THE BIRTH OF A VOLCANO 141 



dead lava, and boiled and bubbled like some brob- 

 dignagian kettle. It was astonishing to see a swell 

 roll shoreward, curve up into a yellowish green 

 wave, shatter against the scarlet lava and instantly 

 rise and go floating off high in air toward the top 

 of the distant mountain. It was a battle, a cosmic 

 conflict among fire, water, earth and air such as 

 only astronomers might dream of or a maker of 

 worlds achieve. 



Here at last was the very life blood of this Ar- 

 chipelago. Never would the black cliffs seem cold 

 and meaningless again, but always memory would 

 warm them and give them movement and color. 

 Their twisted strands, their broken, porous bombs 

 would seem to have cooled and exploded an instant 

 before; every gas-made tunnel might redden and 

 fill and pour at any moment. 



I tried to estimate the speed of the lava and 

 chose a stream about twenty feet wide. As well as 

 I could judge at a distance of several hundred 

 yards the cliff at this point was about a hundred 

 feet high. I timed occasional black gobs of matter 

 floating down the trough and found that they trav- 

 ersed the entire drop in two seconds. Therefore 

 (as my old arithmetic used to say) "^if a stream of 

 lava flows a hundred feet in two seconds in one 

 hour it will," etc., etc., etc. My answer was that 

 the lava flowed thirty-four miles an hour. Here 

 was liquid lava in the open air and in a strong cool- 

 ing breeze holding its two to three thousand degrees 

 of heat for a long distance, showing no blackening 

 before it was lost in the mass of steam and water. 



