ently,
there were two or more vents. The outbreak of imprisoned steam at
intervals of a half minute or more threw the mud in small fig-like
masses from five to forty feet in air with a dull, booming sound,
sometimes loud enough to be heard for miles through the awful stillness
of these lonely hills. It is clear, from the fact of our finding these
mud-patches at least one hundred yards from the crater, that at times
much more violent explosions take place. The constant plastering of the
slopes of the crater which these explosions cause tends to seal up its
vent, but the greater explosions cleanse it at times, and all the while
the steam softens the masses on the sides, so that they slip back into
the boiling cauldron below. As one faces the slit in the cone there lies
to the right a pool of creamy thin mud, white and yellow, feebly
boiling. It is some thirty feet wide, and must be not more than twenty
feet from the crater: its level I guessed at sixteen feet above that of
the bottom of the crater.

After an hour's observation near to the volcano I retired some fifty
feet, and, sheltering myself under a stunted pine, waited in the hope of
seeing a greater outbreak. After an hour more the boiling lessened and
the frequent explosions ceased for perhaps fifteen minutes. Then of a
sudden came a booming sound, followed by a hoarse noise, as the crater
filled with steam, out of which shot, some seventy-five feet in air,
about a cartload of mud. It fell over an area of fifty yards around the
crater in large or small masses, which flattened as they struck. As
soon as it ended I walked toward the crater. A moment later a second
squirt shot out sideways and fell in a line athwart the mud-pool near
by, crossing the spot where I had been standing so long, and covering
me, as I advanced, with rare patches of hot mud. Some change took place
after this in the character and consistency of the mud, and now, at
intervals, the curious spectacle was afforded of rings of mud like the
smoke-rings cast by a cannon or engine-chimney. As they turned in air
they resembled at times the figure 8: once they assumed the form of a
huge irregular spiral some ten feet high, although usually the figures
were like long spikes, or, more rarely, thin formless leaves, and even
like bats or deformed birds.

I walked back over the hills to camp, where we found Captain G. and the
commissary with the best of two deer they had shot. Later, Mr. C. and
Mr. K. came