11145	----	THE DISCOVERY OF YELLOWSTONE PARK _Journal of the Washburn Expedition to the Yellowstone and Firehole Rivers in the Year 1870_ by Nathaniel Pitt Langford 1905 CONTENTS Foreword (not included) Introduction Journal Index (not included) INTRODUCTION When the rumored discovery in the year 1861 of extensive gold placers on Salmon river was confirmed, the intelligence spread through the states like wild fire. Hundreds of men with dependent families, who had been thrown out of employment by the depressed industrial condition of the country and by the Civil War, and still others actuated by a thirst for gain, utilized their available resources in providing means for an immediate migration to the land of promise. Before midsummer they had started on the long and perilous journey. How little did they know of its exposures! The deserts, destitute of water and grass, the alkaline plains where food and drink were alike affected by the poisonous dust, the roving bands of hostile Indians, the treacherous quicksands of river fords, the danger and difficulty of the mountain passes, the death of their companions, their cattle and their horses, breakage of their vehicles, angry and often violent personal altercations--all these fled in the light of the summer sun, the vernal beauty of the plains and the delightfully pure atmosphere which wooed them day by day farther away from the abode of civilization and the protection of law. The most fortunate of this army of adventurers suffered from some of these fruitful causes of disaster. So certain were they to occur in some form that a successful completion of the journey was simply an escape from death. The story of the Indian murders and cruelties alone, which befell hundreds of these hapless emigrants, would fill volumes. Every mile of the several routes across the continent was marked by the decaying carcasses of oxen and horses, which had perished during the period of this hegira to the gold mines. Three months with mules and four with oxen were necessary to make the journey--a journey now completed in five days from ocean to ocean by the railroad. Some of these expeditions, after entering the unexplored region which afterwards became Montana, were arrested by the information that it would be impossible to cross with wagon teams the several mountain ranges between them and the mines. In the summer of 1862 a company of 130 persons left St. Paul for the Salmon river mines. This Northern overland expedition was confided to the leadership of Captain James L. Fisk, whose previous frontier experience and unquestionable personal courage admirably fitted him for the command of an expedition which owed so much of its final success, as well as its safety during a hazardous journey through a region occupied by hostile Indians, to the vigilance and discipline of its commanding officer. E.H. Burritt was first assistant, the writer was second assistant and commissary, and Samuel R. Bond was secretary. Among those who were selected for guard duty were David E. Folsom, Patrick Doherty (Baptiste), Robert C. Knox, Patrick Bray, Cornelius Bray, Ard Godfrey, and many other well known pioneers of Montana. We started with ox teams on this journey on the 16th day of June, traveling by the way of Fort Abercrombie, old Fort Union, Milk river and Fort Benton, bridging all the streams not fordable on the entire route. Fort Union and Fort Benton were not United States military forts, but were the old trading posts of the American Fur Company. This Northern overland route of over 1,600 miles, lay for most of the distance through a partially explored region, filled with numerous bands of the hostile Sioux Indians. It was the year of the Sioux Indian massacre in Minnesota. After a continuous journey of upwards of eighteen weeks we reached Grasshopper creek near the head of the Missouri on the 23d day of October, with our supply of provisions nearly exhausted, and with cattle sore-footed and too much worn out to continue the journey. There we camped for the winter in the midst of the wilderness, 400 miles from the nearest settlement or postoffice, from which we were separated by a region of mountainous country, rendered nearly impassable in the winter by deep snows, and beset for the entire distance by hostile Indians. Disheartening as the prospect was, we felt that it would not do to give way to discouragement. A few venturesome prospectors from the west side of the Rocky Mountains had found gold in small quantities on the bars bordering the stream, and a few traders had followed in their wake with a limited supply of the bare necessaries of life, risking the dangers of Indian attack by the way to obtain large profits as a rightful reward for their temerity. Flour was worth 75 cents per pound in greenbacks, and prices of other commodities were in like proportion, and the placer unpromising; and many of the unemployed started out, some on foot, and some bestride their worn-out animals, into the bleak mountain wilderness, in search of gold. With the certainty of death in its most horrid form if they fell into the hands of a band of prowling Blackfeet Indians, and the thought uppermost in their minds that they could scarcely escape freezing, surely the hope which sustained this little band of wanderers lacked none of those grand elements which sustained the early settlers of our country in their days of disaster and suffering. Men who cavil with Providence and attribute to luck or chance or accident the escape from massacre and starvation of a company of destitute men, under circumstances like these, are either wanting in gratitude or have never been overtaken by calamity. My recollection of those gloomy days is all the more vivid because I was among the indigent ones. This region was then the rendezvous of the Bannack Indians, and we named the settlement "Bannack," not the Scotch name "Bannock," now often given to it. Montana was organized as a territory on the 26th day of May, 1864, and I continued to reside in that territory until the year 1876, being engaged chiefly in official business of a character which made it necessary, from time to time, for me to visit all portions of the territory. It is a beautiful country. Nature displays her wonders there upon the most magnificent scale. Lofty ranges of mountains, broad and fertile valleys, streams broken into torrents are the scenery of every-day life. These are rendered enjoyable by clear skies, pure atmosphere and invigorating climate. Ever since the first year of my residence there I had frequently heard rumors of the existence of wonderful phenomena in the region where the Yellowstone, Wind, Snake and other large rivers take their rise, and as often had determined to improve the first opportunity to visit and explore it, but had been deterred by the presence of unusual and insurmountable dangers. It was at that time inhabited only by wild beasts and roving bands of hostile Indians. An occasional trapper or old mountaineer were the only white persons who had ever seen even those portions of it nearest to civilization, previous to the visit of David E. Folsom and C.W. Cook in the year 1869. Of these some had seen one, some another object of interest; but as they were all believed to be romancers their stories were received with great distrust. [Illustration: JAMES BRIDGER.] The old mountaineers of Montana were generally regarded as great fabricators. I have met with many, but never one who was not fond of practicing upon the credulity of those who listened to the recital of his adventures. James Bridger, the discoverer of Great Salt lake, who had a large experience in wild mountain life, wove so much of romance around his Indian adventures that his narrations were generally received with many grains of allowance by his listeners. Probably no man ever had a more varied and interesting experience during a long period of sojourning on the western plains and in the Rocky Mountains than Bridger, and he did not hesitate, if a favorable occasion offered, to "guy" the unsophisticated. At one time when in camp near "Pumpkin Butte," a well-known landmark near Fort Laramie, rising a thousand feet or more above the surrounding plain, a young attache of the party approached Mr. Bridger, and in a rather patronizing manner said: "Mr. Bridger, they tell me that you have lived a long time on these plains and in the mountains." Mr. Bridger, pointing toward "Pumpkin Butte," replied: "Young man, you see that butte over there! Well, that mountain _was a hole in the ground_ when I came here." Bridger's long sojourn in the Rocky Mountains commenced as early as the year 1820, and in 1832 we find him a resident partner in the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. He frequently spent periods of time varying from three months to two years, so far removed from any settlement or trading post, that neither flour nor bread stuffs in any form could be obtained, the only available substitute for bread being the various roots found in the Rocky Mountain region. I first became acquainted with Bridger in the year 1866. He was then employed by a wagon road company, of which I was president, to conduct the emigration from the states to Montana, by way of Fort Laramie, the Big Horn river and Emigrant gulch. He told me in Virginia City, Mont., at that time, of the existence of hot spouting springs in the vicinity of the source of the Yellowstone and Madison rivers, and said that he had seen a column of water as large as his body, spout as high as the flag pole in Virginia City, which was about sixty (60) feet high. The more I pondered upon this statement, the more I was impressed with the probability of its truth. If he had told me of the existence of falls one thousand feet high, I should have considered his story an exaggeration of a phenomenon he had really beheld; but I did not think that his imagination was sufficiently fertile to originate the story of the existence of a spouting geyser, unless he had really seen one, and I therefore was inclined to give credence to his statement, and to believe that such a wonder did really exist. I was the more disposed to credit his statement, because of what I had previously read in the report of Captain John Mullan, made to the war department. From my present examination of that report, which was made Feb. 14, 1863, and a copy of which I still have in my possession, I find that Captain Mullan says: I learned from the Indians, and afterwards confirmed by my own explorations, the fact of the existence of an infinite number of hot springs at the headwaters of the Missouri, Columbia and Yellowstone rivers, and that hot geysers, similar to those of California, exist at the head of the Yellowstone. Again he speaks of the isochimenal line (a line of even winter temperature), which he says reaches from Fort Laramie to the headwaters of the Yellowstone, at the hot spring and geysers of that stream, and continues thence to the Beaver Head valley, and he adds: This is as true as it is strange, and shows unerringly that there exists in this zone an atmospheric river of heat, flowing through this region, varying in width from one to one hundred miles, according to the physical face of the country. [Illustration: Very much yours D.G. Folsom] As early as the year 1866 I first considered the possibility of organizing an expedition for the purpose of exploring the Upper Yellowstone to its source. The first move which I made looking to this end was in 1867 and the next in 1868; but these efforts ended in nothing more than a general discussion of the subject of an exploration, the most potent factor in the abandonment of the enterprise being the threatened outbreaks of the Indians in Gallatin valley. The following year (1869) the project was again revived, and plans formed for an expedition; but again the hostility of the Indians prevented the accomplishment of our purpose of exploration. Hon. David E. Folsom was enrolled as one of the members of this expedition, and when it was found that no large party could be organized, Mr. Folsom and his partner, C.W. Cook, and Mr. Peterson (a helper on the Folsom ranch), in the face of the threatened dangers from Indians, visited the Grand Cañon, the falls of the Yellowstone and Yellowstone lake, and then turned in a northwesterly direction, emerging into the Lower Geyser basin, where they found a geyser in action, the water of which, says Mr. Folsom in his record of the expedition, "came rushing up and shot into the air at least eighty feet, causing us to stampede for higher ground." Mr. Folsom, in speaking of the various efforts made to organize an expedition for exploration of the Yellowstone says: In 1867, an exploring expedition from Virginia City, Montana Territory, was talked of, but for some unknown reason, probably for the want of a sufficient number to engage in it, it was abandoned. The next year another was planned, which ended like the first--in talk. Early in the summer of 1869 the newspapers throughout the Territory announced that a party of citizens from Helena, Virginia City and Bozeman, accompanied by some of the officers stationed at Fort Ellis, with an escort of soldiers, would leave Bozeman about the fifth of September for the Yellowstone country, with the intention of making a thorough examination of all the wonders with which the region was said to abound. The party was expected to be limited in numbers and to be composed of some of the most prominent men in the Territory, and the writer felt extremely flattered when his earnest request to have his name added to the list was granted. He joined with two personal friends in getting an outfit, and then waited patiently for the other members of the party to perfect their arrangements. About a month before the day fixed for starting, some of the members began to discover that pressing business engagements would prevent their going. Then came news from Fort Ellis that, owing to some changes made in the disposition of troops stationed in the Territory, the military portion of the party would be unable to join the expedition; and our party, which had now dwindled down to ten or twelve persons, thinking it would be unsafe for so small a number to venture where there was a strong probability of meeting with hostile Indians, also abandoned the undertaking. But the writer and his two friends before mentioned, believing that the dangers to be encountered had been magnified, and trusting by vigilance and good luck to avoid them, resolved to attempt the journey at all hazards. We provided ourselves with five horses--three of them for the saddle, and the other two for carrying our cooking utensils, ammunition, fishing tackle, blankets and buffalo robes, a pick, and a pan, a shovel, an axe, and provisions necessary for a six weeks' trip. We were all well armed with repeating rifles, Colt's six-shooters and sheath-knives, and had besides a double barreled shotgun for small game. We also had a good field glass, a pocket compass and a thermometer. [Illustration: C.W. Cook] Mr. Folsom followed the Yellowstone to the lake and crossed over to the Firehole, which he followed up as far as the Excelsior geyser (not then named), but did not visit the Upper Geyser basin. On his return to Helena he related to a few of his intimate friends many of the incidents of his journey, and Mr. Samuel T. Hauser and I invited him to meet a number of the citizens of Helena at the directors' room of the First National Bank in Helena; but on assembling there were so many present who were unknown to Mr. Folsom that he was unwilling to risk his reputation for veracity, by a full recital, in the presence of strangers, of the wonders he had seen. He said that he did not wish to be regarded as a liar by those who were unacquainted with his reputation. But the accounts which he gave to Hauser Gillette and myself renewed in us our determination to visit that region during the following year. Mr. Folsom, however, sent to the Western Monthly of Chicago a carefully prepared account of his expedition, which that magazine published in July, 1870, after cutting out some of the most interesting portions of the story, thus destroying in some measure the continuity of the narrative. The office of the Western Monthly was destroyed by fire before the copies of the magazine containing Mr. Folsom's article were distributed, and the single copy which Mr. Folsom possessed and which he presented to the Historical Society of Montana met a like fate in the great Helena fire. The copy which I possessed and which I afterwards presented to that Society is doubtless the only original copy now in existence; and, for the purpose of preserving the history of the initial step which eventuated in the creation of the Yellowstone National Park, I re-published, in the year 1894, 500 copies of Mr. Folsom's narrative, for distribution among those most interested in that exploration. In the spring of 1870, while in St. Paul, I had an interview with Major General Winfield S. Hancock, during which he showed great interest in the plan of exploration which I outlined to him, and expressed a desire to obtain additional information concerning the Yellowstone country which would be of service to him in the disposition of troops for frontier defense, and he assured me that, unless some unforeseen exigency prevented, he would, when the time arrived, give a favorable response to our application for a military escort, if one were needed. Mr. Hauser also had a conference with General Hancock about the same time, and received from him like assurances. About the 1st of August, 1870, our plans took definite shape, and some twenty men were enrolled as members of the exploring party. About this time the Crow Indians again "broke loose," and a raid of the Gallatin and Yellowstone valleys was threatened, and a majority of those who had enrolled their names, experiencing that decline of courage so aptly illustrated by Bob Acres, suddenly found excuse for withdrawal in various emergent occupations. After a few days of suspense and doubt, Samuel T. Hauser told me that if he could find two men whom he knew, who would accompany him, he would attempt the journey; and he asked me to join him in a letter to James Stuart, living at Deer Lodge, proposing that he should go with us. Benjamin Stickney, one of the most enthusiastic of our number, also wrote to Mr. Stuart that there were eight persons who would go at all hazards and asked him (Stuart) to be a member of the party. Stuart replied to Hauser and myself as follows: Deer Lodge City, M.T., Aug. 9th, 1870. Dear Sam and Langford: Stickney wrote me that the Yellow Stone party had dwindled down to eight persons. That is not enough to stand guard, and I won't go into that country without having a guard every night. From present news it is probable that the Crows will be scattered on all the headwaters of the Yellow Stone, and if that is the case, they would not want any better fun than to clean up a party of eight (that does not stand guard) and say that the Sioux did it, as they said when they went through us on the Big Horn. It will not be safe to go into that country with less than fifteen men, and not very safe with that number. I would like it better if it was fight from the start; we would then kill every Crow that we saw, and take the chances of their rubbing us out. As it is, we will have to let them alone until they will get the best of us by stealing our horses or killing some of us; then we will be so crippled that we can't do them any damage. At the commencement of this letter I said I would not go unless the party stood guard. I will take that back, for I am just d----d fool enough to go anywhere that anybody else is willing to go, only I want it understood that very likely some of us will lose our hair. I will be on hand Sunday evening, unless I hear that the trip is postponed. Fraternally yours, JAS. STUART. Since writing the above, I have received a telegram saying, "twelve of us going certain." Glad to hear it--the more the better. Will bring two pack horses and one pack saddle. I have preserved this letter of James Stuart for the thirty-five years since it was received. It was written with a lead pencil on both sides of a sheet of paper, and I insert here a photograph of a half-tone reproduction of it. It has become somewhat illegible and obscure from repeated folding and unfolding. [Illustration: A letter.] [Illustration: A letter, continued.] Mr. Stuart was a man of large experience in such enterprises as that in which we were about to engage, and was familiar with all the tricks of Indian craft and sagacity; and our subsequent experience in meeting the Indians on the second day of our journey after leaving Fort Ellis, and their evident hostile intentions, justified in the fullest degree Stuart's apprehensions. About this time Gen. Henry D. Washburn, the surveyor general of Montana, joined with Mr. Hauser in a telegram to General Hancock, at St. Paul, requesting him to provide the promised escort of a company of cavalry. General Hancock immediately responded, and on August 14th telegraphed an order on the commandant at Fort Ellis, near Bozeman, for such escort as would be deemed necessary to insure the safety of our party. Just at this critical time I received a letter from Stuart announcing that he had been drawn as a juryman to serve at the term of court then about to open, and that as the federal judge declined to excuse him, he would not be able to join our party. This was a sore and discouraging disappointment both to Hauser and myself, for we felt that in case we had trouble with the Indians Stuart's services to the party would be worth those of half a dozen ordinary men. A new roster was made up, and I question if there was ever a body of men organized for an exploring expedition, more intelligent or more keenly alive to the risks to be encountered than those then enrolled; and it seems proper that I here speak more specifically of them. Gen. Henry D. Washburn was the surveyor general of Montana and had been brevetted a major general for services in the Civil War, and had served two terms in the Congress of the United States. Judge Cornelius Hedges was a distinguished and highly esteemed member of the Montana bar. Samuel T. Hauser was a civil engineer, and was president of the First National Bank of Helena. He was afterwards appointed governor of Montana by Grover Cleveland. Warren C. Gillette and Benjamin Stickney were pioneer merchants in Montana. Walter Trumbull was assistant assessor of internal revenue, and a son of United States Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois. Truman C. Everts was assessor