Its surface
cooled, leaving a high, uneven plain, black and desolate, a hard, cold
crust over a fiery and smoldering interior. About the crater lay great
ropes and rolls of the slowly hardening lava, looking like knots and
tangles of gigantic reptiles of some horrible extinct sort. There was
neither grass nor trees, nor life of any sort. Nothing could grow in
the coarse, black stone. The rivers and brooks had long since
vanished in steam, the fishes were all dead, and the birds had flown
away. The whole region wore the aspect of the desolation of death.

But to let land go to waste is no part of Mother Nature's plan. So
even this far-off corner of her domain was made ready for settlement.
In the winter she sifted snow on the cold black plain, and in the
summer the snow melted into a multitude of brooks and springs. The
brooks gradually wore paths and furrows down the large bed, and the
sands which they washed from one place they piled up in another. The
winds blew the seeds of grasses about, and willows and aspens crept up
the mountain-sides. Then came the squirrels, scattering the nuts of
the pine. Other seeds came too, in other ways, till at last the barren
hillside was no longer barren.

The brooks ran over the surface of the crust undisturbed by the fires
within, and were clear and cold as mountain brooks should be; but the
rain and melted snow will never all remain on the surface. Some of it
falls into cracks or joints or porous places in the rock, and from
this come underground streams or springs. But in this region a stream
could not run long underground without coming in contact with the old
still-burning fires. When a crust is formed over the lava, it cools
very slowly. When the crust is a rod or two deep, the lava within is
almost as well protected as if it were at the center of the earth.

Whenever the water came down into the fire, the hot rocks would be
furious with indignation, and tearing the water to atoms they would
throw it back to the surface as steam. Then the explosive force of the
steam would in turn tear up the rocks, making still larger the hole
through which the water came. When the rocks were very hot, a little
water upon them would make a terrible commotion like the shock of an
earthquake. When much water came down, it would hiss and boil high in
the air, as it tried to break the cushion of steam which came between
it and the lava.

[Illustration: MOUTH OF GEYSER.]

And all this went on