GEOLOGY AND TOPOGRAPHY OF HA^VAII. 137 



they are often three or four hundred feet in height. Tt ai^peai's that ticitlicr 

 Lanai nor Kahoohiwe have e\'er been carefully studied In- g(^()l()gists. 



Kahoolawe, 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 ]\Iaui, whose high mountains wring the 

 rain-clouds dry, the surface shows but little wash and is almost level. There 

 being no important streams or springs on the island it has never been con- 

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

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

 considered by 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 water through the agency of 

 plant growth. 



Like Lanai, the island of Kahoolawe 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 islands was ever more closely connected with each other 

 or with the nearby and larger island of ]Maui than they are now unless it was 

 l)y their normal slopes, now hidden beneath the sea. The larger island of ^laui 

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

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

 Lanai and j\Iaui, forms the ^laui channel; a waterway which no doul)t has been 

 formed by the subsidence of all three islands just mentioned. 



]\Lvri, THE Valley Isle. 



It is the custom to regard ]\Iolokai, Lanai, Kahoolawe and INIaui 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 Oahu ^ in the north- 

 west, that there is between the nearest points of IMaui and Hawaii ^ at the 

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

 placed at 7,289 square miles. Maui 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 Maui is but a synonym for the name of the gi-eat 

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

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

 the Yalley Isle, is no less interesting in its topography and history than Kauai 

 or Oahu are. 



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

 volcanic activity. West ^laui with its highest peak" corresponds in ag" ^vith 

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

 tion, shown by the deep wonderful valleys dissected into its mass, makes it un- 

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

 as old as Kauai, the Waianae Range on Oahu, the western end of ?»Iolo]\ai, or 

 the Kohala mountains on Hawaii. 



3 1472 feet. * 23 miles. ^ 26 miles. " Piiu Kukui. 5788 feet. 



10 



