140 HOT SPRING. 



and left the issue to the future. A pleasant run of 

 two hours — for having empty sledges our dogs speeded 

 merrily along — brought us to a line of high steep 

 banks, under a range of rounded barren hills, all now 

 enveloped in snow. Long ere we reached the spring, 

 clouds of vapour hanging above, and the stream 

 proceeding from it, showed where it lay, at the foot 

 of a high bank, overhung in a very curious manner 

 by a canopy of snow. Drift had, I conjecture, first 

 formed in a mass above, which the action of the 

 vapour had hollowed out inside, until a sort of cave 

 of considerable height was formed ; the melting snow 

 and heated vapom' had encrusted the inner surface 

 with a smooth and glassy coating of ice, in which 

 numerous apertures, in beautiful crystallisation, per- 

 mitted the vapour to escape in volumes ; depending 

 icicles, like fragments of felspar, added to the 

 picturesque appearance of this curious cavern. The 

 spring was not at this time boiling at the surface, the 

 thermometer showing only 156° of Fahrenheit; the 

 water was strongly impregnated with salt and other 

 substances, having a mingled taste of iron and copper, 

 and bitter as gall. In the cauldron or basin of the 

 spring I found a blue bead, which, however, 

 No-tak-en carefully replaced, at the same time adding 

 two or three of those he had brought, and telling 



