Selected American history

CHAPTER XXV.

The Wonderful Hawaiian Craters and Kilauea's Lake of Fire.

In the central region of the North Pacific Ocean lies the archipelago formerly known as the Sandwich Islands, now collectively designated as Hawaii. The people of the United States should be specially interested in this island group, for it has become one of our possessions, an outlying Territory of our growing Republic, and in making it part of our national domain we have not alone extended our dominion far over the seas, but have added to the many marvels of nature within our land one of the chief wonders of the world, the stupendous Hawaiian volcanoes, before whose grandeur many of more ancient fame sink into insignificance.

The Island of Hawaii, the principal island of the group, we may safely say contains the most enormous volcano of the earth. Indeed, the whole island, which is 4000 square miles in extent, may be regarded as of volcanic origin. It contains four volcanic mountains—Kohola, Hualalia, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. The two last named are the chief, the former being 13,800 feet, the latter 13,600 feet, above the sea-level. Although their height is so vast, the ascent to their summits is so gradual that their circumference at the base is enormous. The bulk of each of them is reckoned to be equal to two and a half times that of Etna. Some of the streams of lava which have emanated from them are twenty-six miles in length by two miles in breadth.

On the adjoining island of Maui is a still larger volcano, the mighty Haleakala, long since extinct, but memorable as possessing the most stupendous crater on the face of the earth. The mountain itself is over 10,000 feet high, and forms a great dome-like mass of 90 miles circumference at base. The crater on its summit has a length of 7 1/2 and a width of 2 1/4 miles, with a total area of about sixteen square miles. The only approach in dimensions to this enormous opening exists in the still living crater of Kilauea, on the flank of Mauna Loa.

The peaks named are the most apparent remnants of a world-rending volcanic activity in the remote past, by whose force this whole Hawaiian island group was lifted up from the depths of the ocean, here descending some three and a half miles below the surface level. The coral reefs which abound around the islands are of comparatively recent formation, and rest upon a substratum of lava probably ages older, which forms the base of the archipelago. The islands are volcanic peaks and ridges that have been pushed up above the surrounding seas by the profound action of the interior forces of the earth.

It must not be supposed that this action was a violent perpendicular thrust upward over a very limited locality, for the mountains continue to slope at about the same angle under the sea and for great distances on every side, so that the islands are really the crests of an extensive elevation, estimated to cover an area of about 2000 miles in one direction by 150 or 200 miles in the other. The process was probably a gradual one of up-building, by means of which the sea receded as the land steadily rose. Some idea of the mighty forces that have been at work beneath the sea and above it can be gained by considering the enormous mass of material now above the sea-level. Thus, the bulk of the island of Hawaii, the largest of the group, has been estimated by the Hawaiian Surveyor General as containing 3,600 cubic miles of lava rock above sea-level. Taking the area of England at 50,000 square miles, this mass of volcanic matter would cover that entire country to a depth of 274 feet. We must remember, however, that what is above sea-level is only a small fraction of the total amount, since it sweeps down below the waves hundreds of miles on every side.

Of the lava openings on these islands, the extinct one of Haleakala, as stated, with its twenty-seven miles circumference, is far the most stupendous. It is easy of access, the mountain sides leading to it presenting a gentle slope; while the walls of the crater, in places perpendicular, in others are so sloping that man and horse can descend them. The pit varies from 1500 to 2000 feet in depth, its bottom being very irregular from the old lava flows and the many cinder cones, these still looking as fresh as though their fires had just gone out. Some of these cones are over 500 feet high. There is a tradition among the natives that the vast lava streams which in the past flowed from the crater to the sea continued to do so in the period of their remote ancestors. They still, indeed, appear as if recent, though there are to-day no signs of volcanic activity anywhere on this island.

In fact, the only volcano now active in the Hawaiian Islands is Mauna Loa, in the southern section of the Island of Hawaii. A striking feature of this is that it has two distinct and widely disconnected craters, one on its summit, the other on its flank, at a much lower level. The latter is the vast crater of Kilauea, the largest active crater known on the face of the globe.

