GEOLOGY AND TOPOGRAPHY OF HAWAII. 157 



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

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

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

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

 stream of fire flowed for fifteen or twenty miles directly toward the town. This 

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

 rapidity. Activity lasted about five months and came to an end when its stream 

 was about ten miles from Hilo Bay. It is a privilege, at this point, to quote 

 from the vivid description of this eruption and flow given ]>y 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 

 Hilo side, this experienced mountaineer started with a party to visit the source 

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

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



"It was a moment of unutterable interest. I seemed to be 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 the sea, in a vast soli- 

 tude untrodden by the foot of man or l)east; amidst a silence unbroken by any 

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

 almost blinded by the unsuft'erable 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 fift>' yards on the windward 

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

 before stated, conunenced on the very summit of the mountain, i^ 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 from the suminit to the place 

 of ejection. 



"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 hundred feet. 

 The eruption first issued from a depression in the mountain, ])ut a rim of scoriiv 

 two hundred feet in elevation had already been formed around the orifice in 

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

 ference at its l)ase, 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, scorite, slag and ]Mimice, which were scattered wide and 

 wildly around. From the horrid throat of this cone vast and continuous jets 

 of red-hot, and sometimes white-hot, lava were being ejected Avith a noisp that 

 was almost deafening and a force which threatened to rend the rocky ribs of 

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



^* By fire showing in the summit t-rater. 



