

V J' 



K' 



\ 





i 



Oil the Recent Condition of Kilaiiea. 81 



and this stratum was soon raised into a dome some 200 or 300 

 feet high ov^er the whole lake ; traversed here and there by rents 

 and fissures, and studded by an occasional cone. Occasionally 



the visitor or the passing traveller Would descry, through these 



fissures, the glowing of the subterranean fires, and now and then 

 the gory mass would be pressed sluggishly through these chasms, 

 or driven up with more force through the several chimneys, ap- 

 ertures, or orifices of the dome. These eruptions rolled in heavy 

 and irregular streams down the sides of the dome, spreading over 

 ^1 its surface or cooling at its base. Thus the dome, as it now 



exists, has been formed by the compound action of upheaving 

 forces froni'beneaih and of eruptions from its openings, formin; 



g 



successive layers upon its external surface. During most of this 

 year, however, (1848,) an extraordinary inactivity prevailed 

 throughout the crater, so that visitors chided the long slumbers 

 of the goddess, and were impatient with her drowsy propensities* 

 During the summer and autumn of this year, when I was at Ki- 

 lauea, there was no fire to be seen, even in the night. Old Vul- 

 c*i seemed to have forsaken his furnace, buried his fires and re- 

 tired to his deep, dark caverns, leaving his awful forge surrounded 



with smouldering masses of scoria and slas;. At the time of my 



visit in August, the great dome was so elevated as almost to over- 

 top the lower parts of the outer walls of Kilauea and look out 

 tipon the surrounding country. No important changes were no- 

 ticed in the crater from this time until the spring of 1849. In 

 April and May of this year, travellers upon the borders of Ki- 

 lauea were startled by explosions and detonations from cones on 

 the great dome. A party lodging in the hut on the upper banks 

 were greatly terrified during one whole night, by hissings, bel- 



lowings, and sUarp and loud detonations, sometimes like the dis- 

 charge of whole ranks of musketeers, sometimes like field artil- 

 lery, and sometimes like awful deep toned thunder, roaring, and 

 reverberating around the adamantine walls of the dark cavern. 

 These bellowings were repeated hourly through the night, and 

 ^ were attended by a brilliant column of red-hot lava thrown per- 



pendicularly from an orifice in the apex of the dome, to the 

 height ofi some fifty or sixty feet. At other times red-hot stones 

 Were projected with great force into the air and sent whizzing 

 hke fiery meteors through the gloom of night. As the glow of 

 this scene a little abated, a stream of burning lava was disgorged 

 from the orifice of a lateral cone on the ridge of the dome, flam- 

 ing down to its base and winding along upon the dark substra- 

 tum like a fiery serpent. Fire was seen through some of the 

 fissures in the dome, and nearly the whole bottom of Kilauea 

 was quivering and crackling with heat; so much so, that travel- 

 lers feared to descend into any part of the crater. 



Second Series, Vol. XII, ^-o. 34.— July, 1851. 11 



, ^ 



> 



/= 



% 





