Statewide County HI Archives News.....Letters of Isabella L. Bird Bishop. - Part 22: Letter # XII - Part 2. October 30, 2008
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Darlene E. Kelley donkeyskid@msn.com November 16, 2008, 9:00 am

Keepers Of The Culture, A Study In Time Of The Hawaiian Islands October 30, 2008

Contributed for use in
USGenWeb Archives
by Darlene E. Kelley
donkeyskid@msn.com
October 30, 2008.

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Historical Collections of Hawai'i
Keepers of the Culture 
A Study in Time, of the Hawai'ian Islands
Isabella L. Bird Bishop Letters
" Six Months Among the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes of the
Sandwich Islands.
Letter # XII - Part 2
Transcrbed.

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Letter # XII 

Part 2

I must tell you a story which the venerable Mrs. Lyman told me
yesterday. In 1825, five years after the first missionaries landed,
Kaapiolani, a female alii of high rank, while living at Kaiwaaloa (
where 
Captain Cook was murdered ), became a Christian. Grieving for her
people, most whom still feared to anger Pele, she announced that it was
her intention to visit Kilauea, and dare the fearful goddess to do her
worst. Her husband and many others tried to dissuade her, but she was
resolute, and taking with her a large retinue, she took a journey of one
hundred miles, mostly on foot, over the rugged lava, till she arrived
near the crater. There a priestess of Pele met her, threatened her with
the displeasure of the goddess if she persisted in her hostile errand,
and prophesied that she and her folowers would perish miserably. Then,
as now, ohelo berries grew prfusely round the terminal wall of Kilauea,
and there, as elsewhere, were sacred to Pele, no one daring to eat of
them till he had first offered some of them to the divinity. It was
usual on arriving at the crater to break a brnach covered with berries,
and turning the face to the pit of fire, throw half the branch over the
precipice, saying," Pele, here are your ohelos. I offer some to you,
some I also eat." after which the natives partook of them freely.
Kapiolani gathered and eat them without this formula, after which she
and her company of eighty persons descended in the black edge of
Hale-mau-mau. There, in ful view of the fiery pit, she addressed her
followers: -- " Jehovah is my God. He kindled these fires. I fear not
Pele. If I perish by the anger of Pele, then you may fear the power of
Pele; but if I trust in Johovah, and he should save me from the wrath of
Pele, when I break through her tabus, then you must fear and serve the
Lord Jehovah. All the Gods of Hawaii are vain! Great is Johovah's
goodness in sendng teachers to turn us from these vanities to the living
God and the way of righteousness!' Then they sang a hymn. I can fancy
the strange procession winding its backward way over the cracked, hot,
lava sea, the robust belief of the princess hadly substaining the
limping faith of her followers, whose fears would not be laid to rest
until they reached the crater's rim without any signs of the pursuit of
an avenging deity. It was more sublime than Elijah's appeal on the soft,
green slopes of Carmel, but the popular belief in the Goddess of the
Volcano survived this flagrant instance of her incapacty, and only died
out many years afterwards. 

Besides these interesting reminiscences, I have been hearing most
thrilling stories from Mrs. Lyman and Mr. Coan of volcanoes, eartquakes,
and tidal waves. Told by eye-witnesses, and on the very spot where the
incidents occurred, they make a profound, and, I fear, an incommunicable
impression. I took on these venerable people as I should on people who
had seen the Deluge, or the burial of Pompei, and wonder that they eat
and dress and live like other mortals!
For they have felt the perpetual shudder of earthquakes, and their eyes,
which look so calm and kind, have seen the inflowing of huge tidal
waves, the dull red glow of lava streams, and the leaping of fire
cataracts into deep-lying pools, burning them dry in a night time. There
were years in which there was no day in which the smoke of underground
furnaces was out of their sight, or night which was not lurid with
flames. Once they traced a river of lava burrowing its way 1500 feet
below the surface, and saw it emerge, break over a precipice, and fall
hissing into the ocean. Once from the tallest mountain a pillar of fire
200 feet in diameter lifted itself for three weeks 1000 feet into the
air, making night day, for a hundred mils round, and leaving as its
monument a cone a mile in circumference. We see a clothed and finished
earth; they see the building of an island, layer on layr, hill on hill,
the naked and deformed product of the melting, foraging, and welding,
wich go on perpetually in the crater of Kilauea.

I could fill many sheets with what I have heard, but must be 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. Coan made several
visits to the eruption, and on eash return the simple people ashed him
how much longer it would last. For fivemonths 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 neighboring 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 thirten 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 eight, 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 begin to think
that the volcano was reformed. But in 168 terrors occurred which are
without precedent in island history. While Mrs. Lyman was giving me the
narrative in her graphic but simple way, 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 wierd tale of another world. On
March 27, five years ago, a series of eartquakes 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 shooks. 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 molton 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, stam, or soke. Hilo was
much agitated by the sudden lull. No one was deceived into security,for
it was certain that the strangely pent-up fires must make themselves
felt.

