

i^WP 



Photograph by R. F. Griggs 



THE TRIDENT FROM THE ISEAND CAMP 



The conspicuous column of steam rising behind Trident comes from the "Valley of the Ten 



Thousand Smokes" 



The biggest of all, whose steam had 

 first caught my eye, stood well up on the 

 mountain side, in a nest of fissures which 

 looked like the crevasses of a glacier, and 

 were big enough to be plainly visible, 

 though more than five miles away. 



Fortunately a strong wind was blow- 

 ing across the pass, carrying the fumes 

 all down the valley and away from us, or 

 we might not have dared to go on. In 

 addition to the active fissures, there were 

 thousands more that were quiescent at 

 the time of our visit, but which had en- 

 crusted the ground round about with col- 

 ored deposits like the others. If all of 

 these vents were to be counted, their 

 numbers would undoubtedly reach into 

 tens of thousands. 



CHARACTER OE THE VENTS 



In some cases the orifice from which 

 the steam issued was a large, deep hole ; 

 in others there was no opening at all, the 

 steam simply escaping through the inter- 

 stices of the soil particles. There was no 

 relation between the size of the vent and 



its output. Some of the largest had no 

 visible opening at all, while from some 

 cavernous holes issued only faint breaths 

 of steam. In many cases steam issued 

 from the sides of the gullies cut by water 

 from the melting snow on the mountain 

 sides where it did not break through the 

 more compact surface layer of mud. 



In some places the ground was warm 

 beneath our feet, and had we not been 

 solicitous for our shoe leather doubtless 

 we could have found places as hot as we 

 might have desired. 



Although there is every reason to sup- 

 pose that the vigor of the action is vari- 

 able, there was in most cases no evidence 

 of explosive action, such as remnants of 

 ejecta around the vent. Most of the 

 steam jets came out of cracks in the level 

 mud floor of the valley. But some, on 

 the contrary, had built up small cones 

 around themselves or formed a small- 

 sized crater by hurling away the ground 

 around the vent. 



I wish my vocabulary were adequate to 

 describe the curious mixture of foul 



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