CHAPTER 11

The Volcanoes

According to all the rules of school geographies a volcano ought to be situated on top of a mountain; it ought to throw out stones, and ashes, and molten lava; its crater should be in the shape of an inverted cone and should emit terrifying noises; periodically it should overwhelm a village or two. Kilauea conforms to none of these specifications. Although it probably started out to make a mountain of its own, it is actually 4,000 feet above sea level on the southeastern slope of Mauna Loa. It has thrown out neither stones nor ashes since it annihilated the army that was marching against Kamehameha, almost a hundred and fifty years ago. It retains its lava within its own crater, which is not shaped like an inverted cone. The walls, on the contrary, are vertical, and the floor, except that it rises toward the southern part, horizontal. The sides are from 100 to 700 feet high and 7.85 miles in circumference, and the floor covers 2,650 acres. The volcano seldom makes terrifying noises—at least, of the kind heard in imagination by a schoolboy. Thousands of people descend into the crater annually, and not one has ever been injured. In fact, it is excellently behaved, not being, like Vesuvius and Etna, one of the explosive class of volcanoes.

Visitors scorching postal cards and letters in lava in Kilauea communicating with internal fires

The Volcano House stands on the northern bank of the crater, with a wonderful view across it, in clear weather, to the sea; of the great snowy mass of Mauna Loa to the west, and of the peak of Mauna Kea above the forests away to the northward. Back of it are beautiful koa forests, and some of the best masses of tree ferns to be found anywhere. The only caution to be observed in the vicinity of the crater is to walk always where the ground is visible, never to take short cuts through clumps of ferns, since the country is intersected with cracks, and the warm steam issuing from them and keeping the ground moist, usually induces heavy growth. Some of these steam-cracks are large enough to fall into, and as they are very hot a few feet down such a fall might be a serious matter. Animals have been killed in this way. Just toward the mountain from the Volcano House steam issues from banks of red earth through myriads of tiny holes, and has encrusted the banks with sulphur, brilliant yellow and white against the red, in places formed into the most delicate crystals. The separate little orifices are too hot to touch with the bare hand, but the banks are safe to walk over. Steam is brought from them in wooden pipes to a bath-house, where one can take the most refreshing of natural Turkish baths.

The main interest naturally centres in the trip to the crater. The old approach, still advisable for good walkers, is by a path down the side, which is here broken and wooded, directly in front of the hotel. During the descent one passes under low growing lehna trees, and by many sturdy little yellow-green leaved sandalwood trees that have made their slow growth since the time of the mad exportation of sandalwood in the early nineteenth century. The walk across the floor of the crater, about two and one-half miles, is over a hard lava bed, more or less up and down, since lava hardens quickly and remains as it flowed, in great ropes and ripples. A few yards from shore—one comes naturally to call the bank " shore "—a ragged crack is crossed by a wooden bridge. At the time this crack opened a large party was in the crater. They stayed long because they were delighted with the unusual activity of the lake and had no idea that this activity extended beyond the pit of fire until at last they started to go back to the hotel. It was night, and as they approached the northern bank of the crater their lanterns suddenly revealed a huge fissure directly across their path. Already molten lava was bubbling up at the bottom. They followed the edge of the crack, keenly conscious, undoubtedly, as they turned to keep parallel with the crater wall, that they were on the inner edge. At last they found a spot where the lava had split unevenly, leaving a projecting ledge on which it was possible to stand and so to jump to the other side. The whole experience, with the thought of sinking to the fires beneath, or of being overwhelmed by the lava slowly rising in the fissure, and the utter helplessness of their situation, was enough to test the most fearless.

