“Sandal-wood and strawberries grow all about here—­and fleas, too! wicked fleas, that bite voraciously, to keep themselves warm, I think, for here, so far from Pele’s hearth, it is cold, and we sit by a log fire of our own.

“The day after our arrival we went into the crater, starting immediately after an early breakfast.  There is but one entrance, a narrow ledge, formed by the gradual crumbling and falling in of the precipice.  Along this ledge we slipped and scrambled, making the descent on foot—­for no ridden animal has ever been able to descend the trail.  Holding on to bushes and snags when the path was dangerously steep, we finally landed below on the black satin floor of lava.

“Satin!  What had looked so smooth and tempting from a thousand feet above, turned out to be a surface more troubled and uneven than the ocean in the most violent storm.  And that tiny thread of smoke, toward which our faces were set, lay three miles distant—­three miles that were worse than nine on an ordinary road.

“How we worked that passage! up hill and down hill, over hard pointed lava that cut through our shoes like knife blades; over light, crumbled lava into which we sank up to our knees; over hills of lava that were, themselves, covered with smaller hills; into ravines and over steam-cracks, some of which we could jump with the aid of our long poles, and some of which we had to find our way around; steam-cracks whose depths we could not see, and into which we thrust our walking-sticks, drawing them out charred black or aflame; over lava so hot that we ran as rapidly and lightly as possible, to prevent our shoes being scorched.  Three hours of this kind of work for the three miles, and Hale-mau-mau, or ‘House of Everlasting Fire,’ lay spitting and moaning at our feet!

    “A lake of boiling lava is what the column of smoke marked out to
    us,—­a pit within a pit,—­a lake of raging lava fifty feet below
    us, of which you have here the picture taken ‘from life.’

“It was so hot and suffocating on the brink of this lake that we cut eye-holes in our pocket-handkerchiefs and wore them as masks.  Even then we had to run back every few moments for a breath of fresher air, though we were on the windward side of the lake.  The gases on the leeward side would suffocate one instantly.  Oh, the glory!  This Hale-mau-mau, whose fire never goes out, is a huge lake of liquid lava, heaving with groans and thunderings that cannot be described.  Around its edge, as you see in the picture, the red lava was spouting furiously.  Now and then the center of the lake cooled over, forming a thin crust of black lava, which, suddenly cracking in a hundred directions, let the blood-red