of internal revenue for Montana, and Nathaniel P. Langford (the writer) had been for nearly five years the United States collector of internal revenue for Montana, and had been appointed governor of Montana by Andrew Johnson, but, owing to the imbroglio of the Senate with Johnson, his appointment was not confirmed. [Illustration: James Stuart.] While we were disappointed in our expectation of having James Stuart for our commander and adviser, General Washburn was chosen captain of the party, and Mr. Stickney was appointed commissary and instructed to put up in proper form a supply of provisions sufficient for thirty (30) days, though we had contemplated a limit of twenty-five (25) days for our absence. Each man promptly paid to Mr. Stickney his share of the estimated expense. When all these preparations had been made, Jake Smith requested permission to be enrolled as a member of our company. Jake was constitutionally unfitted to be a member of such a party of exploration, where vigilance and alertness were essential to safety and success. He was too inconsequent and easy going to command our confidence or to be of much assistance. He seemed to think that his good-natured nonsense would always be a passport to favor and be accepted in the stead of real service, and in my association with him I was frequently reminded of the youth who announced in a newspaper advertisement that he was a poor but pious young man, who desired board in a family where there were small children, and where his Christian example would be considered a sufficient compensation. Jake did not share the view of the other members of our company, that in standing guard, the sentry should resist his inclination to slumber. Mr. Hedges, in his diary, published in Volume V. of the Montana Historical Society publications, on September 13th, thus records an instance of insubordination in standing guard: Jake made a fuss about his turn, and Washburn stood in his place. Now that this and like incidents of our journey are in the dim past, let us inscribe for his epitaph what was his own adopted motto while doing guard duty when menaced by the Indians on the Yellowstone: "REQUIESCAT IN PACE." Of our number, five--General Washburn, Walter Trumbull, Truman C. Everts, Jacob Smith and Lieutenant Doane--have died. The five members now surviving are Cornelius Hedges, Samuel T. Hauser, Warren C. Gillette, Benjamin Stickney and myself. I have not been able to ascertain the date of death of either Walter Trumbull or Jacob Smith. Lieutenant Doane died at Bozeman, Montana, May 5, 1892. His report to the War Department of our exploration is a classic. Major Chittenden says: His fine descriptions have never been surpassed by any subsequent writer. Although suffering intense physical torture during the greater portion of the trip, it did not extinguish in him the truly poetic ardor with which those strange phenomena seem to have inspired him. Dr. Hayden, who first visited this region the year following that of our exploration, says of Lieutenant Doane's report: I venture to state as my opinion, that for graphic description and thrilling interest, it has not been surpassed by any official report made to our government since the times of Lewis and Clark. Mr. Everts died at Hyattsville, Md., on the 16th day of February, 1901, at the age of eighty-five, survived by his daughter, Elizabeth Everts Verrill, and a young widow, and also a son nine years old, born when Everts was seventy-six years of age,--a living monument to bear testimony to that physical vigor and vitality which carried him through the "Thirty-seven days of peril," when he was lost from our party in the dense forest on the southwest shore of Yellowstone lake. General Washburn died on January 26, 1871, his death being doubtless hastened by the hardships and exposures of our journey, from which many of our party suffered in greater or less degree. In an eloquent eulogistic address delivered in Helena January 29, 1871, Judge Cornelius Hedges said concerning the naming of Mount Washburn: On the west bank of the Yellowstone, between Tower Fall and Hell-broth springs, opposite the profoundest chasm of that marvelous river cañon, a mighty sentinel overlooking that region of wonders, rises in its serene and solitary grandeur,--Mount Washburn,--pointing the way his enfranchised spirit was so soon to soar. He was the first to climb its bare, bald summit, and thence reported to us the welcome news that he saw the beautiful lake that had been the proposed object of our journey. By unanimous voice, unsolicited by him, we gave the mountain a name that through coming years shall bear onward the memory of our gallant, generous leader. How little we then thought that he would be the first to live only in memory. * * * The deep forests of evergreen pine that embosom that lake shall typify the ever green spot in our memory where shall cluster the pleasant recollections of our varied experiences on that expedition. The question is frequently asked, "Who originated the plan of setting apart this region as a National Park?" I answer that Judge Cornelius Hedges of Helena wrote the first articles ever published by the press urging the dedication of this region as a park. The Helena Herald of Nov. 9, 1870, contains a letter of Mr. Hedges, in which he advocated the scheme, and in my lectures delivered in Washington and New York in January, 1871, I directed attention to Mr. Hedges' suggestion, and urged the passage by Congress of an act setting apart that region as a public park. All this was several months prior to the first exploration by the U.S. Geological Survey, in charge of Dr. Hayden. The suggestion that the region should be made into a National Park was first broached to the members of our party on September 19, 1870, by Mr. Hedges, while we were in camp at the confluence of the Firehole and Gibbon rivers, as is related in this diary. After the return home of our party, I was informed by General Washburn that on the eve of the departure of our expedition from Helena, David E. Folsom had suggested to him the desirability of creating a park at the grand cañon and falls of the Yellowstone. This fact was unknown to Mr. Hedges,--and the boundary lines of the proposed park were extended by him so as to be commensurate with the wider range of our explorations. The bill for the creation of the park was introduced in the House of Representatives by Hon. William H. Clagett, delegate from Montana Territory. On July 9, 1894, William R. Marshall, Secretary of the Minnesota Historical Society, wrote to Mr. Clagett, asking him the question: "Who are entitled to the principal credit for the passage of the act of Congress establishing the Yellowstone National Park?" Mr. Clagett replied as follows: Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, July 14th, 1894. Wm. R. Marshall, Secretary Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, Minn. Dear Sir: Your favor of July 9th is just received. I am glad that you have called my attention to the question, "Who are entitled to the principal credit for the passage of the act of Congress establishing the Yellowstone National Park?" The history of that measure, as far as known to me, is as follows, to-wit: In the fall of 1870, soon after the return of the Washburn-Langford party, two printers at Deer Lodge City, Montana, went into the Firehole basin and cut a large number of poles, intending to come back the next summer and fence in the tract of land containing the principal geysers, and hold possession for speculative purposes, as the Hutchins family so long held the Yosemite valley. One of these men was named Harry Norton. He subsequently wrote a book on the park. The other one was named Brown. He now lives in Spokane, Wash., and both of them in the summer of 1871 worked in the New Northwest office at Deer Lodge. When I learned from them in the late fall of 1870 or spring of 1871 what they intended to do, I remonstrated with them and stated that from the description given by them and by members of Mr. Langford's party, the whole region should be made into a National Park and no private proprietorship be allowed. I was elected Delegate to Congress from Montana in August, 1871, and after the election, Nathaniel P. Langford, Cornelius Hedges and myself had a consultation in Helena, and agreed that every effort should be made to establish the Park as soon as possible, and before any person had got a serious foot-hold--Mr. McCartney, at the Mammoth Hot Springs, being the only one who at that time had any improvements made. In December, 1871, Mr. Langford came to Washington and remained there for some time, and we two counseled together about the Park project. I drew the bill to establish the Park, and never knew Professor Hayden in connection with that bill, except that I requested Mr. Langford to get from him a description of the boundaries of the proposed Park. There was some delay in getting the description, and my recollection is that Langford brought me the description after consultation with Professor Hayden. I then filled the blank in the bill with the description, and the bill passed both Houses of Congress just as it was drawn and without any change or amendment whatsoever. After the bill was drawn, Langford stated to me that Senator Pomeroy of Kansas was very anxious to have the honor of introducing the bill in the Senate; and as he (Pomeroy) was the chairman of the Senate committee on Public Lands, in order to facilitate its passage, I had a clean copy made of the bill and on the first call day in the House, introduced the original there, and then went over to the Senate Chamber and handed the copy to Senator Pomeroy, who immediately introduced it in the Senate. The bill passed the Senate first and came to the House, and passed the House without amendment, at a time when I happened to be at the other end of the Capitol, and hence I was not present when it actually passed the House. Since the passage of this bill there have been so many men who have claimed the exclusive credit for its passage, that I have lived for twenty years, suffering from a chronic feeling of disgust whenever the subject was mentioned. So far as my personal knowledge goes, the first idea of making it a public park occurred to myself; but from information received from Langford and others, it has always been my opinion that Hedges, Langford, and myself formed the same idea about the same time, and we all three acted together in Montana, and afterwards Langford and I acted with Professor Hayden in Washington, in the winter of 1871-2. The fact is that the matter was well under way before Professor Hayden was ever heard of in connection with that measure. When he returned to Washington in 1871, he brought with him a large number of specimens from different parts of the Park, which were on exhibition in one of the rooms of the Capitol or in the Smithsonian Institute (one or the other), while Congress was in session, and he rendered valuable services, in exhibiting these specimens and explaining the geological and other features of the proposed Park, and between him, Langford and myself, I believe there was not a single member of Congress in either House who was not fully posted by one or the other of us in personal interviews; so much so, that the bill practically passed both Houses without objection. It has always been a pleasure to me to give to Professor Hayden and to Senator Pomeroy, and Mr. Dawes of Mass, all of the credit which they deserve in connection with the passage of that measure, but the truth of the matter is that the origin of the movement which created the Park was with Hedges, Langford and myself; and after Congress met, Langford and I probably did two-thirds, if not three-fourths of all the work connected with its passage. I think that the foregoing letter contains a full statement of what you wish, and I hope that you will be able to correct, at least to some extent, the misconceptions which the selfish vanity of some people has occasioned on the subject. Very truly yours, Wm. H. Clagett. [Illustration: Wm. H. Clagett] It is true that Professor Hayden joined with Mr. Clagett and myself in working for the passage of the act of dedication, but no person can divide with Cornelius Hedges and David E. Folsom the honor of _originating the idea_ of creating the Yellowstone Park. By direction of Major Hiram M. Chittenden there has been erected at the junction of the Firehole and Gibbon rivers a large slab upon which is inscribed the following legend: JUNCTION OF THE GIBBON AND FIREHOLE RIVERS, FORMING THE MADISON FORK OF THE MISSOURI. * * * * * ON THE POINT OF LAND BETWEEN THE TRIBUTARY STREAMS, SEPTEMBER 19, 1870, THE CELEBRATED WASHBURN EXPEDITION, WHICH FIRST MADE KNOWN TO THE WORLD THE WONDERS OF THE YELLOWSTONE, WAS ENCAMPED, AND HERE WAS FIRST SUGGESTED THE IDEA OF SETTING APART THIS REGION AS A NATIONAL PARK. On the south bank of the Madison, just below the junction of these two streams, and overlooking this memorable camping ground, is a lofty escarpment to which has appropriately been given the name "National Park mountain." I take occasion here to refer to my personal connection with the Park. Upon the passage by Congress, on March 1, 1872, of the act of dedication, I was appointed superintendent of the Park. I discharged the duties of the office for more than five years, without compensation of any kind, and paying my own expenses. Soon after the creation of the Park the Secretary of the Interior received many applications for leases to run for a long term of years, of tracts of land in the vicinity of the principal marvels of that region, such as the Grand Cañon and Falls, the Upper Geyser basin, etc. These applications were invariably referred to me by the Assistant Secretary of the Interior, Hon. B.R. Cowen. It was apparent from an examination of these applications that the purpose of the applicants was to enclose with fences their holdings, and charge visitors an admission fee. To have permitted this would have defeated the purpose of the act of dedication. In many instances the applicants made earnest pleas, both personally and through their members in Congress, to the Interior Department and to myself for an approval of their applications, offering to speedily make improvements of a value ranging from $100,000 to $500,000. I invariably reported unfavorably upon these alluring propositions, and in no instance was my recommendation overruled by Secretary Cowen, to whom Secretary Delano had given the charge of the whole matter, and to Judge Cowen's firmness in resisting the political and other influences that were brought to bear is largely due the fact that these early applications for concessions were not granted. A time should never come when the American people will have forgotten the services, a generation ago, of Judge Cowen, in resisting the designs of unscrupulous men in their efforts to secure possession of the most important localities in the Park, nor the later services of George Bird Grinnell, William Hallett Phillips and U.S. Senator George Graham Vest, in the preservation of the wild game of the Park and of the Park itself from the more determined encroachments of private greed. [Illustration: Hiram M. Chittenden] The second year of my services as superintendent, some of my friends in Congress proposed to give me a salary sufficiently large to pay actual expenses. I requested them to make no effort in this behalf, saying that I feared that some successful applicant for such a salaried position, giving little thought to the matter, would approve the applications for leases; and that as long as I could prevent the granting of any exclusive concessions I would be willing to serve as superintendent without compensation. Apropos of my official connection with the Park a third of a century ago, is the following letter to me, written by George Bird Grinnell. This personal tribute from one who himself has done so much in behalf of the Park was very gratifying to me. New York, April 29th, 1903. _Mr. N.P. Langford St. Paul, Minn_., Dear Sir: I am glad to read the newspaper cutting from the Pioneer Press of April 19th, which you so kindly sent me. In these days of hurry and bustle, when events of importance crowd so fast on each other that the memory of each is necessarily short lived, it is gratifying to be reminded from time to time of important services rendered to the nation in a past which, though really recent, seems to the younger generation far away. The service which you performed for the United States, and indeed for the world, in describing the Yellowstone Park, and in setting on foot and persistently advocating the plan to make it a national pleasure ground, will always be remembered; and it is well that public acknowledgment should be made of it occasionally, so that the men of this generation may not forget what they owe to those of the past. Yours very truly, GEO. BIRD GRINNELL. The Act of Congress creating the Park provided that this region should be "set apart for a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people," but this end has not been accomplished except as the result of untiring vigilance and labor on the part of a very few persons who have never wavered in their loyalty to the Park. It may never be known how nearly the purposes of the Act of Dedication have escaped defeat; but a letter written to me by George Bird Grinnell and an editorial from _Forest and Stream_ may reveal to visitors who now enjoy without let or hindrance the wonders of that region, how narrowly this "Temple of the living God," as it has been termed, has escaped desecration at the hands of avaricious money-getters, and becoming a "Den of Thieves." New York, July 25, 1905. _Mr. N.P. Langford_. Dear Sir: I am very glad that your diary is to be published. It is something that I have long hoped that we might see. It is true, as you say, that I have for a good many years done what I could toward protecting the game in the Yellowstone Park; but what seems to me more important than that is that _Forest and Stream_ for a dozen years carried on, almost single handed, a fight for the integrity of the National Park. If you remember, all through from 1881 or thereabouts to 1890 continued efforts were being made to gain control of the park by one syndicate and another, or to run a railroad through it, or to put an elevator down the side of the cañon--in short, to use this public pleasure ground as a means for private gain. There were half a dozen of us who, being very enthusiastic about the park, and, being in a position to watch legislation at Washington, and also to know what was going on in the Interior Department, kept ourselves very much alive to the situation and succeeded in choking off half a dozen of these projects before they grew large enough to be made public. One of these men was William Hallett Phillips, a dear friend of mine, a resident of Washington, a Supreme Court lawyer with a large acquaintance there, and a delightful fellow. He was the best co-worker that any one could have had who wanted to keep things straight and as they ought to be. At rare intervals I get out old volumes of the _Forest and Stream_ and look over the editorials written in those days with a mingling of amusement and sadness as I recall how excited we used to get, and think of the true fellows who used to help, but who have since crossed over to the other side. Yours sincerely, GEO. BIRD GRINNELL. [Illustration: NATIONAL PARK MOUNTAIN. AT JUNCTION OF FIREHOLE AND GIBBON RIVERS.] [Illustration: Geo. Bird Grinnell] From _Forest and Stream_, August 20, 1904. SENATOR VEST AND THE NATIONAL PARK. In no one of all the editorials and obituaries written last week on the death of Senator Vest did we see mention made of one great service performed by him for the American people, and for which they and their descendants should always remember him. It is a bit of ancient history now, and largely forgotten by all except those who took an active part in the fight. More than twenty years ago strong efforts were made by a private corporation to secure a monopoly of the Yellowstone National Park by obtaining from the government, contracts giving them exclusive privileges within the Park. This corporation secured an agreement from the Interior Department by which six different plots in the Yellowstone Park, each one covering about one section of land--a square mile--were to be leased to it for a period of ten years. It was also to have a monopoly of hotel, stage and telegraph rights, and there was a privilege of renewal of the concession at the end of the ten years. The rate to be paid for the concession was $2 an acre. When the question of this lease came before Congress, it was referred to a sub-committee of the Committee on Territories, of which Senator Vest was chairman. He investigated the question, and in the report made on it used these words: "Nothing but absolute necessity, however, should permit the Great National Park to be used for money-making by private persons, and, in our judgment, no such necessity exists. The purpose to which this region, matchless in wonders and grandeur, was dedicated--'a public park and a pleasure ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people'--is worthy the highest patriotism and statesmanship." The persons interested in this lease came from many sections of the country, and were ably represented by active agents in Washington. The pressure brought to bear on Congress was very great, and the more effectively applied, since few men knew much about conditions in the Yellowstone Park, or even where the Yellowstone Park was. But pressure and influence could not move Senator Vest when he knew he was right. He stood like a rock in Congress, resisting this pressure, making a noble fight in behalf of the interests of the people, and at last winning his battle. For years the issue seemed doubtful, and for years it was true that the sole hope of those who were devoted to the interests of the Park, and who were fighting the battle of the public, lay in Senator Vest. So after years of struggle the right triumphed, and the contract intended to be made between the Interior Department and the corporation was never consummated. This long fight made evident the dangers to which the Park was exposed, and showed the necessity of additional legislation. A bill to protect the Park was drawn by Senator Vest and passed by Congress, and from that time on, until the day of his retirement from public life, Senator Vest was ever a firm and watchful guardian of the Yellowstone National Park, showing in this matter, as in many others, "the highest