We cannot offer a better description of the aspect of this lava abyss than to give Miss Bird's eloquent description of her adventurous descent into it:

"The abyss, which really is at a height of four thousand feet on the flank of Mauna Loa, has the appearance of a pit on a rolling plain. But such a pit! It is quite nine miles in circumference, and at its lowest area—which not long ago fell about three hundred feet, just as the ice on a pond falls when the water below is withdrawn—covers six square miles. The depth of the crater varies from eight hundred to one thousand feet, according as the molten sea below is at flood or ebb. Signs of volcanic activity are present more or less throughout its whole depth and for some distance along its margin, in the form of steam-cracks, jets of sulphurous vapor, blowing cones, accumulating deposits of acicular crystals of sulphur, etc., and the pit itself is constantly rent and shaken by earthquakes. Great eruptions occur with circumstances of indescribable terror and dignity; but Kilauea does not limit its activity to these outbursts, but has exhibited its marvellous phenomena through all known time in a lake or lakes on the southern part of the crater three miles from this side.

"This lake—the Hale-mau-mau, or 'House of everlasting Fire', of the Hawaiian mythology, the abode of the dreaded goddess Pele—is approachable with safety, except during an eruption. The spectacle, however, varies almost daily; and at times the level of the lava in the pit within a pit is so low, and the suffocating gases are evolved in such enormous quantities, that travellers are unable to see anything.

"At the time of our visit there had been no news from it for a week; and as nothing was to be seen but a very faint bluish vapor hanging round its margin, the prospect was not encouraging. After more than an hour of very difficult climbing, we reached the lowest level of the crater, pretty nearly a mile across, presenting from above the appearance of a sea at rest; but on crossing it, we found it to be an expanse of waves and convolutions of ashy-colored lava, with huge cracks filled up with black iridescent rolls of lava only a few weeks old. Parts of it are very rough and ridgy, jammed together like field-ice, or compacted by rolls of lava, which may have swelled up from beneath; but the largest part of the area presents the appearance of huge coiled hawsers, the ropy formation of the lava rendering the illusion almost perfect. These are riven by deep cracks, which emit hot sulphurous vapors.

"As we ascended, the flow became hotter under our feet, as well as more porous and glistening. It was so hot that a shower of rain hissed as it fell upon it. The crust became increasingly insecure, and necessitated our walking in single file with the guide in front, to test the security of the footing. I fell through several times, and always into holes full of sulphurous steam so malignantly acid that my strong dogskin gloves were burned through as I raised myself on my hands.

"We had followed the lava-flow for thirty miles up to the crater's brink, and now we had toiled over recent lava for three hours, and, by all calculations, were close to the pit; yet there was no smoke or sign of fire, and I felt sure that the volcano had died out for once for my special disappointment.

"Suddenly, just above and in front of us, gory drops were tossed in the air, and springing forwards, we stood on the brink of Hale-mau-mau, which was about thirty-five feet below us. I think we all screamed. I know we all wept; but we were speechless, for a new glory and terror had been added to the earth. It is the most unutterable of wonderful things. The words of common speech are quite useless. It is unimaginable, indescribable; a sight to remember forever; a sight which at once took possession of every faculty of sense and soul, removing one altogether out of the range of ordinary life. Here was the real 'bottomless pit', 'the fire which is not quenched', 'the place of Hell', 'the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone', 'the everlasting burnings', 'the fiery sea whose waves are never weary'. Perhaps those Scripture phrases were suggested by the sight of some volcano in eruption. There were groanings, rumblings, and detonations; rushings, hissings, splashings, and the crashing sound of breakers on the coast; but it was the surging of fiery waves upon a fiery shore. But what can I write? Such words as jets, fountains, waves, spray, convey some idea of order and regularity, but here there are none.

