The swampy, lily-padded margin of Beaver Lake is haunted by wild geese. This lake is the beaver’s own. These industrious little animals constructed it by damming up Green Creek for a distance of two miles. Some thirty dams sweep in graceful curves from side to side each having a fall from two to six feet.
[Illustration: OLD FAITHFUL GEYSER, YELLOWSTONE PARK, JUST BEFORE AN ERUPTION.]
The geyser basins are places of unusual interest and beauty. No scene in the park is lovelier than these areas of bubbling pools, boiling lakes and steaming geysers, at sunrise, when the columns of white steam, tinged to a roseate hue by the rising sun, ascending against the background of dark green pines. Presently,--
“There came o’er the perturbed waves Loud-crashing, terrible, a sound that made Either shore tremble, as if a wind Impetuous, from conflicting vapors sprung, That ’gainst some forest driving with all his might, Plucks off the branches, beats them down, and hurls Afar; then, onward passing proudly sweeps His whirlwind rage, while beasts and shepherds fly.”
Thus warned we moved away just as Old Faithful shot his boiling waters skyward.
“Ask thou no more Now ’gin rueful wailings to be heard. The gloomy region shook so terribly That yet with clammy dews chill my brow. The sad earth gave a blast.”
And steam and water shot up a column two hundred feet high. The Giant Geyser was playing.
“We the circle crossed To the next steep, arriving at a well That boiling pours itself down a foss Sluiced from its source.”
This well is the formidable Excelsior Geyser which pours its waters into the Fire Hole River.
The Paint Pots are springs which boil incessantly their pasty clay, which boiling over hardens, building up a rim around the pot. In one group of seventeen pots are as many different colors.
The center pot is a pearl gray, while grouped about it are smaller pots of various shades of pink, gray, chocolate, yellow, red, lavender, emerald and sapphire blues and white, mortar thousands of years old that would make the heart of a plasterer glad. Here is a plaster which when hardened, whether by sun or fire, never cracks.
Of a somewhat different character are the chocolate jugs on the banks of the Fire Hole River. These springs are rich in iron. The sediment hardens as the water pours out, building up gradually a brown jug-like cone.