222 T. Coan onthe Eruption of Mauna Loa in 1852. 
hushed, His alone spoke. I was 10,000 feet above the sea; in 
a vast solitude untrodden by the foot of man or beast; amidst.a 
silence unbroken by any living voice, and surrounded by scenes 
of terrific desolation. Here I stood, almost blinded with the in- 
sufferable 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 fifty yards 
on the windward side, and, probably, not within two miles on the 
leeward. i 
The eruption, as before stated, commenced on the very sum- 
mit of the mountain, bunt it would seem that the lateral pressure 
of the emboweled lava was so great as to force itself out at a 
weak point in the side of the mountain ; at the same time erack- 
ing and rending the mountain all the way down from the summit 
to the place of ejection. The mountain seemed to be siphuncu- 
' lated ; the fountain of fusion being elevated some 2,000 or 3,000 
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 400 or 500 feet. The 
eruption at first issued from a depression in the mountain, but a 
rim of scoria 200 feet in elevation had already been formed 
around the orifice in the form of a hollow truncated cone. This 
cone was about half a mile in circumference at its base, and the 
orifice at the top may be 300 feet in diameter. I approached as 
red-hot, and sometimes white hot, lava were being ejected with a 
