38 
Volcano of Kirauea. 
pitious. The divinity called Pele, supposed to reign 
as the Neptune of these fiery floods, receives adora¬ 
tion, has her priestesses and her sacrifices; nor can 
the ceremony of the Doge espousing the sea be more 
extraordinary than that of the Sandwich Islanders in 
their sacrifice of men and swine to the burning gulf. 
To the largest of these six reservoirs, called Hau-mau- 
mau by the natives, the terrified people make their 
way with prayers and offerings: into its gulf also 
they consign the bones of high priests, distinguished 
chiefs, and of those who have deserved well of their 
country, and so mingle with the element of the goddess 
whom they revere, the remains of those she has cherished 
in their lifetime. 
The progress round these reservoirs is most dangerous : 
beside the suffocating fumes of sulphuric acid gas filling 
the air, two or three inhalations of which may prove 
fatal, there is a risk of falling into the fiery matter which 
flows on every side. Seldom does it confine itself to the 
reservoirs; it often appears unexpectedly through the 
pores of the black and rugged lava over which the path 
lies, receives the same outward appearance by instant 
congelation, and flows almost imperceptibly in slow convo¬ 
lutions, twisted and wrung, as of a thick fluid compressed 
by a porous covering. These dangers are much increased 
by a certain species of lava which this volcano produces. 
Information received in Scotland from the lips of the 
well-known traveller Sir George Mackenzie, who ex¬ 
plored Heela, leads me to believe that this lava of 
Kirauea is a second instance of the kind known under 
the name of “ cavernous,” which by the intensity of 
its heat, and the abundance of its elastic gases, pro¬ 
duces here, as in Iceland, tumefactions, from the 
thickness and delicacy of a soap-bubble, up to the 
size of caverns twenty or thirty feet across. These 
