Chapter X: Appendix (5)

No photograph can give any adequate idea of the view from its summit, often above the clouds. It is a good place from which to see the sun come up through the clouds in the crater. This event has been described as being like the birth of a new world. From here one can look down on the island and on the sea, and see the neighboring island of Oahu.

Sidney Ballou says: "A number of people who have been to the top of Haleakala pronounce the sensation there, although somewhat indefinable and indescribable, as the chief scenic attraction of the world. Men like John Muir, who have been all over the world, go up there and say that it is the greatest spectacle in the world."

In addition to the variety of volcanic displays and lava landscapes, the Hawaiian Park contains splendid tropical groves and forests of sandalwood and magnificent Hawaiian mahogany trees with trunks over twenty feet in circumference. There are forests of tree ferns up to forty feet in height, with single leaves twenty feet long; tropical jungles with scores of varieties of the most exquisite and delicate ferns and mosses, many of them found nowhere else in the world. There are numerous song-birds of brilliant hues, many of them found nowhere but in Hawaii, and nearly extinct except in this Park. There are rolling grassy meadows, dotted with tropical trees, shrubs, and ferns, giving a parklike effect. Many of the trees are botanical treasures, known only in this Park region, and of great rarity.

The views from the slopes and summits of the volcanic peaks are a mingling of wild magnificence and tropical splendor. The craters themselves are weird spectacles that awe visitors into silence as they watch the wonderful action of the liquid fire fountains, boiling lakes, flaming lava, and other demonstrations of the Fire King.