LETTER XII. ] 



A LAVA FLOW. 



I2T 



felt the perpetual shudder of earthquakes, and their eyes, which 

 look so calm and kind, have seen the inflowing of huge tidal 

 waves, the dull red glow of lava streams, and the leaping of fire 

 cataracts into deep-lying pools, burning them dry in a night 

 time. There were years in which there was no day in which 

 the smoke of underground furnaces was out of their sight, or 

 night which was not lurid with flames. Once they traced a 

 river of lava burrowing its Avay 1500 feet below the surface, 

 and saw it emerge, break over a precipice, and fall hissing 

 into the ocean. Once from their highest mountain a pillar of 

 fire 200 feet in diameter lifted itself for three weeks 1000 feet 

 into the air, making night day, for a hundred miles round, and 

 leaving as its monument a cone a mile in circumference. We 

 see a clothed and finished earth ; they see the building of an 

 island, layer on layer, hill on hill, the naked and deformed 

 product of the melting, forging, and welding, which go on 

 perpetually in the crater of Kilauea. 



I could fill many sheets with what I have heard, but must 

 content myself with telling you very little. In 1855 the fourth 

 recorded eruption of Mauna Loa occurred. The lava flowed 

 directly Hilo-wards, and for several months, spreading through 

 the dense forests which belt the mountain, crept slowly shore- 

 wards, threatening this beautiful portion of Hawaii with the 

 fate of the Cities of the Plain. Mr. C. made several visits to 

 the eruption, and on each return the simple people asked him 

 how much longer it would last. For five months they watched 

 the inundation, which came a little nearer every day. Should 

 they fly or not ? Would their beautiful homes become a waste 

 of jagged lava and black sand, like the neighbouring district of 

 Puna, once as fair as Hilo ? " Such questions suggested them- 

 selves as they nightly Avatched the nearing glare, till the fiery 

 waves met with obstacles which piled them up in hillocks, 

 eight miles from Hilo, and the suspense was over. Only 

 gigantic causes can account for the gigantic phenomena of this 

 lava-flow. The eruption travelled forty miles in a straight line, 

 or sixty, including sinuosities. It was from one to three miles 

 broad, and from five to two hundred feet deep, according to 

 the contours of the mountain slopes over which it flowed. It- 

 lasted for thirteen months, pouring out a torrent of lava which 

 covered nearly 300 square miles of land, and whose volume 

 was estimated at thirty-eight thousand millions of cubic feet ! 

 In 1859 lava fountains 400 feet in height, and with a nearly 

 equal diameter, played on the summit of Mauna Loa. This 



