72 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Oct. 15. 



for, his handsome young mistress that he 

 yielded to the motion of her hand and to the 

 entreaties of her voice when perhaps a strong 

 man could not have pulled him up by force. 

 If any of our party should happen to read 

 this, they will know why the stage had to 

 wait so long for me to investigate (?) more 

 critically the Black Growler and Hurricane. 

 I can not quite recall all the wonderful things 

 I saw on that eventful afternoon. Toward 

 evening the coach crossed the l^ridge over 

 Firehole River, passing by Morning-glory 

 Spring, Fan Geyser and Mortar Geyser, slop- 

 ping a little right at the bridge to let us catch 

 a brief glimpse of Riverside Geyser, that 

 throws a stream of water so it falls directly in- 

 to the river. Then we went around to the 

 Wylie permanent camp right close to Splendid 

 Geyser. At this camp we passed all day Sat- 

 urday as well as Sunday; but I have already 

 told 3^ou about the meeting S ibbath evening. 

 Early in the morning we visited Riverside 

 Geyser and saw it play repeatedly, for it 



CONE OF THE GIANT GEYSER 



" goes off " about three times a day. This is 

 really one of the prettiest in the basin, in my 

 opinion. Shortly before it has an eruption, a 

 little fellow a few yards away sends up a 

 slender stream of steam and water, with quite 

 a comical mimic of the great geysers. The 

 eruptions commence gradually, increasing till 

 they get up to 100 feet. There are some seats 

 placed on the opposite side of the river, where 

 you can usually find more or less spectators 

 when the eruption is in the daytime. 



As an illustration of the wonderful crystal 

 clearness of the water, when several of our 

 party were over there just at dusk, after an 

 eruption, I proposed jumping down into a 

 cavity near the crater, to examine it more 

 thoroughly. One of the ladies cautioned me, 

 saying she did not think the water was all 

 out. " Oh! yes, it is," said I. "See." Then 

 I tossed in a pebble to make sure it was empty. 

 To my great surprise and considerable fright 

 it splashed in the boiling water that filled the 



basin. Had I stepped in as I proposed, I 

 should have been scalded severely. 



There are twenty-five or thirty geysers all 

 together, mostly in this Upper Geyser Basin. 

 By the way, you want to be sure to say geyser, 

 giving the letters ey the sound of /. If you 

 do not, the guides and drivers will be sure to 

 catch you up. 



Now I can not describe all of these wonder- 

 ful springs and geysers; but I will go over 

 them very briefly. "Grotto" has a great 

 number of craters, and during an eruption the 

 water and steam make a terrible commotion 

 as they puff and spurt out of the various 

 openings. " Giant " is, as its name indicates, 

 one of the principal ones in the lot; but as it 

 goes off only once in from two to four days, 

 we did not see it. To tell the truth, it played 

 in the night after we arrived. But I did not 

 hear it, as I was so tired from the amount of 

 travel I did the day before. Below is a pic- 

 ture of the mouth of the giant. 



On one side the crater is broken away as 

 you see. This was prob- 

 ably done by some tre- 

 mendous eruption. 

 There is an accumula- 

 tion or deposit around 

 it for forty or fifty feet. 

 The water is sometimes 

 lifted in a column 250 

 high, and the rumbling 

 has been likened to 

 that of a train of mov- 

 ing cars. The play lasts 

 from one and a half to 

 two hours. The cone 

 you see in the picture is 

 about ten feet high. 



There is a new geyser 

 called Daisy. This is 

 near by the Comet, and 

 was so close to our 

 camp that a number of 

 our party saw it several 

 times, for it goes off 

 about once every other 

 hour. 



One of the prettiest 

 things in the whole geyser basin is what is 

 called the Punch-bowl. It is not a geyser, 

 but a beautiful hot spring. On the next 

 page is a picture of it. 



Now, these scalloped walls that hold the 

 pool of water remind me more of beautiful 

 Etruscan jewelry, interspersed with the choic- 

 est and rarest gems, than any thing else. 

 The outside edge is beautifully decorated; 

 but when you come to look over into the 

 water, with its sparkling clearness, you think 

 it must be a brilliant illusion borrowed from 

 scenes in the Arabian Nights. The most 

 beautiful part of it is on the opposite side of 

 the wagon-road that runs near. But our 

 party had seen so many sights I absolutely 

 could not get them to alight from the coach 

 and walk around the Punch-bowl. The edge 

 of the basin is about five feet above the level of 

 the ground. The whole structure is kept 

 bright with its startling brilliancy by the boil- 

 ing water that constantly flows over and 



