KATMAI, Alaska, a volcano of the Alaskan peninsula, situated long. 30" W., lat. 58° N. on Shelikof Strait almost opposite Karluk on Kodiak Island. Its altitude is 7,500 feet, and until its outbreak 6 June 1912 it was sup posed to be extinct. The main crater is one of the greatest in the world, according to a statement made 22 Aug. 1916 by Robert F. Griggs, after a careful study of the volcano, in the interests of the American Geographic Society. "This crater," he said, "is miles across, and extends down thousands of feet to a blue-green lake, simmering and sputtering at the bottom." Mr. Griggs was accompanied on the expedition by Lucius G. Folsom, principal of the Kodiak schools, and Donovan Church, a student at the Ohio State University. This was the first close examination by scientists that had been made of the volcano since the great eruption in June 1912, when the top of the mountain was blown off, and Kodiak Island, across Shelikof Strait, was covered with a foot of volcanic ash, darkness lasting for 60 hours "Other craters in the group have been reported as the main crater of Katmai," said Mr. Griggs,
"but these do not compare with the real thing." The explorers said the most wonderful of all sights at the crater was a place where a glacier, blown in two by the eruption, still formed part of the crater wall, the intense heat being in sufficient to melt this palisade of ice. Part of the crater wall is composed of igneous rock of brilliant color. Eruptions on a smaller scale occurred in 1914. Consult 'The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes> (National Geographic Magazine, Vol. XXXI, pp. 13-68, Washington 1917).