ht livable, though one of suffering. It was afternoon of the
following day before they reached camp and found an astonished Sluiskin,
then, in fact, on the point of leaving to report their unfortunate
destruction.

Stevens and Van Trump were doubly pioneers, for their way up the
mountain is, in general direction at least, the popular way to-day,
greatly bettered since, however, by the short cuts and easier detours
which have followed upon experience.

III

Our four volcanic national parks exemplify four states of volcanic
history. Lassen Peak is semi-active; Mount Rainier is dormant;
Yellowstone is dead, and Crater Lake marks the spot through which a
volcano collapsed and disappeared. Rainier's usefulness as a volcanic
example, however, is lost in its supreme usefulness as a glacial
exhibit. The student of glaciers who begins here with the glacier in
action, and then studies the effects of glaciers upon igneous rocks
among the cirques of the Sierra, and upon sedimentary rocks in the
Glacier National Park, will study the masters; which, by the way, is a
tip for universities contemplating summer field-classes.

Upon the truncated top of Mount Rainier, nearly three miles in diameter,
rise two small cinder cones which form, at the junction of their
craters, the mountain's rounded snow-covered summit. It is known as
Columbia Crest. As this only rises four hundred feet above the older
containing crater, it is not always identified from below as the highest
point. Two commanding rocky elevations of the old rim, Point Success on
its southwest side, 14,150 feet, and Liberty Cap on its northwest side,
14,112 feet, appear to be, from the mountain's foot, its points of
greatest altitude.

Rainier's top, though covered with snow and ice, except in spots bared
by internal heat, is not the source of its glaciers, although its
extensive ice-fields flow into and feed several of them. The glaciers
themselves, even those continuous with the summit ice, really originate
about four thousand feet below the top in cirques or pockets which are
principally fed with the tremendous snows of winter, and the wind
sweepings and avalanches from the summit. The Pacific winds are charged
heavily with moisture which descends upon Rainier in snows of great
depth. Even Paradise Park is snowed under from twelve to thirty feet.
There is a photograph of a ranger cabin in February which shows only a
slight snow-mound with a hole in its top which locat