262 HAWATIAN ISLANDS. 
V. ISLAND OF KAUAL 
GENERAL FEATURES. 
Kauai* is nearly circular in form, and has an average diameter of 
twenty-nine statute miles, with an area of six hundred and forty square 
miles. ‘The land rises very gradually from the coast, except on the 
western side, where there is a precipice fronting the sea, of a thousand 
feet or more in height. Elsewhere, there are usually cliffs of two or 
three hundred feet, above which commences a gently sloping shore 
plain, two to five miles wide, and one to five degrees in inclination. 
This cliff occasionally retreats inward, leaving a sea-coast plain sur- 
rounded by an amphitheatre of steep hillsides. The surface of the 
interior is broken into ridges and valleys, many of great extent. The 
loftier summits tower up with steep, unbroken sides three or four 
thousand feet above the other heights around them, and some of the 
gorges are one to two thousand feet deep. The altitude of Waialeale, 
the highest peak, is estimated at eight thousand feet. 
Towards the west side of the island, there is a mountain plain about 
four thousand feet above the sea. 
Among the lofty summits of the interior there 1s no trace of a crater. 
The ridges, as they reach towards the sea, are very distinctly seen to 
decline gradually into the shore plain, this plain being, in fact, but the 
base or foot of the mountains, and continuing the slope of the ridges 
to the sea. Moreover, the plain and the ridges show not merely a 
continuity of surface, but also of internal structure. The river chan- 
nels which intersect it, like those of the dividing plain of Oahu, 
often three hundred feet deep, have a uniform stratification, which 
extends, without changing essentially its inclination or general cha- 
racter, far towards the centre of the island. This uniformity of struc- 
ture affords more decided evidence of continuity than might be 
gathered from the nature of the surface, which is, sometimes, quite 
undulating. We may, therefore, distinguish in the topography of the 
island, notwithstanding the great irregularity in the arrangement of 
the heights and ridges, a seeming conformity to a system, pointing to 
a unity of origin. ‘ 
* The observations on this island by the author were made during four days, to which 
time he was limited by definite orders. 
