350 J. D. Dana — History of the Changes in Kilauea. 



The lavas of 1868 were ejected from a fissure nearly a hundred 

 yards long, and flowed over the plain without descending into 



Kilauea, a portion of it covering part 

 of the stream of 1832, as already 

 stated. Man}' small trees standing in 

 its course have now a rough cylindri- 

 cal encasement of lava about their 

 charred bases, which reaches to a 

 height of from two to two and a half 

 feet or more above the level of the flow, 

 thus showing that the viscid stream, 

 when reaching the trees on its way 

 down the slope, had greater height of 

 surface than afterward when the flow 

 had passed by and its final level was attained. 



2. Lower pit in 1837. — The lower pit of 1832 had become 

 very nearly obliterated, according to Mr. S. N. Castle, of Hono- 

 lulu, by the latter part of August, 1837, as he informed me in 

 August last. He found cones active in all parts of the crater. 



3. The " lower pit 1 ' 0/I868.— Mr. Nordhoff, in his "Northern 

 California, Oregon and the Sandwich Islands,"* p. 45, says, 

 speaking of the outbreak of Kilauea in 1868, " suddenly, one 

 day, the greater part of the lava floor sank down or fell down 

 a depth of about five hundred feet, to the level where we now 

 walked. The wonderful tale was plain to us [March 3, 1873] 

 as we examined the details on the spot. It was as though a 

 top-heavy and dried-out pie-crust had fallen in at the middle, 

 leaving a part of the circumference bent down but clinging at 

 the outside of the dish." Mr. Nordhoff's statement as to the 

 depth of the lower pit was evidently quoted, and is not inde- 

 pendent testimony, but his comparison suggested by the sight 

 of the place, sufficiently intelligible to an American, attests to 

 the reality of the subsidence. 



A letter from Mr. J. M. Lydgate, dated Laupahoehoe, Ha- 

 waii, August 10, 1887, contains the information that his 'map, 

 reproduced on page 94 of this volume, was made after a survey 

 in June of 1874. He also stated that the depth of the lower 

 pit of 1868, was at that time, as nearly as he could now remem- 

 ber, " about thirty or forty feet where the trail crossed it." 



4. Level of the Great South Lake in January, 1878. — Mr. C. J. 

 Lyons, of the Government Survey Office, told me that on 

 January 1, of 1878, he obtained, by means of a theodolite, 325 

 feet as the level of the lavas of Halema'uma'u below the datum 

 mark at the Yolcano House. 



* 1874. New York and also London. 



