460 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
It might be that the surface quartz would be barren, or that there would be 
only the smallest scales of copper amongst the surface material ; but the quartz, 
or gangue, would show for itself whether it had been through the course of change 
I have described; and should such ever be found, it would be, to my mind a very- 
safe thing to go down upon, especially if occurring in a large bed, as then it 
would have the chance of being as inexhaustible as anything known at Lake 
Superior. 
Denver, Colorado, November 7, 1883. 
THE PLUTON GEYSERS OF CALIFORNIA. 
>f: ^ * ^ -^ -^ if. 
Although only a hundred miles from San Francisco, it is an all day's journey: 
to the Geyser Canon. One travels by train from eight to eleven o'clock'in the 
morning, first crossing the Bay of San Francisco and the Straits of Carquinez bjr 
ferryboats, and then speeding up the famous Napa Valley to that point where the 
mountain ridges meet and seemingly bar all further progress, thejgreat stage ride 
of twenty-seven miles from Calistoga to the geysers begins. There is one spring: 
in that narrow little " Devil's Canon " for every ailment in the doctor's category;, 
the iron, the sulphur, the alum, the magnesia, and the epsom salts, boiling and 
gurgling away at all temperatures and in all combinations, and as we wound our 
way up that tortuous canon the guide continually did tempt us with his cup full 
of some steaming draught. 
The shifting clouds of steam and the canon walls streaked and daubed with 
brilliant patches of color make fine pictures to the eye every moment, but no- 
photograph can do justice to it, and only a well executed aquarelle could give an 
accurate view of this vivid, diabolical and unearthly realm. 
Although this group of hot and boiling springs have long been denominated 
geysers, they are not geysers at all, and there are no eruptions of columns of 
water or the recurrent bursts of water and steam to great heights, which charac- 
terize the geysers of Iceland, New Zealand, and the Yellowstone. One inky 
pool, of unknown depth and a diameter of seven feet, boils away at a furious- 
rate, but even this witches' caldron does not authorize the ambitious name that 
designates this collection of boiling springs and steam blow-holes. The heat and 
steam have so decomposed the rocks through which they find vent, that one can. 
thrust his stick into what appears to be solid rock, and the ground jars and 
trembles beneath any heavy or emphatic footstep. At the head of the canon, 
there is the inevitable Devil's Pulpit, from which the ruler is supposed to view 
his realm. In the early morning and at sunset the canon is one cloud of steam,, 
and prosaic human figures seen through that misty and shifting medium are sug- 
gestive of all the witches, goblins, and demons that haunt the fairy tales and the 
Brocken; but, at noon, when the hot sun pours straight down into the canon,., 
the steam rises in faint and fitful gusts, and the wonderful coloring; of the canoa. 
