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Sierra Club Bulletin 



the trade-winds unload when they strike this mountain barrier 

 athwart their path. 



It was strenuous and hot work — this scramble over weathered 

 lava flows. Being on the leeward side of the mountain, the vegeta- 

 tion through which we made our way was mostly scrubby xerophytic 

 chaparral, the kind that grows on dry lava-fields. Of this, even, only 

 such species survive as are obnoxious to cattle. Island botanists tell 

 me that the north and west slopes of Haleakala scarcely exhibit a 

 hint now of the varied and interesting flora that clothed the Kula 

 side of the mountain before the introduction of cattle. 



Since we were planning to spend the night on the summit, there 

 was no need of hurry, and we enjoyed to the full the occasions when 

 the clouds parted and the world below came into view. Then a whole 

 county, diversified with hills and valleys, woods and plantations, 

 appeared to be leaning on its elbows, looking out upon the blue Pa- 

 cific. Far away the summits of West Maui could be seen rising 

 above the cloud-bank, encouraging the illusion that they were float- 

 ing upon it. And always, v/herever and whenever the cloud-curtains 

 parted, the vast mysterious immensity of the blue Pacific met the 

 softer blue of a South Sea horizon. 



About six o'clock found us on the summit and on the rim of the 

 abyssal pit-crater. It was the right time for a view of the chasm 

 that must impress even a Dantean imagination and cling to one's 

 memory for a lifetime. Mere figures of dimensions seem bald beside 

 the stupendous reality that yawned there at our feet. But figures 

 and comparisons may help the reader, with the aid of the accom- 

 panying pictures, to arrive at some conception of this volcanic phe- 

 nomenon. 



The crater is of an irregular triangular form, due to the fact that 

 during the last summit eruption, whose date is too remote to be re- 

 membered in Hawaiian tradition, the mountain was fractured across 

 the summit, permitting the lava to flow to the sea through two enor- 

 mous gaps on opposite sides of the crater. The latter has a diameter 

 of seven and a half (7.48) miles in one direction and about two and 

 a half (2.37) miles in another. Measured about the rim, it has a 

 circumference of twenty miles and its extreme depth is two thousand 

 five hundred and ninety-two feet. If the whole of San Francisco 

 were put into this chasm it would not nearly cover its floor — a quar- 

 ter of a mile below! 



