SECOND

MORNING BY THE

CRATER. 309

to try its abyss. Gazing upon it, then, at midnight, so near its brink as we were, was rather venturing upon the edge of safety, as I found to my cost. But woe to the man that should have a fit of somnambulism on the spot where our tent was pitched that last night. Baron Munchausen's seven-leagued boots could hardly save him from a warm bath in flowing lava cherry-red.

Morning broke again upon our open encampment, clear and bracing as upon the Green Mountains of Vermont. With fingers burned and bleeding from the climbing and crystal-digging of yesterday, we made all the dispatch possible in collecting and packing specimens, but it was one o'clock before we were ready to leave. Having at length got off the natives with their burdens, two for Hilo and two for Kau, we kneeled for the last time by that wonderful old furnace, where the hand of God works the bellows and keeps up his vast laboratory of elemental fire. Then we mounted our horses and bade a final good-by, the one for Hilo, and the other for his happy Hawaiian home.

It was with regret that I left half explored a region so replete with wonder and novelties, where a man might spend a week in the rarest sight-seeing without satiety. One wants to encompass the crater above as well as below; to go round about her, to mark well her bulwarks, to tell the towers thereof, and to spy out all the wonderful country round about; to apply the plummet and line, and take the gauge and dimensions of the vast openings into earth's fiery womb here to be met with; and to trace out some of those subterranean galleries and awful caves by which her re

dundant fires have from time to time flowed off seaward, and to explore all the region where, sixty years ago, Keoua and his band of warriors were fatally arrested by an eruption.*

* The army of Keoua set out on their way in three different companies. The company in advance had not proceeded far, before the ground began to shake and rock beneath their feet, and it became quite impossible to stand. Soon a dense cloud of darkness was seen to rise out of the crater, and almost at the same instant the electrical effect upon the air was so great that the thunder began to roar in the heavens and the lightning to flash. It continued to ascend and spread abroad till the whole region was enveloped, and the light of day was entirely excluded. The darkness was the more terrific, being made visible by an awful glare from streams of red and blue light variously combined, that issued from the pit below, and being lit up at intervals by the intense flashes of lightning from above. Soon followed an immense volume of sand and cinders, which were thrown in high heaven, and came down in a destructive shower for many miles around. Some persons of the forward company were burned to death by the sand and cinders, and others were seriously injured. All experienced a suffocating sensation upon the lungs, and hastened on with all possible speed.

The rear body, which was nearest the volcano at the time of the eruption, seemed to suffer the least injury, and, after the earthquake and shower of sand had passed over, hastened forward to escape the dangers which threatened them, and rejoicing in mutual congratulations that they had been preserved in the midst of such imminent peril. But what was their surprise and consternation when, on coming up with their friends of the centre party, they discovered them all to have become corpses. Some were lying down, and others were sitting upright, clasping with dying grasp their wives and children, and joining noses (their form of expressing affection) as in the act of taking a final leave. So much like life they looked, that they at first supposed them merely at rest, and it was not until they had come up to them and handled them that they could detect their mistake. The whole party, including women and children, not one of them survived to relate the catastrophe that had befallen their comrades. The only living being they found was a solitary hog, in company with one of the families which had been so suddenly bereft of life. In those perilous circumstances, the surviving party did not even stay to bewail

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When some enterprising Yankee, or Yankeefied Hawaiian, shall have built there a house of entertainment, the thing will be possible, and Kilauea will be resorted to from far and near as one of the wonders of the world. Invalids and travelers from America may yet cross the Isthmus of Darien or the Rocky Mountains by rail-road, be ferried to Hawaii nei by iron steamers from San Francisco or Panama, and have their youth renewed by a sulphur bath from one of the steaming orifices of old Pele. Nor is it an impossibility, in this age of gold, that volcanic fire may yet retire from the bed of this crater, and, in the changes of mineral chemistry, leave all its veins and fissures so injected with shining metal from the central Pyrophlegethon, that Hawaii shall yet become the El Dorado of the Pacific, the Colchis of modern Argonauts, and the very Ultima Thule of gold hunters from all

nations.

It was not till late in the evening that I reached Ola, a district in Puna, where Mr. Coan had deposited a letter for me in the time of his last tour, and had charged his good people there to pay suitable attentions to a stranger that was shortly coming through. Warned of our approach by the whoop and whistle of the natives, the hospitable inmates of a house there, with kindest intent, had kindled a large fire in the middle, and called together a goodly deputation from other houses. As the place had no outlet but by one

their fate, but, leaving their deceased companions as they found them, hurried on and overtook the company in advance at the place of their encampment.-Dibble's History of the Sandwich Islands, p. 65, 66. Lahainaluna Mission Press, 1843.

little puka (door) in the side, it was so dense with smoke, and oppressive with heat and twice-breathed. air, as to induce a violent headache, that was by no means an equivalent for the wet feet and pure air by whose loss it was gained.

What with this and the feverishness incurred already by exposure and weariness, and the incessant fire of a flying detachment of ukulele that came in my skirts from the volcano, there was no sleep for the night, and I was in poor plight for travel the next day. Heavy showers, too, prevented an early departure. But by nine in the morning of Saturday I was mounted for Hilo. The route lay through the tangled forests and ferns of Puna, fallen trees lying frequently across the way, and the road for a good part of the distance being made of the large stumps of ferns, a la mode corduroy, or what they call "down east” a gridiron road, over which my horse traveled with more shrinking and difficulty than St. Anthony (I believe it was) used to walk barefoot, for penance, over a bridge paved with sharp flints.

To a wearied traveler, the way through that long wood seemed almost interminable. But there was something singular in the composition of the forest, and of the ground, or rather crumbled lava whereon it grew. The huge vine, called by the natives Iie, coiling up like a great reptile, and overhanging all the trees with its deep-red blossoms, was very conspicuous; and large trees of the ohia and kukui (candle nut) would be frequently girdled with a chaplet of moss, on which were growing ferns, and a plant with long leaves like the dandelion.