The eartquakes became nearly continous; scarcely an appreciable interval
occurred between them; " the throbbing, jeking, and quivering motions
grew more positive, intense, and sharp; they wre vertical, rotary,
lateral, and undulating, " producing nausea, vertigo, and vomiting. Lae
in the afternoon of a lovely day, April 2 the climax came. " The crust
of the earth rose and sank like the sea in a storm." Rocs were rent,
mountains fell, buildings and their contents were shattered, trees
swayed like reeds, animals were scared, and ran about semented; men
thought the judgment had come. The earth opened in thousands of places,
the roads in Hilo cracked open, horses and their riders, and people
afoot, were thrown violently to the ground; " it seemed as if the rocky
ribs o the mountains, and the grnite walls and pillars of the earth were
breaking up."

At Kilanea the shocks were as frequent as the ticking of a watch. In
Kau, south of Hilo, they counted 300 shocks on this direful day; and
Mrs. Lyman's son, who was in that distict at the time, says that the
earth swayed to and fro, north and south, then east and west, then round
and round, up and down, in every imaginable direction, everything
crashing about them, " and the trees thrashing as if torn by a strong
rushing wind." He and others sat upn the ground bracing themselves with
hands and feet to avoid being rolled over. They saw an avalanche of red
eart, which they supposed to be lava, burst from the mountain side,
throwing rocks high into the air, swallowing up houses, trees, men, and
animals; and traveling three miles in as many minutes, burying a hamlet,
with thirty-one inhabitants and 500 head of cattle. The people of the
valleys fled to the mountains, which themselves were splitting in all
directions, and collecting on an elevated spot, with the earth reeling
under them, they spent the night April 2 in prayer and singing. Looking
towards the shore, they saw it sink, and at the same moment a wave,
whose height was estmated at from forty to sixty feet, hurled itself
upon the coast, and receded five times, dstroying whole villages, and
even strong stone houses, with a touch, and engulfing for ever forty six
people who had lingered too near the shore.

Still the earthquakes continued, and still the volcano gave no sign. The
nerves of many people gave way in thoe fearful days. Some tried to get
away to Honolulu, others kept horses saddled on which to fly, they knew
not whither. The hourly question was " What of the volcano? " People put
their ears to the quivering ground, and heard, or thought they heard,
the surgings of the imprisoned lava sea rending its way among the ribs
of the earth.

Five days after the destructive earthquake of April 2, the ground south
of Hilo burst open with a crash and roar which at once answered all
questions concerning the volcano. The molten river, after traveling
underground for twenty miles, emerged through a fissure two miles in
length with a tremendous force and volume. It was in a pleasent pastoral
region, supposed to be at rest for ever, at the top of a grass-covered
plateau sprinkled with native and foreign houses, and rich in herds of
cattle. Four huge fountains boiled up with terrific fury, throwing
crimson lava, and rocks weghing many tons, to a height of from 500 to
1000 feet. Mr. Whitney, of Honolulu, who was near the spot, say;-- "
from these great fountains to the sea flowed a rapid stream of red lava,
rolling, rushing, and tumbling, like a swollen river, bearing along in
its current large rocks that made the lva foam as it dashed down the
precipice and through the valley into the sea, surging and roaring
throughout its length like a cataract, with a power and fury perfectly
indescribable. It was nothing else than a river of fire from 200 to 800
feet wide and twnty deep, with a speed varying fromten to twenty-five
mles an hour ! " This same intelligent observer notice as a peculiarity
of the spouting that the lava was ejected by a rotary motion, and in the
air both lava and stones always rotated towards the south. At Kilauea I
noticed that the lava was ejected in a southerly direction. From the
scene of hese fire fountains, whose united length was about a mile, the
river in its rush to the sea divided itself into four streams, between
which it shut up men and beasts. One stream hurried to the sea in four
hours, but the other took two days to travel ten miles. The aggregate
width was a mile and a half. Where it entered the sea it extended the
coastline half a mile, but this worthless accession to Hawaian acreage
was dearly purchased by the loss, for ages at least, of 4000 acres of
valuable pasture land, and a much larger quanity of magnificent forest.
The whole south-east shore of Hawaii sank from four to six feet, which
involved the destruction of several hamlets and a beautiful fringe of
cocoa-nut trees. Though this region was very thinly peopled, 200 houses
and 100 lives were sacrificed in this week of horrors, and from the
reeling mountains, the uplifted ocean, and the fiery inundation, the
terrified survivors fled into Hilo, each with a tale of woe and loss.
The number of shocks of earthquake counted was 2000 in two weeks, an
average of 140 a day; but the other side of the island the number was
incalcuable.

I.L. B.

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Next Letter XIII.



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