ing
and steaming water does. One also gets a taste of a much more rarefied
air than he has been used to, and finds himself panting for breath on
a very slight exertion. The Mammoth Hot Springs have built themselves
up an enormous mound that stands there above the village on the side
of the mountain, terraced and scalloped and fluted, and suggesting
some vitreous formation, or rare carving of enormous, many-colored
precious stones. It looks quite unearthly, and, though the devil's
frying pan, and ink pot, and the Stygian caves are not far off, the
suggestion is of something celestial rather than of the nether
regions,--a vision of jasper walls, and of amethyst battlements.

With Captain Chittenden I climbed to the top, stepping over the rills
and creeks of steaming hot water, and looked at the marvelously clear,
cerulean, but boiling, pools on the summit. The water seemed as
unearthly in its beauty and purity as the gigantic sculpturing that
held it.

The Stygian caves are still farther up the mountain,--little pockets
in the rocks, or well-holes in the ground at your feet, filled with
deadly carbon dioxide. We saw birds' feathers and quills in all of
them. The birds hop into them, probably in quest of food or seeking
shelter, and they never come out. We saw the body of a martin on the
bank of one hole. Into one we sank a lighted torch, and it was
extinguished as quickly as if we had dropped it into water. Each cave
or niche is a death valley on a small scale. Near by we came upon a
steaming pool, or lakelet, of an acre or more in extent. A pair of
mallard ducks were swimming about in one end of it,--the cool end.
When we approached, they swam slowly over into the warmer water. As
they progressed, the water got hotter and hotter, and the ducks'
discomfort was evident. Presently they stopped, and turned towards us,
half appealingly, as I thought. They could go no farther; would we
please come no nearer? As I took another step or two, up they rose and
disappeared over the hill. Had they gone to the extreme end of the
pool, we could have had boiled mallard for dinner.

Another novel spectacle was at night, or near sundown, when the deer
came down from the hills into the streets and ate hay, a few yards
from the officers' quarters, as unconcernedly as so many domestic
sheep. This they had been doing all winter, and they kept it up till
May, at times a score or more of them profiting thus on the
government's bounty. When