g Kilauea of the pit of fire, a neighbor volcano which it has
almost engulfed in its swollen bulk, well illustrates the volcano built
up by outpourings of lava from vents broken through its sides. Flat and
rolling Yellowstone with its geyser fields, is one of the best possible
examples of a dead and much eroded volcanic region.

The scenic detail of the volcanic landscape is interesting and different
from any other. Centuries and the elements create from lava a soil of
great fertility. No forests and wild flowers excel those growing on the
lavas of the Cascades, and the fertility of the Hawaiian Islands, which
are entirely volcanic, is world-famous. Streams cut deep and often
highly colored canyons in these broad lava lands, and wind and rain,
while eroding valleys, often leave ornately modelled edifices of harder
rock, and tall thin needles pointing to the zenith.

In the near neighborhood of the volcanoes, as well as on their sloping
sides, are found lava formations of many strange and wonderful kinds.
Hot springs and bubbling paint pots abound; and in the Yellowstone
National Park, geysers. Fields of fantastic, twisted shapes, masses
suggesting heaps of tumbled ropes, upstanding spatter cones, caves
arched with lava roofs, are a very few of the very many phenomena which
the climber of a volcano encounters on his way. And at the top, broad,
bowl-shaped craters, whose walls are sometimes many hundred feet deep,
enclose, if the crater has long been dormant, sandy floors, from which,
perhaps, small cinder cones arise. If the crater still is active, the
adventurer's experiences are limited only by his daring.

The entire region, in short, strikingly differs from any other of scenic
kind.

Of the several processes of world-making, all of which are progressing
to-day at normal speed, none is so thrilling as volcanism, because no
other concentrates action into terms of human grasp. Lassen Peak's
eruption of a thousand cubic yards of lava in a few hours thrills us
more than the Mississippi's erosion of an average foot of her vast
valley in a hundred thousand years; yet the latter is enormously the
greater. The explosion of Mount Katmai, the rise and fall of Kilauea's
boiling lava, the playing of Yellowstone's monster geysers, the
spectacle of Mazama's lake-filled crater, the steaming of the Cascade's
myriad bubbling springs, all make strong appeal to the imagination. They
carry home the realization of mysterious, overwhelm