KILAUEA, HAWAIL 175 
rages three-fourths of a mile. The southwest extremity (a, fig. p. 173,) 
forms a partly isolated basin, of an oval form, and contains the large 
boiling lake to which we have alluded. The rest of the bottom of the 
pit, at the time visited by the author, was a field of hardened lava, 
excepting two small boiling pools, one on the western side, and the 
other near the eastern. 
On the descent, we travelled the greater part of the way between 
deep fissures, on narrow walls of rock, more or less covered with 
vegetation, and by a winding course, occasionally through clouds of 
steam or drafts of hot air issuing from some oven-hole or dark chasm, 
reached the black ledge. Here we came at once upon the scene of 
late fires, although the boiling pools, at the time, were three hundred 
and forty feet below. Various streams of hardened lava, with their 
tortuous windings, were traced over its surface, some spreading far 
and wide, and terminating in a rounded margin alongside of the pre- 
cipitous walls of the crater, and some twisted into ropes or ropy lines, 
or reaching out in rounded knobs. Others, of still less extent, sur- 
rounded an oddly-shaped cone a few yards in height, which small 
worming streams, and smaller dribblings of lava, had raised. Just pre- 
vious to the eruption of the June preceding (1840) the whole ledge 
was flooded with lava streams, and to that period all these fresh ap- 
pearances are to be attributed. 
The lavas crackled under foot at each tread, as if ready to break 
through : but this arose from a splintery scoriaceous crust, two to four 
inches thick, extremely cellular and brittle, and shining like greenish 
black glass. It is loosely attached to the more solid grayish black 
lava below, and may be peeled off in large pieces. Once accustomed 
to the scoria pavement, the explorer of Pele’s pit tramps on, carelessly 
cracking the glassy crust, until, at another step, the lava actually gives 
way, and opens some concealed cavern. ‘The layers are, in many 
places, swollen or expanded into hollow domes, and the fissured walls 
often yield to slight pressure. But the cavities are usually shallow, 
and such accidents are attended with little inconvenience excepting 
a bruise or wrench between the broken masses that may tumble with 
him. But besides these cavities, there are dark chasms that suddenly 
intercept his course, many of which open to a depth of several hun- 
dred feet, and send up torrents of hot air or suffocating fumes of 
sulphur. Near the walls of the lower pit, these chasms increase in 
number and extent, and in some places, acres of the black ledge are 
tottering, ready to fall. Long-continued rumbling sounds from the 
