The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1908-09-25
BY WILL ]. COOPER.

real live volcano. OF course l had
seen old weather worn craters about
Honolulu which the old gray-beards
who claim to know all about such
things say haven't even smoked for
fifteen million years. l think they made
this statement four years ago, accord
ing to which it would now be fifteen
million and four years. Anyhow it's a
long time TO go without a smoke, but
everybody says that Honolulu's vol
canoes have sworn off smoking for
good.
But up on the Island of Hawaii,
two hundred miles from here old Maui
ma Loa still hits the pipe and occa-
sionally it seems to make her sea-sick
to judge from the commissions which
follow; while Kilauea has them all
backed off the board 1t was Kilauea
that we went to see and she certainly
gave us show for our money.
We made the trip on an Elks excur-
sion, leaving Honolulu at O'Clock
Saturday afternoon on board the S. s..
Mauna Kea, and getting back early
the following Tuesday morning. 1t
was a delightful trip-good crowd, good
boat, good food, and good weather. The
staunch little steamer, fitted up like a
miniature Atlantic liner, is about the
only thing on the trip that strikes one
as real; and all you have to do to for
get all about it is to get off alone to
some place on the hurricane deck and
in a little bit you doubt your own
reality and float along as part of
that you feel certain it never existed in
nature. You look at painted islands,
and mountains that lose themselves in
the most gorgeous painted clouds of
sunset coloring with purple sky for
a background. The impossibility of
such riot of vivid color strikes you,
and you feel that the artist has been
making a study in colors solely from
his own vivid imagination.
We landed at the town of Hilo, the
chief seaport of the Island of Hawaii,
about s O'Clock Sunday morning, and
found train waiting for us on the
wharf, so we didn't have time to get
much idea of the place The train
was something of a surprise, being a
full sized and up-to-date affair, with
air-brakes and a parlor car. We got
seats in the latter and were soon whirl-
ing along over a good road-bed through
sugar cane fields, past great sugar
mills, and for the last four or five miles
of the 22-mile journey, through jun
gle of tropical forest. Carriages were
waiting when the train stopped and
we were soon driving through fairy
land of verdure. For nine miles we
drove through a forest composed al
most entirely, it seemed, of gigantic
ferns. Many of them lowered fifty
feet or more in height and had trunks
as thick as a mans body. The great
fronds ten to fifteen feet long were as
delicately colored and tapered as the
daintiest house plant. / felt as
though l was a CULVER in a land OF
giants and would scarcely have been
surprised to have seen some monster
proportionately large to the size Of
those ferns put in an appearance al
any turn of the road.
We had got word at Hilo that the
volcano had suddenly gone out of active
business the day before, and that we
would not see anything but black pit
and little smoke. AS result some
of the party were a little down in the
mouth, but that railroad ride and
drive through those fern forests fiXeC
us all, and we wouldn't have felt the
trip a failure had we never got any
further But the best was yet to come
We reached the Volcano House just
before noon. This is a very comfort
able and ordinary place of accommoda'
tion which nobody thinks very much
about-at least we didn't for there was
too much else in the surroundings tC
occuply all ones faculties. The hote
OIdlluo vi lllS Cu6C VI a SlSebL
From the big front veranda one looks
out over what seems to be vast plair
spread out from the foot of the cliff
which must be a thousand feet to thu
| bottom. Gradually the senses begiI
to comprehend that the cliff on which
we stand extends away on either hanC
in a great arc, and finally it dawns up
on us that it has no end-that we arr
really standing upon the edge of /;
great pit, and that the wall of rocl
we see dimly through a haze in tn
distance five or six miles away, i
in reality the opposite side of this tire
mendous abyss. And this is the crate
of Kilauea. At first it is simply tn
magnitude of such an immense hol
that appeals, but other impressions fol
low. Through a rift in the cloud
one looks across the crater and up tn
great slope of Mauna Loa to the sum
NIT nearly $4,000 feet high, and blu
in the distance. You may even detec
| a little smoke from its lofty croWn-o