MOKUAWEOWEO IN 1885.
E. P. Baker descended to the bottom of the crater in April and found everything quiet.
One of the most satisfactory reports of the conditions in Mokuaweoweo is given by Rev. J. M. Alexander, who was en gaged in surveying lands for the Government, and marked the corner in the bottom of the pit where the four areas of Kea auhou, Kahuku, Kapapala and Kaohe meet, which is at the cone in the southwest part of the principal pit. This prin cipal pit had a floor of pahoehoe streaked with gray sulphur cracks, from hundreds of which there issued columns of steam, and the boundary cone (M) one hundred and forty feet high, composed of pumice and friable lava, still hot and smoking. Just east of this cone was a basin (E) four hundred feet wide, twenty feet deep, apparently connected with a recent flow of lava to the northeast. South of the boundary was a plateau from five hundred to five hundred and fifty feet below the sum mit (C on the map) and beyond this an opening into a small deep pit (D) eight hundred feet deep. North of the main pit was another shelf six hundred and seventy-five to seven hundred and fifty feet down (B on map), rising from the lower floor by a precipice of fifty feet. At the north end the highest plateau (A) four hundred and seventy-five and five hundred and fifty feet had practically the same level as C. The easiest path down was at the south angle of A just south of a circular pit six hundred feet deep, I,000 feet wide, with a cone in its center still smoking. Not very long before there had been a flow of lava from the summit into A making the incline for the path down. "Farther south there were the courses of two other cataracts, which had poured directly into the cen tral crater. At the summit I found the deep fissure from which these cataracts had been supplied with lava, and ascertained that it had also poured an immense stream north upon the first plateau and thence south into the central crater."
The length of the whole caldera was about 19,000 feet; the greatest breadth 9,000 feet; the greatest depth Soo feet; the area 3.6 square miles. Near the north edge of plateau C, south from the boundary cone, there had been eruptions from fissures both into the plateau and to the southwest towards Kahuku.
Of the general conclusions Mr. Alexander opines that Mo kuaweoweo is a series of four or five craters, the walls of which have broken down, so that they have flowed into each other.
Finding that lava had flowed into the caldera, he. asks: "How has the lava risen high enough to pour in extensive eruptions through these fissures, almost a thousand feet above the bottom of the crater, without rising in the crater and over flowing it ? The same question has often been asked in respect to the rise of liquid lava to the summit of Mauna Loa without overflowing the open crater of Kilauea, to,000 feet below." The smaller craters, more than fifty in number, on Mauna Loa, Mauna Kea and Hualalai are arranged without reference to the several mountains, but to points of the compass. The nearly parallel fissures through which the lava has flowed with craters run from S.4o°-6o°E. There are a few arranged in lines running N.5o°E. The major axes of the great craters upon Hawaii are at right angles to the general trend of the archipelago, or about N.3o°E.. The highest walls are on the western side, and the action is developing towards the south west.
Mr. Alexander made his first ascent in September, 1885, in company with Mr. J. S. Emerson, passing by the ragged crater hill from which the outbreak of 1859 had issued. His other journey, when he completed his measurements, was about a month later. Plate 17C is a copy of J. M. Alexander's map.