The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-10-31
THE EARTHQUAKES.
RxpIoratIon Of the Volcano Of hiInuen-Won-
TsIards-The Peruvian Disturbanccs-The
L.. hon L NNnNna.

Great Earthquake Waves.
U,To Hawaii Sept. 20.-I have lately re-
turned from tour OF exploration TO the active
Puma At Kilauea the action was dull. The
central area of this immense crater remains n
deep concavty, depressed about 400 feet below
its margin; but this margin is a new vein or
black ledge of lava, itself depressed a thousand
feet below the banks Of the crater, and marking
the former level OF its bottom In this profound
basin i noticed q scanty growth of ferns rooted
in the superficial strata of lava. They had gonc
down uniniurcd to depth of 400 or 800 feet, as
the crust subsidized upon the disagreement of the
molten lava beneath. The old South Lake re-
tains its locality, but its contours are entirely
changed
1t Is now q nearly circular pit, about 400 feet
deep in the bottom of the crater. It's diameter
as 1 measured, is four-ffths of mile and its
walls Of black hardened lava, are Jagged and
frowning; in some places beeting; in others,
perpendicular or retreating. To this sombre
abyss access is anything but easy; ii is possible
to enter it at but single place, and by making
a trdje over steep, rugged and difficult incline
of debris, yet brave American lady of my party
yentured to descend under my guidance Here
1000 feet below the surface of the ground, we
tramped together over the floor of the
awful pit. 1t seems now the half-cooled
force of Vulcan; the fiery pillows no
longer roll and break as they were wont
TO do over this vast area of indurated avas; yet,
in many places we could look into red-hot
ovens and chmneys and peer down through
orifces i'm the crust to the molten sea below,
and hear and see and feel the iucandescent
minerals boiling, Kissing, and surging, lashing
the sides of the Internal cavern, and sending up
volumes of white sulphur vapOrs like the broth
of Pluto or like the ''smOke of torment"
spoken of in that terrible passage in Revela-
tions, which ascendeth forever. But now this
principal focus of volcanic action is compare
lively quiescent Our last great eruption has
lowered its fiery tides far below their usual
leve and we are content to enjoy this
lull in the strife of the telluric forces, which
,l,n1 "a, Tr
recent.work on Force and Nature--a work which
riyes the completest explanation that has yet
appeared OF volcanic phenomena in Hawaii. l
spent three days at kilauea, making careful
observations OF the crater and, when these were
completed, went to the seashore at Ke-a-la-ko-
mo, a village in the volcanic district of Puma,
situated about twenty miles from kilauea. In
this district the suOSidence OF the land was dis
tncty marked Throughout coast line of
many miles in extent the shore has settled from
six to eight feet
On the 25th of July last n remarkable flood
tide visited the southern shore of Puma tearing
away the faces of the sea-cliifs, sweeping over
barriers twenty-five feet high, rolling in foam
ing suris hundreds of feet inland, and carrying
with it huge boulders and angular masses of rock
from a ton TO three tons in weight. The sea rose
nearly thirty feet in perpendicular height, or
ten feet higher than the great earthquake wave,
already described in your columns of the I'd of
April, 1868. Several houses which were not
reached by that wave were swept away on the
25th. By the latter calamity nearly everything
has been destroyed upon the high shores of
Ka-ha-na-le-a, and the delicious bath in the fis-
sure at Pu-na-luu is doubled in depth.
Nor are the changes that the plastic volcanic
agency is impressng upon this country yet COM
pleted. At Ka-la-pa-na the sea is more and more
invading the land. Two channels are opened
through the beach, and the tide ebbs and flows
over large fields of the Ka-la-pa-na plain. The
old stone church of the village is deeply buried
in sand and boulders, and the tides sweep en-
tirely over it. From ka-mai-li to Ka-po-ho the
shores are terribly torn by the action of the vol
canic waves. Between the villages of O-pi-hi-
kaa and Po-ho-i-ki the waves dashed a thousand
feet inland, and destroyed a mile of road run
ming parallel with the shore, upon line never
before reached by the sea. But for the declivity
of our shores, these gigantic waves would have
penetrated much further inland. What ruin
would not be done by succession of pillows 80
feet higher than the highest tides, hurled vio-
lently upon the coasts of New York and
New Jersey! An electrical storm occurred ut
the same time with these phenomena (July 25O
and hundreds of large mullet were killed, appa-
rently by this cause, in the "Green Lake"
Wai-a-Pe-le), at Kapoho The point of dis
turbance, from which these remarkable waves
radiated is still unknown to us. The focus of
the great Peruvian earthquakes of 1868 was near
the city of africa, where the first shocks were
felt at AS P. NJ, Aug. 13. The resulting earth
quake wave reached our Islands, a distance of
5000 miles to the northwest, late at night upon
the same day, and travelling toward the south
west, reached the harbor of Lyttleton, New Iea-
land at 42l o'clock in the morning of the 18th.
Making the allowances in time required by a
difference in longitude of 243 deg. Is min.
Counting eastward), it appears that the wave
occupied but 10 hours and II minutes in making
the latter distance of 7200 miles.
This makes 368 miles per hour, or $40 feet per
second about half the nominal velocity of
cannon ball. On the 23d of December 1854, a
similar wave was transmitted across the entire
breadth of the Pacific Ocean, from Japan to
California in twelve hours and thirty-eight min
utes The great earthquake wave of April 20,
1868 passed from our Hawaiian shores to the
coasts of Mexico, California, and Oregon, in
five hours time, as indicated by sef-registering
tide-gauges at San Francisco and Astoria which
announced its arrival upon the evening of the
same day in which it had desoated the coasts of
Puma and OF Ka IL. These waves are entirely
distinct from the tidal swing of the ocean, and
are proper waves of translation, in which the
particles of water moved bodily forwards and
backwards, like those of the air in sound waves.
They convey an impressive idea of the tremen-
dous power required to disturb the whole body
of the Pacific Ocean for 10000 miles in either
direction
returned to Hilo by the coast route, eXpe-
Tiencing occasional earthquakes by the way,
some OF them little startling. These still con-
tinue at Intervals but we are inclined to expect
q season of comparative volcanic quiet at pre-
sent, and have no sensation, in the way of natu-
raj phenomena, in definite prospect earlier than
the transit of Venus in 1874. We are already
promised visits by scientific observers upon that
occasion.
Cholera i'm India.