HAWAIIAN ISLANDS, IN 1864-65. 19 
disappointed in this, for I remembered the accounts of 
those who had seen all this plain in a melted state. As 
we came near the Lua Pélé, however, we found a black 
cone some twenty-five feet high, with a bright spot at its 
summit. There was fire at last, but we pushed on over 
the loose slabs, and through the steam, until suddenly we 
stood on the brink of the lake of lava some seven hundred 
feet long, five or six hundred feet wide, and perhaps 
thirty feet below us. The surface was covered with a 
dark crust, broken around the edges where the thick 
blood-like mass surged against its banks with a dull sullen 
roar. The sulphurous vapors which rose from its surface 
were blown away by the wind, so that we could approach 
the very brink on the windward side, but the heat was so 
great that we had to hold our hands before our faces. The 
walls on which we stood and where we intended to sleep, 
were thickly covered with Pelé’s hair* which we saw con- 
stantly forming. The drops of lava spattered out as the 
waves dash against the walls, drawing after them a thread, 
or two drops spin out a thread between them like the 
finest “spun glass,” and these broken threads are caught 
against the rough points of the cliffs and form a thick 
coating. 
Occasionally a crack would open in the surface of the 
lake, and the white-hot lava boil up through it in several 
places for a few minutes, and then turning red, and cooling 
rapidly, become black as before. A current would often 
‘set in towards the banks, and cake after cake breaking 
off from the crust be drawn in, causing a violent bubbling 
and spattering; and then this would cease, or run in an- 
other direction, but always from the centre to the edge. 
As it grew dark we were very tired, having travelled 
*Pélé was the Hawaiian Goddess of fire whose home was in Kilauea. 