patriotism and statesmanship." For many years, from 1882 to 1894, Senator Vest remained the chief defender of a National possession that self-seeking persons in many parts of the country were trying to use for their own profit. [Illustration: W. Hallett Phillips] [Illustration: GEORGE GRAHAM VEST.] If we were asked to mention the two men who did more than any other two men to save the National Park for the American people, we should name George Graham Vest and William Hallett Phillips, co-workers in this good cause. There were other men who helped them, but these two easily stand foremost. In the light of the present glorious development of the Park it can be said of each one who has taken part in the work of preserving for all time this great national pleasuring ground for the enjoyment of the American people, "He builded better than he knew." An amusing feature of the identity of my name with the Park was that my friends, with a play upon my initials, frequently addressed letters to me in the following style: [Illustration: National Park Langford] The fame of the Yellowstone National Park, combining the most extensive aggregation of wonders in the world--wonders unexcelled because nowhere else existing--is now world-wide. The "Wonderland" publications issued by the Northern Pacific Railway, prepared under the careful supervision of their author, Olin D. Wheeler, with their superb illustrations of the natural scenery of the park, and the illustrated volume, "The Yellowstone," by Major Hiram M. Chittenden, U.S. Engineers, under whose direction the roads and bridges throughout the Park are being constructed, have so confirmed the first accounts of these wonders that there remains now little of the incredulity with which the narrations of the members of our company were first received. The articles written by me on my return from the trip described in this diary, and published in Scribner's (now Century) Magazine for May and June, 1871, were regarded more as the amiable exaggerations of an enthusiastic Munchausen, who is disposed to tell the whole truth, and as much more as is necessary to make an undoubted sensation, than as the story of a sober, matter-of-fact observer who tells what he has seen with his own eyes, and exaggerates nothing. Dr. Holland, one of the editors of that magazine, sent to me a number of uncomplimentary criticisms of my article. One reviewer said: "This Langford must be the champion liar of the Northwest." Resting for a time under this imputation, I confess to a feeling of satisfaction in reading from a published letter, written later in the summer of 1871 from the Upper Geyser basin by a member of the U.S. Geological Survey, the words: "Langford did not dare tell one-half of what he saw." Mr. Charles T. Whitmell, of Cardiff, Wales, a distinguished scholar and astronomer, who has done much to bring to the notice of our English brothers the wonders of the Park--which he visited in 1883--in a lecture delivered before the Cardiff Naturalists' Society on Nov. 12, 1885, sought to impress upon the minds of his audience the full significance of the above characterization. He said: "This quite unique description means a great deal, I can assure you; for Western American lying is not to be measured by any of our puny European standards of untruthfulness." But the writings of Wheeler and others, running through a long series of years and covering an extended range of new discoveries, have vindicated the truthfulness of the early explorers, and even the stories of Bridger are not now regarded as exaggerations, and we no longer write for his epitaph, Here LIES Bridger. As I recall the events of this exploration, made thirty-five years ago, it is a pleasure to bear testimony that there was never a more unselfish or generous company of men associated for such an expedition; and, notwithstanding the importance of our discoveries, in the honor of which each desired to have his just share, there was absolutely neither jealousy nor ungenerous rivalry, and the various magazine and newspaper articles first published clearly show how the members of our party were "In honor preferring one another." In reviewing my diary, preparatory to its publication, I have occasionally eliminated an expression that seemed to be too personal,--a sprinkling of pepper from the caster of my impatience,--and I have also here and there added an explanatory annotation or illustration. With this exception I here present the original notes just as they were penned under the inspiration of the overwhelming wonders which everywhere revealed themselves to our astonished vision; and as I again review and read the entries made in the field and around the campfire, in the journal that for nearly thirty years has been lost to my sight, I feel all the thrilling sensations of my first impressions, and with them is mingled the deep regret that our beloved Washburn did not live to see the triumphant accomplishment of what was dear to his heart, the setting apart at the headwaters of the Yellowstone, of a National "public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people." NATHANIEL PITT LANGFORD. St. Paul, Minn., August 9, 1905. [Illustration: The Author] JOURNAL Wednesday, August 17, 1870.--In accordance with the arrangements made last night, the different members of our party met at the agreed rendezvous--the office of General Washburn--at 9 o'clock a.m., to complete our arrangements for the journey and get under way. Our party consisted of Gen. Henry D. Washburn, Cornelius Hedges, Samuel T. Hauser, Warren C. Gillette, Benjamin Stickney, Truman C. Everts, Walter Trumbull, Jacob Smith and Nathaniel P. Langford. General Washburn has been chosen the leader of our party. For assistants we have Mr.---- Reynolds and Elwyn Bean, western slope packers, and two African boys as cooks. Each man has a saddle horse fully rigged with California saddle, cantinas, holsters, etc., and has furnished a pack horse for transportation of provisions, ammunition and blankets. There are but few of our party who are adepts in the art of packing, for verily it is an art acquired by long practice, and we look with admiration upon our packers as they "throw the rope" with such precision, and with great skill and rapidity tighten the cinch and gird the load securely upon the back of the broncho. Our ponies have not all been tried of late with the pack saddle, but most of them quietly submit to the loading. But now comes one that does not yield itself to the manipulations of the packer. He stands quiet till the pack saddle is adjusted, but the moment he feels the tightening of the cinch he asserts his independence of all restraint and commences bucking. This animal in question belongs to Gillette, who says that if he does not stand the pack he will use him for a saddle horse. If so, God save Gillette! [Illustration: PACKING A RECALCITRANT MULE.] Thursday, August 18.--I rode on ahead of the party from Mr. Hartzell's ranch, stopping at Radersburg for dinner and riding through a snow storm to Gallatin City, where I remained over night with Major Campbell. General Washburn thought that it would be well for some members of the company to have a conference, as early as possible, with the commanding officer at Fort Ellis, concerning an escort of soldiers. I also desired to confer with some of the members of the Bozeman Masonic Lodge concerning the lodge troubles; and it was for these reasons that I rode on to Bozeman in advance of the party. [Illustration: THE START. PRICKLY PEAR VALLEY.] Friday, August 19.--Rode over to the East Gallatin river with Lieutenants Batchelor and Wright, crossing at Blakeley's bridge and reaching Bozeman at 7 o'clock p.m. Saturday, August 20.--Spent the day at Bozeman and at Fort Ellis. I met the commanding officer, Major Baker, of the Second U.S. Cavalry, who informs me that nearly all the men of his command are in the field fighting the Indians. I informed him that we had an order for an escort of soldiers, and he said that the garrison was so weakened that he could not spare more than half a dozen men. I told him that six men added to our own roster would enable us to do good guard duty. The rest of the party and the pack train came into Bozeman at night. This evening I visited Gallatin Lodge No. 6, and after a full consultation with its principal officers and members, I reluctantly decided to exercise my prerogative as Grand Master and arrest the charter of the lodge as the only means of bringing to a close a grievous state of dissension. In justice to my own convictions of duty, I could not have adopted any milder remedy than the one I applied. Sunday, August 21.--We moved into camp about one-half mile from Fort Ellis on the East Gallatin. General Washburn presented the order of Major General Hancock (recommended by General Baird, Inspector General, as an important military necessity) for an escort. Major Baker repeated what he said to me yesterday, and he will detail for our service five soldiers under the command of a lieutenant, and we are satisfied. General Lester Willson entertained us at a bounteous supper last night. His wife is a charming musician. Monday, August 22.--We left Fort Ellis at 11 o'clock this forenoon with an escort consisting of five men under command of Lieut. Gustavus C. Doane of the Second U.S. Cavalry. Lieutenant Doane has kindly allowed me to copy the special order detailing him for this service. It is as follows: Headquarters Fort Ellis, Montana Territory, August 21; 1870. In accordance with instructions from Headquarters District of Montana, Lieutenant G.C. Doane, Second Cavalry, will proceed with one sergeant and four privates of Company F. Second Cavalry, to escort the Surveyor General of [Illustration: Olin D. Wheeler.] Montana to the falls and lakes of the Yellowstone, and return. They will be supplied with thirty days' rations, and one hundred rounds of ammunition per man. The acting assistant quarter-master will furnish them with the necessary transportation. By order of Major Baker. J.G. MacADAMS, First Lieutenant Second Cavalry. Acting Post Adjutant. The names of the soldiers are Sergeant William Baker and Privates John Williamson, George W. McConnell, William Leipler and Charles Moore. This number, added to our own company of nine, will give us fourteen men for guard duty, a sufficient number to maintain a guard of two at all times, with two reliefs each night, each man serving half of a night twice each week. Our entire number, including the packers and cooks, is nineteen (19). Along the trail, after leaving Fort Ellis, we found large quantities of the "service" berry, called by the Snake Indians "Tee-amp." Our ascent of the Belt range was somewhat irregular, leading us up several sharp acclivities, until we attained at the summit an elevation of nearly two thousand feet above the valley we had left. The scene from this point is excelled in grandeur only by extent and variety. An amphitheatre of mountains 200 miles in circumference, enclosing a valley nearly as large as the State of Rhode Island, with all its details of pinnacle, peak, dome, rock and river, is comprehended at a glance. In front of us at a distance of twenty miles, in sullen magnificence, rose the picturesque range of the Madison, with the insulated rock, Mount Washington, and the sharp pinnacle of Ward's Peak prominently in the foreground. Following the range to the right for the distance of twenty-five miles, the eye rests upon that singular depression where, formed by the confluent streams of the Madison, Jefferson and Gallatin, the mighty Missouri commences its meanderings to the Gulf. Far beyond these, in full blue outline, are defined the round knobs of the Boulder mountains, stretching away and imperceptibly commingling with the distant horizon. At the left, towering a thousand feet above the circumjacent ranges, are the glowering peaks of the Yellowstone, their summits half enveloped in clouds, or glittering with perpetual snow. At our feet, apparently within jumping distance, cleft centrally by its arrowy river, carpeted with verdure, is the magnificent valley of the Gallatin, like a rich emerald in its gorgeous mountain setting. Fascinating as was this scene we gave it but a glance, and turned our horses' heads towards the vast unknown. Descending the range to the east, we reached Trail creek, a tributary of the Yellowstone, about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, where we are now camped for the night. We are now fairly launched upon our expedition without the possibility of obtaining outside assistance in case we need it, and means for our protection have been fully considered since we camped, and our plans for guard duty throughout the trip have been arranged. Hedges is to be my comrade-in-arms in this service. He has expressed to me his great satisfaction that he is to be associated with me throughout the trip in this night guard duty, and I am especially pleased at being assigned to duty with so reliable a coadjutor as Hedges, a man who can be depended upon to neglect no duty. We two are to stand guard the first half of this first night--that is, until 1 o'clock to-morrow morning; then Washburn and Hauser take our places. Fresh Indian signs indicate that the red-skins are lurking near us, and justify the apprehensions expressed in the letter which Hauser and I received from James Stuart, that we will be attacked by the Crow Indians.[A] I am not entirely free from anxiety. Our safety will depend upon our vigilance. We are all well armed with long range repeating rifles and needle guns, though there are but few of our party who are experts at off-hand shooting with a revolver. [Illustration: TAKING A SHOT AT JAKE SMITH'S HAT.] In the course of our discussion Jake Smith expressed his doubt whether any member of our party except Hauser (who is an expert pistol shot) is sufficiently skilled in the use of the revolver to hit an Indian at even a close range, and he offered to put the matter to a test by setting up his hat at a distance of twenty yards for the boys to shoot at with their revolvers, without a rest, at twenty-five cents a shot. While several members of our party were blazing away with indifferent success, with the result that Jake was adding to his exchequer without damage to his hat, I could not resist the inclination to quietly drop out of sight behind a clump of bushes, where from my place of concealment I sent from my breech-loading Ballard repeating rifle four bullets in rapid succession, through the hat, badly riddling it. Jake inquired, "Whose revolver is it that makes that loud report?" He did not discover the true state of the case, but removed the target with the ready acknowledgment that there were members of our party whose aim with a revolver was more accurate than he had thought. I think that I will make confession to him in a few days. I now wish that I had brought with me an extra hat. My own is not large enough for Jake's head. Notwithstanding the serious problems which we must deal with in making this journey, it is well to have a little amusement while we may. Tuesday, August 23.--Last night was the first that we were on guard. The first relief was Hedges and Langford, the second Washburn and Hauser. Everything went well. At 8 a.m. to-day we broke camp. Some delay occurring in packing our horses, Lieutenant Doane and the escort went ahead, and we did not again see them until we reached our night camp. We traveled down Trail creek and over a spur of the mountain to the valley of the Yellowstone, which we followed up eight miles to our present camp. Along on our right in passing up the valley was a vast natural pile of basaltic rock, perpendicular, a part of which had been overthrown, showing transverse seams in the rock. Away at the right in the highest range bordering the valley was Pyramid mountain, itself a snow-capped peak; and further up the range was a long ridge covered with deep snow. As we passed Pyramid mountain a cloud descended upon it, casting its gloomy shadow over the adjacent peaks and bursting in a grand storm. These magnificent changes in mountain scenery occasioned by light and shade during one of these terrific tempests, with all the incidental accompaniments of thunder, lightning, rain, snow and hail, afford the most awe-inspiring exhibition in nature. As I write, another grand storm, which does not extend to our camp, has broken out on Emigrant peak, which at one moment is completely obscured in darkness; at the next, perhaps, brilliant with light; all its gorges, recesses, seams and cañons illuminated; these fade away into dim twilight, broken by a terrific flash, and, echoing to successive peals, "* * * the rattling crags among Leaps the live thunder" in innumerable reverberations. On the left of the valley the foot hills were mottled with a carpet of beautiful, maroon-colored, delicately-tinted verdure, and towering above all rose peak on peak of the snow-capped mountains. To-day we saw our first Indians as we descended into the valley of the Yellowstone. They came down from the east side of the valley, over the foot hills, to the edge of the plateau overlooking the bottom lands of the river, and there conspicuously displayed themselves for a time to engage our attention. As we passed by them up the valley they moved down to where their ponies were hobbled. Two of our party, Hauser and Stickney, had dropped behind and passed towards the north to get a shot at an antelope; and when they came up they reported that, while we were observing the Indians on the plateau across the river, there were one hundred or more of them watching us from behind a high butte as our pack-train passed up the valley. As soon as they observed Hauser and Stickney coming up nearly behind them, they wheeled their horses and disappeared down the other side of the butte.[B] This early admonition of our exposure to hostile attack, and liability to be robbed of everything, and compelled on foot and without provisions to retrace our steps, has been the subject of discussion in our camp to-night, and has renewed in our party the determination to abate nothing of our vigilance, and keep in a condition of constant preparation. [Illustration: ON GUARD. VALLEY OF THE YELLOWSTONE.] With our long-range rifles and plenty of ammunition, we can stand off 200 or 300 of them, with their less efficient weapons, if we don't let them sneak up upon us in the night. If we encounter more than that number, then what? The odds will be against us that they will "rub us out," as Jim Stuart says. Jake Smith has sent the first demoralizing shot into the camp by announcing that he doesn't think there is any necessity for standing guard. Jake is the only one of our party who shows some sign of baldness, and he probably thinks that his own scalp is not worth the taking by the Indians. Did we act wisely in permitting him to join our party at the last moment before leaving Helena? One careless man, no less than one who is easily discouraged by difficulties, will frequently demoralize an entire company. I think we have now taken all possible precautions for our safety, but our numbers are few; and for me to say that I am not in hourly dread of the Indians when they appear in large force, would be a braggart boast. Mr. Everts was taken sick this afternoon. All day we have had a cool breeze and a few light showers, clearing off from time to time, revealing the mountains opposite us covered from their summits half way down with the newly fallen snow, and light clouds floating just below over the foot hills. Until we reached the open valley of the Yellowstone our route was over a narrow trail, from which the stream, Trail creek, takes its name. The mountains opposite the point where we entered the valley are rugged, grand, picturesque and immense by turns, and colored by nature with a thousand gorgeous hues. We have traveled all this day amid this stupendous variety of landscape until we have at length reached the western shore of that vast and solitary river which is to guide us to the theatre of our explorations. From the "lay of the land" I should judge that our camp to-night is thirty-five to forty miles above the point where Captain William Clark, of the famous Lewis and Clark expedition, embarked with his party in July, 1806, in two cottonwood canoes bound together with buffalo thongs, on his return to the states. It was from that point also that some six hundred residents of Montana embarked for a trip to the states, in forty-two flat boats, in the autumn of 1865.[C] We learn from Mr. Boteler that there are some twenty-five lodges of Crow Indians up the valley.[D] Wednesday, August 24.--It rained nearly all of last night, but Lieutenant Doane pitched his large tent, which was sufficiently capacious to accommodate us all by lying "heads and tails," and we were very comfortable. Throughout the forenoon we had occasional showers, but about noon it cleared away, and, after getting a lunch, we got under way. During the forenoon some of the escort were very successful in fishing for trout. Mr. Everts was not well enough to accompany us, and it was arranged that he should remain at Boteler's ranch, and that we would move about twelve miles up the river, and there await his arrival. Our preparations for departure being completed, General Washburn detailed a guard of four men to accompany the pack train, while the rest of the party rode on ahead. We broke camp at 2:30 p.m. with the pack train and moved up the valley. At about six miles from our camp we crossed a spur of the mountain which came down boldly to the river, and from the top we had a beautiful view of the valley stretched out below us, the stream fringed with a thin bordering of trees, the foot hills rising into a level plateau covered with rich bunch grass, and towering above all, the snow-covered summits of the distant mountains rising majestically, seemingly just out of the plateau, though they were many miles away. Above us the valley opened out wide, and from the overlooking rock on which we stood we could see the long train of pack horses winding their way along the narrow trail, the whole presenting a picturesque scene. The rock on which we stood was a coarse conglomerate, or pudding stone. Five miles farther on we crossed a small stream bordered with black cherry trees, many of the smaller ones broken down by bears, of which animal we found many signs. One mile farther on we made our camp about a mile below the middle cañon. To-night we have antelope, rabbit, duck, grouse and the finest of large trout for supper. As I write, General Washburn, Hedges and Hauser are engaged in an animated discussion of the differences between France and Germany, and the probabilities of the outcome of the war. The three gentlemen are not agreed in determining where the responsibility for the trouble lies, and I fear that I will have to check their profanity. However, neither Washburn nor Hedges swears. Thursday, August 25.