The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-09-14

l
subterranean home beneath the dead
floor OF Kiiauea. So are her vagaries
Just now in Halemaumau regarded, her
comings and gOings, the ebb and the
flow of her fires running before her
feet. the swing and the swirl of her
fame fringed garments as she opens the
door of her fiery kingdom for the
nonce, then closes it on darkened
doorstep For months. until few days
ago, the Fire Goddess ragged in the open
and hundreds of her worshipers gazed
down upon her ragings from the lip of
her crater home. Then, the fury re-
lapsed and for a day she sulked, draw
ing a veil of black and deadened lavas
over her bright face, while far and
wide the report spread "Kiauea is
dead One day the news was true,
the next, petulantly, Pele had torn the
veil away and with a rush and fury
her mourning weeds were rent and she
was again the fiery queen, watched and
admired and feared in her unconquer-
able strength. Furious at her own tenn
porary abasement she tossed her fire
locks to the skies, clutched with angry
fingers the edges of her cavern and
tore the glowing rocks in laundering
cascades into the depths. Then fem1-
nine in her moods, her fury sunk TO
brooding deep. This series of moods,
the warnings of the goddess that soon
L. w. n
is a notification to those who would
visit at her cleaning shrine, not TO
delay lest it be too late. But, though
a goddess, Pele is woman and none
may say that her mind is made up.
Women are said not to make up their
minds except to change them. Those
who would see the fires would do well
not to put off the visit too long, how
ever.
The phenomena of Kilauea at the
present time are intensely interesting.
The display of volcanic action was new
er better The violence of the forces
at work in the depths, the source of
the lava lake, has not been exceeded
for score of years and tourists and
others cannot expect to see the fires
of Halemaumau to better advantage. |
So say the kamaainas. [ cannot say
what the volcano has been in other
days; / cannot begin to say in words |
what the volcano is today or what it was
the day and night | sat and marveled |
on the irepit brink last week, because |
there are few men who have ever been |
who could set down in words the scene |
that all may see who visit Kilauea at !,
&c +oSn &c 4haA
those who are able to visit Madame |
Pele at her home now and fail to do so
are losing that which would be an ex- /
perience of a lifetime, a sight of Ma
ture' 8 throes to be seen nowhere else |
in the world, something never to be /
forgotten and a spectacle that must I
impress the most unimaginative.
Nearly everyone who has crossed an
ocean has been through the greatest
storm that the captain of their particu,
lar vessel ever experienced in all his
years at sea and in just the same way
everyone who has visited the volcano |
in one of its periods of activity has I
seen the fires to greater advantage than
any of the volcano guides ever remem
bers in all his years of guidance back
and forth over the lava trails. There
was no guide to lie to me week ago !
today when / hung my legs over the
frepit brink and | was the sole specta,
tor for two hours of the glorious dis
play three hundred feet or more below
me, thus | have no means of telling
how much greater was the flow, how
much higher were the fountains and
how much hotter was the lava than it
had ever been before, but should any
0ne tell me that the activity on Mon,
lay afternoon last has ever been sur.
passed at any time / would not believe
hem. / saw the fires that day when
they first began to rise; L watched the
axe of fire belch from the bottomless
galleries in the firepit center, spread
over and across the dead lava floor of
he great chasm, lap the walls with
tongues of streaming, cleaning glow,
:ascading into the hollows and tumb,
ing, roaring and splashing in the livid,
Dulsating pond in. the center that rose
so fast that the hardened lava on the
surface was the thinnest scum, across
which waves of ruby light crisscrossed
from the plashings of the fire fountains.
At first, when the lavas welled from
the depths in their first return to the
day, they were sluggish, squirming in
dull red writhing, but short way, then
into stiffness, while the out
let cavern seemed to suck back the
smoke clouds that swirled out between
the flows. TIL IN, with a cough and
gurgle, the first fountain began to play,
in volume until in the cen
ter of a rapidly expanding lake of
cleaning lava fire column stood clear
thirty feet above the level into which
it poured From that time on for two
hours that mammoth jet of fire remain
ed, never once sinking back to the lake
level, and at times, with intervals of
less than three minutes, sthe forces at
work below heaved the whole mass
high into the air, the cooling fragments
splashing back into the lake, splattering
the lava for a distance around quite
hundred yards. To say how high the
lava was tossed or to what volume the
fountain played for me is the veriest
and the guess is forty feet
for the diameter of the fire column and
at least seventy feet for the height to