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Volcano of Kirauea. 
Art. IV. The Volcano of Kirauea, Sandwich Islands. 
By Count Streleski. 
TnE volcano of Kirauea lies on the north-western side of 
Mouna Loa, about twenty miles from the summit of that 
mountain, and about forty from the Bay of Hilo : its 
latitude, determined on the spot, was 19° 27'. Its pre¬ 
sent size surpasses that of every other known volcano, yet 
it hardly displays more than a third of its pristine gran¬ 
deur. Like some of those old Egyptian cities, Kirauea 
has no other chronicles of the past than a part of its 
ancient walls still standing, and a part either in ruins or 
buried beyond the memory of man under the ashes of 
successive eruptions, though always to be recognised and 
traced by means of the blocks which stand at intervals as 
landmarks. 
When, pencil in hand, we take the circuit of these 
landmarks, collect the scattered materials, fill-up the 
breaches, and so re-construct the former orifice of the 
crater,—when, from its actual violence, checked and 
bounded as it is, we calculate what it must once have 
been, we are thrilled with awe at the contemplation of 
our results. Fearful and astonishing must have been 
the action of this volcano in the days of its former great¬ 
ness,—when it belched its fires from a mouth twenty-four 
miles round, and overwhelmed the country with its de¬ 
vouring floods. But as all power bears within itself the 
seeds of its own destruction, which the moment of its 
greatest vigour develops and brings to maturity, so 
Kirauea, once irresistible on every hand, has ended its 
destructive career by breaking the bounds which con¬ 
tained it and rendered it formidable : the south-south¬ 
western walls, whose exterior declivity is very steep, gave 
way the first; those to the N. and N.N.E., supported 
outside by the volcanic masses, which have burst their 