--Last night was very cold, the thermometer marking 40 degrees at 8 o'clock a.m. At one mile of travel we came to the middle cañon, which we passed on a very narrow trail running over a high spur of the mountain overlooking the river, which at this point is forced through a narrow gorge, surging and boiling and tumbling over the rocks, the water having a dark green color. After passing the cañon we again left the valley, passing over the mountain, on the top of which at an elevation of several hundred feet above the river is a beautiful lake. Descending the mountain again, we entered the valley, which here is about one and a half to two miles wide. At nineteen miles from our morning camp we came to Gardiner's river, at the mouth of which we camped. We are near the southern boundary of Montana, and still in the limestone and granite formations. Mr. Everts came into camp just at night, nearly recovered, but very tired from his long and tedious ride over a rugged road, making our two days' travel in one. We passed to-day a singular formation which we named "The Devil's Slide," From the top of the mountain to the valley, a distance of about 800 feet, the trap rock projected from 75 to 125 feet, the intermediate layers of friable rock having been washed out. The trap formation is about twenty-five feet wide, and covered with stunted pine trees. Opposite our camp is a high drift formation of granite boulders, gravel and clay. The boulders are the regular gray Quincy granite, and those in the middle of the river are hollowed out by the action of the water into many curious shapes. We have here found our first specimens of petrifactions and obsidian, or volcanic glass. From the top of the mountain back of our camp we can see to-night a smoke rising from another peak, which some of our party think is a signal from one band of the Indians to another, conveying intelligence of our progress. Along our trail of to-day are plenty of Indian "signs," and marks of the lodge poles dragging in the sand on either side of the trail.[E] Jake Smith stood guard last night, or ought to have done so, and but for the fact that Gillette was also on guard, I should not have had an undisturbed sleep. We know that the Indians are near us, and sleep is more refreshing to me when I feel assured that I will not be joined in my slumbers by those who are assigned for watchful guard duty. [Illustration: S.T. Hauser] Friday, August 26.--For some reason we did not leave camp till 11 o'clock a.m. We forded Gardiner's river with some difficulty, several of our pack animals being nearly carried off their feet by the torrent. We passed over several rocky ridges or points coming down from the mountain, and at one and a half miles came down again into the valley, which one of our party called the "Valley of desolation." Taking the trail upon the left, we followed it until it led us to the mouth of a cañon, through which ran an old Indian or game trail, which was hardly discernible, and had evidently been long abandoned. Retracing our steps for a quarter of a mile, and taking a cut-off through the sage brush, we followed another trail upon our right up through a steep, dry coulee. From the head of the coulee we went through fallen timber over a burnt and rocky road, our progress being very slow. A great many of the packs came off our horses or became loosened, necessitating frequent haltings for their readjustment. Upon the summit we found a great many shells. Descending the divide we found upon the trail the carcass of an antelope which the advance party had killed, and which we packed on our horses and carried to our night camp. In the morning Lieutenant Doane and one of his men, together with Mr. Everts, had started out ahead of the party to search out the best trail. At 3 o'clock p.m. we arrived at Antelope creek, only six miles from our morning camp, where we concluded to halt. On the trail which we were following there were no tracks except those of unshod ponies; and, as our horses were all shod, it was evident that Lieutenant Doane and the advance party had descended the mountain by some other trail than that which we were following. Neither were there any marks of dragging lodge poles. There are seemingly two trails across the mountain,--a circuitous one by as easy a grade as can be found, over which the Indians send their families with their heavily laden pack horses; and a more direct, though more difficult, route which the war parties use in making their rapid rides. This last is the one we have taken, and the advance party has doubtless taken the other. Our camp to-night is on Antelope creek, about five miles from the Yellowstone river. After our arrival in camp, in company with Stickney and Gillette, I made a scout of eight or ten miles through the country east of our trail, and between it and the river, in search of some sign of Lieutenant Doane, but we found no trace of him. Parting from Stickney and Gillette, I followed down the stream through a narrow gorge by a game trail, hoping if I could reach the Yellowstone, to find a good trail along its banks up to the foot of the Grand cañon; but I found the route impracticable for the passage of our pack train. After supper Mr. Hauser and I went out in search of our other party, and found the tracks of their horses, which we followed about four miles to the brow of a mountain overlooking the country for miles in advance of us. Here we remained an hour, firing our guns as a signal, and carefully scanning the whole country with our field glasses. We could discern the trail for many miles on its tortuous course, but could see no sign of a camp, or of horses feeding, and we returned to our camp. Saturday, August 27.--Lieutenant Doane and those who were with him did not return to camp last night. At change of guard Gillette's pack horse became alarmed at something in the bushes bordering upon the creek on the bank of which he was tied, and, breaking loose, dashed through the camp, rousing all of us. Some wild animal--snake, fox or something of the kind--was probably the cause of the alarm. In its flight I became entangled in the lariat and was dragged head first for three or four rods, my head striking a log, which proved to be very rotten, and offered little resistance to a hard head, and did me very little damage. Towards morning a slight shower of rain fell, continuing at intervals till 8 o'clock. We left camp about 9 o'clock, the pack train following about 11 o'clock, and soon struck the trail of Lieutenant Doane, which proved to be the route traveled by the Indians. The marks of their lodge poles were plainly visible. At about four miles from our morning camp we discovered at some distance ahead of us what first appeared to be a young elk, but which proved to be a colt that had become separated from the camp of Indians to which it belonged. We think the Indians cannot be far from us at this time. Following the trail up the ascent leading from Antelope creek, we entered a deep cut, the sides of which rise at an angle of 45 degrees, and are covered with a luxuriant growth of grass. Through this cut we ascended by a grade entirely practicable for a wagon road to the summit of the divide separating the waters of Antelope creek from those of [F]---- creek, and from the summit descended through a beautiful gorge to a small tributary of the Yellowstone, a distance of two miles, dismounting and leading our horses almost the entire distance, the descent being too precipitous for the rider's comfort or for ease to the horse. We were now within four miles of[F]---- creek, and within two miles of the Yellowstone. On the right of the trail, two miles farther on, we found a small hot sulphur spring, the water of which was at a temperature a little below the boiling point, which at this elevation is about 195 degrees. Ascending a high ridge we had a commanding view of a basaltic formation of palisades, about thirty feet in height, on the opposite bank of the Yellowstone, overlooking a stratum of cement and gravel nearly two hundred feet thick, beneath which is another formation of the basaltic rock, and beneath this another body of cement and gravel. We named this formation "Column Rock." The upper formation, from which the rock takes its name, consists of basaltic columns about thirty feet high, closely touching each other, the columns being from three to five feet in diameter. A little farther on we descended the sides of the cañon, through which runs a large creek. We crossed this creek and camped on the south side. Our camp is about four hundred feet in elevation above the Yellowstone, which is not more than two miles distant. The creek is full of granite boulders, varying in size from six inches to ten feet in diameter. General Washburn was on guard last night, and to-night he seems somewhat fatigued. Mr. Hedges has improvised a writing stool from a sack of flour, and I have appropriated a sack of beans for a like use; and, as we have been writing, there has been a lively game of cards played near my left side, which Hedges, who has just closed his diary, says is a game of poker. I doubt if Deacon Hedges is sufficiently posted in the game to know to a certainty that poker is the game which is being played; but, putting what Hedges tells me with what I see and hear, I find that these infatuated players have put a valuation of five (5) cents per bean, on beans that did not cost more than $1 quart in Helena, and Jake Smith exhibits a marvelous lack of veneration for his kinswoman, by referring to each bean, as he places it before him upon the table, as his "aunt," or, more flippantly, his "auntie." Walter Trumbull has been styled the "Banker," and he says that at the commencement of the game he sold forty of these beans to each of the players, himself included (200 in all), at five (5) cents each, and that he has already redeemed the entire 200 at that rate; and now Jake Smith has a half-pint cup nearly full of beans, and is demanding of Trumbull that he redeem them also; that is, pay five (5) cents per bean for the contents of the cup. Trumbull objects. Jake persists. Reflecting upon their disagreement I recall that about an hour ago Jake, with an apologetic "Excuse me!" disturbed me while I was writing and untied the bean sack on which I am now sitting, and took from it a double handful of beans. It seems to me that a game of cards which admits of such latitude as this, with a practically unlimited draft upon outside resources, is hardly fair to all parties, and especially to "The Banker." 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? In camp to-day several names were proposed for the creek and fall, and after much discussion the name "Minaret" was selected. Later, this evening, this decision has been reconsidered, and we have decided to substitute the name "Tower" for "Minaret," and call it "Tower Fall."[G] General Washburn rode out to make a _reconnaissance_ for a route to the river, and returned about 3 o'clock in the afternoon with the intelligence that from the summit of a high mountain he had seen Yellowstone lake, the proposed object of our visit; and with his compass he had noted its direction from our camp. This intelligence has greatly relieved our anxiety concerning the course we are to pursue, and has quieted the dread apprehensions of some of our number, lest we become inextricably involved in the wooded labyrinth by which we are surrounded; and in violation of our agreement that we would not give the name of any member of our party to any object of interest, we have spontaneously and by unanimous vote given the mountain the name by which it will hereafter and forever be known, "Mount Washburn." In addition to our saddle horses and pack horses, we have another four-footed animal in our outfit--a large black dog of seeming little intelligence, to which we have given the name of "Booby." He is owned by "Nute," one of our colored boys, who avers that he is a very knowing dog, and will prove himself so before our journey is ended. The poor beast is becoming sore-footed, and his sufferings excite our sympathy, and we are trying to devise some kind of shoe or moccasin for him. The rest to-day in camp will benefit him. Lieutenant Doane is suffering greatly with a felon on his thumb. It ought to be opened, but he is unwilling to submit to a thorough operation. His sufferings kept him awake nearly all of last night. Monday, August 29.--We broke camp about 8 o'clock, leaving the trail, which runs down to the mouth of the creek, and passed over a succession of high ridges, and part of the time through fallen timber. The trail of the Indians leads off to the left, to the brink of the Yellowstone, which it follows up about three-fourths of a mile, and then crosses to the east side. Hauser, Gillette, Stickney, Trumbull and myself rode out to the summit of Mount Washburn, which is probably the highest peak on the west side of the river. Having an aneroid barometer with us, we ascertained the elevation of the mountain to be about 9,800 feet. The summit is about 500 feet above the snow line. Descending the mountain on the southwest side, we came upon the trail of the pack train, which we followed to our camp at the head of a small stream running into the Yellowstone, which is about five miles distant. As we came into camp a black bear kindly vacated the premises. After supper some of our party followed down the creek to its mouth. At about one mile below our camp the creek runs through a bed of volcanic ashes, which extends for a hundred yards on either side. Toiling on our course down this creek to the river we came suddenly upon a basin of boiling sulphur springs, exhibiting signs of activity and points of difference so wonderful as to fully absorb our curiosity. The largest of these, about twenty feet in diameter, is boiling like a cauldron, throwing water and fearful volumes of sulphurous vapor higher than our heads. Its color is a disagreeable greenish yellow. The central spring of the group, of dark leaden hue, is in the most violent agitation, its convulsive spasms frequently projecting large masses of water to the height of seven or eight feet. The spring lying to the east of this, more diabolical in appearance, filled with a hot brownish substance of the consistency of mucilage, is in constant noisy ebullition, emitting fumes of villainous odor. Its surface is covered with bubbles, which are constantly rising and bursting, and emitting sulphurous gases from various parts of its surface. Its appearance has suggested the name, which Hedges has given, of "Hell-Broth springs;" for, as we gazed upon the infernal mixture and inhaled the pungent sickening vapors, we were impressed with the idea that this was a most perfect realization of Shakespeare's image in Macbeth. It needed but the presence of Hecate and her weird band to realize that horrible creation of poetic fancy, and I fancied the "black and midnight hags" concocting a charm around this horrible cauldron. We ventured near enough to this spring to dip the end of a pine pole into it, which, upon removal, was covered an eighth of an inch thick with lead-colored sulphury slime. There are five large springs and half a dozen smaller ones in this basin, all of them strongly impregnated with sulphur, alum and arsenic. The water from all the larger springs is dark brown or nearly black. The largest spring is fifteen to eighteen feet in diameter, and the water boils up like a cauldron from 18 to 30 inches, and one instinctively draws back from the edge as the hot sulphur steam rises around him. Another of the larger springs is intermittent. The smaller springs are farther up on the bank than the larger ones. The deposit of sinter bordering one of them, with the emission of steam and smoke combined, gives it a resemblance to a chimney of a miner's cabin. Around them all is an incrustation formed from the bases of the spring deposits, arsenic, alum, sulphur, etc. This incrustation is sufficiently strong in many places to bear the weight of a man, but more frequently it gave way, and from the apertures thus created hot steam issued, showing it to be dangerous to approach the edge of the springs; and it was with the greatest difficulty that I obtained specimens of the incrustation. This I finally accomplished by lying at full length upon that portion of the incrustation which yielded the least, but which was not sufficiently strong to bear my weight while I stood upright, and at imminent risk of sinking in the infernal mixture, I rolled over and over to the edge of the opening; and, with the crust slowly bending and sinking beneath me, hurriedly secured the coveted prize of black sulphur, and rolled back to a place of safety. [Illustration: SECURING A SPECIMEN AT HELL-BROTH SPRINGS.] From the springs to the mouth of the creek we followed along the bank, the bed or bottom being too rough and precipitous for us to travel in it, the total fall in the creek for the three miles being about fifteen hundred feet. Standing upon the high point at the junction of the creek with the Yellowstone, one first gets some idea of the depth of the cañon through which the river runs. From this height the sound of the waters of the Yellowstone, tumbling over tremendous rocks and boulders, could not be heard. Everything around us--mountains, valleys, cañon and trees, heights and depths--all are in such keeping and proportion that all our estimates of distances are far below the real truth. To-day we passed the mouth of Hell-Roaring river on the opposite side of the Yellowstone. It was again Jake Smith's turn for guard duty last night, but this morning Jake's countenance wore a peculiar expression, which indicated that he possessed some knowledge not shared by the rest of the party. He spoke never a word, and was as serene as a Methodist minister behind four aces. My interpretation of this self-satisfied serenity is that his guard duty did not deprive him of much sleep. When it comes to considering the question of danger in this Indian country, Jake thinks that he knows more than the veteran Jim Stuart, whom we expected to join us on this trip, and who has given us some salutary words of caution. In a matter in which the safety of our whole party is involved, it is unfortunate that there are no "articles of war" to aid in the enforcement of discipline, in faithful guard duty. Tuesday, August 30.--We broke camp about 9 o'clock a.m., traveling in a southerly direction over the hills adjoining our camp, and then descended the ridge in a southwesterly direction, heading off several ravines, till we came into a small valley; thence we crossed over a succession of ridges of fallen timber to a creek, where we halted about ten miles from our morning camp and about a mile from the upper fall of the Yellowstone. Mr. Hedges gave the name "Cascade creek" to this stream. When we left our camp this morning at Hell-Broth springs, I remarked to Mr. Hedges and General Washburn that the wonders of which we were in pursuit had not disappointed us in their first exhibitions, and that I was encouraged in the faith that greater curiosities lay before us. We believed that the great cataracts of the Yellowstone were within two days', or at most three days', travel. So when we reached Cascade creek, on which we are now encamped, after a short day of journeying, it was with much astonishment as well as delight that we found ourselves in the immediate presence of the falls. Their roar, smothered by the vast depth of the cañon into which they plunge, was not heard until they were before us. With remarkable deliberation we unsaddled and lariated our horses, and even refreshed ourselves with such creature comforts as our larder readily afforded, before we deigned a survey of these great wonders of nature. On our walk down the creek to the river, struck with the beauty of its cascades, we even neglected the greater, to admire the lesser wonders. Bushing with great celerity through a deep defile of lava and obsidian, worn into caverns and fissures, the stream, one-fourth of a mile from its debouchure, breaks into a continuous cascade of remarkable beauty, consisting of a fall of five feet, succeeded by another of fifteen into a grotto formed by proximate rocks imperfectly arching it, whence from a crystal pool of unfathomable depth at their base, it lingers as if half reluctant to continue its course, or as if to renew its power, and then glides gracefully over a descending, almost perpendicular, ledge, veiling the rocks for the distance of eighty feet. Mr. Hedges gave to this succession of cascades the name "Crystal fall." It is very beautiful; but the broken and cavernous gorge through which it passes, worn into a thousand fantastic shapes, bearing along its margin the tracks of grizzly bears and lesser wild animals, scattered throughout with huge masses of obsidian and other volcanic matter--the whole suggestive of nothing earthly nor heavenly--received at our hands, and not inaptly as I conceive, the name of "The Devil's Den." I presume that many persons will question the taste evinced by our company in the selection of names for the various objects of interest we have thus far met with; but they are all so different from any of Nature's works that we have ever seen or heard of, so entirely out of range of human experience, and withal so full of exhibitions which can suggest no other fancy than that which our good grandmothers have painted on our boyish imaginations as a destined future abode, that we are likely, almost involuntarily, to pursue the system with which we have commenced, to the end of our journey. A similar imagination has possessed travelers and visitors to other volcanic regions. We have decided to remain at this point through the entire day to-morrow, and examine the cañon and falls. From the brief survey of the cañon I was enabled to make before darkness set in, I am impressed with its awful grandeur, and I realize the impossibility of giving to any one who has not seen a gorge similar in character, any idea of it. [Illustration: Cornelius Hedges.] It is getting late, and it is already past our usual bedtime, and Jake Smith is calling to me to "turn in" and give him a chance to sleep. There is in what I have already seen so much of novelty to fill the mind and burden the memory, that unless I write down in detail the events of each day, and indeed almost of each hour as it passes, I shall not be able to prepare for publication on my return home any clear or satisfactory account of these wonders. So Jake may go to. I will write until my candle burns out. Jacob is indolent and fond of slumber, and I think that he resents my remark to him the other day, that he could burn more and gather less wood than any man I ever camped with. He has dubbed me "The Yellowstone sharp." Good! I am not ashamed to have the title. Lieutenant Doane has crawled out of his blankets, and is just outside the tent with his hand and fore-arm immersed in water nearly as cold as ice. I am afraid that lock-jaw will set in if he does not consent to have the felon lanced. Wednesday, August 31.