The Rim of the Crater of Haleakala

As the trail winds across the uneven lava one is tempted again and again to turn aside to explore some curious cone or unusual formations, but always even more tempting is the sharp black line ahead that cuts across the lazy clouds of yellow smoke. Even the afternoon colours on the mountain, the wonder of the whole great, strange crater, fail to divert attention from that black rim. Curiosity as to what is back of it, below it, overcomes all other feelings. One reaches it suddenly. It is a rim, as it looked, the rim of a profounder pit, a crater within the crater. The cavity is perhaps 1,000 feet across, and its precipitous sides lead down to a lake of molten lava several acres in extent, sometimes higher, sometimes lower in the pit. This is Halemaumau, which is commonly translated the "house of everlasting fire," but which undoubtedly means the "home of the Maumau fern," this fern having a leaf which the twisted and curled lava strongly suggests. But whatever its name, Halemaumau is certainly the centre of volcanic activity, the house of the goddess Pele.

By daylight the lake of fire is a greenish yellow, cut with ragged cracks of red that look like pale streaks of stationary lightning across its surface. It is restless, breathing rapidly, bubbling up at one point and sinking down in another; throwing up sudden fountains of scarlet molten lava that play a few minutes and subside, leaving shimmering mounds which gradually settle to the level surface of the lake, turning brown and yellow as they sink. But as the daylight fades the fires of the pit shine more brightly. Mauna Loa, behind, becomes a pale, grey-blue, insubstantial dome, and overhead stars begin to appear. As darkness comes the colours on the lake grow so intense that they almost hurt. The fire is not only red; it is blue and purple and orange and green. Blue flames shimmer and dart about the edges of the pit, back and forth across the surface of the restless mass. Sudden fountains paint blood-red the great plume of sulphur smoke that rises constantly, to drift away across the poisoned desert of Kau. Sometimes the spurts of lava are so violent, so exaggerated by the night, that one draws back terrified lest some atom of their molten substance should spatter over the edge of the precipice. Sometimes the whole lake is in motion. Waves of fire toss and battle with each other and dash in clouds of bright vermilion spray against the black sides of the pit. Sometimes one of these sides falls in with a roar that echoes back and forth, and mighty rocks are swallowed in the liquid mass of fire that closes over them in a whirlpool, like water over a sinking ship. Again everything is quiet, a thick scum forms over the surface of the lake, dead, like the scum on the surface of a lonely forest pool. Then it shivers. Flashes of fire dart from side to side. The centre bursts open and a huge fountain of lava twenty feet thick and fifty high streams into the air and plays for several minutes, waves of blinding fire flowing out from it, dashing against the sides until the black rocks are starred all over with bits of scarlet. To the spectator there is, through it all, no sense of fear. So intense, so tremendous is the spectacle that silly little human feelings find no place. All sensations are submerged in a sense of awe. Nor is there ever a suggestion of weariness when sense of time is lost. The guide's quiet warning that the hour approaches midnight is an unwelcome shock, but without protest, with only unexpressed regret the party turns away a few steps to the east ward, where motors—strange anomaly among these primeval forces—are waiting at the end of the new road that leads up the low southeastern bank of the crater and so back to the Volcano House. This vision of the earth-building forces at work is a picture so overpowering that it is burned into the memory for all time, can always be recalled in every detail as though one were standing on the brink of Halemaumau.

Not always has Kilauea been what it is now, an enormous, quiescent crater with an active inner pit. It has changed in character with the decades, sometimes with the seasons. Its own mountain has been submerged in the course of centuries by the masses of lava which have been piled against its western slopes by volcanic action from Mauna Loa. The vent through which its fires are forced is far below the surface of the sea. Around this vent have been built layer after layer of solid lava, each layer the result of a new eruption, but as the crater above the vent has been pushed higher and higher, the weight of the molten column has become proportionately greater and it has more and more tended to find the weak places in the surrounding walls and so to force an outlet lower down, sometimes many miles distant from the crater. This accounts for the innumerable lava flows which may be seen everywhere on the sides of Mauna Loa, and in this way, for centuries, Kilauea has built its mountain, spreading in bulk below and not overflowing at the top. How long this process will last, when the weak spots in the walls will have been made solid by new flows, thus forcing an overflow from the crater itself, is a problem to which there is no answer. The only violent eruption actually from the crater, of which there is authentic record or even legend, is that which destroyed the enemies of Kamehameha in 1789, and this came after the Volcano had been, apparently, completely inactive for a long period of years, the natural vent being temporarily sealed and therefore breaking out finally in an eruption similar in kind and as unexpected as the eruption of Vesuvius which destroyed Pompeii. Stones scattered all over the surrounding country, especially to the south, still bear witness to the violence of the outburst. Nothing of the kind has since occurred, and nothing similar can occur unless the molten lava in Halemaumau should solidify, thus closing the natural outlet for the forces beneath.

