' • 1. 



83 On the Recent Condition of Kitanea. 



These reports I have from those who professed to have been 



eye and ear witneses of the thrilHng scenes. Since the time jii»t 





mentioned no reniarkable phenomena have been noticed in the 

 crater. It has been for the most part in a quiescent state, with 

 more or less steam and smoke, and occasionally opening a small 

 red eyelidj or letting loose a few fire flies upon the wings of the 

 night. 



During December of 1850 the smoke and steam are said to 

 have much increased; and the occasional throe of an earthquake 

 indicates that all subterranean action has not ceased. Kilauea is 

 evidently assuming more of the manners and habits of the fiery 

 sisterhood. Her exhibitions are becoming periodical, arbitrary, 

 capricious. With the exception that her throne is not a moun- 

 tain summit, she more and more resembles Etna, Vesuvius and 

 the Andean and Asiatic furnaces. 



The sulphur beds remain much as formerly, except, perhaps, 

 that the bank within the crater has less heat and activity, and 

 the one above, or near the hut has a little increase of heat. Most 

 of the sulphur is now obtained at the beds near the hut. * 



The eruption of 1840 is still hot and steaming at many points 



along its course, and hundreds of steam holes are still smoking 



in Puna and parts of Kau. 



There is now one cone feebly active at a little distance from 

 the dome in the crater. Those on the dome are now inactive. 



The eruption in Mokuaweoweo, or the great crater on the 

 summit of Mauna Loa, was first noticed in May, 1849, some 

 little time after the extraordinary activity of Kilauea. This 

 eruption never overflowed the crater in which it occurred, but 

 spent all its force within the bowels of that deep chaldron. For 

 two or three weeks it shot up a tall, beautiful and brilliant col- 

 umn of light perpendicularly and to a great height; this column, 

 like that which led Moses and the hosts of Israel, being "a pillar 

 of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night." At the end of 

 two or three weeks it faded away and disappeared. 



The eruption on Mauna Loa immediately succeeded the action 

 in Kilauea. I cannot say they were coincident ; though they 

 mar/ have been, as the mountain is, as you are aware, often ob- 

 scured in clouds. Whether or not there were any connection 

 between the two eruptions we cannot determine. 



Xote by J. D. Daxa. — If there was actually a connection in tlie instance abo\'e 

 alluded to, the trifling effects observed may well excite our surprise : for how could so 

 slight agitations be all the result, when the lava stands in 3Iauna Lea to a height of 

 10,000 feet above the great open pit of Kilauea on Its slopes — 10,000 feet higher in 

 one leg of the syphon than in the other, — the crater too at the summit being in erup- 

 tion at the time? See this Journal, x, 244, 1850, and Proc. Amer. Assoc, Cam- 

 bridge, 1849, p. 95. 



