January 6, 1873, Mr. Coan writes that for nine months the action had not ceased. Its duration is marvellous, considering that it seems to be confined to the crater. There was a special brilliancy to it in January.
June 24, J. M. Lydgate drew a plan of Mokuaweoweo, shown in Plate 17B. Its greatest length is 17,00o feet, or 15,000 without the basin at the northeast. The greatest breadth is 8,60o feet; greatest depth 1,05o feet. The floor is continually rising because of overflows. The lake has a diameter of five hundred feet.
August 27th, Dr. 0. B. Adams, Surgeon of the Costa Rica, with his wife, ascended to the summit and found a column of molten lava rising from two hundred to five hundred feet in height, assuming all the various forms of a grand fountain of water.
September 3, R. Whitman and B. F. Dillingham report the jets of lava spouting up a hundred feet.
September 20, W. W. Hall says the floor is covered by lava that was poured out the year previous.
October 6, Mr. Coan says the action has continued for eighteen months, and most of the time it has been violent; but he thinks it will soon cease. There have been few earthquakes, and those feeble, during the year. Kilauea has been unusually active all this time.
In October Messrs. E. G. and H. R. Hitchcock reported similar conditions. The fountain played to the height of six hundred feet, as determined by lying upon the brink and look ing across the pit to the top of the opposite wall, estimating to what point in the wall the top of the column was opposite. The descending lava flowed off northward nearly the whole length of the western side of the pit.
Similar eruptions were evident in 1875-6, Mr. Green men tions the occurrence of summit action January loth, lasting for one month. He regarded these fountains in 1872, 1873, 1875 and 1876 as premonitory of the great outbreak of 1877. On August nth, 1875, Mr, Coan reported the summit crater as again in brilliant action, lasting for one week. About this time a party from the Challenger Expedition reported the presence of a "globular cloud" on the summit, which was "perpetually re formed by condensation," and had a brilliant orange glow at night looking as if a fire were raging in the distance." It is reported that during this year Mr. George Forbes suc ceeded in finding a path to the summit without passing over any aa.
Another grand display of short duration was reported by Mr. Coan on February 13, 1876.