--This has been a "red-letter" day with me, and one which I shall not soon forget, for my mind is clogged and my memory confused by what I have to-day seen. General Washburn and Mr. Hedges are sitting near me, writing, and we have an understanding that we will compare our notes when finished. We are all overwhelmed with astonishment and wonder at what we have seen, and we feel that we have been near the very presence of the Almighty. General Washburn has just quoted from the psalm: "When I behold the work of Thy hands, what is man that Thou art mindful of him!" My own mind is so confused that I hardly know where to commence in making a clear record of what is at this moment floating past my mental vision. I cannot confine myself to a bare description of the falls of the Yellowstone alone, for these two great cataracts are but one feature in a scene composed of so many of the elements of grandeur and sublimity, that I almost despair of giving to those who on our return home will listen to a recital of our adventures, the faintest conception of it. The immense cañon or gorge of rocks through which the river descends, perhaps more than the falls, is calculated to fill the observer with feelings of mingled awe and terror. This chasm is seemingly about thirty miles in length. Commencing above the upper fall, it attains a depth of two hundred feet where that takes its plunge, and in the distance of half a mile from that point to the verge of the lower fall, it rapidly descends with the river between walls of rock nearly six hundred feet in vertical height, to which three hundred and twenty feet are added by the fall. Below this the wall lines marked by the descent of the river grow in height with incredible distinctness, until they are probably two thousand feet above the water. There is a difference of nearly three thousand feet in altitude between the surface of the river at the upper fall and the foot of the cañon. Opposite Mount Washburn the cañon must be more than half a vertical mile in depth. As it is impossible to explore the entire cañon, we are unable to tell whether the course of the river through it is broken by other and larger cataracts than the two we have seen, or whether its continuous descent alone has produced the enormous depth to which it has attained. Rumors of falls a thousand feet in height have often reached us before we made this visit. At all points where we approached the edge of the cañon the river was descending with fearful momentum through it, and the rapids and foam from the dizzy summit of the rock overhanging the lower fall, and especially from points farther down the cañon, were so terrible to behold, that none of our company could venture the experiment in any other manner than by lying prone upon the rock, to gaze into its awful depths; depths so amazing that the sound of the rapids in their course over immense boulders, and lashing in fury the base of the rocks on which we were lying, could not be heard. The stillness is horrible, and the solemn grandeur of the scene surpasses conception. You feel the absence of sound--the oppression of absolute silence. Down, down, down, you see the river attenuated to a thread. If you could only hear that gurgling river, lashing with puny strength the massive walls that imprison it and hold it in their dismal shadow, if you could but see a living thing in the depth beneath you, if a bird would but fly past you, if the wind would move any object in that awful chasm, to break for a moment the solemn silence which reigns there, it would relieve that tension of the nerves which the scene has excited, and with a grateful heart you would thank God that he had permitted you to gaze unharmed upon this majestic display of his handiwork. But as it is, the spirit of man sympathizes with the deep gloom of the scene, and the brain reels as you gaze into this profound and solemn solitude. [Illustration: GRAND CAÑON.] The place where I obtained the best and most terrible view of the cañon was a narrow projecting point situated two or three miles below the lower fall.[H] Standing there or rather lying there for greater safety, I thought how utterly impossible it would be to describe to another the sensations inspired by such a presence. As I took in this scene, I realized my own littleness, my helplessness, my dread exposure to destruction, my inability to cope with or even comprehend the mighty architecture of nature. More than all this I felt as never before my entire dependence upon that Almighty Power who had wrought these wonders. A sense of danger, lest the rock should crumble away, almost overpowered me. My knees trembled, and I experienced the terror which causes, men to turn pale and their countenances to blanch with fear, and I recoiled from the vision I had seen, glad to feel the solid earth beneath me and to realize the assurance of returning safety. The scenery surrounding the cañon and falls on both banks of the Yellowstone is enlivened by all the hues of abundant vegetation. The foot-hills approach the river, crowned with a vesture of evergreen pines. Meadows verdant with grasses and shrubbery stretch away to the base of the distant mountains, which, rolling into ridges, rising into peaks, and breaking into chains, are defined in the deepest blue upon the horizon. To render the scene still more imposing, remarkable volcanic deposits, wonderful boiling springs, jets of heated vapor, large collections of sulphur, immense rocks and petrifications abound in great profusion in this immediate vicinity. The river is filled with trout, and bear, elk, deer, mountain lions and lesser game roam the plains, forests and mountain fastnesses. The two grand falls of the Yellowstone form a fitting completion to this stupendous climax of wonders. They impart life, power, light and majesty to an assemblage of elements, which without them would be the most gloomy and horrible solitude in nature. Their eternal anthem, echoing from cañon, mountain, rock and woodland, thrills you with delight, and you gaze with rapture at the iris-crowned curtains of fleecy foam as they plunge into gulfs enveloped in mist and spray. The stillness which held your senses spellbound, as you peered into the dismal depths of the cañon below, is now broken by the uproar of waters; the terror it inspired is superseded by admiration and astonishment, and the scene, late so painful from its silence and gloom, is now animate with joy and revelry. The upper fall, as determined by the rude means of measurement at our command, is one hundred and fifteen feet in height. The river approaches it through a passage of rocks which rise one hundred feet on either side above its surface. Until within half a mile of the brink of the fall the river is peaceful and unbroken by a ripple. Suddenly, as if aware of impending danger, it becomes lashed into foam, circled with eddies, and soon leaps into fearful rapids. The rocky jaws confining it gradually converge as it approaches the edge of the fall, bending its course by their projections, and apparently crowding back the water, which struggles and leaps against their bases, warring with its bounds in the impatience of restraint, and madly leaping from its confines, a liquid emerald wreathed with foam, into the abyss beneath. The sentinel rocks, a hundred feet asunder, could easily be spanned by a bridge directly over and in front of the fall, and fancy led me forward to no distant period when such an effort of airy architecture would be crowded with happy gazers from all portions of our country. A quarter of the way between the verge and the base of the fall a rocky table projects from the west bank, in front of and almost within reaching distance of it, furnishing a point of observation where the finest view can be obtained. In order to get a more perfect view of the cataract, Mr. Hedges and I made our way down to this table rock, where we sat for a long time. As from this spot we looked up at the descending waters, we insensibly felt that the slightest protrusion in them would hurl us backwards into the gulf below. A thousand arrows of foam, apparently _aimed at us_, leaped from the verge, and passed rapidly down the sheet. But as the view grew upon us, and we comprehended the power, majesty and beauty of the scene, we became insensible to danger and gave ourselves up to the full enjoyment of it. Very beautiful as is this fall, it is greatly excelled in grandeur and magnificence by the cataract half a mile below it, where the river takes another perpendicular plunge of three hundred and twenty feet into the most gloomy cavern that ever received so majestic a visitant. Between the two falls, the river, though bordered by lofty precipices, expands in width and flows gently over a nearly level surface until its near approach to the verge. Here a sudden convergence in the rocks compresses its channel, and with a gurgling, choking struggle, it leaps with a single bound, sheer from an even level shelf, into the tremendous chasm. The sheet could not be more perfect if wrought by art. The Almighty has vouchsafed no grander scene to human eyes. Every object that meets the vision increases its sublimity. There is a majestic harmony in the whole, which I have never seen before in nature's grandest works. The fall itself takes its leap between the jaws of rocks whose vertical height above it is more than six hundred feet, and more than nine hundred feet above the chasm into which it falls. Long before it reaches the base it is enveloped in spray, which is woven by the sun's rays into bows radiant with all the colors of the prism, and arching the face of the cataract with their glories. Five hundred feet below the edge of the cañon, and one hundred and sixty feet above the verge of the cataract, and overlooking the deep gorge beneath, on the flattened summit of a projecting crag, I lay with my face turned into the boiling chasm, and with a stone suspended by a large cord measured its profoundest depths. Three times in its descent the cord was parted by abrasion, but at last, securing the weight with a leather band, I was enabled to ascertain by a measurement which I think quite exact, the height of the fall. It is a little more than three hundred and twenty feet; while the perpendicular wall down which I suspended the weight was five hundred and ten feet. [Illustration: LOWER FALL OF THE YELLOWSTONE.] Looking down from this lofty eminence through the cañon below the falls, the scene is full of grandeur. The descent of the river for more than a mile is marked by continuous cascades varying in height from five to twenty feet, and huge rapids breaking over the rocks, and lashing with foam the precipitous sides of the gorge. A similar descent through the entire cañon (thirty miles), is probable, as in no other way except by distinct cataracts of enormous height can the difference in altitude between this point and its outlet be explained. The colors of the rock, which is shaly in character, are variegated with yellow, gray and brown, and the action of the water in its rapid passage down the sides of the cañon has worn the fragments of shale into countless capricious forms. Jets of steam issue from the sides of the cañon at frequent intervals, marking the presence of thermal springs and active volcanic forces. The evidence of a recession of the river through the cañon is designated by the ridges apparent on its sides, and it is not improbable that at no distant day the lower fall will become blended by this process with the upper, forming a single cataract nearly five hundred feet in height. There are but few places where the sides of the Grand cañon can be descended with safety. Hauser and Stickney made the descent at a point where the river was 1,050 feet below the edge of the cañon, as determined by triangulation by Mr. Hauser. Lieutenant Doane, accompanied by his orderly, went down the river several miles, and following down the bed of a lateral stream reached its junction with the Yellowstone at a point where the cañon was about 1,500 feet in depth--the surface of the ground rising the farther he went down the river. Mr. Hedges and I sat on the table-rock to which I have referred, opposite the upper fall, as long as our limited time would permit; and as we reluctantly left it and climbed to the top, I expressed my regret at leaving so fascinating a spot, quoting the familiar line: "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." Mr. Hedges asked me who was the author of the line, but I could not tell. I will look it up on my return.[I] Yes! This stupendous display of nature's handiwork will be to me "a joy forever." It lingers in my memory like the faintly defined outlines of a dream. I can scarcely realize that in the unbroken solitude of this majestic range of rocks, away from civilization and almost inaccessible to human approach, the Almighty has placed so many of the most wonderful and magnificent objects of His creation, and that I am to be one of the few first to bring them to the notice of the world. Truly has it been said, that we live to learn how little may be known, and of what we see, how much surpasses comprehension. Thursday, September 1.--We did not break camp till nearly ten o'clock this morning, the pack-train crossing Cascade creek at its head, and coming into the river trail about two miles above the upper fall. The more direct trail--shorter by one and a half miles--runs along the bank of the river. If we had not decided, last night, that we would move on to-day, I think that every member of the party would have been glad to stay another day at the cañon and falls. I will, however, except out of the number our comrade Jake Smith. The afternoon of our arrival at the cañon (day before yesterday), after half an hour of inspection of the falls and cañon, he said: "Well, boys, I have seen all there is, and I am ready to move on." However, the perceptible decline in our larder, and the uncertainty of the time to be occupied in further explorations, forbid more than these two days' stay at the falls and cañon. The sun this morning shone brightly, and its rays were reflected upon the sides of the dismal cañon--so dark, and gray, and still--enlivening and brightening it. To-day has been warm, and nature this morning seemed determined that our last look should be the brightest, for the beauties of the entire landscape invited us to make a longer stay, and we lingered till the last moment, that the final impression might not be lost. Pursuing our journey, at two miles above the falls we crossed a small stream which we named "Alum" creek, as it is strongly impregnated with alum. [Illustration: W.C. Gillette.] Six miles above the upper fall we entered upon a region remarkable for the number and variety of its hot springs and craters. The principal spring, and the one that first meets the eye as you approach from the north, is a hot sulphur spring, of oval shape, the water of which is constantly boiling and is thrown up to the height of from three to seven feet. Its two diameters are about twelve feet and twenty feet, and it has an indented border of seemingly pure sulphur, about two feet wide and extending down into the spring or cauldron to the edge of the water, which at the time of our visit, if it had been at rest, would have been fifteen or eighteen inches below the rim of the spring. This spring is situated at the base of a low mountain, and the gentle slope below and around the spring for the distance of two hundred or three hundred feet is covered to the depth of from three to ten inches with the sulphurous deposit from the overflow of the spring. The moistened bed of a dried-up rivulet, leading from the edge of the spring down inside through this deposit, showed us that the spring had but recently been overflowing. Farther along the base of this mountain is a sulphurous cavern about twenty feet deep, and seven or eight feet in diameter at its mouth, out of which the steam is thrown in jets with a sound resembling the puffing of a steam-boat when laboring over a sand-bar, and with as much uniformity and intonation as if emitted by a high-pressure engine. From hundreds of fissures in the adjoining mountain from base to summit, issue hot sulphur vapors, the apertures through which they escape being encased in thick incrustations of sulphur, which in many instances is perfectly pure. There are nearby a number of small sulphur springs, not especially remarkable in appearance. About one hundred yards from these springs is a large hot spring of irregular shape, but averaging forty feet long by twenty-five wide, the water of which is of a dark muddy color. Still farther on are twenty or thirty springs of boiling mud of different degrees of consistency and color, and of sizes varying from two to eight feet in diameter, and of depths below the surface varying from three to eight feet. The mud in these springs is in most cases a little thinner than mortar prepared for plastering, and, as it is thrown up from one to two feet, I can liken its appearance to nothing so much as Indian meal hasty pudding when the process of boiling is nearly completed, except that the puffing, bloated bubbles are greatly magnified, being from a few inches to two feet in diameter. In some of the springs the mud is of dark brown color, in others nearly pink, and in one it was almost yellow. Springs four or five feet in diameter and not over six feet apart, have no connection one with another either above or beneath the surface, the mud in them being of different colors. In some instances there is a difference of three feet in the height to which the mud in adjoining springs attains. There may be in some instances two or more springs which receive their supply of mud and their underground pressure from the same general source, but these instances are rare, nor can we determine positively that such is the case. This mud having been worked over and over for many years is as soft as the finest pigments. All of these springs are embraced within a circle the radius of which is from a thousand to twelve hundred feet, and the whole of this surface seems to be a smothered crater covered over with an incrustation of sufficient strength and thickness to bear usually a very heavy weight, but which in several instances yielded and even broke through under the weight of our horses as we rode over it. We quickly dismounted, and as we were making some examinations, the crust broke through several times in some thin places through which vapor was issuing. Under the whole of this incrustation the hottest fires seem to be raging, and the heat issuing from the vents or from the crevices caused from the breaking in of the surface is too intense to be borne by the gloved hand for an instant. Surrounding the natural vents are deposits of pure sulphur, portions of which in many instances we broke off, and after allowing them to cool, brought them away with us. On the top of the mountain overlooking the large sulphur spring is a small living crater about six inches in diameter, out of which issue hot vapor and smoke. On the slope adjoining the mud spring is another crater of irregular shape, but embracing about one hundred square inches, out of which issues hot vapor, the rocks adjoining changing color under the intense heat with every breath blown upon them. The tramp of our horses' feet as we rode over the incrustation at the base of the mountain returned a hollow sound; yet while some of our party were not disposed to venture upon it with their horses, still I think with care in selecting a route there is very little danger in riding over it. On the mountain, large quantities of sulphur formed by the condensation of the vapor issuing from the crevices, now closed, but once in activity in the incrusted covering, have been deposited, and we collected many specimens of pure and crystallized sulphur. Thousands of pounds of pure and nearly pure sulphur are now lying on the top and sides of the mountain, all of which can be easily gathered with the aid of a spade to detach it from the mountain side incrustations to which it adheres in the process of condensation. We gave to this mountain the name "Crater hill." Five miles further on we camped near the "Mud geyser." Our course to-day has been for the greater part over a level valley, which was plainly visible from the top of Mount Washburn. The water of the river at this point is strongly impregnated with the mineral bases of the springs surrounding our camp, and that empty into the river above it. Friday, September 2.