MAUNA LOA. 143 



A search was set on foot in the morning, but had continued without 

 success. 



The storm which with us had been snow, was rain at the Recruiting 

 Station, and they were in hopes of getting from it a supply of water ; 

 but in the morning the lava-rock appeared as dry as before. 



The news Dr. Judd brought was far from encouraging. Besides 

 the disappearance of Longley, I learned that nearly all the natives had 

 deserted the boxes ; that many of them had not even reached the 

 Recruiting Station, and that Ragsdale and his forty goats had not 

 come ; nor were there any tidings of the party from the ship. The 

 natives hearing of our distresses, and probably exaggerating them, had 

 refused to furnish any thing unless at exorbitant prices. The officers 

 had very properly rejected the whole that was offered ; for, although 

 our allowance was small, we trusted that the provisions from the ship 

 would arrive in a day or two at farthest. 



I despatched a messenger to desire that the men coming from the 

 ship should be employed first in hunting up Longley, although I enter- 

 tained little hope of his being found alive, exposed as he must have been 

 to two such severe nights and days, without food or covering from the 

 storm. 



After getting a fire lighted, and something to eat, Drs. Judd, Pick- 

 ering, and myself, set out to reconnoitre the crater for a more suitable 

 place in which to establish the tents ; but, after much search, we found 

 none that offered so many facilities as that I had accidentally chosen 

 the first night. Dr. Pickering parted from us, and was the first to 

 make a descent into the crater. 



Nothing can exceed the devastation of the mountain : the whole area 

 of it is one mass of lava, that has at one time been thrown out in a fluid 

 state from its terminal crater. There is no sand or other rock ; nothing 

 but lava, on whichever side the eye is turned. To appearance it is of 

 different ages, some of very ancient date, though as yet not decom- 

 posed, and the alternations of heat and cold, with rain and snow, seem 

 to have united in vain for its destruction. In some places, it is quite 

 smooth, or similar to what has already been described as the pahoihoi, 

 or " satin stream ;" again, it appears in the form of clinkers, which are 

 seldom found in heaps, but lie extended in beds for miles in length, 

 sometimes a mile wide, and occasionally raised from ten to twenty 

 feet above the surface of the surrounding lava. 



The place where these clinkers appear to me to have been formed is 

 in the crater itself; there they have been broken up by contending 

 forces, and afterwards ejected with the more fluid lava, and borne 



