The morning call., 1894-11-24
THIS MISTAKEN FOR SMOKE.
There Have Been No Changes at
the Summit.
SO SAYS PROFESSOR VAN TRUMP.
1t Would Have Taken a Severe Shock
to Cause the Changes
Reported.

TACOMA. Nov. 23.-It remained cloudy
all day to-day. and Mount Rainier could
not be seen. Professor p. b. Van Trump
of Yelm Prairie, thirty miles north on the
Northern Pacific, where a splendid view
of the fountain is obtainable. writes the
Ledger to the effect that msts rising from
the mountain have probably been mis-
taken for smoke.
Professor Van Trump is an educated
gentleman and high authority on all
matters pertaining to the mountain. In
1872 he made the ascent with General
Hazard Stevens of Boston, aud since has
made mum erous ascents. lie has made a
special study of phenomena connected
with the great mountain. Professor Van
Trump writes thus:
During my twenty-seven years ac-
Quaintance with or knowledge of the
mountain / have known of number of
persons who at different periods in the
past declared they saw columns OF smoke
Issuing from the top Of the IN mountain, and
that afterward they noted remarkable
changes in the appearance of one Or the
other of the peaks never before noticed by
them. Had the summit really changed, as
some people have imagined, there would
now be little LETT OF the original peaks.
"Some people are almost as fanciful
about The mountain as are the Indians in
their legends about it. Ia one legend Is
told how Taco bet once had only single,
solid peak, not triple summit as now;
that the three peaks were the work of
mountain spirit or that he mountain itself.
under the personifcation of a warning
ri br nhop mi mil
when in angry conflict with other giant
peaks.
Persons familiar with mountain pine
nomens, especially those pertaining TO this
great mountain, know that clouds or
masses of mist often form very rapidly on
the mountain side or near its base, which
sometimes suddenly elongate into stream
ers or columns and shoot rapidly up the
mountain in the ravines or depressions
between its rocky ribs, and rise high above
the peaks, or on them. Seen from the
other side of the peak. this ascending
column of mist (of dark black hue when
seen in certain lighO looks exactly like
smoke issuing from the summit of the
peak. Such phenomenon is some
times seen in connection with the
north peak especially. Again, the
weather caps which are thrown off
from the middle peak, sometimes a half
dozen in rapid succession. look very much
like 'puffS' of smoke. These caps of mist
are simply condensed mist air or steam
from the craters, and almost invariably
precede a storm or change in the weather.
Our noun tain is great natural barome-
ter. and lis predictions of change in the
weather lin from one TO three days from
the appearance of the weather caps on the
middle peak) are as reliable as those of
the artificial and mercurial barometer.
The dome of snow and ice, called latterlv
'Columbia's Crest, is so firmly and surely
fixed on the solid rock which forms the
rim of the two cr9 ters that it
would take much harder shock of earth
quake to topple it into either crater than
we have ever had in Washington or are
likely TO have; and even if, according to
one theory, the central snow of the crater
had fallen inward such n phenomenon
would not necessarily have resulted in the
overtur0lng or disappearance OF 'Colum-
bias Crest. Such throe or convulsion
of the old mountain as would produce such
wonderful change in its appearance,
viewed sixty miles away and plainly visi-
bic, would have caused such violent trem-
bling of mother earth for hundred miles
from the mountain as would have con-
WINGED not few, but every man, woman
and child within that radius, that some
thing startlingly strange and phenomenal
had occurred"