EXPLORATIONS IN IDAHO AND MONTANA. 589 



hard frosts at night, and a temperature one morning to zero Fahrenheit, rendered 

 our couches on the volcanic soil cold and restless. Once, however, in the midst 

 of this region of subterranean fires and lakes of scalding water, we felt no more 

 the cold chill of the lower valleys. A soft moist air in the day, foggy mists, or 

 columns of steam, rendered more visible from the greater coolness of the atmos- 

 phere, made our mornings enjoyable by their novelty. In the pines, in the open 

 prairies along Fire Hole River, we could see the steam rising from myriads of 

 scalding springs or clear basins of scalding water. Occasionally a magnificent 

 column of steam and boiling water would rush aloft swiftly and play from one to 

 ten minutes in duration. Old Faithful, the Giant, the Giantess, the Castle Gey- 

 ser, the Beehive, the Fountain, and a countless host of smaller spurting fountains 

 made it difficult to follow any determined course. Everywhere — above, below, 

 around — the hidden energies of subterranean forces were manifest. When near 

 some of the more active vents— some of the more demonstrative 5-a/"^/y-t;«/w^ they 

 might be called — we could hear the smothered, labored pent-up groans, or what 

 one would imagine were the desperate struggles of some cavern full of struggling 

 life striving to escape. We stood, as it were, in the mythological Hades; we 

 wandered in imagination on the banks of Cocytus. 



' " Cocytus, named of lamentations loud 

 Heard on the rueful stream." 



The whole ground surface in the geyser basin seems to be made up wholly 

 from the varied mineral deposits of the countless myriads of hot springs. We 

 notice in every direction a peculiar resonance when we ride or drive over the or- 

 dinary surface. We seem to wander over a dome erected over immense subter- 

 ranean lakes of pent-up steam and boiling water. At the surface, the general 

 boiling point varied from 199° to 200°. Dr. Peile, however, (who was then in 

 the Park,) informed me that a self-registering thermometer shoved some fifteen or 

 sixteen feet down the geyser orifices gave him a temperature of 209°, evidently 

 due to an abnormal compression having in these subterranean reservoirs raised 

 the boiling point. 



The National Park is well worthy of that title, and for future time its capa- 

 bilities and its surprising natural phenomena will always render it of most extraor- 

 dinary interest. I can say but little of the fauna and flora of the National 

 Park. Elk, moose, deer, antelope, mountain sheep, bears, wolves, wild cats, 

 lynx, rabbits and porcupines, with some beautiful foxes, were all we obtained. 

 Birds were scarce, and of only fifteen species, including an abundance of ducks, 

 geese, swans and sage-hens. We were too late for summer flowers, and generally 

 the whole of the sylva of the park consist of pine, red fir, spruce, one species 

 of Cottonwood, and ever-present quaking aspen; scrubby willows and some insig- 

 nificant bushes of Rhus and Cornus complete nearly the whole list. 



Completing our surveys in the Park, we turned to the west again, reached 

 Henry's Lake, and tried to follow the west side of Henry's Fork to Snake River. 

 Baffled in this, we traveled westward to Camass Creek, reached the regular stage 



