1/4 Life of a Fossil Hunter 



shades, while in the background, towering upward 

 for two thousand feet, rise rows upon rows of 

 mighty basaltic columns, eight-sided prisms, each 

 row standing a little back of the one just below, and 

 the last crowned with evergreen forests of pine and 

 fir and spruce. But no pen can picture the glorious 

 panorama. 



Ever since Cretaceous times, when a quiet inland 

 sea laid down the thousand feet of Kansas chalk, 

 here in the John Day region vulcanism has held 

 sway; almost until to-day. Indeed I have often 

 seen the summit of old Mount Hood wreathed with 

 menacing clouds of smoke, as if she were preparing 

 to pour forth again her floods of molten lava and 

 devastate the region. 



When volcanic action first began, great masses of 

 ashes must have been thrown out over the country, 

 settling in the lakes and covering the remains of 

 animals which had been accumulating there for ages. 

 Then floods of lava, one after another, poured out 

 over the forests, until they lay buried beneath two 

 thousand feet of volcanic rock. Where did this 

 immense mass of molten rock come from, and how ? 

 A dike crosses the Basin, and for fifteen miles the 

 basaltic columns lie along its edges like cordwood; 

 so we know that some of the lava at least was 

 squeezed up out of the earth's crust through narrow 

 cracks. 



