When Mark Twain visited Hawaii in 1866, he was able to inspect a live volcano, Halema’uma’u, which he described as “a crimson cauldron.”

Twain concluded his impressions of the hellish scene by writing, “The smell of sulfur is strong, but not unpleasant to a sinner.”

That eruption came to an end in 1924, and life awakened in the crater in a different form.

White-tailed Tropic Birds began to nest there, on ledges along the crater’s 300-foot cliffs. Then in March 2008, the crater’s volcanic spark rekindled.