sides, are found lava formations of many strange and wonderful kinds.
Hot springs and bubbling paint pots abound; and in the Yellowstone
National Park, geysers. Fields of fantastic, twisted shapes, masses
suggesting heaps of tumbled ropes, upstanding spatter cones, caves
arched with lava roofs, are a very few of the very many phenomena which
the climber of a volcano encounters on his way. And at the top, broad,
bowl-shaped craters, whose walls are sometimes many hundred feet deep,
enclose, if the crater has long been dormant, sandy floors, from which,
perhaps, small cinder cones arise. If the crater still is active, the
adventurer's experiences are limited only by his daring.
The entire region, in short, strikingly differs from any other of scenic
kind.
Of the several processes of world-making, all of which are progressing
to-day at normal speed, none is so thrilling as volcanism, because no
other concentrates action into terms of human grasp. Lassen Peak's
eruption of a thousand cubic yards of lava in a few hours thrills us
more than the Mississippi's erosion of an average foot of her vast
valley in a hundred thousand years; yet the latter is enormously the
greater. The explosion of Mount Katmai, the rise and fall of Kilauea's
boiling lava, the playing of Yellowstone's monster geysers, the
spectacle of Mazama's lake-filled crater, the steaming of the Cascade's
myriad bubbling springs, all make strong appeal to the imagination. They
carry home the realization of mysterious, overwhelming power.
Lava is molten rock of excessively high temperature, which suddenly
becomes released from the fearful pressures of earth's interior. Hurled
from volcanic vents, or gushing from cracks in the earth's skin, it
spreads rapidly over large neighborhoods, filling valleys and raising
bulky rounded masses.
Often it is soft and frothy, like pumice. Even in its frequent glass
forms, obsidian, for example, it easily disintegrates. There are as many
kinds of lava as there are kinds of rock from which it is formed.
Volcanic scenery is by no means confined to what we call the volcanic
national parks. Volcanoes were frequent in many parts of the continent.
We meet their remnants unexpectedly among the granites of the Rockies
and the Sierra, and the sedimentary rocks of the west and the southwest.
Several of our national parks besides those prevailingly volcanic, and
several of our most distinguished national monuments, exhibit
interesting volcanic interludes.
VII
LASSEN PEAK AND MOUNT KATMAI
THE ONE A NATIONAL PARK IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA, THE OTHER A NATIONAL
MONUMENT IN ALASKA
Because most of the conspicuous volcanic eruptions of our day have
occurred in warmer climes nearer the equator, we usually think of
volcanoes as tropical, or semi-tropical, phenomena. Vesuvius is in the
Mediterranean, Pelee in the Caribbean, Mauna Loa and Kilauea on the
Hawaiian Islands. Of course there is Lassen Peak in California--the
exception, as we say, which proves the rule.
As a fact, many of the world's greatest volcanoes are very far indeed
from the tropics. Volcanoes result from the movement of earth masses
seeking equilibrium underneath earth's crust, but near enough to the
surface to enable molten rock under terrific pressure to work upward
from isolated pockets and break through. Volcanoes occur in all
latitudes. Even Iceland has its great volcano. It is true that the
volcano map shows them congregating thickly in a broad band, of which
the equator is the centre, but it also shows them bordering the Pacific
Coast from Patagonia to Alaska, crossing the ocean through the Aleutian
Islands, and extending far down the Asian coast. It also shows many
inland volcanoes, isolated and in series. The distribution is
exceedingly wide.
Volcanoes usually occur in belts which may or may not coincide with
lines of weakening in the earth's crust below. Hence the series of
flaming torches of prehistoric days which, their fires now extinguished
and their sides swathed in ice, have become in our day the row of
spectacular peaks extending from northern California to Puget Sound.
Hence also the long range of threatening summits which skirts Alaska's
southern shore, to-day the world's most active volcanic belt. Here it
was that Katmai's summit was lost in the mighty explosion of June, 1912,
one of enormous violence, which followed tremendous eruptions elsewhere
along the same coast, and is expected to be followed by others, perhaps
of even greater immensity and power.
These two volcanic belts contain each an active volcano which Congress
has made the centre of a national reservation. Lassen Peak, some wise
men believe, is the last exhibit of activity in the dying volcanism of
the Cascade Mountains. Mount Katmai is the latest and greatest exhibit
in a volcanic belt which is believed to be young and growing.
