VERLAND MONTHLY was founded, July, 1868, by Bret Harte and Anton Roman, at that time the leading publisher in the West. Bret Harte, then a young man of eighteen years, had come to California in 1853; he remained until 1871. In the interim he served as a school teacher, stage messenger, printer and editor. His first newspaper work was on a Humboldt publication. From there he drifted to San Francisco, and rapidly developed bis versatility and character of work.

Associated with him in the editorial work of Overland Monthly were Chas. Warren Stoddard and Noah Brooks, their chief assistant being Ina Coolbrith, later recognized as one of California's leading poets. Harte made it a practice to attract all the best writers in the West into the new monthly. Mark Twain was then a special contributor. Launched under such promising auspices, success was immediate locally. Very shortly the East was captured with the original and diverting stories of the wonderful and extraordinary life of the mining camps. Under Bret Harte's original and fertile mind the magazine introduced a new literary field to the world. The founding of Overland Monthly forty-nine years ago opened a distinctively new and original literary life in the West, and this life has been continued to be reflected in the pages of the magazine.

In the first issue was published "The Luck of Roaring Camp," which was received with extraordinary favor in the East, and was accepted as introducing a new and original field in American literature. Two years later Harte wrote "The Heathen Chinee," verse on a catchy theme of that period which extended his popularity. In that period he touched most of the

high points in his literary flight, and his stories and verse continued to introduce Overland Monthly throughout this country and into England. So popular did he become in Great Britain that inducements were made him to reside there. He settled there in 1871, and died there.

Mark Twain, the while, was also beginning those famous unique stories which later carried him to a high place in American literature, especially as a humorist.

The famous "Tumping Frog of Calaveras," a story hat set the world a-laughing and vas translated into several foreign languages, was one of Twain's early contributions to Overland Monthly.

The list of names of contributors that have won fame in the pages of Overland Monthly comprehends practically all the noted writers of the West from Bret Harte down to Jack London. The magazine won its fame of long standing through the constant stream of new writers that developed so promisingly in the new life and stimulating surroundings of California and the Great West. They contributed the best of their productions to the magazine, and thereby kept its name in the forefront as publication of distinction in its special field.

To the distinguished names already mentioned may be added such prominent writers as Frank Norris, cut off at almost the moment fame crowned him; Henry George, who published. his earliest pleas on single tax in Overland Monthly; Charles Warren Stoddard, who lent his ardent aid in the editorial development of the magazine; John Muir, the nature lover and natural writer; Daniel Coit Gilman. for years an associate editor on Overland, and later president of the

Carnegie Institute, and Noah Brooks, whose stories for boys are still as fresh and famous as ever.

Among the later writers are Wallace Irwin, whose stories and sprightly verse now attract in Eastern magazines; James F. J. Archibald, who has won an international reputation in a number of recent wars as a war correspondent; Rounseville Wildman, for five years editor of Overland, and later Consul to China, and who lost his life on the ill-fated steamer Rio Janeiro off the Golden Gate.

Perhaps no magazine in the country can furnish such a remarkable roll of editors who attained distinction. Certainly none outside of New York. Its list of old competing magazines of the early '70's have long since passed passed away, and of the later ones only two now survive on the Pacific Coast. Long life and prestige has made Overland a part of the great West which it reflects so accurately in its pages. Behind it are the traditions, the spirit of the compelling magic in the names California, the great West.

Ahead beckons the realm of new opportunities, in the awakening commercial empire that is stretching its great pinions westward to the Golden Gate. A new era is dawning on the Pacific Coast, and this new era will be reflected in Overland just as the era of gold mining and the argonauts was reflected in the pioneer Overland under the Bret Harte regime.

The aim of the present management is to perpetuate Overland traditions and to meet the sunrise of new people in the West with all the ardor and con

vincing appeal that have made the Overland Monthly the foreword of its class.

On these lines of endeavor Overland has continued to hold its large circulation in the Eastern field, an inheritance from the days of Bret Harte. The same is true to a less degree in Europe, the Antipodes and the coast of Africa. The magazine's prospects to-day are as bright and encouraging as ever, and for this the management heartily thanks its many and staunch subscribers.

