24 IT. T. Brigham—Kilauea in 18S0. 



various times as many as ten nights in the crater on the banks 

 of this and other similar lakes, and have noticed blue and green 

 flames playing over the cracks in the surface, but these seldom 

 lasted longer than a few moments, and were not confined to any 

 locality. Now, on the contrary, on the top of a huge hum mock 

 which seemed to have been broken from the bank, was a clus- 

 ter of blow-holes from which escaped constantly a large volume 

 of gas which burned with a bluish-green flame well shown in 

 Mr. Furneaux's painting of the lake made on this visit. These 

 jets 'were burning in the morning, and twelve hours after their 

 volume was apparently unaltered. The pressure evidently 

 varied but slightly, and any increase in pressure did not seem 

 to correspond to greater activity in the molten lava. With 

 suitable apparatus it would have been possible to have collected 

 this gas before it was consumed. Its escape caused a noise simi- 

 lar to that of a steamboat blowing off steam. The mention of 

 steam leads me to express a wish that those geologists who see 

 in steam the prime cause of volcanic action, could have been 

 here, and have studied an eruption of the Hawaiian volcanoes. 

 A pailfull of water thrown into the southeast lake would have 

 made more steam than was present all the time we stayed in 

 the crater. It is difficult' to mistake a steamy atmosphere for 

 a very dry one, and then if steam was present in any quantity 

 in the gaseous exhalations of Kilauea, the cold winds from 

 Mauna Loa would soon precipitate it as rain, when in fact this 

 is the dryest part of the island. 



The ancient Halemaumau or Everlasting House, where fires 

 have been seen, or whence vapors have escaped from time im- 

 memorial, was now replaced, I believe, by the four lakes which 

 occupy the position of that single source. The guide and 

 others insisted that the northeastern of the lakes was the Hale- 

 maumau, and without renewing my survey, for which I did 

 not have with me the necessary instruments, I could not posi- 

 tively declare that they were wrong, but I sighted from two of 

 my monuments left from 1865, and comparing with my notes 

 of that survey on my return home, 1 found the Halemaumau 

 of that day occupied a position nearly southwest of the present 

 so-called Halemaumau, or in the midst of the present four 

 lakes, so that no one of them is entitled exclusively to that 

 name sacred to the ancient worshipers of Pele. 



Among other changes the southern sulphur bank had wholly 

 disappeared, having been consumed by a local outbreak of lava 

 which occurred a few months before our visit. The other de- 

 posit of sulphur on the northern side near the hotel seemed 

 smaller, and the impression conveyed was of a much smaller 

 amount of sulphur in and around the crater than was found 

 fifteen years before. None of the fine crystals so common 

 then could be found now. 



