"The floor of the crater is hardly the same from week to week, and if I should make a map of it, and describe the place very carefully, you might not know it if you come here a year from now. In many places it is so hot that you cannot walk on it. Lava cools very slowly, and the thicker the bed of it the longer the time it requires for cooling.
"The Hawaiians say that the volcano is under the control of the Goddess Pele; she is a capricious deity, and you never know for any great length of time beforehand what she will do. Whenever the mood strikes her she orders an eruption, and straightway the fires are lighted, the mountain trembles, and the earth all around is violently shaken. Flames burst forth from the crater and shoot high in air, and sometimes the floor of the whole area is lifted and tossed like the waves of the sea. Kilauea may be said to be constantly active, as the fires never cease; but there are periods of great activity followed by seasons of comparative quiet.
[Illustration: VIEW OF ONE OF THE BURNING LAKES.]
"Over the floor of the great crater we picked our way for nearly three miles to the Burning Lakes; and what do you suppose these lakes are?
"Their name describes them, as they are literally burning lakes--lakes of fire so hot that if you should be foolish enough to try to bathe in them, or so unfortunate as to fall into their waves, you would be burned up in less than a minute. We had to climb up a steep bank of lava to get in sight of them, and then what a spectacle was presented!
"There were two little lakes or ponds, five or six hundred feet in diameter, and separated by a narrow embankment which the guide said was occasionally overflowed, and either covered entirely or broken down for a while. These lakes are on the top of a hill formed by the cooling of the lava, and at the time we saw them their surface was perhaps one hundred feet below the point where we stood on the outer edge or rim. The wind blew from us over the lakes, and carried away the greater part of the smoke and the fumes of sulphur; but in spite of the favoring breeze we were almost choked by the noxious gases that rose from the burning lava, and the numerous crevices in the solid banks where we stood.