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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As a display of fireworks compared to
the conflagration of a metropolis. THEN, the sense of awe gave way
speedily to that of admiration of the dancing fire fountains of a
fiery lake; NOW, it was all terror, horror, and sublimity,
blackness, suffocating gases, scorching heat, crashings, surgings,
detonations; half seen fires, hideous, tortured, wallowing waves. I
feel as if the terrors of Kilauea would haunt me all my life, and be
the Nemesis of weak and tired hours.
We left early, and descended the terminal wall, still as before,
green with ferns, ohias, and sandalwood, and bright with clusters of
turquoise berries, and the red fruit and waxy blossoms of the ohelo.
The lowest depression of the crater, which I described before as a
level fissured sea of iridescent lava, has been apparently partially
flooded by a recent overflow from Halemaumau, and the same agency
has filled up the larger rifts with great shining rolls of black
lava, obnoxiously like boa-constrictors in a state of repletion. In
crossing this central area for the second time, with a mind less
distracted by the novelty of the surroundings, I observed
considerable deposits of remarkably impure sulphur, as well as
sulphates of lime and alum in the larger fissures. The presence of
moisture was always apparent in connexion with these formations.
The solidified surges and convolutions in which the lava lies, the
latter sometimes so beautifully formed as to look like coils of wire
rope, are truly wonderful.
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