August 20. W. D. Alexander had seen Halernaumau when it was an abyss 1,000 feet deep and 1,200 feet wide, pouring out volumes of black smoke; now there is the breaking down of the retaining walls of the inner lake in three places from which cas cades of liquid fire are falling and flowing till the whole space is filled up to the level of the inner lake.
Aug. 26 to Sept. 6. Conditions described by Dr. W. T. Brig ham in Thrum's Annual for 1909. The present floor of Kilauea is now about four hundred feet higher than in 1864. The Hale mailman pit had filled up to within one hundred feet of the rim or fifty feet above the lower edge of the dome.
Thursday, Sept. 4, in the early afternoon the fountains ceased to play and the subsidence of the pool began With Messrs. C. B. Thompson and C. N. Forbes, Dr. Brigham went to Halemaumau soon after dark and found that the lake had fallen about a hundred feet. "In the center of the pit was a curious break running E. to W., at the edge of which was a vertical slab of lava semi-circular in form, resembling half a mill-stone, and other slabs continued the wall for some dis tance. Over these fell a cascade of lava in a condition I had never seen before ; its particles seemed to be in a state of repul sion, and although white hot fell through the central hole of the 'mill-stone' as meal. There seemed absolutely no cohesion, no signs of plastic molten lava." Mr. G. H. Fairchild describes the collapse as follows, the whole process of the emptying taking about two hours time. "On Thursday night the level of the lava had reached a point less than a hundred feet, I should. judge, below the level of the main crater floor. Old Faithful spouted its fiery flow to a height of twenty feet, and from the edges of the lake a score of lesser fire-fountains were playing continuously. At midnight there was a strange motion in the lava, which began suddenly to sink in towards the center. The sinking continued till the whole pit was a maelstrom of fire and a chasm appeared in the lava lake. Like liquid pouring into a funnel, or like the waters swirling out of a bath tub after the plug is drawn, the boiling lava began to pour in cataracts of fire into the chasm. From all sides the lava flowed, and as the torrents drained away into the depths, the sides of the crater, gleaming red, began to crash into the lake, splashing the lava like surf into the air, while the dull roar of the crumbling rock and the sharper detonation as the colder rocks heated and exploded was terrifying but yet absorbing.
"As the great slabs of lava peeled off the sides, pieces hun dreds and thousands of tons at a time, the levels streamed out cascades of liquid lava, which hung and cooled about the sides like great golden stalactites. Deeper and deeper the lava into the depths and on Saturday morning the pit was (lead. Everything that had filled it with the bubbling, spurting lava for nearly a thousand feet had drained off in the opening far below and there was nothing to be seen in the depths of Halemaumau hut a cloud of smoke. All the fire had gone."
Sept. 6, at II P. M., a spark of fire appeared five hundred feet down, and lava increased for two hours, when the lake was only one hundred and fifty feet lower than before the col lapse. J. A. Kennedy.
"The fire increased very rapidly, astonishingly so. It spread in area, and so quickly that we could see it was rising, appar ently being forced up by some great power beneath. This force seemed to push the lava into a cone that would burst with a noise, shooting the flame higher and higher. It con tinued in this way, the fire coming nearer and the cones form ing and bursting one after another. There appeared at one time to be three cones of fire that merged into one ; and again, when the force beneath must have been more intense the flame shot fully two hundred feet into the air like a rocket, then gradually spread out into the shape of a fan." L. A. Thurston writes, "The lava was rising rapidly. All at once it quit rising. A red line showed around the border ; masses of cooled lava broke off and fell into the liquid. These falls and rises vary from ten to fifty feet. There is an artesian flow on one side. When the lava lake is low a stream comes from this orifice. When the lava rises above this stream it becomes a fountain pushing upwards." There was an earthquake at Hilo and in Puna about noon of Sept. 2. Another at 6:15 P. M., Sept. 4. A at 6:r5 P. M. Sept. 5, the most severe of all. Sept. 6 a slight one. The shocks were unusually severe. Those who experienced the shake up of 1868 believed these were equal to those. Great damage was done in Hilo to china and earthenware. The shocks were heavier in Puna than in Hilo.
The near coincidence of these earthquakes with the first discharge of the lava from Halemaumau leads us to believe that the two phenomena were genetically connected with each other, rather than to some general cosmic influence.
Oct. 2 to II. E. E. Paxton reports that the lava was rising in Halemaumau when he left ; it had risen fifty feet during his visit ; and is from one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet below the top.
W. A. Bryan, Sept. 17. The lake estimated to be nine hun dred feet across with fourteen fountains. Liquid lava thrown up two hundred and fifty feet, even above the border of the pit. In October, '02, he had found the lake to be five hundred and twenty-five feet below the surface. Since then there have been land slides in Kilauea. Along the eastern side the old observa tion point has disappeared. A strip of rock sixty feet long caved in a few days after his model of the volcano had been completed.
Oct. 17. Harry Dennison measured the depth of the lake with a string. Two hundred and twenty feet were recorded, and he estimated the balance of the distance at from fifty to one hundred feet.
Oct. 18. Old Faithful was active eighteen times in ten minutes. On the 21st it was twelve times in ten minutes; and again eighteen times in ten minutes.