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appearance, one place in particular which bears the felicitous 
title of “‘ Hell’s half-acre.” Here there is a hot spring of great 
size, and as it continually overflows the deposited salts have 
raised its mouth considerably above the neighbouring stream, 
down whose banks the collected waters rush in brooks with beds 
and sides of garish yellow. But the character of this vast spring 
we cannot discern as the water is very hot and the cloud of steam 
so dense that our view is limited to a few feet of its margin. 
Close beside this is a smaller but still more awful spring. We 
dare not approach its edge, as what little the dense cloud per- 
mitted us to see, we saw that the cracked and seamed edges 
were hollowed under and its troubled waters seethed some six or 
seven feet below the brim. ‘There was another place where small 
mud geysers were in active operation, but there was nothing 
terrifying about them. On a slight eminence surrounded by 
stunted pines and low shrubs was an irregular patch 30 yards 
square. Here were numerous small cauldrons, their sides built 
up of soft coloured earth and in their centre a thick liquid kept 
continually rismg in heavy bubbles and bursting and bespatter- 
ing the sides with mud. ‘These were of various hues, from a 
deep pink to a pure white. As we went up the valley we forsook 
our waggon and the track, and wandered wherever the curious 
manifestations attracted us. Sometimes it would be to discover 
a lonely spring in a sheltered wooded nook or attracted by a 
hissing sound to find a jet of steam issuing from a fissure in the 
soil, or by the locomotive-like panting of some puny geyser throw- 
ing its little jet of water a few feet in the air. At last we reach 
the Upper Geyser Basin, and a weird looking place itis. The 
ground slopes backward to the hills and a portion about a mile 
square is barren and covered with a silicious deposit. Many of the 
trees that fringe this place have their stems bleached, while 
others lie uprooted sodden and without thew bark. A stream 
divides this barren portion, and is fed by tiny rills from overflow- 
ing springs and geysers. Some of the geysers have their mouths 
surrounded by irregular walls, and these bearing fancied resem- 
blances to other structures give to the geysers distinctive names. 
None of the larger geysers were in action when we arrived, but 
jets of steam at intervals were thrown out of the craters. None 
of these large geysers are continuous in their action, the intervals 
varying from one hour to days, weeks or months in some cases. 
One of these large geysers became active shortly after our arrival. 
Premonitory of the eruption there is a deep rumbling noise and 
the earth in the neighbourhood quivers, then with a loud roar a 
column of hot water is projected suddenly nigh 200 feet in the 
air. ‘The temperature of the water being at or above boiling 
point, most of it is immediately dissipated into steam, which 
arises in a cloud from the whole length of the column, and as it 