"The inner lake, while we stood there, formed a sort of crater within itself; the whole lava sea rose about three feet; a blowing cone about eight feet high was formed; it was never the same two minutes together. And what we saw had no existence a month before, and probably will be changed in every essential feature a month from hence. The prominent object was fire in motion; but the surface of the double lake was continually skimming over for a second or two with a cool crust of lustrous grey-white, like frost-silver, broken by jagged cracks of a bright rose-color. The movement was nearly always from the sides to the centre; but the movement of the centre itself appeared independent, and always took a southerly direction. Before each outburst of agitation there was much hissing and throbbing, with internal roaring as of imprisoned gases. Now it seemed furious, demoniacal, as if no power on earth could bind it, then playful and sportive; then for a second languid, but only because it was accumulating fresh force. Sometimes the whole lake took the form of mighty waves, and, surging heavily against the partial barrier with a sound like the Pacific surf, lashed, tore, covered it, and threw itself over it in clots of living fire. It was all confusion, commotion, forces, terror, glory, majesty, mystery, and even beauty. And the color, 'eye hath not seen' it! Molten metal hath not that crimson gleam, nor blood that living light."

To this description we may add that of Mr. Ellis, a former missionary to these islands, and one of the number who have descended to the shores of Kilauea's abyss of fire. He says, after describing his difficult descent and progress over the lava-strewn pit:

"Immediately before us yawned an immense gulf, in the form of a crescent, about two miles in length, from northeast to southwest; nearly a mile in width, and apparently 800 feet deep. The bottom was covered with lava, and the southwestern and northern parts of it were one vast flood of burning matter in a state of terrific ebullition, rolling to and fro its 'fiery surges' and flaming billows. Fifty-one conical islands, of varied form and size, containing as many craters, rose either round the edge or from the surface of the burning lake; twenty-two constantly emitted columns of gray smoke or pyramids of brilliant flame, and several of these at the same time vomited from their ignited mouths streams of lava, which rolled in blazing torrents down their black indented sides into the boiling mass below.

"The existence of these conical craters led us to conclude that the boiling cauldron of lava before us did not form the focus of the volcano; that this mass of melted lava was comparatively shallow, and that the basin in which it was contained was separated by a stratum of solid matter from the great volcanic abyss, which constantly poured out its melted contents through these numerous craters into this upper reservoir. The sides of the gulf before us, although composed of different strata of ancient lava, were perpendicular for about 400 feet, and rose from a wide horizontal ledge of solid black lava of irregular breadth, but extending completely round. Beneath this ledge the sides sloped gradually towards the burning lake, which was, as nearly as we could judge, 300 or 400 feet lower.

"It was evident that the large crater had been recently filled with liquid lava up to this black ledge, and had, by some subterraneous canal, emptied itself into the sea or spread under the low land on the shore. The gray and in some places apparently calcined sides of the great crater before us, the fissures which intersected the surface of the plain on which we were standing, the long banks of sulphur on the opposite side of the abyss, the vigorous action of the numerous small craters on its borders, the dense columns of vapor and smoke that rose at the north and west end of the plain, together with the ridge of steep rocks by which it was surrounded, rising probably in some places 300 or 400 feet in perpendicular height, presented an immense volcanic panorama, the effect of which was greatly augmented by the constant roaring of the vast furnaces below."

Of the two great craters of Mauna Loa, the summit one has frequently in modern times overflowed its crest and poured its molten streams in glowing rivers over the land. This has rarely been the case with the lower and incessantly active crater of Kilauea, whose lava, when in excess, appears to escape by subterranean channels to the sea. We append descriptions of some of the more recent examples of Mauna Loa's eruptive energy. The lava from this crater does not alone flow over the crater's lip, but at times makes its way through fissures far below, the immense pressure causing it to spout in great flashing fountains high into the air. In 1852 the fiery fountains reached a height of 500 feet. In some later eruptions they have leaped 1,000 feet high. The lava is white hot as it ascends, but it assumes a blood-red tint in its fall, and strikes the ground with a frightful noise.

