Statewide County HI Archives News.....Letters of Isabella L. Bird Bishop. - Part 9. October 11, 2008 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/hi/hifiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Darlene E. Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 October 12, 2008, 10:27 pm Keepers Of The Culture, A Study In Time Of The Hawaiian Islands October 11, 2008 Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley donkeyskid@webt.net http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 October 11, 2008 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Historical Collections of Hawai'i Keepers of the Culture A Study in Time, of the Hawai'ian Islands Letters of Isabella L. Bird Bishop " Six Months Among the Palm Grove, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes of the Sandwich Islands." Letter # 5 - Part 2. Transcribed. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Letter # V - part 2. " Six Months Among the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes of the Sandwich Islands." The country altered but lttle, only the variety of trees gave place to the ohia alone, with its sombre foliage. There was nether birds nor insects,and the only travellers we encounteredin solitude compelled us to give them a wide berth, for they were a drove of half wild random cattle, led by a lean bull of hideeous asect, with crumpled horns. Two picturesque native vaccheros on mules accompanied them, and my flagging spirits were raised by their news that the volcano was quite active. The owner of these cattle knows that he has 10.000 head,and may have had a great many more. They are shot for their hides by men who make shooting and skinning them their profession, and, near sttlements, the owners are thankful to get two cents a pound for sirloin and rump-steaks. These, and great herds were actually wild and ownerless upon the moutains, are a degenarate breed, with some of the worst peculiarities of the Texas cattle, and are a descendants of those which Vancouver placed on the islands and which were under Tabu for ten years. They destroy the old trees by gnawing the bark, and render the growth of young ones impossible. As it was getting dark we passed through a forest strip, where tree ferns from twelve to eighteen feet in height, and with fronds from five to seven feet long,were the most attractive novelties. As we emerged." with one stride camethe dark." a great darkness, a cloudy night, with neither moon or stars, and the track was further obscured by a belt of ohias. There five miles of this, and I was so dead from fatigue and want of food, that I would willingly have lain down inthe bush in the rain. I most heartedly wished that Miss k. were tired too, for her voice, which seemed tireless as she rode ahead in the dark, rasped upon my ears. I could only keep on my saddle by leaning on the horn, and my clothes were soaked with the heavy rain. " A dreadful ride," one and another said, and I believed them. It seemed an aweful solitude full of mystery. Often, I only knew that my companions were ahead by the sparks struck from their horse's shoes. It became a darkness whih could be felt. " Is that possibly a pool of blood?" I thought in horror, as a rain puddle glowed crimson on the track. Not that indeed! A glare brighter and redder than that from my furnace suddnly lightened the wole sky, and from that moment brightened our path. There sat Miss K. under her dripping umbrella as provoking erect as she had left Hilo. There Upa jogged along, huddled up in his poncho, and his canteen shone red. There the ohia trees were relieved blackly against the sky. The scene started out from the darkness and with the suddenness of a revelation. We felt the pungency of sulpurous fumes in the night air. A sound as of the sea broke on our ears, rising and falling as if breaking on the shore, but the ocean was thirty miles away. The heavens became redder and brighter, and when we reached the crater- house at eight, clouds of red vapour mixed with flame were curling ceaselessly out of a huge invisible pit of blackness, and Kilauea was all its fiery glory. We had reached the largest active volcano in the world, the " place of everlasting burnings." Rarely was light more welcome than that which twinkled from under the verandah of the lonely crater house on a rany night. The hospitable landlord of this unique dwelling lifted me from my horse, and carried me into a pleasant room thoroughly warmed by a large wood fire, and I hastily retired to bed to spend much of the bitterly cold night in watching the fiery vapours rolling up out of the infinate darkness, and in dreading the decent into the crater. The heavy clouds were crimson with the reflection, ad soon after midnight jets of flame of the most peculiar colour leapt fitfully into the air, accompanied by a dull throbbing sound. This morning was wet and murky asmany mornings are here, and the view from the door was a blank up to ten o'clock, when the mist rolled away and revealed the mystery of last night, the mighty crater whose vast terminal wall is only a few yards from this house. We think of a volcano as a cone. This is a different thing. The abyss, which really is at a heigt of nearly 4,000 feet on the flank of Mauna Loa, has the appearance of a great pit on a rolling plain. But such a pit! It is nine miles in circumference, and its lowest area, which not long ago fell about 300 feet, just as ice on a pond falls when the water below it is withdrawn, covers six square miles. The depth of the crater varies from 800 to 1,100 feet in different years, according as the molten sea below is at flood or ebb. Signs of volcanic activity are present more or less throughout its whole depth, and for some distance round its margin, in th form of steam cracks, jets of sulphurous vapour, blowin cones, accumulating deposits of acicular crystals of sulpher, &c., and the pit itself is constantly rent or shaken by earthquakes. Grand eruptions occur at intervals with circumstances of indescribable