The loneliness was absolute. For several hours I saw no trace
of human beings, except the very rare print of a shod horse's hoof.
It is a region for ever "desolate and without inhabitant,"
trackless, waterless, silent, as if it had passed into the
passionless calm of lunar solitudes. It is composed of rough
hummocks of pahoehoe, rising out of a sandy desert. Only stunted
ohias, loaded with crimson tufts, raise themselves out of cracks:
twisted, tortured growths, bearing their bright blossoms under
protest, driven unwillingly to be gay by a fiery soil and a fiery
sun. To the left, there was the high, dark wall of an a-a stream;
further yet, a tremendous volcanic fissure, at times the bed of a
fiery river, and above this the towering dome of Mauna Loa, a
brilliant cobalt blue, lined and shaded with indigo where
innumerable lava streams had seamed his portentous sides: his whole
beauty the effect of atmosphere, on an object in itself hideous.
Ahead and to the right were rolling miles of a pahoehoe sea, bounded
by the unseen Pacific 3,000 feet below, with countless craters,
fissures emitting vapour, and all other concomitants of volcanic
action; bounded to the north by the vast crater of Kilauea.
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