The quantities of lava ejected in some of the recent eruptions have been enormous. The river-like flow of 1855 was remarkable for its extent, being from two to eight miles wide, with a depth of from three to three hundred feet, and extending in a winding course for a distance of sixty miles. The Apostle of Hawaiian volcanoes, the Rev. Titus Coan, who ventured to the source of this flow while it was in supreme action, thus describes it:—

"We ascended our rugged pathway amidst steam and smoke and heat which almost blinded and scathed us. We came to open orifices down which we looked into the fiery river which rushed madly under our feet. These fiery vents were frequent, some of them measuring ten, twenty, fifty or one hundred feet in diameter. In one place we saw the river of lava uncovered for thirty rods and rushing down a declivity of from ten to twenty-five degrees. The scene was awful, the momentum incredible, the fusion perfect (white heat), and the velocity forty miles an hour. The banks on each side of the stream were red-hot, jagged and overhanging. As we viewed it rushing out from under its ebon counterpane, and in the twinkling of an eye diving again into its fiery den, it seemed to say, 'Stand off! Scan me not! I am God's messenger. A work to do. Away!'"

Later he wrote again:—"The great summit fountain is still playing with fearful energy, and the devouring stream rushes madly down toward us. It is now about ten miles distant, and heading directly for our bay. In a few days we may be called to announce the painful fact that our beauteous Hilo is no more,—that our lovely, our inimitable landscape, our emerald bowers, our crescent strand and our silver bay are blotted out. A fiery sword hangs over us. A flood of burning ruin approaches us. Devouring fires are near us. With sure and solemn progress the glowing fusion advances through the dark forest and the dense jungle in our rear, cutting down ancient trees of enormous growth and sweeping away all vegetable life. For months the great summit furnace on Mauna Loa has been in awful blast. Floods of burning destruction have swept wildly and widely over the top and down the sides of the mountain. The wrathful stream has overcome every obstacle, winding its fiery way from its high source to the bases of the everlasting hills, spreading in a molten sea over the plains, penetrating the ancient forests, driving the bellowing herds, the wild goats and the affrighted birds before its lurid glare, leaving nothing but ebon blackness and smoldering ruin in its track."

His anticipation of the burial of Hilo under the mighty flow was happily not realized. It came to an abrupt halt while seven miles distant, the checked stream standing in a threatening and rugged ridge, with rigid, beetling front.

In January, 1859, Mauna Loa was again at its fire-play, throwing up lava fountains from 800 to 1,000 feet in height. From this great fiery fountain the lava flowed down in numerous streams, spreading over a width of five or six miles. One stream, probably formed by the junction of several smaller, attained a height of from twenty to twenty-five feet, and a breadth of about an eighth of a mile. Great stones were thrown up along with the jet of lava, and the volume of seeming smoke, composed probably of fine volcanic dust, is said to have risen to the height of 10,000 feet.

An eruption of still greater violence took place in 1865, characterized by similar phenomena, particularly the throwing up of jets of lava. This fiery fountain continued to play without intermission for twenty days and nights, varying only as respects the height to which the jet arose, which is said to have ranged between 100 and 1,000 feet, the mean diameter of the jet being about 100 feet. This eruption was accompanied by explosions so loud as to have been heard at a distance of forty miles.

A cone of about 300 feet in height, and about a mile in circumference, was accumulated round the orifice whence the jet ascended. It was composed of solid matters ejected with the lava, and it continued to glow like a furnace, notwithstanding its exposure to the air. The current of lava on this occasion flowed to a distance of thirty-five miles, burning its way through the forests, and filling the air with smoke and flames from the ignited timber. The glare from the glowing lava and the burning trees together was discernible by night at a distance of 200 miles from the island.

