you more of their phenomena, but tonight I shall only write to you
my first impressions of what we actually saw on this January 31st.
My highest expectations have been infinitely exceeded, and I can
hardly write soberly after such a spectacle, especially while
through the open door I see the fiery clouds of vapour from the pit
rolling up into a sky, glowing as if itself on fire.

We were accompanied into the crater by a comical native guide, who
mimicked us constantly, our Hilo guide, who "makes up" a little
English, a native woman from Kona, who speaks imperfect English
poetically, and her brother who speaks none. I was conscious that
we foreign women with our stout staffs and grotesque dress looked
like caricatures, and the natives, who have a keen sense of the
ludicrous, did not conceal that they thought us so.

The first descent down the terminal wall of the crater is very
precipitous, but it and the slope which extends to the second
descent are thickly covered with ohias, ohelos (a species of
whortleberry), sadlerias, polypodiums, silver grass, and a great
variety of bulbous plants many of which bore clusters of berries of
a brilliant turquoise blue. The "beyond" looked terrible. I could
not help clinging to these vestiges of the kindlier mood of nature
in which she sought to cover the horrors she had wrought. The next
descent is over rough blocks and ridges of broken lava, and appears
to form part of a break which extends irregularly round the whole
crater, and which probably marks a tremendous subsidence of its
floor. Here the last apparent vegetation was left behind, and the
familiar earth. We were in a new Plutonic region of blackness and
awful desolation, the accustomed sights and sounds of nature all
gone. Terraces, cliffs, lakes, ridges, rivers, mountain sides,