Grotto Geyser, Famed for Its Crater, Yellowstone Nat. Park, Wyo.

GROTTO GEYSER, YELLOWSTONE NAT. PARK, WYO. Grotesque as the creation of a nightmare, seems the crater of the Grotto Geyser as we approach it from the high road, its two great hooded caverns concrealing the vents which run down into the bowels of the earth. The Grotto has frequent eruptions at irregular intervals of between two and five hours. when they come, immense volumes of water are thrown against the cavern roofs for about 30 minutes. The members of the Washburn party discovered the Grotto, which they named, in September, 1870. When first seen it was so quiet that they did not recognize it as a geyser. So Private Williamson, of the military escort, crawled through one of the apertures and looked into the discharging orifice. A short time later an eruption occurred and as Williamson saw the 2-foot column of boiling water leaping from the crater and floods of it flowing out of the cavern he had entered he fervently thanked Heaven that he had not been cooked alive. When we consider that the Grotto is only one of more than 40 geysers in Yellowstone Park, we can realize how much greater is the Yellowstone geyser group than either of the only two others which approach it in magnitude. One of these is in Iceland, with two gushers and the other is the Whakarewarewa group in New Zealand, with eight. The Icelandic group, the first discovered in modern times, has been known at least since 1514. Its chief cone is called in Danish, the Great "Geysir," meaning "gusher." From the name of this individual specimen has been derived the general name now applied to all similar gushers. (View looking E. Elev. 7,300 ft. Lat. 45° N.; Long. 111° W.)