It was an agreeable reception, and so widely different from the one I had anticipated, that for the moment I forgot my loss. Straightening myself up, with a modest disclaimer of his praise, I resolved to keep my intended apology under the lock and key of a silent tongue. It was, I think, about noon, some two weeks after this, we reached Bear River. Following its course until we came to Soda Springs, our camp was pitched for the night, between them and the silenced volcanic crater beyond. This has been so often described, that to do so again would be a waste of words. But on a hunting trip some ten miles more or less North, I discovered another natural curiosity, to which I was the first to call attention. On entering a small valley, I heard a continuous whizzing and grumbling noise, which was unlike anything I had before listened to. Looking around, I saw in the scarped face of an almost perpendicular mountain a cavity some twenty-five or thirty feet above the level on which I was standing. From this cavity came a broad and persistent jet of steam. This evidently caused the sound which had startled me. It was the result of volcanic action of some description, although I was scarcely scientific enough, even in a small way, to reason this out. Suddenly, without the slightest note of preparation, a huge ball of hot mud and fragments of stone was projected across the valley from this opening in the precipice. It was followed by a sharp roar, like the report from some heavy piece of artillery. As I stood watching the orifice from which the jet of steam poured for some twelve or thirteen minutes, this phenomenon was repeated, and in something more than an hour I counted some five repetitions of it. Farther up the valley, which was about a hundred and fifty yards in width, according to a rough guess, I came to another curious phenomenon. Opposite this natural cannon, the valley formed a broad semicircle, and on the extreme side of this was a tolerably large plateau of hard and sandy soil, from the summit of which I heard a singular hissing sound. Hobbling my horse below, I climbed to the summit of this, and my curiosity was rewarded by the discovery of another freak of Nature. The summit of the plateau was surrounded with a number of funnel-shaped apertures, from which water constantly rose and fell again, bubbling and sparkling like the contents of a soda-water bottle after the cork has been removed. The taste of this water, which was warm, was, however, scarcely so agreeable as the temperance beverage to which I have compared it. Slightly behind me, the natural cannon still continued to belch forth its projectiles from the scarp of the rocky fortalice in which they were stored. Here, perhaps, were a number of relief-valves which prevented its destruction by a wider and more devastating explosion.