File:THE VOLCANO OF KILAUEA EXPERIENCE.jpg

English: THE VOLCANO OF KILAUEA.-Between the Chinese Theatre and the Ferris Wheel and accross from the Austrian village stood the cyclorama of the greatest active volcano in the northern hemisphere. In front of the pavilion was a heroic statue of Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire, made by Mrs. Copp, the sculptor, and under the canopy a choir of Kanak musicians sang to the public, evoking much applause. The word is pronounced "Kill-away-ah," or nearly so. The great circular painting was made for a company of which the Hon. Lorin A. Thurston, Hawaiian Minister to the United States, was President, and W. T. Sessen, Manager. Walter W. Burridge, a painter, of Chicago, visited Hawaii and made a two-years' study of the mountain; thereafter, with a corps of assistants, he painted and built the scene, the entire expense rising to $80,000. The crater is eight hundred feet deep and three miles across. It is a lake of bubbling and thunderous lava set in the side of Mona Loa, a mountain fifteen thousand feet high. The station for the spectator of the picture was a heap of lava which had exuded and solidified in the centre of the crater. A priest climbed the cliffs that rimmed the scene and chanted an invocation to Pele, and his form added to the realism of the effects. The mountain peak and the Pacific Ocean, the baleful fires of the never slumbering volcano, the mists and lava floods, all conspired to make a great picture. (Panorama of the Kilauea Volcano of Hawaii. The Panorama was a reproduction of the largest active volcano in the Hawaiian Islands and visitors would walk through lava tubes and craters that created the effect of an active volcano through the use of painted scenery and electric lights. )