THE BUILDING OF THE CASCADES
Millions of years ago, in the period which geologists call Tertiary, the
pressure under that part of the crust of the earth which now is
Washington, Oregon, and northern California, became too powerful for
solid rock to withstand. Long lines of hills appeared parallel to the
sea, and gradually rose hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of feet. These
cracked, and from the long summit-fissures issued hot lava, which spread
over enormous areas and, cooling, laid the foundations for the coming
Cascade Mountains.
When the gaping fissures eased the pressure from beneath, they filled
with ash and lava except at certain vent holes, around which grew the
volcanoes which, when their usefulness as chimneys passed, became those
cones of ice and snow which now are the glory of our northwest.
There may have been at one time many hundreds of these volcanoes, big
and little. Most of them doubtless quickly perished under the growing
slopes of their larger neighbors, and, as they became choked with ash,
the lava which had been finding vent through them sought other doors of
escape, and found them in the larger volcanoes. Thus, by natural
selection, there survived at last that knightly company of monsters now
uniformed in ice, which includes, from north to south, such celebrities
as Mount Baker, Mount Rainier, Mount Adams, Mount St. Helens, Mount
Hood, vanished Mount Mazama, Mount Shasta, and living Lassen Peak.
Whether or not several of these vast beacons lit Pacific's nights at one
time can never be known with certainty, but probability makes the claim.
Whether or not in their decline the canoes of prehistoric men found
harbor by guidance of their pillars of fire by night, and their pillars
of smoke by day is less probable but possible. One at least of the giant
band, Lassen Peak, is semi-active to-day. At least two others, Mount
Rainier and Mount Baker, offer evidences of internal heat beneath their
mail of ice. And early settlers in the northwest report Indian
traditions of the awful cataclysm in which Mount Rainier lost two
thousand feet of cone.
LASSEN PEAK NATIONAL PARK
Lassen Peak, the last of the Cascades in active eruption, rises between
the northern end of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, of which it is locally
but wrongly considered a part, and the Klamath Mountains, a spur of the
Cascades. Actually it is the southern terminus of the Cascades.
* * * * *
Though quiet for more than two hundred years, the region long has
enjoyed scientific and popular interest because it possesses hot
springs, mud volcanoes and other minor volcanic phenomena, and
particularly because its cones, which are easily climbed and studied,
have remained very nearly perfect. Besides Lassen Peak, whose altitude
is 10,437 feet, there are others of large size and great interest close
by. Prospect Peak attains the altitude of 9,200 feet; Harkness Peak
9,000 feet; and Cinder Cone, a specimen of unusual beauty, 6,907 feet.
Because it seemed desirable to conserve the best two of these examples
of recent volcanism, President Taft in 1906 created the Lassen Peak and
the Cinder Cone National Monuments. Doubtless there would have been no
change in the status of these reservations had not Lassen Peak broken
its long sleep in the spring of 1914 with a series of eruptions covering
a period of nineteen months. This centred attention upon the region, and
in August, 1916, Congress created the Lassen Volcanic National Park, a
reservation of a hundred and twenty-four square miles, which included
both national monuments, other notable cones of the neighborhood, and
practically all the hot springs and other lesser phenomena. Four months
after the creation of the national park Lassen Peak ceased activity with
its two hundred and twelfth eruption. It is not expected to resume. For
some years, however, scientists will continue to class it as
semi-active.
These eruptions, none of which produced any considerable lava flow, are
regarded as probably the dying gasps of the volcanic energy of the
Cascades. They began in May, 1914, with sharp explosions of steam and
smoke from the summit crater. The news aroused wide-spread interest
throughout the United States; it was the first volcanic eruption within
the national boundaries. During the following summer there were
thirty-eight slight similar eruptions, some of which scattered ashes in
the neighborhood. The spectacle was one of magnificence because of the
heavy columns of smoke. Eruptions increased in frequency with winter,
fifty-six occurring during the balance of the year.
