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on a pond falls when the water below is withdrawn--covers six square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 sulphurous vapor, blowing cones, accumulating deposits of
acicular crystals of sulphur, etc., and the pit itself is constantly
rent and shaken by earthquakes.
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