ERUPTION OF 1855.
This commenced August i ith and continued for sixteen months. The amount of lava ejected was the greatest of any of the flows seen by modern observers. The only witnesses of the scene on record were Titus Coan, S. E. Bishop and F. A. Weld. It started from a point 12,000 feet high and nearer the summit than the preceding flow. The first thing seen was a small point of light much like Sirius ; it threw off coruscations of light and soon re sembled a full orbed sun. As the stream continued to flow directly towards Hilo, the inhabitants grew more and more anxi ous and made frequent trips to determine its progress. Mr. Coan went up early in October. In three days he reached the place where it was three miles wide. Usually it was broader, some times reaching a width of eight miles.
"Early on Saturday the 6th," he says, "we were ascending our rugged pathway amidst steam, smoke and heat which almost blinded and scathed us. At ten we came to open orifices down which we looked into the fiery river which rushed furiously be neath our feet. We had seen in the night many lights like street lamps, glowing along the slope of the mountain at considerable distances from each other, while the stream made its way in a subterranean channel, traced only by these vents. From io A. M. and onward these fiery vents were frequent, some of them meas uring ten, twenty, fifty or one hundred feet in diameter. In one place only, we saw the river uncovered for thirty rods and mak ing down a declivity of from ten to twenty-five degrees. The scene was awful, the momentum incredible, the fusion perfect (a white heat), and the velocity forty miles an hour. The banks on each side of the stream were red-hot, jagged and overhang ing, adorned with burning stalactites and festooned with immense quantities of filamentose or capillary glass, called Pele's hair. From this point to the summit crater all was inexpressibly inter esting. Valve after valve opened as we went up, out of which issued fire, smoke and brimstone, and down which we looked as into the caverns of Pluto. The gases were so pungent that we
had to use the greatest caution, approaching a stream or an orifice on the windward side, and watching every change or gyration of the breeze. Sometimes whirlwinds would sweep along, loaded with deadly gases and threatening the unwary traveller. After a hot and weary struggle over smoking masses of jagged scoriae and slag, thrown in wild confusion into hills, cones and ridges, and spread out over vast fields, we came at one P. M. to the terminal or summit crater (not Mokuaweoweo).
"This we found to be a low elongated cone, or rather a series of cones, standing over a great fissure in the mountain. Mount ing to the crest of the highest cone, we expected to look down into a great sea of raging lavas, but instead of this the throat of the crater, at the depth of one hundred feet, was clogged with scoriae, cinders and ashes through which the smoke and gases rushed up furiously from seams and holes. One orifice within this cone was about twenty feet in diameter, and was constantly sending up a dense column of blue and white smoke which rolled off in masses and spread over all that part of the mountain, darkening the sun and obscuring every object a few rods distant. * * * * The summit cone which we ascended was about one hundred feet high, five hundred long and three hundred broad at the base. Several other cones below us were of the same form and general character, presenting the appearance of smoking tumuli along the upper slope of the mountain. * * * The molten stream first appears some ten miles below the foun tain crater." The principal stream with all its windings was thought to be sixty miles long, lying between the flows of 1843 and 1852. From his various trips Mr. Coan had ascertained that a line of fissures extended from Mokuaweoweo for five miles down to the place of this outbreak, along which there were cones of scoriae and sand that had been thrown up at various times.