VI.
One from the Sunrise
Dawned on His people and slowly before him
Vanished shadow-like
Gods and Goddesses,
None but the terrible Peelè remaining as Kapiolani
Ascended her mountain,
Baffled her priesthood,
Broke the Taboo,
Dipt to the crater,
Called on the Power adored by the Christian and crying, “I dare her, let Peelè avenge herself!”
Into the flame-billows dashed the berries, and drove the demon from Hawa-i-ee.
[[165]]
PART II
GEOLOGICAL FACTS
Note: The following articles pertaining to the geological formation of the Hawaiian Islands were written by the author at different times for the various local periodicals in Honolulu and will be found interesting by those who wish to increase their knowledge of volcanology.
I
THE CRACK IN THE FLOOR OF THE PACIFIC
A geological or earthquake map of the Pacific shows that the ocean is bordered by ranges of volcanic mountains on the American side, and by a long chain of volcanic islands, such as the Aleutian, Japanese, and Formosa islands along the coast of Asia. It is also clear that between America and Asia connected islands built up by volcanic action follow what appear to be cracks in the floor of the Pacific.
It is interesting to note the fact that all along the western coast of North and South America there is only a comparatively narrow strip of [[166]]land between the mountain ranges and the sea, and that from the edge of this narrow seacoast there is a rapid descent in the ocean bed until it becomes one of the most profound oceanic depressions on the globe. The depth of the floor of the ocean is greater than the enormous elevation of the mountain ranges along its edge. “The Challenger” surveyors give the average depth of the Pacific Ocean as about 2,400 fathoms, while between the Caroline and Ladrone groups of islands lies a valley whose ooze-carpeted floor can be reached only by a sounding line about 25,000 feet long, and near Japan about 30,000 feet of line is needed to reach the bottom of one of the deepest pits on the globe.
The German survey ship “Planet” has made the deepest sounding thus far taken. About forty sea miles off the north coast of Mindanao, the largest and most southerly of the important islands of the Philippines, the “Planet” found a depth of 32,078 feet. In other words, the Pacific Ocean where the sounding was taken has a depth of 6.07 miles, exceeding by 482 feet the greatest depth hitherto known.
In 1901 the United States survey ship “Nero,” while studying out a route for a cable line to the Philippines, made a sounding some distance to the southeast of the island of Guam of 31,596 feet, which beat the world’s record for sea depth [[167]]up to that time. This is a depth of 5.98 miles, and is known as the “Nero” deep. The surpassing sea depth now discovered may appropriately be named the “Planet” deep.
Out of these awful ocean depths have come the chains and groups of islands which form Polynesia. It seems absolutely necessary to recognize the cracks in the floor of the ocean through which the vast floods of lava were forced for the upbuilding of these islands. Even the coral polyps had to have the edge of a crater to work on while building the innumerable coral reefs of the Pacific.
No one knows what mighty conflicts were fought between the two eternal enemies, fire and water; nor does anyone know how long they fought while these islands were being built into mountains, but there must have been ages when the skies were filled with rolling masses of clouds of steam sent up through boiling, turbulent waters with awful explosions of escaping gases before the dry land appeared on the face of the deep. It has been the modern story of creation. There were boiling seas and skies always covered with vast masses of steam clouds, then ages of mountain building at the hands of chaotic fire-rock, and the subsequent ages of the disintegration of lava, forming soil for the coming of plant and animal life. [[168]]
The building of these islands has been a most stupendous task, and the chains of islands resulting from the tremendous volcanic energy still exhibit immense activity. The volcanic outbreaks and earthquakes of the Japanese islands from Nippon to Formosa are so frequent as to afford an excellent field for study. The New Zealand islands have a volcanic region around Roturua which is visited by numbers of tourists every year.
Islands appear and disappear in the Western Pacific. None of the islands have so good a tradition of these turbulent times as the Hawaiian group, and they have only a statement made by William Ellis in his book, “A Tour through Hawaii,” published in 1826. He says that while on this tour around the island Hawaii, he stopped with John Young, who is now stated to have been an American sailor and a close friend of the great king Kamehameha I. “Mr. Young said that among many traditionary accounts of the origin of the island, one was that in former times, when there was nothing but sea, an immense bird settled on the water and laid an egg which soon bursting produced the island Hawaii.”
