THE YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK 43 



uncontrollable as fate, tossing their pearly 

 branches in the wind, bursting into bloom and 

 vanishing like the frailest flowers, — plants of 

 which Nature raises hundreds or thousands of 

 crops a year with no apparent exhaustion of the 

 fiery soil. 



The so-called geyser basins, in which this rare 

 sort of vegetation is growing, are mostly open 

 valleys on the central plateau that were eroded 

 by glaciers after the greater volcanic fires had 

 ceased to burn. Looking down over the forests 

 as you approach them from the surrounding 

 heights, you see a multitude of white columns, 

 broad, reeking masses, and irregular jets and 

 puffs of misty vapor ascending from the bottom 

 of the valley, or entangled like smoke among the 

 neighboring trees, suggesting the factories of 

 some busy town or the camp-fires of an army. 

 These mark the position of each mush-pot, paint- 

 pot, hot spring, and geyser, or gusher, as the 

 Icelandic words mean. And when you saunter 

 into the midst of them over the bright sinter 

 pavements, and see how pure and white and 

 pearly gray they are in the shade of the moun- 

 tains, and how radiant in the sunshine, you are 

 fairly enchanted. So numerous they are and 

 varied, Nature seems to have gathered them 

 from all the world as specimens of her rarest 

 fountains, to show in one place what she can do. 

 Over four thousand hot springs have been counted 



