The
banks on each side of the stream were red-hot, jagged and overhanging.
As we viewed it rushing out from under its ebon counterpane, and in the
twinkling of an eye diving again into its fiery den, it seemed to say,
'Stand off! Scan me not! I am God's messenger. A work to do. Away!'"
Later he wrote again:--"The great summit fountain is still playing with
fearful energy, and the devouring stream rushes madly down toward us. It
is now about ten miles distant, and heading directly for our bay. In
a few days we may be called to announce the painful fact that our
beauteous Hilo is no more,--that our lovely, our inimitable landscape,
our emerald bowers, our crescent strand and our silver bay are blotted
out. A fiery sword hangs over us. A flood of burning ruin approaches us.
Devouring fires are near us. With sure and solemn progress the glowing
fusion advances through the dark forest and the dense jungle in our
rear, cutting down ancient trees of enormous growth and sweeping away
all vegetable life. For months the great summit furnace on Mauna Loa has
been in awful blast. Floods of burning destruction have swept wildly
and widely over the top and down the sides of the mountain. The wrathful
stream has overcome every obstacle, winding its fiery way from its high
source to the bases of the everlasting hills, spreading in a molten sea
over the plains, penetrating the ancient forests, driving the bellowing
herds, the wild goats and the affrighted birds before its lurid glare,
leaving nothing but ebon blackness and smoldering ruin in its track.
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