Fiercest, though loveliest, of all the gods is Pele, she whose home is in Kilauea, greatest of the world’s volcanoes. When this mountain lights the heavens, when lava pours from its miles of throat, when stone bombs are hurled at the stars, when its ash-clouds darken the sun and moon, when there are thunders beneath the earth, and the houses shake, then does this spirit of the peak, in robes of fire, ride the hot blast and shriek in the joy of destruction,—a valkyrie of the war of nature. Kanakas try to keep on the good side of this torrid divinity by secret gifts, either of white chickens or of red ohelo berries, and an old man once put into a guide’s hand the bones of a child that he might throw them down the inner crater,—Halemaumau, the House of Eternal Burning, whose ruddy lava cones are homes of the goddess and her family. The dogs sacrificed to Pele, when human victims were scant, were nursed at the breasts of slaves, and the priests and virgins received as their portion, after the killing, the heart and liver. Next to her eyes, of piercing brightness, the most striking thing in the aspect of this deity is her wealth of hair, silky, shining red in the glow, and shaken from her head in a cloud-like spread as of flame. When the eruption is at an end and a sullen peace follows the outbreak, tufts of this hair are found in hollows for miles around. Birds gather it for their nests, and unfearing visitors collect it for cabinets and museums.

Science tells us that Pele’s hair is a molten glass; threads of pumice: a stony froth. When a mighty blast occurs, or when steam escapes through the boiling mass, particles of pumice shred off in the upward flight, or are wire-drawn by winds that rage over the earth. These viscid threads cool quickly in that chill altitude, and float down again. They can be artificially made by passing jets of steam through the slag of iron furnaces while it is in a melted state, the product, which resembles raw cotton, being used, in place of asbestos, for the packing of boilers, steam-pipes, and the like. To such base uses might the goddess’ shining locks be put, if she tore them out in large enough handfuls during the carnival of fire and earthquake; but they are not found in quantities to justify this search by commercial-minded persons, and conservative Kanakas might be alarmed by thought of revenges which Pele would visit on them should they misuse her hair as the foreign heathen do.