and extending down into the spring or cauldron to the edge of the water,
which at the time of our visit, if it had been at rest, would have been
fifteen or eighteen inches below the rim of the spring. This spring is
situated at the base of a low mountain, and the gentle slope below and
around the spring for the distance of two hundred or three hundred feet
is covered to the depth of from three to ten inches with the sulphurous
deposit from the overflow of the spring. The moistened bed of a dried-up
rivulet, leading from the edge of the spring down inside through this
deposit, showed us that the spring had but recently been overflowing.
Farther along the base of this mountain is a sulphurous cavern about
twenty feet deep, and seven or eight feet in diameter at its mouth, out
of which the steam is thrown in jets with a sound resembling the puffing
of a steam-boat when laboring over a sand-bar, and with as much
uniformity and intonation as if emitted by a high-pressure engine. From
hundreds of fissures in the adjoining mountain from base to summit,
issue hot sulphur vapors, the apertures through which they escape being
encased in thick incrustations of sulphur, which in many instances is
perfectly pure. There are nearby a number of small sulphur springs, not
especially remarkable in appearance.

About one hundred yards from these springs is a large hot spring of
irregular shape, but averaging forty feet long by twenty-five wide, the
water of which is of a dark muddy color. Still farther on are twenty or
thirty springs of boiling mud of different degrees of consistency and
color, and of sizes varying from two to eight feet in diameter, and of
depths below the surface varying from three to eight feet. The mud in
these springs is in most cases a little thinner than mortar prepared
for plastering, and, as it is thrown up from one to two feet, I can
liken its appearance to nothing so much as Indian meal hasty pudding
when the process of boiling is nearly completed, except that the