kness
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 t