Dick was about to follow suit when he saw Roger suddenly start up from his kneeling position, with a look of the most intense astonishment on his face.
“Why, Dick, it burns me!” he cried. “The water is hot!”
Dick immediately tested it with his hand.
“Just as you say, Roger, it seems as though it might be over a fire. Do you know, I noticed something like a trace of steam, but I thought it only such vapor as we often see rising from ice-cold water.”
“But who ever before met with boiling water in the open?” asked Roger. “Why, there must be fires under the earth here, such as leap out of volcanoes in other countries.”
He even rested his hand on the rock close by, but found it cold. Vegetation grew all around the hot stream and pool, showing that it never overflowed its banks at any time.
“There’s one good thing about it,” remarked Dick, turning to the frontiersman; “after this, if these hot springs are common here, you will never need to build a fire in order to make a pannikin of tea.”
“I can believe almost anything after this,” muttered Roger, as he dabbled his hand in the pool, and quickly snatched it out again, for the water seemed to almost scald his flesh. “Of course nothing can live in such a stream. I wonder what next we will run across. Cats with tassels on their ears, rocks and mud looking like they had been painted every color going, waterfalls that drop from the clouds, and where rainbows play hide and seek in the sunlight, and now a boiling spring, and a hot pool. What if one of us had fallen in here, and could not get out?”
“We’ll soon begin to believe in those stories the red men tell of the Evil Spirits that live in this enchanted valley,” laughed Dick, who seemed determined not to allow himself to be dismayed by anything wonderful they might encounter in their wanderings.
“I’m getting that way even now, Dick. I tell you, it wouldn’t surprise me very much if we ran upon one of those monsters they say used to live in America centuries and centuries ago, much larger than an elephant. I only hope my rifle speaks true, if ever I have to face anything like that!”