--To-day we have occupied ourselves in examining the springs and other wonders at this point. At the base of the foot-hills adjoining our camp are three large springs of thick boiling mud, the largest of which resembles an immense cauldron. It is about thirty feet in diameter, bordered by a rim several feet wide, upon which one can stand within reach of the boiling mass of mud, the surface of which is four or five feet below the rim enclosing it, the rim being a little raised above the surrounding level. Some twelve or fifteen rods from this spring are two other springs from ten to twelve feet in diameter. Near by is a hot (not boiling) spring of sulphur, fifteen to eighteen feet in diameter, too hot to bathe in. From these we passed over the timbered hill at the base of which these springs are situated. In the timber along the brow of the hill and near its summit, and immediately under the living trees, the hot sulphur vapor and steam issue from several fissures or craters, showing that the hottest fires are raging at some point beneath the surface crust, which in a great many places gives forth a hollow sound as we pass over it. Through a little coulee on the other side of the hill runs a small stream of greenish water, which issues from a small cavern, the mouth of which is about five feet high and the same dimension in width. From the mouth, the roof of the cavern descends at an angle of about fifteen degrees, till at the distance of twenty feet from the entrance it joins the surface of the water. The bottom of the cavern under the water seems to descend at about the same angle, but as the water is in constant ebullition, we cannot determine this fact accurately. The water is thrown out in regular spasmodic jets, the pulsations occurring once in ten or twelve seconds. The sides and mouth of this cavern are covered with a dark green deposit, some of which we have taken with us for analysis. About two hundred yards farther on is another geyser, the flow of which occurs about every six hours, and when the crater is full the diameter of the surface is about fourteen feet, the sides of the crater being of an irregular funnelshape, and descending at an angle of about forty-five degrees. At the lowest point at which we saw the water it was about seven feet in diameter on the surface. One or another of our party watched the gradual rise of the water for four or five hours. The boiling commenced when the water had risen half way to the surface, occasionally breaking forth with great violence. When the water had reached its full height in the basin, the stream was thrown up with great force to a height of from twenty to thirty feet, the column being from seven to ten feet in diameter at the midway height of the column, from bottom to top. The water was of a dark lead color, and those portions of the sides of the crater that were overflowed and then exposed by the rise and fall of the water were covered with stalagmites formed by the deposit from the geyser. While surveying these wonders, our ears were constantly saluted by dull, thundering, booming sounds, resembling the reports of distant artillery. As we approached the spot whence they proceeded, the ground beneath us shook and trembled as from successive shocks of an earthquake. Ascending a small hillock, the cause of the uproar was found to be a mud volcano--the greatest marvel we have yet met with. It is about midway up a gentle pine-covered slope, above which on the lower side its crater, thirty feet in diameter, rises to a height of about thirty-five feet. Dense masses of steam issue with explosive force from this crater, into whose tapering mouth, as they are momentarily dispelled by the wind, we can see at a depth of about forty feet the regurgitating contents. The explosions are not uniform in force or time, varying from three to eight seconds, and occasionally with perfect regularity occurring every five seconds. They are very distinctly heard at the distance of half a mile, and the massive jets of vapor which accompany them burst forth like the smoke of burning gunpowder. Some of these pulsations are much more violent than others, but each one is accompanied by the discharge of an immense volume of steam, which at once shuts off all view of the inside of the crater; but sometimes, during the few seconds intervening between the pulsations, or when a breeze for a moment carries the steam to one side of the crater, we can see to the depth of thirty feet into the volcano, but cannot often discover the boiling mud; though occasionally, when there occurs an unusually violent spasm or concussion, a mass of mud as large in bulk as a hogshead is thrown up as high as our heads, emitting blinding clouds of steam in all directions, and crowding all observers back from the edge of the crater. We were led to believe that this volcano has not been long in existence; but that it burst forth the present summer but a few months ago. The green leaves and the limbs of the surrounding forest trees are covered with fresh clay or mud, as is also the newly grown grass for the distance of 180 feet from the crater. On the top branches of some of the trees near by--trees 150 feet high--we found particles of dried mud that had fallen upon the high branches in their descent just after this first outburst, which must have thrown the contents of the volcano as high as 250 or 300 feet. Mr. Hauser, whose experience as an engineer and with projectile forces entitles his opinion to credit, estimates from the particles of mud upon the high trees, and the distance to which they were thrown, that the mud had been thrown, in this explosion, to the height of between 300 and 400 feet. By actual measurement we found particles of this mud 186 feet from the edge of the crater. We did not dare to stand upon the leeward side of the crater and withstand the force of the steam; and Mr. Hedges, having ventured too near the rim on that side, endangered his life by his temerity, and was thrown violently down the exterior side of the crater by the force of the volume of steam emitted during one of these fearful convulsions. General Washburn and I, who saw him fall, were greatly concerned lest while regaining his feet, being blinded by the steam, and not knowing in which direction to turn, he should fall into the crater. Between the volcano, the mud geyser and the cavern spring are a number of hot sulphur and mud springs, of sizes varying from two to twenty feet in diameter, and many openings or crevices from which issue hot vapor or steam, the mouths of which are covered with sulphur deposits or other incrustations. From the mud volcano we moved up the valley about four miles to our camp on the river, passing several mud puffs on the way. One of the soldiers brought in a large string of river trout, but the water of the river is strongly impregnated with the overflow from springs near its bank, and is not palatable. Some of our party who have drank the water are feeling nauseated. Others think that their illness is caused by partaking too freely of one of the luxuries of our larder, canned peaches. I assuaged my thirst with the peaches, and have not partaken of the water, and there is no one in our camp in finer condition than I am. Lieutenant Doane's felon has caused him great suffering to-day, and I have appealed to him to allow me to lance it. I have for many years carried a lancet in my pocketbook, but I find that I have inadvertently left it at home. So all this day, while on horseback, I have been preparing for the surgical operation by sharpening my penknife on the leathern pommel of my saddle as I rode along. I have in my seamless sack a few simple medicines, including a vial of chloroform. Lieutenant Doane has almost agreed to let me open the felon, provided I put him to sleep with the chloroform; but I feel that I am too much of a novice in the business to administer it. However, I have told him that I would do so if he demanded it. Our elevation to-day is about 7,500 feet above sea level. Saturday, September 3.--This morning General Washburn and I left camp immediately after breakfast and returned four miles on our track of September 1st to Crater Hill and the mud springs, for the purpose of making farther examinations. We found the sulphur boiling spring to be full to overflowing, the water running down the inclined surface of the crust in two different directions. It was also boiling with greater force than it was when we first saw it, the water being occasionally thrown up to the height of ten feet. About 80 or 100 yards from this spring we found what we had not before discovered, a boiling spring of tartaric acid in solution, with deposits around the edge of the spring, of which we gathered a considerable quantity. In the basin where we had found so many mud springs we to-day found a hot boiling spring containing a substance of deep yellow color, the precise nature of which we could not readily ascertain. We accordingly brought away some of it in a bottle (as is our usual custom in such cases of uncertainty), and we will have an analysis of it made on our return home. In the same basin we also found some specimens of black lava. A half mile south of these springs we found an alum spring yielding but little water and surrounded with beautiful alum crystals. From its border we obtained a great many curiously shaped deposits of alum slightly impregnated with iron. The border of this spring below the surface had been undermined in many places by the violent boiling of the water, to the distance of several feet from the margin, so that it was unsafe to stand near the edge of the spring. This, however, I did not at first perceive; and, as I was unconcernedly passing by the spring, my weight made the border suddenly slough off beneath my feet. General Washburn noticed the sudden cracking of the incrustation before I did, and I was aroused to a sense of my peril by his shout of alarm, and had sufficient presence of mind to fall suddenly backwards at full length upon the sound crust, whence, with my feet and legs extended over the spring, I rolled to a place of safety. But for General Washburn's shout of alarm, in another instant I would have been precipitated into this boiling pool of alum. We endeavored to sound the depth of this spring with a pole twenty-five feet long, but we found no bottom. Everything around us--air, earth, water--is impregnated with sulphur. We feel it in every drop of water we drink, and in every breath of air we inhale. Our silver watches have turned to the color of poor brass, tarnished. General Washburn and I again visited the mud vulcano to-day. I especially desired to see it again for the one especial purpose, among others of a general nature, of assuring myself that the notes made in my diary a few days ago are not exaggerated. No! they are not! The sensations inspired in me to-day, on again witnessing its convulsions, and the dense clouds of vapor expelled in rapid succession from its crater, amid the jarring of the earth, and the ominous intonations from beneath, were those of mingled dread and wonder. At war with all former experience it was so novel, so unnaturally natural, that I feel while now writing and thinking of it, as if my own senses might have deceived me with a mere figment of the imagination. But it is not so. The wonder, than which this continent, teeming with nature's grandest exhibitions, contains nothing more marvelous, still stands amid the solitary fastnesses of the Yellowstone, to excite the astonishment of the thousands who in coming years shall visit that remarkable locality.[J] Returning to the camp we had left in the morning, we found the train had crossed the river, and we forded at the same place, visiting, however, on our way another large cauldron of boiling mud lying nearly opposite our camp. Soon after fording the river we discovered some evidence that trappers had long ago visited this region. Here we found that the earth had been thrown up two feet high, presenting an angle to the river, quite ingeniously concealed by willows, and forming a sort of rifle-pit, from which a hunter without disclosing his hiding place could bring down swans, geese, ducks, pelicans, and even the furred animals that made their homes along the river bank. We followed the trail of the advance party along the bank of the river, and most of the way through a dense forest of pine timber and over a broad swampy lowland, when we came into their camp on the Yellowstone lake two miles from where it empties into the river, and about ten miles from our morning camp. We passed Brimstone basin on our left, and saw jets of steam rising from the hills back of it. From all appearances the Yellowstone can be forded at almost any point between the rapids just above the upper fall and the lake, unless there are quicksands and crevices which must be avoided. Yellowstone lake, as seen from our camp to-night, seems to me to be the most beautiful body of water in the world. In front of our camp it has a wide sandy beach like that of the ocean, which extends for miles and as far as the eye can reach, save that occasionally there is to be found a sharp projection of rocks. The overlooking bench rises from the water's edge about eight feet, forming a bank of sand or natural levee, which serves to prevent the overflow of the land adjoining, which, when the lake is receiving the water from the mountain streams that empty into it while the snows are melting, is several feet below the surface of the lake. On the shore of the lake, within three or four miles of our camp, are to be found specimens of sandstone, resembling clay, of sizes varying from that of a walnut to a flour barrel, and of every odd shape imaginable. Fire and water have been at work here together--fire to throw out the deposit in a rough shape, and water to polish it. From our camp we can see several islands from five to ten miles distant in a direct line. Two of the three "Tetons," which are so plainly visible to travelers going to Montana from Eagle Rock bridge on Snake river, and which are such well-known and prominent landmarks on that stage route, we notice to-night in the direction of south 25 degrees west from our camp. We shall be nearer to them on our journey around the lake. Sunday, September 4.--This morning at breakfast time Lieutenant Doane was sleeping soundly and snoring sonorously, and we decided that we would not waken him, but would remain in camp till the afternoon and perhaps until morning. Walter Trumbull suggested that a proper deference to Jake Smith's religious sentiments ought to be a sufficient reason for not traveling on Sunday, whereupon Jake immediately exclaimed, "If we're going to remain in camp, let's have a game of draw." Last evening Lieutenant Doane's sufferings were so intense that General Washburn and I insisted that he submit to an operation, and have the felon opened, and he consented provided I would administer chloroform. Preparations were accordingly made after supper. A box containing army cartridges was improvised as an operating table, and I engaged Mr. Bean, one of our packers, and Mr. Hedges as assistant surgeons. Hedges was to take his position at Doarte's elbow, and was to watch my motion as I thrust in the knife blade, and hold the elbow and fore-arm firmly to prevent any involuntary drawing back of the arm by Lieutenant Doane, at the critical moment. When Doane was told that we were ready, he asked, "Where is the chloroform?" I replied that I had never administered it, and that after thinking the matter over I was afraid to assume the responsibility of giving it. He swallowed his disappointment, and turned his thumb over on the cartridge box, with the nail down. Hedges and Bean were on hand to steady the arm, and before one could say "Jack Robinson," I had inserted the point of my penknife, thrusting it down to the bone, and had ripped it out to the end of the thumb. Doane gave one shriek as the released corruption flew out in all directions upon surgeon and assistants, and then with a broad smile on his face he exclaimed, "That was elegant!" We then applied a poultice of bread and water, which we renewed a half hour later, and Doane at about eight o'clock last night dropped off into a seemingly peaceful sleep, which has been continuous up to the time of this writing, two o'clock p.m.[K] Evening of September 4.--I have been glad to have this rest to-day, for with the time spent in writing up a detailed diary in addition to the work about camp, I have been putting in about sixteen hours work each day. So this afternoon a nap of two or three hours was a pleasant rest. I strolled for a long distance down the shore, the sand of which abounds in small crystals, which some of our party think may possess some value. Craters emitting steam through the water are frequently seen beneath the surface, at a distance of from forty to fifty feet from its margin, the water in which is very hot, while that of the lake surrounding them I found to be too cool for a pleasant bath. In some places the lake water is strongly impregnated with sulphur. One crater emits a jet of steam with a hissing noise as loud as that usually heard at the blowing off of the safety valve of a steam-boat. In the clear light of the setting sun, we can see the three Tetons in a southwesterly direction. [Illustration: GRAND TETON.] Some member of our party has asked what is the meaning of the word "Teton" given to these mountains.[L] Lieutenant Doane says it is a French word signifying "Woman's Breast," and that it was given to these mountains by the early French explorers, because of their peculiar shape. I think that the man who gave them this name must have seen them from a great distance; for as we approach them, the graceful curvilinear lines which obtained for them this delicate appellation appear angular and ragged. From our present point of view the name seems a misnomer. If there were twelve of them instead of three, they might better be called the "Titans," to illustrate their relation to the surrounding country. He indeed must have been of a most susceptible nature, and, I would fain believe, long a dweller amid these solitudes, who could trace in these cold and barren peaks any resemblance to the gentle bosom of woman. Monday, September 5.--Lieutenant Doane continued to sleep all last night, making a thirty-six hours nap, and after dressing his thumb and taking an observation to determine our elevation, which we found to be 7714 feet above the ocean, we broke camp at nine o'clock. After the train had got under way, I asked Mr. Hedges to remain behind and assist me in measuring, by a rude system of triangulation, the distance across the lake as well as to the Tetons; but owing to the difficulty we encountered in laying out a base line of sufficient length, we abandoned the scheme after some two hours of useless labor. [Illustration: SLATE SPECIMENS FROM CURIOSITY POINT. SLATE CUP. LEG AND FOOT.] Following the trail of the advance party, we traveled along the lake beach for about six miles, passing a number of small hot sulphur springs and lukewarm sulphur ponds, and three hot steam jets surrounded by sulphur incrustations. After six miles, we left the beach, and traveled on the plateau overlooking the lake. This plateau was covered with a luxuriant growth of standing pine and a great deal of fallen timber, through which at times considerable difficulty was experienced in passing. A little way from the trail is an alkaline spring about six feet in diameter. We came to camp on the shore of the lake, after having marched fifteen miles in a southerly direction. We have a most beautiful view of the lake from our camp. Yesterday it lay before us calm and unruffled, save by the waves which gently broke upon the shore. To-day the winds lash it into a raging sea, covering its surface with foam, while the sparkling sand along the shore seems to form for it a jeweled setting, and the long promontories stretching out into it, with their dense covering of pines, lend a charming feature to the scene. Water never seemed so beautiful before. Waves four feet high are rolling in, and there appear to be six or seven large islands; but we cannot be certain about this number until we reach the south shore. From this point we cannot tell whether the wooded hills before us are islands or promontories. On the shore are to be found large numbers of carnelians or crystallized quartz, agates, specimens of petrified wood, and lava pebbles or globules. We have found also many curious objects of slate formation, resembling hollowed-out cups, discs, and two well formed resemblances of a leg and foot, and many other curious objects which Nature in her most capricious mood has scattered over this watery solitude. All these seem to be the joint production of fire and water; the fire forming and baking them, and the water polishing them. We called this place "Curiosity Point." If Mount Washington were set in the lake, its summit would be two thousand feet below the surface of the water. To-night a conference of the party was held, to decide whether we would continue our journey around the lake, or retrace our steps and pass along the north side of the lake over to the Madison. By a vote of six to three we have decided to go around the lake. Mr. Hauser voted in favor of returning by way of the north side. My vote was cast for going around the lake. As we passed along the shore to-day, we could see the steam rising from a large group of hot springs on the opposite shore of the lake bordering on what seems to be the most westerly bay or estuary.[M] We will have an opportunity to examine them at short range, when we have completed our journey around the lake. Tuesday, September 6.--We broke camp at ten thirty this morning, bearing well to the southeast for an hour and then turning nearly due south, our trail running through the woods, and for a large part of our route throughout the day, through fallen timber, which greatly impeded our progress. We did not make over ten miles in our day's travel. Frequently we were obliged to leave the trail running through the woods, and return to the lake, and follow the beach for some distance. We passed along the base of a brimstone basin, the mountains forming a semi-circle half way around it, the lake completing the circle. In company with Lieutenant Doane I went up the side of the mountain, which for the distance of three or four miles and about half way to the summit is covered with what appears to be sulphate (?) of lime and flowers of sulphur mixed. Exhalations are rising from all parts of the ground at times, the odor of brimstone being quite strong; but the volcanic action in this vicinity is evidently decreasing. About half way up the deposit on the mountain side a number of small rivulets take their rise, having sulphur in solution, and farther down the mountain and near the base are the dry beds of several streams from ten to twenty feet in width which bear evidence of having at some time been full to the banks (two or three feet deep) with sulphur water. The small streams now running are warm. The side of the mountain over which we rode, seems for the most part to be hollow, giving forth a rumbling sound beneath the feet, as we rode upon the crust, which is very strong. In no instance did it give way as did the crust at "Crater hill," under which the fires were raging, though the incrustation appears to be very similar, abounding in vents and fissures and emitting suffocating exhalations of sulphur vapor. On the sides of the mountain were old fissures, surrounded by rusty looking sulphur incrustations, now nearly washed away. The whole mountain gives evidence of having been, a long time ago, in just the same condition of conflagration as that in which we found "Crater hill;" but all outward trace of fire has now disappeared, save what is found in the warm water of the small streams running down the sides. Our course for the past two days has been in nearly a south-southeast direction, or about parallel with the Wind river mountains. We have to-day seen an abundance of the tracks of elk and bears, and occasionally the track of a mountain lion. Wednesday, September 7.