ed there, I must
give you an idea of it.

It was round and nearly encircled by naked painted hills. From its
floor came steam and a roaring sound. The steam blew here and
there among the pines on the floor; rose to eddy about the naked
painted hills. At one end we saw intermittently a broad ascending
canon--deep red and blue-black--ending in the cone of a smoking
volcano. The other seemed quite closed by the sheer hills; in fact
the only exit was the route by which we had come.

For the hills were utterly precipitous. I suppose a man might have
made his way up the various knobs, ledges, and inequalities, but it
would have required long study and a careful head. I, myself, later
worked my way a short distance, merely to examine the texture of their
marvellous colour.

This was at once varied and of great body--not at all like the smooth,
glossed colour of most rock, but soft and rich. You've seen painters'
palettes--it was just like that, pasty and _fat_. There were reds
of all shades, from a veritable scarlet to a red umber; greens, from
sea-green to emerald; several kinds of blue, and an indeterminate
purple-mauve. The whole effect was splendid and barbaric.

We stopped and gasped as it hit our eyes. Darrow alone was unmoved.
He led the way forward and in an instant had disappeared behind the
veil of steam. Thrackles and Perdosa hung back murmuring, but at a
sharp word from me gathered their courage in their two hands and proceeded.

We found that the first veil of steam, and a fearful stench of gases,
proceeded from a miniature crater whose edge was heavily encrusted
with a white salt. Beyond, close under the rise of the hill, was
another. Between the two Percy Darrow had stopped and was waiting.

He eyed us with his lazy, half-quizzical glance as we approached.

"Think the place is going to blow up?" he inquired, with a tinge of
irony. "Well, it isn't." He turned to me. "Here's where we shall stay
for a while. You and the men are to cut a number of these pine trees
for a house. Better pick out the little ones, about three or four
inches through: they're easier handled. I'll be back by noon."

We set to work then in the roaring, steaming valley with the vapour
swirling about us, sometimes concealing us, sometimes half revealing
us gigantic, again in the utterness of exposure showing us dwindled
pigmies against the magnitudes about us. The labour was not difficult.
By the time Darrow returned we had a pile of