84 MA WAIIAN G VIDE B OK. 



1874, and has since issued a book descriptive of her 

 travels.* She writes : 



" We think of a volcano as a cone. This Kilauea is 

 a different thing. The abyss, which really is at a hight 

 of nearly 4,000 feet on the flank of Manna Loa, has the 

 appearance of a great pit on a rolling plain. But such 

 a pit ! It is nine miles in circumference, and its lowest 

 area, which not long ago fell about 300 feet, just as ice on 

 a pond falls when the water below it is withdrawn, covers 

 six square miles. The depth of the crater varies &ova 

 800 to 1,100 feet in different years, according as the 

 molten sea below is at flood or ebb. Signs of volcanic 

 activity are present more or less throughout its whole 

 depth, and for some distance round its margin, in the 

 form of steam cracks, jets of sulphurous vapor, blowing 

 cones, accumulating deposits of acicular crystals of sul- 

 phur, &c, and the pit itself is constantly rent and shak- 

 en by earthquakes. Grand eruptions occur at intervals 

 with circumstances of indescribable terror and dignity, 

 but Kilauea does not limit its activity to these outbursts, 

 but has exhibited its marvellous phenomena through all 

 known time in a lake or lakes in the southern part of 

 the crater three miles from this side. 



" This lake, the Hale-mau-mau, or House of Ever- 

 lasting Fire of the Hawaiian mythology, the abode of 

 the dreaded goddess Pele, is approachable with safety 

 excejit during an eruption. The spectacle, however, va- 

 ries almost daily, and at times the level of the lava in 

 the pit within a pit is so low, and the suffocating gases 

 are evolved in such enormous quantities, that travelers 

 are unable to see anything. There had been no news 



*« Hawaiian Archipelago. London, 1875. 



