or. The interior was a chaos of pots and kettles, in the centre
of which sat the cook, Eleanor, holding on by the floor. Every now and
then she would give a scream which took all the breath out of her; so
she had to stop and fetch breath before she could give another. The
Doctor stepped through the saucepans and camp-ovens, and trying to
raise her said,--

"Come, get up, my good woman, and give over screaming. All the danger
is over, and you will frighten the ladies."

At this moment she had got her "second wind," and as he tried to get
her up she gave such a yell that he dropped her again, and bolted,
stopping his ears; bolted over a teakettle which had been thrown down,
and fell prostrate, resounding like an Homeric hero, on to a heap of
kitchen utensils, at the feet of Alice, who had come in to come see
what the noise was about.

"Good Lord!" said he, picking himself up, "what lungs she has got! I
shall have a singing in my ears to my dying day. Yar! it went through
my head like a knife."

Sam picked up the cook, and she, after a time, picked up her pots,
giving, however, an occasional squall, and holding on by the dresser,
under the impression that another earthquake was coming. We left her,
however, getting dinner under way, and went back to the others, whom we
soon set laughing by telling poor Eleanor's misadventures.

We were all in good spirits now. A brisk cool wind had come up from the
south, following the earthquake, making a pleasant rustle as it swept
across the plain or tossed the forest boughs. The sky had got clear,
and the nimble air was so inviting that we rose as one body to stroll
in groups about the garden and wander down to the river.

The brave old river was rushing hoarsely along, clear and full, between
his ruined temple-columns of basalt, as of old. "What a grand
salmon-river this would be, Major!" said I; "what pools and stickles
are here! Ah! if we only could get the salmon-spawn through the tropics
without its germinating.--Can you tell me, Doctor, why these rocks
should take the form of columns? Is there any particular reason for it
that you know?"

"You have asked a very puzzling question," he replied, "and I hardly
know how to answer it. Nine geologists out of ten will tell you that
basalt is lava cooled under pressure. But I have seen it in places
where that solution was quite inapplicable. However, I can tell you
that the same cause which set these pillars here, to wall the rive