Orleans independent standard. [volume] (Irasburgh, Vt.) 1856-1871, 1861-02-01
THE DEVILS CANON IN CALIFORNIA.

Rev. It. Starr King, the noted Uni
tartan clergyman who went from Boston
a year ago to take charge OF a congre-
cation in San Francisco, gives in a letter
to the Boston Transcript the following
description of the Geysers of California,
in ravine called the Devils Canon
The Geysers-boiling springs-are sit
uated in a rayine called, not inappro-
priately, "Tho Devils Canon pro
nounced Kanyon--which is q vast trench,
quarter Of a mile long, cut out OF an
other large ravine nearly fifteen hun
dred feet deep, We hurried by many
Of the lesser wonders in order to reach
the great steamboat spring on the right
hand wall Of the canon. This is the
spout whose loud wheeling we heard,
nearly mile of, while descending into
the larger ravine on horseback. Around
it is huge pile of slags and frightful
clinkers, over which rises the continual
roar Of escaping steam from an orifce
two feet in diameter, and impclsations
precisely like those Of huge engine
hard ct work. Each beat sends the va
por up visibly to hundred feet but in
the early morning, when the air was cool,
l saw column five hundred feet high,
and widened to a cloud above, belched
from the strange boiler that relieves its
wrath through the mountain side OF
ten, little after sunrise, too, a rainbow
can be seen on the steam cloud, spanning
The whole length OF the awful trench
with hues. To describe all the strange
substances and gases that lie along the
floor, or issue from the crevces of the
canon, would overload your columns and
repel your readers. How chemist
would reyel in noxious and mephitic va
pors that puff or whistle out of the
leached, hot walls! Here lie would /
turn up patch of brown, crumbly soil
and find a clay that looks like blue vitrol |
nearly under shelving ledge is brisk,
bubbling pool, over hung with virdigris
incrustings; few feet off spirits bead
ed jet Of hot water, which sheds a dismal
brown casting over the surrounding
earth little way farther still, is a
spring that looks like pure hot ink
then we discover a rock of alum that
weighs two or three hundred pounds
then a small fountain of epson salts
not far of, again, basin apparently of
boiling soap suds then iron springs,
white, red, and black sulphur; and soon
a foul Stygian sluice, close to the wall
from which a steam exhales that covers
the overbanging earth with Shiny de-
post which eats your clothes; if you
touch it, it bites you as ravenously as
aqua fortis. Whether the origin Of the
heats aud vapors is volcanic, or simply
chemical, is not decided yet, believe, by
The scientific gentlemen who have visited
The ravine. After leaving the canon we
-ried bath in the Holam, which is con-
iucted at blood heat to a bath-house an
eighth of a mile distant. 1t was refresh
ng, as a bath ought to be when the
water is medicated with every kind of
drug and vapor that separately is ac-
counted seviceable to the human frame.
One ablution in such tide ought to save
man from the possibility of rheumatism
or life. And more grateful than 3
'ath was the breathing of pure air aad
he sight O healthful bloom after two
lours' rambling over the hot ashes and
trough the Tartarean streams