terror and dignity, but Kilauea does not limit its activity to these outbursts, but has exhibited its marvellous phenomena through all known time in a lake or lakes in the southern part of the crater three miles from this side. This lake, the Hale-mau-mau, or House of Everlasting Fire of the Hawaiian mythology, the abode of the deaded goddess Pele, is approachable with safety during an eruption. The spectacle, however, varies almost daily, and at times the level of the lava in the pit within a pit is so low, and the suffocating gases are evolved in such enormous quantities, that travellers are unable to see anything. There had been no news from it in a week, and as nothing was to be seen but a very faint bluish vapour hanging around its margine, the prospect was not encouraging. When I have learned more about the Hawaiian volcanoes, I shall tell you more of their Phenomena, but tonight I shall write to you my first impressions of what we actually saw on this January 31st. My highest expectations have been infinitely exceeded, and I can hardly write soberly after such a spectable, especially while through the open door I see the fiery clouds of vapour from the pit rollig up into a sky, glowing as if itself on fire. We were accompanied into the crater by a comical native guide, who mimicked us constantly, our Hilo guide, who " makes up " a little English, a native woman from Kona, who speaks imperfect English poetically, and her brother who speaks none. I was conscious that we foreign women with our stout staffs and grotesque dress looked like caricatures, and the natives, who had a keen sense of ludicrous, did not conceal that they thought us so. The first descent down the terminal wall of the crater is very precipitous, but it and the slope which extends to the second descent are thickly covered with ohias, ohelos ( a species of whortleberry), sadlerias, polypodiums, silver grass, and a great variety of bulbous plants many of which bore clusters of berries of a brilliant turquoise blue. The " beyond " looked terrible. I could not help clinging to these vestiges of the kindlier mood of nature in which she sought cover the horrors she had wrought. The next descent is over rough blocks and ridges of brokn lava, and appears to form part of a break which extends irregularly round the whole crater, and which probably marks a tremendous subsidence of its floor. Here the last apparent vegetation was left behind, and the familiar earth. We were in a new Plutonic region of blackness and awful desolation, the accustomed sights and sounds of nature all gone. Terraces, cliffs, lakes, ridges, rivers, mountain sides, whirlpools, chasms of lava surround us, solid, black, and shining, as if vitrified, or an ashen grey, stained yellw with sulphur here and there, or white with alum. The lava was fissured and upheaved everywhere by eartquakes, hot underneath, and emitting a hot breath. After more than an hour of very difficult climbing, we reached the lowest level of the crater, pretty nearly a mile across, presenting from above the appearance of a sea at rest, but on crossing it we found it to be an expanse of waves and convolutions of ashy-coloured lava, with huge cracks filled up with black iridescent rolls of lava, only a few weeks old. Parts of it are very rough and ridgy, jammed together like field ice, or compacted by rolls of lava which may have swelled up from beneath, but the largest part of the area presents the appearance of huge coiled hawsers, the ropy formation of the lava rendering the illusion almost perfect. These are riven by deep cracks which emit hot sulphurous vapours. Strange to say, in one of these, deep down in that black ad awful region, three slender metamorphosed ferns were growing, three exquisite forms, the fragile heralds of the great forest of vegetatin, which probably in coming years will clothe this pit with beauty. Truly they seemed to speak of the love of God. On our right there was a precipitous ledge, and a recent flow of lava had poured over it, cooling as it fell into columnar shapes as symmetrical as those of Staffa. It took us a full hour to cross this deep depreson, and as long to maser a steep hot ascent of about 400 feet, formed by a recent lava flow, from Hale-mau-mau into the basin. This lava hill is an extraordinary sight--- a flood of molton stone, solidifying as it ran down the declivity, formng arrested waves, streams, eddies, gigantic convolutions, forms of snakes, stems of trees, gnarled roots, crookd water-pipes, all involved and contorted on a gigantic scale, a wilderness of force and dread. Over one steeper place the lava had run in a fiery cascade about 100 feet wide. Some had reached the ground, some had been arrested midway, but all had taken the aspect of stems of trees. In some of the crevices I picked up a quantity of very curious filamentose lava, known as " Pele's hair." It resembles coarse spun glass, and is of a greenish or yellowish-brown colour. In many places the whole surface of the lava is covered with this substance seen through aglazed medium. During eruptons, when fire fountains play to a great height, and drops of lava are thrown in all directions, the wind spins themout in clear green or yellow threads two or three feet long, which catch and adhere to projecting points. As we ascended, the flow became hotter under our feet, as well as more porous and glistening. It was so hot that a shower of rain hissed as it fell upon it. The crust became increasingly insecure, and necessitated our walking in single file with the guide in front, to test the security of the footing.I fell through several times, and always into holes full of suphurous steam, so malignantly acid that my strong dog skn gloves were burned through as I raised myself on my hands. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Letter V continued in Part 3. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/hi/statewide/newspapers/letterso64nnw.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/hifiles/ File size: 12.1 Kb