226 



HA WAIL 



[letter xxtv. 



sulphur, in a very impure form, exist here and there, but there 

 are no sulphur or steam-cracks, or hot springs, on any part of 

 the mountain. With its cold ashes and dead force, it is a most 

 tremendous spectacle of the power of fire. 



Some previous travellers had generously left some faggots on 

 the summit, and we made a large fire for warmth, and I rolled 

 my blanket round me, and sat with my feet among the hot 

 embers, but all to no purpose. The wind was strong and keen, 

 and the fierce splendour of the tropic sun conveyed no heat. 

 Mr. A. went away investigating, the native rolled himself in his 

 poncho and fell asleep by the fire, and I divided the time 

 between glimpses into the awful desolation of the crater, 

 snatched between the icy gusts of wind, and the enjoyment of 

 the Avonderful cloud scenery which to everybody is a great 

 charm of the view from Haleakala. The day was perfect j for 

 first we had an inimitable view of the crater and all that- could 

 be seen from the mountain-top, and then an equally inimitable 

 view of Cloudland. There was the gaunt, hideous, desolate 

 abyss, with its fiery cones, its rivers and surges of black lava 

 and grey ash crossing and mingling all over the area, mixed with 

 splotches of colour and coils of satin rock, its walls dark and 

 irowning, everywhere riven and splintered, and clouds perpetu- 

 ally drifting in through the great gaps, and filling up the whole 

 crater with white, swirling masses, which in a few minutes 

 melted away in the sunshine, leaving it all as sharply definite 

 as before. Before noon clouds surrounded the whole mountain, 

 not in the vague, flocculent, meaningless masses one usually 

 sees, but in Arctic oceans, where lofty icebergs, floes and pack, 

 lay piled on each other, glistening with the frost of a Polar 

 winter; then alps on alps, and peaks of well remembered 

 ranges gleaming above glaciers, and the semblance of forests 

 in deep ravines loaded with new fallen snow. Snow-drifts, 

 avalanches, oceans held in bondage of eternal ice, and all this 

 massed together, shifting, breaking, glistering, filling up the 

 broad channel which divides Maui from Hawaii, and far away 

 above the lonely masses, rose, in turquoise blue, like distant 

 islands, the lofty Hawaiian domes of Mauna Kea and Mauna 

 Loa, with snow on Mauna Kea yet more dazzling than the 

 clouds. There never was a stranger contrast than between the 



are : native sulphur, pyrites, salt, sal ammoniac, hydrochloric acid, 

 haematite, sulphurous acid, sulphuric acid, quartz, crystals, palagomte, 

 feldspar, chrysolite, Thompsonite, gypsum, solfatarite, copperas, nitre, 

 Aarragonite, Labradorite, limonite. 



