The Henson Journals

[71]

Monday, June 14th, 1909.

We drove for 40 miles from Mammoth Hot Springs to the Lower Geyser Basin, stopping to lunch at Norris Geyser Basin. The weather was perfect, for the smart shower that interrupted the brilliant sunshine fell during lunch time, & did us the service of laying the dust. From first to last the journey was one long succession of marvels. Snow still lay beside the road, and in patches on the mountain sides; but the weather was warm, & it seemed hard to believe that we were mostly more than 7000 feet above the sea–level. We saw an elk, some deer, an eagle, many gophers, and chipmunks, three "ground–hogs", two wild geese, & a squad of wild duck. We passed two considerable water–falls; observed with amazement the broken masses of rock called "Hoodoos", & the "Olbsidian Cliff". Interesting, or beautiful, or majestic as were these & other things, all were dwarfed by the recurrent marvel of the Geysers. At two points in our journey – the Norris Geyser Basin & the Lower Geyser Basin, where we lunched & where we lodged, the spectacles beggar description. The glorious sunset reflecting itself in a thousand pools, from which at intervals volumes of steam issued, & bound in by snow–patched mountains & the solemn masses of a fir–forest, formed a scene to be remembered & thought upon with delight, but not to be described.

[72]

The combination of regularity & the weirdest eccentricity in these geysers is arresting. Their eruptions are accurately timed to the minute, and ever announce themselves by tokens which do not fail: but the geysers cease & emerge, re–appear and disappear without apparent reason. Many were pointed out to us as of quite recent origin. Some had shifted their venue within the last four months.

The close jostling of the living vegetation with the death shroud of white deposit which the geysers distribute on every side is quite wonderful. One may see a boiling pool fringed with blooming flowers.

Then who can describe the amazing colour–contrasts displayed on all hands? Brilliant blue, pink, green, orange, purple hues diversify the prevailing and fatal white? The general effect of a geyser basin, set in the midst of the woods, is that of a vast, grotesquely worked but brilliant carpet. Thrown from above on to the soil, which it at once sterilises and glorifies. Finally, when the visitor approaches those sinister cavities, from which the angry steam of boiling water are belched forth spasmodically, and looks into the fountains, he finds himself gazing on a spectacle of fairy loveliness. The fantastic beauty of the forms assumed by the mineral stained geyserite baffles description.

---