Exploration of West Valley 



glassy dust blown out of a crater by the explosions is 

 often called and in these progress was easy, as a certain 

 amount of vegetation had already established itself and 

 to some extent bound the soft ash together. 



N earing the summit, we came upon several open 

 rifts, from which was escaping a small quantity of steam 

 and sulphurous gases, and on reaching the edge of the 

 crater looked down upon an almost circular plain, some 

 200 feet below the rim and bearing on its surface 

 a group of three small cones, each with a diminutive 

 crater at its summit. From one of these steam was 

 escaping quietly, but was absorbed by the atmosphere 

 before reaching the level on which we stood. In the 

 neighbourhood of several fissures in the crater rim, from 

 which gas was escaping, the temperature of the ground 

 was unpleasantly high, but by walking round to the 

 northern side we were able to station ourselves on a 

 level portion remote from the fissures and free from 

 objectionable sulphur fumes. From this vantage-point 

 we had a magnificent view of the active cone, though, 

 contrary to our expectations, we were unable to see the 

 interior of its crater, as the wall was somewhat higher on 

 our side than on the other. 



We had taken up our point of observation about ten 

 minutes when the volcano resumed operations. First 

 there was a distinct quivering of the steam cloud and 

 then followed four explosions in rapid succession, which 

 increased the cloud to something like ten times its 

 former dimensions. The last explosion was the most 

 violent we had yet witnessed, blocks of solid lava 

 large enough to be clearly visible from where we stood 

 being hurled into the air to a height of some 2000 



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