--- title: Hawaiian Volcanoes — Hawaiian Legends of Volcanoes (mythology) · full text with trees description: Hawaiian Volcanoes, «Hawaiian Legends of Volcanoes (mythology)» by W. D. Westervelt: the whole chapter, every sentence with its dependency tree and pragmatics. It begins: Each island has its extinct craters from which extend the limited ranges of mountains and plains which make the island surface. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66516/26/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Hawaiian Legends of Volcanoes (mytholo…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66516/) / Hawaiian Volcanoes # Hawaiian Volcanoes Hawaiian Volcanoes of «Hawaiian Legends of Volcanoes (mythology)» by W. D. Westervelt: the whole text, 67 sentences and 1512 words. 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Each island has its extinct craters from which extend the limited ranges of mountains and plains which make the island surface.[1](1/ "tree and pragmatics") These large craters are from a few hundred to over thirteen thousand feet in altitude.[2](2/ "tree and pragmatics") They seem to have had mighty explosions after they had been built into mountains, and one side of the crater has usually been blown out or has slid down into the ocean, leaving very high, steep side walls around irregularly shaped valleys opening toward the sea.[3](3/ "tree and pragmatics") In these craters and between them and the sea are many small craters which mark the most recent eruptions on the various islands.[4](4/ "tree and pragmatics") There are no legends of the origin of any of these large craters, whether extinct or active.[5](5/ "tree and pragmatics") There are very interesting stories connected with many of them, and there are legends of the origin of some of the small extinct craters which lie at the bases of the mountain ranges.[6](6/ "tree and pragmatics") These usually are ascribed to the fire-goddess Pele, who came to the Hawaiian group ages after the islands were built, and who only succeeded in starting eruptions of no great importance until she found her present home in the volcano Kilauea.[7](7/ "tree and pragmatics") These small extinct craters marked the progress of Pele’s journey through the islands.[8](8/ "tree and pragmatics") The large mountains of all the islands, except Hawaii, have no hot springs and no outlets for steam or hot air which would indicate any remnant of living fire still abiding in them.[9](9/ "tree and pragmatics") Nor are there any very noticeable earthquake shocks in these other islands, even at the time when the island Hawaii is pouring floods of lava down its mountain sides and is shaking its inhabitants with great force.[10](10/ "tree and pragmatics") Open volcanic activity is confined to the mountains of Hawaii.[11](11/ "tree and pragmatics") The mountains of Maui, especially Hale-a-ka-la, are called active because of historic eruptions and signs of hidden fire.[12](12/ "tree and pragmatics") The extinct craters are very interesting.[13](13/ "tree and pragmatics") They have their broken-down side wall, through which the last great effort of volcanic life was poured out.[14](14/ "tree and pragmatics") They also have crater cones and sometimes lava flows of small extent on the floor left by the great eruption.[15](15/ "tree and pragmatics") These were the picturesque last throbs of life as a volcano died.[16](16/ "tree and pragmatics") Occasional spasmodic efforts were made in both earthquake and lava flow until the fire cooled in the submarine chambers.[17](17/ "tree and pragmatics") From the summits of all these mountains, peculiarly fine cloud views can be enjoyed.[18](18/ "tree and pragmatics") There is not only the gathering of cloud masses rolling beneath the lover of the sublime,—this can be seen on all the large mountains of the world,—but here in the Hawaiian Islands the march of cloud armies sweeping over an ocean and spreading in ceaseless motion for miles over the lowlands receives an added element of majesty and awe when tossing, whirling cloud mountains roll into the extinct craters and slowly fill the bowl of the gods from rim to rim as the morning sun delicately touches the crater edges above the clouds with all the colors of the dawn.[19](19/ "tree and pragmatics") Here and there in the decaying volcanic ash and disintegrating lava can sometimes be found beautiful, small, star-rayed zeolite, or the pale green olivine, or coarse black augite crystals.[20](20/ "tree and pragmatics") These are of no value, save as they show some of the forms taken by cooling lava, and are of interest chiefly to the scientist.[21](21/ "tree and pragmatics") On the island Hawaii are three great mountains from 8,200 to 13,600 feet above the ocean, which smashes its mighty tides and surf waves against the coast below.[22](22/ "tree and pragmatics") One of these, Mauna Kea (White Mountain), is an extinct volcano with a lake of water in its crater.[23](23/ "tree and pragmatics") Hualalai is dormant, although from it there was a great eruption a little over a hundred years ago, and even now possibilities of activity are talked about by those who cultivate sugar-cane and coffee on its lower slopes.[24](24/ "tree and pragmatics") Mauna Loa (Great or long mountain) has a most interesting active crater on its summit, Mokuaweoweo (Blood-red island), from which enormous rivers of lava are hurled down to the waiting ocean many miles below.[25](25/ "tree and pragmatics") What is said to be the most active crater in the world, Kilauea, lies on an eastern spur of Mauna Loa at an elevation of 4,000 feet above the sea.[26](26/ "tree and pragmatics") This crater is a great caldron or pit crater, and has been known among the Hawaiians for centuries as Ka-Lua Pele (The Pit of Pele).[27](27/ "tree and pragmatics") Below Kilauea are a number of craters of similar character, great sunken holes or pits in a country of almost even surface.