A succeeding great lava flow was that which began on November 6, 1880. Mr. David Hitchcock, who was camping on Mauna Kea at the time of this outbreak, saw a spectacle that few human eyes have ever beheld. "We stood," writes he, "on the very edge of that flowing river of rock. Oh, what a sight it was! Not twenty feet from us was this immense bed of rock slowly moving forward with irresistible force, bearing on its surface huge rocks and immense boulders of tons' weight as water would carry a toy-boat. The whole front edge was one bright red mass of solid rock incessantly breaking off from the towering mass and rolling down to the foot of it, to be again covered by another avalanche of white-hot rocks and sand. The whole mass at its front edge was from twelve to thirty feet in height. Along the entire line of its advance it was one crash of rolling, sliding, tumbling red-hot rock. We could hear no explosions while we were near the flow, only a tremendous roaring like ten thousand blast furnaces all at work at once."

This was the most extensive flow of recent years, and its progress from the interior plain through the dense forests above Hilo and out on to the open levels close to the town was startling and menacing enough. Through the woods especially it was a turbulent, seething mass that hurled down mammoth trees, and licked up streams of water, and day and night kept up an unintermitting cannonade of explosions. The steam and imprisoned gases would burst the congealing surface with loud detonations that could be heard for many miles. It was not an infrequent thing for parties to camp out close to the flow over night. Ordinarily a lava-flow moves sluggishly and congeals rapidly, so that what seems like hardihood in the narrating is in reality calm judgment, for it is perfectly safe to be in the close vicinity of a lava-stream, and even to walk on its surface as soon as one would be inclined to walk on cooling iron in a foundry. This notable flow finally ceased within half a mile of Hilo, where its black form is a perpetual reminder of a marvellous deliverance from destruction.

Kilauea seems never, in historic times, to have filled and overflowed its vast crater. To do so would need an almost inconceivable volume of liquid rock material. But it approached this culmination in 1840, when it became, through its whole extent, a raging sea of fire. The boiling lava rose in the mighty mountain-cup to a height of from 500 to 600 feet. Then it forced a passage through a subterranean cavity twenty-seven miles long, and reached the sea forty miles distant, in two days. The stream where it fell into the sea was half a mile wide, and the flow kept up for three weeks, heating the ocean twenty miles from land. An eye-witness of this extraordinary flow thus describes it:

"When the torrent of fire precipitated itself into the ocean, the scene assumed a character of terrific and indescribable grandeur. The magnificence of destruction was never more perceptibly displayed than when these antagonistic elements met in deadly strife. The mightiest of earth's magazines of fire poured forth its burning billows to meet the mightiest of oceans. For two score miles it came rolling, tumbling, swelling forward, an awful agent of death. Rocks melted like wax in its path; forests crackled and blazed before its fervent heat; the works of man were to it but as a scroll in the flames. Imagine Niagara's stream, above the brink of the Falls, with its dashing, whirling, madly-raging waters hurrying on to their plunge, instantaneously converted into fire; a gory-hued river of fused minerals; volumes of hissing steam arising; some curling upward from ten thousand vents, which give utterance to as many deep-toned mutterings, and sullen, confined clamorings; gases detonating and shrieking as they burst from their hot prison-house; the heavens lurid with flame; the atmosphere dark and oppressive; the horizon murky with vapors and gleaming with the reflected contest!

"Such was the scene as the fiery cataract, leaping a precipice of fifty feet, poured its flood upon the ocean. The old line of coast, a mass of compact, indurated lava, whitened, cracked and fell. The waters recoiled, and sent forth a tempest of spray; they foamed and dashed around and over the melted rock, they boiled with the heat, and the roar of the conflicting agencies grew fiercer and louder. The reports of the exploding gases were distinctly heard twenty-five miles distant, and were likened to a whole broadside of heavy artillery. Streaks of the intensest light glanced like lightning in all directions; the outskirts of the burning lava as it fell, cooled by the shock, were shivered into millions of fragments, and scattered by the strong wind in sparkling showers far into the country. For three successive weeks the volcano disgorged an uninterrupted burning tide, with scarcely any diminution, into the ocean. On either side, for twenty miles, the sea became heated, with such rapidity that, on the second day of the junction of the lava with the ocean, fishes came ashore dead in great numbers, at a point fifteen miles distant. Six weeks later, at the base of the hills, the water continued scalding hot, and sent forth steam at every wash of the waves."

