make their first appearance.

Indeed, America possesses, in her Canadian lakes, true extensive oceans of fresh water, moreover she has, perhaps, as many and as charming inland lakes as Europe. Even the Yellowstone park is, so far, a real Switzerland. Dozens of surfaces of magnificent lakes slumber upon the plateaus or concealed between the Rocky Mountains; but the most beautiful is the Yellowstone lake which you find nearly in the midst of the Park, if advancing the river of the same name. Excepting lake Titicaca in South America, it is the highest of all large lakes on earth, almost 8,000 feet above the level of the sea. The immense surface of water extends for miles in every quarter. Surrounded by the highest peaks of the Rocky Mountains and overtopped by the three snow-covered Tetons, it can be numbered amongst the most beautiful works of nature. The neighboring woods are full of stags, boars, elks, chamois, and bears. Viewed from afar, it resembles a hand with the fingers outstretched to the South. The water of the lake which is over 300 feet deep is thoroughly impregnated with sulphur. Along its banks, arise innumerable hot springs which, whistling and puffing, protrude the steam which inwardly in the earth is produced, like from the valves of a locomotive. They are the safety-valves of the immense boiler full of water and fire in Vulcan's forge. Even from the icy water of the lake, 20 feet distant from the bank, shoot up boiling hot springs from small side craters. In some spaces of the banks, the soil is covered with small pieces of obsidian, chalcedony, and rock-crystal, in others with parts of slate, which often were believed to be the work of human primitive art. Cups, points of lances, buttons, plates, etc., are here scattered. Still they are not the product of the hands

of Indians, but of the united action of the two most powerful elements, fire and water, the former forming their rough rudiments, the latter polishing them.

At the western part of the great Yellowstone Lake the principal branch of the Rocky Mountains, here only a few miles wide, is situated, which also is the watershed between the two oceans that confine America.

The Shoshone lake, the second in size, is situated beyond that chain, about 10 miles distant from the banks of the Yellowstone Lake; its effluence is the Snake river.

In the environs of this lake are the grandest and most remarkable Geysers of the world, compared with which those of Iceland and New Zealand are small, namely; The old Faithful Geyser, 150 ft. high. The Bee Hive Geyser, 200 ft. high. It spouts once in 3 or 4 days. Its ejections last 15 minutes, and are preceeded by repeated detonations like claps of thunder, finished by a tumult like a cannonading on the battle field. During these phenomena the earth is trembling, and a crash of sound is heard. The clouds of steam rise 500 feet high. The body of water is 25 feet in diameter; the height of spouting, 90 feet. From the apex of the column, five jets of vapor shoot up, 250 feet high, and illuminated by all colors of the rainbow. This spectacle lasts twenty-five minutes. Little jets of vapor play around the Geyser. The Giantess, or Castle Geyser, is situated among ruins which look like an old castle, its eruptions are often 20, 30, and 50 feet high; they last for several hours. This Geyser is now in decadence.

The Grand Geyser: 100 feet high; pouts at very irregu lar intervals; its out-pourings last 15 to 20 minutes.

*The description of the different Geysers, here inserted, is taken from the illustrated work; "Our native land. " New York, Appleton.

The Fantail Geyser has five orifices; it mounts, sometimes, 100 feet high and forms, in descending, a fluttering feather-fan.

The Grotto Geyser, amidst several grottoes, is 150 feet high and displays, 3 to 4 times a day; only 200 yards distant from the Grand Geyser.

The Giant Geyser, the mos gigantic in the world, is, in itself worth to tourists to make an excursion to the United States, in order to see it. Its basin is formed by three craters which look like the stumps of a great, broken tree. The phenomenon of its eruption begins by a tumult of the water down in the depths of the basin. The nearest Geyser begins to operate; its flood is hurled 30 feet high; after a few moments, the next is spouting; then follows thunder and groans of the earth, its water is boiling, expanding 10 feet in diameter, and is several times hurled up; now, all gets quiet; but at once, the water shoots up 200 feet high, and above its apex, the steam is borne away 1,000 feet high. Its tumult is like the roar of artillery, its motion like the sweep of a tornado. This phenomenon lasts 13 hours. Rocks thrown into the flood are hurled into the air.

The operation of the Geysers is slowly declining; one hundred years ago it was more powerful than at the present day.

I return to the report of the diary of my friend, and first will finish the picture of the Giant Geyser with its words:

1

The opening of the crater of the Geyser is bottomless, and without water, but its noise and bustle under the crater can be heard in a great distance. The boiling and hissing water suddenly rises, shooting large masses of vapor, and is hurled up as by the explosion of an infernal machine. If the first clouds of steam have

disappeared, the water, in the wide pipe, mounts up and down, like heated quicksilver. Its surface is unquiet, boiling and covered with bubbles. Small jets surmount its surface and almost reach the mouth of the opening. Suddenly, the whole column of water is rising, and like fiery tongs divided in two. Both parts

are lifted with incredible velocity, and shot up as if from a cannon; a fuming jet of water more than twenty feet in diameter is elevated, with terrible thunder, sixty feet high, and five or six thinner jets shoot through this grand column, one out of the other. as high as a steeple, the uppermost jet seemingly a half a foot thick. The beauty of the spectacle is incomparable. Rainbows play and chase up and down in the clouds of fine, drizzling rain, appearing sometimes at the foot of the column of water, sometimes at their apex. And like the image of a divinity, the grand radiant fountain is enveloped in a frame of clear, round, small steam-clouds, the edges of which are illuminated like the halo of a saint.

After this graphic description of the Giant Geyser, the diary thus continues its narrative:

The most wonderful region is the valley of upper Madison river, which they justly called the firehole river. The valley, which is many miles long and two and three miles wide, contains hundreds of geysers, hot springs and fountains, which thrust out their jets to 250 feet of hight. The atmosphere is impregnated with hot steam and sulphurous odors, which issue from the gaps in the earth. The soil on some places is covered with white sinter, on others it consists of a hot, slimy crust, of bad smell, the depth of which is unfathomable! Bubbles stand on their surface, and jets of steam shoot up from hundred openings. The ground

gives way under the foot of the traveler, and sometimes it seemed to sink down in the abyss. The fountains have the same diabolic appearance as the witches' caldron in Macbeth; they don't need there the presence of Hecate and of her wild band to realize that creation of poetic inspiration. All openings are boiling, puffing, throwing up their fluid contents, as driven by a diabolic power, hundreds of feet, and scattering them on the surrounding grounds. Some appear like immense boilers, of unfathomable depth. Stones and pieces of rock thrown into those devils' throats only increase the excitement of the elements. Boughs are in the shortest time, covered by layers ol leaden slime. The color of the water in different Geysers is different, but always of a glaring feature: red, like brimstone, milk-white, agate and crystaline: even the most diverse shades of green occur, and on the walls of the caldron of some apertures small valves are seen from which the water rushes, while the walls themselves, as far down you can see, are covered with snow-white crystals.

After a passage of 51⁄2 hours, we arrived at the hotel of the Upper Geyser, where we had, immediately, the chance to see the spectacle of the eruption of the Old Faithful Geyser. It is the peculiarity of this Geyser to be precisely, active every hour and throw out, for five minutes, its boiling masses of water 200 feet in height; but after having achieved this feat, he is again the most quiet fellow.

The next day, (the 18th of July,) was devoted to the inspection of the nearly 200 Geysers, distant four miles from the hotel "Upper Geyser Basin," of which I especially mark the sawmill which incessantly puffs and snorts and makes a noise like a sawmill-the "Grotto,"