29
YELLOWSTONE EXPEDITION OF 1870
meshes as delicate as the finest lace. Diminutive
yellow columns rise from their depths, capped with small tablets of rock,
and resembling flowers growing in the water. Some of them are filled with
oval pebbles of a brilliant white color, and others with a yellow frost-work
which builds up gradually in solid stalagmites. Receding still further
from the crater, the cavities become gradually larger, and the water cooler,
causing changes in the brilliant colorings, and also in the formations
of the deposits. These become calcareous spar, of a white or slate color,
and occasionally variegated. The water of the geyser is colorless, tasteless,
and without odor. The deposits are apparently as delicate as the down on
the butterfly's wing, both in texture and coloring, yet are firm and solid
beneath the tread. Those who have seen stage representations of "Aladdin's
Cave," and the "Home of the Dragon Fly," as produced in a first-class theater,
can form an idea of the wonderful coloring, but not of the intricate frost-work,
of this fairy-like, yet solid mound of rock, growing up amid clouds of
steam and showers of boiling water. One instinctively touches the hot ledges
with his hands, and sounds with a stick the depths of the cavities in the
slope, in utter doubt in the evidence of his own eyes. The beauty of the
scene takes away one's breath. It is overpowering, transcending the visions
of the Moslem's Paradise. The earth affords not its equal. It is the most
lovely inanimate object in existence. The period of this geyser is fifty
minutes. First an increased rush of steam comes forth, followed instantly
by a rising jet of water, which attains, by increased impulsions, to the
height of 125 feet, escaping with a wild, hissing sound, while great volumes
of steam rise up to an altitude of 500 feet from the crater. Rainbows play
around the tremendous fountain, the waters of which fall about the basin
in showers of brilliance, then rush steaming down the slopes to the river.
After a continuous action for a space of five minutes, the jet owers convulsively
by degrees, the waters finally disappear, and only a current of steam pours
forth from the crater. When we consider that it plays through an
aperture 7 by 3 feet in measurement, an idea can be formed of the vast
quantity of water ejected by this great natural fountain. In the neighborhood
of this are several old geysers, choked up by their own deposits to small,
simmering craters, with their outside slopes decomposed and shelly.
Following the edge of the valley southward, we
passed hot springs of various sizes, from 2 to 50 feet in diameter, with
craters built up in rounded knolls, from 3 to 40 feet above the general
level. All these were of clear water, without sulphur vents; most of them
had periodical turns of violence, during which they threw off immense columns
of steam and water in jets from the center of their basins to heights varying
from 3 to 50 feet. Many of these springs gave evidence of having been once
geysers of the first class, but their waters in such cases had burst out
from excess of pressure in large springs at the bases of the old craters,
where they were building up anew. Large swampy places in the hollows were
formed of a greasy, calcareous slime, covered with turf, growing evergreen
from the warm water below. In many localities there were large groups of
standing trees in these marshes, dead and denuded of bark to the height
of three feet, their bare trunks being a snowy whiteness and fast turning
to stone. These were always found in places where hot water flowed down
at some period from geysers above. They presented, with their deadened
tops and bare and white-washed stumps, a very singular appearance. No sulphur
springs, nor sulphur deposits, are found in the valley; but few mud springs
are seen, and these are small in dimensions. Along the margin of the Go
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