In 1866 the great crater of Kilauea presented a new and unlooked-for spectacle in the sinking and vanishing of its great lava lake. In March of that year the fires in the ancient cauldron totally disappeared, and the surrounding lava rock sank to a depth of nearly 600 feet. Mr. Thrum, in a pamphlet on "The Suspended Activity of Kilauea," says of it:

"Distant rumbling noises were heard, accompanied by a series of earthquakes, forty-three in number. With the fourth shock the brilliancy of New Lake disappeared, and towards 3 A. M. the fires in Halemaumau disappeared also, leaving the whole crater in darkness.

"With the dawn the shocks and noises ceased, and revealed the changes which Kilauea had undergone in the night. All the high cliffs surrounding Halemaumau and New Lake, which had become a prominent feature in the crater, had vanished entirely, and the molten lava of both lakes had disappeared by some subterranean passage from the bottom of Halemaumau. There was no material change in the sunken portion of the crater except a continual falling in of rocks and debris from its banks as the contraction from its former intense heat loosened their compactness and sent them hurling some 200 or 300 feet below, giving forth at times a boom as of distant thunder, followed by clouds of cinders and ashes shooting up into the air 100 to 300 feet, proportionate, doubtless, to the size of the newly fallen mass.

"This remarkable recession of the liquid lava in Halemaumau was probably due to the opening of some deep subterranean passage through which the lake of lava made its way unseen to the ocean's depths. The Rev. Mr. Baker, probably the most adventuresome explorer of Hawaiian volcanoes, actually descended into that crumbling pit to a point within what he judged to be fifty feet of the bottom. But Halemaumau had only taken an intermission, for in two short months signs of returning life became frequent and unmistakable, and, in June, culminated in the sudden outbreak of a lake that has since then steadily increased in activity."

We cannot close this chapter without some reference to the Goddess Pele, to whom the Hawaiians long imputed the wonder-work of their volcanic mountains. When there is unusual commotion in Kilauea myriads of thread-like filaments float in the air and fall upon the cliffs, making deposits much resembling matted hair. A single filament over fifteen inches long was picked up on a Hilo veranda, having sailed in the air a distance of fifty miles. This is the famous Pele's Hair, being the glass-like product of volcanic fires. It resembles Prince Rupert's Drops, and the tradition is that whenever the volcano becomes active it is because Pele, the Goddess of the crater, emerges from her fiery furnace and shakes her vitreous locks in anger.

This fabled being, according to Emerson, in a paper on "The Lesser Hawaiian Gods," "could at times assume the appearance of a handsome young woman, as when Kamapauaa, to his cost, was smitten with her charms when first he saw her with her sisters at Kilauea." Kamapauaa was a gigantic hog, who "could appear as a handsome young man, a hog, a fish or a tree." "At other times the innate character of the fury showed itself, and Pele appeared in her usual form as an ugly and hateful old hag, with tattered and fire-burnt garments, scarcely concealing the filth and nakedness of her person. Her bloodshot eyes and fiendish countenance paralyzed the beholder, and her touch turned him to stone. She was a jealous and vindictive monster, delighting in cruelty, and at the slightest provocation overwhelming the unoffending victims of her rage in widespread ruin."

The superstition regarding the Goddess Pele was thought to have received a death blow in 1825, when Kapiolani, an Hawaiian princess and a Christian convert, ascended, with numerous attendants, to the crater of Kilauea, where she publicly defied the power and wrath of the goddess. No response came to her defiance, she descended in safety, and faith in Pele's power was widely shaken.

Yet as late as 1887 the old superstition revived and claimed an exalted victim, for in that year the Princess Like Like, the youngest sister of the king, starved herself to death to appease the anger of the Goddess Pele, supposed to be manifested in Mauna Loa's eruption of that year, and to be quieted only by the sacrifice of a victim of royal blood. Thus slowly do the old superstitions die away.