142 ***** "O/z, Ranger!" 



the bottom reaches so great an expansion under continued heat that the less 

 heated water above it can no longer weigh it down, it bursts upward with 

 great violence, rising many feet in the air and continuing to play until 

 practically all the water in the crater has been expelled. Spring water, or 

 the same water cooled after falling on the ground again, seeps through to 

 repeat this process. The length of time before the geyser spouts again de 

 pends upon the time it takes for the water to seep back and to become 

 re-heated. 



The celebrated Old Faithful Geyser plays with great regularity at inter 

 vals of about sixty-three minutes. It has never failed any visitor with an 

 hour to spare and patience to wait that long. Some of the largest geysers 

 play at irregular intervals of days, weeks, or months. Some very small ones 

 play every few minutes. Many bubbling hot springs which throw water a 

 few feet into the air once or twice a minute are in reality but small, im 

 perfectly formed geysers. 



Nearly the entire Yellowstone region, covering an area of 3,426 square 

 miles, so large that two or three of our smaller states could be dropped into 

 it with room to spare, is remarkable for its hot-water phenomena. The 

 geysers are confined to six basins known as the Upper, Lower, Norris, 

 Shoshone, Heart Lake, and West Thumb geyser basins, lying in the middle- 

 western and southern portions of the park, but the other hot-water manifesta 

 tions occur at widely separated points. Marvelously colored hot springs, mud 

 volcanoes, and other phenomena are frequent. Yet the geysers and hot-water 

 formations are by no means the only wonders in the Yellowstone. Indeed, 

 the entire park is a wonderland. The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is 

 renowned for its marvelously variegated volcanic coloring, a dazzling spec 

 tacle that fairly takes the visitor's breath with its beauty. Far below the 

 rim and the coloring, one sees the foaming Yellowstone River winding down 

 the canyon, following its plunge over a waterfall of 308 feet, nearly twice 

 the height of Niagara. From Inspiration Point one can stand on the rim 

 and gaze at two miles of kaleidoscopic coloring in the steep slopes that drop 

 more than a thousand feet down to the river. Here and there jagged rocky 

 needles rise perpendicularly for hundreds of feet like groups of Gothic spires, 

 and on the topmost pinnacles of some of them may be seen the nests of the 

 osprey, sometimes with young. 



Every shade of almost every color can be found in this daring and 

 spectacular canyon: deepest orange, faintest yellow, reds ranging from the 

 softest pink to the most vivid crimson, blacks and grays and pearls and 

 glistening white. Greens are furnished by the dark pines, or the lighter 

 shades of the leafy shrubs, or the foaming emerald of the plunging river, 

 while above are the ever changing blues of the Rocky Mountain sky, per 

 forated by the fleeting, fleecy clouds. The canyon is a spectacle which one 

 gazes upon in silence. The favorite practice of the rangers is to blindfold 

 their friends who have not yet seen the canyon, take them to Artist Point or 

 Grand View, and then suddenly remove the handkerchief from their eyes. 



Yellowstone National Park is the greatest wild game sanctuary in the 

 country. No rifle has been fired at the animals of the park, except to destroy 



