"Black Warrior" Geyser waving a banner of steam and spray, Yellowstone Park, U.S.A., The

Publication

"Black Warrior" Geyser waving a banner of steam and spray, Yellowstone Park, U.S.A., The

Description

You are in the district known as the Lower Geyser Basin. The "Great Fountain" is about a mile west of here (at your left). The Mammoth Hot Springs are about forty miles away at the north beyond that tree-covered hill. The ground under your feet is a crusty deposit of sinter or geyserite-mostly silica that had been dissolved in the boiling waters and was deposited when the water evaporated. it scrapes and crunches underfoot like crusty snow, and takes a variety of yellowish, grayish and brownish colors. The water in these shallow pools is boiling hot or perilously near it, as you would find were you to investigate with a foot or finger. The "Warrior" there is not so large as some of the other geysers, but he makes up in energy for what he lacks in size. Geologists say that long ago all this Lower Geyser Basin district was the belching vent of an open volcano, and that the present height of the land (you are on a high plateau) is accounted for by its being an accumulation of the cooled-off matter thrown up from turbulent depths blow. Certain it is that those depths though nearly hidden now, are not yet serenely cool; for this water-originally rainfall from the surrounding heights-when it settled far enough into the bosom of the earth became heated to the boiling point and was driven back. Indeed the waters in the "tubes" or chimneys of these geysers often become heated above the boiling point and it is their sudden overcoming of the pressure from above that causes the explosive effect you see at this moment. From Notes of Travel, No.13, copyright, 1904, by Underwood & Underwood.