Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/424

418 418 JOURNAL AND LETTERS OF DAVID DOUGLAS. truly beautiful, and worthy to range with the gig-antic species collected by Dr. Wallich. Of Ferns alone I have fully two hundred species, and half as many Mosses ; of other plants comparatively few, as the season is not yet good for them, nor will be so until after the rains. On my return, I must consult with you on the best mode of publishing the plants of these islands. I also visited the summit of Mouna Roa, the Big or Long Mountain, which afforded me inexpressible delight. This mountain, with an elevation of thirteen thousand five hundred and seventeen feet, is one of the most interesting in the world. I am ignorant whether the learned and venerable Menzies ascended it or no, but I think he must have done so, and the natives assert that this was the case. The red- faced man, who cut off the limbs of men, and gathered grass, is still known here; and the people say that he climbed Mouna Roa. No one, how- ever, has since done so, until I went up a short while ago. The journey took me seventeen days. On the summit of this extraordinary mountain is a volcano, nearly twenty-four miles in circumference, and at present in terrific activity. You must not confound this with the one situated on the flanks of Mouna Roa, and spoken of by the mis- sionaries and Lord Byron, and which I visited also. It is difficult to attempt describing such an immense place. The spectator is lost in terror and admiration at beholding an enormous sunken pit (for it differs from all our notions of volcanos, as possessing cone-shaped summits, with terminal openings), five miles square of which is a lake of liquid fire, in a state of ebullition, sometimes tranquil, at other times rolling its blazing waves with furious agitation, and casting them upwards in columns from thirty to one hundred and seventy feet high. In places, the hardened lava assumes the form of gothic arches in a colossal building, piled one above another in terrific mag- nificence, through and among which the fiery fluid forces its way in a current that proceeds three miles and a quarter per hour, or loses itself in fathomless chasms at the bottom of the cauldron. This vol- cano is one thousand two hundred and seventy-two feet deep; I mean down to the surface of the fire; its chasms and caverns can never be measured. Mouna Roa appears, indeed, more like an elevated Table- land than a mountain. It is a high broad dome, formed by an infini- tude of layers of volcanic matter, thrown out from the many mouths of its craters. Vegetation does not exist higher than eleven thousand feet ; there is no soil whatever, and no water. The lava is so porous that when the snow melts it disappears a few feet from the verge, the ground drinking it up like a sponge. On the higher parts grow some species of Rubus, Fraseria, Vacdnium, and some Junci. I visited also the volcano of Kirauea, the lateral volcano of Mouna Roa; it is nearly nine miles around, one thousand one hundred and fifty-seven feet deep, and is likewise in a terrific state of activity.