly yards on the windward 

 side, and probably not within two miles on the leeward. The eruption, as 

 before stated, commenced on the very summit of the mountain,* ■* but it would 

 seem that the lateral pressure of the emboweled lava was so great as to force 

 itself out at a weaker point on the side of the mountain, at the same time crack- 

 ing and rending the mountain all the way down fi-oin the sinumit to the place 

 of e.iection. 



■'The mountain seemed to be siphunculated; the fountain of fusion being 

 elevated some two or three thousand feet above the lateral crater, and being 

 pressed down an inclined subterranean tube escaped through this valve with a 

 force which threw its burning masses to the height of four or five hundi'ed feet. 

 The eruption first i.ssued from a depression in the mountain, but a rim of seoria- 

 two hundred feet in elevation had alr(>atly been formed around the uritiee in 

 the form of a hollow truncated cone. This cone was about a mile in eireum- 

 ference at its base, and the orifice at the top may have been three hundred feet 

 in diameter. I approached as near as I could bear the heat and stood amidst 

 the ashes, cinders, scoria?, slag and pumice, which were scattered wide and 

 wildly around. From the horrid throat of this cone vast and continuous ji'ts 

 of red-hot. and sometimes white-hot. lava were being ejected with a noise that 

 was almost deafening and a force which threatened to rend the i-oeky ribs of 

 the mountain and to shiver its adamantine pillars. At times, the sound seemerl 



