My experiments with volcanoes

by Thomas Augustus Jaggar

9. Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, 1912

10. Jaggar in seismograph vault beneath Volcano Observatory, 1916

The textbook needs for volcanology are records of the shape, height, number, distribution, temperature, and differences among volcanoes. How gaseous is lava? how radioactive is it? how often does it erupt? and how dangerous is it for human beings? With reference to the source, crack or crater, we need knowledge of how the earth crust is ruptured, how deep are the fractures, and how much accompanied by earthquake is the wedging upward of lava in those cracks.

My first job on arriving in Hawaii was to make contact with Mr. Thurston and his associates. The next was to get a good map made of Kilauea Volcano as a basis for measurement of changes in the fire pit. Governor Walter F. Frear came to my rescue and immediately sent Colonel Claude Birdseye and Captain Albert Burkland to make a topographic map of the proposed Hawaii National Park. These engineers brought into the field the topographic camp of the U.S. Geological Survey, and they were extremely sympathetic with my project, furnishing me with surveying monuments, and sketching out methods wherewith to make an accurate base line for measurement of changes inside the pit.

A laboratory on the northeast edge of Kilauea Crater was quickly provided through the energy of the brilliant Demosthenes Lycurgus, hospitable Greek manager of the Volcano House, the hotel where I stayed. All the merchants of Hilo, thirty miles away, contributed funds and in a few weeks carpenters were at work, on land belonging to the Bishop Estate and sublet by the Volcano House. Furniture was paid for by the Whitney Fund.

A cellar for seismographs was blasted by Territorial prisoners in the hot rock under the laboratory, at the actual northeast edge of the greater crater of Kilauea. The lava pit Halemaumau, always smoking, was in full view two miles away. The cellar lined with concrete, which shut off the steam cracks, became a warm, dry place for instruments at a constant temperature of about 80° Fahrenheit. Concrete tables on the floor of the cellar held the pair of east-west and north-south horizontal pendulums, recording with delicate pens on smoked paper, stretched over a chronograph drum. These paper records, removed every day and fixed with shellac varnish, became the seismograms of the permanent files. Long belts of wavy lines on each paper exhibited seconds, minutes, and hours; and when a sharp zigzag in one of the lines occurred, it was evidence of either a local or a distant earthquake. H. O. Wood, who had been my assistant in field geology at Harvard and had had experience with Omori seismographs at the University of California, was summoned to the Observatory as seismologist.

Thus in the first six months of 1912 I became a resident of a volcano in Hawaii and had an adequate laboratory of eight rooms, and suitable porches, a darkroom for photography, and the beginnings of seismograph records in the basement. Horses and saddles were purchased, the necessary outer houses were built, and Alec Lancaster was employed as janitor and field man. Francis Dodge, athletic young Honoluluan and son of a government surveyor, was appointed topographic assistant. He was a hardy cowboy, with some experience as rodman for the Geological Survey.

From the moment of my arrival I adopted uniform pocket scratch pads with detachable sheets for the use of all employees, insisting that anyone who went to the lava pit should write notes, inscribe the date and hour, tell what he saw, and hand the notes to me. Even Alec Lancaster, whose father was a Cherokee Indian carpenter and whose mother was a mulatto, took notes and learned about the points of the compass and the names of the coves and blowholes of the lava lake in the bottom of the pit. Some of Alec’s notes were very amusing, as when he wrote, “9:30 A.M. April 3, Old Faithful is on her job right sturdy.” However, he quickly learned the correct technical expressions for surface streaming of the lava, brightness of the fountains at night, numbers of the bubble fountains, and places of smoke on the bottom of the pit. At all times Alec was a useful camp man, a good cook, and a fearless climber of cliffs. When it came to making and using rope ladders with hickory rungs for descent down a 200-foot cliff to the edge of the lava, Alec was the first to volunteer. He drove spikes into cracks in the rock and tested out the ladders, surrounded by smoke. This was done in June and December of 1912, when the gas chemists of the Carnegie Institution were conducted to the bottom to collect gases, by pumps and vacuum tubes, from flaming spatter cones.

I hope this introduction gives some idea of what the first year of the Observatory accomplished. Meanwhile problems of policy and of the publishing of results crowded upon me thick and fast. The notes of all employees had to be compiled; critical scientific visitors had to be convinced of the usefulness of the new effort; the Massachusetts Tech and Honolulu sponsors had to be given suitable reports; a permanent record book, reproducing surveys, notes, and photographs, had to be devised; and I had to make occasional journeys to California, Boston, and Washington for contact with the Government, with scientific societies, and with scientific magazines.