early rocket planes in that they have a very difficult time taking 

 off and landing, but once they get air-borne they travel like 

 shells. To watch a loon land on a large frozen lake is positively 

 breath-taking, for it comes down breast first and, with hardly 

 any change in speed, goes roaring off into the far white yonder. 

 One that has just had a large meal and ends up in the middle 

 of a frozen lake often cannot get air-borne again until it has 

 digested, and so flounders about squawking in fran'ic frustration, 

 for these birds cannot stand up on ice when overladen. 



THE BELCHING EARTH 



Contained within this province is an area of volcanic activity. 

 It is an isolated area a little outside of the great belt of crustal 

 instability that rings the Pacific Ocean, but it displays many 

 interesting features. The most obvious and active of these are 

 now confined within Yellowstone National Park. (Incidentally. 

 Yellowstone is the oldest of the national parks, having been 

 established in 1872.) Here there are over ten thousand individual 

 holes in the ground that belch hot steam, water, gas, or mud. 

 These holes are distributed among a number of mountain basins 

 — the average height of the whole park is about 7500 feet — 

 named the Norris, Lower, Midway, Upper, Heart Lake, and 

 Shoshone. Among these natural phenomena are many geysers, 

 including the famous "Old Faithful." 



We have run into volcanicity already and we shall meet it 

 again several times before our journey is over, but it is a large 

 subject and one of great variety. It might seem that any hole in 

 the earth out of which anything belches either continuously or 

 irregularly is much the same as any other, but this is not so. 

 Material comes up out of the shallower depths of the earth in 

 various forms and manners. There are places where molten 

 basaltic rocks — not lavas — have flowed out over the surface and 

 spread for hundreds of square miles; there are other places 

 where similar deep-down rocks have forced their way between 

 strata to form huge lenticles: there are still other places where 

 they have formed wall-like structures called dykes. Then there 

 are the true volcanos, some of which, like Mauna Loa in the 

 Hawaiian Islands, are enormous pits into which molten lava 

 sometimes wells. There are other types, such as Vesuvius in Italy 

 and Mount Rainier in Washington, that are vast mountains of 

 lava rock, and other materials built up over millennia by eruption. 

 Next there are the cinder cones, of which the best known in 

 modern times is Paricutin in Mexico, which appeared suddenly 

 in a cornfield as a small hole in the ground from which clinker- 

 like material started spouting, built up a thousand-foot mountain 

 in ten months, but which has now been reduced by rain to six 

 hundred feet. 



Going down the scale, we come next to the mud volcanos. 

 These are truly volcanic outpourings, but of water, usually hot 

 water, containing so much finely divided mineral material that 

 it constitutes a sort of gooey mud. This slops out in all directions 

 and then begins to flow downhill. As it does so, it gradually 

 dries out and forms smoothly curved and rounded terraces 

 following the contours of the land surface and so may often 

 produce the most bizarre effects. 



Then finally, there are those holes that belch water and steam. 

 These are known as geysers, from an Icelandic word geysir. 

 which means a "gusher" or "rager." The original geysir (or hver. 

 which means "hot spring"), known as "The Great Geysir," is in 

 Iceland, and all other similarly spouting hot springs have 



Bighorn or Rocky Mountain Wild Sheep is one of the com- 

 moner large animals of the upper mountain pastures and 

 alps. They are very wary creatures and great climbers. 



derived their common name from this. Geysers are found all 

 over the world, notably in Iceland. Indonesia, New Zealand, and 

 South America. 



In Yellowstone there are over a hundred true geysers, four of 

 which are notable. The best known is undoubtedly "Old Faith- 

 ful," which has been spouting away almost exactly every hour 

 on the hour for five minutes ever since it was discovered by 

 white men and. if the Amerindians are to be believed, for cen- 

 turies before that. (Even during the somewhat violent earthquake 

 of the summer of 1959 in this region. Old Faithful continued to 

 spout with perfect regularity.) This geyser spouts hot water 

 some 100 to 150 feet into the air. The star performer, however, is 

 named the Giantess; it spouts a massive column to a height of 

 about 60 feet, which then throws up a jet that reaches some 250 

 feet. Another, known as the Castle, is very variable both in 

 timing and effort but makes the most tremendous rumpus about 

 it, roaring like an open furnace and shaking the whole earth. 



Geysers are a product of volcanicity. which is to say the 

 presence not too far under the surface of the earth of a large 

 pocket of molten rocks. Whether such pockets are upward exten- 

 sions of a generally molten substratum that underlies the whole 

 crust of the earth or are just big vesicles within the crust itself 

 is still not determined, but in either case these pockets are under 

 pressures other than and in excess of the normal ones due to the 

 mere weight of the rocks above them. Volcanic areas are places 

 where the earth's crust is under stress and is being either com- 

 pressed or stretched apart, or is shearing. If there happens to be 

 much water present in the rocks in such areas, it will be the first 

 substance to be pushed out, and it will be hot. The Great Geysir 

 has a surface temperature of some 190 degrees Fahrenheit. 



In certain kinds of rocks the minerals dissolved in hot water 

 form, when redeposited, a solid flinty material that resists 

 further solution. Thus a pipe may form where hot waters reach 

 the surface and superheated water is constantly pushed from 

 below. As this water wells up it cools, so that the upper layers 

 in the pipe are substantially colder than the water at the bottom. 

 The latter may be well above the boiling point and be con- 

 stantly heated from below. Eventually, when the vapor pressure 

 rises to a critical point, the superheated water at the bottom 

 suddenly turns into steam, which entails its sudden expansion 

 and pushes upward the whole column of colder water above it. 

 As this spills over the edge of the basin at the surface, its weight 

 on the superheated water below is reduced so that more hot 

 water flashes into steam; and. with a roar, all the water is 

 blasted sky high. Then everything settles down till the funnel 

 fills once more and the whole process starts over again. 



Geysers often build wondrous formations on the surface all 

 around their mouths. Sometimes the hot waters are filled with 

 all manner of minerals in solution which are deposited when the 

 water cools and which form rim-stone basins, frozen cascades, 

 crystalline walls and domes, and other beautiful creations. There 

 are several fine examples at Yellowstone as well as some eerie 

 scenes that look like settings from Dante's Inferno as depicted 

 by Dore. There are countless hot springs in addition to geysers, 

 and the waters of some of these encrust everything with pure 

 white or softly tinted crystals, making them look like something 

 out of a fairyland. 



