basin, we know not how—­for the records all are burned or buried—­the crust of the earth was broken, and a great outflow of melted larva surged up from below.  This was no ordinary eruption, but a mighty outbreak of the earth’s imprisoned forces.  The steady stream of lava filled the whole mountain basin and ran out over its sides, covering the country all around so deeply that it has never been seen since.  More than four thousand square miles of land lay buried under melted rock.  No one can tell how deep the lava is, for no one has ever seen the bottom.  Within its bed are deep clefts whose ragged walls descend to the depth of twelve hundred feet, and yet give no glimpse of the granite below, while at their side are mountains of lava whose crags tower a mile above the bottom of the ravines.

[Illustration:  “IT WOULD HISS AND BOIL HIGH IN THE AIR.”]

At last, after many years or centuries—­time does not count for much in these Tertiary days—­the flow of melted lava ceased.  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.