File:Memoirs of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum of Polynesian Ethnology and Natural History (1899) (16584668079).jpg

Title: Memoirs of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum of Polynesian Ethnology and Natural History
Identifier: acs9793.0002.004.umich.edu
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum
Subjects: Natural history; Ethnology
Publisher: Honolulu : Bishop Museum Press
Contributing Library: University of Michigan
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Michigan

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Eruption of 1840^ Ktlauea. 51 one dared to approach near it, and travellers on the main road, which lay along the verge of the crater, feeling the ground tremble beneath their feet, fled and passed by at a distance. I should be inclined to discredit these statements of the natives, had I not since been to Kilauea and examined it minutely with these reports in view. Every appearance, however, of the crater confirms these reports. Every thing within the cauldron is new. Not a particle of lava remains as it was when I last visited it. All has been melted down and recast I will now give a short history of the eruption itself. On the 30th of May, the people of Puna observed the appearance of smoke and fire in the interior, a mountainous and desolate region of that district. Thinking that the fire might be the burning of some jungle, they took little notice of it until the next day, Sabbath, when the meetings in the different villages were thrown into confusion by sudden and grand exhibitions of fire, on a
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FIG. 42. MAP OF THK REGION OF THE ERUPTION. AFTER WII.KES. scale so large and fearful as to leave them no room to doubt the cause of the phenomenon. The fire augmented during the day and night; but it did not seem to flow off rapidly in any direction. All were in consternation, as it was expected that the molten flood would pour itself down from its height of four thousand feet to the coast, and no one knew to what point it would flow, or what devastation would attend its fiery course. On Monday, June ist, the stream began to flow off in a northeasterly direction, and on the following Wednesday, June 3rd, at evening, the burning river reached the sea, having averaged half a mile an hour in its progress. The rapidity of the flow was very unequal, being modified by the inequalities of the surface, over which the stream passed. Sometimes it is supposed to have moved five miles an hour, and at other times, owing to obstructions, making no apparent progress, except in filling up deep valleys, and in swelling over or breaking away hills and precipices. But I will return to the source of the eruption. This is in a forest, and in the bottom of an ancient wooded crater, about four hundred feet deep, and probably eight miles eavSt of Kilauea. The region being uninhabited and covered with a thicket, it was some time before the place was dis- (429)

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