California volcanoes as a field of observatory study were an obvious choice when Judge Cramton proposed enlargement of the volcano enterprise. He succeeded in getting me a Section of Volcanology in the Geological Survey, and I sent R. H. Finch to Lassen Volcanic National Park, where he made his headquarters at Mineral. Lassen had made steamblast explosions in 1912 through 1914 which had rushed down into the forest with such horizontal destruction as occurred at Mount Pelée. It was not realized that this blast was terrible, for it was in the backwoods on top of the Sierra Nevada and little known. The national park there was created later. It is an area with a recent (1871?) cinder cone and rocky lava flow, boiling lakes and mud pots, numerous solfataras and hot springs, and a lava cavern much like those on Hawaii. [Illustration: _21. The_ Honukai _on Alaska beach, 1928. Jaggar on the right_] [Illustration: _22. The_ Ohiki, _first amphibian truck, with passengers Isabel Jaggar, Tahara, L. A. Thurston, Jaggar, and Ted Dranga, 1928_] [Illustration: _23. Lava flow entering village of Hoopuloa, 1926_] [Illustration: _24. Lava flow of 1926 Mauna Loa eruption approaching Hoopuloa Village, which was destroyed. Photo section U.S. Army Air Force_] Lassen Peak is the southernmost volcano on the line where the Cascade Range merges with the Sierra Nevada. The line of volcanoes extends beyond Mount Baker into Canada. North of Lassen is the Glass Mountain region where there are obsidian lava flows. Like Mount Shasta, Lassen is a volcano of very few recent eruptions, but there were at least two outbreaks in the nineteenth century. These two volcanoes resemble Pelée and Soufrière. Their linear quality implies a long ragged rift in the earth’s crust, and south of Lassen there is suggested an offset rift at Mount St. Helena, near the famous superheated steam of Geyserville. This is near the northern end of the great San Andreas rift, which extends many hundreds of miles southeast of San Francisco. The rift shifted in a north-south direction during the earthquake of 1906, and is one of the many evidences that the north-south faults of California are all a part of the faulting up, over lava, of the Cordillera, relative to downsunken Pacific Ocean slabs.