The Appearance Of Oahu From The Sea Is Deceptive.

It looks hardly larger than Arran, but it is really forty-six miles long by twenty-five broad, and is 530 square miles in extent.

Diamond Hill, or Leahi, is the most prominent object south of the town, beyond the palm groves of Waikiki. It is red and arid, except when, as now, it is verdure- tinged by recent rains. Its height is 760 feet, and its crater nearly as deep, but its cone is rapidly diminishing. Some years ago, when the enormous quantity of thirty-six inches of rain fell in one week, the degradation of both exterior and interior was something incredible, and the same process is being carried on slowly or rapidly at all times. The Punchbowl, immediately behind Honolulu, is a crater of the same kind, but of yet more brilliant colouring: so red is it indeed, that one might suppose that its fires had but just died out. In 1786 an observer noted it as being composed of high peaks; but atmospheric influences have reduced it to the appearance of a single wasting tufa cone, similar to those which stud the northern slopes of Mauna Kea. There are a number of shore craters on the island, and six groups of tufa cones, but from the disintegration of the lava, and the great depth of the soil in many places, it is supposed that volcanic action ceased earlier than on Maui or Hawaii. The shores are mostly fringed with coral reefs, often half a mile in width, composed of cemented coral fragments, shells, sand, and a growing species of zoophyte.

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