in its calendar of ages, the birth of the great volcano, the offspring 
of those Tertiary eruptions whose smouldering craters reach from 
Alaska to Patagonia. 
Nowhere in the United States is there a larger area of the 
eruptive rocks of that period than in Washington and Oregon. 
In the western part along the Cascade range, many great snow- 
clad peaks have been formed from the volcanic outbursts; 
while in the east, thousands of square miles of basaltic plains 
extending into Idaho, have resulted from the later massive erup¬ 
tions. Eight of the volcanoes of the western belt are particularly 
conspicuous :—Mt. Pitt, the Three Sisters, Jefferson and Hood in 
Oregon, Mt. Adams, St. Helens, Tacoma and Baker, in Washing¬ 
ton territory. Of these the highest are Mt. Hood, 11,225 feet, 
Adams, 12,250 feet, and Tacoma, 14,300 feet. There are a number 
of peaks in Colorado above 14,000 feet, but, like the great moun¬ 
tains in the Andes and the Himalayas, they are surrounded by 
others of so nearly the same elevation, that their height is not appar¬ 
ent, as is that of Tacoma which towers 8,000 feet above the high¬ 
est point within 40 miles. Mt. Shasta in California is an isolated 
cone, 14,400 feet high, but its position, far from the sea in the great 
Yreka plain, makes impossible from any point of view that mag¬ 
nificent sweep with which Tacoma rises from Puget Sound. 
Looking from the wharf at New Tacoma, the eye reaches across the 
dancing waters of the bay to the waving surface of the salt marshes 
about the mouth of the Puyallup ; along the river, masses of light 
green indicate the groups ot cottonwoods and maples receding till 
they are lost in the sombre setting of the evergreen forest; it is a 
bright, lovely scene in itself; but it is forgotten as the clouds part 
toward sunset and reveal the gigantic mountain, the single cone of 
snow. The foreground and the distant peak reflect the glory of 
the western sky ; between them stretches the belt of forest, dark 
alike beneath the noonday sun and evening glow. This forest is 
the magic circle drawn by the spirits of the mist about their ice 
palaces on the mountain. From the warm western winds they 
gather the gentle showers, under whose vivifying influence the 
plant world flourishes with almost tropical luxuriance. The fir 
trees raise their great trunks straight as an arrow, competing for 
the sunlight, a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet, without a limb ; 
then they branch into thick masses of evergreen needles that shut 
