THE GEYSERS. 277 



lucent stream, placid as Lethe, winds around the base, regardlqss 

 of the dark, sulphurous waters which gurgle and gush up all 

 along its banks. But on we creep up the dismal ravine, and 

 soon we come to the Devil's Pulpit, and the Devil's Arm-chair, 

 both of which we rejoiced to find vacant. And now I beg the 

 indulgence of the audience, and especially of my reverend 

 friends, for any seeming impropriety of language in describing 

 this awful yawning gulf. And now w^e are in the throat of the 

 sulphurous canyon, wlrere vegetation dies, and only abominable 

 things live, where the very air oppresses you above, and where 

 thousands of boiling springs, around and beneath you, are mut- 

 tering, sputtering, bubbling and belching, like the long pent-up 

 fires of a volcano. Imagine, if you can, a combination of the 

 fumes of sulphur, soda, nitric acid, phosphorus, borax, alum, 

 ammonia and every other detestable ingredient, and you may 

 have some idea of the atmosphere of the Geysers. And here 

 the ground beneath you is covered with an incrustation of sul- 

 phur, magnesia and other chemicals, like the yellow lava from 

 an overflowing crater. Now your feet are burning, and your 

 guide cautions you not to step from the trodden path, lest you 

 might find yourself sinking you know not where. 



On either side, and near your path as you travel up, are 

 numerous large boiling springs, — the Devil's Inkstand, from 

 which we took a bottle of ink, and with which these words are 

 written ; the Devil's Tea-kettle, always boiling and ready to 

 scald you or your tea, in which you might cook an egg in two 

 minutes ; but the most noted is the Witches' Cauldron, an 

 immense cistern six feet wide, casting up scalding, spouting, 

 turbulent waters from a fathomless abyss. And here I confess 

 that it required but a little imagination to fancy that Pluto had 

 established a grand entrepot underneath, and Lucifer himself 

 was stirring up the fires at the bottom, wherever that bottom 

 might be, — and with a still further range of thought to imagine 

 that Hecate and her weird sisters were dancing around this 

 infernal cauldron and chanting their malefic incantation of, — 



" Double, double, toil and trouble, 

 Fire burn and cauldron bubble 

 Tor a charm of powerful trouble, 

 Like a liell-brotb boil and bubble." 



