letter xxix.] DESCENT INTO KILAUEA. 251 



Perhaps its spasmodic fires will die out, and we shall find only- 

 blackness. Perhaps anything, except our seeing it as it ought 

 to be seen ! The practical difficulty about a guide increases, 

 and Mr. Gilman cannot help us to solve it. And if it be so 

 cold at 4000 feet, what will it be at 14,000? 



Kilauea, June 0t. 



I have no room in my thoughts for anything but volcanoes, 

 and it will be so for some days to come. We have been all 

 day in the crater, in fact I left Mr. Green and his native there, 

 and came up with the guide, sore, stiff, bruised, cut, singed, 

 grimy, with my thick gloves shrivelled off by the touch of sul- 

 phurous acid, and my boots nearly burned off. But what are 

 cuts, bruises, fatigue, and singed eyelashes, in comparison with 

 the awful sublimities I have witnessed to-day ? The activity of 

 Kilauea on Jan. 3 1 was as child's play to its activity to-day : as 

 a display of fireworks compared to the conflagration of a me- 

 tropolis. Then, the sense of awe gave way speedily to that of 

 admiration of the dancing fire fountains of a fiery lake ; now, it 

 was all terror, horror, and sublimity, blackness, suffocating 

 gases, scorching heat, crashings, surgings, detonations ; half 

 seen fires, hideous, tortured, wallowing waves. I feel as if the 

 terrors of Kilauea would haunt me all my life, and be the 

 Nemesis of weak and tired hours. 



We left early, and descended the terminal wall, still, as before, 

 green with ferns, ohias, and sandalwood, and bright with 

 clusters of turquoise berries, and the red fruit and waxy blossom 

 of the ohelo. The lowest depression of the crater, which I 

 described before as a level, fissured sea of iridescent lava, has 

 been apparently partially flooded by a recent overflow from 

 Halemaumau, and the same agency has filled up the larger 

 rifts with great shining rolls of f black lava, obnoxiously like 

 boa-constrictors in a state of repletion. In crossing this central 

 area for the second time, with a mind less distracted by the 

 novelty of the surroundings, I observed considerable deposits 

 of remarkably impure sulphur, as well as sulphates of lime and 

 alum in the larger fissures. The presence of moisture was 

 always apparent in connection with these formations. The 

 solidified surges and convolutions in which the lava lies, the 

 latter sometimes so beautifully formed as to look like coils of 

 wire rope, are truly wonderful. Within the cracks there are 



