E. D. BALDWIN UPON THE YELLOW ASHES OF KAU.
As to the sources of the yellow ash eruption, I would state, that I found a partial old yellow cone in among the Kamakaia hills, or the hills some three miles back of the Halfway House. The first source of the 1823 flow was three miles above these hills, from a long fissure, and then it seems to have broken out again, in its line of flow at these hills, forming the two larger cones. Near the large cone are two ancient cones, surrounded by the new lava, one of these was completely spattered and plastered over by the ejections from the large cone ; it was on this cone, while riding along its base, that my horse broke through the crust, and while floundering around for a footing brought up large quanti ties of yellow tufa, of exactly the same nature as the black tufa, only it was of a beautiful yellow ocher color. On investigation I found that a large portion of this cone was composed of the same material.
About a mile below Kamakaia hills, in the middle of the 1823 flow, is what we call the yellow cone. This cone had attracted my attention several times from a distance, as being of a yellowish color on all sides that we had observed it from. I thought, of course, that like the little sharp cone, Puu Kou, between it and the Kamakaia hills, it was a portion of the 1823 lava flow, but when we went out to the cone, we found that it was the top of an old cone sticking up through the 1823 flow, which flow had run all around the same, and into the crater of the cone. This cone was very interesting, its formation was exactly the same as all of the dark colored tufa cones, with the exception of color, which was entirely of the yellow tufa, which, when crushed in the hand to fine powder, had exactly the same appearance as the Kau yellow soils. In the crater of the cone were the same brilliantly red tufas that you find in the craters of all other cones. The top of the cone stands forty or fifty feet above the 1823 flow, and must be several hundred feet in circumference at the flow line. At this point the land lays more or less level, with a gentle slope towards the sea, so that the 1823 flow seems to have piled up to a great height and spread out to over a mile wide ; showing that this was a very large cone in its original state.
There are further evidences of the yellow eruptions some ten miles from these cones mentioned above. The great hill Puu Kapukapu, at the sea coast, is largely composed of the Kau yel low soil, also just to the Kau side of this hill, is the great hill Pun Kaone, having a low flat top, containing sixty acres of first class agricultural land, composed entirely of the Kau yellow soil, of a depth of over thirty feet, as observed in the little rain-washed gullies on the same. Also on the face of the great pali or fault
line, near the top, on a line towards Kamakaia hills from Pun Kapukapu, I noticed a large yellow patch.
None of the sources of the yellow eruptions, that I have men tioned, would account for the lower Kau yellow soil, and that on the Kau side of Ka Lae or South Point, as the prevailing winds in this district seem to sweep from the volcano (Kilauea) down past the Kamakaia hills, and from there they meet the winds coming around from the sea coast, which seem to turn the air currents inland again.
My theory is, that at some ancient period, there was a great line of yellow eruptions, extending from Puu Kapukapu (near Keauhou), past the Kamakaia hills to the lower portion of Kau, and that the sources of this yellow eruption in the lower part of Kau have been covered up with later flows, or other volcanic ac tion, and that the great beds of yellow soil that we find today all over Kau, were blown there from these sources, before they were covered up. All of the yellow soil on the Pahala plantation, or towards the volcano from Pahala, is directly on the line of the prevailing winds from the direction of Kamakaia hills, Yellow cone, and a short ways below the same. I have especially noticed in the cuts on the Volcano-Kau road, just above the Pahala mill, that the old aa formation seems to be full of this yellow dust. If one will go and study the action of the wind on the great masses of volcanic sand being blown, at present, from Kilauea towards Ka makaia hills, it will be noted that when this sand strikes an aa flow, its forward progress is stopped, until it has filled and sifted into all of the little crevices of the aa. From Kilauea to near Kamakaia hills is a nearly barren field of pahoehoe, and the sand is driven along this space at a great pace, until it reaches the aa at the Kamakaia hills, and there it has been blocked up and is in many cases forming numerous sand dunes. Some of these sand dunes are very extensive, being four or five hundred feet long and over fifty feet high.