J. jS. Emerson — Some Characteristics of Kan. 433 



successive layers of rock has added this crowning layer of dust, 

 which makes it possible to plow and plant a district whose 

 formation is so recent. How different it might have been if 

 this superficial layer had been aa or pahoehoe rock, as in Kona, 

 requiring another ten thousand years to distintegate it suffi- 

 ciently for farming purposes. 



Between the South Point and the road from Kahaku Ranch 

 to Waiohinu is a beautiful sketch of smooth grassy pasture. 

 At various points near the Cape the waiter has measured the 

 depth of the soil to the bed rock, and recorded it as having an 

 average thickness of about ten feet, separated into two layers 

 of nearly equal thickness by a thin layer of whitish earth per- 

 haps half an inch thick. One branch of the flow of 1868 

 traversed a portion of this plain from the vicinity of the 

 Kahuku Kanch house half way to the Kaalualu landing. 

 Flows of an earlier date have also covered other portions with 

 a horrid mass of rock. But it is outside of the purpose of 

 this paper to describe the various lava flows which cover much 

 of the territory below the cane lands and the Kapapala Ranch. 



The woods above the plantations are difficult, if not posi- 

 tively dangerous, to traverse on horseback, so much so that 

 Mr. Julian Monsarrat, who knows the country well, pronounced 

 the carrying of supplies through these woods to his workmen 

 engaged in building a fence along their upper edge, as impracti- 

 cable. The soft treacherous mud gives no foothold for man or 

 beast. Consequently the supplies were carried a long distance 

 around. 



The Kau hills, Iholena, Puu Enuhe, Makanao and Kapuna, 

 bear a most striking family resemblance to each other, so 

 that the profile of one will serve pi-etty well for all. Cap- 

 tain Dutton in his Hawaiian Volcanoes speaks of them as 

 "mere remnants of a large alluvial formation which was origi- 

 nally continuous," and the valleys which separate them as " val- 

 leys of erosion." In speaking of these hills he uses the follow- 

 ing language : " The more we see of this country the more 

 will the evidences accumulate that these buttes are silent wit- 

 nesses of an extensive upheaval of this part of the island at 

 an epoch not very remote." Again he says, " It is difficult to 

 estimate with precision the amount of elevation attested by 

 these terraces, but there are evidences still legible of several 

 of them — one of them 1,200 to 1,400 feet high, another 

 about 2,800, and perhaps, though more doubtful, a third at 

 3,400 feet." (See Dutton's Hawaiian Volcanoes, page 98.) 



This theory, though advanced by a recognized authority on 

 the geology of portions of the western United States, lacks the 

 support of facts. It has not a single ledge of coral, a bed of 

 shells, or a vestige of marine life of any sort on which to rest. 



