ERUPTION OF 1849.
This eruption was not very important. In April and May ex plosions and detonations from the cones of the great dome startled travelers. They were compared to the discharge of whole ranks of musketeers or field artillery. They were repeated hourly and attended by a brilliant column of red-hot lava, rising fifty or sixty feet above the dome. "At other times red-hot stones were pro jected with great force into the air and sent whizzing like fiery meteors through the gloom of night." Later a stream of lava came from the ridge of the dome, flowed to the base and wound along the floor like a fiery serpent. These phenomena are what precede an eruption ; and as they ceased shortly afterwards, it is presumed that the lavas escaped into some subterranean cavity, and the fires went out.
During the two years 185o and 1851 there was very little indi cation of heat. Mr. Coan characterizes it as a time of "steaming
stupefaction." In March, 1852, he says the great dome a mile and a half in circuit and several hundred feet high has lost its keystone and the opening is one hundred feet in diameter, increas ing to two hundred in July. The lake is gradually rising and threatening to engulf the whole overhanging mass ; but in the latter part of 1853 it still remained, two miles in circuit and from three hundred to six hundred feet high. The central lower plat form rose during this year above the black ledge, some points of it being six hundred feet higher than after the eruption of 1840, and in some portions 200 feet above the black ledge. Lyman's ridge of blocks retained its position little changed.
The crater was "unusually dull" all through 1854. Ferns and ohelo bushes grew upon the lower platform.