. Shoshone, and other western wonders. and red, is like a chalk-bed, —soft tothe touch and crumbling with chemical action. Here, surely, is the Wonderland whose fea-tures the guide-books so minutely entire area of the basin is nearly four squaremiles. It is well timbered, and the soil wherethere are no spring deposits is a dark volcanicsand. Near the river the formation is calca-reous, and rises above the level of the streamto a height of from ten to twenty feet. Thefirst descriptions of the springs and geysers weregiven by members of the Washburne expedi-tion ; later information
. Shoshone, and other western wonders. and red, is like a chalk-bed, —soft tothe touch and crumbling with chemical action. Here, surely, is the Wonderland whose fea-tures the guide-books so minutely entire area of the basin is nearly four squaremiles. It is well timbered, and the soil wherethere are no spring deposits is a dark volcanicsand. Near the river the formation is calca-reous, and rises above the level of the streamto a height of from ten to twenty feet. Thefirst descriptions of the springs and geysers weregiven by members of the Washburne expedi-tion ; later information has been gained throughthe Government Geologists who visit the basinnearly every year. More than four hundredand fifty springs have already been named, andof these are many which are distinctly the balcony of the hotel a score of them 222 SHOSHONE. may be seen. Some send forth high spiralcolumns; others are mere fountains, rising andfalling in obedience to the unseen forces. Onefamous geyser, Old Faithful, has an hourly. OLD FAITHFUL. eruption. Its cream-white cone forms the apexof a low mound near the hotel, and fromthis, preceding every action, issue loud, hoarsegroans and waves of heated air. Far down GEYSERS OF THE YELLOWSTONE. 223 the chimney-like opening you can see the surg-ing waters, now filling the gloomy depths, thendisappearing, and finally bursting forth in atorrent and shooting skyward like a five minutes the gorgeous spectacle lasts,and the slopes of the mound are overrun withsteaming rivulets. Then the eruption a few despairing efforts the waters returnto their caverns, and the cone is only an emptyshell, bluish-white within, and like a block ofincrusted marble on the outside. The actualheight which the waters attain is two hundredfeet. The stream itself is six feet in diameter,and falls in a graceful arc that ends in a glit-tering shower. The eruptions occur at regularintervals of every fifty-seven minutes. Among the larges
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Keywords: ., bookauthorrobertse, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, bookyear1888
