Other interesting features were the "Cathedral," a driblet cone with several turrets of varying altitude, mentioned first by Mr. Coan in 1862; several caves, exhibiting the singular stalactitic tubes, and stalagmites ; fissures or cracks near the northern sul phur banks, Waldron's ledge, near Keanakakoi and by Uweka huna, all concentric with the wall of this pit ; and finally one nearly a mile long rudely concentric with Halemaumau. This possibly corresponded to the border of the columnar mass outlining the elevations in 1888 and 1892. Halemaumau was eight hundred feet long in 1864 and i,000 in August, 1865. The encircling banks varied from fifty to thirty feet in height. The liquid was usually quiescent though occasionally in violent ebullition and throwing the spray over the hank. The small island visible in 1864 had disappeared in the following year. Distinct flames of fire were also observed. "They burst from the surface and were in tongues or wide sheets a foot long and of a bluish color, quite distinct from the lava even when white-hot ; they played over the whole surface at intervals, and I thought they were more fre quent after one of the periodical risings of the surface in the pit." In 1865 Rev. 0. H. Gulick presented to the landlord of the grass house which had been built for the convenience of visitors, a record book in which notes might be written descriptive of the conditions at the volcano. I have been able to examine all the records from this early date through the whole intervening period to the end of 1908 ; and will quote freely from them. Mention was made by Mr. Gulick of the formation of a great crack on the side of Uwekahuna from three to eight feet wide in September, 1863, following an eruption in May or June which flowed over an area of one thousand acres, and another smaller lake was formed near the north wall. There were several of these active vents in that part of the pit specially mentioned as existing in 1864 and 1865.
June 4, 1865, D. H. Hitchcock made his nineteenth visit to Kilauea and observed a lake on the north side three hundred feet long adjacent to a spiteful chimney. The older lake had been extended to the northward and lava flawed from the new lake far a mile.
June 27. C. Arnold found the lake unusually active.
In May, June and July, 1866, Mr. Coan describes a great in crease in activity. New lakes and new cones opened along a curve northwest to north of Halemaumau, flooding all that por tion of the caldera and reaching to the sulphur banks. The area covered was two miles long, and half a mile wide, and the usual entrance to the lake was cut off. Mr. Sessan estimated the size of the north lake as two hundred by five hundred feet. There were seven lakes between this and Halemaumau and they in creased in size till the eruption of 1868. This flooded region
was said by Brigham to be about fifty feet below the central area ; it was a hundred feet higher than in 1865 ; but the central area has also risen so that the relative height was about the same. The general appearance of Kilauea had changed. The ledge of broken blocks near the margin of the earlier black ledge has nearly dis appeared because it has been covered by the recent outflows, and the various caves have been obliterated. Large blocks of basalt have fallen from the steep outside walls, which were speedily ab sorbed by the molten flood, illustrating the method by which pit craters may be enlarged horizontally. Travelers during this summer spoke of the hissings, spoutings, rumblings and detona tions as terrific. In August the activity ceased, but no subterra nean discharge was noted ; the central plateau remained undis turbed and hence it is not certain that an eruption took place ; though the phenomena would seem to indicate a considerable dis turbance.
August 6, i866, Dr. G. P. Judd writes : "I first visited this crater in 1830 when its depth was three or four times greater than now. In 1849 I marked a spot upon the bank estimated at sixty feet above the bottom which is now out of sight." Oct. 23 he adds : "Since August 6 the long ridge of rocks and earth which had fallen from the western wall and appeared to be floating into the middle of the crater bottom, has floated past the middle to the eastward. The center is rising slowly without change of sur face, while the sides of the whole crater have been overflowed and kept full of fresh lava. The action at the south lake is grand. There are several new lakes." George Clark, July 20 to 25, 1867, says that on May 23, 1864, there was but one lake and that not large. At a later visit he saw a large island melt away. On the 19th inst. he first saw the large north lake, with several others. A blow-hole near the south lake had diminished in importance. Very much new lava had been flowing. The cones seen in 1864 are filled up.
Sept. 18, 1869. A. Francis Judd wrote that he first visited Kilauea in 1853. The bed has since greatly filled up and the south lake has many rivals, eight of them being now in sight.
The same day La Paz says: "Kilauea is not a crater but a deep chasm formed by the breaking of the rocks about a thousand feet below the level of the surrounding country. There never was a lava flow from Kilauea." His conclusions were based upon a comparison of Kilauea with various volcanoes in Central America. The northern lake was first formed in March, 1867, and had been enlarging ever since.