OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 25 



VII 



THE CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK 



Special Characteristic: Lake of Great Depth Filling Collapsed Volcanic 



Crater 



IN the heart of the Cascade Mountains of our Northwest, whose 

 volcanoes were in constant eruption in the ages before history, 

 and now, extinct and ice-plated, shine like huge diamonds in the 

 sunlight, there lies, jewel-like in a setting of lava, a lake of unbe- 

 lievable blue. The visitor who comes suddenly upon it stands silent 

 with emotion, overcome by its quite extraordinary beauty and by a 

 strange sense of mystery which even the unimaginative feel keenly 

 and which increases rather than decreases with familiarity. 



This is Crater Lake. 



One of the very largest of these ancient volcanoes was Mount 

 Mazama. It stood in the southern central part of what is now Ore- 

 gon, two hundred miles south of Mount Rainier and nearly as lofty. 

 It was about the height of Mount Shasta, in plain sight of which 

 it rose nearly a hundred miles to its north. 



But this was ages ago. No human eyes ever saw Mount Mazama. 

 Long before man came, the entire upper part of it in some titanic 

 cataclysm fell in upon itself as if swallowed by a subterranean cavern, 

 leaving its crater-like lava sides cut sharply downward into the 

 central abyss. 



What a spectacle that must have been! 



The first awful depth of this vast hole no man can guess. But the 

 volcano was not quenched; it burst up through the collapsed lavas 

 in three places, making lesser cones within the greater, but none 

 quite so high as the surrounding rim. 



Then the fires ceased and gradually, as the years passed, springs 

 percolated into the vast basin and filled it with water within a thou- 

 sand feet of its rim. As you see it to-day one of these cones emerges 

 a few hundred feet from the surface. The lake is 2,000 feet deep in 

 places. It has no inlet of any sort nor is there any stream running 

 out of it; but the water is supposed to escape by underground chan- 

 nels and to reappear in the Klamath River, a few miles away. 



ROMANTIC INDIAN LEGENDS 



The Indians believed that Crater Lake was the home of a great 

 spirit whom they called Llao. The blue waters teemed with giant 

 crawfish, his servants, some of them so large that they could reach 

 great claws to the top of the cliffs and seize venturesome visitors. 

 Another great spirit chieftain, whom they called Skell, was supposed 



