Lava

“ If you stand on the edge of a lava lake, like one of those on the islands of the Hawaiian group, the stifling fumes that rise might make you feel as if you were back at the beginning of the earth's history, when the solid crust was just a thin film on an unstable sea of molten rock, and this volcano but one of the vast number of openings by which the boiling lava and the condensed gases found their way to the surface. Then the rivers ran black with the waste of the rocky earth they furrowed, and there was no vegetation to soften the bleakness of the landscape. ”

“ With a clang, a clash, and a roar, like that of breakers on a rocky coast, waves of blood-red, fiery, liquid lava dashed against the opposing cliffs, and flung their spume high up in the air—waves which were never still, but rolled onwards incessantly to the charge, and as incessantly retired—hustling one another angrily, and hissing and boiling and bubbling, like a sea chafed by adverse wind and current. ”

“ The sky was again darkened, not with dust and ashes, but with snow which fell in glorious abundance, piling deeper, deeper, slipping from the overladen heights in booming avalanches, compacting into glaciers, that flowed over all the landscape, wiping off forests, grinding, sculpturing, fashioning the comparatively featureless lava beds into the beautiful rhythm of hill and dale and ranges of mountains we behold to-day; forming basins for lakes, channels for streams, few soils for forests, gardens, and meadows. ”

“ The air feels like the breath of a sirocco, the tongue becomes parched and horny, and the mouth, nose, and eyes are incessantly assailed by the fine pulverized lava, which rises from the ground with the least breath of air. ”

“ What a contrast between the wooded hillside adjoining, with its carpet of soft volcanic sand, and the jagged surface of the lava! Care must be taken in climbing over the lava, for the sharp points and angles are ever ready to tear one's shoes and hands. It cannot be many years since these hard, cold rocks formed a glowing mass of molten matter creeping quietly out of some hidden fissure which reached far down into the earth. The lava hardened as it became cold, just as does molten iron when led from the furnace to make a casting. ”

“ I sunk down on the slippery ground at the foot of a tall pine, and leaning my throbbing temples on my hands, tried to think and reason.
Do the wild flowers and mountain herbage raise their heads and meet the sunshine and shake off the blight, an hour after the burning lava has swept over their frail beauty? ”

“ Occasionally the molten lava flowing under the superincumbent crust broke through—split a dazzling streak, from five hundred to a thousand feet long, like a sudden flash of lightning, and then acre after acre of the cold lava parted into fragments, turned up edgewise like cakes of ice when a great river breaks up, plunged downward and were swallowed in the crimson cauldron. ”

“ Up and down, in and out, carefully feeling for places for our feet, or sometimes making good way over some old and hardened stream, we proceeded, the lava cracking all about us with the contraction of cooling, the under surface still glowing in the crevices. ”

“ On the morrow they still rode the lava like to clinkers, and it rose higher about them, till suddenly nigh sunset it ended at a turn of their winding road, and naught lay betwixt them and that mighty ness of the mountains, save a wide grassy plain, here and there swelling into low wide risings not to be called hills, and besprinkled with copses of bushes, and with trees neither great nor high. ”

“ On every side of the mountain, so fair to look on when peaceful, so terrible in its wrath, one may follow for miles on miles these ancient currents, radiating from the centre. Here the hard, dark rock rings, as iron would, under your horse’s hoof. There, what was once a death-bearing stream of lava has been covered by time with a rich soil, on which vines and olives flourish. ”

“ We looked into a huge cavity in the heart of the earth. A vast underground plain lay before us, with the black lava of the roof arching above it. It must have been miles across, though we had no way to measure it, and it stretched down into dim hazy distance. Its level was hundreds of feet below us.
At our feet the glistening river of fire plunged down again in a magnificent flaming fall. Below, its luminous liquid was spread out in rivers and lakes and canals, over all the vast plain. The channels ran through an amazing jungle. ”

