The record-union., 1894-11-24
MIST MISTAKEN FOR SMOKE.
WHAT a SCIENTIST SAYS OF THE
MI. RAINIER PHENOMENA.
Had the Crest Fallen Inward People
for Hundreds of Miles Would
Have Felt the Shock.
Special to the REcoRD-UNIoN.

TACOMA, Nov. 23.-It remained cloudy
all day to-day, and Mount Tacoma could
not be seen. Professor p. B. Van Trump
of Yelm Prairie. thirty miles north on
the North Pacific. where a splendid view
of the mountain is obtainable, writes the
Ledger to the effect that mists rising from
the mountain have probably been mis-
taken for smoke. Professor Van Trump
is 3n educated gentleman, and high au-
thority on all matters pertaining TO the
mountain. In 1872 he made the ascent
with General Hazard Stevens OF Boston,
and since has made numerous ascents
He has made a special study of the phe-
nomena connected with the great mount
ain.
Professor Van Trump writes thus:
During my twenty-seven years ac-
quaintance with or knowledge of the
mountain L have known of a number of
persons who at different periods in the
past declared they saw columns of smoke
issuing from the top of the mountain
and that atterward they noted remark
able changes in the appearance of one or
the other of the peaks never before no.
ticed by them. Had the summit really
changed as often as some people have i'm
agined there would be little left of the
original peaks.
''Some people are almost as fanciful
about the mountain as are the Indians in
their legends about 1t. In one legend is
told how Tacobet once had only a single,
solid peak, not triple summit as now:
that the three peaks were the work of
mountain spirit, or that the mountain it
self under the personit tication of warning
giant wrought this change in It's summit
when in angry conflict with other giant
peaks.
Persons familiar with mountain phe-
osaIl
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 one OF them. Seen
from the other side of the peak, this as
ascending column of mist (of dark or
black hue when seen III q certain light
looks exactly like smoke issuing from the
summit. 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 half-dozen in rapid
succession. look very much, sometimes,
like puffs of smoke. These caps of mist
are simply condensed mist air or steam
from the craters, and almost invariably
precede storm or change in the weather.
our mountains STedI Natural DarOfn-
eter, and its predictions of change in
the weather (in 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 mercural ba-
rometer. The dome of snow and ice,
called latterly '.Columbia's crest" is so
firmly and surely fixed on the solid rock
which forms the common rim of the two
craters that it would take much harder
shock of earthquake 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 CEN
trail snow of the crater had fallen in
ward, such a phenomenon would not
necessarily have resulted in the over
turning or disappearance OF "Columbia's
crest.n Such a throe or convulsion of the
old mountain as would produce such a
wonderful change in its appearance,
viewed sixty miles away and plainly
visible, would have caused such violent
trembling of mother earth for a hundred
miles from the mountain as would have
convinced, not a few. but every man,
woman and child within that radius that
something startlingly strange and phe-
nomenal had occurred"