trees, and which the Chinamen ship in considerable quantities (300,000 lbs. a year), and yet none of the white merchants of Honolulu have ever shipped a single pound, nor can they tell what profit the Chinamen obtain for the article; their only knowledge being that it is used as an article of luxury, like the bird's-nests of Malacca, and the shark's fins and fish-maws collected by Chinamen on the African coast, or the sea-slug beche-de-mar, obtained in the Islands of the Pacific. Indeed, throughout the world, trade in these peculiar commodities is entirely in the hands of Chinese, they alone possessing the necessary facilities for selling them in the interior of the Empire.

Leaving the region where ferns are the only growth, the road to Kilauea winds through a belt of forest land, about four miles broad, which skirts the Eastern side of the island, and runs partially around the Southern and Western. Here the road is but a sheep-walk, leading often through such a dense growth of weeds and ferns, ten or twelve feet high, as to make it difficult to see anything of the surrounding forest. Wherever glimpses are caught of it, the eye is pleased with the strange and wonderful tropical plants that spring up on every side. Conspicuous among them is the beautiful ohia-tree, which looks like one of our own hickories, except that it is covered with a brilliant red flower, and clusters of snake-like vines run up the trunk. The tutui, or candle-nut tree, is almost as common as the ohia, and quite as beautiful in its way. Many of these are transplanted to the towns and villages, where they make excellent shade trees, not attaining any great height, but spreading like the larger kinds of cherry or chestnut. From the nut of this tree, as its name implies, the natives make their tapers, by stringing them like beads. Another curious tree, very abundant in these forests, is the lauhala-tree, the roots of which grow above ground for four or five feet, being with the trunk as gnarled and ugly as those of any tree in existence. The leaves are shaped like rushes, and stand out around the fruit like the cloak of a New Zealander, or a Chinese Coolie, and are equally impervious to the rain. Commend us to a lauhala-tree in times of thunder-showers. Occasionally the Pride of India, the Koa and the Sandal-wood are seen, but not often, especially the last, as the active demand for it in former times did not allow many to escape. The cocoa-nut palm and the wild banana-tree are sometimes found, the former shooting upwards with a curve in its earlier growth like that of a rocket in its first flight, and the latter attaining a height of twenty feet or more. It is singular that the African Palm ("La Palma real," of the Spanish West Indies,) has not been introduced on these Islands. There is only one specimen, I believe, and that occurs in a private garden in Nuaanu Valley. Tropical scenery scarcely seems complete without this lordly tree. A plant, which cannot be correctly styled a shrub, yet which never attains to the dignity of a tree, the Ti-plant, is quite abundant, especially on the out-skirts of the forest, furthest from the coast, where the road leads through wild plantations of them, two miles or more in extent. The roots of this plant are said to be very nutritious, and are cooked by the natives, although not a favorite dish with them. In times of famine, which, Heaven help them! will occur in the most favored lands, if man is lazy and improvident, the roots of the Ti-plant have saved many from starvation. The general use, however, is to obtain an intoxicating liquor like arrack, manufactured somewhat in

the same manner, the effects of which rival those of opium in lasting injury to the system. A wild plantation of these bushes without branches is a pleasing sight; the stalk is of the thickness of two fingers, rough and mottled like calamus root, and growing nearly straight to the height of eight or ten feet. Here it bursts out into leaves, broad and glossy, which hang gracefully like those of the palm-tree.

After leaving the forest and its belt of T-plants, the character of the road changes, and leads through a tract of country, several miles in extent, where lava rock is the only noticeable feature. This rock, although a dozen miles from the volcano,shows signs of having been formed by some overflow within the century. Those who have examined the country critically say that it has come from Mauna Loa, on the side of which Kilauea is situated. It has all the waves and eddies of a moving mass distinctly marked on its surface. In many places appear pools and eddies, where a level space has allowed a short accumulation; while, further on, the stream has leaped down some precipice, and crusted the rock it passed over, as ice will form on some northern waterfall. These signs warn the traveller that he is approaching the volcano, but he will look in vain for any other sign of its proximity. If the orthodox school-boy idea of a volcano, such as geographies for a century past have impressed on all minds-that of a cone, smoking at the top like a burning hay stack-be present to his imagination, he will surely be disappointed, for the road carries the visitor within a hundred yards of the brink before he is aware of the proximity of the

crater.

It is a sight to be remembered.

