XI
HAWAII NATIONAL PARK
A volcanic exhibit unrivaled in the world is embraced in the Hawaii National Park, which was created in 1916. This Park consists of two volcanic sections in the Hawaiian Islands, with a total area of one hundred and seventeen square miles. Within this territory are two active volcanoes, Kilauea and Mauna Loa on the island of Hawaii; and one sleeping volcano, Haleakala on the island of Maui.
The celebrated and unequaled Hawaiian volcanoes are a national scenic asset, unique of their kind and famous in the world of science. Apparently, the ocean has been filled in and the entire group of Hawaiian Islands built by the lava-outpourings of volcanoes. In this National Park we may see volcanic topography in the course of construction; some landscapes just cast in the process of cooling; others that are beginning to show the erosion of the elements; also those which vegetation is just possessing.
The Hawaii National Park has about the same latitude as the City of Mexico. There are about a dozen islands in the group, with a total area of seventy-five hundred square miles. Honolulu, the capital city, is on the island of Oahu, near the middle of the island chain, which extends from northwest to southeast. From San Francisco it is about twenty-one hundred miles to Honolulu.
Kilauea is more than two hundred miles southeast of Honolulu, and thirty miles inland from the port of Hilo. Twenty miles to the west from Kilauea is Mauna Loa. The crater of Haleakala is on a different island from Kilauea and Mauna Loa, about midway between these and Honolulu.
The active rim of Kilauea is four thousand feet above the sea. The slopes of this volcano have an exceedingly flat grade. It is the most continuously active of the three volcanoes in this Park. It has a pit in which the molten lava rises and falls and is boiling all the time. For a century Kilauea has been almost continuously active with a lake or lakes of molten lava. The crater of Kilauea is not a steep mountain-top, but a broad, forested plateau, beneath which is a lava sink three miles in diameter, surrounded by cliffs three hundred feet high. Several times during the last century the active crater was upheaved into a hill. In a little while it collapsed into a deep pit with marvelously spectacular avalanches, fiery grottos, and clouds of steam and brown dust. Through many years the crater was overflowing. Frequently large pieces of the shore fall into the molten lake, forming islands.
The magnificent spectacle of the lake of lava at Kilauea is indescribable. Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard University, visited the crater and pronounced it the most wonderful scene he had ever watched. It is a lake of liquid fire one thousand feet across, splashing on its banks with a noise like the waves of the sea. Great high fountains boil up through it, sending quantities of glowing spray over the shore. There are fiery, molten cascades, whirlpools, and rapids, with hissing of gases, rumbling, and blue flames playing through the crevices. It is ever changing, and the record of these changes is being kept from day to day, photographically and otherwise, by the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.
Mauna Loa is an active crater, 13,675 feet above sea-level. It is an enormous mountain mass, covering a wide area with its very gentle slopes. This volcano erupts about once every decade. Of the three volcanoes in the Park, Mauna Loa is the most productive of new rock, which it pours out on the surface of the land. Its activities start with outbursts on the summit and culminate after a number of years in a flow which floods the whole country for many months.
Perpetual snow crowns Mauna Loa, and ice may be found in cracks even in summer. In the winter-time there is a variety of climate from sea-level to the summit—from the warmth of the tropics to arctic blizzards on the mountain-top.