[Illustration: _From a photograph by J.S. Diller_
LASSEN PEAK SEEN FROM THE SOUTHWEST
On the left is the material last erupted from the slope of the peak. It
is called Chaos]
[Illustration: _From a photograph by J.S. Diller_
LASSEN PEAK CLOSE UP
Showing the northeast slope as seen from Chaos]
About the end of March, 1915, according to Doctor J.S. Diller of the
United States Geological Survey, new lava had filled the crater and
overflowed the west slope a thousand feet. On May 22 following occurred
the greatest eruption of the series. A mushroom-shaped cloud of smoke
burst four miles upward in air. The spectacle, one of grandeur, was
plainly visible even from the Sacramento Valley. "At night," writes
Doctor Diller, "flashes of light from the mountain summit, flying
rocket-like bodies and cloud-glows over the crater reflecting the light
from incandescent lavas below, were seen by many observers from various
points of view, and appear to indicate that much of the material erupted
was sufficiently hot to be luminous."
Another interesting phenomenon was the blast of superheated gas which
swept down Lost Creek and Hot Creek Valleys. For ten miles it withered
and destroyed every living thing in its path. Large trees were uprooted.
Forests were scorched to a cinder. Snow-fields were instantly turned to
water and flooded the lower valleys with rushing tides.
Later examination showed that this explosion had opened a new fissure,
and that the old and new craters, now joined in one, were filled with a
lava lid. Following this, the eruptions steadily declined in violence
till their close the following December.
As a national park, though undeveloped and unequipped as yet, Lassen has
many charms besides its volcanic phenomena. Its western and southern
slopes are thickly forested and possess fine lakes and streams. Several
thousand persons, largely motorists, have visited it yearly of late.
There are hot springs at Drakesbad, just within the southern border,
which have local popularity as baths. The trout-fishing in lake and
stream is excellent, and shooting is encouraged in the extensive
national forest which surrounds the park, but not in the park itself,
which is sanctuary. In spite of the hunting, deer are still found.
The greatest pleasure, however, will be found in exploring the
volcanoes, from whose summits views are obtainable of many miles of this
tumbled and splendidly forested part of California and of the dry plains
of the Great Basin on its east.
THE KATMAI NATIONAL MONUMENT
We turn from the dying flutter of California's last remaining active
volcano to the excessive violence of a volcano in the extremely active
Alaskan coast range. The Mount Katmai National Monument will have few
visitors because it is inaccessible by anything less than an
exploring-party. We know it principally from the reports of four
expeditions by the National Geographic Society. Informed by these
reports, President Wilson created it a national monument in 1918.
A remarkable volcanic belt begins in southern Alaska at the head of Cook
Inlet, and follows the coast in a broad southwesterly curve fifteen
hundred miles long through the Alaskan Peninsula to the end of the
Aleutian Islands, nearly enclosing Behring Sea. It is very ancient. Its
mainland segment contains a dozen peaks, which are classed as active or
latent, and its island segment many other volcanoes. St. Augustine's
eruption in 1883 was one of extreme violence. Kugak was active in 1889.
Veniaminof's eruption in 1892 ranked with St. Augustine's. Redoubt
erupted in 1902, and Katmai, with excessive violence, in June, 1912. The
entire belt is alive with volcanic excitement. Pavlof, at the
peninsula's end, has been steaming for years, and several others are
under expectant scientific observation. Katmai may be outdone at any
time.
Katmai is a peak of 6,970 feet altitude, on treacherous Shelikof Strait,
opposite Kodiak Island. It rises from an inhospitable shore far from
steamer routes or other recognized lines of travel. Until it announced
itself with a roar which was heard at Juneau, seven hundred and fifty
miles away, its very existence was probably unknown except to a few
prospectors, fishermen, geographers, and geologists. Earthquakes
followed the blast, then followed night of smoke and dust. Darkness
lasted sixty hours at Kodiak, a hundred miles away. Dust fell as far as
Ketchikan, nine hundred miles away. Fumes were borne on the wind as far
as Vancouver Island, fifteen hundred miles away. Weather Bureau reports
noted haziness as far away as Virginia during succeeding weeks, and the
extraordinary haziness in Europe during the following summer is noted by
Doctor C.S. Abbott, Director of the Astrophysical Observatory of the
Smithsonian Institution, in connection with this eruption.
Nevertheless, Katmai's is by no means the greatest volcanic eruption.
Katmai's output of ash was about five cubic miles. Several eruptions
have greatly exceeded that in bulk, notably that of Tomboro, in the
island of Sumbawa, near Java, in 1815, when more than twenty-eight cubic
miles of ash were flung to the winds. Comparison with many great
eruptions whose output was principally lava is of course impossible.
