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, F, Shepherd on the Platon Geysers of California, 157 



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the rocks and earth in many places are so hot as to burn your 

 feet through the soles of yonr boots, there is yet no appearance 

 of a volcano in this extraordinary spot Were the action to cease, 

 . it wottld be div^.cult after a few years to persuade men that it ever 

 existed. There is no appearance of lava. You find yourself 

 Standing not in a solfatara nor one of the salses described by the 

 illustrious Humboldt. The rocks around, you are rapidly dissolv- 

 itig under the powerful metamorphic action going on. Porphyry 

 and jasper are transformed into a kind of potters clay. Pseudo- 

 trappean and magnesian rocks are consumed much like wood in 

 a slow fire, and go to form sulphate of magnesia and other pro- 

 ducts. Granite is rendered so soft that you may crush it be- 

 tween your fingerSj and cut it as easily as bread unbaked. The 

 feldspar appears to bq converted partly into alum. In the mean- 

 time, the boulders and angular fragments brought down the ra- 

 vines and river by the floods, are being cemented into a firm con- 

 glomerate so that it is difficult to dislodge even a small pebble, 

 the pebble itself sometimes breaking before the cementation yields. 

 The thermal action on wood in this place is also highly inter- 

 esting. In one mound I discovered the stump of a .large tree 

 silicified; in another a log changed to lignite or brown caal. 

 Other fragments appeared midway between petrifaction and car- 

 bonization. In this connection, finding some drops of a very 

 dense fluid and also highly refractive, I was led to believe that 

 pure carbon might under such circumstances crystallize and form 

 the diamond. Unfortunately for me however, 1 lost the precious 

 drop in attempting to secure it. 



. ■ A green tree cut down and obliquely inserted in one of the 

 conical mounds, was so changed in thirty-six hours that its spe- 

 cies would not have been recognized except from the portion 

 projecting outside, around which beautiful crystals of sulphur had ' *- 

 already formed.. . 



From the thermal exhalations and the amount of sulphur de- 

 posited, it might be supposed that the progress of vegetation 

 would be retarded. But such is not the fact. On the contrary it is 

 reatly facilitated. The Quercus sempervirens or evergreen oak, 

 flourishes in beauty within fifty feet of the boiling and angry 

 geysers. Maples and alders from one to two feet in diameter, 

 g^'ow within twenty or thirty feet of the hottest steam pipes. 

 This, however^ may be accounted for by the cold surface water 

 flowing down from the adjacent mountain. Here too the birds 

 huild their nests and '' sing among the branches." Multitudes of 

 grizzly bears make their beds on the warm groimdsl Panthers, * 



deer^ hares, and squirrels, also take up their winter quarters in ; %^ 

 the very midst of the geyser mounds. Farther down the stream .^^ 



0^^ the terraced banks of the limpid Pluton, vegetation (as one 

 gentlemen has aptly expressed it) ^^ actually runs wild^^^ and the 

 ^^"^nter months exhibit all the fancied freshness of primeval Eden. 



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