By day two great and solemnly moving rivers flowed northward and westward from the crater, with subsidiary streams. Their motion was marked by the sudden ignition of trees, which fell in that short and fiery embrace. The appearance at night is thus described: “The immense arena, the intense glare of the flows and fissures, covering the mountain side to the height of some 6000 feet above us, describing horizontal lines and points of molten mineral matter; the sullen glow above the crater and inferior orifices from which the lava issued; the fire and smoke rising from the far-off streams and those nearer at hand, in which latter, every now and then, the burning trees threw up their wreathed flames like the arms of an agonised victim, added to the sort of glimmer and twinkle seen on a frosty night, produced a spectacle of such grandeur, that words before it become powerless. If on some mountain side, the largest fire that ever devastated San Francisco could be reproduced, and four or five himdred domes like that of St. Peter's at Rome, when illuminated, be dotted about on the slopes below, the general effect might be that of a very pretty miniature on ivory of the eruption on Mauna Loa. Every five minutes or so some new chasm or torrent showed itself, comparable at first to the spark of a glow-worm, but suddenly extending like a train of gunpowder.”
In the more scientific account given by Professor Alexander, he describes the jet when first seen by his party as 300 feet in height; in form and movement exactly like a fountain, and accompanied by immense columns of steam. By day his companions explored the craters. The principal sources of action were two cones, about 150 feet high, composed of pumice and fragments of lava. The suffocating gases which escaped from the red-hot ventholes of these furnaces rendered it a matter of danger to approach them. At night, they encamped by a fresh lava stream, which served for all cooking purposes. The next morning they followed the central flow from the lower crater, and reached its outlet from its subterranean channel Its appearance there was that of a pool of blood, a few rods in width, boiling up like a spring, and spouting up thick clotted masses to the height of ten or twenty feet. On the lower side it poured like a cataract of molten metal at white heat down a descent of about fifty feet, with a roar like that of a heavy surf. Keeping to windward,
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Blowing-Hole in Crater, Kilauea.
and protecting their faces with their hats, they approached the brink. The lava appeared almost as fluid as water, and ran with a velocity which the eye could scarcely follow. For several miles the fiery river was a continuous series of rapids and cataracts. They travelled for three or four hours along the edge of the stream. The open part of the canal was from twenty to fifty feet wide; but the stream was really wider, because both its banks were undermined to a considerable distance. Over this part of the flow there were frequent openings, through which they could see the rushing torrent a few feet, sometimes a few inches, beneath their feet. “To describe the scene,” says the Professor, “is impossible. For the first time we saw actual waves and actual 8]ray of liquid lava. As its surges rolled back from the enclosing walls of rock, they curled over and broke like combers on the reef. There was, besides, an endless variety in its forms. Now we passed a cascade, then a smooth majestic river, then a series of rapids, tossing their waves like a stormy sea; now rolling into lurid caverns, the roofs of which were hung with red-hot stalactites, and then under arches which it had thrown over itself in sportive triumph.” After pursuing the great stream some miles, it reticulated into so many rivulets, forming islands, that it required great caution not to be isolated on the latter. The lava often penetrated caves, and blew them up with loud explosions. Where it debouches into the ocean, it has already filled up the bay, and formed a promontory instead.
Extremes proverbially meet; and the phenomena of glacier progression and lava streams have much in common. Recent investigators of glaciers have examined the curved lines found in the ice, concentric with the axis of the flow. The Hawaiian observers were accounting for curvilinear forms of lava, which it is clear were strict homologues of the glacial ones. The generation of the nests of curved wrinkles could be witnessed; and the theorem which was deduced, only, in regard to ice, was demonstrated in the march of minerals solved by fire.
By the last accounts received from the islands, the volcano was in unabated activity. Numbers of the inhabitants were flocking to the coast to witness the splendid spectacle of the confluence of the lava stream with the sea. The whole district of North Kona was suffering from drought; the the wells being completely dry.
