Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/298

294 sending you the results of our observations to date. Saturday, May 30, the first outbreak occurred at 5 This was witnessed by Bert McKenzie, of Chester, who was looking directly at it when it occurred. Ranger Harvey Abbey investigated it on Sunday, May 31, finding a hole 25 x 40 feet in size and of unknown depth. Sand, rocks as large as a sack of flour, and mud had been ejected. The heavier material was thrown over an area three hundred feet across, while the ash, or cement-like material, was scattered over an area one quarter mile across. . . . No molten material was thrown out at all. 8:05 A.M., June 1, a second outburst occurred, throwing out large quantities of the same material. Some boulders weighing all of a ton were thrown out. The vent was enlarged to 60 X 275 feet. . . . Boerker, Abbey, and Macomber went up June 4, remained on top at the lookout house over night, and came back June 5.

June 8, heavier volumes of steam were noted, and at night apparently another eruption took place, throwing out more ashes or fine material, which could be seen on the new snow.

Heavy volumes of steam are coming out of the vent today. We have watched it carefully and at no time have we been able to see any flame or indication of fire. . . . The vent is about one quarter mile from the fire lookout house, and if it continues eastward, as it has so far, it will finally break out on the east side.

Mr. Ben Macomber, one of the party mentioned in the report above as spending the night on the mountain top, has given the following description of the crater as it was after the early eruptions:

When I saw the new crater on Lassen on June 4 and 5, the vent, by an engineer’s tape, measured 275 feet long. It was then in one of the pauses between the heavy explosions. Thick volumes of steam, laden with sulphur smoke, were rising, and cracks were appearing in the ground. From three different places on the edge I looked down into the crater. Sixty or seventy feet down a pile of rocks was visible in the center of the vent, but at either end was a huge dark hole from which the steam clouds poured. The walls were absolutely perpendicular, and around the top were hung with huge icicles formed by the condensation of steam in the chill air of the peak.

On the west side of the crater everything was buried beneath a heavy fall of light gray ash, into which we sank over our boot-tops. So light was this rock powder that it flew into the air at every step. On the east side the same material seemed to have been thrown out in the form of mud and lay frozen hard as rock. What little snow remained near the crater was buried under a layer of stones and boulders. (San Francisco Chronicle, June 28.)

The eruption of June 14 was heavier than any which had preceded it, and the only serious injuries suffered by visitors during the six months covered by this article, occurred during the outburst beginning at 9:45 Extracts from a letter from Mr. B. F. Loomis written a month after the events gives a brief summary of the experiences of the party that was caught by this eruption, as told to him by the different members.

Mr. Phelp’s party had just reached the rim of the old crater and sat down to rest a short time, watching the smoke from the crater, when the eruption began. Without any warning or explosion that could be heard, a huge column of black smoke shot upward with a roar, such as would be caused by a rushing mighty wind, and in an instant the air was filled with smoke, ashes and flying rocks