[Footnote: What does this power of minute observation tell you about the writer? What other qualities of the naturalist does Burroughs show in this account? What things in nature seem most to attract his attention? Do you know what science now says about "the beginning of things" being "associated with water"? What do you imagine were the "adventures with the pine knots" that Burroughs speaks of?]
AN ASCENT OF KILAUEA
[Footnote: Kilauea: a volcano on the island of Hawaii.]
At last we found ourselves at the very edge of the old crater, the bed of which, three or four hundred feet beneath us, was surrounded by steep and in many places overhanging sides. It looked like an enormous cauldron, four or five miles in width, full of a mass of cooled pitch. In the center was the still glowing stream of dark red lava flowing slowly toward us, and in every direction were red-hot patches, and flames, and smoke, issuing from the ground.
Yet the first sensation is rather one of disappointment, as one expects greater activity on the part of the volcano; but the new crater was still to be seen, containing the lake of fire, with steep walls rising up in the midst of the sea of lava.
We spent the night at the Volcano House, and at three o'clock the next afternoon we set out, a party of eight, with two guides, and three porters to carry our wraps and provisions, and to bring back specimens.
First of all we descended the precipice, three hundred feet in depth, forming the wall of the old crater, but now thickly covered with vegetation. It is so steep in many places that flights of zigzag wooden steps have been inserted in the face of the cliff in some places, in order to render the descent practicable.
At the bottom we stepped straight on to the surface of cold boiled lava, which we had seen from above last night. Even here, in every crevice where a few grains of soil had collected, delicate little ferns might be seen struggling for life, and thrusting out their green fronds towards the light.
It was the most extraordinary walk imaginable, over that vast plain of lava, twisted and distorted into every conceivable shape and form, according to the temperature it had originally attained and the rapidity with which it had cooled, its surface, like half-molten glass, cracking and breaking beneath our feet.
Sometimes we came to a patch that looked like the contents of a pot, suddenly petrified in the act of boiling; sometimes the black, iridescent lava had assumed the form of waves, or more frequently of huge masses of rope, twisted and coiled together; sometimes it was piled up like a collection of organ pipes, or had gathered into mounds and cones of various dimensions.