Professor Brigham summed up the losses as follows: Num ber of houses destroyed by land slide, ten ; by the sea wave, one hundred and eight; deaths by the land slide, thirty-one; by sea wave, forty-six. Number of houses destroyed by earthquake, forty-six; by lava stream thirty-seven. Total houses destroyed, two hundred and one;; total deaths, seventy-seven.
The first stage in the eruptions about Kahuku occurred in the night of April 6th. There was a shower of ashes and pumice, covering the country ten or fifteen miles upon each side. These covered the ground for ten inches generally, but sometimes fifteen. Pieces of the pumice two or three inches wide floated forty-five miles up the Kona coast. On the morn ing of April 7th a lava stream originated some ten miles up the mountain, and was crossed by Mr. H. M. Whitney on the north side of the later eruption. He speaks of it as pahoehoe in a valley five hundred feet wide. It had ceased flowing in three days' time so that people could walk over it.
In the afternoon of April 7th, the principal eruption com menced, as a discharge from a crevice about three miles long and above the Kahuku Ranch. The inmates of Captain Brown's house saw the fiery stream making apparently for the house and they were not slow in vacating the premises, going towards Waiohinu. Mr, H. M. Whitney was able to witr ess a part of this flow from a small hill westward on April loth. He says, "On ascending the ridge we found the eruption in full blast. Four enormous fountains, apparently distinct from each other, and yet forming a line a mile long north and south, were continually spouting up from tile opening. These jets were blood-red and yet as fluid as watcr, ever g in size, bulk and height. Sometimes two would join together, and again the whole four would be united, making one continuous fountain a mile in length." This liquid descended the slope to the grounds about the ranch, then took the Government road, ran down the precipice and folk w •d it to the sea, a "rapid stream of red lava, rolling, rushing and turnling like a swollen river, and bearing along in its current large rocks that almost made the lava foam." It was from two hundred to eight hundred feet wide, twenty feet deep and had a velocity of from ten to twenty-five miles an hour. The fountains re believed to have reached an altitude of five hundred to six hun dred feet and to have thrown up also stones weighing one hundred tons. The ascending lava had a rotary motion to wards the south. The stream reached the sea at one point and did not flow after the 12th inst., the life of the river thus lasting only five days. The pahoehoe of the early flow was succeeded by aa which covered 4,000 acres of good pasture land besides much that was of no value. This aa branched out into four wide streams, covering a space estimated at four miles w;de and long. The final flow was of the original pahoehoe.
Dr, Hillebrand visited the ground April 23d. He found that the lava issued from a fissure extending about three miles from Captain Brown's house in the direction N. 6° E. up the mountain to a height of 2,800 feet. It gushed out in waves parallel to its course which assumed a direction at right angles to it in the middle of the stream. The edges are somewhat raised above the middle, and much scoria is present, at one place a small cone of scoria about twelve feet high and of equal diameter bridging the chasm. The issuance of hot gases from it prevented a close scrutiny. Near the upper end of the chasm the Doctor was surprised at the sudden apparition of a cataract of lava pouring down an incline of some three hundred feet. The trees and fern stalks were encircled and capped by h‘va. The extreme point visited was simply a crevice: there was nothing of the nature of a cone of lapilli as was the case at the beginnings of the later flows above Puu Ulaula.
The land runs to a point at the extreme south end of Ha waii, sometimes called Ka Lae and sometimes South Cape. The triangular area—perhaps nine miles long—from the ranch house to the sea, is bordered on the west side by a precipice or pali, suggesting that it lies along the line of a fracture. This im pression is heightened by the fact that this line coincides with and adjoins the rent of three miles out of which the lava was protruded. The precipice was known locally as the "Pali of TvIamalu." Mr. Whitney seems to have observed the coinci dence in the direction of this pali and the vent of the eruption pointing up the mountain. So did Mr, Coan. In 1886 I visited this locality and called attention to this feature in a letter to Professor Dana, published in his "Characteristics of Volcanoes." "The fissure whence the lavas of 1868 flowed is the exact continuation of the pali up the mountan. I traced it fully three miles. For much of the way it makes a narrow canyon forty to fifty feet wide at the maximum, and so deep that it is dangerous to explore it. In the lower part heat was still evident. The fissure is most prominent where the lava is in greatest amount. Its borders have the smoothed appear ance that would result from an outflow of lava over its edge." I have sometimes compared the conditions attendant upon this flow with the splitting of a log of wood. The first blow of the axe splits the log a short distance from the end. A wedge in serted in the split exerts a little pressure, but not enough to continue the enlargement till another blow has been struck by the beetle. A continuance of the blows will eventually split the log from end to end.