Down the Valley came Pouring a Flood of Lava.
Kamapua and his bandits fled, but again he heard the laughter, this time from the crater, which Pele had reached from within, and was now mounting, free, vaulting through the clouds, revelling in the heat and blaze and din, and hurling rocks and thunderbolts at the intruder. At the ocean’s edge the lava was still close at his heels. Its heat blistered his skin. He had no time to reach his boats. With his spear he struck a mighty blow on the ground and cracked the mountain to its base, so that the ocean flowed in, and a fearful fight of fire and sea began. Steam shot for miles into the air, with vast geysers leaping through it, and the hiss and screech and bellow were appalling. The crater filled with water, so that Pele and her brothers had to drink it dry, lest the fires should be quenched. When they had done this they resumed the attack on Kamapua, emptying the mountain of its ash and molten rock, and hurling tons of stone after the wretch, who was now straining every muscle to force his boat far enough to sea to insure his safety. He did not retaliate this time, but was glad to make his escape; for Pele had come to her godhood at last.
Pele’s Hair
Fiercest, though loveliest, of all the gods is Pele, she whose home is in Kilauea, greatest of the world’s volcanoes. When this mountain lights the heavens, when lava pours from its miles of throat, when stone bombs are hurled at the stars, when its ash-clouds darken the sun and moon, when there are thunders beneath the earth, and the houses shake, then does this spirit of the peak, in robes of fire, ride the hot blast and shriek in the joy of destruction,—a valkyrie of the war of nature. Kanakas try to keep on the good side of this torrid divinity by secret gifts, either of white chickens or of red ohelo berries, and an old man once put into a guide’s hand the bones of a child that he might throw them down the inner crater,—Halemaumau, the House of Eternal Burning, whose ruddy lava cones are homes of the goddess and her family. The dogs sacrificed to Pele, when human victims were scant, were nursed at the breasts of slaves, and the priests and virgins received as their portion, after the killing, the heart and liver. Next to her eyes, of piercing brightness, the most striking thing in the aspect of this deity is her wealth of hair, silky, shining red in the glow, and shaken from her head in a cloud-like spread as of flame. When the eruption is at an end and a sullen peace follows the outbreak, tufts of this hair are found in hollows for miles around. Birds gather it for their nests, and unfearing visitors collect it for cabinets and museums.
Science tells us that Pele’s hair is a molten glass; threads of pumice: a stony froth. When a mighty blast occurs, or when steam escapes through the boiling mass, particles of pumice shred off in the upward flight, or are wire-drawn by winds that rage over the earth. These viscid threads cool quickly in that chill altitude, and float down again. They can be artificially made by passing jets of steam through the slag of iron furnaces while it is in a melted state, the product, which resembles raw cotton, being used, in place of asbestos, for the packing of boilers, steam-pipes, and the like. To such base uses might the goddess’ shining locks be put, if she tore them out in large enough handfuls during the carnival of fire and earthquake; but they are not found in quantities to justify this search by commercial-minded persons, and conservative Kanakas might be alarmed by thought of revenges which Pele would visit on them should they misuse her hair as the foreign heathen do.
The Prayer to Pele
Although Pele is the most terrible of deities, she can be kind. If a village makes sacrifices to her she is liable at any hour to continue to keep the peace. Otherwise, she loses her temper and pours out floods of lava or showers of ashes on the neglectful people, or dries their springs and wastes their farms. Sacrifices of unhappy beings were made to her whenever the volcano spirits began to growl, the victims being bound and thrown into the crater of the threatening mountain. Princess Kapiolani was probably the first native to protest against these sacrifices, and in 1824, after her conversion to Christianity, she gave an instructive exhibition by defying the taboo of Kilauea, eating the berries growing on the sides of the peak, in defiance of the priestly order, and throwing rocks contemptuously into the pit.
Pele is the Venus of the islands, and is of wondrous beauty when she takes a human form, as she does, now and again, when she falls in love with some Mars or Adonis of the native race, or when she intends to engage in coasting down the slippery mountain sides,—a sport of which she is fond. As always with distinguished company, you must let your competitor win, if you fancy that it is Pele in disguise who is your rival in a toboggan contest; for a chief of Puna having once suffered himself to distance her, she revengefully emptied a sea of lava from the nearest crater and forced him to fly the region. Many tales of her amours survive. Kamehameha the Great was among her most favored lovers. It was to help him to a victory that she suffocated a part of the army of his enemy with steam and sulphur fumes.