letter xxv.] ASCENT OF MAUN A KEA. 



235 



cones, dark and grey basalt, clinkers, scoriae., fine ash, and fer- 

 ruginous basalt, is something gigantic. We were three hours 

 in ascending through it, and the eye could at no time take in 

 its limit, for the mountain which from any point of view below 

 appears as a well defined dome with a ragged top, has at the 

 summit the aspect of a ridge, or rather a number of ridges, 

 with between 20 and 30 definite peaks, varying in height 

 from 900 to 1400 feet. Among these cones are large plains of 

 clinkers and fine gravel, but no lava-streams, and at a height of 

 12,000 feet the sides of some of the valleys are filled up with 

 snow, of a purity so immaculate and a brilliancy so intense as 

 the fierce light of the tropical sun beat upon it, that I feared 

 snow-blindness. We ascended one of the smaller cones, which 

 was about 900 feet high, and found it contained a crater of 

 nearly the same depth, with a very even slope, and lined en- 

 tirely with red ash, which at the bottom became so bright and 

 fiery-looking that it looked as if the fires, which have not burned 

 for ages, had only died out that morning. 



After riding steadily for six hours, our horses, snorting and 

 panting, and plunging up to their knees in fine volcanic ash, 

 and halting, trembling and exhausted, every few feet, carried 

 us up the great tufa cone which crowns the summit of this vast, 

 fire-flushed, fire-created mountain, and we dismounted in deep 

 snow on the crest of the highest peak in the Pacific, 13,953 feet 

 above the sea. This summit is a group of six red tufa cones, 

 with very little apparent difference in their altitude, and with 

 deep valleys filled with red ash between them. The terminal 

 cone on which we were has no cavity, but most of those form- 

 ing the group, as well as the thirty which I counted around 

 and below us, are truncated cones with craters within, and 

 with outer slopes, whose estimated angle is about 30° On these 

 slopes the snow lay heavily. In coming up we had had a superb 

 view of Mauna Loa, but before we reached the top, the clouds 

 had congregated, and lay in glistening masses all round the 

 mountain about half-way up, shutting out the smiling earth, and 

 leaving us alone with the view of the sublime desolation of the 

 volcano. 



We only remained an hour on the top, and came down by a 

 very circuitous route, which took us round numerous cones, 

 and over miles of clinkers varying in size from a ton to a few 

 ounces, and past a lake the edges of which were frozen, and 

 which in itself is a curiosity, as no other part of the mountain 

 " holds water." Not far off is a cave, a lava-bubble, in which 