It must be remembered that the Hawaiians also have the pulling up of the islands with a fish-hook by the demi-god Maui, who fished up many islands in Polynesia. [[169]]
It has been nearly a hundred years since Ellis made the brief reference to the production of an island by the explosion of the egg, and now it is impossible to secure any enlargement of the legend. The story stands as an ancient memory of volcanic activity so mighty and so extensive as to produce islands in the time of human experience.
[[170]]
II
HAWAIIAN VOLCANOES
Each island has its extinct craters from which extend the limited ranges of mountains and plains which make the island surface. These large craters are from a few hundred to over thirteen thousand feet in altitude. They seem to have had mighty explosions after they had been built into mountains, and one side of the crater has usually been blown out or has slid down into the ocean, leaving very high, steep side walls around irregularly shaped valleys opening toward the sea.
In these craters and between them and the sea are many small craters which mark the most recent eruptions on the various islands. There are no legends of the origin of any of these large craters, whether extinct or active. There are very interesting stories connected with many of them, and there are legends of the origin of some of the small extinct craters which lie at the bases of the mountain ranges. These usually are ascribed to the fire-goddess Pele, who came to the Hawaiian group ages after the [[171]]islands were built, and who only succeeded in starting eruptions of no great importance until she found her present home in the volcano Kilauea. These small extinct craters marked the progress of Pele’s journey through the islands.
The large mountains of all the islands, except Hawaii, have no hot springs and no outlets for steam or hot air which would indicate any remnant of living fire still abiding in them. Nor are there any very noticeable earthquake shocks in these other islands, even at the time when the island Hawaii is pouring floods of lava down its mountain sides and is shaking its inhabitants with great force.
Open volcanic activity is confined to the mountains of Hawaii. The mountains of Maui, especially Hale-a-ka-la, are called active because of historic eruptions and signs of hidden fire.
The extinct craters are very interesting. They have their broken-down side wall, through which the last great effort of volcanic life was poured out. They also have crater cones and sometimes lava flows of small extent on the floor left by the great eruption. These were the picturesque last throbs of life as a volcano died. Occasional spasmodic efforts were made in both earthquake and lava flow until the fire cooled in the submarine chambers.
From the summits of all these mountains, [[172]]peculiarly fine cloud views can be enjoyed. There is not only the gathering of cloud masses rolling beneath the lover of the sublime,—this can be seen on all the large mountains of the world,—but here in the Hawaiian Islands the march of cloud armies sweeping over an ocean and spreading in ceaseless motion for miles over the lowlands receives an added element of majesty and awe when tossing, whirling cloud mountains roll into the extinct craters and slowly fill the bowl of the gods from rim to rim as the morning sun delicately touches the crater edges above the clouds with all the colors of the dawn.
Here and there in the decaying volcanic ash and disintegrating lava can sometimes be found beautiful, small, star-rayed zeolite, or the pale green olivine, or coarse black augite crystals. These are of no value, save as they show some of the forms taken by cooling lava, and are of interest chiefly to the scientist.
On the island Hawaii are three great mountains from 8,200 to 13,600 feet above the ocean, which smashes its mighty tides and surf waves against the coast below. One of these, Mauna Kea (White Mountain), is an extinct volcano with a lake of water in its crater. Hualalai is dormant, although from it there was a great eruption a little over a hundred years ago, and [[173]]even now possibilities of activity are talked about by those who cultivate sugar-cane and coffee on its lower slopes. Mauna Loa (Great or long mountain) has a most interesting active crater on its summit, Mokuaweoweo (Blood-red island), from which enormous rivers of lava are hurled down to the waiting ocean many miles below.
What is said to be the most active crater in the world, Kilauea, lies on an eastern spur of Mauna Loa at an elevation of 4,000 feet above the sea. This crater is a great caldron or pit crater, and has been known among the Hawaiians for centuries as Ka-Lua Pele (The Pit of Pele). Below Kilauea are a number of craters of similar character, great sunken holes or pits in a country of almost even surface.
