158 NATURAL HISTORY OF HAWAII. 



subterranean, deep and infernal. First a rumbling, a muttering, a hissing, a 

 deep premonitory surging; then followed an awful explosion, like the roar of a 

 broadside in a naval battle, or the quick discharge of pack after pack of artillery 

 on the field of carnage. Sometimes the sound resembled that of 10,000 furnaces 

 in full blast. Again it was like the rattling of a regiment of musketry; and 

 sometimes like the booming of distant thunder. The detonations were heard 

 along the shore at Hilo. 



"The eruption was not intermittent but continuous. Volumes of tlie fusion 

 were constantly ascending and descending, like a jet d'eau. The force which 

 expelled these igneous columns from the oritice shivered them into millions of 

 fragments of unequal size, some of which would be rising, some falling, some 

 shooting off laterally, others describing graceful curves ; some moving in tangents, 

 and some falling back in vertical lines into the mouth of the crater. Every 

 particle shown with the brilliancy of Sirius and all kinds of geometrical figures 

 were being formed and broken up. No tongue, no pen, no pencil can portray 

 the beauty, the grandeur, the terrible sublimity of the scene. 



"To be appreciated, it must be felt. * * * * Duriu';- the night the scene 

 surpassed all powers of description. Vast columns of lava at a white heat shot 

 up continuously in the ever-varying forms of pillars, pyramids, cones, towers, 

 turrets, spires, minerets. etc., while the descending showers poured in one in- 

 cessant cataract of fire upon the rim of the crater down its burning throat and 

 over the surrounding areas ; each falling avalanche containing matter enough to 

 sink the proudest ship. A large fissure opening through the rim of the crater 

 gave vent to the molten flood which constantly poured out of the orifice and 

 rolled down the mountain in a deep, broad river, at the rate probably of ten 

 miles an hour. This fiery stream we could trace all the way down the mountain 

 until it was hidden from our eyes by its windings in the forest, a distance of 

 some thirty miles. The stream shown with a great brilliancy by night, and a 

 horizontal drapery of light hung over its whole course. But the great furnace 

 on the mountain was the all-absorbing object." 



Three years later, in Aiigust, 1855, and continuing for sixteen months, oc- 

 curred the greatest flow of the century. The point of emergence was at an 

 elevation of 12,000 feet on the northeast side of the mountain, and the molten 

 river took a course directly for Hilo. After fifteen or sixteen months of con- 

 tinuous flowing, during which the flood advanced at about :i mile each week, the 

 eruption came gradually to an end, having sent a stream of lava for a distance 

 of many miles down the mountain side, that in places was eight miles in width 

 at the M'idest part. As its lower end came within five miles nf Hilo the quiet 

 village was greatly alarmed, but fortunately no damage was done. 



In 1859 activity shifted to the northwestern side of the mountain. A flow 

 started on January 23d at an elevation of 10,500 feet, that came down to the 

 sea on the northwest coast in two branches, at a point just north of Kiholo. 

 On January 31st the stream had reached the sea, more than thirty-three miles 

 in a direct line fi-om its source — the first eruption in historic times from a liiuh 



