Loa, sixteen miles from Kailua, and some ten miles in an air line from the crater, which lies over against us on the side of Mauna Loa, distinctly in view. This plain is some five thousand feet above the level level of the sea, and is covered with small shrubs and trees, growing from ten to twenty feet high. In some places it is level, and covered with a coarse, black sand, similar to that found on the sides of the Punch Bowl, only much coarser, while the shrubs are so sparse as to allow a horse to travel across it on a full gallop. In others it consists of a dense jungle with numerous pits or caves concealed by overgrowing shrubs. This part of the plain is almost impenetrable. In still other localities it is covered with coarse lava stones or "clinkers," over which travelling is next to impossible. The nights are extremely cold, frost covering the ground every morning. The days, are however, warm and pleasant, and the air, both night and day, is cool and invigorating.

During the day-time the light of the crater and the lava streams is hardly perceptible. The night is the time for observation. Soon after the sun had set, the molten streams began to show their courses, while the spouting of the lava from the crater became more and more distinct. The reflection of the numerous fiery streams rolling rapidly down the side of the mountain and across the plain lit up the overhanging clouds, making it as bright as moonlight for many miles around. As night advanced, and every little stream became more and distinct, the scene was grand.

This new crater, is located on the northern slope of Mauna Loa, at an elevation of, say eight thousand five hundred feet above the sea. It is some ten or more miles westward and about four thousand feet lower down than the last eruption of 1855, known as that of Mokuaweoweo. The course of the stream, from its source to the sea, we judge to be nearly N.W. by N. The crater bears due east from Kailua by the compass, and is about twenty-four miles from that harbour in a straight line. Its latitude, as near as we are able to determine without instruments, is 19° 37′; longitude 155° 49'. By referring to a map or chart, its position on the island can readily be noted. Our figures are only estimates, and accurate observations may prove that we are in error in some of them.

The actual size and form of the crater can only be determined by visiting its immediate vicinity, which we were not prepared to do. From the distance at which we observed it, about ten miles, and from various points of observation, it appeared to be circular, its width being about equal to its breadth, and perhaps two hundred and fifty feet across the mouth. This may be too moderate an estimate, and it may prove to be three hundred or four hundred feet across it. The rim of the crater is surrounded or made up of cones constantly varying in extent, now growing in size and again all tumbling down. The lava does not simply run out from the side of the crater like water from the side of a bowl, but is thrown up in continuous columns, very much like Geyser springs, as represented in school geographies.

At times this spouting appeared to be feeble, rising but little al

the rim of the crater, but generally, as if eager to escape from the pent-up bowels of the earth, it rose to a height nearly equal to the base of the crater. But the columns and masses of lava thrown were ever varying in form and height. Sometimes, when very active, a spire or cone of lava would shoot up like a rocket or in the form of a huge pyramid to a height nearly double the base of the crater. The mouth of the crater being about two hundred and fifty feet across, the perpendicular column must be five hundred feet in height! Then, by watching it with a spy-glass, the columns could be seen to diverge and fall in all manner of shapes, like a beautiful fountain."

This part of the scene was one of true grandeur-no words can convey a full idea of it to our readers. The molten fiery-redness, ever varying, ever changing its form, from the simple gurgling of a spring to the hugest fountain conceivable, is a scene that, only when viewed in its surpassing grandeur, will remain painted on the memory till death. Large boulders of red-hot lava stone, weighing hundreds, if not thousands, of tons, thrown up with inconceivable power high above the liquid mass, could be occasionally seen falling outside or on the rim of the crater, tumbling the cones down and rolling over the precipice, remaining brilliant for a few moments, then becoming cold and black, were lost among the mass of surrounding lava. So awfully grand, so beautiful was this ever varying scene, that the observer cannot help watching it with intense delight and increasing excitement for hours together; the only drawback being the severe cold of the night, against which travellers should be provided.

A dense heavy column of smoke continually rose out from the crater, but always on the north side, and took a north-easterly direction, rising in one continuous column far above the mountain, to a height of perhaps ten thousand feet above the crater. This smoke hovers over that island, and indeed all the islands, and must at times, when the trade wind lulls, obstruct the view. During our stay, however, it passed off from the mountain leaving the lower atmosphere quite clear. We watched closely to observe whether any steam could be seen issuing, either from the crater or from any of the streams of lava, but could not see anything that could be called steam or vapour, unless occasionally very slight indications along some of the lava streams. Considerable smoke rose along the stream, as the molten lava came in contact with trees and vegetable masses, but the mass of smoke came from the crater itself. Steam was noticed in various places on the plain, issuing from the rocks, and near one of the camps the heat was so intense that a tea kettle could be boiled over it. But this steam was undoubtedly caused by the heat of the flowing lava which was about a mile distant, coming in contact with pools of water in caves or pits.

