sides of the peak. They
help us to estimate its greater circumference and bulk, before the
glaciers had chiseled so deep.

[Illustration: Looking from top of Gibraltar to the Summit. Elevation
of camera, 12,300 feet. In distance is seen the rim of the crater. The
route to this is a steady climb, with 2,000 feet of ascent in one mile
of distance. Many detours have to be made to avoid crevasses. Note the
big crevasse stretching away on right--a "Bergschrund," as the Swiss
call a break where one side falls below the other. The stratification
on its side shows in each layer a year's snow, packed into ice.]

{p.086} But they do even more. Wherever lava flows occurred in the
building of the Mountain, strata formed; and such stratification is
clearly seen at intervals on the sides of the great rocks just
mentioned. Its incline, of course, is that of the former surface. The
strata point upward--not toward the summit which we see, but far above
it. For this reason the geologists who have examined the aretes most
closely are agreed that the peak has lost nearly two thousand feet of
its height. It blew its own head off!

Such explosive eruptions are among the worst vices of volcanoes. Every
visitor to Naples remembers how plainly the landscape north of
Vesuvius tells of a prehistoric decapitation, which left only a low,
broad platform, on the south rim of which the little Vesuvius that
many of us have climbed was formed by later eruptions, while a part of
the north rim is well defined in "Monte Somma." Similarly, here at
home, Mt. Adams and Mt. Baker are truncated cones, while, on the other
hand, St. Helens and Hood are still symmetrical.

Like Vesuvius, too, Rainier-Tacoma has built upon the plateau left
when it lost its head. Peak Success, overlooking Indian Henry's, and
Liberty Cap, the northern elevation, seen from Seattle and Tacoma, are
nearly three miles apart on the west side of the broad summit. These
are parts of the rim of the old crater. East of the line uniting them,
and about two miles from each, the volcano built up an elevation now
known as Crater Peak, comprising two small adjacent craters. These
burnt-out craters are now filled with snow, and where the rims touch,
a big snow-hill rises--the strange creature of eddying winds that
sweep up through the great flume cut by volcanic explosion and
glacial action in the west side of the peak. (See pp. 14, 27, and 52.)

[Illustration {p.087}: View South from Cowlitz