1856.] COAN VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS IN HAWAII. 173 



We judged it to be five or six miles wide at this point. Finding a 

 narrower place, and wishing to shorten the distance by cutting off 

 the windings of the stream, we crossed over to its right bank, the 

 passage occupying one hour and fifteen minutes. At this point the 

 whole surface of the lava was solidified, while the molten flood moved 

 on below like water under ice in a river. The superficial crust of 

 the lava was crackling with heat and emitting mineral-gases at in- 

 numerable points. Along the margin numerous trees lay crushed, 

 half-charred, and smouldering upon the hardened lava. 



All this day we passed up the lava- stream, sometimes on its surface, 

 and sometimes along its smoking banks, which often rose in frown- 

 ing battlements and ragged precipices to the height of 50 or 100 feet 

 above us. 



At night we slept on the cooled lava, above the line of vegetation. 

 From this elevation we had an impressive view of these devouring 

 fires, as they rushed in dazzling brilliancy down their burning duct, 

 covered for the most part by a solidified crust, but revealed at many 

 points along the line of flow by openings in the roof, which served 

 as valves for the escaping gases. 



Early on Saturday we were ascending our rugged pathway amidst 

 steam, smoke, and heat. The ascent was rough and toilsome in the 

 extreme. The atmosphere was rare, and what added much to our 

 suff'erings was the want of water. Early on the morning of Friday 

 we had unwittingly passed the last pool of water ; and, having only 

 one pint in our flask, this was our whole supply for six men, from 

 Friday morning until Monday, a.m. 



Upward and upward we urged our weary way upon the heated 

 roof of the lava, passing, as we ascended, opening after opening, 

 through which we looked upon the igneous river as it rushed down 

 its vitrified duct at the rate of forty miles an hour. The lava-current 

 at this high point on the Mount was fearful, the heat incandescent, 

 and the dynamic force wonderful. The fire-duct was laid from 25 

 to 100 feet deep down the sides of the Mount ; and the occasional 

 openings through the arches or superincumbent strata were from 

 1 to 40 fathoms in diameter. Into these orifices we cast large stones, 

 which, as soon as they struck the surface of the hurrying flood, 

 passed down the stream in an indistinct and instantaneous blaze. 

 Through openings in the mountain we could also see subterranean 

 cataracts of molten rock leaping precipices of 25 or 50 feet. The 

 whole scene was awful, defying description. Struggling upwards 

 amidst hills, cones, ridges, pits, and ravines of jagged and smoking 

 lava, we came at 1 p.m. to the terminal or summit crater, and, 

 mounting to the highest crest of its banks, we looked down as into 

 the very throat of hell. 



Instead of a well-defined circular crater, we found the summit of 

 the Mount rent into yawning fissures, on each bank of which immense 

 masses of scoriae, lava, pumice, tuff, and cinders were piled in the 

 form of elongated cones, rent longitudinally, while the inner walls 

 were hung with burning stalactites, and festooned with a capillary or 

 filamentous lava, called Feles hair, and much resembling the hair 