The first white man to write of Kilauea was Mr. Ellis, who visited the crater in 1823, and what he saw was very different from what one sees to-day. Evidently the whole floor of the crater was active, and Mr. Ellis described it as follows: "The southwest and northern parts of the crater were one vast flood of liquid fire, in a state of terrific ebullition.... Fifty-one craters of varied form and size rose like so many conical islands from the surface of the burning lake. Twenty-two constantly emitted columns of grey smoke or pyramids of brilliant flame, and many of them at the same time vomited from their ignited mouths streams of fluid lava, which rolled in blazing torrents down their black, indented sides, into the boiling mass." Since that time changes have been rapid. In 1832 the floor fell, making the crater about 2,000 feet deep. In 1840 the whole crater was again in a state of violent action until the lava found its way through unknown channels underground, broke out eleven miles from the coast, and flowed into the sea, thus draining away the molten mass in Kilauea. In 1848 a lava dome was formed over the lake of fire, confined then within what seems its normal area—a dome so high that it overtopped the walls of the crater. In 1868 all signs of activity disappeared, leaving only a great, fuming cavity, but three years later the fire lake was again full. In 1880 the whole floor of the crater rose in a fairly regular dome, which was surmounted by four lakes of fire, each about 1,000 feet in diameter. In 1886 all fire had again disappeared, but soon returned, forming other lakes and debris cones which were higher than the outer walls of the crater.*

There came a time, between 1900 and 1907, when the activity was very slight, and when people wondered whether Pele had died with the Monarchy, but during the last few years Kilauea has been continuously active. There is only one lake of fire, to be sure, which rises and falls in the most unexpected manner, sometimes draining away like wheat in the bottom of a funnel, but always bubbling back in a few days or hours, and always in a state of violent and fiery unrest. What changes future years will bring is one of the mysteries which make the Volcano so fascinating. Certainly the visitors' register at the Volcano House, which contains detailed accounts, often with drawings of occurrences seen by tourists and by scientists for many years back, will record as extraordinary events in the years to come.

An observation station, under the auspices of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has recently been established at the edge of Halemaumau. Dr. F. A. Perrett, in charge of the station, sends most interesting weekly bulletins while he is at the Volcano to the Hawaiian Commercial Advertiser in Honolulu, and the series of these bulletins forms a valuable and practically unique scientific record of volcanic phenomena. The temperature of the lava has been found by experiment to be about 1,750° Fahrenheit. The daily, almost hourly, observations have finally proved much that was formerly only suspected about conditions and periods of activity. The floating islands in the lake have been studied, and it was found that they greatly affected the lava fountains. Even the most regular of these—called, of course, "Old Faithful"—became very uncertain in its action when an island moved into its vicinity, probably because the solid mass appreciably cooled and therefore thickened the fluid lava. All sorts of instruments are used in recording the various phases of action, and cameras fix any unusual visible manifestations. The reports to be published by the scientists in charge are expected to be illuminating in the facts which they will definitely establish.

