On this place of despair lay most of the big, bad geysers who
know when there is trouble in Krakatoa, who tell the pines when
there is a cyclone on the Atlantic seaboard, and who are
exhibited to visitors under pretty and fanciful names.

The first mound that I encountered belonged to a goblin who was
splashing in his tub.

I heard him kick, pull a shower-bath on his shoulders, gasp,
crack his joints, and rub himself down with a towel; then he let
the water out of the bath, as a thoughtful man should, and it all
sunk down out of sight till another goblin arrived.

So we looked and we wondered at the Beehive, whose mouth is built
up exactly like a hive, at the Turban (which is not in the least
like a turban), and at many, many other geysers, hot holes, and
springs. Some of them rumbled, some hissed, some went off
spasmodically, and others lay dead still in sheets of sapphire
and beryl.

Would you believe that even these terrible creatures have to be
guarded by the troopers to prevent the irreverent Americans from
chipping the cones to pieces, or, worse still, making the geyser
sick? If you take a small barrel full of soft-soap and drop it
down a geyser's mouth, that geyser will presently be forced to
lay all before you, and for days afterward will be of an
irritated and inconstant stomach.

When they told me the tale I was filled with sympathy. Now I
wish that I had soft-soap and tried the experiment on some lonely