The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-08-05


 Lees 'wapor," and somewhere in that pond Is the volcano, leisurely beginning It's daily exhibition. You are disposed in the chill morning air to hold Peter | Lee responsible fo rthe failure of his 1 show when you learn that he has spent the last thirty years at that crater. | But he, familiar with volcanic habits, assures you that there never is any thing to see until after breakfast and l tells you the story of the oheIo berry, which used to be sacred to the Goddess Pele in the old days before Chieftess i Kapiolani-not Kalakaua's queen, but an ancestress--stood on the crater's lip | and detied the goddess and all her in- | fernal powers, and the "kapus' of the ancient and bloody organism were broken, and Hawaii had accepted the | Christianity that had been sent out l from Massachusetts to prepare the eight islands in the fullness of time to become American. You can eat some of the berries for breakfast, he says. So you can, for breakfast and for every meal besides, while you tarry on the crater edge, to say nothing of picking your fill as you explore the patches of soil which have gathered in between | the lava sheets for the encouragement of stunted mountain vegetation. The ! story interests, but nothing can remove 1 the disappointment at the way in which the expected grandeur of the volcanic spectacle sneaks under it's white blank ct. Breakfast comes on and there are bowls of ohelo berries, good to eat sat | isfactory to a pagan goddess in fire 1 pit and satisfactory to modern sight ger in cooler surroundings; like a cram berry grafted on huckleberry bush, f some one says, the red size of the one and the sweetness of the other.
 | Then the horses are brought around from a line of grass matched huts, which prove to be stables, for it is three miles to the mouth of the pit of fire l to the Halema'umau about which scholars in the language may wringle without end as to whether 1t has apos- trophes in it's spelling or not, and de- pendent on that point whether the name means the house of ferns or the house of everlasting. The journey is fairly out of sight. You go a hundred | feet to the brink of the white lake; at | that jumping off place you make a ver- ticle descent of 800 feet, and the rest of the distance is to be ridden over the l lava crust of the crater itself. Before you can begin to be nervous at the prospect of groping in the white depths of that vapor lake, for you doubt Peter Lee since breakfast is past and still there is nothing to see, a new problem arises. The Volcano House stables have bunt one side saddle, and that is already occupied by an elderly lady who may not be dislodged. Every oth- CT woman must ride, Hawaiian fashion, that is, man fashion, astride, or else must walk.
 How am ever going to ride on that kind of saddle?" a woman asks. Must really ride astride? never can do it in the world"
 But Peter Lees two buxom daughters have heard that complaint many a time before and they are used to it. One has the stirrup ready and the other stands by to attend to other lit tie problems as to which there exists an unexpressed but none the less uncom- fortable doubt You spring dubiously into the air and without you knowing | exactly how it is done those skirts are adjusted satisfactorily, although you l do feel like a collection of bundles. There is still doubt as to your ability to make these arrangements for your self, for you learn that at certain point far down in the depths of the | crater you have to leave the horse But the youngest Lee girl hops into the sad dle to show you how it is done and | ly,ao I,a, t-.1 whereat you look rather doubtfully at the Hawaiian who is to guide the par ty
 Now you revise your ideas as to the verasity of Peter Lee and of the grand eur of Kilauea as well. While you have been worrying over the introduction to horsewomanship after the Hawaiian fashion the sun has brought it's beams to bear on the vapor lake, and it has vanished except for a mist bank snug
 gled in the shade under the eastern wall. No doubt now as to the volcano and it's whereabouts. You feel giddy when you see almost at your feet a vast pit, 500 feet deep, the bottom of which has fairly dropped out from the most solid thing you know, the time honored standard of comparison for solidity, the solid earth itself and 8 mountain rock. Some one recites the statement of the guide book that the crater is so many miles long and so many miles wide and has a depth of so many feet of lava floor. But what meaning has all that: what does it amount to? Figures are an imperti- hence in the presence of nature oper- ating it's grand method. Down below nthat abyss which has sunk straight down from the mountain slope there may be a certain number of square miles. But what is a square mile to you? Who would reel off a tape meas ure to make a record of the magnifi- cence of the fire and fury which made that pit? Mile after mile if a tale of miles be needed for the seeing of pow CT in it's infinite degree, the eye sees the criffs square cut above the crater floor, square cute with the mountain slope, above which they do not rise a , single inch; one cannot make too clear that the impression of a vast dropping 1 down; there is a thrill of fear that it may drop still further while you are | below there. Black, green, red, these ! walls bound a floor all black which from the distances seems as level as a floor of carpentry. It is only when you |