Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/63

Rh "We have visited volcanoes in other parts of the world, but none that equalled this, and never have we seen anything to compare with the Burning Lakes of Kilauea. What a magnificent sight it must be to see an eruption of Kilauea or Mauna Loa—especially the latter, as it is much the larger of the two. Just now it is quiet, but when it does break out it is, I believe, the greatest volcano in the world. Let me give you a few figures:

"Mauna Loa has had eight great eruptions in forty years, an average of one eruption every five years. It is 13,700 feet high, and in several of its eruptions it has sent streams of lava fifty miles in length to the sea. The flow of these streams is slow, usually requiring eight or ten days, and sometimes longer, to cover the distance from the mountain to the sea. In one eruption it was estimated that 38,000,000,000 cubic feet of lava were poured out, and in another 17,000,000,000. Kilauea is properly a spur of Mauna Loa, and less than 4000 feet high, but nevertheless it is the largest constantly active volcano in the world.



"When the lava from Mauna Loa reaches the sea there is an immense cloud of steam rising from the point where the molten mass enters the water; the ocean is heated for miles around, and fishes by millions perish from the heat. The ground all over the island is devastated, earthquakes are frequent, and altogether Hawaii must be an unpleasant place of residence at that time.

"We got back to the hotel about five o'clock in the afternoon, thoroughly tired out with the day's excursion, which had given us so