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Updated: June 28, 2025
When viewing the spot, I imagined that the injection of a large mass of rock. like the cone of phonolite at Fernando Noronha, in a semi-fluid state, by arching the surface might have caused a wedge-shaped hollow with cracks at the bottom, and that the rain- water percolating to the neighbourhood of the heated mass, would during many succeeding years be driven back in the form of steam.
For miles and miles, above and around, great billowy masses, tossed and twisted into an infinity of fantastic shapes, arrest and weary the eye, lava in all its forms, from a compact phonolite, to the lightest pumice stone, the mere froth of the volcano, exceeding in wildness and confusion the most extravagant nightmare ever inflicted on man. Recollect the vastness of this mountain.
Not far off is a cave, a lava-bubble, in which the natives used to live when they came up here to quarry a very hard adjacent phonolite for their axes and other tools. While the others poked about, I was glad to make it a refuge from the piercing wind. Hundreds of unfinished axes lie round the cave entrance, and there is quite a large mound of unfinished chips.
This is a very interesting spot to Hawaiian antiquaries. They argue, from the amount of the chippings, that this mass of phonolite was quarried for ages by countless generations of men, and that the mountain top must have been upheaved, and the island inhabited, in a very remote past.
These cones of phonolite, I believe, bear the same relation to the surrounding feldspathic strata which some masses of coarsely crystallised augitic rock, in another part of the island, bear to the surrounding basalt, namely, that both have been injected.
From one of the ridges in the midst of the valley, a conical precipitous hill, called Lot, boldly stands up, and forms a most singular and conspicuous object. It is composed of phonolite, divided in one part into great curved laminae, in another, into angular concretionary balls, and in a third part into outwardly radiating columns. Seale in his Geognosy of the island.
The most remarkable feature is a conical hill, about one thousand feet high, the upper part of which is exceedingly steep, and on one side overhangs its base. The rock is phonolite, and is divided into irregular columns. On viewing one of these isolated masses, at first one is inclined to believe that it has been suddenly pushed up in a semi-fluid state. At St.
His pony had no shoes, and having never been ridden far, was a trifle soft for a trip involving difficulties such as this mountain work abundantly afforded. When they came to Phonolite Pass, the last of the cut-offs on the trail, Van rode no more than a hundred yards into its shadows before he feared he must turn.
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