Kilauea is a surprise to the tourist. Ki-lau-ea means “the rising up or living leaf of the ti-plant.” Ea means “to rise up” and also “to live.” Ki-lau means “ti-leaf.” A gradual ascent by rail and motor-car for about thirty miles brings the visitor to a flat region miles in extent and sparsely covered with giant ferns[1] and shrubs and gray-leaved trees with fringed red balls of flowers. Here and there small clouds of steam come from crevices around a hotel where the traveller finds his resting-place.
In front of this hotel, and not seen until the [[174]]motor-car stops, is the crater whose edges are almost level with the surrounding plain. It is a precipice-walled bowl, three miles across, with a multitude of steam jets breaking through its vast floor and a great cloud of smoke rising from a pit in a black border-land of frozen lava. Kilauea looks like a congealed lake whose glossy black hard waves had hardened while rolling and struggling with each other under some fierce tempest. It is, however, a cone ascending gradually to the fire-pit from these precipitous edges of the bowl.
Under the smoke cloud of the pit lies the always active lake of fire, Ka-Lua Pele (The Pit of Pele), the traditional home of the goddess Pele, now called Halemaumau (House fixed or continuing).
From this volcano Kilauea, and the crater Mokuaweoweo, which lies like an island in the top of Mauna Loa, nearly 10,000 feet higher, come enormous and sometimes destructive lava flows. They are called rivers of lava, but a lava river, unlike a stream of water, flows underneath a continually cooling and hardening crumpled surface, pushing its way from under and at last leaving long tunnels. Sometimes new lava melts through the walls of these caves and pours along the path left ages before, frequently finding an outlet even under the waves of the sea. The [[175]]natives say, “Pele has gone to the sea by the ala huna [the hidden path].”
There are two kinds of lava which these rivers carry down. One in cooling becomes very smooth and hard. Its surface shines like black satin. Professor C. H. Hitchcock, the eminent geologist, says: “The name pa-hoe-hoe signifies having the aspect of satin or having a shining smooth surface. It is quite hummocky and shows a wrinkled ropy structure.” The glossy part is real volcanic glass shining on the surface because the silica which is used in making glass rises to the top of the cooling lava. It is lighter than the other ingredients. This pa-hoe-hoe lava is abundant in the lava fields around Mexico City.
The name a-a, which signifies “torn up by roots,” is the name given to another kind of lava. An a-a flow is lava changed into bristling, ragged rocks, with innumerable fine sharp edges cutting like fragments of broken glass. It appears very much like slag from iron furnaces, only infinitely worse to handle.
These two Hawaiian names are now the accepted scientific names for these classes of lava the world over.
In 1911 the first successful attempt to secure the temperature of the boiling lava in the lake of fire was made scientifically. Professor F. G. Perret came from his observatory by Vesuvius [[176]]and Professor E. G. Shepherd from the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution at Washington, to study Kilauea, following the beginning of such observations already established by Professor Jaggar of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
They stretched a wire cable 1,500 feet long from wall to wall over the lake of fire. They ran wires through pulleys along this cable and dropped the best instruments they had with them straight down. Some of these were broken before registration could be secured. The last thermometer registered 1850° Fahrenheit, remaining steadily at that point until the thermometer was withdrawn. Later it was again lowered, but, according to Professor Shepherd, “Pele arose in her wrath, grasped the thermometer, flung hot lava on the supporting wires, thereby weakening them, and then with a final jerk broke the thermometer from its supports and swallowed it. Pele seems to like ironware for diet.”
The record of from 1800° to 2000° Fahrenheit seems to be the normal heat of the lake of fire, sometimes, of course, rising much higher under special conditions. The scientific observers when speaking of lava heat usually say it is 1850° Fahrenheit. [[177]]
[1] Tree fern—Cibotium Menziesii. [↑]
III
VOLCANIC ACTIVITY
In a little note-book in Hilo is a record which from time to time has been studied and copied frequently by visiting scientists. The missionary mother who put down the facts therein recorded never dreamed of being scientific. She simply kept a record. In 1832 Mrs. Sarah J. Lyman came to Hilo, where her husband founded the Hilo Boys’ Boarding School, a school, by the way, after which the great Hampton Institute of Virginia was patterned. On October 3, 1833, she was tossed around in her home in a way somewhat alarming. She opened her little note-book and wrote, “Two earthquakes, one of them heavy.”
