W. T. Brigham—Kilauea in 1880. 23 



tion is marked by the surface lakes just mentioned, enough it 

 maj be to raise the cool but somewhat flexible crust a few feet 

 in the middle, the supply ceases ; the liquid which has per- 

 meated all the cracks and fissures in the overlying crust^as the 

 lava on a larger scale injects 

 dikes in the earth's crust, cools 

 and becomes solid, to be in turn 

 raised by a new influx of lava 

 from beneath. Each layer will 

 be thicker near the source and 

 will thin out as the distance Diagram of elevation. 



therefrom increases, and this is 



what the cracks and chasms in the dome show so far as one can 

 get into them. The successive layers are very irregular; one 

 not far, perhaps two hundred feet from the outer lake, was six 

 feet thick and contained on a rough estimate ten thousand cubic 

 yards of vesicular lava ; next to it was a layer not quite two feet 

 thick and diminishing at a distance of two hundred yards to 

 less than half a foot. 



After examining Kilauea by daylight, I procured lanterns 

 and returned to the lakes about nightfall, traversing the bed of 

 the crater while the daylight lasted. A guide (so-called) who 

 was at the Volcano House, and who went with us that morn- 

 ing, refused to descend after dark, and the hotel keeper put 

 every obstacle in our way ; but I had often been there by night 

 before, and my familiarity with the external action of this vol- 

 cano made it quite safe to pass over any part of the terrible 

 waste in the flickering, lurid light of the earth-fires, and it is 

 only at night that the Halemaumau can be seen in all its splen- 

 dor. In some respects also it is a safer journey by night than 

 by day ; for example, on our way down we crossed a low dome 

 which gave no signs of fire except a clinking sound and a slight 

 bluish vapor common enough in the vicinity of the lakes; the 

 ground was so hot, however, that we crossed it rapidly to save 

 our shoes ; on our return about midnight we found that our 

 path had led over a mound wholly injected with a network of 

 molten lava filling the cracks not two inches from the surface, 

 and which, now plainly visible in the darkness, was a startling 

 as well as a beautiful sight. In the daylight the hot lava looks 

 like black tar, and I have several times had to pull my com- 

 panions from the spot where they might be standing uncon- 

 scious of the silent black monster which was almost biting their 

 feet, for it was almost invisible on the equally black floor. 



In all of my previous visits the bank of the active pool had 

 been at least twenty-five feet above the lava surface, but now 

 we were able to approach the southeast lake nearly on a level 

 and the effect was much grander than usual. I have spent at 



