fire or from noxious vapors.

The Skapta river branch of this lava stream was fifty miles long and
in places twelve to fifteen miles wide; the other stream was forty
miles long, seven miles broad, and the range of depth in each stream
was from 100 to 600 feet. Professor Bischoff has called this, in
quantity, the greatest eruption of the world, the lava, piled, having
been estimated as of greater volume than is Mont Blanc.

Regarding the volcanoes of the United States, Mount Shasta is one of
the most interesting of them. It has an altitude of 14,350 feet,
towering more than a mile above its nearest neighbor. Four thousand
feet of its peak are above timber line, covered with glaciers, while
the mountain's base is seventeen miles in diameter. Shasta is almost
continually showing slight evidences of its internal fires. Another of
the famous cones is that of Mount Hood, standing 11,225 feet,
snow-capped, and regarded as an extinct volcano.

As to the volcanic records of the great West, they may be read in the
chains of mountains that stretch from Alaska 10,000 miles to Tierra
del Fuego. In the giant geysers and hot springs of the Yellowstone
Park are evidences of existing fires in the United States; while as to
the extent of seismic disturbances of the past, the famous lava beds
of Dakota, in which Captain Jack, the Modoc chief, held out against
government troops till starved into submission, are volcanic areas
full of mute testimony regarding nature's convulsions.

How soon, if ever, some of these volcanic areas of the United States
may burst forth into fresh activity, no one can predict. If the
slumbering giants should arouse themselves and shake off the rock
fetters which bind their strength, the results might be terrible to
contemplate. Those who dwell in the shadow of such peaks as are
believed to be extinct, become indifferent to such a possible threat
after many years of immunity, but such a disaster as that of St.
Pierre arouses thought and directs scrutiny once more upon the ancient
volcanic peaks of the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas.

CHAPTER XXXI.

SOUTH AMERICAN CITIES DESTROYED.

BY TRUMBULL WHITE.

=Earthquakes Ravage the Coast Cities of Peru and the
Neighboring Countries--Spanish Capitals in the New
World Frequent Sufferers--Lima, Callao and Caracas
Devastated--Tidal Waves Accompany the Earthquakes--Juan
Fernandez Island Shaken--Fissures Engulf Men and
Animals-