46 OUR NATIONAL PARKS 



ering nuts, and hear the blessed ouzel singing 

 confidingly in the shallows of the river, — most 

 faithful evangel, calming every fear, reducing 

 everything to love. 



The variously tinted sinter and travertine 

 formations, outspread like pavements over large 

 areas of the geyser valleys, lining the spring 

 basins and throats of the craters, and forming 

 beautiful coral-like rims and curbs about them, 

 always excite admiring attention ; so also does 

 the play of the waters from which they are de- 

 posited. The various minerals in them are rich 

 in colors, and these are greatly heightened by a 

 smooth, silky growth of brilliantly colored con- 

 fer vse which fines many of the pools and chan- 

 nels and terraces. No bed of flower-bloom is 

 more exquisite than these myriads of minute 

 plants, visible only in mass, growing in the hot 

 waters. Most of the spring borders are low and 

 daintily scalloped, crenelated, and beaded with 

 sinter pearls. Some of the geyser craters are 

 massive and picturesque, like ruined castles or 

 old burned-out sequoia stumps, and are adorned 

 on a grand scale with outbulging, cauliflower- 

 like formations. From these as centres the silex 

 pavements slope gently away in thin, crusty, 

 overlapping layers, slightly interrupted in some 

 places by low terraces. Or, as in the case of the 

 Mammoth Hot Springs, at the north end of the 

 park, where the building waters issue from the 