--Last night when all but the guards were asleep, we were startled by a mountain lion's shrill scream, sounding so like the human voice that for a moment I was deceived by it into believing that some traveler in distress was hailing our camp. The stream near the bank of which our camp lay, flows into the southeast arm of Yellowstone lake, and for which the name "Upper Yellowstone" has been suggested by some of our party; but Lieutenant Doane says that he thinks he has seen on an old map the name "Bridger" given to some body of water near the Yellowstone. We tried to cross the river near its mouth, but found the mud in the bed of the stream and in the bottom lands adjoining too deep; our horses miring down to their bellies. In accordance with plans agreed upon last night, General Washburn and a few of the party started out this morning in advance of the others to search for a practicable crossing of the river and marshes, leaving the pack train in camp. In company with Lieutenant Doane I went out upon a reconnaissance for the purpose of determining the elevation of the mountains opposite our camp, as well as the shape of the lake as far as we could see the shore, and also to determine as far as possible our locality and the best line of travel to follow in passing around the lake. There is just enough excitement attending these scouting expeditions to make them a real pleasure, overbalancing the labor attendant upon them. There is very little probability that any large band of Indians will be met with on this side of the lake, owing to the superstitions which originate in the volcanic forces here found. We followed along the high bank adjacent to the bottom through which the river runs in a direction a little south of east for the distance of about three miles, when we entered a heavily timbered ravine, which we followed through the underbrush for some three miles, being frequently obliged to dismount and lead our horses over the projecting rocks, or plunging through bushes and fallen timber. At the end of two hours we reached a point in the ascent where we could no longer ride in safety, nor could our horses climb the mountain side with the weight of our bodies on their backs. Dismounting, we took the bridle reins in our hands, and for the space of an hour we led our horses up the steep mountain side, when we again mounted and slowly climbed on our way, occasionally stopping to give our horses a chance to breathe. Arriving at the limit of timber and of vegetation, we tied our horses, and then commenced the ascent of the steepest part of the mountain, over the broken granite, great care being necessary to avoid sliding down the mountain side with the loose granite. The ascent occupied us a little more than four hours, and all along the mountain side, even to near the summit, we saw the tracks of mountain sheep. The view from the summit of this mountain, for wild and rugged grandeur, is surpassed by none I ever before saw. The Yellowstone basin and the Wind river mountains were spread out before us like a map. On the south the eye followed the source of the Yellowstone above the lake, until, twenty-five miles away, it was lost in an immense cañon, beyond which two immense jets of vapor rose to a height of probably three hundred feet, indicating that there were other and perhaps greater wonders than those embraced in our prescribed limit of exploration. On the north the outlet of the lake and the steam from the mud geyser and mud volcano were distinctly visible, while on the southeast the view followed to the horizon a succession of lofty peaks and ridges at least thirty miles in width, whose jagged slopes were filled with yawning caverns, pine-embowered recesses and beetling precipices, some hundreds and some thousands of feet in height. This is the range which Captain Raynolds, approaching from the east, found impassable while on his exploring tour to the Yellowstone in the year 1860. I shall, upon my return home, read Captain Raynolds' report with renewed interest.[N] The mountain on which we stood was the most westerly peak of a range which, in long extended volume, swept to the southeastern horizon, exhibiting a continuous elevation more than thirty miles in width, its central line broken into countless points, knobs, glens and defiles, all on the most colossal scale of grandeur and magnificence. Outside of these, on either border, along the entire range, lofty peaks rose at intervals, seemingly vying with each other in the varied splendors they presented to the beholder. The scene was full of majesty. The valley at the base of this range was dotted with small lakes. Lakes abound everywhere--in the valleys, on the mountains and farther down on their slopes, at all elevations. The appearance of the whole range was suggestive of the existence, ages since, of a high plateau on a level with these peaks (which seemed to be all of the same elevation), which by the action of the water had been cut down in the intervals between the peaks into deep gorges and cañons. The sides of the mountains formed in many places a perpendicular wall from 600 to 1,000 feet in height. This range of mountains has a marvelous history. As it is the loftiest, so it is probably the most remarkable lateral ridge of the Rocky range. In the expedition sent across the continent by Mr. Astor, in 1811, under command of Captain Wilson P. Hunt, that gentleman met with the first serious obstacle to his progress at the eastern base of this range. After numerous efforts to scale it, he turned away and followed the valley of Snake river, encountering the most discouraging disasters until he arrived at Astoria.[O] I have read somewhere (I think in Washington Irving's "Astoria" or "Bonneville's Adventures") that the Indians regard this ridge of mountains as the crest of the world, and that among the Blackfeet there is a fable that he who attains its summit catches a view of the "Land of Souls" and beholds the "Happy Hunting Grounds" spread out below him, brightening with the abodes of the free and generous spirits. Lieutenant Doane and I were somewhat fatigued with our climb of four hours' duration, and we refreshed ourselves with such creature comforts as we found on the summit; but, although we attained the "crest," we did not discern any "free and generous spirit," save that which we saw "through a glass darkly." At the point where we left our horses there was, on the east slope of the mountain, a body of snow, the surface of which was nearly horizontal, and the outer edge of which was thirty feet in perpendicular height. This body of snow is perpetual. At this point the elevation, as indicated by our aneroid barometer, was 9,476 feet, while at the summit it was 10,327 feet, a difference of 581 feet, which was the broken granite summit. The descent occupied an hour and a quarter, when we struck the trail of the pack train near the base of the mountain, which we followed until we found three poles placed in the form of a tripod, the longer pole pointing to the right to indicate that at this point the party had changed its course. [Illustration: Marker made of sticks.] Obeying this Indian sign, we descended the bank bordering the valley and traversed the bottom lands to the river, which we forded at a point where it was about ninety feet wide and three feet deep, with a current of about six miles an hour. This was about six or seven miles from the mouth of the river. We followed the trail of the advance party through a beautiful pine forest, free from underbrush, for the distance of two miles, passing two beautiful lakes. By this time night had overtaken us, and it was with difficulty that we could follow the trail, the tracks of the horses' shoes, which were our sole guide, being hardly discernible. But we pressed on, following the dark, serpentine line of freshly disturbed earth till it turned up the side of the mountain, where we followed it for upwards of a mile. Fearing lest we were not upon the right trail, we dismounted, and, placing our faces close to the ground, examined it carefully, but could not discover the impression of a single horseshoe. Gathering a few dry branches of pine, we kindled a fire upon the trail, when we discovered that we had been following, from the base of the mountain, the trail of a band of elk that had crossed the line of travel of the pack train at a point near the base of the mountain, and in the dim twilight we had not discovered the mistake. [Illustration: MAP OF YELLOWSTONE LAKE, AS KNOWN BETWEEN 1860 AND 1870. FROM THE MAP OF RAYNOLDS' EXPEDITION OF 1860.] The prospect for a night on the mountain, without blankets or supper, seemed now very good; but we retraced our steps as rapidly as possible, and on reaching the base of the mountain, struck out for the lake, resolving to follow the beach, trusting that our party had made their camp on the shore of the lake, in which case we should find them; but if camped at any considerable distance from the shore, we should not find them. Our ride over fallen timber and through morass for the distance of about two miles to the shore of the lake was probably performed more skillfully in the darkness of the night than if we had seen the obstacles in our path, and as we rounded a point on the smooth beach we saw at a distance of a little over a mile the welcome watch fire of our comrades. When we arrived within hailing distance we gave a loud halloo, and the ready response by a dozen sympathetic voices of our companions-in-arms showed that our own anxiety had been shared by them. Our camp to-night is on the westerly side of the most southeasterly bay of the lake. These bays are separated by long points of land extending far out into the lake. From our camp of two days ago some of these points seemed to be islands. From the top of the mountain, which Doane and I ascended to-day, I made an outline map of the north and east sides of the lake and part of the south side; but on account of the heavy timber on the promontories I could not make a correct outline of the south and west shores. General Washburn and Hauser, as well as myself, have thus far made outlines of the lake shore as best we could from points on a level with the lake, but these have been unsatisfactory and have lacked completeness, and Washburn and Hauser have both expressed their satisfaction with the sketch of the lake shore I made to-day from the top of the mountain; and Washburn has just told me that Lieutenant Doane has suggested that, as I was the first to reach the summit of the mountain, the peak should be named for me. I shall be gratified if this is done.[P] [Illustration: MAP OF YELLOWSTONE LAKE. COPY OF THE ORIGINAL OUTLINE SKETCHED BY NATHANIEL P. LANGFORD FROM THE TOP OF MOUNT LANGFORD, SEPT. 7, 1870, AND COMPLETED SEPT. 10 AND 13.] We have traveled from our morning camp about twelve miles, but we are not more than four miles from it in a straight line. Thursday, September 8.--Travel to-day has led us in zigzag directions over fallen timber some twelve miles. We have halted on a small creek about one mile from the most southerly arm of the lake and about seven miles in a straight line from our morning camp. This has been a terrible day for both men and horses. The standing trees are so thick that we often found it impossible to find a space wide enough for the pack animals to squeeze through, and we were frequently separated from each other in a search for a route. Hedges and Stickney, in this way, became separated from the rest of the party, and after suffering all the feelings of desolation at being lost in this wilderness, accidentally stumbled upon our camp, and they freely expressed their joy at their good fortune in being restored to the party. I fully sympathized with them, for, speaking from a personal experience of a similar character which I had in 1862, I can say that a man can have no more complete sense of utter desolation than that which overwhelms him when he realizes that he is lost. At one point while they were seeking some sign of the trail made by the rest of the party, a huge grizzly bear dashed by them, frightening Hedges' horse, which broke his bridle and ran away. After supper Washburn and Hauser went up on the ridge back of the camp to reconnoiter and ran across a she grizzly and her two cubs. Being unarmed, they hastily returned to camp for their guns, and five or six of us joined them in a bear hunt. The members of this hunting party were all elated at the thought of bagging a fine grizzly, which seemed an easy prey. What could one grizzly do against six hunters when her instinctive duty would lead her to hurry her little ones to a place of safety! While putting our guns in order and making other preparations for the attack, an animated discussion took place concerning a proper disposition of the two cubs which were to be captured alive. Some of our party thought that they ought to be carried home to Helena, but Bean and Reynolds, our packers, being appealed to, thought the plan not feasible unless they could be utilized as pack animals. When we reached the spot where Washburn and Hauser had last seen the bear, we traced her into a dense thicket, which, owing to the darkness, we did not care to penetrate, for not one of us felt that we had lost that particular bear. Jake Smith, with more of good sense than usual, but with his usual lack of scriptural accuracy, remarked, "I always considered Daniel a great fool to go into a den of bears."[Q] Our journey for the entire day has been most trying, leading us through a trackless forest of pines encumbered on all sides by prostrate trunks of trees. The difficulty of urging forward our pack train, making choice of routes, extricating the horses when wedged between the trees, and re-adjusting the packs so that they would not project beyond the sides of the horses, required constant patience and untiring toil, and the struggle between our own docility and the obstacles in our way, not unfrequently resulted in fits of sullenness or explosions of wrath which bore no slight resemblance to the volcanic forces of the country itself. [Illustration: Benj. Stickney] On one of these occasions when we were in a vast net of down timber and brush, and each man was insisting upon his own particular mode of extrication, and when our tempers had been sorely tried and we were in the most unsocial of humors, speaking only in half angry expletives, I recalled that beautiful line in Byron's "Childe Harold," "There is a pleasure in the pathless woods," which I recited with all the "ore rotundo" I could command, which struck the ludicrous vein of the company and produced an instantaneous response of uproarious laughter, which, so sudden is the transition between extremes, had the effect to restore harmony and sociability, and, in fact, to create a pleasure in the pathless wilderness we were traveling. One of our pack horses is at once a source of anxiety and amusement to us all. He is a remarkable animal owned by Judge Hedges, who, however, makes no pretentious to being a good judge of horses. Mr. Hedges says that the man from whom he purchased the animal, in descanting upon his many excellent qualities, said: "He is that kind of an animal that drives the whole herd before him." The man spoke truly, but Mr. Hedges did not properly interpret the encomium, nor did he realize that the seller meant to declare that the animal, from sheer exhaustion, would always be lagging behind the others of the herd. From the start, and especially during our journey through the forest, this pony, by his acrobatic performances and mishaps, has furnished much amusement for us all. Progress to-day could only be accomplished by leaping our animals over the fallen trunks of trees. Our little broncho, with all the spirit necessary, lacks oftentimes the power to scale the tree trunks. As a consequence, he is frequently found resting upon his midriff with his fore and hind feet suspended over the opposite sides of some huge log. "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." He has an ambitious spirit, which is exceeded only by his patience. He has had many mishaps, any one of which would have permanently disabled a larger animal, and we have dubbed him "Little Invulnerable." One of the soldiers of our escort, Private Moore, has made a sketch of him as he appeared to-day lying across a log, of which I am to have a copy. [Illustration: LITTLE INVULNERABLE.] I growled at Hauser and scolded him a little in camp to-night because of some exasperating action of his. I here record the fact without going into details. I think that I must try to be more patient. But I am feeling somewhat the fatigue of our journey. However, there is something to be said on the other hand, and that is that there is no one of the party better able to bear its labors and anxieties than I, and therefore I should be the last man to lose my patience. I know of nothing that can try one's patience more than a trip of any considerable length by wagon train or pack train through an uninhabited region, and the most amiable of our race cannot pass this ordeal entirely unscathed. Persons who are not blessed with uncommon equanimity never get through such a journey without frequent explosions of temper, and seldom without violence. Even education, gentle training and the sharpest of mental discipline do not always so effectually subdue the passions that they may not be aroused into unwonted fury during a long journey through a country filled with obstructions. Philosophy has never found a fitter subject for its exercise than that afforded by the journey we are now making, which obliges the members of our party to strive to relieve each other's burdens. Friday, September 9.--Last night there occurred an incident which I would gladly blot from these pages, but a faithful record of all the events of camp life in connection with this expedition demands that I omit nothing of interest, nor set down "aught in malice." Mr. Hedges and I were on guard during the last relief of the night, which extends from the "Wee sma' hours ayont the twal" to daybreak. The night was wearing on when Hedges, being tempted of one of the Devils which doubtless roam around this sulphurous region, or that perhaps followed Lieutenant Doane and myself down from that "high mountain apart" where the spirits roam, asked me if I was hungry. I replied that such had been my normal condition ever since our larder had perceptibly declined. Mr. Hedges then suggested that, as there was no food already cooked in the camp, we take each a wing of one of the partridges and broil it over our small fire. It was a "beautiful thought," as Judge Bradford of Colorado used to say from the bench when some knotty legal problem relating to a case he was trying had been solved, and was speedily acted upon by both of us. But I was disappointed in finding so little meat on a partridge wing, and believed that Hedges would have chosen a leg instead of a wing, if he had pondered a moment, so I remedied the omission, and, as a result, each roasted a leg of the bird. Soon increase of appetite grew by what it fed on, and the breast of the bird was soon on the broiler. In the meantime our consciences were not idle, and we were "pricked in our hearts." The result was that we had a vision of the disappointment of our comrades, as each should receive at our morning breakfast his small allotment of but one partridge distributed among so many, and it did not take us long to send the remaining bird to join its mate. Taking into consideration the welfare of our comrades, it seemed the best thing for us to do, and we debated between ourselves whether the birds would be missed in the morning, Hedges taking the affirmative and I the negative side of the question. This morning when our breakfast was well nigh finished, Mr. Hauser asked "Newt," the head cook, why he had not prepared the partridges for breakfast. "Newt" answered that when he opened the pan this morning the birds had "done gone," and he thought that "Booby" (the dog) had eaten them. Whereupon Hauser pelted the dog with stones and sticks. Hedges and I, nearly bursting with our suppressed laughter, quietly exchanged glances across the table, and the situation became quite intense for us, as we strove to restrain our risibles while listening to the comments of the party on the utter worthlessness of "that dog Booby." Suddenly the camp was electrified by Gillette asking, "Who was on guard last night?" "That's it," said one. "That's where the birds went," said another. This denouement was too much for Hedges and myself, and amid uproarious laughter we made confession, and "Booby" was relieved from his disgrace and called back into the camp, and patted on the head as a "good dog," and he has now more friends in camp than ever before. Mr. Hauser, who brought down the birds with two well directed shots with his revolver, made from the back of his horse without halting the animal, had expected to have a dainty breakfast, but he is himself too fond of a practical joke to express any disappointment, and no one in the party is more unconcerned at the outcome than he. He is a philosopher, and, as I know from eight years' association with him, does not worry over the evils which he can remedy, nor those which he cannot remedy. There can be found no better man than he for such a trip as we are making. "Booby" is taking more kindly, day by day, to the buckskin moccasins which "Newt" made and tied on his feet a few days ago. When he was first shod with them he rebelled and tore them off with his teeth, but I think he has discovered that they lessen his sufferings, which shows that he has some good dog sense left, and that probably his name "Booby" is a misnomer. I think there is a great deal of good in the animal. He is ever on the alert for unusual noises or sounds, and the assurance which I have that he will give the alarm in case any thieving Indians shall approach our camp in the night is a great relief to my anxiety lest some straggling band of the Crows may "set us afoot." Jake Smith was on guard three nights ago, and he was so indifferent to the question of safety from attack that he enjoyed a comfortable nap while doing guard duty, and I have asked our artist, Private Moore, to make for me a sketch of Smith as I found him sound asleep with his saddle for a pillow. Jake might well adopt as a motto suitable for his guidance while doing guard duty, "Requieseat in pace." Doubtless Jake thought, "Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?" I