“ The colours of the hills are bright and varied; the lava rocks are of many shades, and the sun, piercing through strata of pure air, illuminates them with great vividness and force; but after a time the eye tires of the uniform hues of the landscape. ”

“ The sun had now risen in his strength, and his bright rays, reflected from the sparkling sand, and undulated surface of the vitreous lava, dazzled our sight and caused considerable pain, particularly as the trade-wind blew fresh in our faces, and continually drove into our eyes particles of sand. ”

“ The lava has covered with a rich incrustation the fields which it once devastated, and, after having turned a beautiful and fruitful garden into a desert, has again turned the desert into a still more beautiful and fruitful garden. The marks of its ravages are still all around us. The ashes are beneath our feet. ”

“ We may hear an object spoken of a thousand times, but its peculiar features will never be caught till we see it with our own eyes. The stream of lava was small, not broader perhaps than ten feet, but the way in which it flowed down a gentle and tolerably smooth plain was remarkable. ”

“ On the surface of the seething lava in the throat of the volcano there gathers a rock foam, which, when hurled into the air, is cooled and falls as PUMICE,—a spongy gray rock so light that it floats on water. ”

“ It is difficult for one who has not seen it to picture to himself the scene that lay around us. Devastation every where; lava covering the whole region in heaps upon heaps, fantastically piled one on the other. Here a huge isolated mound rises, seemingly cut off on all sides from the lava around; there we see how a mighty stream once rushed down the mountain-side, and cooled gradually into stone. Immense chasms are filled with lava masses, which have lain here for many years cold and motionless, and will probably remain for as many more, for their fury has spent itself. ”

“ Little by little, the fascination of this tremendous thing, of this black and stony sea which once was fire and lava, which is now rock, but still is lava, still is fire inside, seems to fascinate all of us, even the most timid. ”

“ The colors of the rock are those produced by fire: its texture is that of slag from a furnace. One sees how the lava hardened into a crust, which cracked and sank in places, mingling its tumbled edges with the creeping flood not cooled beneath. ”

“ It was a battle between the heavens and the earth,—the stream of molten rock, blinding [Pg 57] hot from the caverns beneath the earth’s crust, meeting the sweet cool waters from the clouds that troop about the mountains or hide their tops in mist and snow. The life-giving flood prevailed over that which brought only defacement and death. The sullen lava flux settled, shrank, and hardened at last, fitting into the granite gorges as melted lead fits the mould into which it is poured. ”

“ The mountain itself is partly covered with the luxuriant greenery of orchards and villas, and partly by the gloomy beds of lava thrown out by successive eruptions—"a black ocean, which was tumbled into a thousand fantastic shapes—a wild chaos of ruin, desolation and barrenness—a wilderness of billowy upheavals, of furious whirlpools, of miniature mountains rent asunder—of gnarled and knotted, wrinkled and twisted masses of blackness that mimicked branching roots, great vines, trunks of trees all interlaced and mingled together ”

“ While we speak Earth unleashes a torrid surprise . Look below you . Molten flaming splinters sprout from funnels , lofty protrusions from surface crust . Springs of ancient wrath spray and fling its repressed fury , heeding not whom or what it incinerates when gravity reclaims lava?s spurts . Roiled dust form smoky plumes , shroud clarity of view , choke and engulf those hopelessly ensnared . Lava is no kin to mercy yet its ashes enriches where it settles , exorcising the curse of previous barrenness . ”

“ A few clear, open sections occur, exposing an elaborate history of seas, and glaciers, and volcanic floods—chapters of cinders and ashes that picture dark days when these bright snowy mountains were clouded in smoke and rivered and laked with living fire. A fearful age, say mortals, when these Sierras flowed lava to the sea. ”

“ When we first began the ascent, the steep climbing told severely on our backs and legs, while the enormous protruding masses of porous lava which fringed the outside portion of the ridge, and over which we had to climb as much by our hands as by our feet, were as sharp as if they had cooled and crystallized but yesterday. ”

