Bean and Reynolds have just announced that the pack saddles have been repaired, and that preparations are being made for the start, so on this hint I suspend my record until night. Sunday, September 18, evening.--We left our morning camp about 9 o'clock, pursuing our uncertain course through fallen timber for a distance of about three miles, when we had all our fears of misdirection relieved by coming suddenly upon the banks of the Firehole river, the largest fork of the Madison, down which we followed five miles, passing several groups of boiling springs and a beautiful cascade[Y] (to which we gave no name), when we emerged from the dense forest into a sequestered basin two miles above the union of the Firehole river with a stream which comes in from the southwest, the basin extending to the width of a mile, and traversing the river until contracted between proximate ranges two miles below our camp. I have spent the entire afternoon and part of this evening in examining the geysers and springs, but will not further record the explorations of to-day until we are ready to leave the basin. Monday, September 19.--When we left Yellowstone lake two days ago, the desire for home had superceeded all thought of further explorations. Five days of rapid travel would, we believed, bring us to the upper valley of the Madison, and within twenty-five miles of Virginia City, and we indulged the remote hope that we might there find some trace of Mr. Everts. We had within a distance of fifty miles seen what we believed to be the greatest wonders on the continent. We were convinced that there was not on the globe another region where within the same limits Nature had crowded so much of grandeur and majesty with so much of novelty and wonder. Judge, then, of our astonishment on entering this basin, to see at no great distance before us an immense body of sparkling water, projected suddenly and with terrific force into the air to the height of over one hundred feet. We had found a real geyser. In the valley before us were a thousand hot springs of various sizes and character, and five hundred craters jetting forth vapor. In one place the eye followed through crevices in the crust a stream of hot water of considerable size, running at nearly right angles with the river, and in a direction, not towards, but away from the stream. We traced the course of this stream by the crevices in the surface for twenty or thirty yards. It is probable that it eventually flows into the Firehole, but there is nothing on the surface to indicate to the beholder the course of its underground passage to the river.