She had a little curiosity to see how frequently these earthquakes disturbed her home. Thus the record went on from month to month and year to year: “Earthquake, motion up and down,” “Heavy shake, stone walls down, cream shaken off the milk,” “4 A.M., all the family aroused,” “Jar and a noise like distant cannon,” “Tremendous shock, brace ourselves to stand up,” “Kai-mimiki” (sea shaken by an earthquake), [[178]]“All motions combined, earth like the sea.” At one time the record ran: “Frequent jars, severe, so many I have ceased to count.”
KAIMIMIKI
Interspersed through this concise and interesting story of earthquakes told in a few word pictures are many references to other volcanic phenomena. “Activity great in Mokuaweoweo. Mountain clear for several days, the smoke is marked, light brilliant at night, snow extensive on both mountains.”
The year 1868 has been marked as the volcano year of Hawaiian history. Mr. F. S. Lyman, now living in Hilo, wrote a journal letter, which was quoted in full. He writes as follows about the earthquake:
“March 27–31, 1868. A sudden eruption from Mauna Loa, no forewarning, a spray of red lava thrown high in the air, followed by a great stream of smoke rising up thousands of feet. In Kau we had quite a sprinkling of Pele’s hair, peculiar earthquakes—first hard shakes, then a swaying motion, as if the whole island were swaying back and forth and we with it. March 31—From about 10 P.M. to 2 A.M. the shaking was incessant. Thursday, April 2nd. We experienced the most fearful of earthquakes. The earth swayed north, south, east, west, round and round, up and down, and in every imaginable direction, everything crashing around us, trees [[179]]thrashing as if torn by a mighty wind, impossible to stand. We had to sit on the ground, bracing with hands and feet, to keep from rolling over.”
Mr. H. M. Whitney, editor of the Advertiser, says that “the number of shocks which occurred at Waiohinu from March 29 to April 10 was estimated at upwards of two thousand. The heaviest shock, that of April 2d, destroyed every church and nearly every dwelling in the whole district. This earthquake was felt very sensibly in Honolulu. Following the earthquake came a great tidal wave at Punaluu. It rolled in over the tops of coconut trees, probably sixty feet high at least, driving all floating rubbish inland about a quarter of a mile—taking with it, when it returned to the sea, houses, men, and women and everything movable.”
Mr. Lyman wrote: “We could see the shore. All along the seashore from directly below us to Punaluu about three or four miles the sea was boiling and foaming furiously, all red.”
Two remarkable eruptions accompanied this earthquake. The lava, starting from the slope of Mauna Loa, sank into some great channel but “burst forth with a heavy roar several miles farther down. The lava stream became a river of fire, flowing rapidly toward and around some farmhouses. The inmates had barely time to escape. The path by which they fled was covered [[180]]with lava within ten minutes after they passed over it. Animals and even human beings perished. The number of deaths were between eighty and one hundred. This eruption flowed ten miles in two hours, and continued five days, destroying many thousands of acres of good lands.” The second remarkable eruption was nearer the crater Kilauea and has been known as “The Great Mud Flow of 1868.” It is in the region covered by the Pahala plantation.
Mr. Lyman writes: “In the midst of the great earthquake we saw burst out from the top of the pali about a mile and a half north of us, what we supposed to be an immense river of molten lava (which afterward proved to be red earth), which rushed down in headlong course and across the plain below, apparently bursting from the ground and swallowing up everything in its way—trees, houses, cattle, horses, men, in an instant as it were. It went three miles in not more than three minutes’ time and then stopped. After the hard shaking had ceased we went right over to a hill with the children and our natives expecting every moment to be swallowed up by the lava from beneath, for it sounded as if it were surging and washing under our feet all the time. Outside of Punaluu we saw a long black point of lava slowly pushing out to sea. An island about four hundred feet high rose out of the sea at the south [[181]]point. The lava river has extended the shore to this island one mile at least.”
Mrs. Lyman wrote: “Jan. 30, 1875. Light exceedingly brilliant. Perpendicular column of smoke over 1,000 feet high on the summit crater spreading out at top like an expanding flower.” This august glow was described by members of the “Challenger” expedition as “a globular cloud perpetually reformed by condensation, having a brilliant orange glow at night as if a fire were raging in the distance.”
