which Hedges has given, of "Hell-Broth springs;" for, as we gazed upon
the infernal mixture and inhaled the pungent sickening vapors, we were
impressed with the idea that this was a most perfect realization of
Shakespeare's image in Macbeth. It needed but the presence of Hecate and
her weird band to realize 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