NORRIS BASIN 223 



influence. A hundred yards from the road a flock 

 of thirty or forty Canada geese were sailing in the 

 water. I walked up to them and got one snap- 

 shot at a hundred feet, and a second just as they 

 were leaving the water. 



Halfway to the Basin is the Apollinaris Spring, 

 that bubbles from the wide hillside — a, natural, 

 sparkling water not much unlike its namesake. 



Two miles farther is the obsidian cliff, a vast 

 mass of volcanic glass, mentioned heretofore as the 

 one through which Jim Bridger tried to shoot the 

 elk. It is black, rather like anthracite in appear- 

 ance. The river runs at its foot, and to make a 

 roadway was a problem. It was too hard to be 

 drilled for blasting, and Colonel Norris, the 

 engineer, broke it into fragments by first heating 

 it with fires along its surface and then throwing 

 cold water on it. 



We passed Beaver Lake, with its numerous 

 dams and houses still standing, and the forest 

 denudation that evidences their busy effort, but 

 the beavers had long ago departed. 