Among the many famous contributors of Overland Monthly and others who became famous through their contributions to its pages are: Mark Twain, Charles Warren Stoddard, Bret Harte, Noah Brooks, Jack London, Ina Coolbrith, Henry George, Austin Lewis, Frank Norris, David Starr Jordan, Will S. Green, John R. Knowland, Theodore H. Hittell, John Vance Cheney, Charles Howard Shinn, Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman, Charles Frederick Holder, Ella Wentworth Higginson, Horace A. Vachell, Mrs. Batterman Lindsay, Edward Robeson Taylor, Edwin Markham, Joaquin Miller, Pierre N. Beringer, John Muir, Irving Scott, John Bidwell, Wallace Irwin, Rounceville Wildman, L. Maynard Dixon, James Phelan, Mrs. Jack London, George Wharton James, Juliet Wilbur Tompkins, Mollie Elliott Sewall, Poultney Bigelow, John O'Hara Cosgrave, Arthur McEwen, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Grace Hudson, Robert Lee Dunn, Henry Meade Bland, Helen Fitzgerald Sanders and Frank G. Carpenter.

I

MAGINE a pit half a mile deep dug in the top of a mountain 10,000 feet high, and into which the entire Island of Manhattan could be placed, and you will have some conception of the crater of Haleakala, the largest extinct volcano in the world, situated on the Island of Maui, the second in area of the Hawaiian group.

This is only one of the extraordinary features of Uncle Sam's 75,000 acre playground, the Hawaiian National Park, which came into being by virtue of an act of Congress passed this year. The Park, furthermore, is unusual in that it is situated on two islands-54,145 acres being on Hawaii, the largest island, and 21,150 on Maui.

The reservation on the Island of

Hawaii contains the famous Kilauea, which is the largest continuously active volcano in existence. To visit Kilauea, which is naturally the first objective point in the Hawaiian division of the park, you take the steamship "Great Northern" from San Francisco or Los Angeles, to Hilo, the second city and seaport in the Territory, thence by automobile 31 miles over an excellent road of easy grade. This road is of great beauty and passes through numerous sugar plantations and wonderful forests of giant tree ferns. The first part of the trip is purely tropical and full of strange delights to allure the traveler from more prosaic lands. There is probably no more astounding change of scenery to be found anywhere than the

view when the road emerges from the forest at the very brink of the crater; and it ranks with the celebrated Cornichi road running out of Monte Carlo, as one of the world's great scenic highways.

This part of the reservation braces groves of sandalwood, now nearly extinct in the Pacific; magnificent forests of koa, or Hawaiian mahogany-trees with trunks over twenty feet in circumference; forests of tree ferns up to forty feet in height, and with leaves over twenty feet long; tropical jungles with scores of varieties of the most exquisite and delicate ferns and mosses, many of them indigenous only to this locality. There are rolling grassy meadows, dotted with weird tropical flora, giving a true park-like effect. Much of this flora is of priceless botanical value, and only found here. In addition to Kilauea, 4,000 feet, there is Mauna Loa, 13,675 feet, with its great summit crater of Mokuaweowo, the second highest peak in the Pacific, being only surpassed by its sister mountain of Mauna Kea, 13,825 feet. Besides the two active volcanos, pit craters with walls rising sheer for 1,500 feet, there are innumerable cones, wells, sinks, lava

tubes, fissures and other volcanic structures of every possible variety in color, form and detail-a veritable world in the making.

Kilauea, ("shooting with a great noise",) being the most noted and spectacular of the volcanos, deserves first mention. It is on the lower slope of Mauna Kea, about 4,000 feet above sea level, and encloses an area of 2,600 acres of solidified lava six hundred feet below the surface of the mountain side, is nearly eight miles in circumference and is one of the greatest natural wonders of the world. In the center of this sunken sea is a pit nearly 1,000 feet in diameter, known as Halemaumau, or "House of Everlasting Fire." Inside of this pit with a noise like the roaring of the sea, waves of white hot lava ceaselessly lash themselves against the confining walls, and in periods of particular activity fountains of liquid metal send their fiery spray high in the air with a hissing of gases, demoniac rumblings, and blue flames leaping through the crevasses, making a never-to-beforgotten pyrotechnical display on a cosmic scale. It is customary for tourists to place a post card held by a forked stick in one of the fissures and