nts had escaped. They and their
villages had been swallowed up by the sea.

CHAPTER XXX.

OUR GREAT HAWAIIAN AND ALASKAN VOLCANOES.

BY TRUMBULL WHITE.

=Greatest Volcanoes in the World Are Under the American
Flag--Huge Craters in Our Pacific Islands--Native
Worship of the Gods of the Flaming Mountains--Eruptions
of the Past--Heroic Defiance of Pele, the Goddess of
Volcanoes, by a Brave Hawaiian Queen--The Spell of
Superstition Broken--Volcanic Peaks in Alaska, Our
Northern Territory--Aleutian Islands Report Eruptions.=

Under the American flag we are ourselves the possessors of some of the
greatest active volcanoes in the world, and the greatest of all
craters, the latter extinct indeed, for many years, but with a latent
power that no one could conceive should it once more begin activity.

Hawaii, Paradise of the Pacific, raised by the fires of the very
Inferno out of the depths of the ocean centuries ago, to become in
recent years a smiling land of tropic beauty and an American island
possession! Hawaii is the land of great volcanoes, sometimes
slumbering and again pouring forth floods of molten fire to overwhelm
the peaceful villages and arouse the superstitious fears of the
natives.

Alaska, too, is a region of great volcanic ranges and eruptive
activity, the Aleutian islands being raised from the bed of the
Pacific by the same natural forces.

The Hawaiian islands occupy a central position in the North Pacific
ocean, about 2,000 miles west of the California coast. The group
includes eight inhabited islands, all of volcanic origin, and they
are, substantially, naught but solid aggregations of fused, basaltic
rock shot up from the earth's center, during outbursts of bye-gone
ages, and cooled into mountains of stone here in the midst of the
greatest body of water on the globe. In many localities, however, the
accretions of centuries have so covered them with vegetable growths
that their general appearance is not greatly different from that of
other sections of the earth's surface.

The largest of the group is Hawaii, and it includes nearly two-thirds
of the total area. Here stand the highest mountains found on any
island in the known world. Only a few peaks of the Alps are as high as
Mauna Loa (Long mountain), which towers 13,675 feet above the level of
the sea, and Mauna Kea (White mountain), the height of which is 13,805
feet. In east Maui stands Haleakala, with an el