Hawaii

Millions upon millions of years ago, when the continents were already formed and the principal features of the Earth had been decided, there existed, then as now, one aspect of the world that dwarfed all others. It was a mighty ocean, resting uneasily to the east of the largest continent, a restless, ever-changing, gigantic body of water that would later be described as Pacific. Over its brooding surface, immense winds swept back and forth, whipping the waters into towering waves that crashed down upon the world's seacoasts, tearing away rocks and eroding the land. In its dark bosom, strange life was beginning to form, minute at first, then gradually, of a structure now lost even to memory. Upon its farthest reaches, birds with enormous wings came to rest and then flew on. Agitated by a moon stronger then than now, immense tides ripped across this tremendous ocean, keeping it in a state of torment. Since no great amounts of sand had yet been built, the waters where they reached shore were universally dark, black as night, and fearful. Scores of millions of years before man had risen from the shores of the ocean to perceive its grandeur and to venture forth upon its turbulent waves, this eternal sea existed, larger than any other of the Earth's features, vaster than the sister oceans combined, wild, terrifying in its immensity, and imperative in its universal role. How utterly vast it was, how its surges modified the very balance of the Earth, how completely lonely it was, hidden in the darkness of night or burning in the dazzling power of a younger sun than ours. At recurring intervals, the ocean grew cold. Ice piled up along its extremities and so pulled vast amounts of water from the sea, so that the wandering shoreline of the continents sometimes jutted miles farther out than before. Then, for a hundred thousand years, the ceaseless ocean would tear at the exposed shelf of the continents, grinding rocks into sand and incubating new life. Later, the fantastic accumulations of ice would melt, setting cold waters free to join the heating ocean, and the coasts of the continents would lie submerged. Now the restless energy of the sea deposited upon the ocean bed layers of silt and skeletons and salt. For a million years, the ocean would build soil, and then the ice would return, the waters would draw away, and the land would lie exposed. Winds from the north and south would howl across the empty seas and lash stupendous waves upon the shattering shore. Thus the ocean continued its alternate building and tearing down. Master of life, guardian of the shorelines, regulator of temperatures, and heaving sculptor of mountains, the great ocean existed. Millions upon millions of years before man had risen upon Earth, the central areas of this tremendous ocean were empty, and where famous islands now exist, nothing rose above the rolling waves. Of course, crude forms of life sometimes moved through the deep, but for the most part, the central ocean was marked only by enormous waves that arose at the command of moon and wind. Dark, dark, they swept the surface of the empty sea, falling only upon themselves, terrible and puissant and lonely. Then one day, at the bottom of the deep ocean, along a line running 2,000 miles from northwest to southeast, a rupture appeared in the basalt rock that formed the ocean's bed. Some great fracture of the Earth's basic structure had occurred, and from it began to ooze a white-hot liquid rock. As it escaped from its internal prison, it came into contact with the ocean's wet and heavy body. Instantly, the rock exploded, sending aloft through the 19,000 feet of ocean that pressed down upon it columns of released steam. Upward, upward for nearly 4 miles they climbed, those agitated bubbles of air, until at last upon the surface of the sea they broke loose and formed a cloud. In that instant, the ocean signaled that a new island was building. In time, it might grow to become an infinitesimal speck of land that would mark the great central void. No human beings then existed to celebrate the event. Perhaps some weird and vanished flying thing spied the escaping steam and swooped down to inspect it. More likely, the roots of this future island were born in darkness and great waves and brooding nothingness. For nearly 40 million years, an extent of time so vast that it is meaningless, only the ocean knew that an island was building in its bosom, for no land had yet appeared above the surface of the sea. For nearly 40 million years, from that extensive rupture in the ocean floor, small amounts of liquid rock seeped out, each forcing its way up through what had escaped before, each contributing some small portion to the accumulation that was building on the floor of the sea. Sometimes a thousand years or ten thousand would silently pass before any new eruption of material would take place. At other times, gigantic pressures would accumulate beneath the rupture, and with unimaginable violence rush through the existing apertures, throwing clouds of steam miles above the surface of the ocean. Waves would be generated which would circle the globe and crash upon themselves as they collided 12,000 miles away. Such an explosion, indescribable in its fury, might in the end raise the height of the sub-ocean island afoot. But for the most part, the slow, constant seepage of molten rock was not violently dramatic. Layer upon layer of the earth's vital core would creep out, hiss horribly at the cold seawater, and then slide down the sides of the little mountains that were forming. Building was most sure when the liquid rock did not explode into minute, ashy fragments, but cascaded viscously down the sides of the mountains, for this bound together what had gone before, and established a base for what was to come.