Now, the
Great Eyrie did not seem particularly attractive to birds; on the
contrary, the people of the neighborhood began to remark that on some
days when birds approached its summit they mounted still further,
circled high above the crest, and then flew swiftly away, troubling
the air with harsh cries.
Why then the name Great Eyrie? Perhaps the mount might better have
been called a crater, for in the center of those steep and rounded
walls there might well be a huge deep basin. Perhaps there might even
lie within their circuit a mountain lake, such as exists in other
parts of the Appalachian mountain system, a lagoon fed by the rain
and the winter snows.
In brief was not this the site of an ancient volcano, one which had
slept through ages, but whose inner fires might yet reawake? Might
not the Great Eyrie reproduce in its neighborhood the violence of
Mount Krakatoa or the terrible disaster of Mont Pelee? If there were
indeed a central lake, was there not danger that its waters,
penetrating the strata beneath, would be turned to steam by the
volcanic fires and tear their way forth in a tremendous explosion,
deluging the fair plains of Carolina with an eruption such as that of
1902 in Martinique?
Indeed, with regard to this last possibility there had been certain
symptoms recently observed which might well be due to volcanic
action.
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