It was as though a top-heavy and dried-out pie-crust had fallen in in the middle, leaving a part of the circumference bent down, but clinging at the outside to the dish.
[Illustration: LAVA FIELD, HAWAII--FLOW OF 1868.] After this great crash the lava seems from time to time to have boiled up from beneath through cracks, and now lies in great rolls upon the surface, or in the deeper cracks.

It is related that later the lake or caldron at the farther end of the crater boiled over, and sent down streams of lava which meandered over the black plain; that, continuing to boil over at intervals, this lake increased the height of its own banks, for the lava cools very rapidly; and thus was built up a high hill, which we ascended after crossing the lava plains, in order to look down, in fear and wonder, upon the awful sight below.

What we saw there on the 3d of March, 1873, was two huge pits, caldrons, or lakes, filled with a red, molten, fiery, sulphurous, raging, roaring, restless mass of matter, to watch whose unceasing tumult was one of the most fascinating experiences of my life.
The two lakes were then separated by a narrow and low-lying ledge or peninsula of lava, which I was told they frequently overflow, and sometimes entirely melt down.

Standing upon the northern bank we could see both lakes, and we estimated their shortest diameter to be about 500 feet, and the longest about one-eighth of a mile.

Within this pit the surface of the molten lava was about eighty feet below us.