"
Here was a round basin ten feet in diameter, very shallow, with a hole
in the middle about one foot across. The water was perfectly calm.
But every six minutes a sudden spurt of water and steam would rise
about thirty feet, for thirty seconds, and then settle economically,
without waste of water, into the pool, sinking with pulsations as on an
elastic cushion a foot below the bottom of the pool. One could stride
the opening like a colossus for five and one half minutes without fear.
He might be using the calm depth for a mirror. But stay a moment too
long and he is scalded to death by the sudden outburst.
The next lesson required more patience and gave more abundant reward.
I found a great raised platform on which stood a castellated rock, more
than twenty feet square, that had been built up particle by particle
into a perfect solid by deposits from the fiery flood. In the center
was a brilliant orange-colored throat that went down into the bowels of
the earth. That was not the geyser--it was only the trump through
which the archangel was to blow. I had heard the preliminary tuning of
the instrument.
The guide book said the grand play of this "Castle" geyser began from
eight to thirty hours after a previous exhibition, and was preceded by
jets of water fifteen to twenty feet high, and that these continued
five or six hours before the grand eruption.
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