Middletown transcript., 1870-02-12
A WONDERFUL REGION.

4. correspondent of the Advertiser gives.
the following description, Of the Geyser.
Springs, in Sonora county, California:
No mans words can convey more than
heare idea of what we saw in that morn.
ing walk, The scenery is wild and start
ling to the last egree--infernal is the on7
ly lit adjective for its description. The
little canyon is hardly half mile long,
and nowhere more than three hundred feet
wide, yet within its rugged sides is . mar
vel great as any on the continent, Here
are springs of soda, alum, iron, EPSON
salts, ammonia, magnesia, nitro, tartaric
acid and dozen other acids and alkalis.
On every foot of ground are crystalline
formations-here handfuls of sulphur;
there thick incrustations of iron; yonder
little spars Of alum; near by rock cover
ed with magnesia deposits. Here is
spring of soda and sulphur; there one of
alum and iron; one contains ammonia and
iron and EPSON salts; another is black as
my ink with iron and sulphur; at one point
a boiling spring of alum and sulphur, and
twenty feet distant is a cold one of soda
and iron; one spring has temperature of
about rs degrees; another of 175 degrees;
while hard BY under an oak tree, is
spring of clear and cold mountain water
FREQ from any foreign taste. A little
stream runs down the canyon; at its
source it is sweet and pure-at its mouth,
mile away, it is foul and discolored with
score of salts and acids. Scientific ex-
animation shows one spring Of alum and
iron, with temperature Of SO degrees;
one of iron and sulphur, at 146 degrees.
and one iron and soda and sulphur and
magnesia, at 1876 degrees. The ''steam-
boat puffs and roars with fury of steam
and boiling water like great engine the
"witch's caldron" is a tempestuous hole of
black, boiling and foaming water, eight or
ten feet across tue i.deYils inkstand' is
a yillaipops little hole wherefrom was dipp-
ed the black decoction of iron and sulphur
with which | am writing this page; the
"tea kettle +" is an orifce from which steam,
shoots out with Kissing, sound and fear.
full force; the ''sweat bath" is steam es-
cape pipe over which man could be par
boiled to death in five minutes; while the
devils kitchen" is spot of twenty feet
square where there is combination Of ey-
cry conceivable Internal sound and agency.
There are a hundred or more Of these boil:
ing springs-some that you could cover
with your hands, others as large as your
hat, and Il few that are twenty inches or
two feet across. From thousands of crew..
ices in the rocks and holes in the ground
steam issues with more Or less force; one
jutting point of sulphur and salts SO crum-
blcs under your feet that you can hardly
scramble up it; another is so porous that
you can anywhere run stick into it three
or four feet; one slope of a hundred feet
square is so full of steam holes that you
can scarcely walk across it without STEP.
ping into ono of them; in many places the,
earth and rocks feel very warm under
your hand. You do not find the springs
any way impressive: when had seen half
4 dozen questioned myself whether the
whole thing were not a humbug; when
was half way up the canyon, 1 began to
speculate whether we should live to ride
up the mountain again; by the time we
got to the "deYils tea kettle" fell to won-
iering how long this crust of earth and
'ock might hold out against these internal
md internal fires. When things break up
here'll be a very lively time in that region.
No one feature is in itself and alone of SUR
passing interest; but when you put the
Shole into an hour and half,-springs,
md salts, and escape pipes, and streaming
slopes, and porous hillsides, and black wa
ers, and sulphurous deposits, and the in
ernal rumblings and grumblings that you
IAN hear by laying your ear on the earth,
md the unpicturable desolation of the
whole canyon, add to what you see and
eel what you must perforcc imagine below
1our sight and hearing, consider what
here is above ground, and what there
must be under ground, and you get good
many thoughts and sensations that don't
lften come to human minds and human
leryes.