The Mammoth Paint Pots held my undivided interest for the limited time that I had. This is a boiling mass of mud, white at the center, and gradually developing into a beautiful pink, or flesh color toward the outer edges. The caldron of waxen mixture has a basin forty by sixty feet in size, with a rim about five feet high. The mud in the center bubbles up continually, "plop, plop," under the pressure of heat, and cools off toward the outer edges.
"HELL'S HALF ACRE" © Haynes, St. Paul
David E. Folsom witnessed a display of the Great Fountain Geyser in 1869:
"The hole through which the water was discharged was ten feet in diameter, and was situated in the center of a large circular shallow basin into which the water fell. There was a stiff breeze blowing at the time, and by going to the windward side and carefully picking our way over convenient stones we were enabled to reach the edge of the hole. At that moment the escaping steam was causing the water to boil up in a fountain five or six feet high. It stopped in an instant, and commenced settling down—twenty, thirty, forty feet—until we concluded that the bottom had fallen out, but the next instant, without any warning, it came rushing up and shot into the air at least eighty feet, causing us to stampede. It continued to spout at intervals of a few moments for some time, but finally subsided."
Prismatic Lake fairly dazzled me with its beauty. In the center it is a deep blue, blending into green toward the edges. In the shallow portion it is yellow, blending into orange at the edges. The water sparkles and flows off in every direction over the slightly raised rim of the lake. Its beauty and delicacy of coloring are impossible to describe. It is heated to nearly 150 degrees Fahrenheit.
Biscuit Basin and Sapphire Pool are places of much interest, also Jewel Geyser, Artemisia Geyser, etc.
Morning Glory Spring, near Riverside Bridge, presented to me an idea of what the earth will be when the curse is lifted and it is clothed in Edenic glory. It is twenty-three feet in diameter, with a temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and with an apparent depth of about thirty feet.
I had not previously made a study of the Park, and never knew what was coming next, but before I reached Old Faithful Camp at the Upper Geyser Basin, I felt that I had seen enough to repay me a thousand-fold for any expense or effort that was being made in the tour of the Yellowstone, which to me was truly a world of wonders.