[Geysers] Anotehr 1872 image

[Mike O'Brien]

> Below is another engraving from William Cullen Bryant's "Picturesque
> America..." Rather curious, is it not? It is titled The Geyser", but I believe  that
> it does NOT purport to show a Yellowstone geyser. To me it appears to be
> within a limestone cavern and, indeed, three of the four observers appear to be
> holding lanterns that illuminate "the geyser."

	I'm going to stick my neck out here and say that that's
not a cavern.  That's what I thought too, at first.  But
flowstone just never looks remotely like that.  It spreads
at the bottom, not the top.  Just about everything in a
cave that comes up from the floor tapers as you go up, not
as you go down.  Stuff hanging from the ceiling works the
other way, of course.  And when they meet in the middle
you get a column which is either of uniform thickness, or
thin in the middle and thick at top and bottom.

	No, I think this is a geyser, being viewed at night.
The other flowstone-looking stuff is really puffs of steam.
The rock is a bluff behind the geyser, and the things in the
background are whack-looking pine trees that look like
spindles instead of pyramids for some reason...probably
because the engraver's never been west of Wilkes-Barre.

Mike O'Brien