Volcano of Kirauea . 
37 
fury*, produces splendid scenes before which all human 
greatness fades, and a sense of humility and a few earnest 
thoughts are all that the mind can find room for. Even 
in the breasts of the natives the magical influence has not 
been unfelt: they have ever approached this place with a 
sacred awe, and offered their religious adoration. And 
this was natural. At the sight of the disasters which the 
eruptions of the lava have spread over the plains, and 
of these inevitable calamities which have been poured 
out upon the inhabitants, man, in his primitive state, 
can only see his littleness, his nothingness,—he can 
only feel the presence of an invincible and angry Power, 
whom he must appease, conciliate, and render pro- 
* C( At midnight (June, 1825) the volcano suddenly began roaring 
and labouring with redoubled activity, and the confusion of noises 
was prodigiously great. The sounds were not fixed or confined to 
one place, but rolled from one end of the crater to another ; some¬ 
times seeming to be immediately under us, when a sensible tremor 
of the ground on which we lay took place; and then again rushing 
on to the farther end with incalculable velocity. Almost at the 
same instant a dense column of heavy black smoke was seen rising 
from the crater directly in front, the subterranean struggle ceased, 
and immediately after flames burst from a large cone, near which 
we had been in the morning, and which then appeared to have been 
long inactive. Red-hot stones, cinders, and ashes were also pro¬ 
pelled to a great height with immense violence, and shortly after the 
molten lava came boiling up, and flowed down the sides of the cone 
and over the surrounding scoriae in most beautiful curved'streams, 
glittering with a brilliancy quite indescribable. At the same time a 
whole lake of fire opened in a more distant part. This could not 
have been less than two miles in circumference, and its action was 
more horribly sublime than anything I ever imagined to exist even 
in the ideal visions of unearthly things. Its surface had all the agi¬ 
tation of i\n ocean; billow after billow tossed its monstrous bosom 
into the air; and occasionally those from different directions burst 
with such violence, as in the concussion to dash the flcry spray forty 
or fifty feet high. It was at once the. most splendid and fearful of 
spectacles .” — Voyage of the Blonde . 
