Then and Now

In 1947 my Grandpa Noall wrote a book about his life titled "To My Children". In the book he tells of some of the missionary experiences he had while serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Mormons, in the Sandwich Islands, Hawaii. He tells of getting an assignment which would take him to the Kohala Conference on the Island of Hawaii. It was 1886 and he and his missionary companion, Elder Farr traveled by steamer from Oahu to the island of Hawaii.

“Elder Farr was to be my companion. After a short journey from Oahu by steamboat, we landed at Honokaa on Hawaii. Our course was to lead us down the coast as far as the city of Hilo. Since we had no special headquarters in this conference, our procedure was to walk to a branch of the Church on Monday, and spend the week visiting, teaching and proselyting there. Some good family, usually that of the branch president, would furnish housing and meals for the two of us, and transportation – a mule or a horse or both.


When we reached the city of Hilo we were in the last city of our conference. We found it a beautiful place with a harbor that could have rivaled that of Honolulu. It had a population of about 10,000 people. Its annual rainfall was about 144 inches, as compared with about 29 inches for Salt Lake City. The verdure was superb. The fern fronds grew more than twelve feet long, and here, in the wilds around the city, we found the coffee plant growing vigorously.


While walking along the road we stopped to examine an ancient lava flow which had ceased but ten miles short of the city, and then, the natives said, only because of the sacrifice of many pigs and chickens, which had been thrown into the lava stream in order to appease the anger of the volcano god.


Before retracing our steps from Hilo, Elder Farr and I decided to visit the volcano Kilauea, which was twenty-eight miles farther along the road. But now we had only one mule between us, and only fifty cents apiece in our pockets. We therefore decided to employ the “walk and tie” method of traveling. One of us would ride approximately six miles, tie up the mule, and travel on afoot. The other, catching up with the mule, would take his turn at riding.


We traveled over some rather new lava fields which looked like great fields of plowed ground, had the plot used to dig these furrows been fifty times the size of a regular dirt plow. We also saw evidence of the gradual disintegration of lava fields through the crackings and sloughing of the rock. This allowed ferns and other forms of plant life to thrust tiny roots into the myriad crevices. The decaying of this life, mixing itself with the decayed rock, would gradually form soil. We could not help being impressed by the visible process of nature’s changes in the earth’s surface.


Reaching the “Volcano Tavern,” we, being ministers of the gospel, appealed to the proprietor to supply us with lodgings, food and a guide, which he graciously did. Early the next morning the guide took us over the floor of Kilauea. The pit of the crater was nine miles in circumference and 1,000 feet deep. The floor was the color of black lava and was comparatively level, but it was cracked as a great mud puddle cracks when it dries in the heat of the sun. In Kilauea’s pit the cracks, running hither and thither, were about an inch open at the top and six or seven inches deep. They were fiery red at the bottom. A wooden walking stick, thrust into this red crevice, would burst immediately into flame.


We traveled northeast across the pit to a hole about fifty feet across and one hundred feet deep. It was called Halemaumau – or the House of the Gods. Peering into it we could see the black lava floor of the pit, and we could hear the thump, thump of the molten lava boiling up against the dark floor below us. At times the boiling mass would burst through its air-cooled crust, and then it would rise in this hole until it filled the pit. Sometimes it even ran slightly over. Then a tourist, being present, could thrust his cane into the stiffening mass and drawing it to one side could press a coin into the lava which he could then chip off and keep as a souvenir. Needless to say, even had Halemaumau boiled over when we were present, Elder Farr and I would not have tried this game. We kept lifting our feet as we stood by the pit to keep our shoes from burning. Kilauea is, perhaps, the only active volcano in the world so docile and accommodating as to allow an intimate study of its crater”.



For the “Now” portion of this post, read my post of "Day 8, Sunday April 18, 2010" on this blog. Needless to say we had the convenience of traveling in a KIA automobile, which seats five plus luggage, rented from National Car Rental; we did the entire trip around the island in only half-a-day, and obviously we were not allowed past the viewing rail of the Kilauea crater which was probably one-quarter mile from the edge of the crater.

In the early ‘80s we owned a home in Kalapana Gardens, Hawaii. In the mid ‘80s the Kilauea volcano started to erupt and the lava began to flow down the mountain slopes toward our development. The local Hawaiians made sacrifices to appease Madam Pele, the volcano goddess, by throwing a bottle of gin and a bough of juniper berries into the lava flow. Being Mormon and not drinking alcoholic beverages, our home was taken by Madam Pele on December 20, 1986.

Aloha

.