1872.] 949 [Kneeland. 
The crater of Kilauea was active in the south lake, the surface of 
the melted lava being about two hundred feet below the rim, boiling 
and heaving like an ocean, and throwing up blood-red jets about forty 
feet high from the central portion. A fortnizht before his visit it 
had overflowed the rim, and a week after his visit it overflowed a 
second time, while the summit crater of Mauna Loa was in full 
activity. 
He gave an account also of the ascent to the summit crater by the 
first party which went up, some days before the one whose account 
has been published in Silliman’s Journal, and who saw the phenomena 
when grandest. Though obliged to leave the party himself, he had 
the advantage of notes taken by his brother-in-law, who was the 
first to gain the summit. After a fatiguing ascent they found the 
lava rising like a silvery fountain, estimated at two hundred and fifty 
feet high, from a central depression in the floor of the crater, which 
did not exist at the time of Capt. Wilke’s visit; the time taken for 
the lava to fall from its highest point was seven seconds; the lava did 
not flow out of the crater down the mountain side, but fell hack into 
the crater, forming a small fiery lake. The flow commenced on 
Friday, August 9th, and the light he saw from Haleakala a few 
days after, not knowing, however, that the summit crater was active. 
Most of the eruptions from Mauna Loa have been from points con- 
siderably below the summit; and in the two or three which have 
occurred in the summit crater during the last fifty years, the fires 
. have either suddenly subsided, or when visited have presented sim- 
ply a smoke without apparent fire. This, therefore, is the first dis- 
play from the summit crater that has been visited either by natives 
or foreigners since the missionary occupation of these islands. 
He described also his ascent to the extensive crater of Haleakala, 
the largest known, being twenty-seven miles in circumference, and 
on an average two thousand feet deep. The scene of utter desola- 
tion presented by this crater he thought must resemble the exterior 
craters of the moon; he exhibited in this connection photographs of 
Haleakala and the lunar crater Copernicus for comparison. __ 
He exhibited also specimens of the recent flows from Kilauea, 
which did not apparently differ from the lava of other flows collected 
by Mr. Brigham. - 
Dr. Kneeland also spoke of several theories which had been pro- 
posed to account for the phenomena of volcanoes. 
