PROCEEDINGS OF THE COTTESWOLD CLUB 273 



commodity in the Rockies), or I should certainly have 

 tried the effect of administering some of it to the giant. 

 This, I believe, usually acts as a very efficaceous emetic; 

 owing, of course, to the viscosity it produces in the 

 water. Engine drivers well know how quickly " priming" 

 is brought on if a little grease or soap gets into the w^ater 

 supplied to the boiler. 



About a quarter of a mile farther south, on a mound 

 not far from the margin of the plain, there rises a 

 structure which might easily be mistaken for the ruins of 

 an old castle [)artly buried in debris. [Lantern slide 

 shown.] This is another typical geysir-formation, showing 

 the cone in an advanced stage of old age. It was probably 

 at one time at least 25 or 30 feet high, built up by the 

 deposits of numberless eruptions, each adding a brick (or 

 more strictly, a film of silica) to the pile. Then, as the 

 tube lengthened and the resistance to the passage of the 

 water increased, the violence of its own discharges blew 

 the structure to pieces, and left it as I saw it, a splendid 

 wreck. It still emits much steam, and contributes a good 

 deal of boiling water to the beautiful circular pool below, 

 [Lantern slide shown] but it has retired from business 

 as a real active geysir. The pool just mentioned (and 

 shewn in the photograph) is a very fine one, perfectly 

 circular, very deep and always full of magnificently-blue, 

 tranquil water. I could almost fancy, while gazing into it, 

 that I was looking down a hole bored right through the 

 earth, upon the blue sky on the other side. 



Perhaps I may note here, as a characteristic of nearly all 

 the geysirs of the Rocky Mountains, and a point in which 

 they difl"er from the Icelandic geysirs, that hardly any of 

 them rise from the centre of pools. They almost invari- 

 ably build up cones or short chimneys round the point 

 where the water reaches the surface, and the discharge 

 takes place from the top of these, instead of from a deep 

 circular cup, like a volcanic crater. This peculiarity is 



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