Grasshoppers, and even butterflies, as we have seen, are occasionally subjected to the same treatment, with the same result. By-and-by, when the geyser regions become a popular resort, the preparation of petrifactions to be carried away as mementos, may become quite an item of entertainment if not of industry.
To obtain a complete view of the Lower Geyser Basin, Colonel Barlow made a trip to the summit of the Twin Buttes on the west side of the basin. From this point the valley of Firehole River could be overlooked for a distance of twenty miles; but nothing new was discovered except an attractive fall plunging over a precipice a short distance to the south.
After much severe climbing over rocky ridges, and scrambling through deep and thickly wooded ravines, he succeeded in reaching the foot of the fall—the loveliest vision he had ever beheld. "Towering above my head," he writes, "was a perpendicular cliff, three hundred feet high, while from a slight depression in its upper edge descended a sparkling stream, dashed into spray as it impinged against projecting angles of the rocky wall. On reaching the bottom the mist is gathered into a shallow basin, forming a pool of clear cold water, delightfully refreshing in this region of steaming geysers and volcanic heat. After resting a moment in this quiet retreat, the water slowly finds its way through the forest, and crossing the geyser valley eventually reaches Firehole River, some two miles distant."
From the marshy ground about the fall the pines shoot upward to an astonishing altitude, as though ambitious to overtop the cliff. Colonel Barlow approached the fall through a natural avenue in these pines, and as he caught sight of its dancing water, leaping with life-like action down the face of the overhanging cliff, the thought of fairies was so strongly suggested that he could think of no name so appropriate as the Fall of the Fairies.
The extreme north of the Lower Basin is bounded by the East Fork of Madison River, along whose valley, within the basin and above it, are numerous groups of interesting springs, though not materially different from those already described. Near the head of the stream sulphur springs are abundant, with here and there extensive deposits of sulphur. Steam-vents are frequent, their orifices lined with sulphur, and the surrounding crust filled with crystals of a vivid yellow. The channels of the streams are lined with a delicate veil of creamy sulphur. In some of the springs, lower down the stream, iron predominates. Within the basin on the south side of the East Fork are a hundred springs or more, any one of which, if alone, would be worthy of elaborate description. In some the fallen leaves of trees are frosted with silica as white as snow, and the inner surface of the basins are covered with a delicate bead-like embroidery of marvellous beauty. The most beautiful of the group is a Prismatic Spring, like those described in the Upper Basin. "Nothing ever conceived by human art," says Dr. Hayden, "could equal the peculiar vividness and delicacy of coloring of these remarkable prismatic springs." About a mile south of the East Fork, at the head of a little stream that flows into the Firehole, is another of these brilliant springs. A thin, delicately ornamental rim of silica surrounds a basin six feet in diameter, filled to the brim with water of marvellous transparency. When its surface is rippled by a passing breeze, the reflected sunlight is broken as by a million prisms. It is called the Rainbow Spring.
CHAPTER XIV.
NATURAL HISTORY OF GEYSERS AND OTHER THERMAL SPRINGS.
In Icelandic speech the word geyser means simply rager, and is applied indiscriminately to all turbulent fountains of water or mud. The most violent and noisy "rager" on the island being the great intermittent spouting spring near Haukadal, it naturally gained for itself the title, The Geyser; and being the earliest known and most remarkable fountain of the kind, its native common name was adopted in other languages as the generic name for all springs of its class.