Year: 1868

The Sandwich Islands Mauna Loa in


Eruption.


The special kilograms which we published in
yesterdays HERALD from Honolulu, in the
Sandwich Islands, 80 many thousand miles
away, show that the internal disturbances of
the earth which recently revealed themselves
in the West India islands and 80 far away in
the other direction as at Mount Vesuvius have
found another outlet, and that they are now in
fame and fury, wasting their strength in those
far Eastern SEAS 1t is now becoming more
and more apparent that the law of earthquakes,
of storms, of volcanic eruptions, of meteors is
one and the same. 1t has long been manifest
that earthquakes were traceable to the same
cause or causes as volcanoes. It is not so
generally believed that storms were similar, if
not identical, in their origin with the earth
quake and the volcano. That they are all
identical in their origin the HERALD in a recent
paper very satisfactorily proved. This fresh
eruption calls attention afresh to the subject.
Let it be supposed that this eruption which
has taken place at Mauna Loa had taken place
in mid-ocean, and who could doubt that
we should have heard of some terrific
storm at sea, attended with extensive
loss of both life and property? We have no
reason to believe that the surface under the
sea differs in any essential particular from the
surface above it. The only difference is the
difference between water and air. The sub
marine volcanoes do not belch forth fire and
smoke, but they may and they unquestionably
do belch forth heat-or, if the term is prefer
able, electricity-and lava In other words,
the bottom of the sea is liable to the same dis
placements with that of the surface of the
earth. On the surface of the earth volcanic
eruptions make and unmake mountains. At
the bottom of the sea volcanic eruptions make
and unmake what is or is likely to become
solid and visible land. 1t is unquestionably
the internal heat of the earth which, seeking
an outlet, blazes forth through some ancient
chimney, as that of Vesuvius, or Etna, or
Hecla, or Sangay, or Mauna Loa, or the rest
which occasions those sudden and fearful
storms that battle the calculations of the
wisest That there is some great internal heat
in the body Of the planet must be admitted.
That this heat seeks an outlet from time to time
with greater or less fury is as little to be denied
Where this outlet is to be found is simply q
question of resistance. Wherever the resist
ance is weakest there that outlet is certain to
be found. II il terminates under the water we
shall have violent connections at sea. If it
terminates on the surface of the earth we shall
have violent connections on land. Whether it
finds an outlet by sea or by land, whether we
have blazing volcanoes, accompanied by earth
quakes, or whether we have violent and un-
looked-for commotion of the waters, serious
disturbance of the atmosphere is the neces-
sary consequence. Volcanoes, earthquakes,
storms, seem at least to point to one source.


From causes which it is more difficult to get
at this seems to have been year of unusual
disturbance in the bowels of the earth. How
this is to be explained we are willing to leave
to the philosophers. II leads to an entirely
new class of questions. II is true that the inter-
nal heat Of the earth began to burst forth at
ST. Thomas and St. John and at Alaska
directly 1t became manifest that they must pass
out of the hands of their ancient possessors. 1t
might not be just to call this protest of nature,
although it looks something like It, This tre-
mendous outburst of Indignation and wrath in
the Sandwich Islands at time when Mr..
Seward had just begun to entertain serious no
tions of another purchase is, it must be admit
ted, rather ominous. 1t is bad enough to be the
object of the envy of tho nationa tn he the
object of the wrath of nature is more than we
can endure.