THROUGH HAWAII. 
247 
kind, which, decomposing more rapidly, had been 
washed away, and left them in detached masses scat¬ 
tered on the plain. They were hard, and, when frac¬ 
tured, appeared a lava of basalt, containing very fine 
grains of compact felspar and augite; some of them 
contained small particles of olivin. We also saw a 
number of other rocks in a state of decomposition, 
which proved to be a species of lava, containing glo¬ 
bules of zeolite. The decomposition of these rocks 
appeared to have formed the present surface of much 
of the west, north, and east parts of the plain imme¬ 
diately surrounding the crater. 
When we had broken off specimens of these, and 
of some red earthy-looking stones, which seemed to 
have the same base as the other, but to have lost their 
compact texture, and to have experienced a change of 
colour, from a further degree of decomposition,* we 
passed along to the east side, where I took a sketch 
of the south-west end of the crater. 
As we travelled on from this spot, we unexpectedly 
came to another deep crater, nearly half as large as 
the former. The native name of it is Kirauea-iti, 
(little Kirauea.) It is separated from the large crater 
by an isthmus nearly a hundred yards wide. Its sides, 
which were much less perpendicular than those of the 
great crater, were covered with trees and shrubs, but 
the bottom was filled with black lava, either fluid or 
scarcely cold, and probably supplied by the great 
crater, as the trees, shrubs, and grass on its sides, 
* Specimens of volcanic sulphur, of the several kinds of lava 
and rocks found in the immediate neighbourhood of the volcano, 
and other parts of the island, with descriptions of their localities, 
are deposited in the Museum of the London Missionary Society, 
Austin Friars. 
