The courier., 1902-07-26
THE COURIER
SIGHTS IN THE HAWAIIAN ISLES.


yards Of the hotel. In many directions.
were holes and seams in the rocks
where hot sulphur smoke and steam
were escaping, too hot to permit one
to hold the hand close to the vent.
THE windows OF my room over
looked the basin of the crater. This
bed of lava is nearly three miles long
and two miles wide containing over
two thousand six hundred acres, and
from its seams are constantly rising
clouds Of hot vapor. At morning and
evening II reminds one Of steam ris-
During tie middle Of the day when
the sun is shining brightly but little
smoke is seen. and then only the
SCARED. scanned, irregular surface of
black lava lies like lake below. The
walls of the crater rise perpendicularly
on most sides. At the highest point
the elevation Is 800 feet. Near one
end of the crater is the lake of Hale
maumau. By lake 1 do not mean
body of water, as is usually under
stood by the word, but a deep hole
or pit in the lava, varying in size, &C.
centric in shape, and where there is
continual evidence in rising volumes
of steam and sulphur smoke of the in
tense heat that underlies the crater.
ION the afternoon of April 22d our
party of six, three of whom, Mr.. Smith,
Mrs. Guy Gere, formerly Miss Dena
Loomis, and myself. were from Lin
conl, left the hotel accompanied by the
guide Alex, who has made that his
principal vocation for over twenty
years. The walls are somewhat irregu-
lar at the end of the crater nearest the
hotel, so that a trail of easy descent
has been made to the bed of the crater.
It was a strange ride of over three
miles, over the cooled surface of
fiery lake, that at times gave forth a
hollow sound under the horses feet,
surface scanned with cracks from
which hot vapors escaped, passing
through waves of heat, by immense
rugged mounds of lava, near small
caves that were only cooled bubbles
in the lava, until We reached the little
corral near Halemaumau, where we
dismounted and left our horses. A
short distance from the corral we came
to cracks in the lava about foot in
width where the heat was so intense
that cards placed in forked stick and
held at the surface of the lava were
quickly scorched. No fire could be
seen, but at night the walls of lava
glowed with heat within few inches
of the surface. The accompanying
picture was taken by Mr.. Smith, and
shows one Of our party attempting to
gee some evidence Of the wrath of the
GODDESS Pele in the regions below,
while the guide is scorching the cards
just beyond her. We stepped over the
crack and feeling the entense heat of
the surface through the soles of our
shoes, hurried on to the edge of Hale
maumau. Here we endeavored to peer
through the thick volume of smoke
into the depths below, but one glance
convinced US that as we had lost moth
ing down there We better not linger
long on the edge of the lake. We
stepped back and listened for the sound
as the guide hurled an immense chunk
of lava over the edge. 1t was some
moments before the lava struck, and
as it started other stones to rolling 1t
sounded like the distant explosion of
bunch of firecrackers. The lava comes
and goes in this lake, at times when
the crater is eruptive, spilling its con-
tents over onto the surrounding sur
face. When We were there the lava
was supposed to be about fifteen