124 



HA WAIL 



[LETTER XT I. 



current large rocks that made the lava foam as it dashed down 

 the precipice and through the valley into the sea, surging anil 

 roaring throughout its length like a cataract, with a power and 

 fury perfectly indescribable. It was nothing else than a river 

 of fire from 200 to 800 feet wide and twenty deep, with a speed 

 varying from ten to twenty-five miles an hour ! " This same 

 intelligent observer noticed as a peculiarity of the spouting 

 that the lava was ejected by a rotary motion, and in the air 

 both lava and stones always rotated towards the south. At 

 Kilauea I noticed that the lava was ejected in a southerly 

 direction. From the scene of these fire fountains, whose 

 united length was about a mile, the river in its rush to the sea 

 divided itself into four streams, between which it shut up men 

 and beasts. One stream hurried to the sea in four hours, but 

 the others took two days to travel ten miles. The aggregate 

 width was a mile and a half. Where it entered the sea it 

 extended the coast-line half a mile, but this worthless accession 

 to Hawaiian acreage was dearly purchased by the loss, for 

 ages at least, of 4000 acres of valuable pasture land, and a 

 much larger quantity of magnificent forest. The whole south- 

 east shore of Hawaii sank from four to six feet, which in- 

 volved the destruction of several hamlets and the beautiful 

 fringe of cocoa-nut trees. Though the region was very thinly 

 peopled, 200 houses and 100 lives were sacrificed in this week 

 of horrors, and from the reeling mountains, the uplifted ocean, 

 and the fiery inundation, the terrified survivors fled into Hilo, 

 each with a tale of woe and loss. The number of shocks of 

 earthquake counted was 2000 in two weeks, an average of 140 

 a day ; but on the other side of the island the number was 

 incalculable. 



I. L. B. 



