ELLIS' DESCRIPTION OF KILAUEA.
The first edition of the Journal of the Tour Around Hawaii was published in 1825. Eight years later it was reprinted with addi tions and emendations as Polynesian Researches, in four volumes and some of the original statements were modified. There were English editions also. I will utilize the additions and corrections given in the later edition.
"We found ourselves," he says, "on the edge of a steep preci pice (Uwekahuna) with a vast plain before us," seven and one half miles in circumference, and sunk at least eight hundred feet "below its original level. The surface of this plain was uneven, and strewed over with large stones and volcanic rocks." A place was found at the north end where a descent to the plain below was found practicable, and even yet the stones gave way under their feet causing them to fall and receive bruises. The rocks were of a "light red and gray lava, vesicular, and lying in horizontal strata, varying in thickness from one to forty feet. In a small number of places the different strata of lava were also rent in perpendicular or oblique directions, from the top to the bottom, either by earthquakes or other violent convulsions of the ground connected with the action of the adjacent volcano." "The im mense gulf has the form of a crescent two miles long from north east to southwest and a mile in width." "The bottom was cov ered with lava, and the southwest and northern parts of it were one vast flood of burning matter, in a state of terrific ebullition, rolling to and fro its "fiery surge" and flaming billows. Fifty one conical islands (spiracles), of varied form and size, contain ing as many craters, rose either round the edge or from the sur face of the burning lake. Twenty-two constantly emitted col umns of gray smoke or pyramids of brilliant flame; and several of these at the same time vomited from their ignited mouths streams of lava, which rolled in blazing torrents down their black indented sides into the boiling mass below." Next follows a paragraph added in the later edition, a theoretical deduction. "The existence of these conical craters led us to con
clude that the boiling caldron of lava before us did not form the focus of the volcano ; that this mass of melted lava was compara tively shallow ; and that the basin in which it was contained was separated, by a stratum of solid matter, from the great volcanic abyss, which constantly poured out its melted contents through these numerous craters into this upper reservoir. We were fur ther inclined to this opinion from the vast column of vapor con tinually ascending from the chasms in the vicinity of the sulphur banks and pools of water, for they must have been produced by other fire than that which caused the ebullition in the lava at the bottom of the great crater ; and also by noticing a number of small craters in vigorous action, situated high up the sides of the great gulf, and apparently quite detached from it. The streams of lava which they emitted rolled down into the lake and mingled with the melted mass, which, though thrown up by different apertures, had perhaps been originally fused in one vast furnace." "The sides of the gulf before us, although composed of differ ent strata of ancient lava were perpendicular for about (nine) hundred feet (as calculated by Lieut. Malden later) and rose from a wide horizontal ledge of solid black lava of irregular breadth, but extending completely round. Beneath this ledge the sides sloped gradually towards the burning lake, which was, as nearly as one could judge, three or four hundred feet lower. It was evident that the large crater had been recently filled with liquid lava up to the black ledge, and had by some subterranean canal emptied itself into the sea, or upon the lowland on the shore." And he goes on to suggest that this discharge was what they had seen at Ponahoahoa a short time previously. This erup tion is reported at one time two moons and at another five moons earlier than that date of August 1st. I have already presented a figure illustrating this flow to the southwest.