In Mid-Pacific

For a fortnight a snow-crowned protuberance of the earth in mid-Pacific rumbled and smoked and discharged flaming dragons of molten lava to writhe down and be drowned with great hissing in the sea. By the end of last week, all was quiet again. The dragons lay dead, their heads in the water. Little animalcules--human beings--swarmed about and ventured to walk on the monsters' cooling hides. One man--Dr. Thomas A. Jaggar of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory--climbed high up on the protuberance--Mauna Loa, one of Hawaii's two active volcanoes and the largest in the world--to take observations.

It was Mauna Loa's first eruption in five years. Comparatively little destruction attended it. Few, if any, lives were lost. The lava flowed chiefly south and west from three orifices, demolishing but one village, Hoopuloa (chief remaining centre of grass-skirt dancing), which it buried 50 feet deep. An eastward flow demolished four ranch houses.

The Hoopuloans had three days' notice to evacuate. When the convulsions of the mountain sent the slowly creeping river of slag down upon them, they pushed off from shore in their outrigger canoes, abandoning their efforts to placate the goddess Pele* with offerings of burned pig, herbs, liquor and prayers. Passengers on a steamship had a gorgeous sight of a white-hot avalanche plunging into the sea with a roar like a host of locomotives belching blood-colored smoke and towering geysers of steam.

Earthquakes followed the lava, of sufficient violence to move buildings eight inches in the island's principal settlement, Hilo, on the east coast. In the mahogany and sandalwood forests and sugar plantations under Mauna Loa's great flanks, damage was extensive, though for the most part the lava followed its old paths, which lie arid and deserted.

The Mauna Loa eruption may have been a blessing in disguise. It doubtless took subterranean pressure away from Kilauea and Mauna Kea, the neighboring volcanoes, whose eruptions would be truly catastrophic to the many settlers near them.

* The natives refuse to admit that Pele, goddess of volcanoes, will take human life, although she may destroy human habitation. The legend says that, jilted by a mortal lover, she slew him and then was so mortified she made a vow never to do such a thing again. Herds of cattle that have climbed naturally to a knoll or ridge to escape lava, are said to have been "spared" by Pele, who sent her wrath around them. A man whose legs were clipped off by a hot boulder was said, after his demise, to have "stumbled into a crevice."