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Washburn
Report Index
YELLOWSTONE EXPEDITION OF 1870
Page 18
sidering the power of the volcano. The distances to
which this mud has been thrown are truly astonishing. Directly above the
crater rises a steep bank, a hundred feet in height, on the apex of which
the tallest tree near is 110 feet high. The topmost branches of this tree
were loaded with mud 200 feet above, and 50 feet latterly away from the
crater. The ground and fallen trees bear by were splashed at a horizontal
distance of 200 feet. The tree below were either broken down, or their
branches festooned with dry mud, which appeared in the tops of tree growing
on the side hill from the same level with the crater, 50 feet in height, and
at a distance of 180 feet from the volcano. The mud, to produce such
effects, must have been thrown to a perpendicular elevation of at least 300
feet. As the diameter of the vent is small, in comparison to its depth, it
would admit of an initial propulsion, varying little from a vertical line.
It was with difficulty we could believe the evidence of our senses, and,
only after the most careful measurements, could we realize the immensity of
this wonderful phenomenon. In the morning I had forded the river, intending
to go down on the other side and examine the steam jets on the Hellroaring
River, but the day being warm I was overcome with pain and weakness, and
obliged to return without seeing them, to my great disappointment.
Thirteenth day -- September 3. -- We forded
the river opposite camp, and followed up the stream on the east side,
passing several of the gray mud caldrons in the first two miles of our
course on the river bank. A caņon of small depth here commences, impassable
in many places without difficulty, and we bore off to the left on the summit
of the wooded ridges. In six miles we struck the river again at a point
where it falls over a sloping ridge of lava, in roaring rapids, in a
distance of half a mile. The trail is easily passable to the crossing of a
creek seven miles from camp, and coming down through a marshy valley from
the range on the left. Fording this we were caught in an impassable
labyrinth of fallen timber, and obliged to retrace our steps. Recrossing the
creek, we followed down its valley, over marshy ground, for two miles, when
a broad sheet of water suddenly appeared in front. Crossing the creek once
again at a miry ford, skirting an estuary three miles farther along the
margin of a heavy forest on the left, then passing over a sand levee, grown
up with sage brush, and we found ourselves on the open beach of the great
Yellowstone Lake. Camped in a grove on the lake shore. At the head of the
creek is a large basin covered with an incrustation of sulphur, and behind
the first ridge a number of steam jets were seen rising into the air; these
we did not visit. Distance, 12 miles; barometer, lake shore.
Barometer, 22.60; thermometer, 58°; elevation,
7,714 3/5 feet.
Fourteenth day -- September 4. -- We did not
move camp. The lake lies close to the east range, in the rim of the Great
Basin, and presents an appearance at once beautiful and imposing. Its
eastern shore extends southward from camp in a line broken by various
inlets, to the distance of twenty-six miles. Its general form is triangular,
with apices in the south, southwest, and north points, the latter being
below our camp three miles, and at the mouth of the creek crossed yesterday.
The Yellowstone leaves the lake a mile beyond this angle, and from the west
side, starting with a slow current, in a channel one-fourth of a mile wide,
and deep enough to swim a horse. The shore on the east side, for five miles,
is a broad and level beach of sand, and the lake is shallow for some
distance out from the edge. This sand is composed almost entirely of
obsidian and those minute crystals known as California diamonds. Near camp,
on the edge of the lake, is a small boiling
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