Descripción
Single sheet (7 2/3 x 10 in.; 19.5 x 25.4 cm), fine sepia ink wash and pencil drawing of the view looking southeast along Waikiki Beach in the lea of the very distinctive crater of Diamond Head, Oahu, showing native dwellings, a stand of palm trees lining the beachfront, with local fishermen pulling their canoes ashore. (6.5B.2D) Originally one of three official artists of the famed United States Exploring Expedition (1838-1842), also known as the Wilkes Expedition, John B. Dale returned to the United States in July 1840 and joined Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler's U.S. Coastal Survey, which at the time was focused on Delaware Bay to chart the approaches to Philadelphia. March of 1844 finds him as a fifth lieutenant aboard the USS Constitution, under the command of Captain John "Mad Jack" Percival. Between May 1844 and September1846 the Constitution undertook a circumnavigation of the globe, arriving in Honolulu 16 November 1845. During its brief stay (the ship sailed for Mexico in early December), Dale created evocative images of Hawaii in the earliest days of American involvement there. His journal entry for 16 November notes rather wistfully that "Kamehameha III, the present Monarch, is probably the last of the Hawaiian Kings -the white man is a fatal presence to the Hawaiians, as he was to the Indians" (Journal of (Fifth) Lieutenant John B. Dale, 1844-1846, New England Historical Genealogical Society). When Charles Wilkes, commander of the U.S. Exploring Expedition, arrived in Hawaii five years earlier, he described this view in his Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition During the Years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, and 1842: "The most conspicuous point about Oahu, is the noted crater on its east end, called Lealu or Diamond Hill. This lies about four and a half miles from Honolulu, and forms a very picturesque object from the harbor. It is the largest coast-crater on the island, and was visited by many of us. The rock, for the most part, consists of vesicular lava, very rough and black. The ascent to it is somewhat difficult. On the margin of the crater, calcareous incrustations are formed. It is quite shallow, and between a half and a third of a mile in diameter. There is no appearance of a lava-stream having issued from it. Its surface is thickly strewn with lava-blocks, which were also found embedded in the coral rock along the shore. The raised coral reef was also seen here, where it is partially decomposed, so as to resemble chalk, and had been quarried" (volume IV, chapter II, pp. 89-90). N° de ref. del artículo 65ERM0082
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