The new road into the crater, which follows the eastern bank and descends a long spur to within a hundred yards or so of Halemaumau, is familiarly called " the Road to Hell." Certainly the lake of molten lava fulfils as nearly as possible all standard descriptions of that tragic place. One is tempted to believe that Dante and Milton and the rest must have seen this or some similar volcano to make their details so realistic, so true to volcanic reality. From its beginning, too, the new road suggests the pleasant, sinuous charm of the broad way which does not lead to Heaven. Soon after leaving the hotel it plunges into low woods and winds among trees and clumps of ferns, giving every now and then wonderful glimpses of the crater and of the superb mountain beyond. Along its edges grow little ohelo bushes, spangled with their refreshing fruit, the taste of blueberries but the size of small grapes, canary yellow, or pink, or carmine in colour. After about a mile and a half the road reaches the brink of Kilaueaiki, "Little Kilauea," a small extinct crater about half a mile across and 800 feet deep, with walls that are very precipitous, but covered with shrubbery and ferns and with a floor similar to that of the great crater. Its sides are lowest toward Kilauea, with which it seems almost to have been connected. A steep path leads down to the floor, a path almost perpendicular in places, but interesting and to be recommended for good climbers. This unexpected little crater is very beautiful, in looks much more what one would expect a volcano to be than is Kilauea itself. The road then circles closely the east bank of Kilaueaiki and turns westward through sparse growth toward the great crater. Before reaching the long spur down which it runs to the lake of fire, however, it passes another interesting little dead crater, Keanakakoe, "the cave for cutting axes," only about 400 feet deep and with a floor jet-black and polished, as smooth as the floor of a ballroom. When this pit ceased to be active the lava must have been at intense heat and therefore very liquid, so that, as it cooled, the surface was left without a ripple, with hardly a crack—none more than an inch wide—and as hard and glassy as obsidian. It was this brittle, impermeable rock, found also in the crater of the same name at the summit of Mauna Kea—that the Hawaiians used to make into weapons and agricultural implements. Even to-day the floor of the crater is strewn with half-finished axes and picks. The descent into Kilauea is easy, and the road continues across the hard lava floor almost to the edge of Halemaumau.

The whole vast floor of Kilauea is well worth exploring by daylight, but to one unaccustomed to surface indications it is safer to take a guide, as the crust in places is thin, and to break through would mean serious cuts on the sharp edges of the lava, in addition to the possibility of disaster, since one can never be sure in the crater of an active volcano as to what may be underneath any particular spot. The edges of the floor are interesting where the molten lava has piled up against the sides and then, cooling, has shrunk away, looking now like waves which have frozen into black ice on a beach. There are curious cones which not so very long ago spouted out smoke and sparks like great furnace blow-pipes. There are deep caves which can be explored with lanterns, tunnels through which flowed fiery streams and where the lava cooled in fantastic forms—caves which can be entered only for a certain distance since the heat in the ends toward Halemaumau is too great to be endured. Sometimes one finds masses of a kind of greenish lava foam thrown out at times of violent eruptions, a foam made of innumerable minute cells like honeycomb and as light as sea-foam. There are also in places wisps of " Pele's hair " caught on the ragged edges of rock, light brown, as delicate and as brittle as spun glass, the long filaments drawn from the drops of molten lava as they fell from the fountains and were blown away. No minerals are to be found except sulphur, and even this is not very abundant in the crater. Near the top of the west bank, which is much the highest, there are olivine crystals in the lava debris caught on the ledges, but they are imperfect and hardly worth searching for. One thing surely to remember in tramping about the floor of the crater is not to get to leeward of the burning pit, because there the sulphur fumes are sometimes almost overpowering. Indeed, it is probably this smoke, drifting with the trade wind across the south bank of the crater, which has helped to make the desert of Kau so utterly barren and desolate. One of the glories of the whole crater in the sunlight is its colour. The lava is black, yet its polished surface is iridescent, sparkling with all the colours of the prism. So an artist, to give the real impression, uses, instead of black, his most brilliant colours.

