APPENDIX TO VOL. II. 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 



A. Page 835. — M. Strzelecki on Kirauea. — The following account 

 of the volcanic phenomena in Hawaii is so highly interesting, that I 

 am induced to insert it entire. " The volcano of Kirauea lies on the 

 N. W. side of Mouna Roa, about twenty miles from the summit of that 

 mountain, and forty from the Bay of Hilo ; its latitude is 19° 27'. Its 

 present size surpasses that of every other known volcano, yet it now 

 hardly displays more than one-third of its original magnitude. Its crater 

 must have once been twenty-four miles in circumference, as evi- 

 denced by the still remaining ruins of its ancient walls ; the highest 

 point of which is 5,054 feet above the level of the sea. The sunken 

 furnace of Kirauea is now reduced to eight miles of circumference, the 

 present crater being 4,109 feet in height above the sea; which is, 

 therefore, at least 950 feet below the brim of the ancient crater. The 

 edge of this precipice falls perpendicularly 600 feet lower, to the 

 boiling surface of igneous matter. The descent to this level is often 

 precipitous, and winds among a thousand openings, which vomit forth 

 hot vapours, from an area thickly strewed with tabular masses of 

 smoking lava. Like the ice in a blocked-up channel, these tabular 

 masses remain either standing on end, or heaped in horizontal or half- 

 raised beds, and gaping with fissures over fearful cavities, resounding 

 with noises similar to those of a stormy sea. Six of these were in 

 violent agitation while I was exploring the crater. The surface of the 

 fiery matter in all of them kept at about the same height, and rose, 

 sank, and was agitated simultaneously, which seems to show that it 

 belonged to one mass of liquid lava, filling the whole area of the 

 interior of the crater, and that these cavities are mere openings, and 

 the heaps of broken lava which block up part of the crater, are a tem- 

 porary crust or covering over the incandescent mass beneath. The 

 lava of Kirauea appears to be similar to that of Hecla, which is known 

 under the name ' cavernous , ' and which, by the intensity of its heat, 

 and the abundance of its elastic gases, produces here, as in Iceland 



