92 J. S. Emerson—Kilauea after the Eruption of 1886. 
Outside of Kilauea, in addition to the large number of steam 
jets which are a prominent feature of the landscape about 
the Volcano house, there was a large rent in the earth crossing 
the road by which we came from” Keauhou, extending in a 
southeasterly direction, at a point about two miles from the 
Volcano house. It was formed at the time of the sinking of: 
the lakes, and when I observed it, on the 24th of March, the 
steam was still coming up from a considerable depth. A few 
days later, on a visit to “ Kilauea Ikki,” a deep and apparently 
extinct crater to the east of the main crater of Kilauea, I 
crossed a similar rent, formed at the same time, nearer to the 
volcano, from which in like manner the steam was freely 
arising. I was also particularly interested in a line of steam 
jets, stretching away for miles to the southwest, arising from 
the steam cracks of 1868, the general direction of which, as 
observed by prismatic compass, was S. 44° W. On the 26th 
of April I examined a number of these steam jets, and found 
that in every case the sides about the orifice from which they 
arose were well covered with moss, proving that they were of 
an older date than the 6th of March. On the northwest side 
of, and running parallel with, the great steam cracks of 1868, 
were a number of smaller cracks in the extended plain of 
pumice. ‘There were also a few on the southeast side. But in 
no case did I see any steam arising from them. The vertical 
-section of some thirty feet or more in the sides of some of these 
fresh cracks furnished an excellent opportunity to study the 
arrangement of the successive layers of pumice, gravel, and fine 
sand which made up the mass of the great plains stretching for 
miles to the southwest of the crater. It was doubtless the 
ejecta of the voleano, which, blown thither by the wind, and 
accumulating for ages, must have attained considerable depth. 
I was obliged to leave unsurveyed a portion of the sunken 
district to the southwest of the station, marked on the map 
Halemauma’'u S. It was an irregular district, of some ten 
acres extent, whose average subsidence I judged to be not over 
ten feet, save in that portion which, sloping rapidly down and 
connecting with the great abyss of Halema’uma’u, I found had 
fallen twenty feet and more. It lay nearly on the direct line 
from the central pit of Halema’uma’u to the steam cracks of 
1868. On the 25th of March I remarked the great heat of 
portions of this district, and on the afternoon of the 12th of 
April, as I crossed it for the last time, I observed that while 
the crater had been decidedly cooling down as a whole, this 
portion had retained its heat in a marked degree, and was 
without doubt the hottest part of its entire area. The heated 
air still arose from it as from a furnace, and the steam jets 
from its fissures seemed unusually numerous and active. 
