290 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



It is then a moment of intense interest. Curiosity impels you forward 

 fear holds you back ; and while you hesitate, the thin crust under 

 your feet gives way, and you find yourself sinking into the fiery mael- 

 strom below. The writer, on one occasion, heard the rushing of water 

 under his feet. He struck down an axe, which, on the first blow, went 

 through into the deep whirlpool the whole length of the helve. He 

 withdrew it and cut an opening, which revealed a stream of angry 

 water, boiling intensely, and of unknown breadth and depth. He con- 

 tinued to enlarge the opening until the stream was seen to be five or 

 six feet in breadth, leading on indefinitely into the dark caverns beneath 

 the mountains. 



" At the base of the cones, in the bottom of the" ravines, and in the 

 bed and on the north bank of the river Pluton, springs almost innu- 

 merable break out, which are of various qualities and temperatures, 

 from icy coldness up to the boiling point. You may here find sulphur 

 water, precisely similar to the celebrated White Sulphur of Green 

 Brier County, Va., except its icy coldness. Also red, blue, and even 

 black sulphur water, both cold and hot. Also, pure limpid hot water, 

 without any sulphur or chlorine salts, calcareous hot waters, rnagnesian, 

 chalybeate, c., in almost endless variety. Where the heated sulphu- 

 retted hydrogen gas is evolved, water appears to be suddenly formed, 

 beautiful crystals of sulphur deposited, (not sublimed as by fire,) and 

 more or less sulphuric acid generated. In some places the acid was 

 found so strong as to turn black kid gloves almost immediately to a 

 deep red. Where the heated gas escapes in the river Pluton, such is 

 the amount of sulphur deposited, that the whole bed of the stream is 

 made white for one or two miles below. Notwithstanding that the 

 rocks and earth in many places are so hot as to burn your feet through 

 the soles of your boots, there is yet no appearance of a volcano in this 

 extraordinary spot. Were the action to cease, it would be difficult, 

 after a few years, to persuade men that it ever existed. There is no 

 appearance of lava. You find yourself not in a solfatara, nor one of 

 the salses described by Humboldt. The rocks around you are rapidly 

 dissolving under the powerful metamorphic action going on. Porphyry 

 and jasper are transformed into a kind of potter's clay. Pseudotrap- 

 pean and magnesian rocks are consumed much like wood in a slow fire, 

 and go to form sulphate of magnesia and other products. Granite is 

 rendered so soft that you may crush it between your fingers, and cut it 

 as easily as bread unbaked. The feldspar appears to be converted partly 

 into alum. In the mean time, the boulders and. angular fragments 

 brought down the ravines and river by the floods are being cemented 

 into a firm conglomerate, so that it is difficult to dislodge even a small 

 pebble, the pebble itself sometimes breaking before the cementation 

 yields. 



" The thermal action on wood in this place is also highly interesting. 

 In one mound I discovered the stump of a large tree, silicified ; in 

 another, a log changed to lignite or brown coal; Other fragments 

 appeared midway between petrifaction and carbonization. In this 

 connection, finding some drops of a very dense fluid, and also highly 

 refractive, I was led to believe that pure carbon might, under such 



