THE VALLEY OF TEN THOUSAND SMOKES 



National Geographic Society Explorations in the 

 Katmai District of Alaska 



By Robert F. Griggs, of the Ohio State University 

 Leader of the Society's Mount Katmai Expeditions oe 191 5 and 1916 



T 



1HE eruption of Mount Katmai in 

 June, 1912, was one of the most 

 tremendous volcanic explosions 

 ever recorded. A mass of ash and pum- 

 ice whose volume has been estimated at 

 nearly five cubic miles was thrown into 

 the air. In its fall this material buried 

 an area as large as the State of Con- 

 necticut to a depth varying from 10 

 inches to over 10 feet, while small 

 amounts of ash fell as much as 900 miles 

 away. 



Great quantities of very fine dust were 

 thrown into the higher regions of the 

 atmosphere and quickly distributed over 

 the whole world, so as to have a profound 

 effect on the weather, being responsible 

 for the notoriously cold, wet summer of 

 that year. 



The comparative magnitude of the 

 eruption can be better realized if one 

 should imagine a similar eruption of 

 Vesuvius. Such an eruption would bury 

 Naples under 15 feet of ash ; Rome would 

 be covered nearly a foot deep ; the sound 

 would be heard at Paris ; dust from the 

 crater would fall in Brussels and Berlin, 

 and the fumes would be noticeable far 

 beyond Christiania, Norway. 



Readers of The Geographic will re- 

 member the accounts of the eruption by 

 Capt. K. M. Perry and Dr. Geo. C. Mar- 

 tin, which appeared in the magazine for 

 August, 1912, and February, 191 3, re- 

 spectively. 



Fortunately the volcano is situated in 

 a country so sparsely inhabited that the 

 damage caused by the eruption was in- 

 significant — very much less than in many 

 relatively small eruptions in populous 

 districts, such as that of Vesuvius, which 

 destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum. 

 Indeed, so remote and little known is the 



volcano that there were not any witnesses 

 near enough to see the eruption, and it 

 was not until the National Geographic 

 Society's expeditions explored the district 

 that it was settled definitely which of 

 several near-by volcanoes was really the 

 seat of the disturbance. 



The most important settlement in the 

 devastated district is Kodiak, which, al- 

 though a hundred miles from the volcano, 

 was buried nearly a foot deep in ash. 

 This ashy blanket transformed the "Green 

 Kodiak" of other days into a gray desert 

 of sand, whose redemption and revege- 

 tation seemed utterly hopeless. When I 

 first visited it, a year later, it presented 

 an appearance barren and desolate. It 

 seemed to every one there that it must 

 be many years before it could recover its 

 original condition. 



THE ERUPTION WAS THE BEST THING THAT 

 EVER HAPPENED TO KODIAK 



What, then, was my surprise on re- 

 turning after an interval of only two 

 years to find the ash-laden hillsides cov- 

 ered with verdure. Despite the reports 

 I had received, I could not believe my 

 eyes. Where before had been barren ash 

 was now rich grass as high as one's head. 



Every one agrees that the eruption was 

 "the best thing that ever happened to 

 Kodiak." In the words of our hotel 

 keeper, "Never was any such grass 

 known before, so high or so early. Xo 

 one ever believed the country could grow 

 so manv berries, nor so large, before the 

 ash." 



Were the title not preempted, Kodiak 

 might have been called the "Emerald 

 Isle" quite as well as Ireland. Its situ- 

 ation in the Pacific is indeed very similar 

 to that of Ireland in the Atlantic, for it 



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