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.

On the summit of a cone twenty-five feet high was a boiling spring seven
feet in diameter, surrounded with beautiful incrustations, on the slope
of which we gathered twigs encased in a crust a quarter of an inch in
thickness. On an incrusted hill opposite our camp are four craters from
three to five feet in diameter, sending forth steam jets and water to
the height of four or five feet. But the marvelous features of this
wonderful basin are its spouting geysers, of which during our brief stay
of twenty-two hours we have seen twelve in action. Six of these threw
water to the height of from fifteen to twenty feet, but in the presence
of others of immense dimensions they soon ceased to attract attention.

Of the latter six, the one we saw in action on entering the basin
ejected from a crevice of irregular form, and about four feet long by
three wide, a column of water of corresponding magnitude to the height