became black and level
again. During a 'thaw' every dismembered cake was marked by a glittering
white border which was superbly shaded inward by aurora borealis rays,
which were a flaming yellow where they joined the white border, and from
thence toward their points tapered into glowing crimson, then into a
rich, pale carmine, and finally into a faint blush that held its own a
moment and then dimmed and turned black. Some of the streams preferred
to mingle together in a tangle of fantastic circles, and then they
looked something like the confusion of ropes one sees on a ship's deck
when she has just taken in sail and dropped anchor--provided one can
imagine those ropes on fire.

"Through the glasses, the little fountains scattered about looked very
beautiful. They boiled, and coughed, and spluttered, and discharged
sprays of stringy red fire--of about the consistency of mush, for
instance--from ten to fifteen feet into the air, along with a shower of
brilliant white sparks--a quaint and unnatural mingling of gouts of
blood and snowflakes."

One can descend the sides and approach surprisingly close to the
flaming surface, the temperature of which, by the way, is 1750 degrees
Fahrenheit.

Such is "The House of Everlasting Fire" to-day. But who can say what it
will be a year or a decade hence? A clogging or a shifting of the vents
below sea-level, and Kilauea's lake of fire may become again explosive.
Who will deny that Kilauea may not soar even above Mauna Loa? Stranger
things have happened before this in the Islands of Surprise.

THE SEDIMENTARY NATIONAL PARKS

XII

ON SEDIMENTARY ROCK IN SCENERY

The national parks which are wrought in sedimentary rocks are Glacier,
Mesa Verde, Hot Springs, Platt, Wind Cave, Sully's Hill, and Grand
Canyon. Zion National Monument is carved from sedimentary rock; also
several distinguished reservations in our southwest which conserve
natural bridges and petrified forests.

Sedimentary rocks have highly attractive scenic quality. Lying in strata
usually horizontal but often inclined by earth movements, sometimes even
standing on end, they form marked and pleasing contrasts with the heavy
massing of the igneous rocks and the graceful undulations and occasional
sharp-pointed summits of the lavas.

As distinguished from igneous rocks, which form under pressure in the
earth's hot interior, and from lava, which results from volcanic
eruption when fluid igneous rocks a