2 5 2 HA WAIL [letter xxix. 



extraordinary coloured growths, orange, grey, buff, like mineral 

 lichens, but very hard and brittle. 



The recent lava flow by which Halemaumau has consider- 

 ably heightened its walls, has raised the hill by which you 



Halemaumau, Jan. 31. 



ascend to the brink of the pit to a height of fully five hundred 

 feet from the basin, and this elevation is at present much more 

 fiery and precarious than the former one. It is dead, but not 

 cold, lets one through into cracks hot with corrosive acid, 

 rings hollow everywhere, and its steep acclivities lie in waves, 

 streams, coils, twists, and tortuosities of all kinds, the surface 

 glazed and smoothish, and with a metallic lustre. 



Somehow, I expected to find Kilauea as I had left it in 

 January, though the volumes of dense white smoke which are 

 now rolling up from it might have indicated a change ; but 

 after the toilsome, breathless climbing of the awful lava hill, 

 with the crust becoming more brittle, and the footing hotter at 

 each step, instead of laughing fire fountains tossing themselves 

 in gory splendour above the rim, there was a hot, sulphurous, i 

 mephitic chaos, covering, who knows what, of horror ? 



