letter v.] THE CRATER OF KILAUEA. 



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our ears, rising and falling as if breaking on the shore, but the 

 ocean was thirty miles away. The heavens became redder and 

 brighter, and when we reached the crater-house at eight, clouds 

 of red vapour mixed with flame were curling ceaselessly out of 

 a vast, invisible pit of blackness, and Kilauea was in all its 

 fiery glory. We had reached the largest active volcano in the 

 world, the " place of everlasting burnings." 



Rarely was light more welcome than that which twinkled 

 from under the verandah of the lonely crater-house into the 

 rainy night. The hospitable landlord of this unique dwelling 

 lifted me from my horse, and carried me into a pleasant room 

 thoroughly warmed by a large wood fire, and I hastily retired 

 to bed to spend much of the bitterly cold night in watching 

 the fiery vapours rolling up out of the infinite darkness, and in 

 dreading the descent into the crater. The heavy clouds were 

 crimson with the reflection, and soon after midnight jets of 

 flame of a most peculiar colour leapt fitfully into the air, ac- 

 companied by a dull, throbbing sound. 



This morning was wet and murky as many mornings are 

 here, and the view from the door was a blank up to ten o'clock, 

 when the mist rolled away and revealed the mystery of last 

 night, the mighty crater whose vast terminal wall is only a few 

 yards from this house. We think of a volcano as a cone. 

 This is a different thing. The abyss, which really is at a height of 

 nearly 4000 feet on the flank of Mauna Loa, has the appearance 

 of a great pit on a rolling plain. But such a pit ! It is nine miles 

 in circumference, and its lowest area, which not long ago fell 

 about 300 feet, just as ice on a pond falls when the water below 

 it is withdrawn, covers six square miles. The depth of the crater 

 varies from 800 to 1100 feet in different years, according as 

 the molten sea below is at flood or ebb. Signs of volcanic 

 activity are present more or less throughout its whole depth, 

 and for some distance round its margin, in the form of steam 

 cracks, jets of sulphurous vapour, blowing cones, accumulating 

 deposits of acicular crystals of sulphur, &c, and the pit itself 

 is constantly rent and shaken by earthquakes. Grand erup- 

 tions occur at intervals with circumstances of indescribable 

 terror and dignity, but Kilauea does not limit its activity to 

 these outbursts, but has exhibited its marvellous phenomena 

 through all known time in a lake or lakes in the southern part 

 of the crater, three miles from this side. 



This lake, the Hale-mau-mau, or House of Everlasting Fire 

 of the Hawaiian mythology, the abode of the dreaded goddess 



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