GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE TERRITORIES. 



121 



Fig 



FUNGIFORM SILICA. 



great beauty of the prismatic colors depends much on the sunlight, but 

 about the middle of the day, when the bright rays descend nearly verti- 

 cally, and a slight breeze just 

 makes a ripple on the surface, 

 the colors exceed comparison ; 

 when the surface is calm 

 there is one vast chaos of 

 colors, dancing, as it were, like 

 the colors of a kaleidoscope. 

 As seen through this marvelous 

 play of colors, the decorations 

 on the sides of the basin are 

 lighted up with a wild, weird 

 beauty, which wafts one at once 

 into the land of encbantment; 

 all the brilliant feats of fairies 

 and genii in the Arabian ISTights' 

 Entertainments are forgotten 

 in the actual presence of such 

 marvelous beauty; life becomes 

 a privilege and a blessing after 

 one has seen and thoroughly felt these incomparable types of nature's 

 cunning skill. There is another geyser, which has a chimney 3 feet 

 high and 5 feet in diameter at the base, with an orifice 2^ feet at the 

 top, lined with the spongiform silica inside, and on the outside adorned 

 with bead and shell work. There is a form of shell crystallization 

 that reminds one of the artificial shell-work made with small thin 

 oyster-shells ; the form of the chimney is like an old-fashioned bee-hive. 

 High up in the hills there is one lone spring 20 by 30 feet, with consider- 

 able flow, forming with the sediment a high mound 250 yards in diam- 

 eter ; it is constantly boiling up in the center about 2 feet ; it has the 

 prettily scalloped rim, and is 250 feet above the river. The group just 

 described is a most remarkable one, and I call attention to it on the 

 chart in which the Bee-Hive and Giantess are located. 



. We will now pass to the op- 



^ ^ " ^ ^ ■ posite side of the river for a 



moment, and examine the Cas- 

 tle and its surroundings. Upon 

 the mound on which the Castle 

 is located, there is one of the 

 most beautiful of the calm 

 springs, of which Mr. Jackson 

 secured an excellent photo- 

 graph; it does not boil at all, 

 but the surface is kept in a con- 

 stant vibration; the spring has 

 a rim nearly circular, 25 by 30 

 feet; is somewhat funnel- 

 shaped, passing down to a 

 depth of 60 feet in water that 

 has an almost unnatural clear- 

 ness, to a small aperture, which 

 leads under the shell to an unknown depth; the rim slopes down on 

 the other side all around about 12 inches, 1 to 3 inches thick, 

 most elegantly scalloped, the under sides in leaves like a toad-stool ; 

 the inner lining of the basin is a marvel of delicate tracery of pure 



SPONGIFORM CF CAULIFLOWER SILICA. 



