THROUGH HAWAII. 
243 
not means for ascertaining more accurately its depth. 
We lowered down a line one hundred feet from the 
edge of the plain on which our hut was erected, but it 
did not appear to reach near half-way to the black 
ledge of lava; and judging the proportion below to be 
equal to that above, it could not be less that 700 or 
600 feet to the liquid lava. We also threw down some 
large stones, which after several seconds struck on the 
sides, and then bounded down to the bottom, where 
they were lost in the lava. When they reached the 
bottom they appeared like pebbles, and we were 
obliged to watch their course very steadily to perceive 
them at all. 
In company with Dr. Blatchely, Messrs. Chamber- 
lain and Ely, American missionaries, and a gentleman 
resident in Oahu, I have since visited Kirauea, when 
we again endeavoured to measure its circumference. 
Mr. Chamberlain walked round the northern end from 
east to west, as near the edge as it was prudent to go, 
and, numbering his paces, made that part of it 3 X V 
miles ; from which, we think, the above estimate does 
not exceed the actual extent of the crater. We also 
lowered down a line 230 feet long, but it did not reach 
the horizontal ledge of lava. The fissures in the 
tunities for forming a judgment.”-In a letter to professor 
Silliman of New Haven, Mr. Goodrich corroborates the above, and 
states also, that he walked across the bottom, where the lava was 
hard, the surface of which, though apparently smooth as seen 
from the top, was raised in hills or sunk in valleys; that dense 
sulphureous fumes and gases, very suffocating, some of them 
resembling muriatic gas, ascended from almost all parts of the 
bottom, making in their escape a “ tremendous roaring, like the 
discharge of steam from the boiler of a steam engine;” at one 
place the florid lava was boiling like a fountain, and spouting up 
lava forty or fifty feet into the air .—Philosophical Magazine 
for September , 1826. 
