WHY VOLCANOES SEEM TO FLAME
Neither do volcanoes flame, although they are supposed to. Only rarely does flame issue from a volcano, and then only to a moderate extent, due to the burning of the hydrogen gas. What seem to be huge flames are the lights from the molten lava in the crater shining back on the steam clouds above; and these apparent flames rise and fall and vary in brightness because of the rise and fall of the lava.
But the greatest of volcanic eruptions—that is, the welling up of melted rock from within the earth—have not built cones. The lava spread out into vast plains in India and Abyssinia and in our northwestern coast States. Great cracks in the earth cross one another. It is at the crossroads that the volcanoes are apt to form, while out of the cracks leading up to these crossroads the lava spreads in sheets. Mount Shasta began at one of these traffic centres. It is a big brother of the landscape which it overlooks.
"BUT VOLCANOES DO NOT SMOKE!"
This is an eruption of Vesuvius. You would think it was throwing out smoke like a gigantic locomotive, wouldn't you, if you hadn't read the text? The darker masses, which look so much like mingled smoke and steam, are shadows. It is probably eight to ten miles high—that cloud.
Lava, before it cools and for some centuries afterward, is the last thing you would think of farming on, perhaps, but leave it to the little chemists of the water and the air and it will decay into the richest land you ever saw. That is why they raise the finest wheat and the best fruit in the world right in the parts of Washington and Oregon that were once covered by the lava flood.
Not only do volcanoes help to supply us with food by making rich soil of the eruptions of the past, but all life might disappear from the earth if they didn't go on exploding.
HOW VOLCANOES BLOW BUBBLES