The Hawaiian Archipelago - Six Months Among The Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, And Volcanoes Of The Sandwich Islands By Isabella L. Bird
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Its Lava-Beds Differ From Those Of Kauai And Oahu In Being
Lighter In Colour, Less Cellular, And More Impervious To Water.
The
windward side of the mountain is gashed and slashed by streams,
which in their violence have excavated large pot-holes, which serve
as reservoirs, and it is covered to a height of over 2000 feet by a
luxuriant growth of timber.
On the leeward side, several black and
very fresh-looking streams of lava run into the sea, and the whole
coast for some height above the shore shows most vigorous volcanic
action. Elsewhere the rock is red and broken, and lateral cones
abound near the base.
The ascent from Makawao, though it is over rather a desolate tract
of land, has in its lower stages such a dismal growth of pining koa
and spurious sandal-wood, and in its upper ones so much ohelo scrub,
with grass and common aspleniums quite up to the top, that as one
sits lazily on one's sure-footed horse, the fact that one is
ascending a huge volcano is not forced upon one by any overmastering
sterility and nakedness. Somehow, one expects to pass through some
ulterior stage of blackness up to the summit. It is no such thing;
and the great surprise of Haleakala to me was, that when according
to calculation there should have been a summit, an abyss of vast
dimensions opened below. The mountain top has been in fact blown
off, and one is totally powerless to imagine what the forces must
have been which rent it asunder.
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