Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 84, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 April 1917 — H/ WAIIAN ISLANDS GIVE U. S. ROYALTY, VOLCANO [ARTICLE]

H/ WAIIAN ISLANDS GIVE U. S. ROYALTY, VOLCANO

Contribute the Largest Active and Up- to-date Fiery Peak. In World. When the Hawaiian Islands decided to become a part of the United States, we acquired, besides our first royal family and our most beautiful and exotic tropic garden spot, the largest active and up-to-date volcano in the world. Kilauea has not been advertised like Vesuvius and Pelee, by virtue of recent destructive eruptions, nor like Popocatepetl, by a Jewel of a name that would have made the fortune of anybody perspicacious to apply it to a new brand of chewing gum. Retiring by disposition, of recent years at least, and attending to business In a good natured way with only a few minor eruptions to show that ho is still on the Job, Kilauea needs advertising. His advantages as a volcano are many. He dees not porch up at the top of an inaccessible cone, like less considerate volcanoes. He can be reached by nervous ladles In an autosaoblle with ease and safety. He Iles In a country that revels la the luxuriant vegetation of half a dosen Italian gardens. He Is the ideal tourists* volcano—and his crater Is nine miles across, the greatest on earth. It lies before you, a fiat lifeless plain, in great smooth sweeps of lava run out and melted In long, graceful lines that are a delight to the eye. Here and there a fissure smokes reflectively, just to remind you that beneath the crust are depths unthinkable and temperatures unimaginable The wary tourist creeps to the edge of such a fl sure and toasts bits of paper on the end of a stick by the heat of the fires of hades. It is • characteristic sight Where the crust breaks off In a pit and shows the living fire beneath, the United States government has erected a station for the study of volcanoes. Scientists peer into the giant llpless throat and make observations and take temperatures. , The rain tree of Colombia measures about fifty feet high when at maturity, and about three feet In* diameter at ths base. It absorbs an Immense quantity of moisture, from the atmosphesw, which It concentrates, and subsequently sends forth from Its leaves and branches In a shower, In some instances so abundantly that the ground In Its vicinity Is converted Into aquagmira. It possesses this curious prop erty in Its greatest degree In the summer, precisely when the flyers are at ♦Wfrr lowest and water most scarce.