Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black HillsOwen, Luella Agnes
Science
Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills
Owen, Luella Agnes
Caves -- Black Hills (S.D. and Wyo.); Caves -- Ozark Mountains
level, and the great geyser had become reduced to merely a steam vent,
the channels immediately connecting with that level were in their turn
subjected to the same smoothing process, and then all action ceased.
As no two of the glorious geysers of the Yellowstone Park are alike,
neither do the two great caves of the Hills indicate that they should be
so. The vent-tubing of each is quite unlike that of the other in all the
essential governing points of length, size, shape, angle of inclination
and power-conserving bends. And the differences extend in an almost
equally marked degree throughout the vast and complicated succession of
storage chambers and their connecting channels. The small vent of Wind
Cave shows that the ejected jet was far from being equal to that of the
Crystal Cave in volume; but the nearly perpendicular long arm of its
tube shows also that its jet attained a much greater height, even
supposing that it should be necessary to make some allowance for a short
elbow at the top.
Dr. Hayden's geological party gave much attention to the Yellowstone
Park while its wonders were new to the world, and observations were made
at various times during the period included between the years 1869 and
1870. The special study, and full report of the geysers became the duty
of Dr. A.C. Peal, whose descriptions and conclusions were published in
U.S. Geological Survey Report, 1878, Part II. In the final pages of his
report he quotes the leading authorities on geyser action, and applies
the principles of their theories, according to his own judgment, to the
geysers of the park. Since copies of this report are not now easily
obtained, nor even always accessible to the increasing number of
personages who visit the park, it may be well to quote from him some of
the theories he discussed and the opinions he expressed. On page 416,
beginning the chapter with the derivation of the word geyser from the
Icelandic word _geysa_--to gush, he continues:
"We now come to the definition of a geyser. It may be defined to be a
periodically eruptive or intermittent _hot_ spring, from which the water
is projected into the air in a fountain-like column. The analogy between
geysers and volcanoes has frequently been noticed and the former have
often been described as volcanoes which erupt heated water instead of
melted lava. We have italicized the word hot in the definition just
given, because springs containing a large amount of gas may simulate
geysers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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