We halted for a day at one of these grassy spots, and I went with Tiger early from camp to procure meat, when a flock of mountain sheep drew us farther into the mountains. We had fired several bullets at them to no effect, and followed them in growing excitement from one rock to another until, some hours later, we reached a plateau which was shrouded in fog. Our sheep flew over this and disappeared in the mist. We stood amazed at this phenomenon, whose cause we could not explain, for it was a clear, bright morning, and the hills around shone in the brightest sunshine. We went up to the plain, and found to our surprise that the mist covering it came from hot springs, which rose to the surface in immense numbers, the highest with a jet of about three feet. The plateau, which was about a mile in diameter, was quite covered with these springs, which produced a great calcareous deposit. This lime formed a rim round each spring, over which the water poured and collected into a rivulet, which ran down the eastern slope under a thick cloud of steam. We could drink the hot water, though we could not hold our finger in it for a minute. We walked between these hot springs, on which the sun produced the most brilliant rainbows, to the eastern side, where the water flowed away, and reached it bathed in perspiration, for the steam was very hot, and we were constantly enfolded in it. We could watch the course of the stream far through the mountains, for steam continually rose above it. The water had a slightly saline taste, and was very like weak chicken-broth. There is no doubt but that these springs are mineral water, which probably in a hundred years, or a shorter period, will prove most valuable to suffering humanity. At the spot to which a flock of mountain sheep led me and an Indian there will then rise palaces, and gaily dressed ladies and gentlemen will drive out, and the time when only naked savages and a few adventurers admired these beauties of nature will be forgotten. But whether it will be so beautiful there then is questionable; for it is this very untouched nature which is so charming, with its mosses and weeds on the bare rock, its bushes growing out of the crevices, its clumps of trees, and its solitary gigantic pines, behind which are the distant blue ranges. All these pictures will be altered by human hands, but as a rule not improved. Before we proceeded after the game, I carved my name and the date of the year in a large upright rock, and we looked back frequently from the mountains at this strange scene.