f swift
golden-tinted rivers. On one side of the lake the principal object of
attack was an island, dark and craggy, against which the lava-waves
rolled with impetuous fury. On the other, they swept precipitately into
a great cavern, carrying away the gigantic stalactites which hung at its
entrance, and filling it with a thunderous roar like that of contending
armies.

* * * * *

Scenes there are many in this wide world of ours which neither the craft
of the scribe nor the skill of the painter can hope to reproduce, and
this is one of them. It is awful in its grandeur, terrible in its
sublimity, like Milton's Satan. It fascinates, and yet repels; charms
the eye, while it chills the heart. One trembles with the sense of a
dire terrific power, which at any moment may leap into the clay, and
sweep the shattered island into destruction. But dreadful as it is by
day, a deeper dread attaches to it by night, when the glare of those
leaping fountains and rolling billows of molten lava is reflected
athwart the darkness of heaven. And as the night advances and the
darkness increases, a wonderful phantasmagoria of colour invests the
fiery lake--jet black merges suddenly into palest grey; the deepest
maroon changes, through cherry and scarlet, into the exquisitest hues of
pink and blue and violet; the richest brown pales, through orange and
yellow, into a delicate straw. Lady Brassey adds that there was yet
another shade, which can be described only by the term "molten lava
colour." The wreaths and wheeling clouds of smoke and vapour were by all
these borrowed lights and tints translated into beautiful gleaming
mist-like creations--belonging neither to earth nor air, but born of the
molten flame and seething fire--which seemed splendidly and
appropriately displayed against the amphitheatre of black peaks,
pinnacles, and crags rising in the background. Of these great pieces
would sometimes break off, and with a crash fall into the burning lake,
there to be remelted and in due time thrown up anew.[33]

The time spent at Honolulu by Lady Brassey was by no means wasted. She
kept both eyes and ears well open, and suffered nothing to escape her
which could throw any light on the manners and customs of the Hawaiian
population. Though not a deep, she was a close and an accurate
observer; and her book may advantageously be consulted by others than
the "general reader."

The Hawaiians, as a people with a g