An interesting and somewhat amusing story is told in regard to an eruption of Mauna Loa in 1881. The flow of lava at that time was so heavy that it seriously threatened to wipe out the town of Hilo. When the lava ran down to within a mile of the place, the natives urged their Princess Ruth to go and conjure the goddess of the volcano, Pele, to stop the flow. She went—so the tales goes—with all her retinue, and threw into the crater some berries, a black hen, a white pig, and a bottle of gin, as sacrifices. The lava-flow stopped, and the natives believed their escape due to the odd offering, although some people have expressed the opinion that such a collection of stuff thrown into an active volcano's crater would make the eruption more violent, if it had any effect at all.
Mauna Loa forces columns of liquid lava hundreds of feet into the air, and every few years pours forth billions of tons of lava in a few days. There is a wonderful rift-line, from which eight or ten flows poured forth during the last century. These burst out on the slopes of the mountain, not from the summit crater. After the first explosion at the summit, a period of quiet intervenes, and then the rifts open and lava flows down.
The lava cools quickly and changes through colors of red, purple, brown, and gray as it cools. Areas of each of these are seen at one time, with red-hot liquids showing in the cracks of the lava. Trees of lava are formed at one place by the flow of lava rushing through a forest and congealing around the trunks. Fields of "Pele's hair"—lava—are blown out by the wind, like spun glass, as the fiery spray is dashed into the air on the surface of the molten lake. In the large craters are numerous smaller ones with endless lava forms, colors, and volcanic structures.
The crater of Haleakala, ten thousand feet high, is near the middle of the island of Maui. It is eight miles in diameter and three thousand feet deep. While Haleakala has not erupted for two hundred years, the entire crater is sometimes full of active fire fountains, and the fiery glow mounts to the clouds like an immense conflagration.
Professor Thomas A. Jaggar says, "The crater of Haleakala at sunrise is the grandest volcanic spectacle on earth."
No photograph can give any adequate idea of the view from its summit, often above the clouds. It is a good place from which to see the sun come up through the clouds in the crater. This event has been described as being like the birth of a new world. From here one can look down on the island and on the sea, and see the neighboring island of Oahu.
Sidney Ballou says: "A number of people who have been to the top of Haleakala pronounce the sensation there, although somewhat indefinable and indescribable, as the chief scenic attraction of the world. Men like John Muir, who have been all over the world, go up there and say that it is the greatest spectacle in the world."
In addition to the variety of volcanic displays and lava landscapes, the Hawaiian Park contains splendid tropical groves and forests of sandalwood and magnificent Hawaiian mahogany trees with trunks over twenty feet in circumference. There are forests of tree ferns up to forty feet in height, with single leaves twenty feet long; tropical jungles with scores of varieties of the most exquisite and delicate ferns and mosses, many of them found nowhere else in the world. There are numerous song-birds of brilliant hues, many of them found nowhere but in Hawaii, and nearly extinct except in this Park. There are rolling grassy meadows, dotted with tropical trees, shrubs, and ferns, giving a parklike effect. Many of the trees are botanical treasures, known only in this Park region, and of great rarity.
The views from the slopes and summits of the volcanic peaks are a mingling of wild magnificence and tropical splendor. The craters themselves are weird spectacles that awe visitors into silence as they watch the wonderful action of the liquid fire fountains, boiling lakes, flaming lava, and other demonstrations of the Fire King.
L. A. Thurston, of Honolulu, appears to have first proposed this Park, and he did much toward its acquisition.