1856.] WELD — MAUNA LOA. 165 



level country, with forests, jungles, swamps, and streams, it spread 

 to a width of five or six miles, and flowed more slowly. At the time 

 we left Hawaii (Nov. 23, 1855) it had been gaining about a mile a 

 week ; but during the last week it had made yet more sensible pro- 

 gress. The whole length of the course of the lava was, including 

 sinuosities, then computed at considerably more than fifty miles from 

 the craters, and it was then only eight miles in a direct line from the 

 town, which it threatened with destruction. 



Our first good view from Hilo of the eruption was at night, from 

 the deck of a ship in the harbour, as trees obstructed the view from 

 the shore. The distant craters were scarcely visible ; but the burn- 

 ing forests above Hilo showed the front of the advancing lava, light- 

 ing up the night with a mighty glare, with sometimes a column of 

 red light shooting up, occasioned probably by an explosion of the 

 half-cooled upper crust of lava, or by dried trees falling into the 

 devouring element. 



Having spent some days at Hilo, and completed the necessary 

 arrangements, we started with natives and horses to Kilauea, intending 

 to proceed thence on foot. The ascent, though ver^' gradual, may 

 be said to commence immediatelv on leaving; Hilo. The weather was 

 unpropitious, and, where the path was not old lava, it was deep mud ; 

 so that it was not until the second afternoon that we reached Kilauea, 

 as we could hardly get our horses along. The country varied be- 

 tween woods and jungles* and open tracts of Fern, " Ti" (Dracceria 

 ferminalis), and other bushes. A little before we reached Kilauea, 

 we entered the region of the " Koa," — a tree resembhng the Austra- 

 lian gums or Eucalypti, but which is, I believe, classed by Douglas as 

 an Acacia. We also remarked a very handsome yellow x\cacia, the 

 Wild Strawberry and Raspberry, and some Tree-ferns. The soil, of 

 a red colour, was covered with masses of scoriae, and in many places 

 entirely hidden by streams of old lava. 



Our course from Hilo had been about thirty or thirty-five miles, its 

 direction being nearly south by west, and latterly more westerly, when, 

 on the afternoon of Nov. 14, we stood above the great crater of 

 Kilauea, 4104 feet above the sea. We found a grass-built hut on 

 the verge of the upper rim of the crater, and here we took up our 

 quarters. The mountain of Kilauea may be described as the base of a 

 broad, low, truncated cone, standing on a high level plateau on the side 

 of Mauna Loa. It appears as if the apex had subsided, leaving in the 

 centre of the mountain a flat sunken crater, the upper rim of which 

 is about seven miles in circumference. Indeed, even now the level 

 of the bottom of the crater is often lowered by eruptions. 



In the year 1840 an underground eruption of Kilauea reduced the 

 level of its crater 60 feet. The subterranean course of the lava was 

 marked by steam-jets, until some miles below Kilauea it burst forth 

 and ran with great rapidity, reaching the sea more than thirty miles 

 off, in the Puna district, to the southward of Hilo, where it formed 



* Chiefly of a tree of the Myrtle species, often covered with parasites, and 

 bearing red and sometimes vellow flowers. 



N 2 



