102 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
GLIMPSES OF OUR NATIONAL PARKS 
The Yellowstone National Park, which 
lies principally in Wyoming, is the most 
widely celebrated of all our national parks 
because it contains more and greater gey- 
sers than all the rest of the world together. 
The geyser fields next in size are in Ice- 
land and New Zealand. The rest are in- 
conspicuous. 
Geysers are, roughly speaking, water 
volcanoes. They occur only at places 
where the internal heat of the earth ap- 
proaches close to the surface. Their action, 
for so many years unexplained, and even 
now regarded with wonder by so many, is 
simple. A'ater from the surfate trickling 
through cracks in the rocks, or water from 
subterranean springs collecting in the bot- 
tom of the geyser's crater, down among 
the strata of intense heat, becomes itself 
intensely heated and gives off steam, which 
e.xpands and forces upward the cooler 
water that lies above it. 
It is then that the water at the surface of 
the geyser begins to bubble and give off 
clouds of steam, the sign to the w'atchers 
above that the geyser is about to play. 
At last the water in the bottom reaches 
so great an e.xpansion under continued heat 
that the less heated water above can no 
longer weigh it down, so it bursts upward 
with great violence, rising many feet in the 
air and continuing to play until practically 
all the water in the crater has been ex- 
pelled. The water, cooled and falling back 
to the ground, again seeps through the sur- 
face to gather as before in the crater’s 
depth, and in a greater or less time, ac- 
cording to difficulties in the way of its re- 
turn, becomes reheated to the bursting 
point, when the geyser spouts again. 
One may make a geyser with a test tube 
and a Bunsen burner. 
II. — Y ellowstone. 
Nearly the entire Yellowstone region, 
covering an area of about 3,300 square 
miles, is remarkable for its hot-water phe- 
nomena. The geysers are confined to three 
basins lying near each other in the middle 
west side of the park, but other hot water 
manifestations occur at more widely sepa- 
rated points. Marvelously colored hot 
springs, mud volcanoes, and other strange 
phenomena are frequent. At Mammoth, at 
Norris, and at Thumb the hot water has 
brought to the surface quantities of white 
mineral deposits which build terraces of 
beautifully incrusted basins high up into the 
air, often engulfing trees of considerable 
size. Over the edges of these carved 
basins pours the hot water. Microscopic 
plants called algae grow on the edges and 
sides of these basins, assisting the deposi- 
tion of the mineral matter and painting 
them hues of red and pink and bluish gray, 
which in warm weather glow brilliantly, 
but in cold weather almost disappear. At 
many other points lesser hot springs occur, 
introducing strange, almost uncanny, ele- 
ments into wooded and otherwise quite 
normal landscapes. 
.A. tour of these hot-water formations 
and spouting geysers is an experience never 
to be fo^otten. Some of the geysers play 
at quite regular intervals. For many years 
the celebrated Old Faithful played with great 
regularity every seventy minutes, but dur- 
ing the summer of 1915 the interval length- 
ened to about eighty-five minutes, due, it 
is supposed, to the smaller snowfall and 
consequent lessened water supply of the 
preceding winter. Some of the largest gey- 
sers play at irregular intervals of days, 
weeks, or months. Some very small ones 
play every few minutes. Many bubbling hot 
springs, which throw water two or three 
feet into the air once or twice a minute, 
are really small, imperfectly formed 
geysers. 
The hot-spring terraces are also a rather 
awe-inspiring spectacle when seen for the 
first time. The visitor may climb upon 
Photo hj Haynes, St. Paul. 
JUPITER TERRACE, YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK. 
Photo bv Ilavnes, St. Paul. 
PUNCH BOWL SI’RING, YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK. 
