Daily tobacco leaf-chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1890-1895, 1890-03-25
YELLOWSTONE GEYSERS.
Ex-SUPT. HENDERSON TELLS OF A
VISIT TO THE NATIONAL PARK.

The Great spouters of That Wonderland.
Disappearance of the Bats winG-seaI-
ing Up of Different Geysers and Opening
of Others-The Tempest.
l accompanied a party consisting of Mrs.
j. Amory, Miss Anna, her daughter and S.
B., her son, of Fond du Lac, Wis, and Mrs.
E. c. Waters, of Billings, Mon, on a tour OF
exploration
Our purpose on leaving the Grand canyon
was to visit the scene of a recent eruption
caused by the earthquake 1t the Black vol
canic basin, situated about midway between
the Grand canyon and Yellowstone lake.
On approaching the volcanic basin the day
we left the lake, we saw vast clouds of vapoT
rising at point south and east of the Belcher.
Quicl,ening the speed of our horses, we
reached the field Of action in time to witness
one of the most phenomenal exhibitions of
volcanic energy to be met with in this land of
wonders where everything is phenomenal.
There is a circular basin aboat one hundred
and fifty yards in diameter, in the center OF
which is q crater about sixty feet in circum-
ference and about fifteen feet in depth. Out
OF this crater assembled dense clouds of steam
that was given off in successive putfs.
THE MUD BELCHER.
At first so dense was the vapor we could
only hear the connection in the caldron, as
if a thick pudding were slapped against the
wall by gigantic masons trowel AT ono
point we saw what seemed like huge black
tongue or an enormous paint brush, resem-
bling the switch used by blacksmith to keep
off flies, only thousand times larger, shoot
out beneath the clouds and reach twenty-five
feet up the sloping crater, then slowly re-
cede, leaving a thick coat of dark Shiny
paint on the wall. For a few seconds the
wind came in puffs and forced back the cloud.
This mud volcano has evidently been Inactive
for several hundred years. The outside wall
rises from ten to twenty feet and is composed
of the same pitchy substance as that seen at
the point of present activity. There is a
channel through which this mud once flowed
down into the Yellowstone river.
Both walls are composed of the same ma
terial, and the quantity discharged during
former eruptions must have been enormous.
The eruptions occur at intervals of about an
hour and continue until these waves of mud
make the circuit of the crater Terrific as
the exhibition of energy now is it is insignif,
when it sent its torrid lava in continuous
stream twelve feet wide and six feet deep
into the river over thousand yards distant
On the following day we went from the
Lower Geyser Basin hotel to see an early
eruption of the Fountain geyser. The Evan
geline geyser in the Paranasus basin never
fails to excite the wonder and admiration Of
the tourist when attention is called to it, 1t
A,1., Eel
border with two graceful curves that resem-
BILE the double lobes of a heart as drawn by
st. Valentine artists
No contrast can be greater than that which
we saw in the Evangeline and that which we
saw few moments later in the new geyser
situated about two hundred yards east of the
Thanatopsis, or about four hundred yards
from the better known Fountain geyser Be
fore reaching the Paranasus basin, and as we
swept around the western base of Porcupine
butte, Mrs. Amory called attention to a con-
tinuous discharge Of steam that rose to an
immense height about a mile distant, and
suggested the propriety of fastening in order
to see an eruption of the Fountain. Know
ing well the location of the Fountain geyser,
/ had no hesitation in deciding that the great
steam discharges we were witnessing could
not be that of the Fountain, but must be an
entirely new outbreak, caused doubtless by
the earthquake.
Nor could remember seeing anything in
that neighborhood that could possibly have
developed into great steam-aqueous geyser
of the first magnitude, except the Bats Wing,
a quiet geyser of the gas-aqueous variety,
and one that had been growing less and less
every year from the fact that the two wings
of the twin lake that composed it had been
steadily depositing a white silicate substance
resembling isinglass. This deposition going
on much faster in winter, indicated, judging
from the rapidity with which the lakes have
been diminishing since 1888, that in few
years the Bats Wing would become a subter-
ranean lake, frozen over, so to speak, by the
accommodating deposits.
THE TEMPEST