Looking below, almost under the feet, is a vast black lake, 800 feet beneath, and bounded by lofty walls of lava-rock. This lake stretches for miles, and the opposite walls, nearly four miles away, bound the horizon. If seen for the first time at night, under the dim light of the moon as she bursts from time to time through the clouds, the lake appears boundless; its outline is magnified until it seems to swallow up the landscape, and the distant shores appear as if they were the natural horizon. Miles and miles away there is a bright, red, and fitful light cast on the clouds from that awful pit, for which the ancient Hawaiians had such a dread as the abode of the goddess Pelé. Now and again the fires leap up and illuminate the great lake for a long distance from the pit, but unless Pelé is unusually active, the surging of the flames, apparently low on the black surface of the lake, and the glow in the clouds, seem so far away that it is impossible to say how bright or extensive these fires may be. A smell of sulphur is noticeable from the sulphur-pits only a few rods from the spot where the road approaches the volcano, and even around us as we stand on its brink, little puffs of smoke come up from the ground. Down in the black lake, wherever the moonlight will permit them to be seen, little columns of smoke are noticed oozing upwards through the cracks in the crust of lava, and forming in places a white vail over the black mass. Viewed at any time, and from any point of sight, the prospect is weird and very “uncanny," as the Scotch say, but it is particularly so at night, especially to one unacquainted with the mysteries below.

With the morning everything is changed. The outline of the basin; the sulphur banks on the walls; the black lake beneath, its cakes, like those of a frozen river, its mountains and single peaks smoking like young

volcanoes; the great pit of fire itself, and the cloud of smoke always rising from it, are plainly distinguished; and when the mind can grasp the outline entire, it is not difficult to examine and understand the minuter details one by one. The first thing noticeable by anyone at all familiar with the descriptions of former travellers, is that the "black ledge" has entirely disappeared, or else that it is of monstrous size, embracing all that is visible from above. The former supposition is the correct one; in some eruption subsequent to 1840, or as the result of a series of eruptions, the crust which was called the Black Ledge has sunk or fallen in, and the liquid lava below has risen to meet it, and on cooling at this height has left the present lake, filling the bowl of the crater.

A descent into this bowl shows that all this mass of black lava has been subject to great upheavals. When the surface of the fiery lake sunk to its present level, it was tremendously agitated, if we may judge by the confused position of stupendous slabs of lava. It is broken into fantastic. shapes on every side. Here, a chain of hills, trap-rock among the lava waves, runs from North to South; there, a river seems to have flowed between fixed banks, its surface is turbulent with great flat cakes like black ice, broken up in the sinking of the lava-flow below, standing on end and tossed into every possible position. In whatever direction one wanders on this black prairie he is reminded that beneath are the eternal fires. Every crevice has its little curl of smoke, like that rising above a spring on a frosty morning; and as we approach the actual lava-iake, after a brisk walk of more than two miles, volumes of smoke roll up on the right hand, where, as it blows aside, a yellow coating of sulphur is seen on the lava, while out of the dense clouds come strange noises, groans and fearful shrieks from escaping steam, suggestive of the torments of the damned, as when the angel in Revelations applies the key to the bottomless pit. The lurid fires, leaping up before us, seem as if they might come from hell, so horrible suggestive is the whole region of MILTON's description of the fiery abode of Satan. The Devil himself would roast in Kilauea.

The natives give the name of Kilauea only to the burning lake, scarcely two hundred yards across, where the molten lava is tossed about as in a boiling pot. It is possible to approach within fifty feet of the rim, although at that distance the heat is oppressive, and to look down upon the angry mass. Its surface, about thirty feet below our stand is covered with a light grey scum, wrinkled like a wasp's nest, and cracking into hideous waves as the mass is pressed against the banks at either side alternately. It is always in motion, and as it retires from one bank to press heavily upon the other, seams of bright molten lava are seen between the waves. When the slowly-moving mass crowds too powerfully upon the bank, up springs the cherry-red lava, shooting like a fountain twenty or thirty feet into the air, tossing its viscid spray upon the black shore of the crust that encroaches over the basin. Again and again, without warning, except in the angry roar with which it tosses aside the scum, a great column of fiery heat appears, now in the centre, now at the rim of the basin. The thick, pitchy spray often cools in the air, and can be seen floating on the wind in glassy fibres, like thistle-down, long and exceedingly fine. This is found upon the outer banks, and is well-known as Pele's hair. If the wind blows hard there is generally a bright line of fire skirting the edge of the lava-crust, overhanging the basin. This crust

or rim is fretted by the action of the tossing lava into caves with gothic arches, glowing like an iron forge when the men are "digging out the loup," and with a red sea beating up against their sides and fantastic roofs. Sometimes a great piece of the crust, where the fire has undermined it, breaks off, and plunges through the grey scum into the red lava with a sullen roar and a mighty disturbance of the surface of the lake, followed by numerous columns of fire shooting aloft. The whole effect is grand beyond description; grandest in its fearful suggestions of what might be when such a fiery lake fills this crater of miles in extent. Many who visit the place are so fascinated by these wonderful fires-always in motion, never the same-that they spend several nights in succession on the very brink. Small need for a blanket there, unless it were a wet one! Although the air is more or less filled with the sulphur fumes, if the wind is from the basin and tolerably fresh, the smell is not unpleasant, but anywheres in the lee of Kilauea the air is horribly oppressive; people attempting to pass behind and around the lake have been nearly stifled by the

vapors.

