ERUPTION OF 1790.
The account of the eruption of 1790 was compiled by Rev. Sheldon Dibble in his History of the Sandwich Islands, published at Lahainaluna in 1843. He interviewed several of the survivors of the catastrophe, and was able by repeated questionings to com pile a satisfactory account of the events. It was also given by Mr. Ellis in his Journal. Rev. H. R. Hitchcock puts the date of the event at November, 1790, in the chronology of Hawaiian hap penings appended to his Dictionary : others had supposed it to be a year earlier.
In the earlier months of 1790 violent battles had been fought between Keoua and Kamehameha in their struggle for the su premacy, and now quite a large detachment of warriors were on the way to Kau under the leadership of Keoua, an immediate de scendant of Taraiopu, a chief mentioned in Captain Cook's narra tive. He took the route upon the southeast side of Kilauea and was encamped near Keanakakoi. The natives explained the dis aster by the friendship of Pele for Kamehameha and hostility to Keoua. Soon after sunset there were repeated earthquakes, the rising of a column of dense black smoke followed by the most brilliant flames, and streams of lava spouted up in fountains and immense rocks were ejected to a great height. A volley of smaller stones thrown with great force followed the larger ones, striking some of the soldiers, and bursting like bomb shells, ac companied by lightning. Many of the people were killed by the falling fragments and others were buried beneath masses of scoriae and ashes. The natives did not dare to proceed. On the second and third nights there were similar disturbances. Not in timidated by this event Keoua continued his march, separating for safety into three companies. The advance party experienced a severe earthquake and a dense cloud rose out of the crater ac companied by electric discharges. The cloud excluded the light of day, but the darkness became more terrible because of the glare of the red-hot lava below and the flashes of lightning above. Soon afterwards there was a destructive shower, extending for miles around, of sand and cinders. A few persons were burned to death and others were seriously injured. All experienced a suffo cating sensation and hastened on as rapidly as possible.
The hindmost company which was nearest to the volcano seemed to suffer the least, and hastened forward after the eruption, con gratulating themselves upon their escape. On reaching their comrades of the second company, said to be four hundred in num ber (Ellis says eighty), they were greatly surprised to find them all dead, although they retained life-like postures. Not one of
the party survived, except a lone pig. The suddenness and totality of the destruction reads like the story of the disaster at Mar tinique, pouring down from Mont Pelee ; especially as Dibble adds : "A blast of sulphurous gas, a shower of heated embers, or a volume of heated steam would sufficiently account for this sudden death. Some of the narrators, who saw the corpses, af firm that though in no place deeply burnt, yet they were thor oughly scorched." On their return, after the final battle in Kau, in about ten days time, the bodies were still entire and showed no signs of decay except a hollowness of the eyes. They were never buried, and one of the missionaries is reported to have seen many years afterwards a human skull lying in the volcanic sand. Keoua himself surrendered to Taiana upon the hill of Makanao, one of the buttes in Hilea, described in connection with the cal dera of Mohokea.
It has been tacitly assumed that the place where the soldiers were destroyed was near Kilauea. The question arises would not the party have taken the regular road from Puna to Kau. If so, they would have been situated about five miles south from Kilauea. This trail is indicated upon Plate 26 by the dotted line leading from the east border of the map to the sand dunes, close by Koae and thence to the Halfway House. The first part of this trail follows a fault line. It would seem not improbable that the eruption came from some vent now concealed from view, because of the distance from Kilauea ; but if all the material indi cated upon the map as ashes and tuff came out in 5790, there could be no doubt as to its calamitous effect upon the army, for there is an enormous deposit of volcanic ashes, pumice, scoriae, lava bombs, stones and rocks spread over several miles between Keanakakoi and the road from Puna to Kau. It must be scores of feet in thickness. Were it removed, who knows how much farther the caldera beneath extends to the south and southwest ! This deposit must have been laid down by an eruption of the most violent type in prehistoric times long before the passage of the troops of Keoua from Hilo to Kau in 1790. It was a truly terrific discharge, fully equal to anything ever sent out from Vesuvius ; and this enables us to affirm that Kilauea has some times belonged to the explosive class of volcanoes and has not always been the tame creature of today.