[28](28/ "tree and pragmatics") Kilauea is a surprise to the tourist.[29](29/ "tree and pragmatics") Ki-lau-ea means “the rising up or living leaf of the ti-plant.”[30](30/ "tree and pragmatics") Ea means “to rise up” and also “to live.”[31](31/ "tree and pragmatics") Ki-lau means “ti-leaf.”[32](32/ "tree and pragmatics") A gradual ascent by rail and motor-car for about thirty miles brings the visitor to a flat region miles in extent and sparsely covered with giant ferns \[23\] and shrubs and gray-leaved trees with fringed red balls of flowers.[33](33/ "tree and pragmatics") Here and there small clouds of steam come from crevices around a hotel where the traveller finds his resting-place.[34](34/ "tree and pragmatics") In front of this hotel, and not seen until the motor-car stops, is the crater whose edges are almost level with the surrounding plain.[35](35/ "tree and pragmatics") It is a precipice-walled bowl, three miles across, with a multitude of steam jets breaking through its vast floor and a great cloud of smoke rising from a pit in a black border-land of frozen lava.[36](36/ "tree and pragmatics") Kilauea looks like a congealed lake whose glossy black hard waves had hardened while rolling and struggling with each other under some fierce tempest.[37](37/ "tree and pragmatics") It is, however, a cone ascending gradually to the fire-pit from these precipitous edges of the bowl.[38](38/ "tree and pragmatics") Under the smoke cloud of the pit lies the always active lake of fire, Ka-Lua Pele (The Pit of Pele), the traditional home of the goddess Pele, now called Halemaumau (House fixed or continuing).[39](39/ "tree and pragmatics") From this volcano Kilauea, and the crater Mokuaweoweo, which lies like an island in the top of Mauna Loa, nearly 10,000 feet higher, come enormous and sometimes destructive lava flows.[40](40/ "tree and pragmatics") They are called rivers of lava, but a lava river, unlike a stream of water, flows underneath a continually cooling and hardening crumpled surface, pushing its way from under and at last leaving long tunnels.[41](41/ "tree and pragmatics") Sometimes new lava melts through the walls of these caves and pours along the path left ages before, frequently finding an outlet even under the waves of the sea.[42](42/ "tree and pragmatics") The natives say, “Pele has gone to the sea by the ala huna \[the hidden path\].”[43](43/ "tree and pragmatics") There are two kinds of lava which these rivers carry down.[44](44/ "tree and pragmatics") One in cooling becomes very smooth and hard.[45](45/ "tree and pragmatics") Its surface shines like black satin.[46](46/ "tree and pragmatics") Professor C. H. Hitchcock, the eminent geologist, says: “The name pa-hoe-hoe signifies having the aspect of satin or having a shining smooth surface.[47](47/ "tree and pragmatics") It is quite hummocky and shows a wrinkled ropy structure.”[48](48/ "tree and pragmatics") The glossy part is real volcanic glass shining on the surface because the silica which is used in making glass rises to the top of the cooling lava.[49](49/ "tree and pragmatics") It is lighter than the other ingredients.[50](50/ "tree and pragmatics") This pa-hoe-hoe lava is abundant in the lava fields around Mexico City.[51](51/ "tree and pragmatics") The name a-a, which signifies “torn up by roots,” is the name given to another kind of lava.[52](52/ "tree and pragmatics") An a-a flow is lava changed into bristling, ragged rocks, with innumerable fine sharp edges cutting like fragments of broken glass.[53](53/ "tree and pragmatics") It appears very much like slag from iron furnaces, only infinitely worse to handle.[54](54/ "tree and pragmatics") These two Hawaiian names are now the accepted scientific names for these classes of lava the world over.[55](55/ "tree and pragmatics") In 1911 the first successful attempt to secure the temperature of the boiling lava in the lake of fire was made scientifically.[56](56/ "tree and pragmatics") Professor F.[57](57/ "tree and pragmatics") G. Perret came from his observatory by Vesuvius and Professor E. G. Shepherd from the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution at Washington, to study Kilauea, following the beginning of such observations already established by Professor Jaggar of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[58](58/ "tree and pragmatics") They stretched a wire cable 1,500 feet long from wall to wall over the lake of fire.[59](59/ "tree and pragmatics") They ran wires through pulleys along this cable and dropped the best instruments they had with them straight down.[60](60/ "tree and pragmatics") Some of these were broken before registration could be secured.[61](61/ "tree and pragmatics") The last thermometer registered 1850° Fahrenheit, remaining steadily at that point until the thermometer was withdrawn.[62](62/ "tree and pragmatics") Later it was again lowered, but, according to Professor Shepherd, “Pele arose in her wrath, grasped the thermometer, flung hot lava on the supporting wires, thereby weakening them, and then with a final jerk broke the thermometer from its supports and swallowed it.[63](63/ "tree and pragmatics") Pele seems to like ironware for diet.”[64](64/ "tree and pragmatics") The record of from 1800° to 2000° Fahrenheit seems to be the normal heat of the lake of fire, sometimes, of course, rising much higher under special conditions.[65](65/ "tree and pragmatics") The scientific observers when speaking of lava heat usually say it is 1850° Fahrenheit.[66](66/ "tree and pragmatics") III[67](67/ "tree and pragmatics") - ← previous: [The Crack in the Floor of the Pacific](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66516/25/) - next →: [Volcanic Activity](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66516/27/) - ↑ back to [Hawaiian Legends of Volcanoes (mythology)](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66516/)