The Hawaiian gazette. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1865-1918, 1910-09-13

progress, it is being melted like slug
of cold lead dropped into ladle Pale
blue smoke--or steam that resembles
SMOKES rising all around the edges
of the lump as if to tell the tale of
unremittant consumption.
On the same side of the fiery lake
there is spot where the surge is not
SO violent as elsewhere and the cool
mountain air gets in little of its work
but not permanently. The surface is
smooth and thin sheet is formed every
minute, only to be broken up and its
fragments scattered and lost in the
ebb and flow in the more active parts
of the melting pot. Iu daytime this
crust is slate'blue. At night it looks
blacker than night itself, Strange to
say, the breakup is never the same.
Sometimes there creeps across the
black, a narrow slit barely wide enough
to be seen and then it widens till the
molten lava creeps through in little
ribbonlike streams of gold which turn
red quickly, then gradually take on
brownish hue. The streak continues to
widen until it becomes breach and
the big flakes break up and are car
ried away.
Rapidly another sheet of black Is
formed. A winding crack opens all the
way cross. At first it is white like the
squirting lava which flies up in four.
fifths of the pit, Like the other breaks,
| it widens. In the center of it thread
like line turns black, and further from
the center the white turns to gold, then
red then brown, leaving varicolored
stripes extending both ways from the
narrow black line, giving it the appear
ance of huge serpent with a ribboned
back This lasts only few seconds.
The steady swell from below brushes it
to pieces and sends it hurting into the
surge.
Then another sheet forms. An al
| together different scene presents itself.
The next crack is full of sharp angles,
running in a dozen different directions.
1t is like bolt of lightning against a
storm-cloud on a pitch-dark night. The
! opening becomes larger very quickly
and soon the entire sheet is either
broken up in large flakes or crunched
altogether in a great heave from the
| grumbling, upward flow.
! Again the thin black sheet appears.
This time a strong, unseen current of
| lava from below will strike it in the
middle and make a hundred cracks with
| abrupt right angles. 1t resembles to
some extent thin ice on pond, shat
tered by stone thrown into the mid
die. The pieces, large and small, float
away and are soon melted from view.
Every once in a while the black
.l,1 .>l ,11
the pit and are tossed upward with
dashes of white lava, as chaffy wood is
ofttimes hurled shOreward by the surf.
They drop back and are swallowed up.
Sometimes the roar is like the sound
from hurricane in the distance, then
there is cracking like the noise of
falling building.
All the time more than three-fourths
of the pit is a seething, In some
places it churns and roars. Elsewhere
it flows against the wall, striking with
terrific force, flying upward and plast-
ering the black with white. Frequently
it FLASHES against the wall thirty feet
above.
Nearly everywhere the white stuff
spurts like water from small geysers
In the southeast corner there is a place
seven or eight feet up on the wall
where lot of hot lava is pent up as
it wero, and perpendicular pieces of
partially cooled metal give it the APP
| pearance of a large bed of live Goals
held together by CRATE hars.
| The most wonderful feature of this
great natural wonder is its rapid
! changes. The scene is not the same
| for a single minute. 1t never repeats
| itself. Its vividness daZzles. It's
enormity appals.