This display from the summit of Mauna Loa continued about eighteen months.
Isabella Bird Bishop, author of “Six Months in the Sandwich Islands,” visited this active crater in 1874, and wrote about the crater itself. “Nearly opposite us a fountain of pure yellow fire, unlike the gory gleam of Kilauea, was throwing up its glorious incandescence. The sunset gold was not purer than the living fire. The roar of this surging lava sea was a glorious sound, the roar of an ocean at dispeace mingled with the hollow murmur of surf echoing in sea caves, booming on, rising and falling like the thunder music of windward Hawaii. The area below us was over two miles long and a mile and a half wide with precipitous sides and a broad second shelf about 300 feet below the one we occupied with a fire fountain three-quarters [[182]]of a mile away. On the way up the mountain there was a fearful internal throbbing and rumbling, rocks and masses of soil were dislodged, the earth reeled, then rocked again with such violence that I felt as if the horse and myself had gone over.”
During these months of 1874–1875 there were magnificent exhibitions of clouds reflecting volcanic fires caused by the upburst of lava fountains.
The summit crater of Mauna Loa is about 13,000 feet altitude. Snow has frequently covered the top of the mountain, lying in deep banks around the edge of the crater. The cold has acted quickly upon the lake of fire, congealing a large part of the surface into a hard floor of lava. Gases, steam, and smoke lift this floor and break through it with great violence, escaping from the melted lava in pillars of cloud against which the fires beneath mirror themselves in glorious displays of color. These outbursts were frequently called eruptions. The modern name is more correct. They are “glows,” reflecting wonderful fires beneath.
Mrs. Lyman mentions another eruption from the summit of Mauna Loa. “1877. Feb. 14. Eruption seen on the mountain. Ten days extinct then broke out lower down the mountain and reached the sea in a few days, near Kaawaloa, Kealakekua Bay.” [[183]]
Dana says, “The columns of illuminated steam rose with fearful speed to a height of 14,000 to 17,000 feet and then spread out into a vast fiery cloud looking at night as if the heavens were on fire.”
After this, there was an underground eruption to the sea marked by a fissure down the mountain side through which clouds of steam and smoke were forced. The lava at last found its place for escape under the sea.
H. M. Whitney, the editor of the Hawaiian Gazette, was a witness of this submarine eruption. In the issue of Feb. 28, 1877, he wrote: “As the steamer Kilauea came toward the bay, the passengers saw some canoes rowing about over boiling water. The natives reported that about three o’clock in the morning of Feb. 24, they had seen innumerable red, blue, and green lights dancing in the waters. Morning disclosed a new volcano in the sea. The southern shore of the bay has been known as Keei point. The eruption appeared to be in a straight line out from this point. Three boats from the steamer went out, cruising over the most active part of the boiling waters, appearing as if passing over rapids. Blocks of lava two feet across were thrown up from beneath, striking the boats and jarring them. The lava was quite soft and no harm was done. Six stones hit the boat in one [[184]]minute. Several hundred pieces of these stones were floating on the sea at one time. Nearly all the pieces on reaching the surface were red hot, emitting steam and gas strongly sulphurous. Several were taken into the boats, perfectly incandescent and so molten in the interior that the lava could be stirred with a stick, the water having penetrated only about an inch. When these stones cooled and became water soaked they sank rapidly. The specimens taken from the water were of the a-a variety and very light. Probably only the lightest came to the surface. Some of the lava consisted of Pele’s hair, red hot, yet preserving its peculiar characteristics.”
Mrs. Lyman has the record of a terrible tidal wave which struck Hilo harbor in May of that same year: “1877, May 10. A heavy tidal wave at 5 A.M., destroying 34 houses on the Waiakea side of the harbor, also the bridge and twelve houses between Waialama and Aiko’s old store. One hundred and sixty people homeless, some bruised, bones broken, five dead. Wave was thirteen and a half feet above high water mark at Waiakea, swept inland forty rods, accurate measurement.” Following this on May 31, came the record “severe shake, things thrown down.”
Dana says: “A destructive earthquake wave was felt at the Hawaiian Islands on May 10, [[185]]1877, which rose at Hilo to a height of 36 feet. But it was of South American origin, where there were heavy earth-shocks, and not of Hawaiian.”
