Sunday, August 28.—­To-day being Sunday, we remained all day in our camp, which Washburn and Everts have named “Camp Comfort,” as we have an abundance of venison and trout.

We visited the falls of the creek, the waters of which tumble over the rocks and boulders for the distance of 200 yards from our camp, and then fall a distance of 110 feet, as triangulated by Mr. Hauser.  Stickney ventured to the verge of the fall, and, with a stone attached to a strong cord, measured its height, which he gives as 105 feet.

The stream, in its descent to the brink of the fall, is separated into half a dozen distorted channels which have zig-zagged their passage through the cement formation, working it into spires, pinnacles, towers and many other capricious objects.  Many of these are of faultless symmetry, resembling the minaret of a mosque; others are so grotesque as to provoke merriment as well as wonder.  One of this latter character we named “The Devil’s Hoof,” from its supposed similarity to the proverbial foot of his Satanic majesty.  The height of this rock from its base is about fifty feet.

[Illustration:  Devil’s Hoof.]

The friable rock forming the spires and towers and pinnacles crumbles away under a slight pressure.  I climbed one of these tall spires on the brink of the chasm overlooking the fall, and from the top had a beautiful view, though it was one not unmixed with terror.  Directly beneath my feet, but probably about one hundred feet below me, was the verge of the fall, and still below that the deep gorge through which the creek went bounding and roaring over the boulders to its union with the Yellowstone.  The scenery here cannot be called grand or magnificent, but it is most beautiful and picturesque.  The spires are from 75 to 100 feet in height.  The volume of water is about six or eight times that of Minnehaha fall, and I think that a month ago, while the snows were still melting, the creek could not easily have been forded.  The route to the foot of the fall is by a well worn Indian trail running to the mouth of the creek over boulders and fallen pines, and through thickets of raspberry bushes.

At the mouth of the creek on the Yellowstone is a hot sulphur spring, the odor from which is perceptible in our camp to-day.  At the base of the fall we found a large petrifaction of wood imbedded in the debris of the falling cement and slate rock.  There are several sulphur springs at the mouth of the creek, three of them boiling, others nearly as hot as boiling water.  There is also a milky white sulphur spring.  Within one yard of a spring, the temperature of which is little below the boiling point, is a sulphur spring with water nearly as cold as ice water, or not more than ten degrees removed from it.

I went around and almost under the fall, or as far as the rocks gave a foot-hold, the rising spray thoroughly wetting and nearly blinding me.  Some two hundred yards below the fall is a huge granite boulder about thirty feet in diameter.  Where did it come from?