768 
THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 
The spray masses cooling as they fell, formed in their track the threads known as 
“ Pele’s hair,” like fine-spun green glass. Many of the threads could be picked up, each 
with the small mass of hardened lava still attached. These fallen masses are closely like 
drops thrown out of a pitch-pot. Some were nearly pear-shaped; others, which had 
reached the ground before setting, or when only partially set, had coiled up into various 
forms as they fell, but nearly all showed an upright fine point, where a hair had been 
Fig. 268.— Falls of Waianuenne, near Hilo. 
attached to them. Pele’s hair, thus formed, drifts away with the wind and hangs in 
felted masses about the rocks, and the birds sometimes gather it, and make their nests 
entirely of it. 
Between the two ponds was the lava fountain, which had been seen playing the 
night before, but was now quiet. A lava fountain is a tall hollow cone, an extin- 
guisher as it were, which is built up of successive jets of lava thrown out of a hole at 
the summit, and hardened one over the other. The surface of the cone looks as if built 
up of small masses of pitch thrown on to it hap-hazard one over another. As the mouth 
