THE LARGEST VOLCANO IN THE WORLD

BY SARAH COAN.


[Illustration: THE LAKE OF FIRE.]

"Why, it isn't on the top of a mountain at all! What a humbug my
geography must have been!"

So wrote a little fellow to a young friend in America.

He was right. It isn't on the top of a mountain, though the
geographies do say, "A volcano is a mountain sending forth fire, smoke
and lava," and give the picture of a mountain smoking at the top.

This volcano is nothing of the kind; but is a hideous, yawning black
pit at the bottom of a mountain, and big enough to stow away a large
city.

Of course you want to know, first, where this wonder is. Get out the
map of the Western Hemisphere, put your finger on any of the lines
running north and south, through North America, and called meridians;
follow it south until you come to the Tropic of Cancer, running east
and west; then "left-about-face!" and, following the tropic, sail out
into the calm Pacific. After a voyage of about two thousand miles,
you'll run ashore on one of a group of islands marked Sandwich. We
will call them Hawaiian, for that is their true name. Not one of the
brown, native inhabitants would call them "Sandwich." An English
sailor gave them that name, out of compliment to a certain Lord