sen to the
height of 10,000 feet.

An eruption of still greater violence took place in 1865, characterized
by similar phenomena, particularly the throwing up of jets of lava. This
fiery fountain continued to play without intermission for twenty days
and nights, varying only as respects the height to which the jet arose,
which is said to have ranged between 100 and 1,000 feet, the mean
diameter of the jet being about 100 feet. This eruption was accompanied
by explosions so loud as to have been heard at a distance of forty
miles.

A cone of about 300 feet in height, and about a mile in circumference,
was accumulated round the orifice whence the jet ascended. It was
composed of solid matters ejected with the lava, and it continued
to glow like a furnace, notwithstanding its exposure to the air. The
current of lava on this occasion flowed to a distance of thirty-five
miles, burning its way through the forests, and filling the air with
smoke and flames from the ignited timber. The glare from the glowing
lava and the burning trees together was discernible by night at a
distance of 200 miles from the island.

THE LAVA FLOW OF 1880

A succeeding great lava flow was that which began on November 6, 1880.
Mr. David Hitchcock, who was camping on Mauna Kea at the time of this
outbreak, saw a spectacle that few human eyes have ever beheld. "We
stood," writes he, "on the very edge of that flowing river of rock. Oh,
what a sight it was! Not twenty feet from us was this immense bed of
rock slowly moving forward with irresistible force, bearing on its
surface huge rocks and immense boulders of tons' weight as water would
carry a toy-boat. The whole front edge was one bright red mass of solid
rock incessantly breaking off from the towering mass and rolling down
to the foot of it, to be again covered by another avalanche of white-hot
rocks and sand. The whole mass at its front edge was from twelve to
thirty feet in height. Along the entire line of its advance it was
one crash of rolling, sliding, tumbling red-hot rock. We could hear no
explosions while we were near the flow, only a tremendous roaring like
ten thousand blast furnaces all at work at once."

This was the most extensive flow of recent years, and its progress from
the interior plain through the dense forests above Hilo and out on to
the open levels close to the town was startling and menacing enough.
Through the woods especially it was a turbulent, seething mass that