THE STORY OF A STRANGE LAND. 257 
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. 
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 smouldering 
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, no 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 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 lava 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 
17 
