Wonders of the YellowstoneRichardson, James (Geologist)
History
Wonders of the Yellowstone
Richardson, James (Geologist)
Yellowstone National Park
"A moment's reflection," says Professor Tyndall, "will suggest that
there must be a limit to the operations of the geyser. When the tube
has reached such an altitude that the water in the depths below,
owing to the increased pressure, cannot attain its boiling point, the
eruptions of necessity cease. The spring, however, continues to deposit
its silica, and often forms a _Laug_, or cistern. Some of these, in
Iceland, are forty feet deep. Their beauty, according to Bunsen, is
indescribable. Over the surface curls a light vapor; the water is
of the purest azure, and tints with its lovely hue the fantastic
incrustations on the cistern walls; while at the bottom is often seen
the mouth of the once mighty geyser. There are in Iceland vast, but
now extinct geyser operations. Mounds are observed whose shafts are
filled with rubbish, the water having forced a passage underneath and
retired to other scenes of action. We have, in fact, the geyser in its
youth, manhood, old age, and death here presented to us. In its youth
as a simple thermal spring; in its manhood, as an eruptive column; in
its old age, as the tranquil _Laug_; while its death is recorded by
the ruined shaft and mound, which testify the fact of its once active
existence."
All that Professor Tyndall describes so eloquently of Iceland,
exists in our Grand National Park in infinitely greater variety, and
magnitude, and splendor. And much more: Iceland has no Gardiner's
River. To find the nearest approach to the marvels of White Mountain
Hot Spring, we must go to the opposite side of the globe--to New
Zealand. In the celebrated Lake District of the North Island is a
region of hot springs, far exceeding in extent and variety all the
others in the world, save those of the Yellowstone. First of all, says
Hochstetter, the most marvellous of the Rotomahana marvels is the Te
Tarata--the Tattooed Rock--with its terraced marble steps projecting
into the lake. The spring lies about eighty feet above the lake, on a
fern-clad hill-slope, in a crater-like excavation, with steep reddish
sides, from thirty to forty feet high, and open only toward the lake.
The basin of the spring is about eighty feet long and sixty wide,
filled to the brim with perfectly transparent water, which in its
snow-white basin appears of a beautiful blue, like the blue turquoise.
Immense clouds of steam curl up from the surface, obstructing the view,
but the noise of boiling and seething is always audible. The water is
slightly salt, but not unpleasant to the taste, chemically neutral,
and possesses petrifying, or rather incrusting qualities, in a high
degree. The deposit is silicious, like that of the Iceland springs and
the springs around Yellowstone Lake, not calcareous, like those of
Gardiner's River; yet the system of terraces built up by the deposit
on the hill-slope has the same appearance of a cataract plunging over
a series of natural shelves and suddenly turned to stone. The deposits
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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