Mauna Loa

“ Today we had our first glimpse of Hilo, the second city of the Territory, on its matchless site at the feet of Mauna Loa, divided by two rivers, the Wailuku tearing its way down a deep and tortuous gorge. Nothing could be more impressive than the pretty town’s background of steadily rising mountain of sugar cane and forest and twisted lava-flow. ”

“ The fading slopes of Mauna Loa, whose far from moribund crater is second in size only to Kilauea’s, beckoned alluringly to us lovers of saddle and wilderness. One cannot urge too insistently the delusive eye-snare of Hawaii’s heights, because an elastic fancy, continuously on the stretch, is needful to realize the true proportions. ”

“ The diversification is endless, from the lava shores of South Puna to the barking sands of Kauai. On every island break-neck mountain climbing abounds. One can shiver above timber-line on the snow-caps of Mauna Kea or Mauna Loa, swelter under the banyan at sleepy old Lahaina, swim in clear ocean water that effervesces like champagne on ten thousand beaches, or sleep under blankets every night in the upland pastures of the great cattle ranges and awaken each morning to the song of sky-larks and the crisp, snappy air of spring. ”

“ When we sallied forth, four sure-footed ponies stood saddled at the door, and Kalaua, Kea, Frank, and myself, mounting our careering steeds (only they didn't career) , began our ascent to the cloud-capped summit. Mauna Loa, that bald cone, is almost as high as any peak in the Alps, rising some 14,000 feet above sea level; but the ascent over the lava plains is gentle and gradual, and the top, in this warm and delicious climate, still remains far below the level of perpetual snow. Nevertheless it is a long and tedious ride, some thirty miles, from Hilo to the top ”

“ Mauna Loa soars 13,675 feet. Its snowy dome [Pg 238] shares with Mauna Kea, which rises even higher, the summit honors of the islands. From Hilo, the principal port of the island of Hawaii, Mauna Loa suggests the back of a leviathan, its body hidden in the mists. The way up, through forests of ancient mahogany and tangles of giant tree-fern, then up many miles of lava slopes, is one of the inspiring tours in the mountain world. The summit crater, Mokuaweoweo, three-quarters of a mile long by a quarter mile wide, is as spectacular in action as that of Kilauea. ”

“ The lava flows from Mauna Loa north and south arrange themselves symmetrically about this design, with every evidence that Mauna Loa dome was piled up in a spoon underlaid by Hualalai, Mauna Kea, and Kilauea. It is obvious on the map that Mauna Loa upbuilding was obstructed by grandpa Mauna Kea and that it has been forced off to the southwest [165] by the two daughters, to build the elongate point of the island. ”

“ Kalaua's brow darkened somewhat, as if he didn't like to hear Mauna Loa so cavalierly described, and he murmured a few words in Hawaiian to Kea, in which I could only catch the name of Pélé, repeated very earnestly several times over.
The house was large, roomy, and well furnished, with bamboo chairs and neat native bedsteads; and the dinner, to which Frank at least did full justice, seemed to promise well for our future treatment under the old chief's hospitable roof. Kalaua himself grew somewhat less grim, too, as the meal progressed. Nothing thaws the soul like dinner. ”

“ That night, when the first vivid crack broke the oily dark surface, Jack, with a gasp of delight, seized my hand, lighted a match above it, and peered closely at a big black opal, precious loot of Australia’s Lightning Ridge, that I had named “Kilauea” before ever we had seen Pélé’s colors. Tipping the stone from slanting plane to plane, its blue-gray dull face cracked into flaming lines for all the world like the phenomenon before us in the wounded side of Mauna Loa—a truer replica of Halemaumau than any painting. ”

“ Above the horizon-line swell the broad-based shapes of Mauna-kea, Mauna-loa and Hualalai. In the immediate foreground, overlooking the caldera—where are Pele’s headquarters—we see two figures, standing, crouching, or reclining, the lovers whose stolen bliss has furnished Pele with the pretext for her fiery discipline. Measured by the forces in opposition to them, their human forms shrink into insignificance. Measured by the boldness of their words and actions, one has to admit the power of the human will to meet the hardest shocks of fortune. ”

