18 Volcanic Character of the Island of Hawait. 
approached the places from which the smoke issued, they 
assed over a number of fissures or chasms, from two inches 
to six feet in with. ‘ The whole mass of rocks had evi- 
dently been rent by some violent convulsion of the earth, at 
no very distant period,” and when they came in sight of the 
ascending columns of smoke and vapour, they beheld, imme- 
diately below, a valley or hollow, about half a mile across, 
formed by the sinking down of the whole surface of ancient 
ava to the depth of fifty feet below its original level. “It was 
intersected by narrow fissures, running in every direction, and 
two ran from the mountain towards the sea, as far as the eye 
- could reach. From the wider portions of these fissures, 
where they were about ten or twelve feet in width, the smoke 
arose.. As they descended into the valley the ground sound- 
ed hollow, the lava cracked under their feet, and soon grew 
(as they proceeded) so hot that they could not stand more 
than a minute or two in a place. ; 
Their guide, terrified by the smoke and vapour that issued 
from one of the apertures, refused to go any farther, remon- 
strating against the audacity of the strangers, who presumed 
thus to provoke the anger of the goddess Pele, the local deity 
of the volcano, although the guide retreated to the bush- 
es at the edge of the valley, while the travellers proceeded. 
they 
great, that it was difficult to look long. Their hands, legs, 
at 
the lava | been thrown out only a few days before. It 
Wen of, a different kind, from the ancient bed of which the 
whole valley 
