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Updated: June 8, 2025
The lava was more glassy and transparent-looking, as if it had been fused at a higher temperature than usual; and the crystals of sulphur, alum, and other minerals, with which it abounded, reflected the light in bright prismatic colors. In places it was quite transparent, and we could see beneath it the long streaks of a stringy kind of lava, like brown spun glass, called "Pele's hair."
Over one steeper place the lava had run in a fiery cascade about 100 feet wide. Some had reached the ground, some had been arrested midway, but all had taken the aspect of stems of trees. In some of the crevices I picked up a quantity of very curious filamentose lava, known as "Pele's hair." It resembles coarse spun glass, and is of a greenish or yellowish- brown colour.
Some of the glassy threads are fine as the finest silk and a blast of air carries them off to the cliff; Pele's hair, they call it, and the sea-gulls gather it to make their nests. The highest points of Hawaii island are nearly fourteen thousand feet above sea level.
Having heard of the beauty of this woman, Kamapua resolved to abduct her, and after a visit, in which the usual courtesies and hospitalities were observed, but which he paid in order to estimate the strength of her following, he attacked the outlying huts of the village in the night and killed their occupants, intending to follow this assault by surrounding Pele's house and forcing the surrender of all within: but hearing the outcry in the distance and divining its meaning, she and her brothers hastily gathered weapons and provisions and fled to a cave in the hills three miles away.
The superstition regarding the Goddess Pele was thought to have received a death blow in 1825, when Kapiolani, an Hawaiian princess and a Christian convert, ascended, with numerous attendants, to the crater of Kilauea, where she publicly defied the power and wrath of the goddess. No response came to her defiance, she descended in safety, and faith in Pele's power was widely shaken.
It was already in the sky when the fastenings broke, and the workmen were precipitated over every part of Fiji. The sun stood still for Hiaka when she attempted to recover the body of Lohiau, her sister Pele's lover. There was not daylight enough to climb the mountain Kalalau and bring down the body from a cave, so she prayed, and the sun set much later than usual.
As she climbed upward she saw by the side of the path low bushes, and on them beautiful red and yellow berries, growing in clusters. The berries were like large currants. "It is chelo," said the priests, "it is Pélé's berry. You must not touch them unless we ask her. She will breathe fire on you."
In recent years an artificial substance similar to this Pele's hair has been extensively manufactured by passing jets of steam through the molten slag of iron-furnaces; it resembles cotton-wool, but is made up of fine threads of glass, and is employed for the packing of boilers and other purposes.
At the volcano of Kilauea in Hawaii, this substance, as previously stated, is abundantly produced, and is known as 'Pele's Hair' Pele being the name of the goddess of the mountain. Birds' nests are sometimes found composed of this beautiful material.
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