The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1899-07-22
PELE'S FIERY RIVER FLOWS FLAJ1IWG ON
Special correspondence of The Star

KALAIEHA, Humuula Sheep sta
tion, July lin company with Philip
L. Weaver, l have just completed the
first trip ever made from the Volcano
House to the place of the present vol
canic activity, and thence down the flow
from its very source to its very end. l
have seen, at a distance of not more
than ten yards, the white hot molten
lava thrown up in the air 200 feet above
the table of the crater, falling in glori-
Gus fountain effects of fire back into
the mighty cauldron, within the newly
formed cone, and thence rushing like
Niagara of flame through a break in
the side of the cone, falling fifty feet
and tearing away in a torrent stream
fifty feet wide and going thirty miles
an hour. l have followed that stream
down the mountain, sometimes on its
very brink, sometimes warned further
away by it's spread over acres of living
fire for ten miles. Throughout that en-
tire distance it maintained itself as
liquid stream, not blackened over with
cakes of cooling lava, but red and fiery.
glowing in the open day. Its channel
was as we'll defined as that of a water
course. Its width became gradually
narrowed and it's velocity slackened as
it's volume was decreased by the mat
erial that branched off into smaller
flows of the same liquid fire, or spread
out to form square miles of the charac-
teristic a-a lava cooling and blacken-
ing into great banks of clinkers and
cinders. But for fully ten miles it was
stream, well defined in it's channel,
liquid, flowing.
Four miles from its source it still
maintained a velocity of ten or twelve
miles an hour, and where it began TO
1..- a1A ,tstt Of n 1nAt n
stream, where its surface began to yield
up it's fervid heat, and to succumb to
| the caking blackening process, some ten
miles from where it gushed out, geyser-
| like from the side of Mauna Loa, it still
\ had a velocity of a mile or a mile and a
| half an hour
It's course is not a straight one, but
| like that of a river of water, it curves
and bends, making detours where its
course leads it toward some ridge, or
| centuries-old cone; here running placid
| ly with rippleS on it's surface along a
gentle decline; there rushing down a
| declivity like water over a dam: but
| always a river, vivid, ferVid. intense, a
| flood of flame, a flame of flood.
| And when at last the spirit of the
| Titanic forces which sped it from the
| bowels of the earth is quenched in the
| open cooling air, it ends in a slowly ad-
vancing, widespread a-a flow. like q
| creeping cinder pile twenty feet high
| glowing red OH its face bt tween tn,
masses of which it is composed, from
the fires within which are the forces
| that move it.
From the foot of the mountain look
| ing up the view is a Kaleidoscope re-
version of the scene. The continuity is
| broken up. The whole side of the noun
| tain at night seems afire. 1t is not g
blaze, not a conflagration, but great
lines of glowing light, zigzagging across
the face of the mountain the turns anC
curves, and detours of the stream oi
'lava broken where some activity hide:
the view, and broadened where the
stream seeps out through an eXpanse o
spreading a-a.
Growing all, at the extreme limit o
vision, in this night scene from Int
bottom of the mountain is the activ,
volcano, flashing its might fountains o
fire against the background of tn,
darkness, its effect heightened by mass
es of light reflected from the smoke ris
ing from other but less demonstrativ
centers of activity to right and left.
To make clear the stage setting, 81
to speak, of this mighty panorama y
} fire, let me refresh recollection of tn
relation of the principal points in it
to one another. Mauna Loa, roughl.
speaking, constitutes more than thir
of the Island of Hawaii, the southern
|
the east, west and south. It's slope /
. gradual. 1t is great dome whose sum
NIT is 1855 feet above sea level. 1t
sides are Scared and ribbed with cone
and lava flows, some of them so man
centuries old that time and weathe
and vegetation, and a soft clingin
gray moss, have disintegrated them in
to rich, deep soil. Others so new tha
their barrenness and desolation stan
out to view for miles, and they are sti
known by the names of the years Il
which they gushed out from the foun
tains of fire.
To the north in Mauna Kea, a sim
liar mountain, its summit rising littl
higher and fifteen miles further eas
than the summit of Mauna Loa. TIL
bases of the two mountains unite in
[ stretch of table land having an eleVa
tion at the highest point of approx
mately 1000 feet above sea level. Tn
ridges of the two mountains which NEE
at the highest point on this table Ian
form the water shed which divides tn
slopes and water courses into those
, the direction of Hilo and those in tn
q direction of Kohala. Almost due eaS
o of the summit of Mauna Loa, though
3 little to the SOUTH at an elevation {
4040 feet, but still on the slope of Mat
ma Loa, is the crater of Kilauea. lir
! drawn from the summit of Mauna Lo
down the slope through Kilauea, and
\ line drawn from the same summit
7 the highest point of the table land bt
tween Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, wi
include the region and surface of man
If not most of the lava flows from Mat
{, ma Loa within historic times. The gel
n eral slope of this region is toward Hill
The sources of the flows of lSi3, 1852 al
1880, and of the present flow, are all
l. this area, and all between 2000 and 80
feet from the summit of Mauna Lo
The flow Of 1880 was nearest the lii
drawn from the summit through Kila
ca. The flow of 1Si3 was nearest Il
other line enclosing this area l am d
scrbing. The other flows, are in
general way, between these two. Star
II ing from near the same place the natu
II al tendency, each flowing down Il
slope of a dome, was for them to &
n further and further apart, as they g
farther down the slope. They spre1
out fan-like
The present outbreak began, accor
ing to all accounts, with a column
smoke lighted up by fires below, fro
] the crater of Mokuaweoweo the so-ca
| ed summit crater 2000 feet higher tn;