36 
Volcano of Kirauea. 
heaped in horizontal or half-raised beds, sometimes 
they are seen shooting up in cones, and sometimes re¬ 
tiring with precipitous front, “ driven backward, sicqje 
their pointing spires,” here concealing a suppressed 
agitation under ground, there gaping in fearful cavities 
which clamorously resound with the agitation of the 
molten matter.* Sixf of these cavities were in violent 
activity while I was exploring the crater. The height 
of the banks which bounded them varied : four were not 
more than three or four feet high, the fifth forty feet, 
the sixth one hundred and fifty. The extent of their 
surface differed no less,—the first five hardly contained 
12,000 square feet each, while the sixth contained nearly 
a million. The surface of the fiery matter in all the six 
reservoirs kept the same height,—rose, sunk, and was 
agitated simultaneously: this seems to show that it 
belongs to one mass of liquid lava filling the whole 
area of 9,450,000 square feet, and that the cavities or 
reservoirs, as I have called them, are merely vents, while 
the heaps of broken lava, which block up the crater, are 
a mere temporary covering, veiling from the vulgar gaze 
the dark secrets of the gloomy abyss.;}; No pen or 
pencil can ever represent the sublime effects which 
the violence and intensity of the heat produce in the 
reservoirs. The spectacle of those ceaseless and varied 
movements, which are carried, through all the stages of a 
storm at sea, to a still higher pitch of impetuosity and 
* “The S.W. and N. parts were one vast flood of burning matter 
when visited by Mr. Ellis .”—Polynesian Researches. 
f “fifty-one conical islands, contniningas many craters, rose round 
the edge or from the surface of the burning lake. Twenty-two con¬ 
stantly emitted columns of grey smoke or pyramids of brilliant 
flame.”— Ibid. 
1 “ The basin seemed to be separated by a stratum of solid matter 
from the great volcanic abyss, which constantly poured its melted 
contents through the numerous craters.”— Ibid. 
