The Mystery of Hawai‘i’s Doctor’s Pit (opens in new tab)

🌋 David Douglas was many things: a horticulturalist, a mountaineer, and a famed botanist\. He was last seen the morning of July 12, 1834, hiking around Hawaiʻi’s Mauna Kea; later that day, his body was found at the bottom of a cattle pit trap\. What killed Douglas? Was it a rare instance of carelessness? Or, as unfounded rumors had it back in 1834, was he murdered by a man who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?