The scene of this explosion is the national monument of to-day. The
hollowed shell of Katmai's summit is a spectacle of wonderment and
grandeur. Robert F. Griggs, who headed the expeditions which explored
it, states that the area of the crater is 8.4 square miles, measured
along the highest point of the rim. The abyss is 2.6 miles long, 7.6
miles in circumference, and 4.2 square miles in area. A lake has formed
within it which is 1.4 miles long and nine-tenths of a mile wide. Its
depth is unknown. The precipice from the lake to the highest point of
the rim measures thirty-seven hundred feet.
The most interesting exhibit of the Katmai National Monument, however,
is a group of neighboring valleys just across the western divide, the
principal one of which Mr. Griggs, with picturesque inaccuracy, named
the "Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes"; for, from its floor and sides and
the floors and sides of smaller tributary valleys, superheated steam
issues in thousands of hissing columns. It is an appalling spectacle.
The temperatures of this steam are extremely high; Griggs reports one
instance of 432 degrees Centigrade, which would equal 948 degrees
Fahrenheit; in some vents he found a higher temperature at the surface
than a few feet down its throat. The very ground is hot.
This phenomenal valley is not to be fully explained offhand; as Griggs
says, there are many problems to work out. The steam vents appear to be
very recent. They did not exist when Spurr crossed the valley in 1898,
and Martin heard nothing of them when he was in the near neighborhood in
1903 and 1904. The same volcanic impulse which found its main relief in
the explosive eruption of near-by Katmai in 1912 no doubt cracked the
deep-lying rocks beneath this group of valleys, exposing superheated
rocks to subterranean waters which forthwith turned to steam and forced
these vents for escape. Griggs reports that volcanic gases mingle freely
with the steam.
The waters may have one or more of several sources; perhaps they come
from deep springs originating in surface snows and rains; perhaps they
seep in from the sea. Whatever their origin the region especially
interests us as a probably early stage of phenomena whose later stages
find conspicuous examples in several of our national parks. Some day,
with the cooling of the region, this may become the valley of ten
thousand hot springs.
But it is useful and within scientific probability to carry this
conception much further. The comparison between Katmai's steaming
valleys and the geyser basin of Yellowstone is especially instructive
because Yellowstone's basins doubtless once were what Katmai's steaming
valleys are now. The "Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes" may well be a
coming geyser-field of enormous size. The explanation is simple.
Bunsen's geyser theory, now generally accepted, presupposes a column of
water filling the geyser vent above a deep rocky superheated chamber, in
which entering water is being rapidly turned into steam. When this steam
becomes plentiful enough and sufficiently compressed to overcome the
weight of the water in the vent, it suddenly expands and hurls the water
out. That is what makes the geyser play.
Now one difference between the Yellowstone geyser-fields and Katmai's
steaming valleys is just a difference in temperature. The entire depth
of earth under these valleys is heated far above boiling-point, so that
it is not possible for water to remain in the vents; it turns to steam
as fast as it collects and rushes out at the top in continuous flow. But
when enough thousands of centuries elapse for the rocks between the
surface and the deep internal pockets to cool, the water will remain in
many vents as water until, at regular intervals, enough steam gathers
below to hurl it out. Then these valleys will become basins of geysers
and hot springs like Yellowstone's.
VIII
MOUNT RAINIER, ICY OCTOPUS
MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK, WEST CENTRAL WASHINGTON. AREA, 324 SQUARE
MILES
I
Mount Rainier, the loftiest volcano within the boundaries of the United
States, one of our greatest mountains, and certainly our most imposing
mountain, rises from western central Washington to an altitude of 14,408
feet above mean tide in Puget Sound. It is forty-two miles in direct
line from the centre of Tacoma, and fifty-seven miles from Seattle, from
both of which its glistening peak is often a prominent spectacle. With
favoring atmospheric conditions it can be seen a hundred and fifty miles
away.
North and south of Rainier, the Cascade Mountains bear other snow-capped
volcanic peaks. Baker rises 10,703 feet; Adams, 12,307 feet; St. Helens,
9,697 feet; Hood, 11,225 feet, and Shasta, 14,162 feet. But Rainier
surpasses them all in height, bulk, and majesty. Once it stood 16,000
feet, as is indicated by the slopes leading up to its broken and
flattened top. The supposition is that nearly two thousand feet of its
apex were carried away in one or more explosive eruptions long before
history, but possibly not before man; there are Indian traditions of a
cataclysm. There were slight eruptions in 1843, 1854, 1858, and 1870,
and from the two craters at its summit issue many jets of steam which
comfort the chilled climber.
