United States or Cook Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Only a Pompeii and a Herculaneum were needed at the foot of Kilauea to make the story of the irruption immortal. We were more than a week making the trip, because our Kanaka horses would not go by a house or a hut without stopping whip and spur could not alter their minds about it, and so we finally found that it economized time to let them have their way.
Some years before this Pele and her brothers had migrated from the far southern islands and had made their home in Hawaii, close to the crater of Kilauea, so close that they were believed to be under the special protection of the gods; and from that belief no doubt grew the later faith that Pele and her family were gods themselves; that they lived in the cones thrust up from the floor of Kilauea by gas and steam while it was in a viscid state; that the music of their dances came up in thunder gusts, and that they swam the white surges of lava in the hell-pit.
Mauna Loa and Kilauea, in the Hawaiian Group, according to Professor J. D. Dana, are basalt volcanoes in a normal state. They have distinct craters, and the material of which the mountain is formed is basalt or dolerite. The volcano of Rangitoto in Auckland, New Zealand, appears to belong to this class.
The most fearful of all their deities was Pele, a goddess supposed to reside in the famous volcano of Kilauea. Here, with her attendant spirits, she revelled amid the fiery billows as they dashed against the sides of the crater.
This fabled being, according to Emerson, in a paper on "The Lesser Hawaiian Gods," "could at times assume the appearance of a handsome young woman, as when Kamapauaa, to his cost, was smitten with her charms when first he saw her with her sisters at Kilauea." Kamapauaa was a gigantic hog, who "could appear as a handsome young man, a hog, a fish or a tree."
One advantage of returning by way of the Puna coast, rather than by the direct route from Kilauea, is that you have clear, bright weather all the way. The configuration of the coast makes Puna sunny while Hilo is rainy.
That old Kilauea has just come in, and has brought the English mail, and a United States mail, an event which sets Hilo agog.
G., his servant, and packmule took the lower trail, and I, with a native, a string of mules, and a pack-horse, the upper. Our plans for intercepting the good man were well laid and successful, but turned out resultless. This has been an irresistibly comical day, and it is just as well to have something amusing interjected between the sublimities of Kilauea, and whatever to-morrow may bring forth.
Lyman told me yesterday. Grieving for her people, most of whom still feared to anger Pele, she announced that it was her intention to visit Kilauea, and dare the fearful goddess to do her worst.
He did not retaliate this time, but was glad to make his escape; for Pele had come to her godhood at last. Pele's Hair Fiercest, though loveliest, of all the gods is Pele, she whose home is in Kilauea, greatest of the world's volcanoes.
Word Of The Day