The cloud effects at sunrise and sunset are marvelous, and alone repay the ascent.
But the crater itself, clear of fog and clouds in the early morning, and lighted up by the rising sun, is a most surprising sight.

It is ten miles in diameter, and the bottom lies 2000 feet below where you stand.

The vast irregular floor contains more than a dozen subsidiary craters or great cones, some of them 750 feet high, and nearly as large as Diamond Head.

At the Kaupo and Koolau gaps, indicated on the map, the lava is supposed to have burst through and made its way down the mountain sides.

The cones are distinctly marked as you look down upon them; and it is remarkable that from the summit the eye takes in the whole crater, and notes all its contents, diminished of course by their great distance.