180 NATURAL HISTORY OF HAWAII. 



ing tlu'iii iiil.. the crevices; or by boiling cofit'ee and frying bacon and eggs over 



the escaping heat. 



It is quite common to find scattered over the surface or collected in crevices 

 of tlic rock curious greenish and yellowish threads of spun-glass called Pole's 

 hair. AVlien the fire lake is in violent ebullition small masses of lava are thrown 

 into the air as the fountains play. The threads, which are drawn out after the 

 fiery drops harden, are carried high by the uprising current of air from the pit 

 ;ni(l are dropped later over the floor of the crater. 



Close to the corral is a low spatter cone, the "little beggar," which ap- 

 peared in 1884 when the lava was occasionally overflowing the top of the dome 

 which now surrounds the pit. Near at hand is "the devil's picture frame," a 

 hole in a small la\a fall that ran down into a shallow cave in the crater floor. 

 Beginning at the spatter cone the trail winds up to the pit which is hidden from 

 view. After passing other spatter cones the visitor stands at last on the edge 

 of the great pit Halemaumau. 



Halemaumau by Day and Night. 



There, scarcely one hundred and fifty feet below the observer,!'-^ is the burning 

 lake perhaps a thousand feet in diameter,— dancing, boiling, and flaring like a 

 gigantic blast-furnace crucible. A dozen or more splendid fire fountains leap 

 from its face and toss the molten basalt into the air. A great gushing lava 

 spring wells up from beneath, pouring out lava steadily, w^hile the fountains 

 round about leap and dance in wild unbridled fury. The heat is often so 

 intense that it is necessary to shield the face to prevent the skin from blistering. 

 The roar of the fiery furnaces is of a solemn, determined, indefinable character, 

 comparable in a way to that made by a heavy canvas flapping in a gale, or to 

 the resistless roar of a storm on a rock-bound coast. Now and then the wind 

 shifts and the fumes of sulphur drive one back from the edge, for breath. Occa- 

 sionally rocks loosen from their nitches in the shattered walls of the pit and go 

 bonndiiig down the sides to melt away in the lake below. 



The main body of the lake is usually covered over with large, irregular, 

 l)roken pieces of solidified lava that float on the liquid beneath like cakes of 

 ice in a river. As the fountains play, waves run out from them in all directions 

 and set the black cakes bobbing about in the lurid flood. Now and then the lava 

 shoots up a hundred feet in the air, and, as the falling discharge strikes the sur- 

 face again, waves roll across the lake and break, as surf, against the farther 

 wall. The observer is held in a spell of fascination for hours at a time. 

 As the daylight fades the fiery spectacle increases in brilliancy and beauty and 

 becomes more grandly majestic and imposing. The churning, seething mass 

 takes on more lurid, flaming hues, while the opalescent atmosphere over the pit is 

 resplendent with the most delicate ethereal tints that can be imagined. When 

 darkness finally falls the lake becomes as molten gold. Apparently one can 

 look not only into it but through it. The lines between the cooled dark masses 



^^ Conditions of December, 1909. 