“ Already the glow from Kilauea’s raging furnace was coloring the dark clouds beyond Mauna Loa’s long incline. Any time of the night one could reckon upon that intense, lurid wine-glow to the southeast.
Breakfasts were mainly of plumpest plover, proudly served to the queen’s taste by Ondera, the Japanese cook, a broken-down cowboy. For some reason it had been hard for me to think of the Japanese as cowboys; but men who are fortunate enough to get and keep them say there are none more able nor more faithful. ”

“ The Late Eruption of Mauna Loa.—The Rev. Titus Coan gives, in the American Journal of Science, a vivid description of the latest eruption of Mokua-weo-weo, the terminal crater of Mauna Loa, Hawaii. The eruption commenced between nine and ten in the evening of February 14, 1877, with great splendor. The summit of the mountain appeared as though melted, and the heavens seemed on fire. Vast masses of illumined steam, like columns of flaming gas, were shot upward to a height of 14,000 to 17,000 feet, and then spread out into a great fiery cloud. ”

“ One of the older and more intelligent fishermen says that from his boyhood he has known a pushing up and down, backward and forward, of the waters every time that Mauna Loa has shown activity in either of its great craters. ”

“ It has been largely absorbed in the immense swelling bulk of Mauna Loa, which, springing later from the island soil near by, no doubt diverting Kilauea's vents far below sea-level, has sprawled over many miles. So nearly has the younger absorbed the older, that Kilauea's famous pit of molten lava seems almost to lie upon Mauna Loa's slope. ”

“ You are ten thousand feet above them, but yet you seem to stand in a basin, with the green islands here and there, and the valleys and the wide ocean, and the remote snow-peak of Mauna Loa, all raised up before and above you, and pictured out like a brightly tinted map hung at the ceiling of a room.
You look up at everything; nothing is below you. It has a singular and startling effect to see a miniature world thus seemingly hung in mid-air. ”

“ Kilauea is the largest of these outlets, or craters. It is a hard journey to climb even so far as this. Very few people are daring enough to go [86] still farther and journey to the summit of Mauna Loa.
Auwae's mother actually grows excited while she gets her little daughter ready for the trip. She does not care to go herself.
"It is too much work. I know I should get tired; but you can tell me all about it, my child, when you come back. Then I can see it through your eyes. And Upa's father will be kind, and will take good care of you. ”

“ In 1855 an eruption of Mauna Loa occurred. The lava flowed toward Hilo, and for several months, spreading through the dense forests which belt the mountain, crept slowly shorewards, threatening this beautiful portion of Hawaii with the fate of the Cities of the Plain. For five months the inhabitants watched the inundation, which came a little nearer every day. Should they flee or not? Would their beautiful homes become a waste of jagged lava and black sand, like the neighboring district of Puna, once as fair as Hilo? ”

“ MAUI CONQUERS THE SUN.
Hina, the goddess who in the long ago made her home in the great cave beneath Rainbow Falls, was especially gifted in the art of tapa making. So wonderfully artistic and fine were the tapas of Hina that people journeyed from all parts of the Island to view them and to covet. Even across the mighty shoulders of Mauna Loa from Kona and Kailua and down the rugged Hamakua Coast from Waipio they came, and from the other islands as well. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A meal together is a capital introduction. In the course of ten minutes we were all four of us on excellent terms with one another. Kea had introduced to us the dark old man as her Uncle Kalaua, a Hawaiian chief of the old stock of some distinction, whose house was remarkable for being situated higher up the slopes of the great volcano, Mauna Loa, than any other on the entire island. She herself, she let us know by casual side-glimpses, was a half-caste by birth, though she hardly looked as dark as many Europeans ”

