AND RETURN TO SAN FRANCISCO. 45 
portion of his remarks, which will convey a fuller and 
clearer idea than my feeble description. My time 
while there was short, and mostly spent in making 
sketches, and in collecting a few specimens of sulphur 
and of the contiguous rocks; nor had I means 
of testing or examining the waters. 
‘You may here find sulphur water,” says Professor 
Shepherd,* “ precisely similar to the celebrated White 
Sulphur of Green Brier County, Virginia, except its icy 
coldness. Also red, blue, and even black sulphur 
water, both cold and hot. Also pure limpid hot water, 
without any sulphur or chlorine salts; calcareous hot 
waters, magnesian, chalybeate, etc., in almost endless 
variety. Every natural facility is afforded for either 
Taper shower, or plunging baths. Where the heated 
sulphuretted hydrogen gas is evolved, water appears 
to be suddenly formed, beautiful crystals of sulphur 
deposited (not sublimated as by fire), and more or less 
sulphuric acid generated. In some places the acid 
was found so strong as to turn black kid gloves almost 
immediately to a deep red. * * * From nume- 
rous experiments made here and in the mountains of 
Virginia, I am confident that all sulphur springs possess _, 
a high temperature, after descending below the cold 
surface water. Notwithstanding the rocks are so hot 
as to burn your feet through the soles of your boots, 
there is no appearance of a volcano in this extraordi- 
nary spot. 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 
* Silliman’s Journal for November, 1851, p. 156. 
