In 1911 the first successful attempt to secure the temperature of the boiling lava in the lake of fire was made scientifically. Professor F. G. Perret came from his observatory by Vesuvius [[176]]and Professor E. G. Shepherd from the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution at Washington, to study Kilauea, following the beginning of such observations already established by Professor Jaggar of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
They stretched a wire cable 1,500 feet long from wall to wall over the lake of fire. They ran wires through pulleys along this cable and dropped the best instruments they had with them straight down. Some of these were broken before registration could be secured. The last thermometer registered 1850° Fahrenheit, remaining steadily at that point until the thermometer was withdrawn. Later it was again lowered, but, according to Professor Shepherd, “Pele arose in her wrath, grasped the thermometer, flung hot lava on the supporting wires, thereby weakening them, and then with a final jerk broke the thermometer from its supports and swallowed it. Pele seems to like ironware for diet.”
The record of from 1800° to 2000° Fahrenheit seems to be the normal heat of the lake of fire, sometimes, of course, rising much higher under special conditions. The scientific observers when speaking of lava heat usually say it is 1850° Fahrenheit. [[177]]
[1] Tree fern—Cibotium Menziesii. [↑]
III
VOLCANIC ACTIVITY
In a little note-book in Hilo is a record which from time to time has been studied and copied frequently by visiting scientists. The missionary mother who put down the facts therein recorded never dreamed of being scientific. She simply kept a record. In 1832 Mrs. Sarah J. Lyman came to Hilo, where her husband founded the Hilo Boys’ Boarding School, a school, by the way, after which the great Hampton Institute of Virginia was patterned. On October 3, 1833, she was tossed around in her home in a way somewhat alarming. She opened her little note-book and wrote, “Two earthquakes, one of them heavy.”
She had a little curiosity to see how frequently these earthquakes disturbed her home. Thus the record went on from month to month and year to year: “Earthquake, motion up and down,” “Heavy shake, stone walls down, cream shaken off the milk,” “4 A.M., all the family aroused,” “Jar and a noise like distant cannon,” “Tremendous shock, brace ourselves to stand up,” “Kai-mimiki” (sea shaken by an earthquake), [[178]]“All motions combined, earth like the sea.” At one time the record ran: “Frequent jars, severe, so many I have ceased to count.”