408 Scientific Intelligence. 
The summit.—Before us lay a rugged plain, a two miles in 
diameter, of black lava, overlaid in many places with fields of 
brown a-a, and everywhere torn into unheard of shapes by the 
fierce power that had upheaved the whole. To our right rose a 
remarkable Be poe! or sry showing black against the sky. 
On every hand deep crevices, and spent waves of lava 
had dashed coirester i in tye riad shapes, and so congealed: Hurry- 
ing on as well as we were able, we final ly reached a cul-de sae, 
formed by a branching a-a flow, and here we dismounted, and 
tethered our animals for the night. This done, we took our way 
five hundred yards over a ehh strip of rugged lava, and all at 
once pee upon the edge of the 
Crater of Mie caob sind ACI e before us, at our feet as it 
were, yawned a terrific chasm, with black perpendicular walls 
eure the eye daw some 800 feet, to where, in the inky black- 
of the lower basin, sprung up in glorious sparkling light, self- 
sang a mighty fountain of clear molten lav 
Referring to the en er published herewith the reader will 
find that we reached the crater’s edge on or ‘eastern side at the 
point marked by the outline of a tent. The nt walls that en- 
circle the pit, marked a, on our side fell jpedpanidhiouldety about five 
hundred feet, wiiie on the opposite or pias side they descended 
nearer eight hundr ed, to where the plateau marked 8 form eda pons 
to the crater, broken down again to form " the pit marked c, : 
general shape of the central crater, Mokuaweoweo, was an ws? 
lar ellipse, rather more than three-quart ers of a mile through i 
cs etd axis, by about a mile and a quarter from the dividing bye 
arked by a dotted line on the left, that separated it from F, 7 
proce known as Pohaku Hanalei, to a similar though not so we 
ebay artition wall on the ri ht hand et joined to it the crater 
poking id ‘J air 
ec 
fro 
liquid lava, surpassin on beautiful to gaze upo 3 
fiery fountain, a ak incline of ae thrown up by this 
