lize that horrible creation of poetic fancy, and I
fancied the "black and midnight hags" concocting a charm around this
horrible cauldron. We ventured near enough to this spring to dip the end
of a pine pole into it, which, upon removal, was covered an eighth of an
inch thick with lead-colored sulphury slime.

There are five large springs and half a dozen smaller ones in this
basin, all of them strongly impregnated with sulphur, alum and arsenic.
The water from all the larger springs is dark brown or nearly black. The
largest spring is fifteen to eighteen feet in diameter, and the water
boils up like a cauldron from 18 to 30 inches, and one instinctively
draws back from the edge as the hot sulphur steam rises around him.
Another of the larger springs is intermittent. The smaller springs are
farther up on the bank than the larger ones. The deposit of sinter
bordering one of them, with the emission of steam and smoke combined,
gives it a resemblance to a chimney of a miner's cabin. Around them all
is an incrustation formed from the bases of the spring deposits,
arsenic, alum, sulphur, etc. This incrustation is sufficiently strong in
many places to bear the weight of a man, but more frequently it gave
way, and from the apertures thus created hot steam issued, showing it to
be dangerous to approach the edge of the springs; and it was with the
greatest difficulty that I obtained specimens of the incrustation. This
I finally accomplished by lying at full length upon that portion of the
incrustation which yielded the least, but which was not sufficiently
strong to bear my weight while I stood upright, and at imminent risk of
sinking in the infernal mixture, I rolled over and over to the edge of
the opening; and, with the crust slowly bending and sinking beneath me,
hurriedly secured the coveted prize of black sulphur, and rolled back to
a place of safety.

[Illustration: SECURING A SPECIMEN AT HELL-BROTH SPRINGS.]

From the springs to the mouth of the creek we followed along the bank,
the bed or bottom being too rough and precipitous for us to travel in
it, the total fall in the creek for the three miles being about fifteen
hundred feet. Standing upon the high point at the junction of the creek
with the Yellowstone, one first gets some idea of the depth of the canon
through which the river runs. From this height the sound of the waters
of the Yellowstone, tumbling over tremendous rocks and boulders, could
not be heard. Every