I
feel as if the terrors of Kilauea would haunt me all my life, and be
the Nemesis of weak and tired hours.
We left early, and descended the terminal wall, still as before,
green with ferns, ohias, and sandalwood, and bright with clusters of
turquoise berries, and the red fruit and waxy blossoms of the ohelo.
The lowest depression of the crater, which I described before as a
level fissured sea of iridescent lava, has been apparently partially
flooded by a recent overflow from Halemaumau, and the same agency
has filled up the larger rifts with great shining rolls of black
lava, obnoxiously like boa-constrictors in a state of repletion. In
crossing this central area for the second time, with a mind less
distracted by the novelty of the surroundings, I observed
considerable deposits of remarkably impure sulphur, as well as
sulphates of lime and alum in the larger fissures. The presence of
moisture was always apparent in connexion with these formations.
The solidified surges and convolutions in which the lava lies, the
latter sometimes so beautifully formed as to look like coils of wire
rope, are truly wonderful. Within the cracks there are
extraordinary coloured growths, orange, grey, buff, like mineral
lichens, but very hard and brittle.
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