“ In places the bed of the river is of sandstone or limestone, in other places of lava, showing that it has all been cut out again where the sandstones and limestones appear; but there is a little yet left where the bed is of lava.
What a conflict of water and fire there must have been here! Just imagine a river of molten [Pg 157] rock, running down into a river of melted snow. What a seething and boiling of the waters; what clouds of steam rolled into the heavens!
Thirty-five miles to-day. Hurrah!
August 26. The cañon walls are steadily becoming higher as we advance. ”

“ These extreme skirts of the mountain consist of various eddies and whirlpools of different dates of lava, whose black, rough substance is scantily covered by the slowly accumulating soil, seldom sufficient to ensure a clothing of vegetation, the black and naked rock forming a vivid contrast to the brightest verdure. ”

“ By keeping our eyes constantly looking upwards, and continuing to haul ourselves up, by catching firm hold on this grass, after an hour's painful toil we gained the summit, where we found ourselves on an extended plain, of several miles expanse, which terminates in the peak, composed of dark grey lava, bare and frightful to behold. ”

“ On every side of it extends a desolate plain of lava that once must have boiled up red-hot from some distant gateway of hell, and fallen hissing into the sea. No tree or bush relieves the dreariness of the landscape, and the mountains are too distant to serve as a background to the buildings ”

“ Our road lay for the most part through immense seas of lava, in the crevices of which a variety of ferns had taken root, and, though relieving the otherwise triste appearance, in many places shut out our view of any thing besides. ”

“ Here a vast arched chasm presented itself in the side of the mountain, from which rushed with the velocity of a flood the clear vivid torrent of lava in perfect fusion, and totally unconnected [Pg 243] with any other matter that was not in a state of complete solution, unattended by any scoriæ on its surface, or gross materials of an insolvent nature; but flowing with the translucency of honey, in regular channels cut finer than art can imitate, and glowing with all the splendour of the sun. ”

“ Half-way up, the mountain-side is dotted with cones of ashes and _cinders, some covered with the scanty shrubbery which centuries have called forth, some barren and recent; while two dark, winding streams of sterile lava descend to the very shore, where they stand congealed in ragged needles and pyramids. ”

“ The surface of ordinary lava-flows remains rough for centuries, and only slowly crumbles down before weathering to form a soil. While tuff-beds provide light and fertile lands, the lava-streams remain marked out among them, as sinuous bands of rock, given over to an irregular growth of woodland. ”

“ Looked at from any point on its surface, one of these lava plains appears as a vast level surface, like that of a lake bottom. This uniformity has been produced either by the lava rolling over a plain or lake bottom, or by the complete effacement of an original, undulating contour of the ground under hundreds of feet of lava in successive sheets. The lava, rolling up to the base of the mountains, has followed the sinuosities of their margin, as the waters of a lake follow its promontories and bays. ”

“ We soon left the region of woods; and being now at an elevation of seven thousand feet above the sea, felt somewhat cold, and buttoned our capotes closer about us. From the ridges of lava along which we rode, by the light of the stars which now became brilliant, we could discern the snow stretching in long lines down the ravines on either hand; and as we advanced, approaching nearer and nearer, until at length it spread in broad fields before us. As the mules could go no farther, we dismounted, and taking an iron-pointed staff in our hands, we commenced the journey over the snows. ”

“ Frequently we chose to walk along the ride of a billow lava, though considerably circuitous, rather than pass up and down its polished sides. Taking the trough, or hollow between the waves, was found safer, but much more fatiguing, as we sunk every step ankle-deep into the sand.
The natives ran along the ridges, stepping like goats from one ridge to another. ”

“ The way from Kalmannstunga to Thingvalla leads over nothing but lava, and the one to-day went entirely through marshes. As soon as we had crossed one, another was before us. Lava seemed to form the soil here, for little portions of this mineral rose like islands out of the marshes. ”