26^ 



HA WAIL 



[letter XXIX. 



skirted. Winding round the bases of tossed up, fissured hum- 

 mocks of pahoehoe, leaping from one broken hummock to 

 another, clambering up acclivities so steep that the pack-horse 

 rolled backwards once, and my cat-like mule fell twice, moving 

 cautiously over crusts which rang hollow to the tread j stepping 

 over deep cracks, which, perhaps, led down to the burning, 

 fathomless sea, traversing hilly lakes ruptured by earthquakes, 

 and split in cooling into a thousand fissures, painfully toiling 

 up the sides of mounds of scoriae frothed with pumice-stone, 

 and again for miles surmounting rolling surfaces of billowy, 

 ropy lava— so passed the long day, under the tropic sun and 

 the deep blue sky. 



Towards afternoon, clouds heaped themselves in snowy 

 masses, all radiance and beauty to us, all fog and gloom below, 

 girdling the whole mountain, and interposing their glittering 

 screen between us and the dark timber belt, the black, 

 smoking shores of Kau, and the blue shimmer of the Pacific. 

 From that time, for twenty-four hours, the lower world, and 

 " works and ways of busy men " were entirely shut out, and 

 we were alone with this trackless and inanimate region of 

 horror. 



For the first time our guide hesitated as to the right track, 

 for'the faint suspicion of white smoke, which had kept alive 

 our hope that the fire was still burning, had ceased to be « 

 visible. We called a halt while he reconnoitred, tried to eat 

 some food, found that our pulses were beating 100 a minute, 

 bathed our heads, specially our temples, with snow, as we had 

 been advised to do by the oldest mountaineer on Hawaii, and 

 heaped on yet more clothing. In fact, I tied a double woollen 

 scarf over all my face but my eyes, and put on a French soldier's 

 overcoat, with cape and hood, which Mr. Green had brought 

 in case of emergency. The cold had become intense. We 

 had not wasted words at any time, and on remounting, pre- 

 served as profound a silence as if we were on a forlorn hope, 

 even the natives intermitting their ceaseless gabble. 



Upwards still, in the cold bright air, coasting the edges of 

 deep cracks, climbing endless terraces, the mules panting 

 heavily, our breath coming as if from excoriated lungs, — so we 

 surmounted the highest ledge. But on reaching the apparent 

 summit we were to all appearance as far from the faint smoke 

 as ever, for this magnificent dome, whose base is sixty miles in 

 diameter, is crowned by a ghastly, volcanic table-land, cre- 

 viced, riven, and ashy, twenty-four miles in circumference. A 



