64 Rev. T. Coan on the late Eruption of Mauna Loa. 
pass off from the boiling chaldron. ‘This fiery lake, so long com 
cealed by the ponderous dome, is gradually rising and lifting and 
rending the superincumbent strata of which the great dome is 
co mposed, and threatening at no distant day to engulf the whole 
overhanging mass within its burning bowels.* Crag after crag, 
and mass after mass, are being loosened from the walls of this 
fiery orifice and precipitated like an avalanche into the abyss be 
low. Thus the conflict will go on, until the old furnace of Vul- 
can opens to view in all its original dimensions, and beens 
we took a northwest course toward the seat of the late eruption. — 
For three miles we had a good path and passed through immense — 
fields of Ohelo, a variety “ee whortleberry. bapa then entered2 — 
thick forest, about four miles deep. From this we issued into al — 
open field of lava, sprinkled rie shrubbery, seit inhabited by — 
wild goats, wild geese and wild birds. On, on we went, clit 
ing and still climbing, until the crater and the bpateified river, for 
which we were toiling, came into view, and at night we encamped 
within five miles of the cone whose awful thunderings and glaring 
fires spread such consternation in February and Mare 
Taking an early start the next morning, at eight, A. M., We 
stood on the summit of this cone and surveyed it with perfect ) 
composure. It is now extinct, with the exception of some 
and steam from some of the crevices. We went round it, overit 
and into it. It is seventy-four chains in circumference at its hase, 
nearly five hundred feet high, and has a erater four: hundred oF 
five hundred feet deep. It is an irregular, hollow, truncate coue 
I found its symmit to be a little higher above the sea than Hale — 
kala on Maui, which is 10,000 feet, and which was in pe view: 
Mauna Kea was also standing tindoveieel-3 in bold relief, t 
in sublime grandeur to the heavens. 
"rom this summit, we could also survey t the cooled stream 
down the mountain side, over the blackened scoria plains, fat 
into the forests of Hilo. Byron’s Bay, also, and the shores of 
Hilo, lay like a map at our feet. 
At several points at the base of the mountain, yr in ihe forests; 
the lava was still smoking, but for the most part it was facet 
and the atmosphere was so pure and so free from soak that we 
enjoyed a most grand panoramic scene. W here the molten stream 
issued from the crater it made an opening in the rim, throug! 
which it Hoveng with great rapidity. From the erater seve 
* The reader will thictbae that this lake is in the crater of Kilauea, at its 
southernmost extremity, and covers but a small part of its whole although 
enh dome which has covered it is 1800 to 2400 feet in diameter at at base. ya? 
hen fully open, measures 1000 feet by 1500 in a diameter. 
H 
