SKETCH MAP 01? K AT MAI VOLCANO AND VICINITY 



stant fear, however, that the water would 

 suddenly rise in the night and drive us 

 out. 



The desolation of the country beggars 

 description. All of the trees had per- 

 ished except such as were favored by 

 some special circumstance, such as prox- 

 imity to the protecting mountain sides. 

 In one way the trees and bushes suffered 

 more seriously than the herbage, for 

 wherever the ground had been swept 

 bare of ash the old roots of the herbage 

 sent up new shoots, so that in a few for- 

 tunate spots flowers were blooming in 

 their pristine profusion. 



But where the ash remained to the 

 depth of a foot or more, the ground 

 under the dead trees was absolutely bare. 

 No vegetation had come through cracks, 

 as at Kodiak, and indeed such cracks 

 may not have been formed because the 

 deposit here is much coarser grained. 



Under the mountain sides, where a few 

 remnants of the forest remained alive, 

 different species had suffered in different 

 ways. The only large trees were the bal- 

 sam poplars. All of the growing parts 

 and ordinary buds of these had been 

 killed, but some of the dormant buds, 

 buried deep in the bark, had survived and 

 grown out into short, bushy branches 

 which gave the trees a most bizarre ap- 

 pearance. 



The alder, which is the most character- 

 istic Alaskan bush, everywhere was sim- 

 ply exterminated. For our purposes this 

 was somewhat fortunate, for it was easy 

 to break our way through the branches 

 of the dead thickets, which otherwise 

 would have made traveling difficult. Xot 

 a single live sprig of alder was seen until 

 after we had explored considerable conn- 

 try, and then only two or three very small 



23 