This immense sleeping cone is blanketed in ice. Twenty-eight
well-defined glaciers flow down its sides, several of which are nearly
six miles long. Imagining ourselves looking down from an airplane at a
great height, we can think of seeing it as an enormous frozen octopus
sprawling upon the grass, for its curving arms of ice, reaching out in
all directions, penetrate one of the finest forests even of our
northwest. The contrast between these cold glaciers and the luxuriantly
wild-flowered and forest-edged meadows which border them as snugly as so
many rippling summer rivers affords one of the most delightful features
of the Mount Rainier National Park. Paradise Inn, for example, stands in
a meadow of wild flowers between Rainier's icy front on the one side and
the snowy Tatoosh Range on the other, with the Nisqually Glacier fifteen
minutes' walk away!
The casual tourist who has looked at the Snowy Range of the Rockies from
the distant comfort of Estes Park, or the High Sierra from the
dining-porch of the Glacier Point Hotel, receives an invigorating shock
of astonishment at beholding Mount Rainier even at a distance. Its
isolation gives it enormous scenic advantage. Mount Whitney of the
Sierra, our loftiest summit, which overtops it ninety-three feet, is
merely the climax in a tempestuous ocean of snowy neighbors which are
only less lofty; Rainier towers nearly eight thousand feet above its
surrounding mountains. It springs so powerfully into the air that one
involuntarily looks for signs of life and action. But no smoke rises
from its broken top. It is still and helpless, shackled in bonds of ice.
Will it remain bound? Or will it, with due warning, destroy in a day the
elaborate system of glaciers which countless centuries have built, and
leave a new and different, and perhaps, after years of glacial recovery,
even a more gloriously beautiful Mount Rainier than now?
The extraordinary individuality of the American national parks, their
difference, each from every other, is nowhere more marked than here.
Single-peaked glacial systems of the size of Rainier's, of course, are
found wherever mountains of great size rise in close masses far above
the line of perpetual snow. The Alaskan Range and the Himalayas may
possess many. But if there is anywhere another mountain of approximate
height and magnitude, carrying an approximate glacier system, which
rises eight thousand feet higher than its neighbors out of a parkland of
lakes, forests, and wild-flower gardens, which Nature seems to have made
especially for pleasuring, and the heart of which is reached in four
hours from a large city situated upon transatlantic railway-lines, I
have not heard of it.
Seen a hundred miles away, or from the streets of Seattle and Tacoma, or
from the motor-road approaching the park, or from the park itself, or
from any of the many interglacier valleys, one never gets used to the
spectacle of Rainier. The shock of surprise, the instant sense of
impossibility, ever repeats itself. The mountain assumes a thousand
aspects which change with the hours, with the position of the beholder,
and with atmospheric conditions. Sometimes it is fairy-like, sometimes
threatening, always majestic. One is not surprised at the Indian's fear.
Often Rainier withdraws his presence altogether behind the horizon
mists; even a few miles away no hint betrays his existence. And very
often, shrouded in snow-storm or cloud, he is lost to those at his foot.
Mysterious and compelling is this ghostly mountain to us who see it for
the first time, unable to look long away while it remains in view. It is
the same, old Washingtonians tell me, with those who have kept watching
it every day of visibility for many years. And so it was to Captain
George Vancouver when, first of white men, he looked upon it from the
bridge of the _Discovery_ on May 8, 1792.
"The weather was serene and pleasant," he wrote under that date, "and
the country continued to exhibit, between us and the eastern snowy
range, the same luxuriant appearance. At its eastern extremity, mount
Baker bore by compass N. 22 E.; the round snowy mountain, now forming
its southern extremity, and which, after my friend Rear Admiral Rainier,
I distinguished by the name of MOUNT RAINIER, bore N. (S.) 42 E."
[Illustration: _From a photograph by A.H. Barnes_
SOUTHEAST SLOPE OF MOUNT RAINIER
The winding glacier is the Cowlitz. Gibraltar is the rock on the right
near the summit]