That night the hotel was so crowded that each room was shared by three or four occupants. Tom, Randolph, Fred and Rossiter were allotted to a chamber in an outbuilding. They had to reach it by an outside stairway, and I grieve to state that all four—not excepting the Reverend Rossiter Selborne—told stories and laughed over them until very nearly midnight.
Next morning Rossiter left the room before the boys were up, and walked out in the clear, cold air. He had not taken a dozen steps when he saw Bess and Kittie emerging from the main building, which was dignified by the term “hotel.” Hailing them merrily, he was soon at their side, and the three walked down to the Firehole River, from whose sulphurous waters there arose a warm, faint odor, as it foamed along its white-and-yellow-streaked bed.
Over they went, one by one, on a narrow log bridge to the further bank, which they followed down to a little fir grove. There they had a tiny camp-fire, taking great precautions to keep the blaze down and use only dry twigs, so as not to make a smoke.
After breakfast the teams were ready again, and the journey was resumed. For twelve miles they rode among geysers and springs, through low fir woods, over chalky formation, to the Upper Basin, where they were to spend the night.
On the way, it should be mentioned, they stopped to view a singular mud spring, called the “Mammoth Paint Pot.” There was a bowl-shaped crater nearly filled with gray, pasty mud, through the surface of which great bubbles slowly forced themselves, as in a boiling kettle of molasses candy, nearly done. As one of the guide-books said, there was “a continuous bubbling up of mud, producing sounds like a hoarsely whispered ‘plop, plop.’” Travelers were further informed that these bubbling circlets of mud fell into beautiful floral forms; but Kittie could find in them no resemblance to anything but electric bell knobs; while her mother plaintively declared they looked like nothing so much as old-fashioned doughnuts.
That evening Tom caused great merriment at the supper-table by gravely asking Mrs. Percival to “pass the plops,” he having previously ordered doughnuts for that purpose.
But if I were to tell you of all the wonders the Percivals visited and heard with their ears and saw with their eyes, I might be accused of writing a guide-book myself. I can only add that during the next forty-eight hours our friends became intimately acquainted with a dozen or more great geysers, knowing their names and the times for their appearance to the hour, if not the minute.
There was the “Excelsior” (this was passed on the right between the Lower and Upper Basins), the largest geyser in the world; the “Giant,” throwing a huge volume of scalding water high into the air every eight days; the “Grotto,” with a crater of strange, irregular walls as if built by gnomes; the “Castle,” to the brink of which two of the girls climbed and gazed fearlessly down into the terrible throat; and “Old Faithful” which spouts a hundred feet once every sixty-five minutes, and has probably been as prompt as a clock, scientific men tell us, for the last twenty thousand years.
A comical incident occurred as the party were standing near the last-named geyser waiting for it to “erupt.” Tom had timed it by his watch, and had given out word that it would begin to play in just three minutes and a half.
While the words were on his lips, a man was seen approaching from a camp near by, carrying a bucket and some clothes which he evidently intended to wash in warm water from one of the many pools near the crater’s mouth. It was then merely a hole, some four or five feet in diameter, from which came occasional wreaths of steam, and an ominous gurgling growl which the new-comer disregarded altogether.