The Volcano Kilauea

Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.

From The Volcano Kilauea by Kate Marcia Forbes, 1920.

In these days, the tendency of the times is search for the novel and unusual. It applies to almost all lines of business. The public is satisfied with nothing less than an improvement over past efforts, or something it has never had or seen before. The traveler, also, when he is seized with an attack of “wanderlust" and begins to feel the desire for strange things in strange lands, must, of necessity, get away from the beaten tracks. Europe, war torn, is temporarily, at least, out of the question, so that hitherto somewhat neglected parts of the world are coming into their own.

History erred when teaching us that there are but seven greatest wonders of the world. All those so specified, deserve being placed in a class by themselves, yet there is one marvel outside this classification which stands superlative, outranks all the rest. Hawaii, largest island of the Hawaiian group, contains it. Thirty-six miles from the town of Hilo, and a night's trip by boat from Honolulu, is to be found the volcano, Kilauea, a greater wonder than all the other seven, beside which, all man-made things seem trifling and insignificant.

With the world for a stage, Kilauea, largest continuously active and most accessible volcano, "the only tame one in captivity" puts on a continuous performance, unfolds the most spectacular panorama ever presented to view.

Exploring a volcano has always been associated in my mind with climbing a mountain's precipitous sides, a strenuous job calling for a guide, ropes and an Alpen stock, wearisome travel, toiling knee-deep through ashes and over rocky trails. How different is the experience here. The ascent is so gradual, one fails to perceive any likeness to a mountain. Think of driving all the way to it in an automobile as comfortably as when one goes out for an afternoon call, with no more hardships than would be encountered going to church on a Sunday morning.

A fine cinder covered road, smooth as a garden path, extends the whole distance. Hedging either side are giant tree ferns, whose graceful, feathery fronds tower house-high above, rising from trunks big as an oak tree. Along this road, smaller ferns grow, and climbing vines—a wilderness of green. Vegetation and parasitic plants are massed on every tree trunk, in rock and crevice where a grain of soil can lodge. Thickets of guava and patches of berries drop their luscious fruit in careless profusion. Nature has been so lavish in her bestoyal of fruit and other edible things in these islands, that almost is it possible to literally obey the Scriptural injunction to "toil not, neither spin."

Blooming bushes of fuchias, heliotrope, nasturtiums, roses, begonias, clumps of yellow and white ginger flowers, all growing wild, are clustered everywhere and waft a fragrant breath o'er a land "Where the birds are ever singing, and the weather ever fine."

Scenically, the land of Heart's Desire and the Hawaiian Islands are one and the same place.

All that imagination can picture of beauty is to be found here, blue skies flecked with cumulous, cottony clouds mirrored in opal seas;—verdure covered mountains looking from a distance, like immense billows of green velvet, down whose sides cascading waterfalls tumble, whose wind blown mists fling rainbows for our further charm, refract all the colors of a prism; a land of sunshine not too ardent, and at the end of perfect days, sunsets that leave one at peace with God and man. This is not a description of one choice day, picked from the calendar, but the sum total, three hundred and sixty-five.

Small wonder the native Hawaiian is noted for his affable, kindly disposition; small wonder that his voice and heart are attuned to song. God's harmonies of color and sound encompass him. He is a second Adam, born into an earthly Paradise.

One can wander at will through thickest jungle and encounter no harmful animal, no poisonous plant, and, most remarkable, no snakes. There have never been any here, and the territorial law prohibits their importation, even for exhibition purposes.

I digress, this lovelmess delights, but the "sumum magnum" lies beyond us.

Here and there, as we bowl along the winding road, a rosy light is seen. Every turn and clearing in the dense forests presents a brighter beam, a lengthening vista, a broader, higher illumination. Trees are left behind, the summit area is reached, Kilauea lies before us, at an altitude of about 4000 feet.

