Glimpses of our national parks .. . flower elysium. VITHE CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK Special Characteristic: Lake of Gi-eat Depth Filling Collapsed Volcanic Crater IN the heart of the Cascade Mountains of our Northwest, whosevolcanoes were in constant eruption in the ages before history,and now, extinct and ice-plated, shine like huge diamonds in thesunlight, there lies, jewel-like in a setting of lava, a lake of unbe-lievable blue. The visitor who comes suddenly upon it stands silentwith emotion, overcome by its quite extraordinary beauty and by a 28 OUR NATIOXAL PARKS. strange sense of myster
Glimpses of our national parks .. . flower elysium. VITHE CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK Special Characteristic: Lake of Gi-eat Depth Filling Collapsed Volcanic Crater IN the heart of the Cascade Mountains of our Northwest, whosevolcanoes were in constant eruption in the ages before history,and now, extinct and ice-plated, shine like huge diamonds in thesunlight, there lies, jewel-like in a setting of lava, a lake of unbe-lievable blue. The visitor who comes suddenly upon it stands silentwith emotion, overcome by its quite extraordinary beauty and by a 28 OUR NATIOXAL PARKS. strange sense of mystery >vliich e\en the unimaginative feel keenlyand which increases rather than decreases Avitli familiarity. This is Ci-ater Lake. One of the very largest of these ancient volcanoes was ISIoiintMazama. It stood in the sonther-n central part of what is now Oregon,two hundred miles south of INIount Rainier and nearly as lofty. Itwas about the height of Mount Shasta, in plain sight of which itrose nearly a hundred miles to its Ihotograpli l)y II. T. Cowling Across Ckatek Lake, Showing Wizard IslandThe point on the opposite rim of Llao Rock But this was ages ago. Xo human eyes ever saw Mount before man came, the entire upper part of it in some titaniccataclysm fell in upon itself as if swallowed by a subterranean cavern,leaving its craterlike lava sides cut sharply downwardly into thecentral abyss. What a spectacle that must have been ! The first awful depth of this vast hole no man can guess. But thevolcano was not quenched; it burst up through the collapsed lavasin three places, making lesser cones within the greater, but none quiteso high as the surrounding rim. Then the fires ceased and gradually, as the years passed, springspercolated into the vast basin and filled it with water within a thou-sand feet of its rim. As you see it to-day one of these cones emergesa few hundred feet from the surface. The lake is feet deep inplaces. It has no inlet
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