evation about equal to
that of Mount AEtna. This extinct volcano enjoys the distinction of
having the largest crater in the world, a monstrous pit, thirty miles
in circumference and 2,000 feet deep. The vast, irregular floor
contains more than a dozen subsidiary craters or great cones, some of
them 750 feet high. At the Kaupo and Koolau gaps the lava is supposed
to have burst through and made its way down the mountain sides. The
cones are distinctly marked as one looks down upon them; and it is
remarkable that from the summit the eye takes in the whole crater, and
notes all its contents, diminished, of course, by their great
distance. Not a tree, shrub, nor even a tuft of grass obstructs the
view. The natives have no traditions of Haleakala in activity. There
are signs of several lava flows, and one in particular is clearly much
more recent than the others.

The greatest point of interest in the islands is the great crater of
Kilauea. It is nine miles in circumference and perhaps a thousand feet
deep. Nowhere else within the knowledge of mankind is there a living
crater to be compared with it. Moreover, there is no crater which can
be entered and explored with ease and comparative safety save Kilauea
alone. There have been a few narrow escapes, but no accidents, and it
is needless to add that no description can give anyone an adequate
idea of the incomparable splendor of the scene. It is, indeed, a
"bottomless pit," bounded on all sides by precipitous rocks. The
entrance is effected by a series of steps, and below these by a
scramble over lava and rock debris. The greater part of the crater is
a mass of dead, though not cold, lava; and over this the journey is
made to the farthest extremity of the pit, where it is necessary to
ascend a tolerably steep hill of lava, which is the bank of the fiery
lake. A step or two brings one close to the awful margin, and he looks
down over smoking, frightful walls, three hundred feet or more, into a
great boiling, bubbling, sizzling sea of fire.

The tendency of the current, if it may be so called, is centripetal,
though at times it varies, flowing to one side; while along the
borders of the pit, waves of slumbering lava, apparently as unmovable
as those over which the traveler has just crossed, lie in wrinkled
folds and masses, heaped against the shore. If one watches those waves
closely, however, he will presently observe what appears like a fiery,
red serpent coming up out of the