Historical Collections of The Hawaiian Islands -  Kalakaua -- Part 9

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Historical Collections of The Hawaiian Islands
" Keepers of the Culture "
A study in time of the Hawaiian Islands
As told by the ancients--
Kalakaua ---Part 9
Kalakaua -- The Young Man
as told by the Ancients--

by Darlene E. Kelley
March 9, 2001

http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374

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Kalakaua -- The Young Man --part 9.

As mentioned before, Kalakaua dreams and interests were in his writings.
With his new wife's ties being named after the first Kapiolani, who was
named in honor of the first High Chieftess to defy the Goddess Pele, he
loved to write about Kilauea eruptions. So he, with permission from Mrs.
Titus Coan, reprinted her letter in Hawaiian, in one of his newspapers.
This is what she wrote in 1868;

" From time immemorial earthquakes have been common on Hawaii. We have
felt the jar of thousands. Most of these shocks have been harmless. A
few have broken a little crockery, cracked plastering, and thrown down
stone walls.
But on this day of March 27th, 1868, a series of remarkable earthquakes
commenced. Kilauea was unusually full and in vehement action. Day after
day from March 27th and onward , shocks were frequent, and growing more
and more earnest. At 4 P.M., April 2nd, a terrific shock rent the
ground, sending consternation through all of Hillo, Puna, and Kau. In
some places fissures of great length, breadth, and depth were opened.
Rocks of twenty to fifty tons were sent thundering down from the walls
of Kilauea, and massive boulders were torn from hillsides and sent
crashing down upon the plains and valleys below. Stone houses were rent
and ruined, and stone walls sent flying in every direction. Horses and
men were thrown to the ground; houses were tilted from their
foundations; furniture, hardware, crockery, books, and bottles, and all
things movable in houses were dashed hither and thither, as of no
account. It seemed as if the ribs and the pillers of the earth were
being shattered.

My husband was sitting, at his study table, when a fearful jerk startled
him, and before he could rise, a jar still more terrible caused him to
rush for the stairs, and while going down, such a crash shook the house
that we supposed the roof had fallen. We were sure it was the wrath of
God.!

I was out of doors, standing a distance from the house, watching with an
intense gaze its swaying and trembling, while the ground rose and sank
like waves, and there was no place stable where hand or foot could rest.

When the shocks intermitted a little, we went upstairs to witness a
scene of wild confusion. A large bookcase, seven feet high by four feet
wide, that held my husbands books, and had glass doors, lay prostate on
the floor near where he had been sitting, with glass broken into
thousand pieces.

His study table, eight feet long, and loaded with large volumes, was
thrown out from the wall into the center of the room, with one leg
broken off, and the books and papers, scattered on the floor. Another
bookcase, fastened to the wall, was rent from its fastenings and thrown
out near the table, and three of the sleepers which supported the floor
were broken by the fall of the case.

The shaking continued all night, and most or all of the Hilo people
spent the night out of doors, fearing to remain in their houses. Some
said they counted the shocks before mornng, and so rapid were these
shocks, that the earth seemed to be in a continuous quiver, like a ship
in a battle. Many of the people cried out to be saved-- and they
prayed-- Missionary Rev. Titus Coan, lead the prayers and soothed them
with his sermons.

The heaviest blows fell on Kau, the district laying south of us on the
other side of Kilauea. There the earth was rent in a thousand places,
and along the foothills of Mauna Loa a number of land slips were shaken
off from steep places, and thrown down with soil, boulders, and trees.
In one place a slide of half a mile in width was started on a steep
inclined plane, till, coming to a precipice of some 700 feet, on an
angle of about seventy degrees, the vast avalanche, mixing with the
waters of a running stream and several springs, was pitched down this
precipice, receiving such fearful momentum as to carry it three miles in
as many minutes. Ten houses, with thirty one souls and five hundred head
of cattle were buried instantly, and not one one of them has been
recovered.

My husband measured this avalanche and found it just three miles long,
one and a half mile wide at the head, and of a supposed average depth of
twenty feet.

At the same time the sea rose twenty feet along the southern shore of
the island, and in Kau 108 houses were destoyed and forty six people
drowned, making a loss of 118 houses and seventy seven lives inthat
district.

During this one hour, many houses were also destroyed in Puna, but no
lives were lost. During this awful hour the coast of Puna and Kau, for
the distance of seventy five miles, subsided seven feet on the average,
submerging a line of small villages all along the shore. One of the
rough stone meeting houses in Puna, where we once had a congregation of
500 to 1,000, was swept away with the influx of the sea, and its walls
are now under water. Fortunately there was but one stone building in
Hilo, our prison, that fell immediately. Had our coast been studded with
cities built of stone and brick, the destruction of life and property
would have been terrific.

