style="font-size:15px;"> This rather startling idea is emphasized by a smoking vent close at hand, which is also constantly sending forth superheated steam and sulphurous gases, like the extinct volcano of Solfatara, near Naples. Sulphur crystals strew the ground, and are heaped up in small yellow mounds. Not far away an intermittent geyser bursts forth every sixty seconds from a deep hole in the rock-bed of the basin, showing a stream of water six inches in diameter, and sending the same skyward thirty or forty feet. Here also is a powerful geyser called the Monarch, which leaps into action with great regularity once in twenty-four hours, throwing a triple stream to the height of a hundred and thirty feet, and continuing to do so for the space of fifteen or twenty minutes. Beneath the sun’s rays all the colors of the prism are reflected in this vertical column of water, and not infrequently the distinct arch of a rainbow is suspended like a halo about its crown. Nature, even in her most fantastic caprice, is always beautiful.
There are several other high-reaching and powerful geysers in this vicinity, but we will not weary the reader by pausing to describe them.
Gibbon Paint Pot Basin is next visited, being a most curious area, measuring some twenty acres, more or less, situated in a heavily-wooded district, not far from Gibbon Cañon. Here is a most strange collection of over five hundred springs of boiling, splashing, exploding mud, exhibiting many distinct colors, which gives rise to the name it bears. One pot is of an emerald green, another is as blue as turquoise, a third is as red as blood, a fourth is of orange yellow, another is of a rich cream color and consistency. The visitor is struck by the singularity of this hot-spring system, which produces from vents so close together colors diametrically opposite. The earth is piled up about the seething pools, making small mounds all over the basin, and forming a series of pots of clay and silicious compounds. Near the entrance of Gibbon Cañon is a remarkable collection of extinct geysers; the tall, slim, crystallized structures, originating like the Liberty Cap already described, look like genii totem poles, corrugated by the finger of time, and forming significant monuments of bygone eruptions, while the surrounding volcanoes were slowly exhausting their fury. Even about these long-extinct geysers there is an atmosphere indicating their former intensity, though it is quite possible they may have been sleeping for ten centuries.
The locality known as the Lower Geyser Basin is filled with striking and somewhat similar volcanic exhibitions, though there are more hot springs here than other phenomena, the aggregate number being a trifle less than seven hundred, including seventeen active geysers. In some respects this spot exceeds in interest those previously visited, being more readily surveyed as a whole. The variety of form and the large number of these springs are remarkable. As a rule they are less sulphurous and more silicious than those already spoken of. Here, as at the terraces near the hotel, the last touch of beauty is imparted by the sun’s rays forcing themselves through the white vapory clouds which are thrown off by the mysteriously heated waters. One of the large basins, measuring forty by sixty feet, is filled with a sort of porcelain slime, notable for its soft rose tints and delicate yellow hues, which are brought out with magic effect under a cloudless sky. This basin has an elevation of over seven thousand feet above the level of the sea, and is surrounded by heavily-timbered hills which are four and five hundred feet higher. Numerous as these springs and geysers are, each one is strongly individualized by some special feature which marks it as distinctive from the rest, and renders it recognizable by the residents of the Park, but which, however interesting to the observing visitor, would only prove to be tedious if here described in detail.
While sitting at twilight on the piazza of the rude little inn where we passed the night in this basin, there came out from the edge of the wood on to a broad green plateau a couple of long tailed mountain lions. They were not quite full grown, and were of a tawny color. These creatures, savage and dangerous enough under some circumstances, seemed half tame and entirely fearless, playfully romping with each other, and exhibiting catlike agility. The proprietor of the inn told us that not long since, upon a dark night, they came to the house and attacked his favorite dog, killing and eating him, leaving only the bones to explain his disappearance in the morning. They, too, must have read the regulations, “No firearms permitted in the Park.”
The Midway Geyser Basin is situated a few miles directly south of that just spoken of, and contains an extraordinary group of hot springs, among which is the marvelous Excelsior Geyser, largest in the known world. It bursts forth from a pit two hundred and fifty feet in diameter, worn in the solid rock, and which is at all times nearly full of boiling water, above which there is constantly floating a dense column of steam, which rising slowly is borne away and absorbed by the atmosphere. The water which flows so continuously over the brim has formed a series of terraces beaming with beautiful tints. This stupendous fountain is intermittent, giving an exhibition of its startling powers at very irregular periods, when it is said to send up a column of water sixty feet in diameter to a height of from fifty to one hundred feet! So great is the sudden flood thus produced in the Firehole River, which is here between seventy-five and a hundred yards broad, that it is turned for the time being into a furious torrent of steaming, half-boiling water. The Excelsior has also a disagreeable and dangerous habit of throwing up hundred-pound stones and metallic débris with this great volume of water, while the surrounding earth vibrates in sympathy with the hidden power which operates so mysteriously. Visitors naturally hasten to a safe distance during these moments of extraordinary activity.
About midway between Firehole and the Upper Geyser Basin is a strange, unearthly, vaporous piece of low land, which is endowed with a name more expressive than elegant, being called “Hell’s Half Acre.” Here again it seems as if this spot is separated from the raging fires below by only the thinnest crust of earth, through which numerous boiling springs find riotous vent. The soil in many parts is burning hot, and echoes to the tread as though liable to open at any moment and swallow the venturesome stranger. During the season of 1888, a lady visitor who stepped upon a thin place sank nearly out of sight, and though instantly rescued by her friends, she was so severely scalded as to be confined to her bed for a month and more at the Mammoth Springs Hotel. The air is filled with fumes of sulphur, and the place would seem to be appropriately named. There are forty springs in this “Half Acre,” which, by the way, occupies ten times the space which the name indicates, where the seething and bubbling noise is like the agonized wailing of lost spirits. The place has another, and perhaps better, designation besides this satanic title, namely, Egeria Springs. Great is the contrast between the heavens above and the direful suggestions of the earth below, as we behold it under the serene beauty of the blue sky which prevails here in the summer months, and which renders camping out in the Park delightful. “You should come here during a thunder-storm,” said our companion, who is a dweller in this region. “I have done so twice,” he continued, “simply to witness the fitness of the association: rolling thunder overhead and flashes of lightning in the atmosphere, through which the boiling vats, hissing pools, and steaming fissures are seen in full operation, as though they were a part and parcel of the electric turmoil agitating the sky.”
It is impossible to appreciate these various phenomena in a single hurried visit. Like the Falls of Niagara, or the Pyramids of Gizeh, they must become in some degree familiar to the observer before he will be able to form a complete, intelligent, and satisfactory impression which will remain with him. One cannot grasp the full significance of such accumulated wonders at sight. We look about us among the green trees that border the open areas, surprised to behold the calm sunshine, the tuneful birds, and the chattering squirrels, moved by their normal instincts, utterly regardless of these myriad surrounding marvels.
The grandest spouting springs are to be found in Upper Geyser Basin, where there are twenty-five active fountains of this character. Here is situated the famous “Old Faithful,” which, from a mound rising gradually about six or eight feet above the surrounding level, emits a huge column of boiling water for five or six minutes in each hour with never-failing regularity, while it gives forth at all times clouds of steam and heated air. The height reached by the waters of this thermal fountain varies from eighty to one hundred and twenty feet, and it has earned its expressive name by never failing to be on time. It seemed, somehow, to be a more satisfactory representative of the spouting spring phenomenon than any other
