GEYSERS, YELLOWSTONE PARK, WYOMING. The Geyser region in the Yellowstone occupies some thirty square miles. Within this comparatively limited area is a most stupendous exhibition of hot springs, water geysers, mud geysers and steaming caldrons of boiling water. No two of the geysers are alike. The Grotto simply churns and makes a great noise. The others go off at various intervals; some every hour, some all the time and some once a month; some on alternate days, yet the day they are active going over ninety minutes. Nor is their style of action the same. Some play with labored pumping, others throw an unbroken stream; some wear themselves out in a continuous effort, others subside only to recommence again repeatedly. An eruption may extend from two to twenty minutes, the approximate time occupied by the Grand, or even to one hour and twenty minutes, a period that the Giant has been timed to play. The Grand is the largest geyser in the world, shooting a vast column of water over two hundred feet into the air.
GRAND CANON, YELLOWSTONE PARK. The Yellowstone Park is one of the great natural marvels of the world. Within a compass of one hundred square miles there are here gathered the loveliest valleys, the grandest canons, the most marvelous mountains, lakes, rivers, springs and cascades. In addition there are all sorts of natural phenomena: Sulphur mountains, a mud volcano, petrified forests and over ten thousand active geysers, hot springs, salfataras and boiling pools. Greatest of all the sights is the Grand Canon, a ravine varying in depth from one thousand to two thousand feet. The shelving sides of precipitous crags slope down, presenting an endless variety of form and color, until they meet at the bed of the Yellowstone River, which flings itself impetuously along to meet the lake. “A great gulch let down into the eternities,” such is the opinion of De Witt Talmage on this miracle of nature.
CLIFF-DWELLINGS, NEW MEXICO. Cliff-dwellers is the name given to more or less savage people in the past who inhabited dwellings built on projections from the face of cliffs, or cut out of the solid rock. Sometimes the houses are four stories high, and divided into many rooms. Often they are not to be distinguished from the rest of the cliff. Such dwellings are found in various parts of the world, but nowhere are they so abundant and so interesting as in Arizona, New Mexico and California. It is generally supposed that the American cliff-dwellers were the ancestors of the Pueblo Indians. In some respects the cliff-dweller appears to have been better off than his modern descendants; the canon walls sheltered him from cyclones and the overhanging shelves of rock protected him from attack from above. A series of cliff villages, lining the walls of Walnut Canon, in Northeastern Arizona, for a length of five miles, was discovered in 1884.
MASONIC TEMPLE, CHICAGO. For a long time it was held that Philadelphia had the finest Masonic Temple in the world. Now that honor belongs to Chicago. But it has only belonged to it since 1890, when the gorgeous new building was begun at the corner of State and Randolph Streets. The site measures one hundred and seventy feet on State Street and by one hundred and fourteen on Randolph. Every inch of this space is covered by the building, whose twenty stories tower up to the height of two hundred and sixty-five feet. It rests on cement and iron foundations, and its superstructure is of steel. The first three stories are faced with red granite from Wisconsin, the remainder with gray brick that is indistinguishable from the granite. An immense granite arch in the centre of the State Street front forms the entrance, and opens into an interior court, faced from bottom to top with different colored marble. The first eleven stories are fitted up for shops, from the eleventh to the sixteenth inclusive are business offices, while above the sixteenth floor everything is devoted to Masonry.
NIAGARA FALLS. The most stupendous cataract in the world is that formed in the Niagara River, four miles below Grand Island. Here the current begins to grow narrow and develops into rapids, which continue for about a mile, with a descent of fifty-two feet, until the river plunges over a mighty chasm. Goat Island, at the very verge of the cataract, divides it into two sheets of water—the Horse-shoe, or Canadian fall, with a descent of one hundred and fifty-eight feet, and a width of about twenty-six hundred and forty; and the American fall, one hundred and sixty-two to one hundred and sixty-nine feet deep, and about one thousand wide. The volume of water thus precipitated is about fifteen million cubic feet a minute. Nearly nine-tenths of this passes over the Canadian fall. For some distance below the Falls there is still water, the mass which has hurled itself into the abyss sinking and only reappearing two miles below, where the whirlpool rapids begin.
