Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/435

429 JOURNAL AND LETTERS OF DAVID DOUGLAS. 429 some straight, round, or twisted, from whence steam continually is- sued, which in two of them is rapidly condensed and collects in small basins or wells, one of which is situated at the immediate edge of the crater, and the other four hundred and eighty yards to the North of it. The latter, fifteen inches deep and three feet deep in diameter, about thirteen feet North of a very large fissure, according to my thermometer, compared with that at Greenwich and at the Royal Society, and found without error, maintained a temperature of 65. The same instrument, suspended freely in the above-mentioned fissure, ten feet from the surface, expressed, by repeated trials, 158; and an equal temperature was maintained when it was nearly level with the surface. When the Islanders visit this mountain, they invariably carry on their cooking operations at this place. Some pork and a fowl that I had brought, together with Tara-roots and Sweet Potatoes were steamed here to a nicety- in twenty-seven minutes, having been tied up in leaves of Banana. On the sulphur bank are many fissures, which continually exhale sulphureous vapours, and form beautiful prisms, those deposited in the inside being the most delicate and fairy in figure, encrusting the hollows in masses, both large and small, re- sembling swallows' nests on the wall of a building. When severed from the rock or ground, they emit a crackling noise by the contrac- tion of the parts irr the process of cooling. The great thermometer placed in the holes, showed the temperature to be 195.5, after repeated trial? which all agreed together, the air being then 71. I had furnished shoes for those persons who should descend into the crater with me, but none of them could walk when so equipped, pre- ferring a mat sole, made of tough leaves, and fastened round the heel and between the toes, which seemed, indeed, to answer the purpose entirely well. Accompanied by three individuals, I proceeded at one P. M. aJ Dng the North side, and descended the first ledge over such rugged) ground as bespoke a long stage of repose, the fissures and flanks being clothed with verdure of considerable size: thence we as- cended two hundred feet to the level platform that divides the great and small volcanos. On the left, a perpendicular rock three hundred feet above the level, showed the extent of the volcano to have been originally much greater than it is at present. The small crater ap- pears to have enjoyed a long period of tranquillity, for down to the very edge of the crust of the lava, particularly on the East side, there are trees of considerable size, on which I counted from sixty to one hundred and twenty-four annual rings or concentric layers. The lava at the bottom flowed from a spot, nearly equi-distant from the great and small craters, both uniting into a river, from forty to seventy y&rds in breadth, and which appears comparatively recent. A little South of this stream, over a dreadfully rugged bank, I descended the first ledge of the crater, and proceeded for three hundred yards over