For five miles along the desolate shores of Firehole River the course is now taken in a region of mostly extinct geysers, yet with active hot springs and steam jets, and having ashes and cinders covering wide spaces. Ahead is the largest collection of geysers in the world, with clouds of steam overhanging--the Upper Firehole Basin. Hot water runs over the earth, and the "paint pots" color the surface in variegated hues. Here are some forty of the greatest geysers in existence, in a region covering two or three square miles, all of them located near the river, and their outflow making its initial current. The basin is at seventy-three hundred feet elevation above the sea. When the author visited this extraordinary place the guide, halting at the verge, said: "Now I have brought you to the front door of hell." He was asked if there were any Indians about there, and solemnly replied: "No Indian ever comes into this country unless he is blind; only the white man is fool enough to come;" then after a moment's pause he continued, "And I get paid for it, I do." The great stand-by of this Upper Basin, and the geyser that is first visited, is "Old Faithful," near its southern or upper end. This most reliable geyser, which always goes off at the time appointed, is a flat-topped and gently rising cone about two hundred feet in diameter, and elevated towards the centre about twenty feet. The tube is an orifice of eight feet by two feet wide in the centre of this cone, with water-worn and rounded rocks enclosing it. Steam escapes all the time, and the hard, scaly and laminated surface around it seems hollow as you walk across, while beneath there are grumblings and dull explosions, giving warning of the approaching outburst. Several mounds of extinct geysers are near, with steam issuing from one of them, but all have long since gone out of active business. Soon "Old Faithful" gives the premonitory symptoms of an eruption. The steam jet increases, and also the internal rumblings. Then a little spurt of hot water comes, hastily receding with a growl, followed by more steam, and after an interval more growling, finally developing into repeated little spurts of hot water, occupying several minutes. Then the geyser suddenly explodes, throwing quick jets higher and higher into the air, until the column rises in a grand fountain to the height of about one hundred and fifty feet, the stream inclined to the northward, and falling over in great splashes upon that side of the cone, dense clouds of steam and spray being carried by the wind, upon which the sun paints a rainbow. After some four minutes the grand jet dies gradually down to a height of about thirty feet, continuing at that elevation for a brief time, with quickly repeated impulses. When six minutes have elapsed, with an expiring leap the water mounts to a height of fifty feet, there is a final outburst of steam, and all is over. A deluge of hot water rushes