This volcano is nothing of the kind; but is a hideous, yawning black pit at the bottom of a mountain, and big enough to stow away a large city.

Of course you want to know, first, where this wonder is.  Get out the map of the Western Hemisphere, put your finger on any of the lines running north and south, through North America, and called meridians; follow it south until you come to the Tropic of Cancer, running east and west; then “left-about-face!” and, following the tropic, sail out into the calm Pacific.  After a voyage of about two thousand miles, you’ll run ashore on one of a group of islands marked Sandwich.  We will call them Hawaiian, for that is their true name.  Not one of the brown, native inhabitants would call them “Sandwich.”  An English sailor gave them that name, out of compliment to a certain Lord Sandwich.

On the largest of these islands, Hawaii—­pronounced “Ha-y-e”—­is the volcano, Kilauea, the largest volcano in the world.

We have seen it a great many times, and that you may see it as clearly as possible, you shall have a letter from the very spot.  The letter reads: 

“Here we are, a large party of us, looking into Kilauea, which is nine miles in circumference, and a thousand feet below us—­a pit about seven times as deep as Niagara Falls are high.  We came to-day, on horseback, from Hilo, a ride of thirty miles.  Hilo is a beautiful sea-shore village, the largest on the island of Hawaii, and from it all visitors to Kilauea make their start.

“The road over which we came is nothing but a bridle-path, and a very rough one at that, traversing miles and miles of old lava flows.  We had almost ridden to the crater’s brink before we discovered, in the dim twilight, the awful abyss.

    “Before us is the immense pit which, in the day-time, shows only a
    floor of black lava, looking as smooth as satin; and, miles away,
    rising out of this floor, are a few slender columns of smoke.

“At night, everything is changed; and you can’t conceive of the lurid, demoniacal effect.  Each slender column of smoke becomes a pillar of fire that rolls upward, throbbing as it moves, and spreads itself out above the crater like an immense canopy, all ablaze.

    “Ships a hundred miles from land see the glow, and we here, on the
    precipice above, can read ordinary print by its lurid light.

“No wonder the natives worshiped the volcano.  They thought it the home of a goddess, whom they named Pele, and in times of unusual activity believed her to be very angry with them.  Then they came in long processions, from the seashore villages, bringing pigs, dogs, fowls, and sometimes human beings, for sacrifice.  These they threw into the crater, to appease her wrath.

“A small berry, called the ohelo, grows on the banks of the pit, and of these the natives never dared to eat until Pele had first had