whole valley were full of smoke. Of course it was
steam."

"Weren't you afraid of another volcano?" asked the boys, snuggling down
ready for a real story.

"No, because with all those vents letting off steam, it must relieve the
pressure from below, like so many safety-valves. Two black, glassy
looking lava mountains guard the pass. The wind on the side of
Observation Mountain was blowing so hard it honestly lifted us off our
feet at times, and it blew a hail of pumice stone in our faces that
literally cut the flesh. Of course we wore goggles.

"Once in the valley, there were certainly all of ten thousand smokes
rising from the ground. We were simply speechless, it was such an awesome
spectacle."

"I'll bet you were!" breathed Ted.

"Personally, I consider it more wonderful than either the Grand Canyon or
the geysers of the Yellowstone. As far as we could see in any
direction,--and there seemed to be three arms to the valley,--the white
vapor was steaming out of the ground until it mingled with a great cloud
that hung between the mountain walls. And we later camped in places where
we could keep our food in a hollow of a glacier while we boiled our
breakfast in a steam hole, and the ground was almost too warm for
comfort."

"Must have been an ideal camping place," said Ace.

"Far from that. Too much danger of breaking through. And then of course
there wasn't a tree or a grass blade anywhere, much less a stick of
firewood. But we sure had steam heat at night, and we cooked, in the
milder of the fumaroles."

"Wasn't there a lot of gas coming up with the steam?" asked Ace.

"Yes, but it didn't taint our food any. It was an ideal steam cooker.
Farther down the valley were some vents hot enough to fry bacon."

"I should think it would have steamed it," said Ted.

"No, we found one vent where the steam came so hot that it didn't
condense for several feet above ground; the only trouble was that the
frying pan had a tendency to go flying up in the air and the cook had to
have a strong arm to hold it down."

At the picture his memory evoked, Norris burst into hearty chuckles. "As
the bacon got crisp, of course it didn't weigh so heavy, and there always
came a point where it began to fly out of the pan. Then we'd all stand
around, and it was the liveliest man that caught the most breakfast.

"There was another camp convenience, too, there in Hades, as the valley
has been named."

"Thar, didn't I tell you so?" tr