Identifier: sciencerecordcom1874beac (find matches)
Title: The Science record; a compendium of scientific progress and discovery
Year: 1872 (1870s)
Authors: Beach, Alfred Ely, 1826-1896
Subjects: Technology Industrial arts
Publisher: New York, Munn
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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es with a noise likethat of a high-pressure steamboat blowing off; and thisvent is appropriately called the Steamboat Geyser. Fora hundred yards here the rocks are hot under the feet,and as they are also slippery with moist mineral salts andpuffing from numerous small vents, the spectacle theypresent is in sharp contrast tc the sylvan beauty of thecreek. Yet grasses grew in these heated rocks, out of thevery salts, and one or two thermal plants dare to blossomat the edge and in the very breath of the hottest springs,whose waters are sometimes greened with low forms ofmicroscopic plant-life, which also slime the rock wherethey overflow. Following down the right bank of the Plutonforashortdistance, the trail turns to the right and enters a gorgedensely embowered by shrubs at its mcuth, but soon open-ing into the desolate regions of the Devils Canon. Thenomenclature, like the scenery, from this point, is all in-fernal, suggestive of Dante and his awful journe). Climb- 54$ SCIENCE RECORD.
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DEVILS CAftON. ing up a ledge that crosses the canon, we suddenly gain aview of the principal Geysers. The gorge for half a mileup the side of the mountain lies before us, a steep ascent, GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY. 547 filled with steam and noise, its bare sides painted manycolors, its bed obstructed with boulders, around and underwhich turbid waters gurgle and smoke. The hot ground under the feet; the subterranean rum-blings ; the throbs and thuds near some of the largest andmost energetic steam-vents ; the warmly moist atmo-sphere, filled with acidulous and sulphurous vapors, some-times charged with strong odors of sulphureted hydro-gen ; the screaming, roaring, hissing, gurgling, and bub-bling of the various springs—all contribute to make thescene as repellent to some natures as it is grand andexciting to others. There are no spouting fountains in the caiion, but nu-merous bubbling springs, that sink and rise with spasmo-dic action. These number a hundred or two, and are ofvarying t

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