the first to view Lassen Volcano
when, in 1914, it broke its slumber of 200 years. Indeed, he had had a
real adventure, as the second outburst had caught him within half a mile
of the crater and he had barely escaped with his life. Of course the boys
had to hear all about it.

While the Sierra south of Lassen has been built more through uplift than
volcanic activity, at least since the Tertiary period, he explained, the
Cascades and indeed, the whole range to the northward through Oregon and
Washington, is a product of lava flow.

Happening to be about to start on a camping trip in the Feather River
region at the time of the first eruption, he and his companion had
hastened immediately to the scene of so much geological history making.
The smoke and ashes that billowed forth had been visible for fifty miles,
and the accompanying earthquake shocks had been accompanied by a downpour
of rain.

Climbing the path of a recent snow-slide, which had cleared a narrow path
in the fifteen-foot drifts, they could smell sulphur strongly from near
the South base onward. Veering around to the East, past half a dozen
cinder cones, they finally reached a narrow ridge leading directly to, as
yet unoccupied, the fire outlook station. Clambering over crags so steep,
finally, that they could not see ahead, they came to the little square
building, now tattered by the stones that had fallen through its roof,
tethered to the few feet of space available by wire cables that seemed to
hold it down in the teeth of the winds. Suddenly below them lay the bowl
of the ancient crater, bordered by snow fields now gray with ash. That
the ash had not been hot they judged from the fact that it had nowise
melted the snow, but lay on its surface. From the ragged edge of the
steaming basin, yellow with sulphur, rose the oppressive fumes they had
been getting more and more strongly. How deep was this funnel to the
interior of the earth? To their amazement it appeared to be only about 80
feet deep. That, they decided,--coupled with the fact that the ash and
rocks exploded had not been hot, but cold, must be because the sides of
the crater, as they gradually caved in, must have choked the neck of the
crater with debris, which had been expelled when the smoke and gases had
been exploded. There had been no lava flow, then!

They had retraced their steps to perhaps half a mile's distance when of a
sudden the earth beneath their feet began to heave and rumble
t