THE GREAT ERUPTION OF 1868.
This eruption had two peculiarities: 1, it was preceded by numerous and violent earthquakes ; 2, the place of principal emer Bence of the lava was low down the mountain, io,000 feet be low the summit. The flows previously described came from small orifices 10-12,000 feet above the sea, and it took the lava a long time to discharge. The one low down discharged in three or four days out of a long rent in the rock as much ma terial as came from the higher openings for many months. The nature of the eruption was not understood at first, because it was so different from what had been previously observed from either Mokuaweoweo or Kilauea; save that it is now seen to have been like the discharge from Kilauea in 184o near Nanawili. The chief observers were Messrs. T. Coan, H. M. Whitney, Dr. William Hillebrand, F. S. Lyman and other resi dents of the disturbed district.
On March 27, Friday, there were slight earthquake shocks in Kau and Kona. The following day they extended easterly to Hilo and northwesterly through Kona. On the 27th, fire and smoke were observed at the summit from Kawaiahae and Kealakekua, and from Hilo the day following. From Kau the report came that the first outbreak appeared on the south west side of the summit, followed later by others on the same side; and soon there were four streams pouring down the moun tain. By the 3oth, the line of smoke advanced fifteen miles towards the south cape. No light was seen at the summit from Hilo after the 28th.
The earthquakes now began to be noticeable. Rev. C. G. Williamson in South Kona recorded seventy-six shocks be tween April first and tenth. In Kau there were certainly 300 at the same time; and the current statement is that the total number arose to 2,000. The culminating shock was at 3:4o P. M. April 2d. Walls were universally thrown down, houses moved or overturned. I saw one house (in 1883) still showing the amount of the throw to have been eight inches. The focus of the shock was thought to be at Keaiwa and is thus described by F. S. Lyman: "First the earth swayed to and fro north and south; then east and west, round and round; then up and down and in every imaginable direction for several minutes ; everything crashing around us; the trees thrashing about as if torn by a rushing mighty wind. It was impossible to stand; we had to sit on the ground, bracing with hands and feet to keep from rolling over." At this moment there occurred the "mudflow", a slide where earth, trees houses, cattle, horses, goats and men were swallowed up and rocks thrown high into the air. At Waiohinu, ten miles to the S.W., a stone church was leveled to the ground and most of the other buildings were de stroyed. Near this point there was a lateral shift of about eighteen feet, extending along a fault line. The ground moved just about the width of the road makai.
The shocks were felt at a distance of three hundred miles to the N. W., or to Kauai, and on all the intervening islands. Three kinds were noticed : (I) the undulating, with a motion from N. W. to S. E.; (2) a sudden, short, sharp jerking shock occupying barely two seconds ; (3) a thumping, like a cannon ball striking the floor beneath you and then rolling away. Rattling noises ac,
companied all three of these shocks. There was a motion to the N. E. at Hilo, well shown in upright cases in Mr. Coan's study. Books were thrown down from cases facing the south west; while cases filled with minerals and facing to the north west were undisturbed.
Concerning the "mudflow" Mr. Coan writes that it was a true land slide. "I went entirely around it, and crossed it at its head and center, measuring its length and breadth, which I found were severally three miles long and a half mile wide. The breadth at the head is about mile, and the ground on the side hill, where the cleavage took place, is now a bold precipice 6o feet high. Below this line of fracture the super strata of the earth, consisting of soil, rocks, lavas, boulders, trees, roots, ferns and all tropical jungle, and water, slid or rolled down an incline of some twenty degrees, until the im mense masses came to the brow of a precipice near a thous2.nd feet high, and here all plunged down an incline of 4o° to 70° to the cultivated and inhabited plains below. The momentum acquired by this terrific slide was so great that the mass was forced over the plain, and even up an angle of one and a half degrees, at the rate of more than a mile a minute. In its course it swept along enormous trees and rocks from the size of a pebble to those weighing many tons. Immense blocks of lava were un covered by the slide. The depth of the deposit on the grass plains may average six feet; in depressions at the fcot of the precipice it may he thirty or even forty feet." The earthquake wave and its effects are thus described by Mr. Pomander: "At Punaluu (p. 297 of Green) at the mo ment of the shock, it seemed as if an immense quant!tv of lava had been discharged into the sea some distance from the shore, for almost immediately a terrible commotion arose, the water boiling and tossing furiously. Shortly afterwards, a tremend ous wave was sweeping up on the shore, and when it receded, there was nothing left of Punaluu Every house, the big stone church, even the cocoanut trees — all but two — were washed away. The number of lives lost is not yet ascertained. All who were out fishing at the time perished, and man:: of those ashore. A big chasm opened, running from the sea up into the mountain, down which it is said lava, mud, trees, ferns and rocks were rushing out into the sea. The same wave that washed away Punaluu, also destroyed the villages of Ninole, Kawaa, and Honuapo. Not a house remains to mark the site of these places, except at Honuapo, where a small 'hale hala wai' on the brow of the hill, above the village, stood on Friday last. The larger cocoanut grove at Honuapo was washed away, as well as that at Punaluu. A part of the big pali at Honuapo, on the road to Waiohinu, had tumbled into the sea, and people coming from thence are now obliged to take the mountain road through Hilea-uka." H. M. Whitney says this wave rolled in over the tops of the cocoanut trees at Punaluu, probably sixty feet high, driving float ing rubbish inland about a quarter of a mile, and bringing back everything moveable. The same wave washed in many large boulders at Pohoiki.