There is a probability that all the land in the vicinity of Kilauea will be made into a national park reserve, an act which Congress should surely pass, since no other area of fifty square miles within the boundaries of the United States contains so many wonders. Even if the Volcano were not active the great pit and the interesting phenomena of the surrounding country would offer as much to see as do any of the great continental national parks. Back of the Volcano House are lovely woods, with every now and then an open glade ringed by a rank growth of ferns and of vines bearing the delicious little scarlet thimble-berries which grow wild all through the region. A few miles through these woods leads one to a splendid koa forest and to the mill of the Hawaiian Mahogany Lumber Company, where the koa is sawed into boards and shipped away. The trees in this forest are very old, as can be seen by their huge knotted trunks and their twisted limbs. They would look like ancient oaks except that on the full-grown trees the leaves are crescent-shaped and polished, and on the younger shoots lace-like, as are the leaves of the mimosa. Near here are the tree-moulds formed by some ancient lava flow. The molten lava, making its way through the forest, surrounded the great trunks of the trees, burning them finally, of course, but hardening so quickly that it recorded faithfully every line of the bark before the tree was turned into ashes. Over the flow new growth has started, but here and there are holes in the ground as round, as even, as delicately chiselled as though they were casts for future columns. Here, too, are forests of tree ferns, finer than any to be seen elsewhere, except in the jungle, because they are quite untouched. With a guide it is possible to leave the beaten trail and to wander about in the cool shade of these giant ferns, treading always the thick carpet of moss; to pull from the bases of the leaves the soft "pulu," a fine-spun fibre that is often used for making mattresses. This is by far the most thoroughly tropical growth that it is possible to see in the Islands without really forsaking the normal routes, without really getting far off^ into un visited valleys and nearly impenetrable forests.

A delightful day on horseback, some twenty five miles of rough riding, may be spent in a visit to the Six Craters east of Kilauea. First to be reached are The Twins, two small ancient craters, not very deep, quite filled now with vegetation, which clambers over their walls and reaches up from below toward the freer air and the sunlight. On the floors grow trees and shrubbery, so that except for the cup shape there is nothing to indicate volcanic origin. The two little craters side by side are almost identical. Next comes Puu Huluhulu, a cone crater in the top of a hill which stands boldly in the sweep of the upland plains. A clamber up its steep sides rewards one with a magnificent view of all the surrounding country. The two mountains stand out, infinitely high in the late morning, when clouds have ringed around their lower slopes, so that one is more than ever impressed, especially with the nearer dome of Mauna Loa, by far the highest mountain of its kind in the world, and certainly the most beautiful in contour. Far to the northwest is the higher peak of Mauna Kea, but in mass the mountain does not compare with its sister. And to east and south is the opalescent plain of the Pacific. From this cone crater one continues a short distance to the Two Orphans—the loneliest, most neglected of little craters. They are in thick woods quite close to each other. Nothing indicates their proximity. Ferns and trees mask the approaches to them on every side. No well defined rims, no outward slope from them, exist to indicate that they were originally cones— quite unexpectedly the ground sinks away, leaving these two queer, lost, cup-shaped depressions in the woods, startling because they are there at all, giving one an almost uncanny feeling. Even dead volcanoes do not so absolutely hide themselves. Nothing normal in nature is so almost consciously unobtrusive. One turns away as though it had been an indiscretion to invade that solitude. The woods soon become sparser, and the great plains roll onward in undulating lines beyond which one feels the sea. A low growth just obstructs the nearer view. It is, therefore, appalling when the horses stop abruptly at the edge of Kamakaopuhi, the last and by far the most wonderful of the Six Craters. It drops from the surface of the plain for 700 or 800 feet in sheer precipices. There a ledge, varying in width, gives a chance for trees to grow—trees that look like the toy trees of a child's garden, so far below are they. And then, in the centre, is another sheer drop of 1,200 or 1,300 feet, at the bottom of which only a bit of the crater floor is visible. Far, far below little clouds of white steam jet from the sides to drift upward in the still air. The silence is amazing. As one looks the crater grows deeper and deeper until it seems to be the most profound chasm in the earth's crust. To right and left are endless plains; beyond the further bank the same plains sweep onward to the sea; and yet, at one's feet, one looks down and down. Perhaps some prehistoric man reversed the idea of the Tower of Babel, and instead of trying to build to heaven set out to dig a passageway to hell—and almost succeeded, as the little jets of steam bear witness. The Hawaiian name, Kamakaopuhi, "The Eye of the Eel," has its poetic fitness, whether it be taken literally or, as is more probable, as referring to some long since forgotten eel god. It is like a black eye, this vast pit, staring from the face of the plain into the endless sky.

