SANDWICH ISLANDS. 
181 
first discovering the waters of the Pacific, we hailed a cloud 
of smoke that was issuing from the crater. We hastened 
forward with redoubled activity, though we were sometimes 
allured from the path by the beds of wild strawberries that we 
found in abundance, up to within a mile and a half of the crater. 
We now began to find a quantity of light ashes strewing 
our path, and the ascent suddenly became sharper, till 
within a mile of the crater, when our progress was suddenly 
arrested by finding ourselves on the edge of a precipitous 
ledge of seventy feet perpendicular height, clothed with 
trees and gigantic ferns. A winding but very steep path 
conducted to the bottom; and after moving onwards a few 
hundred yards more, we came to a second ledge, whence we 
heard the deep roaring of the volcano like the sounds pro¬ 
ceeding from a blast furnace. And now, at every step, we 
perceived yawning chasms of unknown depth, from some of 
which columns of black smoke issuing told of what was going 
on in the realms of fire below. Near the greatest of these 
chasms, a number of Keioua's people, who had joined with 
him in rebellion against Tamehameha, and who happened to 
be on the mountain, were destroyed by fire from the vol¬ 
cano ; and the traditions of the Island tell of whole armies 
that have been overwhelmed by floods of burning lava # . 
* See Ellis’s Tour for this, and for the names and attributes of the volcanic 
deities, and their combats with other powers, natural and supernatural. We 
