The route southward into the Park crosses mountain ridges and over
stretches of lava and ashes and other volcanic formations, through
woods and past gorges, and reaches the Obsidian Creek, which flows
near the Obsidian Cliff. This remarkable structure is a mountain of
black glass of volcanic formation, rising six hundred feet, with the
road hewn along its edge. It looks as if a series of blasting
explosions had blown its face into pieces, smashing the glass into
great heaps of _débris_ that have fallen down in front. The formation
is columnar, rising from a morass adjoining Beaver Lake, which is a
mile long. The divide is thus crossed between the Gardiner and Gibbon
Rivers, the latter flowing into the Madison, and here, twenty-five
miles from the Mammoth Hot Springs, is the Norris Geyser Basin. In
approaching, seen over the low trees, the place looks much like the
manufacturing quarter of a city, steam jets rising out of many
orifices, and a hissing being heard as of sundry engine exhausts. The
basin covers about one hundred and fifty acres, and is depressed below
the general level. The whole surface is lime, silica, sulphur and
sand, fused together and baked hard by the great heat, cracked into
fissures, and, as it is walked over, giving out hollow sounds, showing
that beneath are subterranean caves and passages in which boil huge
cauldrons. There is a background formed by the bleak-looking mountains
of the Quadrate range, having snow upon their tops and sides. The
steam blows off with the noise of a hundred exhaust pipes, and little
geysers boil everywhere, occasionally spurting up like the bursting of
a boiler. In one place on the hillside the escaping steam from the
"Steamboat" keeps up a loud and steady roar; in another is the deeper
tone of the "Black Growler." As a general thing, the higher vents on
the hill give off steam only, while the lower ones are geysers. The
trees are coated with the deposits, the surface is hot, and all
underneath seems an immense mass of boiling water, impregnated with
sulphur, giving off powerful odors, while brimstone and lime-dust
encrust everything, and a large amount of valuable steam-power goes to
waste.
This is the smallest of the basins, having few large geysers. Most of
them are little ones, spurting every few minutes, and with some view
to economy, whereby the water, after being blown out of the crater to
a brief height, runs back into the orifice again, ready to be ejected
by the next explosion. A mud geyser here throws up large quantities of
dirty white paint in several spouting jets, the eruption continuing
ten minutes, when nearly all the water runs back again, leaving the
crater entirely bare, and its rounded, water-worn rocks exposed. The
"Emerald Pool" is the wide crater of an old geyser, filled with hot
water of a beautiful green color, constantly boiling, but never
getting as far as an eruption. Probably the best geyser on exhibition
in this basin is the "Minute Man," which, at intervals of about one
minute, spouts for ten or twelve seconds, the column rising thirty
feet, and the rest of the time it blows off steam. The "Vixen" is a
coquette which is delightfully irregular, never going off when
watched, but when the back is turned suddenly sending out a column
sixty feet high. The great geyser here is the "Monarch," standing in a
hill from which it has blown out the entire side, and once a day
discharging an enormous amount of water over one hundred feet high,
and continuing nearly a half-hour. Its column comes from two huge
orifices, the surplus water running down quite a large brook. When
quiet, this geyser industriously boils like a big tea-kettle. There
are plenty of "paint pots" and sulphur springs, and the visitors coax
up lazy geysers by throwing stones into them,--a method usually making
the small ones go to work, as if angry at the treatment.