floor of lava.

"Satin! What had looked so smooth and tempting from a thousand
feet above, turned out to be a surface more troubled and uneven
than the ocean in the most violent storm. And that tiny thread
of smoke, toward which our faces were set, lay three miles
distant--three miles that were worse than nine on an ordinary
road.

"How we worked that passage! up hill and down hill, over hard
pointed lava that cut through our shoes like knife blades; over
light, crumbled lava into which we sank up to our knees; over
hills of lava that were, themselves, covered with smaller hills;
into ravines and over steam-cracks, some of which we could jump
with the aid of our long poles, and some of which we had to find
our way around; steam-cracks whose depths we could not see, and
into which we thrust our walking-sticks, drawing them out charred
black or aflame; over lava so hot that we ran as rapidly and
lightly as possible, to prevent our shoes being scorched.
Three hours of this kind of work for the three miles, and
_Hale-mau-mau_, or 'House of Everlasting Fire,' lay spitting and
moaning at our feet!

"A lake of boiling lava is what the column of smoke marked out to
us,--a pit within a pit,--a lake of raging lava fifty feet below
us, of which you have here the picture taken 'from life.'

"It was so hot and suffocating on the brink of this lake that we
cut eye-holes in our pocket-handkerchiefs and wore them as masks.
Even then we had to run back every few moments for a breath of