On leaving the crater, the lava stream does not appear for some distance, say an eighth of a mile, as it has to cut its way through a deep ravine or gulph, eighty or one hundred feet deep, which hides it from the eye. The first then that we see of the lava after being thrown up in the crater is its branching out in streams some distance below the

fountain head. Instead of running in one large stream, it divides into a great number—perhaps as many as fifty-spreading out over a tract of five or six miles in width. For the first six miles from the crater, the descent is very rapid, and the flow of the lava varies from four to five miles an hour. But after it reaches the plain, where it is level, it moves slower. Here the streams are not so numerous as higher up, there being a principal one which varies and is very tortuous-from an eighth to a quarter of a mile in width, with frequent branches. running off from it.

Some of the finest scenes of the flow were the cascades or falls formed in the stream as it flowed down the steep declivities below the crater, and before it reached the plain. There were several of them, and they appeared to be changing and new ones formed in different localities as new streams were made. One, however, which appeared without change for two days, was eighty to one hundred feet in height. First there was a fall, then below were cascades or rapids. To watch this fall during the night when the bright cherry-red stream of lava was tumbling over it at the rate of ten miles an hour, like water, was a scene not often witnessed, and never to be forgotten. In fact, the lava near its source had all the characteristics of a river of water flowing rapidly along, and gurgling with cascades, rapids, currents and falls.

On reaching the plain, where it is more level, the lava stream of course moves along more slowly and in one general stream less divided than above. The stream which had run into the sea, had apparently ceased flowing and was cooled over, so that we crossed and re-crossed it in many places, and through the fissures we could see the molten lava with its red-hot glow, an intense heat issuing out from them. In many places the surface was so hot that the soles of our shoes would have been burned had we not kept in rapid motion. The length of the lava stream from the crater to where it enters the sea at Wainanalii, is estimated to be forty miles.

On the afternoon of our arrival at the camping ground, a new stream started some few miles below the crater, which had evidently been dammed up by some obstruction, and came rushing down with tremendous noise and fury through the thick jungle which lay in its track, burning the cracking trees, and sending up a thick smoke almost as dense as that from the crater. This stream, from the time it broke away from the enbankment, moved along two miles an hour till it reached the vicinity of our camp, when its progress was checked, and it moved not more than a quarter of a mile an hour. But it formed a magnificent sight. Here was a stream of lava rolling over the plain, twenty to twenty-five feet in height, and an eighth of a mile in width, though its width varied a great deal, sometimes broader, sometimes narrower. It was in fact, a mass or pile of red-hot stones, resembling a pile of coals of fire, borne along by the more liquid lava underneath. As it moved slowly along, large red boulders would roll down the sides, breaking into a thousand small stones, crushing and burning the trees, melting the rocks, and destroying everything which lay in the

track. It is impossible to give a true impression of the immense force and power of this lava stream, bearing along as it does an almost inconceivable mass. It reminds us most vividly of the breaking up of the ice in a large river, only the imagination must stretch the comparison and suppose the ice piled up twenty-five feet, and thus borne along by the current beneath, the whole width of the river moving at the same time, crashing and breaking and piling up cones and irregular masses on top. But even this comparison is far below the reality-to be conceived it must be seen.

After running a distance of about forty miles from its source, the lava stream entered the sea at a small fishing village called Wainanalii, about fifteen miles south of the port of Kawaihae, on the morning of January 31st. The eruption having commenced on the 23rd of January, it was consequently eight days in running over that distance. Of this the Rev. Mr. Lyons writes:

"The poor inhabitants of Wainanalii, the name of the village where the fire reached the ocean, were aroused at the midnight hour by the hissing and roaring of the approaching fire, and had but just time to save themselves. Some of the houses of the inland portion of the village were partly surrounded before the inmates were aware of their danger. Wainanalii is near the northern boundary of North Kona, and about twelve or fourteen miles from Kawaihae. It is, of course, all destroyed, and its pleasant little harbour all filled up with lava. The volcanic stream was one mile wide or more in some places, and much less in others. It crossed the Kona road interrupting the mail communication. The whole distance of the flow from the crater to the sea is some forty miles."

The schooner Kekauluohi was passing this village at the time the stream reached the sea, and several foreigners on board have described the scene as one of terrific grandeur. Perhaps we cannot give a better account of it than to insert here the description given of the meeting of the lava stream with the sea in the eruption of 1840:

"When the torrent of fire precipitated itself into the ocean, the scene assumed a character of terrific and indescribable grandeur. The magnificence of destruction was never more perceptibly displayed than when these antagonistic elements met in deadly strife. The mightiest of earth's magazines of fire poured forth its burning billows to meet the mightiest of oceans. For two-score miles it came rolling, tumbling, swelling forward, an awful agent of death. Rocks melted like wax in its path; forests crackled and blazed before its fervent heat; the very hills were lifted from their primeval beds, and sank beneath its tide, or were borne onward by its waves; the works of man were to it but as a scroll in the flames; Nature shrivelled and trembled before the irrestible flow. Imagine Niagara's stream, above the brink of the falls, with its dashing, whirling, madly raging and hurrying on their plunge, instantaneously converted into fire, a goryhued river of fused minerals; the wrecks of creative matter blazing and disappearing beneath its surface; volumes of hissing steam arising; smoke curling upwards from ten thousand vents, which give