172 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [DeC. 3, 



ened to bury all in fiery ruin. But on the morning of the 13th of 

 February, whilst coming with relentless energy down the rocky chan- 

 nel of a river, evaporating the waters, filling the basins, leaping the 

 precipices, and kindling the thickets along its banks, it suddenly 

 ceased to flow, — the whole terminus refrigerated, the fusion retreat- 

 ing towards the mountain, first one, then two, three, and four miles, 

 where the lava gushes up vertically, forming hills, caves, ridges, 

 towers, battlements, and innumerable tunnels, or spreads laterally, 

 consuming the thicket along its margin. From that time to the pre- 

 sent the lava-current has made no progress seaward. 



Visit to the Summit-crater of Mauna Loa*. — Our party consisted 

 of an American gentleman, four natives, and myself. We left Hilo 

 on the morning of the 2nd of Oct. 1855 ; and, as there was no path 

 through the dense forest, some thirty miles wide, interposed be- 

 tween us and the mountain, we took the channel of a wild stream 

 called Wailuku ("river of destruction") as our clue by which to 

 thread our way up to the burning Mount. We advanced about 

 twelve miles the first day, wading in the water, leaping from rock 

 to rock in the stream, crossing and recrossing uncounted times, 

 beating through the jungle along the banks to avoid a cataract, an 

 impassable rapid, or a deep reach, and encamping at night at the 

 roots of a large tree by the side of the stream. — Oct. 3rd. We pro- 

 ceeded about twelve miles more along the rocky bed of this wild 

 romantic stream. During both of these days the forest was filled 

 with volcanic smoke, which gave a solemn aspect to every object 

 around. At night we made our bed of ferns under the trunk of a 

 prostrate tree, and here we saw the gleaming of the fires as they 

 lighted up the forest some five miles distant on our left. We had 

 passed the end of the lava-stream as it swerved on through the 

 thicket towards Hilo ; but, as the jungle was almost impenetrable, 

 we determined to ascend the stream until fairly out of the woods, 

 when we would lay our course direct for the lava-flow. 



At \\ P.M. on the third day we were fairly out of the forest and 

 in an open rolling country of about twenty miles wide, lying between 

 the woods and the bases of the mountains. 



After emerging from the forest, we skirted along its upper borders 

 at right angles with the channel we had left, and at night found our- 

 selves near the borders of the lava-current. We encamped in a ca^e, 

 watching during most of the night the fantastic and ever-varying 

 play of the fires as they gleamed in the burning forest below us, and 

 as they glowed in points and lines over the high plains and up the 

 cleft mountain to the crater above, where the incandescent bowels of 

 the earth were being poured out with a force which seemed to 

 transcend all our ideas of terrestrial dynamics. The next morning 

 (Friday) we walked up the left bank of the lava-stream until 10 o'clock. 



* A detailed account of this visit has appeared in the * New York Tribune/ the 

 ' Pacific Commercial Advertiser,' and in Silliman's ' American Journal/ 1856, 

 p. 139. 



