STEEP TRAILS 



Less recent craters in great numbers dot the 

 adjacent region, some with lakes in their 

 throats, some overgrown with trees, others 

 nearly bare — telling monuments of Nature's 

 mountain fires so often hghted throughout the 

 northern Sierra. And, standing on the top of 

 icy Shasta, the mightiest fire-monmnent of 

 them all, we can hardly fail to look forward to 

 the blare and glare of its next eruption and 

 wonder whether it is nigh. Elsewhere men 

 have planted gardens and vineyards in the 

 craters of volcanoes quiescent for ages, and 

 almost without warning have been hurled into 

 the sky. More than a thousand years of pro- 

 found calm have been known to intervene 

 between two violent eruptions. Seventeen cen- 

 turies intervened between two consecutive 

 eruptions on the island of Ischia. Few volca- 

 noes continue permanently in eruption. Like 

 gigantic geysers, spoutmg hot stone instead of 

 hot water, they work and sleep, and we have 

 no sure means of knowing whether they are 

 only sleeping or dead. 



