Hawaii, Sandwich Islands--Crater of Kilauea--Its awful Aspect--
Fiery Lake and Islands--Jets of Lava--Depth of Crater and Surface
of Lake--Bank of Sulphur--Curious Rainbow--Mouna-Kaah and Mouna-
Loa--Eruption of the Latter in 1840--Recent Eruption--Great Jet and
Torrent of Lava--Burning of the Forests--Great Whirlwinds--
Underground Explosions--Other Volcanoes in the Pacific.


Hawaii is well known in history as being the island where the
celebrated navigator Captain Cook was killed. The name used to be
written Owhyhee; but a better apprehension of the native
pronunciation has led to its being altered into Hawaii. No one who
visits it in the present day need be afraid of sharing the fate of
poor Captain Cook; for the descendants of the savages who, in his
time, inhabited the island, have now, through the labours of
Christian missionaries, become a very decent sort of quiet, well-
behaved Christian people.

Hawaii, which is the largest of a group called the Sandwich
Islands, can boast of the greatest volcanic crater in the world. It
is called sometimes Kirauea, sometimes Kilauea; for the natives
seem not very particular about the pronunciation of their _l_
and their _r_; but where one uses _l_ another as
pertinaciously employs _r_, while a third set use a sound
between the two, as you may have heard some people do at home.
Situated on the lower slopes of a lofty mountain called Mouna-Roa,
or Loa (for there is the same dubiety about the _l_ and the
_r_ here as in the former case), the crater of Kilauea is a
vast plain between fifteen and sixteen miles in circumference, and