Volcanic Character of the Island of Hawaii. 29 
also to the black ledge; where they collected a number of 
beautifi Ci 
lour, light, cellular, brittle, and shining. They also found « 
a a 
a 
€ natives rouoho o Pele, (hair of 
brittle, though some of the filaments were several inches long. 
vigorous action but a short period before, marks of very re- 
cent fusion presenting es on every side. Their size 
and height were various, and many, which, from the top, had 
appeared insignificant as mole-hills, they now found twelve or 
twenty feet high. The outsides were composed of bright 
shining lava, heaped up in piles of most singular form. ‘The 
lava on the inside was. of alight or dark red colour, with a 
glazed surface, and in several places, where the heat had ey— 
ig aa ata rinse of small and beauti- 
crater, They “entered several small craters, that had been 
in vi : 
nels, down which the lava had flowed into the large abyss. 
They were formed by the cooling of the lava, on the sides 
and surface of the stream, while it continued to flow on un- 
derneath. As the size of the current diminished, it had left a 
‘he in- 
-was beautiful beyond description. In many places they _ 
were ten or twelve feet high, and as many wide at the bot- 
tom. The roofs formed a arch, hung with red and © 
brown stalactite lava, in every imaginable shape; while the 
> 
chambers to the edge of the precipice, that bounds the great 
crater, and looked over the fearful steep down which the fiery 
cascade had: rushed... n the space where it had fallen, the la- 
va had formed a spacious basin, which, hardening as it cooly 
