My first job on arriving in Hawaii was to make contact with Mr. Thurston and his associates. The next was to get a good map made of Kilauea Volcano as a basis for measurement of changes in the fire pit. Governor Walter F. Frear came to my rescue and immediately sent Colonel Claude Birdseye and Captain Albert Burkland to make a topographic map of the proposed Hawaii National Park. These engineers brought into the field the topographic camp of the U.S. Geological Survey, and they were extremely sympathetic with my project, furnishing me with surveying monuments, and sketching out methods wherewith to make an accurate base line for measurement of changes inside the pit. A laboratory on the northeast edge of Kilauea Crater was quickly provided through the energy of the brilliant Demosthenes Lycurgus, hospitable Greek manager of the Volcano House, the hotel where I stayed. All the merchants of Hilo, thirty miles away, contributed funds and in a few weeks carpenters were at work, on land belonging to the Bishop Estate and sublet by the Volcano House. Furniture was paid for by the Whitney Fund. A cellar for seismographs was blasted by Territorial prisoners in the hot rock under the laboratory, at the actual northeast edge of the greater crater of Kilauea. The lava pit Halemaumau, always smoking, was in full view two miles away. The cellar lined with concrete, which shut off the steam cracks, became a warm, dry place for instruments at a constant temperature of about 80° Fahrenheit. Concrete tables on the floor of the cellar held the pair of east-west and north-south horizontal pendulums, recording with delicate pens on smoked paper, stretched over a chronograph drum. These paper records, removed every day and fixed with shellac varnish, became the seismograms of the permanent files. Long belts of wavy lines on each paper exhibited seconds, minutes, and hours; and when a sharp zigzag in one of the lines occurred, it was evidence of either a local or a distant earthquake. H. O. Wood, who had been my assistant in field geology at Harvard and had had experience with Omori seismographs at the University of California, was summoned to the Observatory as seismologist. Thus in the first six months of 1912 I became a resident of a volcano in Hawaii and had an adequate laboratory of eight rooms, and suitable porches, a darkroom for photography, and the beginnings of seismograph records in the basement. Horses and saddles were purchased, the necessary outer houses were built, and Alec Lancaster was employed as janitor and field man. Francis Dodge, athletic young Honoluluan and son of a government surveyor, was appointed topographic assistant. He was a hardy cowboy, with some experience as rodman for the Geological Survey.