The Topeka state journal., 1898-07-14
How the Lava Made Hawnii-wnd Life

THE WORLDS oRANDEsT VOLCANO
How the Lava Made Hawnt1-Wnd Life
ThereabOuts.
have no spite against the reader Of
this article. I shall therefore not add
one to the 200 and odd descriptions Of
Rilauea now extant. AS the raw attor-
ney who began his maiden speech by tell
ing what the common law is was direct
ed by the judge ''to assume that this
court knows something and not be so ar
rOgantly instructive" so 1 shall assume
that the reader has read the old Fifth
Reader, and the usual Sunday school
books, and at least one general work of
travel, and that he takes at least one
good weekly paper, in which case he
must have seen half a dozen descriptions.
will only say that of the many I have
read since leaving the islands that of
Mark Twain seems to me the best, and
then go on to mention few points
which astOnished me and are not gener-
ally mentioned in the accounts.
The first is the course of the lava. l
had an idea that it dashed down the
mountain side in mad torrent but
it doesn't. AT any rate it never does un-
less when the quantity is enormous and
while it is still so hot as to maintain
great huidity. Almost always-always
in small streams-it maintains sluggish
flow, like warm tar or thin mush, and
as it flows the surface is rapidly cooling
and forming a sort of case. The molten
interior bursts up through this, and the
outflow cools again, and this is repeated
so often that a moderate stream of lava
often assumes the appearance of a great
cylinder slowly creeping down. Even
when the outside seems comparatively
cool the thing is really an enormous
tube, down the interior of which the hot
and pasty lava is slowly forcing it's way.
And this is the reason few or no lives
are lost in an ordinary eruption. One
can walk up to the advanced end Of the
stream, gather little of it on an iron
rod, press it into mold of any desired
shape, and all without danger, and this
though the cylinder or tube may be 10
feet thick. The second fact that aston
ished me was the location Of the crater.
Mauna LOa is the mountain and Kilauea
is the crater, and Kilauea is not really
on Mauna Loa-that is, not on top of it.
1t is indeed but One-third as high, and,
so far as sea level is concerned, no higher
than Salt Lake City. 1t is, so to speak,
a boil on the flank Of Mauna Loa, and
When the lava pressure becomes too
great to be restrained, it breaks out some
where away down the mountain side.
By and by, the rock sharps' say, it will
burst out away off shore, and then we
shall have an addition to Hawaii.
Another fact, and very surprising
fact indeed to me, was that the nearer
one gets to the volcano the more heath
lo foO ~
''stumps my philosophy" Gs they say at
Harvard, but it certainly is a fact. In
the islands Of Kauai, Oahu and Maui 1
did not see a sign in the common life of
the people that there had ever been idol
airy there, but with every miles travel
toward the volcano I saw more signs
till, as we emerged from the forest on the
rock fat near the hotel, our native at
tendants showed themselves regular Pele
fanatics. Even "Old Antony" }" the guide,
recommended to us especially for his
Christian character, "backslid" when he
saw the smoke and limited that it might
be as we'll to gather some berries to offer
as a sacrifice. This comical retrogres-
sion in faith equally with progression in
altitude reminded me of the formula in
use in Texas when l was there in 1867:
''There is no Sunday west of the Trinity,
no law west of the BrazOs and no God
west of the Colorado"
They say that the topography is the
cause of this local backslding. Maybe
SO, but it is almost impossible to de-
scribe the topography. In truth, very
large part of Hawaii consists of a high
tableland inclosed in a sort of triangle
between the three great mountain peaks
of Mauna Loa, Mauna Kea and Mauna
Hualalai, and this plateau is a dreadful
wilderness of tropical vines and giant
trees, growing among and hiding i'm
mense rocks and crevices, with here and
there bare field of splintered lava or
loose ashy stuff, and more rarely a fertile
little valley. In this region the cattle
introduced by early vOyagers have left a
progeny as wild as any buffalo of the
olden time and much more dangerous.
But along the borders of the island, the
north especially, are some wonderfully
&kL