An interesting and singular fact pertaining to this region is that in most cases the springs and geysers have no underground connection with each other. Water in contiguous pools stands at different levels, and powerful geysers play with no apparent effect upon others near by.
It is another interesting question to know whence comes the water for these geysers and hot springs. Into the hidden caverns of “Old Faithful” flow nearly a million of gallons per hour. This is a large stream, but it is a mere trifle compared with the entire outflow of hot water throughout the Park. The subterranean passages by which the necessary supply is furnished to all these thousands of springs, certainly constitute the most intricate and extensive system of water-works of which there is any knowledge.
Not least wonderful of the features of the great geysers are the marvelous formations which surround them, more exquisitely beautiful than any production of art. They are really much handsomer than those to be found around the ordinary quiescent springs. The falling or the dashing of the hot water seems to be in some way essential to the finest results. To say that these rocky projections simulate cauliflower, sponge, fleeces of wool, flowers or bead-work, conveys but a feeble hint of their marvelous beauty. It is indeed a most interesting fact that nature here produces in stone, by the almost mechanical process of deposition from cooling water, the identical forms elsewhere produced by the very different processes of animal and vegetable life.
Terry Engr. Co.
U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories.
Specimens of Geyserite.
These formations are all silica and are of flinty hardness. Bunsen, and Prof. Le Conte following him, assert it to be a rule that the presence of silica in the water is essential to the development of a geyser. In one sense this is true, and in another it is not. Should the heated waters find a ready-made tube, like a fissure in solid rock, this would serve for a geyser tube as well as any other. The Monarch Geyser, in Norris Geyser Basin, seems to have originated in this way. But in the general case, geyser tubes are built up, not found ready made. In such cases silica is an indispensable ingredient of the water. A calcareous deposit, like that at Mammoth Hot Springs, would lack strength to resist the violent strain of an eruption. So it is found to be a fact that silica is the chief mineral ingredient in the water of all important geysers.