$86 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
months before. We were informed that it too 
place about ten o'clock in the evening. The 
ground, after being agitated some minutes with a 
violent tremulous motion, suddenly burst open, for 
several miles in extent, in a direction from north- 
by-east, to south-by-west, and emitted, in various 
places at the same instant, a considerable quantity 
of smoke and luminous vapour, but none of the 
people were injured by it. A stone wall, four feet 
thick and six feet high, enclosing a garden at the 
north end of the village, was thrown down. A 
chasm about a foot wide marked distinctly its 
course. At the south end of the village, it had 
passed through a small well, in which originally 
there was seldom more than eighteen inches' 
depth of water, though since that period there has 
been upwards of three feet. The crack was about 
ten inches wide, running from north to south 
across the bottom of the well. The water has not 
only increased in quantity, but suffered a great 
deterioration in quality, being now very salt; and 
its rising and falling with the ebbing and flowing 
of the tide, indicates its connexion with the waters 
of the ocean, from which it appeared distant about 
three hundred yards. 
Convulsions of this kind are common over the 
whole island : they are not, however, so frequent 
in this vicinity as in the northern and western 
parts, and are seldom violent, except when they 
immediately precede the eruption of a volcano. 
The superstitions of the natives lead them to believe 
they are produced by the power of Pele, or some 
of the volcanic deities, and consider them as requi¬ 
sitions for offerings, or threatenings of still greater 
calamities. 
Kaimu is pleasantly situated near the sea-shore, 