This terrible earthquake was evidntly caused by the subterraneous flow
of the lavas from Kilauea, for the crater sank rapidly hundreds of feet,
as ice goes down when the water beneath it is drawn off. The course and
the terminus of this flow were indicated by fissures, steam, and
spouting of lava jets along the whole line from Kilauea to Kahuku in
Western Kau, a distance of forty miles, and my husband has found
foldings and faults in several places. 

During these days of subterranean passage, the earth was in a remarkable
state of unrest; shocks were frequent, and it was asserted by
trustworthy native witnesses that in several places, the ragings of the
subterrainean river were heard by listeners who put their ears to the
ground."

In the next paper, Kalakaua continued his account by Mrs. Coans, as of
April 7th.
1868:

On this day of April 7th, the lava burst out of the ground in Kahuku,
nine miles from the sea, and flowed rapidly down to the shore. The place
of outbreak was in a wood on one side of the foothills of Mauna Loa.
Travelers bound to Hilo came up to this flow on the west side, and were
not able to cross it, but were obliged to return to Kona and come via
Waimea, a circuit of one hundred and seventy miles. A fissure of a mile
long was opened for the disgorgement of this igneous river, and from the
whole length of this orfice the lava rushed up with intense vehemence,
sprouting jets one hundred to two hundred feet high,brning the forest
and spreading out a mile wide. The rending, the raging, the swirling of
this stream were terrific, awakening awe in all the beholders.

Flowing seaward, it came to a high precipice which ran some seven miles
toward the shore, varying in height from two hundred to seven hundred
feet, and separating a high fertile plain, of a deep and rich soil on
the left or eastern side, from a wide field of pahoehoe hundreds of feet
below on the right or western side

Before the flow reached this precipice it sent out three lateral streams
upon the grassy plain above, which ran a few mles, and ceased without
reaching the sea. But the larger portion of the igneous river, or its
main trunk, moved in a nearly straight line toward the shore, pouring
over the upper end of the precipice upon the plain below,and dividing
into two streams which ran parallel to each other, some hundred feet
apart, until they plunged into the sea.
These streams flowed four days, causing the waves to boil with a great
violence, and raising two large tufa cones in the water at their
termini. They formed a long, narrow island, on which they enclosed
thirty head of cattle, which were thus surrounded before they were aware
of their danger, and it was ten days before the lava was hard enough to
allow them to be taken out of their prison. During this time they had no
water, and were almost
maddened by the smoke and heat. Several cattle were also surrounded on
the upper grassy plain, where they were lying down to ruminate or to
sleep.

The owner of this ranch, with his wife and a large family of children,
was living in a pleasant house surrounded by a wall, with a fine garden
of trees and plants, near the center of this beautiful grassy plain, and
while sleeping at night, unconscious of danger, one of these lateral
streams came creeping softly and silently like a serpent toward them,
until within twenty yards of the house, when a sudden spout of lava
aroused them and all fled with frightened precipitation, taking neither
purse or script, but leaving all to the devouring fire. The lady was so
overwelmed with terrior that had it not been for her husband on one side
and another gentleman on the other, she would have perished in the lava.

The family crossing a small revine, rested a few moments on a hill near
by. In ten minutes after crossing the ravine it was filed with liqud
fire. Their escape was miraculous. In a few minutes the house was
wrapped in flames, the garden was consumed, and all the premises were
covered with a burning sea. They knelt and thanked God for his miracle
of life and his continued protection.

A little furthur down this green lawn was a hut of a native Hawaiian. As
the fiery flood came wihin fifty feet of it, it suddenly parted, one arm
sweeping around one side of the house and the other around the opposite
side, and uniting again left the building on a small plat of ground, of
some three quarters of an acre, surrounded by a wall of fusion. In this
house five souls were imprisoned ten days with no power to escape. All
their food and water were exhausted. Small fingers of lava often came
under the house; it was a little grass hut, and they were obliged to
beat out the fire with clubs and stamp it with their feet.

Piles of burning scoria were heaped around this house, as high as the
eaves, and in some places within ten feet of it. My husband visited this
house, and found its inmates alive and rejoicing in their deliverance.

A little furthur on, and this lava stream came near the ruins of a stone
church, which had been shaken down by the earthquake of April 2nd. The
walls were a heap of ruins, and the roof and timbers were piled upon the
stones. Again the flood opened up to the right and left, swept close to
the debris of the church. and united again below leaving all unconsumed.

The same earthquake demolished a large stone church in Waiohinu, the
central and most important mission station in Kau, and so rent the house
of the pastor, the Rev John F. Pogue, that he, with his family, fled to
the hills, and soon after left the district to return no more. Other
homes also were left desolate, the terrified inmates seeking abodes
elsewhere. 
God be with you--and yours.
I, remain with God.
Fidelia Coan.

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