a-level. Taking the area of England at 50,000 square miles, this
mass of volcanic matter would cover that entire country to a depth of
274 feet. We must remember, however, that what is above sea-level is
only a small fraction of the total amount, since it sweeps down below
the waves hundreds of miles on every side.

CRATER OF HALEAKALA

Of the lava openings on these islands, the extinct one of Haleakala,
as stated, with its twenty-seven miles circumference, is far the most
stupendous. It is easy of access, the mountain sides leading to it
presenting a gentle slope; while the walls of the crater, in places
perpendicular, in others are so sloping that man and horse can descend
them. The pit varies from 1500 to 2000 feet in depth, its bottom being
very irregular from the old lava flows and the many cinder cones, these
still looking as fresh as though their fires had just gone out. Some
of these cones are over 500 feet high. There is a tradition among the
natives that the vast lava streams which in the past flowed from the
crater to the sea continued to do so in the period of their remote
ancestors. They still, indeed, appear as if recent, though there are
to-day no signs of volcanic activity anywhere on this island.

In fact, the only volcano now active in the Hawaiian Islands is Mauna
Loa, in the southern section of the Island of Hawaii. A striking feature
of this is that it has two distinct and widely disconnected craters, one
on its summit, the other on its flank, at a much lower level. The latter
is the vast crater of Kilauea, the largest active crater known on the
face of the globe.

MISS BIRD IN THE CRATER OF KILAUEA

We cannot offer a better description of the aspect of this lava abyss
than to give Miss Bird's eloquent description of her adventurous descent
into it:

"The abyss, which really is at a height of four thousand feet on the
flank of Mauna Loa, has the appearance of a pit on a rolling plain. But
such a pit! It is quite nine miles in circumference, and at its lowest
area--which not long ago fell about three hundred feet, just as the ice
on a pond falls when the water below is withdrawn--covers six square
miles. The depth of the crater varies from eight hundred to one thousand
feet, 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 along its margin, in the form of steam-cracks,
jets of sulp