One of the eruptions from Mokuaweoweo tried to take possession of a river-bed, but the waters chilled one side of the lava and built it into a wall. On one side was flowing fire and on the other the swift rapids of a river. The antagonistic elements sought the sea side by side.
A native account of Kilauea in “Ka Hae Hawaii [The Hawaiian Flag]” was published in Honolulu in March, 1859. In it is a very interesting native account of eruptions on the island Hawaii. The sketch is in the quaint Hawaiian tongue and is valuable throughout, but only a few extracts from the translation can be used at present. The story as told by the Hawaiian runs as follows:
“In the very ancient time Mauna Kea threw out vast Pele fires, but long ago these eruptions have been imprisoned. The earth has covered them in on all sides and the abundant soil, large trees, and green things of many kinds are multiplying. But not so Mauna Loa and Hualalai, other mountains of this island Hawaii. Pele fires have burst forth from them even up to recent times.
“Mauna Loa is the greatest of all the mountains, [[186]]opening doors for the Pele fires from all its sides. Kilauea and Mokuaweoweo are the very wonderful Pele pits (craters) discharging fire from the very depths of the mountains.
“In the year 1822, or 1823 perhaps, there was an eruption from Kilauea pouring down into the Kau district very close to the Puna line. From the depths of Kilauea was this bursting forth. The a-a (broken lava) of this eruption in its journey to the sea spread about eight miles. In the year 1832 the pit of Kilauea was full of burning a-a. It broke into some ancient tunnel connected with Kilauea and flowed away. The place where the a-a reached the sea is not known. It is supposed to have gone into the sea underground.
“In the year 1840, the people of Puna and Hilo districts saw a great fire inland. They thought that the forest wilderness was burning. That day was the Sabbath. The people assembled together and looked toward the place where the fire was very great and the air was heavy with smoke. Then they saw that this was not an ordinary forest fire but a Pele (an eruption). They could not see any a-a breaking out on the mountain, and therefore were greatly afraid that it was very near and would destroy their lands. Volumes of smoke rolled, curling upward, while the strong steam burst forth [[187]]with reports like the firing of cannon. On the 4th day of June that eruption poured down into the sea. Narrow was the flow in steep places and spread out widely in others. When it came to the sea mighty was the stormy rage and the boiling of the sea, the steam rising in clouds to the sky. There were built up on the beach two hills of black sand, about 400 feet in height. Only on the side from which the wind blew could any one come near. On the other side the smoke was very strong, offensive and sickening like a volcano. Then there were burning ashes destroying every green thing for many miles. The lands of the people of Nanawale were quickly made a desolate wilderness by the heat and the overflowing lava. Some animals were caught by the lava and burned to death. None of the people were destroyed. They escaped with poverty.”
A curious and interesting statement is made by the Hawaiian fishermen of Waikiki concerning a peculiar disturbance of the sea simultaneous with all seasons of volcanic agitation. One of the older and more intelligent fishermen says that from his boyhood he has known a pushing up and down, backward and forward, of the waters every time that Mauna Loa has shown activity in either of its great craters. Fishnets are so tossed about that it is almost impossible [[188]]to retain any fish in them. Hooks are so rapidly moved by the commotion in the waters that fishing with hook and line is not very successful.
The Hawaiians call the ocean at such times kai-mimiki (the rushing sea). Mimiki is defined as a meeting of a returning wave with another advancing, and is sometimes used to express the confusion of advancing and returning tidal waves. Sometimes mimiki is used to denote the choppy waters which follow a storm. The inherent idea of the word seems to be quick, independent action of waves, bringing them into conflict with each other and destroying the quiet, regular motion.
[[189]]
IV
CHANGES IN KILAUEA CRATER
There have been two entirely distinct modifications in Kilauea. One belongs to the centuries and the mountain which the crater has been trying to build. The other relates to the fire-pit and the fire-lake therein.
Kilauea is a mountain a little over 4,000 feet in altitude, closely connected with Mauna Loa, which is about 13,000 feet in altitude. It has been stated that there is some connection which affects the action of two lakes of lava in the two craters.
