My experiments with volcanoes

by Thomas Augustus Jaggar

20. Footprints in ash west of Mauna Iki, said to have been made by Keoua’s army during Halemaumau eruption of 1790

These prints recalled the story of Keoua’s army when there was a big explosive eruption of Halemaumau in 1790 and the mud rains of the period were from ash which had been baked by the volcanic fires. If roasted and moistened, the chemical composition of powdered basalt is that of weak cement, and these surfaces were in hollows which had resisted erosion wash for 130 years. Part of the slopes closer to Halemaumau had been eroded bare, but they also showed footprints. Later the trail was followed up the mountain close to Kilauea Crater and down toward Pahala, and the ash of 1790 was found to be made up of pisolites, or fossil raindrops, in many places. Evidently the eruption had been accompanied by torrential thunder storms, and the natives had walked through the deposits of mud, which had in a century been dried by the sun into a resistant surface. These fossil footprints were to become one of the attractions of a tourist trail in the National Park.

One night in 1922, after some earthquakes of the evening, we were awakened by friends who told us that a glow like a forest fire could be seen from the high cliffs of Kilauea in the easterly direction of Makaopuhi. This big crater had a platform at one end and a pit at the other. We aroused Mr. Finch, then traveled by car as far as we could go on the truck trail, got lost, and with flashlights made our way on foot toward the glow and fume in a rugged wilderness, over cracked ground and old aa lava and obstructing vegetation. We were chilled by a cold drizzle and not at all sure where we would emerge.

Fortunately, the country is sufficiently open so that we could see the “pillar of fire by night.” It turned out that the new fire was in the deep end of Makaopuhi itself. From the western edge of Makaopuhi pit we looked down on ten or fifteen ribbons of lava, made by a line of spouting fountains at the top of the talus heap, and pouring from the top of the big slide-rock slope. We spent the night on the edge in much discomfort, and watched the puddle of accumulation in the bottom of the funnel and the glowing streaks which fed it. It was evident that the eastern rift of Kilauea Mountain had opened, and the lava outflow was found to extend to Napau Crater, a shallow saucer pit farther east. At the same time the lava in Halemaumau went down, enlarging the pit, and cauliflower dust clouds arose from much internal avalanching. This anticipated and resembled the avalanche steam blasts of 1924.

The adventures of the 1924 explosive eruption were too numerous and complicated to elaborate here. However, it was a tremendous event in the history of Hawaii and was totally unforeseeable on the basis of earlier experience. Mrs. Jaggar and I were in New York writing magazine articles and I was giving lectures, when word came from Finch and the newspapers that Halemaumau was caving in and throwing up rocks. We traveled with all haste to Honolulu, where the Navy agreed to send me by plane to Hilo, though they refused to take Mrs. Jaggar.

The Admiral’s car took us to Pearl Harbor, where a seaplane was ready and Mr. Thurston was waiting to see me off, accompanied by a motion picture cameraman. Then pilot Chourré took me into the sky over Diamond Head on my first flight. A companion plane was piloted by Lieutenant Sinton, who had radio communication with Pearl Harbor. Crossing high above the Molokai Channel, I looked down at the beautiful pattern of trade-wind formed whitecaps, and was surprised after a half hour to observe that the wave crests were farther apart. I was even more surprised to see Sinton’s plane far above us. The mechanic in the forward cockpit had been putting up his fingers repeatedly during our flight, to indicate, I later learned, how many cylinders were missing in the Liberty engine supported above us. Our plane was getting closer and closer to the waves and flying fish raced beside us. Finally we felt the bump of wave after wave on the bottoms of the pontoons, and the pilot brought the seaplane to a squelching stop, close to the surf of the Molokai reef.

We found ourselves in fifteen feet of water, the coral reef visible below. I was deputed to throw out an anchor and make the line fast to a cleat, while pilot and mechanic climbed up to the engine, which had been losing compression and could not keep up the requisite speed. Lieutenant Sinton’s pilot plane came down and circled above us until he saw we were safe, then went on to Maui. Meanwhile, I watched the water with great interest, for sharks. When our boys got the engine going with a roar, I pulled up the anchor and we took off against wind and wave, with the pontoons going bang, bang, bang, against the tops of the waves. But finally we were airborne and out above the blue water.

Then the engine gave out again and we came down. This time the men rigged a sea anchor made of buckets with a line attached to the bow, to hold the ship’s nose up to the wind, and battened the hatches with canvas covers. We clambered up on top of the upper wing to wait for rescue. The wind was blowing a gale, the whitecaps hissed by us, and we lay on our bellies. The aviators told me that this was the first forced landing they had had. The word landing seemed to me inapplicable.

We drifted for five hours, moving slowly down the wind, before a white motor boat appeared, coming from Molokai. At the same time smoke showed from two rescue vessels in the Pearl Harbor and Maui directions respectively. Sinton, who had radioed for help, flew back and circled above us, reminding me of the goonies soaring over a wounded bird on a fish line which I had seen in Alaskan waters. The Molokai boat reached us first, picked up our sea anchor and towed us into Kaunakakai. We pitched so and took such a pounding from the gigantic trade-wind waves that it didn’t seem possible that the mahogany hull and the two lateral pontoons could hold together. However, we made the harbor and tied up to the buoy.