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Washburn
Report Index
YELLOWSTONE EXPEDITION OF 1870
Page 29
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
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