Kilauea is a great bowl sunken in a plain which seems level but which slopes decidedly toward the large mountain on the one side and the ocean on the other. Above the present fire-pit rise great plateaus and a summit 500 feet above the edges of the present crater, and about one mile east of it. This elevation shows that at one time the lake of fire had its real crater rim extending far back of the site of the Volcano Hotel and very much higher than at present, and that great floods of lava were poured out over the [[190]]surrounding country at a height impossible for the new crater to attain. After these eruptions the fire-pit sank away, leaving great precipitous walls and wide cracks out of which even now pour clouds of steam of such intense heat and such powerful sulphur fumes that animals falling in are killed instantly.
There are several terraces showing how the precipices, cracks, and plateaus followed each other step by step down to the bed of Kilauea itself. There are hints of these changes in the traditions of the Hawaiians, but it is impossible to know exactly what is meant. Rev. William Ellis, author of “Polynesian Researches,” and a deputation of the American missionaries studying the opportunities for missionary labor, while making a tour around Hawaii in 1823, visited Kilauea and wrote the following description of the volcano. In this report, afterward incorporated in “Polynesian Researches” as Volume IV, the following account is given of ancient Kilauea. “We asked the natives with us to tell us what they knew of the history of this volcano. From them we learned that it had been burning from time immemorial, or to use their own words ‘mai ka po mai’ (from chaos until now) and had inundated some part of the country during the reign of every king that had governed Hawaii. In earlier ages it used to boil [[191]]up, overflow its banks, and inundate the adjacent country; but for many kings’ reigns past it had kept below the level of the surrounding plain, continually extending its surface and increasing its depth, and occasionally throwing up with violent explosions huge rocks and red hot stones. These eruptions, they said, were always accompanied by dreadful earthquakes, loud claps of thunder and vivid and quick succeeding lightning. No great explosion, they added, had taken place since the days of Keoua (a part of whose army was destroyed by a shower of ashes and foul gases in 1790), but many places near the sea had since been overflowed, on which occasions Pele went by a road underground from her house in the crater to the shore.”
Concerning Pele the natives said, “Kirauea had been burning ever since the islands had emerged from night, but it was not inhabited till after the ‘Tai a ka Hina rii,’ the sea or deluge of Hina the chief.” Shortly after this flood they say the present volcanic family came from Tahiti, meaning some foreign country, to Hawaii.
When the crater was “boiling up, overflowing its banks, and inundating the adjacent territory,” as the natives said, it poured out lava which became solid rock. As it went westward, the character of its overflow changed, becoming explosive, hurling out cinders and ashes instead of [[192]]boiling lava, so that all the land, especially toward the south and west, is covered with volcanic ash. For more than a hundred years there has been no uplift of lava or ashes over the outside crater rim.
During this century there has been no marked change in the great edge of the bowl, but the interior has been kaleidoscopic. The bowl is flat-bottomed with a surface creased and cracked and rough, with twisted piles of dead lava. In innumerable spots any cool morning welcomes rising clouds of steam and in the western part is the Lua-Pele, a pit filled with living fire. This outer crater is about three and a half miles across.
A hundred years ago the floor of this crater was the scene of continual activity. Around the entire rim was a black ledge or balcony against which fountains of lava hurled their repeated drops, falling on the black ledge. Now, the fire-pit is but a little over a quarter of a mile in diameter, and yet it has the same form of black ledge which had been built up in the great crater so many years before.
When first visited by the missionaries, there were many hilly islands, fountain cones, and hissing blowholes. Later, the great floor began to cool and lakes appeared in different sections.
In 1890, when the writer first saw the home of the fire-goddess, there were three lakes through which eruptive gases burst with explosions like [[193]]the continual rattle of artillery, and there were two great rivers of lava flowing across the wide, black floor of the vast crater. Now there is only one lake of fire. Ka Lua Pele, the “Pit of Pele,” is at present on a small scale what the crater of Kilauea was in its magnitude in 1823 and for many years thereafter.
The brief mention of shifting fires, flowing rivers, raging lakes, deep pits, falling walls, and frozen uneven lava surfaces must suffice to make evident the stupendous forces of nature which have terrified the Hawaiians for centuries and have made them build up legends in and around these terrors and have created the demand for a special fire-goddess to take rank with the other gods worshipped.
Spear.
[[194]]