Why Science Fears Another Outburst of the
Volcano Where Pele Was Believed to
Live With Her
Dreadful
Dragon of /
the Human ' (
Sacrifices *
“So for years many a lovely girl plunged into
t
those fiery jaws of death, willingly sacrific
ing her life in the belief that by so doing
she was saving her fellow countrymen from
deatruction,,,
CRAMTtt V
A charm
ing Hawaiian
landscape look
ing from Hilo to
ward the snow-cap
ped peaks of Mauna Kea
—a lake of moIten^.va which continually hoik and bubbles,
with lea pings of flame and unearthly noises
Giant cross which is
erected during Holy
Week every year on the
extinct volcano, "Punch
bowl,” as it looks illumi
nated by searchlights
□NTIL quite recent years the
superstitious natives of Hawaii
believed that Pele, the Goddess
of Fire, dwelt in the volcanic crater of
Kilauea, guarded by a huge dragon
whose eyes, mouth and nose spouted fire
like the volcano itself.
Unless the goddess’s wrath was fre
quently appeased by feeding her dragon
a young and beautiful maiden, it was
thought she would take an awful re
venge by turning loose on the island the
volcano’s flood of molten lava.
So, for years many a lovely girl
plunged into those fiery jaws of death,
willingly sacrificing her life in the ber
lief that she was saving her fellow coun
trymen from destruction.
Nobody now believes in the Goddess
of Fire and her dragon, but the crater
where they were supposed to live re
mains an object of dread. In fact, many
scientists predict that both Kilauea and
its companion crater, Mauna Loa, are
due for one of the most terrible explo
sions in their history.
Recent grumblings and tumults of
lava in the two craters are thought to
be warnings of an outburst. Within the
last few weeks there have been tremen
dous earthquakes in Chile and Japan,
and mighty tidal waves, which are en
gendered by seismic disturbances under
the ocean, havy swept the shores of
Nippon. t
The bed of the Pacific is evidently
troubled and if is beneath that ocean
floor that the reservoirs of fire which
supply the two big Hawaiian volcanoes
are located.
Their craters are two enormous pots
of fire, about twenty miles apart. Mauna
Loa shows signs of activity only occa
sionally; Kilauea, on the other hand, is
always busy, its lake of liquid lava
sometimes rising high up in the pot and
throwing fountains of flame hundreds
of feet into the air, while at other times
the monstrous receptacle seems almost
to empty itself of its contents.
What starts them off? It has been a
mystery; but now scientists believe they
have solved it, at least so far as Kilauea
is concerned.
■WJg*. 11 ■■■■ =
The sun and
the moon gov'
ern . Kilauea's
activities. When
both of those
heavenly bodies
happen to be so
situated in re
lation to the
earth that the
pull of their
joint attraction
is away from
the Hawaiian
island it counteracts
gravity and a flood of
lava from the depths
beneath the mountains pours
upward. A “trigger effect,”
it is called.
Sun and moon, joining their forces,
pull the trigger and, bang! goes the
volcanic gun. Beneath the mountain,
eight or ten miles below the level of the
sea bottom, perhaps, is a vast reservoir
of molten rocks. The crater is simply
the mouth of a gigantic chimney which
runs down to that reservoir. To liken
the chimney to a gun is not inapt.
Doubtless the two chimneys of Kilauea
and Mauna Loa run down to the same
basin of fire. When the lava rises in one
crater it rises also in the other. But the
more vehement outbursts of Kilauea are
not usually accompanied by any cor
responding activity on the part of
Mauna Loa, and when the latter starts
trouble Kilauea does not, as a rule, fol
low suit. Why? Nobody knows. It is
one of many unsolved puzzles that re
late to “burning mountains."
Not so very great a length of .ime
ago. as geologists view it, there was no
Hawaiian archipelago. But there came
a day when great vents opened in the
floor of the sea and out of them poured
molten rocks in such quantity as to build
huge mountains. The sea floor was over
three miles below the surface waves of
the Pacific and the mountains thus cre
ated were tall enough to erect peaks to
an additional height of more than two
miles.
It was thus that the archipelago came
into being. Its islands are the tops of
mighty volcanoes that stand on the floor
of the sea. Yet the island of Hawaii
alone, which is the big one of the group,
has an area exceeding 4,000 square
miles. It is built of the eruptive dis
charges of a bunch of five volcanoes, two
of which are Kilauea add Manna Loa.
Imagine the tremendousness of the awe
some spectacle presented when the
building was in progress!
Consider .Mauna Loa. It is a dome
13.630 feet high, and seventy-four by
fifty-three miles in its diameters at sea
level. But that is only what the eye
sees of it. It extends downward over
three miles further to the ocean floor.
If the Pacific were dried up it would ap
pear ns a round-topped cone more than
five and a half miles in height and 100
miles wide at the base.
The fire pot of Kilauea, 2,000 feet in
diameter, is called Halemaumau, or the
“House of Everlasting Fire.” It con
tains a lake of molten lava which con
tinually boils and bubbles, with leapings
of flame and unearthly noises. The
depth of the lake below the rim con
stantly changes, its surface'sometimes
rising and sometimes falling. Occa
sionally one might imagine that the bot
tom was about to drop out, leaving the
pot empty of fire.
