We See A Clothed And Finished Earth; They See The Building Of An Island, Layer On Layer, Hill On Hill, The Naked And Deformed Product Of The Melting, Forging, And Welding, Which Go On Perpetually In The Crater Of Kilauea.

I could fill many sheets with what I have heard, but must content myself with telling you very little.

In 1855 the fourth recorded eruption of Mauna Loa occurred. The lava flowed directly Hilo- wards, and for several months, spreading through the dense forests which belt the mountain, crept slowly shorewards, threatening this beautiful portion of Hawaii with the fate of the Cities of the Plain. Mr. C. made several visits to the eruption, and on each return the simple people asked him how much longer it would last. For five months they watched the inundation, which came a little nearer every day. "Should they fly or not? Would their beautiful homes become a waste of jagged lava and black sand, like the neighbouring district of Puna, once as fair as Hilo?" Such questions suggested themselves as they nightly watched the nearing glare, till the fiery waves met with obstacles which piled them up in hillocks, eight miles from Hilo, and the suspense was over. Only gigantic causes can account for the gigantic phenomena of this lava- flow. The eruption travelled forty miles in a straight line, or sixty, including sinuosities. It was from one to three miles broad, and from five to two hundred feet deep, according to the contours of the mountain slopes over which it flowed. It lasted for thirteen months, pouring out a torrent of lava which covered nearly 300 square miles of land, and whose volume was estimated at thirty-eight thousand millions of cubic feet! In 1859 lava fountains 400 feet in height, and with a nearly equal diameter, played on the summit of Mauna Loa. This eruption ran fifty miles to the sea in eight days, but the flow lasted much longer, and added a new promontory to Hawaii.

These magnificent overflows, however threatening, had done little damage to cultivated regions, and none to human life; and people began to think that the volcano was reformed. But in 1868 terrors occurred which are without precedent in island history. While Mrs. L. was giving me the narrative in her graphic but simple way, and the sweet wind rustled through the palms, and brought the rich scent of the ginger plant into the shaded room, she seemed to be telling me some weird tale of another world. On March 27, five years ago, a series of earthquakes began, and became more startling from day to day, until their succession became so rapid that "the island quivered like the lid of a boiling pot nearly all the time between the heavier shocks. The trembling was like that of a ship struck by a heavy wave." Then the terminal crater of Mauna Loa (Mokuaweoweo) sent up columns of smoke, steam, and red light, and it was shortly seen that the southern slope of its dome had been rent, and that four separate rivers of molten stone were pouring out of as many rents, and were flowing down the mountain sides in diverging lines. Suddenly the rivers were arrested, and the blue mountain dome appeared against the still blue sky without an indication of fire, steam, or smoke.

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