hunderously. Ashes and rocks, some the size of flour sacks, some huge
bowlders, began shooting into the air,--observers at a distance assuring
them afterwards that the smoke must have risen 3,000 feet above the peak.
It grew black as midnight, the smoke stung their eyes and lungs and
whiffs of sulphur nearly overwhelmed them.

It was a position of deadly peril. Quick as thought, they ran, Norris
dragging his companion after him, beneath the shelter of an overhanging
ledge, where at least the rocks could not fall on them, and there they
buried their faces in the snow and waited.

What seemed hours was later pronounced to have been but fifteen minutes,
though with the roaring as of mighty winds, and the subterranean
grumblings and sudden inky night, the crashing of stones and thundering
of rolling bowlders, it seemed like the end of the world.

Norris's companion had suffered a blow that dislocated his shoulder, but
otherwise they emerged unhurt. They afterwards found several areas on the
sides of Lassen where sulphurous gases were escaping from pools of hot
mud or boiling water. They also visited a lake that had been formed at
the time of the lava flow of 200 years ago, (now a matter of legend among
the Pitt River Indians), this lava having formed a dam across a little
valley which later filled from the melting snows. The stumps of the
inundated trees could still be seen.

A geyser, said the Geological Survey man, is just like a volcano, only it
expels steam and boiling water from the interior. There is a line of
volcanic activity up and down the Pacific Coast, from Alaska to Central
America, though Lassen is the only active peak in California, Shasta
having become quiescent save for the hot spring that steams through the
snow near its summit.

The North half of the range, he added, is covered with floods of glassy
black lava and dotted with extinct craters, whereas the Southern half is
almost solid granite, though there are plenty of volcanic rocks to be
found among its wild gorges. The rocks around Lassen tell a vivid story
of the chain of fire mountains that must have again and again blazed into
geysers of molten rock, till the whole smoking range was quenched beneath
the ice of that last glacier period, which through the ages has been
sculpturing new lake and river beds, and grinding soil for the rebirth of
the mighty forests.

The boys drowsed off that night to dream of fire mountains and
explorations in the n