kable curiosities to be found in that region, and I was
greatly surprised to find that Dr. Hayden made so little allusion to it.

In 1872, the year following Dr. Hayden's first visit, I again visited
the volcano, and the omission by Hayden was explained as soon as I saw
the volcano in its changed condition. The loud detonations which
resembled the discharges of a gun-boat mortar were no longer heard, and
the upper part of the crater and cone had in a great measure
disappeared, leaving a shapeless and unsightly hole much larger than the
former crater, in which large tree-tops were swaying to and fro in the
gurgling mass, forty feet below--the whole appearance bearing testimony
to the terrible nature of the convulsion which wrought such destruction.
Lieutenant Doane, in his official report to the War Department, thus
describes the volcano as it appeared in 1870:

"A few hundred yards from here is an object of the greatest interest. On
the slope of a small and steep wooded ravine is the crater of a mud
volcano, 30 feet in diameter at the rim, which is elevated a few feet
above the surface on the lower side, and bounded by the slope of the
hill on the upper, converging, as it deepens, to the diameter of 15 feet
at the lowest visible point, about 40 feet down. Heavy volumes of steam
escape from this opening, ascending to the height of 300 feet. From far
down in the earth came a jarring sound, in regular beats of five
seconds, with a concussion that shook the ground at 200 yards' distance.
After each concussion came a splash of mud, as if thrown to a great
height; sometimes it could be seen from the edge of the crater, but none
was entirely ejected while we were there. Occasionally an explosion was
heard like the bursting of heavy guns behind an embankment, and causing
the earth to tremble for a mile around. The distance to which this mud
had been thrown is truly astonishing. The ground and falling trees near
by were splashed at a horizontal distance of 200 feet. The trees below
were either broken down or their branches festooned with dry mud, which
appeared in the tops of the trees growing on the side hill from the same
level with the crater, 50 feet in height, and at a distance of 180 feet
from the volcano. The mud, to produce such effects, must have been
thrown to a perpendicular elevation of at least 300 feet. It was with
difficulty we could believe the evidence of our senses, and only after
the most careful measurements