three to seven hundred feet high, and nearly nine miles in circuit. Boston could easily be accommodated within this crater, and Vesuvius would not much more than fill it. The whole circuit of the walls is much broken and interrupted, and we rode along over several large cracks, one of which opened about a year since (in 1863). Some are concentric, and others radial, and all along the edges of the abyss are fumaroles from which issue clouds of steam, not as at the Geysers of California, with great noise, but gently as a quiet respectable teakettle pours out its vaporous offering. The steam had no smell of sulphur, and ferns were growing luxuriantly over the openings, while the condensing vapor formed pools of sweet water, the only source of drinking water in this fire-searched region.

When we reached the north-western part of the crater, we found on our left a ridge of reddish earth, from which steam and strong sulphurous fumes poured in many places. This was the western Sulphur Bank, and in its cracks were forming the most beautifully delicate crystals of sulphur, almost mosslike; and here and there a blue crystal of sulphate of copper, and greenish masses of sulphate of iron. The earth, which is formed by the decomposition of the lava, was quite hot, and we found some natives cooking fern stalks in the steam.

While we were examining the sulphur deposits, our men came up with our blankets, and we at once engaged an old kanaka who lived near by, to guide us down into the crater. Two other kanakas went with us to carry water and bring back specimens. The descent was at first quite steep, down the hard grey walls; and then the path wound along on broken shelves, under a grand precipice two or three hundred feet high, quite perpendicular, and

AMERICAN NAT. VOL. I. 3

looking as if built of regular blocks of stone. Small shrubs grew by the way, and we picked berries (vaccinium) in abundance. At last after a rapid descent on a steep gravelly bank, we stepped into the fresh black lava of the crater floor. This floor looked quite smooth and level from above, but we found it was very rough and uneven. The fresh lava we first met had broken up during the last winter and overflowed all the end of Kilauea, and it was piled in twisted masses and broken slabs and bubbles. Its surface was covered with a thin nitrous crust, which crumbled beneath our tread, sounding as hard-frozen snow does on a frosty morning, and thus a distinct path had been worn to Lua Pélé or the great fire-pit which is at the south-western end of the crater proper.

Half a mile of such travelling and we came to a wall of hard trachyte, quite unlike the lava of the floor, which seems to have been floated up here from the walls below. The great blocks which compose it are said to change their position from time to time as the floor rises and cracks. Fissures of all sizes were common, and from many of them steam issued changing the black lava to a reddish hue. The action of vapors and gases had produced fragments of all shades and colors, some so metallic as to closely resemble gold, others red, violet, green, etc. Now and then we broke through the thin crust of a bubble, and although we could not repress a momentary shudder as we thought of what might be the result of a fall into the regions beneath, the stirring interest of the place drove away considerations of personal danger.

After two miles we came to a fearful crack about three or four feet wide, and so deep we could not see the bottom, but still there was no sound that we did not make ourselves, and we could not see any fire. I was certainly

disappointed in this, for I remembered the accounts of those who had seen all this plain in a melted state. As we came near the Lua Pélé, however, we found a black cone some twenty-five feet high, with a bright spot at its summit. There was fire at last, but we pushed on over the loose slabs, and through the steam, until suddenly we stood on the brink of the lake of lava some seven hundred feet long, five or six hundred feet wide, and perhaps thirty feet below us. The surface was covered with a dark crust, broken around the edges where the thick blood-like mass surged against its banks with a dull sullen The sulphurous vapors which rose from its surface were blown away by the wind, so that we could approach the very brink on the windward side, but the heat was so great that we had to hold our hands before our faces. The walls on which we stood and where we intended to sleep, were thickly covered with Pélé's hair* which we saw constantly forming. The drops of lava spatter out as the waves dash against the walls, drawing after them a thread, or two drops spin out a thread between them like the finest "spun glass," and these broken threads are caught against the rough points of the cliffs and form a thick coating.

roar.

Occasionally a crack would open in the surface of the lake, and the white-hot lava boil up through it in several places for a few minutes, and then turning red, and cooling rapidly, become black as before. A current would often set in towards the banks, and cake after cake breaking off from the crust be drawn in, causing a violent bubbling and spattering; and then this would cease, or run in another direction, but always from the centre to the edge. As it grew dark we were very tired, having travelled

*Pélé was the Hawaiian Goddess of fire whose home was in Kilauea.