It Was Usual On Arriving At The Crater To Break A Branch Covered With Berries, And Turning The Face To The Pit Of Fire, To Throw Half The Branch Over The Precipice, Saying, "Pele, Here Are Your Ohelos.

I offer some to you, some I also eat," after which the natives partook of them freely.

Kapiolani gathered and eat them without this formula, after which she and her company of eighty persons descended to the black edge of Hale-mau-mau. There, in full view of the fiery pit, she thus addressed her followers: - "Jehovah is my God. He kindled these fires. I fear not Pele. If I perish by the anger of Pele, then you may fear the power of Pele; but if I trust in Jehovah, and he should save me from the wrath of Pele, when I break through her tabus, then you must fear and serve the Lord Jehovah. All the Gods of Hawaii are vain! Great is Jehovah's goodness in sending teachers to turn us from these vanities to the living God and the way of righteousness!" Then they sang a hymn. I can fancy the strange procession winding its backward way over the cracked, hot, lava sea, the robust belief of the princess hardly sustaining the limping faith of her followers, whose fears would not be laid to rest until they reached the crater's rim without any signs of the pursuit of an avenging deity. It was more sublime than Elijah's appeal on the soft, green slopes of Carmel, but the popular belief in the Goddess of the Volcano survived this flagrant instance of her incapacity, and only died out many years afterwards.

Besides these interesting reminiscences, I have been hearing most thrilling stories from Mrs. Lyman and Mr. Coan of volcanoes, earthquakes, and tidal waves. Told by eye-witnesses, and on the very spot where the incidents occurred, they make a profound, and, I fear, an incommunicable impression. I look on these venerable people as I should on people who had seen the Deluge, or the burial of Pompeii, and wonder that they eat and dress and live like other mortals! For they have felt the perpetual shudder of earthquakes, and their eyes, which look so calm and kind, have seen the inflowing of huge tidal waves, the dull red glow of lava streams, and the leaping of fire cataracts into deep-lying pools, burning them dry in a night time. There were years in which there was no day in which the smoke of underground furnaces was out of their sight, or night which was not lurid with flames. Once they traced a river of lava burrowing its way 1500 feet below the surface, and saw it emerge, break over a precipice, and fall hissing into the ocean. Once from their highest mountain a pillar of fire 200 feet in diameter lifted itself for three weeks 1000 feet into the air, making night day, for a hundred miles round, and leaving as its monument a cone a mile in circumference.

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