266 



HA WAIL 



[letter xxix. 



We were then, as we knew, close to the edge of the crater, 

 but the faint smoke wreath had disappeared, and there was 

 nothing but the westering sun hanging like a ball over the 

 black horizon of the desolate summit. We rode as far as a 

 deep fissure filled with frozen snow, with a ledge beyond, 

 threw ourselves from our mules, jumped the fissure, and more 

 than 800 feet below yawned the inaccessible blackness and 

 horror of the crater of Mokuaweoweo, six miles in circum- 

 ference, and 11,000 feet long by 8000 wide. The mystery 

 was solved, for at one end of the crater, in a deep gorge of its 

 own, above the level of the rest of the area, there was the lonely 

 fire, the reflection of which, for six weeks, has been seen for 

 100 miles. 



Nearly opposite us, a thing of beauty, a fountain of pure, 

 yellow fire, unlike the gory gleam of Kilauea, was regularly 

 playing in several united but independent jets, throwing up its 

 glorious incandescence, to a height, as we afterwards ascer- 

 tained, of from 150 to 300 feet, and attaining at one time 600 ! 

 You cannot imagine such a beautiful sight. The sunset gold 

 was not purer than the living fire. The distance which we 

 were from it, divested it of the inevitable horrors which sur- 

 round it. It was all beauty. For the last two miles of the 

 ascent, we had heard a distant, vibrating roar : there, at the 

 crater's edge, it was a glorious sound, the roar of an ocean at 

 dispeace, mingled with the hollow murmur of surf echoing in 

 sea caves, booming on, rising and falling, like the thunder 

 music of windward Hawaii. 



We sat on the ledge outside the fissure for some time, and 

 Mr. Green actually proposed to pitch the tent there, but I dis- 

 suaded him, on the ground that an earthquake might send the 

 whole thing tumbling into the crater ; nor was this a whimsical 

 objection, for during the night there were two such falls, and 

 after breakfast, another quite near us. 



We had travelled for two days under a strong impression 

 that the fires had died out, so you can imagine the sort of 

 stupor of satisfaction with which we feasted on the glorious 

 certainty. Yes, it was glorious, that far-off fire-fountain, and 

 the lurid cracks in the slow-moving, black-crusted flood, which 

 passed calmly down from the higher level to the grand area of 

 the crater. 



This area, over two miles long, and a mile and a half wide, 

 with precipitous sides 800 feet deep, and a broad second shelf 

 about 300 feet below the one we occupied, at that time ap- 



