Now one difference between the Yellowstone geyser-fields and Katmai's steaming valleys is just a difference in temperature. The entire depth of earth under these valleys is heated far above boiling-point, so that it is not possible for water to remain in the vents; it turns to steam as fast as it collects and rushes out at the top in continuous flow. But when enough thousands of centuries elapse for the rocks between the surface and the deep internal pockets to cool, the water will remain in many vents as water until, at regular intervals, enough steam gathers below to hurl it out. Then these valleys will become basins of geysers and hot springs like Yellowstone's. VIII MOUNT RAINIER, ICY OCTOPUS MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK, WEST CENTRAL WASHINGTON. AREA, 324 SQUARE MILES I Mount Rainier, the loftiest volcano within the boundaries of the United States, one of our greatest mountains, and certainly our most imposing mountain, rises from western central Washington to an altitude of 14,408 feet above mean tide in Puget Sound. It is forty-two miles in direct line from the centre of Tacoma, and fifty-seven miles from Seattle, from both of which its glistening peak is often a prominent spectacle. With favoring atmospheric conditions it can be seen a hundred and fifty miles away. North and south of Rainier, the Cascade Mountains bear other snow-capped volcanic peaks. Baker rises 10,703 feet; Adams, 12,307 feet; St. Helens, 9,697 feet; Hood, 11,225 feet, and Shasta, 14,162 feet. But Rainier surpasses them all in height, bulk, and majesty. Once it stood 16,000 feet, as is indicated by the slopes leading up to its broken and flattened top. The supposition is that nearly two thousand feet of its apex were carried away in one or more explosive eruptions long before history, but possibly not before man; there are Indian traditions of a cataclysm. There were slight eruptions in 1843, 1854, 1858, and 1870, and from the two craters at its summit issue many jets of steam which comfort the chilled climber. This immense sleeping cone is blanketed in ice. Twenty-eight well-defined glaciers flow down its sides, several of which are nearly six miles long. Imagining ourselves looking down from an airplane at a great height, we can think of seeing it as an enormous frozen octopus sprawling upon the grass, for its curving arms of ice, reaching out in all directions, penetrate one of the finest forests even of our northwest. The contrast between these cold glaciers and the luxuriantly wild-flowered and forest-edged meadows which border them as snugly as so many rippling summer rivers affords one of the most delightful features of the Mount Rainier National Park. Paradise Inn, for example, stands in a meadow of wild flowers between Rainier's icy front on the one side and the snowy Tatoosh Range on the other, with the Nisqually Glacier fifteen minutes' walk away!