Imagine a Chicago fire of 1871 casting its lights and reflections on the clouds above, rimmed round by an horizon, velvety black. A full moon, rising, floods every object with silvery light, softens each weird, rugged outline. One great, yellow, luminous star hangs glowing in a sky, the exact intense purple-blue shade of Maxfield Parrish's backgrounds. Nowhere in the world do the stars shine with such brilliancy, seem so close, as in the tropics—and the moon!—an ethereal symphony, a Schubert's Serenade of light.

Mauna Loa, next which Kilauea lies, towers majestically above, the largest single mountain in the world, visible almost in her entirety. She stretches her length about 80 miles, her breadth 40 to 50, rising in a gradual slope from sea level to 14,000 feet, like an enormous, slightly flattened dome. Her sky line is unbroken, no jagged peaks are seen, even her sides appear to be a gentle slope.

In the intervening space between the light from the pit, and circle of darkness, are barren fields of lava rock, giant's pebbles cast out ages ago, covering a vast area of land, miles of dead, burned out cinder, absolutely arid, utterly desolate. Constant clouds of steam uprising from cracks and holes, at intervals all over this surface, hint of the still burning depths.

With grinding brakes we move on, beginning the descent of the crater, darting through clouds of steam, assailed by pungent, choking whiffs of sulphur fumes. We "park" our automobile a few yards from the brink, follow a path a few steps and seat ourselves two feet from the edge of the pit.

Shading our eyes from the heat, we look down in Halemaumau, "The House of Everlasting Fire." Three hundred feet below, a bubbling, seething pool of boiling lava, living fire, in width 200 feet and in length 700 feet, shoots up rockets of flame 70 feet and more into the air, spray showers of molten rock and burning gas, with a roar louder than the mightiest surf that ever beat on rock-bound, stormy shores.

Imagine the 20th Century Limited tearing through Sleepy Hollow at midnight, rails rocking, whistle shrieking, bell clanging, with every air brake and steam exhaust blowing and hissing—then you have some faint conception of the noise.

Liquid lava is of such a character and light-weight, yeasty consistency, that it cools almost instantly where the air strikes it, a thin crust forms and turns black, even at a temperature of from 1800 to 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, measured heat of the pit.

The "clinical thermometer" used for insertion under Madame Pele's feverish, flaming tongue, is a unique device.

A galvanized iron wire, coiled round like a spring, was contained in an ordinary one-inch iron pipe. Inside the coiled wire was a battery of six Seeger cones, made of pipe clay, such as are used in the porcelain industry. These cones fuse at certain degrees of heat, ranging from 770 to 1200 degrees and higher. Lengths of pipe amounting to 220 feet were used. Standing on an eminence of the crag mass, at the nearest possible approach to the lava river, the pipe was slid out over the cooled crust to a fountain area. At the moment when the lava skin or crust broke, and fountaining or geyser action began, the pipe was thrust deeply down into the flaming, white hot lava, which immediately began solidifying around the pipe. Withdrawing it, tests proved a temperature of 2053 degrees.

Uncountable fountains and geysers, yellow as gold, play in the pitchy mass. Surrounding these most active fire fountains, lava rivers flow rapidly, thick, viscid, undulating, serpentine, heaving like a loose cover over a cauldron of steam. The leaven of this huge mass is gas, spouting and flaming from the very bowels of the earth.

As we gaze, suddenly this Titan's tarbucket is ripped asunder. Luminous streaks appear in every direction. Giant flaming fingers rend this inky surface like chain lightning zig-zagging before a summer's storm. Ever and quickly widening, these cracks extend until the whole mass breaks. Huge black bubbles, bursting, throw jets of golden lava high above. Leaping, writhing rockets of liquid fire hiss through the air, spreading showers of glowing rock sparks, a Brobdignagian pyrotechnic display. Below, huge sections, like chunks of asphalt a city block long, swirl and are tossed about in the currents, like corks on an ocean wave, turn end up, roll over and convert themselves into seething furnaces, cauldrons of bubbling gold, whose molten, glowing contents boil over the edges and turn black the moment of escape.

Forbes, Kate Marcia, The Volcano Kilauea, Star-Bulletin Press, 1920.

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