240 JYotice of Hawaii, [Owyhee,) and its Volcanic Regions, 8^c. 



By the nearness of our approach, in the examination of these cones, 

 we were greatly excited, although, judging from the tremendous roar 

 within, the irresistible force and deafening hiss, with which the steam 

 rushed from every opening, and from the flames which flashed up, 

 followed by lava white with an intensity of heat, the action beneath 

 must have been intensfe — still the incrustation of scoria immediately 

 around, seemed firm, and was less hot, than in many other places: 

 admitting, not only of our coming close to the sides of the cone, but 

 also of clambering some feet up them, till we could run our canes 

 into the orifices at the top, and withdraw, with their burning ends, 

 red hot lava, on which we readily made impressions, with pencil 

 cases and naval buttons. 



Even the slightest touch, however, with our sticks against the 

 molten lava, produced an increased rush and roar from below, with 

 an angry spitting of the fiery matter high in the air around us; and, 

 more than once, we hastily retreated, anticipating a more violent 

 eruption. 



So much of novelty — so much of fearful subHmity attracts the at- 

 tention and calls for admiration, on every side, that day after day, iri 

 place of a single morning, would be insufficient to exhaust the points 

 of interest in this grand object : and we regretted the necessity, that 

 hunger, thirst and fatigue imposed upon us, of taking leave of the 

 depths to which we had descended. 



The ascent to our cabin, by the same path we came, was toilsome 

 in the extreme ; and but for the refreshment derived from the whor- 

 tleberries — after having surmounted the first cliffs — we should have 

 been almost entirely overcome.* 



* The first eveninc; of our arrival from the bay, while standing on the edge of the 

 crater, a sudden blast of wind brushed from my head a Leghorn hat, which I had 

 worn to shield my face, by its broad rim, from the sun; and in an instant swept it 

 out of sight over the precipice, as was then supposed, beyond all recovery. But, 

 while at dinner, after having reached the hut, we were alarmed by the running of 

 one of the natives from the crater, calling, in great agitation, for a rope, which had 

 been used in lashing our provision chest; and on hastily demanding what was the 

 matter, we learned, that an islander, when below in the morning, had caught a 

 glimpse of the hat, lodged on the face of the precipice over which it had been 

 blown, a hundred feet or more below the summit; and, that on coming up, he had 

 gone over the brink, and by a most frightful effort, had succeeded in gaining pos- 

 session of it. After making his way back, however, till within twenty or thirty feet 

 of the top, he found it impossible to ascend farther ; and was then standing on a sin- 

 gle projecting stone, in danger every moment of losing his hold, and of being pre- 

 cipitated to instant destruction, down a wall-faced cliff of at least nine hundred feet! 



