Sacramento daily record-union., 1888-08-25
A pENsE FOREST

canvas, we would exclaim ct its beauty
and wish with quick longing that we
might be there" On we go, and our boy
guide fills our cart with ferns and the
sword plant, bringing few-what do you
think-wild Strawberries And after that,
a handful a delicious ground cherries.
Wild thistles and the castor-oil bean
mingled their rougher stalks with the
dainty, waving ferns. At last, through
the trees, we caught sight Of a puff of
smoke.
"That's the volcano" calls out my COM
panion. But we turn again and lose sight
of the curling smoke. Every moment We
are expecting to leave this forest growth,
and come out upon
THE ACRID BARRES PLAIN
Which We suppose surrounds the volcano
itself Another turn, and we reach a
barred fence, drive through gate, looking
eagerly ahead-at large one-story house,
surrounded with lawns and aowers, fianked
by grassy hills, COWS browsing along our
path, while perfect hedge of nodding
roses shake out rosy faces TO the cool breeze,
and beyond
"That's the craterl
"Oh !"
Isn't ii what you expected
Well, no; instead of gloomy sterile hills,
and rude high-piled battlements of frown-
ing jet, we are in Arcadia To be sure,
below u.s. far below, as we pause at the
doorstep, lies a yaWning pit of inky dark
ness, twisted and roped into weird, fantastic
forms, and away off on its bosom looms a
ragged, broken mountain from which and
all about whose base issues great clouds of
smoke. We follow our handsome host
across the broad piazza and go into our
room, which opens upon the same. Here,
too, is
ANOTHER SURPRISE.
Our rooms are neat; our CHINA chamber ser
vice is Of the best our bed is a regula-
tion mattress On a regulation woven spring
bed. More surprises greet Us on our en-
trance into the large square sitting-room.
In short, our whole stay at this most COM
Portable home was series of pleasant sur
prises. Books, papers and bric-a-brac, the
floor Of clean, bare boards, with rugs,
lounges and easy chairs, a huge New Eng
land bright brick fireplace several feet
wide, tables, stereoscope, and in corner
fine organ.
And did you bring that organ away up
here on the backs of mules?" | asked, for
| had been told all freight was so carried
" Not donkeys," answered the Colonel,
it came on the backs of men"
A finely arranged cabinet contained
some beautiful specimens, and indeed set
me to longing to duplicate them.
Dinner, another agreeable surprise, pre-
pared the party for the long tramp
DOWN INTO THE CRATER.
Through the bars, and down, down we 60
the mouth or entrance of this dismal pit
being hung with festoons of pink roses
flaming nasturtions and great banks OF
plumy ferns. Down, down, four or five
hundred feet, and we emerge from the
green onto hard, jetty floor of broken
lava. How often you have read of the
many weird and strange shapes this twist
ing mass of ropes and blocks assume, SO /
will not repeat the description. What
seemed so strange to me was this black
sea, which rolled as it were, or rather
stretched, from side to side of its high
round, inclosing walls, and there abruptly
ceased. The hills or walls were sometimes
red, sometimes rocky, and anon covered
With yerdure, but never black. On we
tramped, our young girl running and trip
ping over powders and across chasms as il
her sea voyage and her long ride after
were of no moment to youth and health.
The professor had returned before we got
clear down the precipice, his system being
considerably shaken up by his recent fall.
We gaze into the deep, dreary pit of what
was recently the New Lake, now but an
empty hole hundreds of feet deep. ON
and over and we came to high cone, from
the narrow top of which issued flames.
"Shall We go over there?"
"Yes," says the guide "its pretty safe.
although the lava is quite soft"
"Oh, no." says Timid
But We must. We have come to zee,
and will see all there is to be SEEN"
| don't think l am reassured by the re-
mark of the guide that the flow on which
We now stand is barely a month old. How
ever, we all go, crunching over the soft
crust, breaking through and going down
sometimes for foot or two, but we at last
get close enough to see the
GREAT Kissing FLAMES
Streaming. out from the narrow opening;
and how fearfully distinct is the thud and
roar and crash of the great boiling, seeth-
ing mass below us against its narrow, con-
fined walls. The lava is hot beneath our
feet, and | shake in every limb, even as
the mass on which we stand trembles be-
meath the blows which our boy-guide de-
liyers as he runs up to the very mouth OF
the fiery tunnel and crushes with his foot
the outer crust of the horrid chimney.
Down crash the huge pieces, and are soon
dissolved and tossed in liquid heat against
the circling Sides We leave this dan
gerous spot, and cross the recent flows
steps with sound resembling (but much
louder the cracking of frozen snow. This
lava is SO soft and brittle that it is almost
impossible to even carry to any distance
specimens of it. We had reached and
were passing around the high, black hills
which we had seen in the farther side OF
the crater, and were now oftentimes en-
veloped in
THE sULPHURoUs SMOKE.
On, still on, and we commence to ascend a
precipitous hill. High up, and oh what
a scene of more than earthly grandeur
bursts upo our sight. Fifty feet below US,
almost at our feet, in vale of inky black
ness, slightly raised from the surrounding
surface and inclosed by its own hilly crust
!! writhed and cleaned and roared a livid
lake of fire. What words of mine can
make you see it in all its sudden grandeur
as it flashed suddenly upon our sight? ]
can tell you piece by piece of its size and
apparent dimensions,
| ITS Awful, ERR AND FLOW
And describe the roar of its angry flames
but you can then only catch faint reaec-
tion of all that my eyes feasted upon
Fully three hundred feet across, its center
+, was crusted thickly over with black film
| which rose and fell with slow, sluggish un.
dulations as it tossed and fretted at its edge
against the frail wall of lava upreared all
round Its sides. 1t boiled, it dashed it:
sinister spray and beat with angry waves
its despised walls. After we have recov.
cred from breathless surprise and awe. oul