Surrounding the basin at every point of the compass, and not far from it, are cones, smoking viciously at the top and crusted with flower of sulphur. On near examination the bright eye of the lava is seen furtively lurking in the sulphur chambers, and the crusted lava at their base is sure to be hot to the touch. In fact the whole surface of the crater is more or less warm, and burns the soles of boots so as to ruin a pair in a few hours. The vitreous lava cuts like a knife, as many a man, too eager in breaking off specimens with his hands, has learned to his cost. Some of these cones assume the most fantastic shapes. There is one not half a mile from the fires of Kilauea which is as large as a church, and at a distance looks like one. Viewed from the bank, at the distance of two miles, it has a perfect resemblance to a Gothic Cathedral, with a graceful spire, and all the grotesque yet delicate fretwork which distinguishes that order of architecture. In fact it is the only strictly Gothic Cathedral on the islands, notwithstanding that the Puseyite Bishop of Honolulu has seen fit to dignify by that name an unsightly brown building, painted to resemble freestone, and scarcely large enough to accommodate his choir.

Kilauea is reported by the people of Hilo to have been quite active in March of last year (1863), and in June it was still moderately so. The lake had filled up, and a crust had formed over it, so that then it occupied comparatively a small area, and the impression left upon the mind that another extensive eruption could not be far off was very strong. It has often been thus choked up by the crusted lava, and then suddenly burst out afresh with redoubled fury, but the area of the eruption seems to have been more circumscribed at each successive outbreak, for nothing like the scene of grandeur described by Mr. ELLIS, and visitors following him within a few years, can be found there at present, and until another eruption, filling the entire crater, shall occur, a repetition of what they saw cannot be expected. It is questionable whether Kilauea has not found another outlet to the sea, as a small island of rock has appeared off the S. E. point of Hawaii, a mere patch of rock, to be sure, but which has grown up lately.

Still, Kilauea remains the most wonderful volcano in the world,-in constant operation since its discovery, at times on the grandest scale.

The native traditions do not go back to a time when Kilauea was silent, although they undoubtedly refer to a time when Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa were more active, and threw out vast fields of lava. Kilauea is also wonderful, as almost the only volcano where the liquid lava and its wonderful action can be viewed, within a few rods with perfect safety, in the bowl of a crater over four miles in diameter.

COMMERCIAL LAW.-NO. 14.

THE STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS.

THE statute of 21 JAMES I., chapter 16, commonly called the Statute of Limitations, was passed in England in 1623. Among its provisions, it enacts that all actions of account and upon the case, (which include nearly all the actions which can be brought for indebtedness or damages,) provided they do not concern the trade of merchandise between merchant and merchant, their factors or servants, all actions of debt grounded upon any lending, or contract without speciality, (that is, contracts without seal,) and all actions for arrearages of rent, shall be commenced and sued within six years next after the cause of such actions or suit, and not after. In few words, all claims which do not rest on a seal or a judgment must be sued within six years from the time when they arise.

The provisions of this statute were copied, without much important variation, in the statues of all our States; and upon them, as they are explained and in some respects materially modified by adjudication, the law of limitation rested, in England and in this country, until 1827, when statute of 9 GEORGE IV., chapter 14, commonly called Lord TENTERDEN'S Act, was passed. This statute, after reciting the statute of JAMES, provides, in substance, that if a debt or promise be once barred by the Statute of Limitations, no acknowledgment of the debt or new promise shall renew the debt and take away the effect of the statute, unless the new promise is in writing, and is signed by the party who makes the promise. But this new statute expressly permits a part payment either of principal or interest of the old debt to have the same effect as before. And this statute also provides, that if there be joint contractors or debtors, and a plaintiff is barred by the statute against both, but the bar of the statute is removed as to one by a new promise or otherwise, the plaintiff may have judgment against this one, but not against the other. And statutes substantially similar have been passed in Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New York, Indiana, Michigan, Arkansas and California.

CONSTRUCTION OF THE STATUTE.

For the law of limitation there is a two-fold foundation. In the first place, the actual probability that a debt which has not been claimed for a long time was paid, and that this is the reason of the silence of the creditor. But besides this reason, there is the inexpediency and injustice of permitting a stale and neglected claim or debt, even if it has not been