One trip into the crater of Kilauea is not enough. Every visitor should get to know the lake of fire as well by day as by night, for, as Dr. Perrett says, although it is more spectacular by night, it is far more interesting by daylight, when its constant changes can be seen. And when in addition to the Volcano there are so many other attractions in the neighbourhood a week is none too long a time to stay, and two weeks are exactly twice as good as one.

The summit crater of Mauna Loa, Mokuaweoweo, is smaller than Kilauea, but is still the second largest active volcano in the world. This crater, three and three-quarters miles long by one and one-quarter wide, is about 400 feet deep. When in action it is quite as spectacular as is Kilauea, and is often much more so, but as its activity occurs only at irregular intervals of several years, the man who happens to ascend the mountain at just the right time is very fortunate. In 1880 a man was alone at the summit. He slept in a little tent at the edge of the crater, which was as usual dark. During the night he was waked by a dazzling light, and rushing from his shelter saw playing in the centre of the crater a jet of lava which spouted nearly a thousand feet into the air. The top of this fountain was visible from the shores of the Island and from the ocean for miles around. Such an experience comes to but few men, and the long, difficult ascent of the mountain, as well as the great altitude, will always prevent many people from visiting this volcano even during its rare eruptions.

As a general rule activity in this summit crater is preliminary to a lava flow which breaks out somewhere along the sides of the mountain. The fluid mass finds its way to the crater, and its subsequent outbreak lower down is a natural enough phenomenon when one considers the enormous weight and the consequent lateral pressure of a column of liquid lava rising nearly 14,000 feet above sea level and no one knows from how far below. The only extraordinary thing is that it does not more quickly find some weak spot in the side of the tube and break through long before reaching the summit crater. Of these lava flows there have been eleven during the last century, nine from Mauna Loa, one from Hualalai, and one from Kilauea. Three times the town of Hilo has been threatened, the lava once coming within a mile. So far as is known, however, no lives have been lost in any of these flows. The lava breaks out far up on the uninhabited slopes, is very liquid, and therefore runs fast at first, but it cools rapidly, banks up, and has to break through its own embankments, so that by the time it approaches the sea it advances at the rate of only a few yards each day. So certain is this action that people who go to see the flows camp directly in front of them, moving their tents only when the lava gets near enough to be uncomfortably warm. In the rare instances when flows have reached the sea anywhere along a precipitous coast, the sight from boats, of the molten lava pouring over the cliff^s and crashing in clouds of steam into the sea, has been indescribably impressive.

Hawaii is, of course, still in the process of building. Its lavas are so liquid, so thoroughly fused, however, that the danger of explosive volcanic outbreaks is reduced to a minimum. A rancher on the uplands is wise to take account of the one chance in a million and build his house on a hill, rather than in a depression, so that no sudden flow can overwhelm him. Any man owning an upland ranch has always before him the unpleasant possibility of waking some morning to find that a section of his best pasture land is being buried under a layer of hard, sterile rock, and the knowledge that in anywhere from a thousand to ten thousand years this rock will have disintegrated into splendidly fertile soil is no immediate consolation. No man, on the contrary, ever lives in fear of his life because of the volcanoes. The people who live in the hotels near Kilauea have rightly no more thought of danger than have those who live in hotels on the Atlantic sea-board. And this " volcanic safety," as it might be called, is not merely the result of long years of immunity. It is corroborated by the highest scientific authority. The tourist, therefore, in making the trip to Kilauea need think only that he is going to see the most magnificent spectacle which the world affords, that he is to have one of the most thrilling experiences of his life, with no more personal danger than he would incur in a railroad trip from Boston to New York. And if he still feels that the goddess of fire should be propitiated, let him follow the old Hawaiian custom of throwing a few ohelo berries into the burning lake as a sacrifice to Pele. Perhaps she will reward him by forcing upward an extra lava fountain that will spray out into a great bouquet made up of all the colours of all the gorgeous flowers of the Orient.

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