Year: 1877




HILo, May lIth, 1877.


1.-THE tenth of May. 1877, will long be remembered
by the residents of Hilo as day of disaster, life
and property swept away by tidal wave We were
awakened yesterday morning about five o'clock by
native, who in great excitement told us that tidal
wave had swept all over the fats of HilO, Waakea,
which is the opposite side Of the bay, and over
Cocoauut Island, and that people were running for
their lives" . . 1t was sad indeed to hear the
walls all along the beach and another was
reported missing and to the houses tumbled and
broken, scattered about. The bay was strewn with
the wreck and natives out in boats seeking the
lost and saving what they could Soon the glad
tdings came that six people had been picked up and
were 90 board the ship. About noon the dead body
of woman was picked up two or three miles away !
as we rode down to the other side of the bay
CocOanut Island, where the greatest damage was
done, passed the house where this woman had
just been carried, a crowd Of natives gathered
round weeping and wailing we passed another
house and stopped to see woman who had worked
for me she was rescued but cold and insensible
when they found her.


AS we rode round Waiakea, realized as we had
not before, the force and power of the great





broken inland and left on higher ground, very few
carried out to sea, large bridge was carried
some distance inland not much broken; some horses
lying about drowned. We came to q house just
above the water mark where a woman lay dead, she
went back to save her horse and was ove:taken by
the wave and drowned, her horse was saved-in
another house lay with a broken rib and a
double fracture in his leg, and little girl with
broken arm and little boy laid out drowned.
Another child and were found buried under
the ruins of houses, they taken out this morn
ing, dead. Had 1t happened iz the night, among
foreigners instead of natives many lives would
have been sacrificed. One old white man quite
seriously injured, he went into his house
his money bag containing over FIVE hundred dollars,
all he possessed and the carried him far inland.
not vestige of his house money found he
was discovered almost dead.


One man received severe cut on his head. another
had q splinter run into his arm. Many trees were
lying abost uprooted by the wave, two storehouses
and q wharf had disappeared, desolation and ruin
lay all about large casks of oil carried in
land some distance from shore: the wave swept all
over Coeoanut Island, It's greatest force seems to
have been that side of the bay. In town the
water into several stores the front street,
large tin-shop moved several feet from its foun-
dations and now stands right across the road-some
of Reed Sisson's lumber was carried of and part
Of the seawall. About twelve hours after the great
wave, at four O'Clock NJ, the rose and fell ten
feet, to-day the rise has been about five feet. We
are an xoas hear from other islands, to know if
others have suffered with US. We would be glad
also to know whether the wave was caused by our
volcano or whether comes from the coast of South
America. We have had slight shocks of earthQ uake
the past week, and Kauea has been presenting new
and unexpected phases, the FIRE all disappearing
from the old lake and breaking out suddenly in new
lakes and flows the Ere has been so bright in the
crater ss to be several times from Hilo."