TERRITORIES: Mauna Loa Erupts

Pele, goddess of volcanoes, was on a house-hunting expedition when she hovered one day over the Hawaiian archipelago. There, according to legend, she found her fancy, settled in the fiery crater of Kilauea, near mighty Mauna Loa.

Pele was the most awesome deity of the people of King Kamehameha. When her anger stirred, Kamehameha’s subjects quaked. She scooped up blood-red lava from the great holes of Mauna Loa, Kilauea, Hualalai, and poured it steaming across the island of Hawaii. To her Hawaiians sacrificed many a pig, many a steer, precious possessions. In caverns formed by the hardened lava, the corpses of ancient kings and the loftier chieftains were interred, with weapons, canoes, feather cloaks, as richly red and yellow as volcanic fires.

Pele’s lava floods sealed many of these graves, hid many relics of Hawaii’s past. One royal feather cloak is left in the Bishop Museum at Honolulu; it is valued at a million dollars. It took 100 years to make such a cloak. Only feathers of a certain texture, color and length were used; one from under each wing of the o-o or mamo birds, one from the head of the male ou.

Dead and wrapped in lava long ago are Hawaii’s ancient rulers. Dead too are some of the craters whence Pele flung her red-hot wrath. But in Kilauea a molten lake still lies, bubbling and puckering, rising and sinking, belching fumes, occasionally spilling over, dribbling Kilauea’s flanks with fire. High above Kilauea, in old Mauna Loa, Pele still broods. Five years ago she hurled a 600-ft.-wide stream of lava down towards Hilo, principal city of the island of Hawaii. The lava was only three miles from the municipal water reservoir, within twelve miles of Hilo, when a squadron of Army bombers dropped 1,200 Ibs. of explosives into Mauna Loa’s vomiting crater, diverted the flow.

Last week Pele stirred again, cracked the back of Mauna Loa. From a jagged rift on the mountain’s slope shot a cascade of fire hundreds of feet high, 150 to 200 feet wide. Fortunately for the citizens of Hilo, the lava moved down toward Kau Desert, on the opposite side from the city.

After the first outburst, the volcano calmed down. But in Mauna Loa’s cauldron, Pele’s brew continued to boil and bubble.