Notice of Active and Extinct Volcanos. 301 



Among active volcanos, we believe that the crater of Ki- 

 rauea is unparalleled for magnitude and depth, and its situa- 

 tion in the midst of a vast elevated plain is also peculiar ; we 

 subjoin the following short additional notice of it from a news 

 paper. 



Hawaii. 



" Crater of Kirauea. — Jan. 5, 1826, Mr. Bishop, the Mission- 

 ary at Hawaii, visited this volcano. He says, we started early 

 on our way. Before we had travelled far, the sulphureous va- 

 pour, the wind being ahead, became very perceivable, and indi- 

 cated our approach to the volcano. For many miles before we 

 arrived there, the air was so much charged with this vapour, as 

 to be very offensive, and, at times almost suffocating. We arri- 

 ved at the crater about eleven o'clock, by a path which led 

 around to the southern side, at this time the windward, our ap- 

 proach to the other quarter being deemed unsafe. We found 

 the crater much altered from what it was in* the summer of 1823, 

 when I visited it in company with Mr. Ellis, and others. I was 

 greatly surprised to find, that since the visit of Lord Byron and 

 company in June last, the crater had been filled, apparently to 

 the height of more than five hundred feet with fresh lava. The 

 smoke ascended in immense columns from a hundred blazing fur- 

 naces, and completely obscured the sides on the north and east, 

 together with a greater part of the interior of the volcano. As 

 the wind occasionally blew away the smoke, I could discover an 

 immense number of fires, some spouting forth from cones that 

 arose to the height of fifty or one hundred feet above the sur- 

 face of the surrounding crust of lava ; and others boiling with 

 the greatest agitation, like vast caldrons of liquid fire, and 

 every now and then sending forth a gust of vapour and smoke 

 with great noise, when the view would again be obscured. The 

 natives inform me, that after rising a little higher, the lava will 

 discharge itself as formerly, towards the sea, through some aper- 

 ture under ground." 



" Other volcanos, (says Prof. Daubeny,) are stated to occur in 

 different parts of that extensive tract, known by modern geogra- 

 phers under the name of Polynesia, as far as to New Caledonia 

 and the New Hebrides. The separate mass of New Zealand, with 

 which Norfolk Island is connected, may be viewed as the south- 

 ern end of the Bulwark; its eastern can hardly be fixed at any 

 nearer point than the coast of America, for I am assured that an 

 active volcano at present exists among the Galapagos, only 10 

 deg. West of Quito. 



" Far therefore from believing that volcanos have been instru- 

 mental in the destruction of continents, or that their history 



