Wherever she went Lady Brassey seems to have commanded special attention; partly no doubt due to her own personal qualities, and partly to the fact that English ladies are rare visitors in the Polynesian islands--and especially an English lady, the wife of a member of parliament, who sails round the world in her husband's yacht! Lady Brassey made, of course, an excursion to the great volcano of Kilauea, of which Miss Bird has furnished a singularly fine description. Lady Brassey's sketch is not so elaborate or powerful or fully coloured, but it has a charm of its own in its unassuming simplicity. Let us go with her on a visit to the two craters, the old and the new. And, first of all, we descend the precipice, 300 feet in depth, which forms the wall of the original crater, but now blooming with a prodigal vegetation. In many places the incline is so steep that zigzag flights of wooden steps have been inserted here and there in the face of the cliff in order to facilitate the descent. At the bottom we step on to a surface of cold boiled lava, and even here, in every chink where a little soil has collected, Nature asserts her robust vitality, and delicate little ferns put forth their green fronds to feel the light. An extraordinary appearance did that vast lava field present, contorted as it was into every imaginable shape and form, according to the temperature it had attained and the rapidity with which it had cooled. Here and there a patch looked not unlike the contents of a caldron, which had been petrified in the very act of boiling; elsewhere the iridescent lava had congealed into wave-like ridges, or huge coils of rope, closely twisted together. Again it might be seen in the semblance of a collection of organ-pipes, or accumulated into mounds and cones of various dimensions. As our travellers moved forward, they felt that the lava grew hotter and hotter, and from every fissure issued gaseous fumes, which seriously affected their noses and throats; till, at last, when passed to leeward of the lava-river rolling from the lake, they were almost suffocated by the vapour, and it was with difficulty they pursued their advance. The lava was more glassy and had a look of greater transparency, as if it had been fused at an exceptionally high temperature; and the crystals of alum, sulphur, and other minerals with which it abounded, reflected the light in bright prismatic colours. In some places the transparency was complete, and beneath it might easily be seen the long streaks of that fibrous kind of lava, connected with a superstition of the natives, which is known as "Pile's hair." * * * * *