But Halemaumau is a mere hole in
the midst of an expanse of nearly 3,000
acres of shiny, black, haodened and
cracked lava, encircled by grim, abrupt
cliffs 500 feet high, which form the rim
of the original and ancient crater. That
was the huge mouth of the original vol
canic pipe which, leading down into the
bowels of the earth, brought up and de
livered therefrom, in a molten state, all
the material that built the mighty moun
tain. For the mountain—as may be said
* of all other volcanoes—is simply an ash
pile erected about a central chimney.
Viewing the Hawaiian group, one is
appalled by the truly, monstrops scale on
which, in a former age, nature, in fiery
mood, must have raged in that mid
Paciflc region. On Maui, the island next
to Hawaii and northwest of the latter,
may be seen the largest extinct volcanic
crater in the world—called by the native
Hawaiian* the ‘‘House of the Sun.” Its
rim measures twenty-one miles around
and the city of Boston could be placed
inside of it.
In many parts of the world volcanoes
operate, as it might be said, in batteries. *
a number of them evidently having
T-sa— ' ,———
chimneys that lead down to the same
subterranean reservoir of fire. Such
groups are found on the Alaskan Penin
sula, in the Aleutian Chain, in the
Caribbean region (where Mount Pel6e is
one member of a series scattered about
on islands) and in Java.
In the Mediterranean V'esuvius, Strom
boli and Etna compose a battery of the
kind, and when one of them starts
trouble the others are likely to erupt.
But Kilauea and Mauna Loa seem to
draw their fiery supplies from a
“magma basin” (as geologists call it)
exclusively their own and unconnected
with any other.
The theory now accepted by most
geologists—though it cannot be said to
be proved—is that volcanoes in general
do not derive their fires from a molten
core of the earth, but from ignepus res
ervoirs not more than eight or ten miles
below’ the surface crust. Why such res
ervoirs should be scattered about here
and there beneath the skin of the terres
trial globe is not very satisfactorily ex
plained, though one suggestion offered
is that they may be hot spots left over
from the general cooling of the planet.
Where volcanoes are concerned there are
so many unsolved puzzles that anybody
has a right to a few guesses.
Kilauea’s last great explosion was in
the year 1789, when it wiped out a large
part of an army, decided a political
quarrel, united the Hawaiian Islands in
one monarchy, set a king on the throne
and established a royal dynasty which
ruled the archipelago until we grabbed
it, a century later.
Up to that time the islands had been
governed in quasi-feudal fashion by a
number of independent chiefs, one of
whom, at the period above mentioned,
was a young man named Kamehameha,
—clever, ambitious and ruthless. His
barony, so to call it, was in the south
western part of Hawaii. He was striv
ing to obtain rulership over the whole
of that big island, and, beyond that, the
kingship of the entire archipelago. This
was promised him by the priests as a
reward for building a stone temple tfedi
cated to the god of earthquakes, Ku
Who-Shakes-the-Islands.
His principal rival and adversary was
a chief named Keoua, who, contemplat
ing a surprise attack, marched an army
from Hilo, on the east side of Hawaii.
The trail ran over the mountains, close
past the crater of Kilnuea,
where, on a cliff overlooking
the fiery pit, stood an ancient
temple of Pele, the goddess
of the volcanic realms, who
was supposed to reside be
neath the crater.
The army moved In three
divisions. While it
the march Kilauea
darkness
awful red and blue glare of
molten lava from the pit.
Earthquakes shook the mountain and
intense lightning, with crashes of thun
der, lent additional horror to the scene.
Presently a rain of incandescent cinders
began to fall.
To go back seemed as perilous as to
proceed, so the army hurried on. A few
of the men in the first division were
burned to death by the cinders. When
the third division came along it saw the
men of the second division apparently
resting on the descending slope of the
mountain, some of them lying down,
others in seated posture. But, as was
soon discovered, all of them were dead.
They had been suffocated by volcanic
gases and not one of them was left
alive.
Naturally, this resulted in an almost
complete demoralization of Keoua’s
forces. Furthermore, the idea spread
th -t the Goddess Pele, displeased by the
attempt to march a military force past
her temple, had caused the eruption as a
punishment. The disaster was followed
by the murder of Keoua, and Kameham
eha became king of all the islands and
the founder of the dynasty whose last
representative, Queen Liliuokalani, was
ousted from the throne by the govern
ment of the United States.
The soldiers who perished on the
mountain lay where they fell and were
never buried. Some of their bones may
still be seen there, scattered about.
Their actual footprints, where their bare
feet squashed up the volcanic mud
(since hardened to stone), are shown to
tourists who in these modern days visit
the crater of Kilauea.
Close Jjy the rim of Kilauea’s crater
they are boring for volcanic steam, hop
ing to make use of it for power. Up to
date they have penetrated only „bout
100 feet. It is a tough job, for the rock
is of the hardest kind—basalt. To har
ness a volcano is an attractive idea and
it has gained encouragement from the
successful employment of volcanic steam
in Italy.
Last summer, with the same aim in
view, borings were begun on the island
3f Vulcano, which is one of the Lipari
?roup, northeast of Sicily. That island
is highly volcanic and once in a while
‘goes bust” in a way that is rather
alarming to its few inhabitants. As for
:he boring enterprise, great hopes are
Entertained, but what will come of it
:annot be known for a while yet.