“ During these months of 1874–1875 there were magnificent exhibitions of clouds reflecting volcanic fires caused by the upburst of lava fountains.
The summit crater of Mauna Loa is about 13,000 feet altitude. Snow has frequently covered the top of the mountain, lying in deep banks around the edge of the crater. The cold has acted quickly upon the lake of fire, congealing a large part of the surface into a hard floor of lava. ”

“ Poliahu in legendary battles has met Pele many times. She has kept the upper part of the mountain desolate under her mantle of snow and ice, but down toward the sea most fertile and luxuriant valleys and hillside slopes attest the gifts of the goddess to the beauty of the island and the welfare of men.
Out of Mauna Loa, Pele has stepped forth again and again, and has hurled eruptions of mighty force and great extent against the maiden of the snow-mantle, but the natives say that in this battle Pele has been and always will be defeated. ”

“ Kea answered with a faint thrill of solemn awe in her hushed voice. "Oh, don't say that. It's—it's so very dangerous." And she glanced aside timidly at her uncle.
Kalaua looked up at us quickly with a suspicious glance. "Observations on Mauna Loa?" he cried in a very stern tone. "On our great volcano? Scientific observations? The man is ill advised in truth who tries to go poking and prying too much about Mauna Loa!"
"Oh, you needn't be afraid," Frank answered laughing; "need they, Tom? It's not by any means our first experience of eruptions. My brother's an awful dab at volcanoes, you know. ”

“ Hawaiians, as all of us know, are very superstitious and appealed to their Princess Ruth, the last of the Kamehameha dynasty, to use her influence with the gods to stop Mauna Loa's evil. They believed that she had the power to stop the lava avalanche. Princess Ruth was a lady who weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of four hundred pounds, and her residence was in Honolulu. Heeding her people's outcry, without delay she summoned her retinue of servants and proceeded to Hilo, taking with her a white pig. ”

“ In the very ancient time Mauna Kea threw out vast Pele fires, but long ago these eruptions have been imprisoned. The earth has covered them in on all sides and the abundant soil, large trees, and green things of many kinds are multiplying. But not so Mauna Loa and Hualalai, other mountains of this island Hawaii. Pele fires have burst forth from them even up to recent times. ”

“ It always does so before it begins to flow out upon the slopes of the mountain."
She was quite right. It was clearly rising. I was overjoyed. Nothing could have happened more neatly or opportunely for the interests of science. Our arrival at Mauna Loa seemed to prove, as it were, the signal for the mountain to burst out at once into full activity. We were in luck's way. We had come on the very eve of an eruption.
Kea ran down to fetch her uncle. The old man came up, and peered over cautiously into the depths of the crater. Then he called aloud in Hawaiian to his trembling niece. ”

“ At noon the snowy peaks of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa detached themselves from the fleecy cloud-racks down to E.S.E., and steadily loomed higher as the sun declined. In the first watch the wind began falling lighter, by midnight it was only coming in fluky puffs, and at daybreak Lurline found [35] herself in the most windlessly somnolent patch of salt water in all the length and breadth of the Pacific, the lee of the two great 13,000-foot volcanoes that form the backbone of the island of Hawaii. ”

“ It was at the suggestion of Ku-moku-halii and Keawe-nui-kau of Hilo that the name was conferred. They also gave the name Mauna-loa to the mountain mass that faced them on the west, “because,” said they, “our journey was long.”
Night fell and they slept. In the morning, when the elepaio uttered its note, they rose and used the Paoa staff. The omens were favorable, and Pele decided that this was the place for her to establish a permanent home.
The people immediately began to set out many plants valuable for food; among them a variety of kalo called aweü, well suited for upland growth ”

“ Captain Dutton, in a paper on Hawaiian volcanoes, prepared for the United States Geological Survey, and published in its Fourth Annual Report for 1882-83, thus describes the appearance at the great crater as it was in 1882.
"The summit of Mauna Loa (Mt. Loa) , is a broad and large platform about five miles in length and four miles in width, within which is sunken the great caldera called Mokuaweoweo. The distance from the point where we first reach the summit to the brink of the pit is about a mile and a half. The surface of the platform is much more rugged than the slopes just ascended. ”