say _thought_ for I doubt if Jake can give a correct verbal rendering of the sentence. A few evenings ago he jocosely thought to establish, by a quotation from Shakespeare, the unreliability of a member of our party who was telling what seemed a "fish story," and he clinched his argument by adding that he would apply to the case the words of the immortal Shakespeare, "Othello's _reputation's_ gone." [Illustration: JAKE SMITH, GUARDING THE CAMP FROM HOSTILE INDIAN ATTACK. "REQUIESCAT IN PACE."] We broke camp this morning with the pack train at 10 o'clock, traveling in a westerly course for about two miles, when we gradually veered around to a nearly easterly direction, through fallen timber almost impassable in the estimation of pilgrims, and indeed pretty severe on our pack horses, for there was no trail, and, while our saddle horses with their riders could manage to force their way through between the trees, the packs on the pack animals would frequently strike the trees, holding the animals fast or compelling them to seek some other passage. Frequently, we were obliged to re-arrange the packs and narrow them, so as to admit of their passage between the standing trees. At one point the pack animals became separated, and with the riding animals of a portion of the party were confronted with a prostrate trunk of a huge tree, about four feet in diameter, around which it was impossible to pass because of the obstructions of fallen timber. Yet pass it we must; and the animals, one after another, were brought up to the log, their breasts touching it, when Williamson and I, the two strongest men of the party, on either side of an animal, stooped down, and, placing each a shoulder back of a fore leg of a horse, rose to an erect position, while others of the party placed his fore feet over the log, which he was thus enabled to scale. In this way we lifted fifteen or twenty of our animals over the log. Soon after leaving our camp this morning our "Little Invulnerable," while climbing a steep rocky ascent, missed his footing and turned three back summersaults down into the bottom of the ravine. We assisted him to his feet without removing his pack, and he seemed none the worse for his adventure, and quickly regained the ridge from which he had fallen and joined the rest of the herd. At 3 o'clock in the afternoon we halted for the day, having traveled about six miles, but our camp to-night is not more than three miles from our morning camp. Mr. Hedges' pack horse, "Little Invulnerable," was missing when we camped; and, as I was one of the four men detailed for the day to take charge of the pack train, I returned two miles on our trail with the two packers, Reynolds and Bean, in search of him. We found him wedged between two trees, evidently enjoying a rest, which he sorely needed after his remarkable acrobatic feat of the morning. We are camped in a basin not far from the lake, which surrounds us on three sides--east, north and west. Mr. Everts has not yet come into camp, and we fear that he is lost. About noon we crossed a small stream that flows towards the southwest arm of the lake, but which, I think, is one of the headwater streams of Snake river. I think that we have crossed the main divide of the Rocky Mountains twice to-day. We have certainly crossed it once, and if we have not crossed it twice we are now camped on the western slope of the main divide. If the creek we crossed about noon to-day continues to flow in the direction it was running at the point where we crossed it, it must discharge into the southwest arm of the lake, and it seems probable that Mr. Everts has followed down this stream. I have just had a little talk with Lieutenant Doane. He thinks that our camp to-night is on the Snake river side of the main divide, and there are many things that incline me to believe that he is correct in his opinion.[R] Last night we had a discussion, growing out of the fact that Hedges and Stickney, for a brief time, were lost, for the purpose of deciding what course we would adopt in case any other member of the party were lost, and we agreed that in such case we would all move on as rapidly as possible to the southwest arm of the lake, where there are hot springs (the vapor of which we noticed from our camp of September 5th), and there remain until all the party were united. Everts thought a better way for a lost man would be to strike out nearly due west, hoping to reach the headwaters of the Madison river, and follow that stream as his guide to the settlements; but he finally abandoned this idea and adopted that which has been approved by the rest of the party. So if Mr. Everts does not come into camp to-night, we will to-morrow start for the appointed rendezvous. Saturday, September 10.--We broke camp about 10 o'clock this morning, taking a course of about ten degrees north of west, traveling seven miles, and coming to camp on the lake shore at about five miles in a direct line from our morning camp at half past two p.m. No sign of Mr. Everts has been seen to-day, and on our arrival in camp, Gillette and Trumbull took the return track upon the shore of the lake, hoping to find him, or discover some sign of him. A large fire was built on a high ridge commanding all points on the beach, and we fired signal guns from time to time throughout the night. Mr. Hauser and I ascended a high point overlooking our camp, and about eight hundred feet above it, where from the top of a tall tree I had a fairly good view of the shore outline of the west and south shores of the lake, with all the inlets, points and islands. We were also enabled to mark out our course of travel which it would be necessary to follow in order to reach the most southwesterly arm of the lake and take advantage of openings in the timber to facilitate travel. On this high point we built a large fire which could be seen for many miles in all directions by any one not under the bank of the lake, and which we hoped Mr. Everts might see, and so be directed to our camp. In going to the summit we traveled several hundred feet on a rocky ridge not wide enough for safe travel by a man on horseback. At an elevation of about eight hundred feet above Yellowstone lake we found two small lakes nestled in a deep recess in the mountain and surrounded by the overturned rocks. Our route to-day has been entirely through fallen timber, and it has been a hard day of travel on our horses, necessitating jumping over logs and dead branches of trees, and thus we have made very slow progress. The map of Yellowstone lake which we will be enabled to complete from the observations made to-day will show that its shape is very different from that shown on Captain Raynolds' map. The lake has but three islands. We are more than ever anxious about Mr. Everts. We had hoped, this morning, to make our camp to-night on the southwest arm of the lake, but the fallen timber has delayed us in our travel and prevented our doing so. The southwest arm of the lake has been our objective point for the past three days, and we feel assured that Mr. Everts, finding himself lost, will press on for that point, and, as he will not be hindered by the care of a pack train, he can travel twice as far in one day as we can, and we are therefore the more anxious to reach our destination. We have carefully considered all the points in the case, and have unanimously decided that it will be utter folly to remain in camp here, and equally so to have remained in this morning's camp, hoping that he would overtake us. On the evening that Mr. Hedges was lost, Mr. Everts told him that he ought to have struck out for the lake, as he (Everts) would do if lost. So we will move on to the southwest arm of the lake and remain three or four days. If Mr. Everts overtakes us at all he will do so by that time. [Illustration: Truman C. Everts] Sunday, September 11.--Gillette and Trumbull returned to camp this morning, having traversed the shore of the lake to a point east of our camp of September 9th, without discovering any sign of Mr. Everts. We have arrived at the conclusion that he has either struck out for the lake on the west, or followed down the stream which we crossed the day he was lost, or that he is possibly following us. The latter, however, is not very probable. Mr. Hauser, Lieutenant Doane and I saddled up immediately after breakfast, and, with a supply of provisions for Mr. Everts, pressed forward in advance of the rest of the party, marking a trail for the pack animals through the openings in the dense woods, and avoiding, as far as possible, the fallen timber. We rode through with all possible dispatch, watching carefully for the tracks of a horse, but found no sign of Mr. Everts. We followed both the beach and the trail on the bank for several miles in either direction, but we saw neither sign nor track. The small stream which we crossed on the 9th does not flow into this arm of the lake as we thought it might, and it is evidently a tributary of the Snake river. The pack train arrived early in the afternoon with the rest of the party, and all were astonished and saddened that no trace of Mr. Everts had been found. We shall to-night mature a plan for a systematic search for him. It is probable that we will make this camp the base of operations, and remain here several days. Everts has with him a supply of matches, ammunition and fishing tackle, and if he will but travel in a direct line and not veer around to the right or left in a circle, he will yet be all right. Directly west of our camp on the further side of this arm of the lake, and about four miles distant, are several hot springs which we shall visit before leaving the lake. We were roused this morning about 2 o'clock by the shrill howl of a mountain lion, and again while we were at breakfast we heard another yell. As we stood around our campfire to-night, our ears were saluted with a shriek so terribly human, that for a moment we believed it to be a call from Mr. Everts, and we hallooed in response, and several of our party started in the direction whence the sounds came, and would have instituted a search for our comrade but for an admonitory growl of a mountain lion. We have traveled to-day about seven miles. On leaving our camps yesterday and to-day, we posted conspicuously at each a placard, stating clearly the direction we had taken and where provisions could be found. The country through which we have passed for the past five days is like that facetiously described by Bridger as being so desolate and impassable and barren of resources, that even the crows flying over it were obliged to carry along with them supplies of provisions. Monday, September 12.--In accordance with our pre-arranged programme, three parties were sent out this morning in search of Mr. Everts. Smith and Trumbull were to follow the take shore until they came in sight of our last camp. Hauser and Gillette were to return on our trail through the woods, taking with them their blankets and two days' rations. General Washburn and myself were to take a southerly direction towards what we called "Brown Mountain," some twelve miles away. Smith and Trumbull returned early in the afternoon and reported having seen in the sand the tracks of a man's foot, and Smith thought that he saw several Indians, who disappeared in the woods as they approached; but Trumbull, who was with him, did not see them, and Smith says it was because he was short-sighted. For some reason they did not pursue their investigations farther, and soon returned in good order to camp. The reconnaissance made by General Washburn and myself resulted in no discovery of any trace of Everts. We traveled about eleven miles directly south, nearly to the base of Brown mountain, carefully examining the ground the whole of the way, to see if any horseshoe tracks could be discovered. We crossed no stream between the lake and the mountain, and if Mr. Everts followed the stream which we crossed on the 9th, he is south of Brown mountain, for it is evident that he did not pass westward between Brown mountain and Yellowstone lake; otherwise we would have discovered the tracks of his horse. It is now night, and Hauser and Gillette have not yet returned. Two miles on this side (the north side) of Brown mountain, Washburn and I passed over a low divide, which, I think, must be the main range of the Rocky Mountains, just beyond which is another brimstone basin containing forty or fifty boiling sulphur and mud springs, and any number of small steam jets. A small creek runs through the basin, and the slopes of the mountains on either side to the height of several hundred feet showed unmistakable signs of volcanic action beneath the crust over which we were traveling. A considerable portion of the slope of the mountain was covered with a hollow incrustation of sulphur and lime, or silica, from which issued in many places hot steam, and we found many small craters from six to twelve inches in diameter, from which issued the sound of the boiling sulphur or mud, and in many instances we could see the mud or sulphur water. There are many other springs of water slightly impregnated with sulphur, in which the water was too hot for us to bear the hand more than two or three seconds, and which overflowed the green spaces between the incrustations, completely saturating the ground, and over which in many places the grass had grown, forming a turf compact and solid enough to bear the weight of a man ordinarily; but when it once gave way the underlying deposit was so thin that it afforded no support. While crossing, heedless of General Washburn's warning, one of these green places, my horse broke through and sank to his body as if in a bed of quicksand. I was off his back in an instant and succeeded in extricating the struggling animal, the turf being strong enough to bear his body alone, without the addition of the weight of a man. The fore legs of my horse, however, had gone through the turf into the hot, thin mud beneath. General Washburn, who was a few yards behind me on an incrusted mound of lime and sulphur (which bore us in all cases), and who had just before called to me to keep off the grassy place, as there was danger beneath it, inquired of me if the deposit beneath the turf was hot. Without making examination I answered that I thought it might be warm. Shortly afterwards the turf again gave way, and my horse plunged more violently than before, throwing me over his head, and, as I fell, my right arm was thrust violently through the treacherous surface into the scalding morass, and it was with difficulty that I rescued my poor horse, and I found it necessary to instantly remove my glove to avoid blistering my hand. The frenzied floundering of my horse had in the first instance suggested to General Washburn the idea that the under stratum was hot enough to scald him. General Washburn was right in his conjecture. It is a fortunate circumstance that I to-day rode my light-weight pack horse; for, if I had ridden my heavy saddle horse, I think that the additional weight of his body would have broken the turf which held up the lighter animal, and that he would have disappeared in the hot boiling mud, taking me with him. At the base of Brown mountain is a lake, the size of which we could not very accurately ascertain, but which was probably about two miles long by three-quarters of a mile wide. On the south end appeared to be an outlet, and it seems to be near the head of the Snake river. Owing to the difficulty of reaching the beach, growing out of the mishaps arising from the giving way of the turf, as I have described, our nearest approach to the lake was about one-half of a mile. During the absence of Washburn and myself Mr. Hedges has spent the day in fishing, catching forty of the fine trout with which the lake abounds. Mr. Stickney has to-day made an inventory of our larder, and we find that our luxuries, such as coffee, sugar and flour, are nearly used up, and that we have barely enough of necessary provisions--salt, pepper, etc., to last us ten days longer with economy in their use. We will remain at the lake probably three or four days longer with the hope of finding some trace of Everts, when it will be necessary to turn our faces homewards to avoid general disaster, and in the meantime we will dry a few hundred pounds of trout, and carry them with us as a precautionary measure against starvation. At all of our camps for the past three days, and along the line of travel between them, we have blazed the trees as a guide for Mr. Everts, and have left a small supply of provisions at each place, securely cached, with notices directing Mr. Everts to the places of concealment. The soldiers' rations issued for thirty days' service will barely hold out for their own use, and we have little chance of borrowing from them. We left Helena with thirty days' rations, expecting to be absent but twenty-five days. We have already been journeying twenty-seven days, and are still a long way from home. A few nights ago I became ravenously hungry while on guard, and ate a small loaf of bread, one of five loaves that I found in a pan by the campfire. I was not aware at the time that these loaves were a part of the soldiers' breakfast rations, nor did I know that in the army service each soldier has his own particular ration of bread. So the next morning, with one ration of bread missing, one soldier would have been short in his allowance if the others had not shared their loaves with him. I supposed at the time of my discovery of the five loaves that they belonged to the larder of the Washburn branch of the party--not to the escort--and I apologized to the soldiers when I learned the truth, and we are now as good friends as ever; but, from an occasional remark which they drop in my presence, I perceive that they think they have the laugh on me. Unfortunately for them, we will part company before we reach the settlements, and I will have no opportunity to _liquidate_ my obligations. Hard work and plain living have already reduced my superfluous flesh, and "my clothes like a lady's loose gown hang about me," as the old song runs. Day before yesterday Mr. Gillette and I discussed the question of the probability of a man being able to sustain life in this region, by depending for his subsistence upon whatever roots or berries are to be found here. We have once before to-day referred to the fact that we have seen none of the roots which are to be found in other parts of the Rocky Mountain region, and especially in the elevated valleys. We have not noticed on this trip a single growing plant or specimen of the camas, the cowse, or yamph. If Mr. Everts has followed the stream on which we were camped the day he was lost down into the Snake river valley, he will find an abundance of the camas root, which is most nutritions, and which will sustain his life if he has sufficient knowledge of the root to distinguish the edible from the poisonous plant. I have been told by James Stuart that in the valley of the Snake river the "camas" and the "cowse" roots are to be found in great abundance, and are much prized as food by the Indians. "Cowse" is a Nez Perce word, the Snake Indians give the name "thoig" to the same root. It grows in great abundance in the country of the Nez Perce Indians, who eat great quantities of it, and these Indians are called by the Snake Indians the "Thoig A-rik-ka," or "Cowse-eaters." The camas is both flour and potatoes for several wandering nations, and it is found in the most barren and desolate regions in greatest quantity. The camas is a small round root, not unlike an onion in appearance. It is sweet to the taste, full of gluten, and very satisfying to a hungry man. The Indians have a mode of preparing it which makes it very relishable. In a hole a foot in depth, and six feet in diameter, from which the turf has been carefully removed, they build a fire for the purpose of heating the exposed earth surface, while in another fire they heat at the same time a sufficient number of flat rocks to serve as a cover. After the heating process is completed, the roots are spread over the bottom of the hole, covered with the turf with the grass side down, the heated rocks spread above, and a fire built upon them, and the process of cooking produces about the same change in the camas that is produced in coffee by roasting. It also preserves it in a suitable form for ready use. The yamph has a longer and smaller bulb than the camas, though not quite as nutritious, and may be eaten raw. Either of these roots contains nutriment sufficient to support life, and often in the experience of the tribes of the mountains winters have been passed with no other food. There is a poisonous camas, which is sometimes mistaken for the genuine root, but which cannot be eaten in large quantities without fatal results. It always grows where the true camas is found, and much care is necessary to avoid mixing the two while gathering the roots in any considerable quantity. So great is the esteem in which the camas is held that many of the important localities of the country in which it is found are named for it.[S] [Illustration: SECTION OF FUNNEL-SHAPED SPRING. SHOWING HOW BRANCHES AND TWIGS LODGE AT THE POINT OF CONVERGENCE SO AS TO MAKE A FOUNDATION FOR GRASS AND EARTH UNTIL THE SPRING IS FILLED TO THE TOP AND THE SURFACE IS COVERED WITH A LIVING TURF STRONG ENOUGH TO BEAR A CONSIDERABLE WEIGHT.] Lieutenant Doane was much amazed at the appearance of my horse's legs, upon our return from Brown mountain, and has asked General Washburn and myself what can be the nature of the ground where such a mishap could occur. My theory of the matter is this: We frequently found springs of hot water--though not boiling--some fifteen or twenty feet in diameter at the top, the sides of which were funnel-shaped, and converged to a narrow opening of say three feet diameter at a depth of twelve or fifteen feet, and which below the point of convergence opened out like an hour glass. In some of these springs at the point of convergence we found tree branches that had fallen into the spring and had become impregnated with the silica or lime of the water; water-soaked we call it. I saw a number of such springs in which several branches of trees were lying across the small opening at the point of convergence. When once these are firmly lodged, they form a support for smaller branches and twigs, and thus the tufts of grass which the spring floods or melting snows bring down from the sides of the mountain will, after a few years, made a sufficiently strong foundation for the earth, which will also wash down the slopes into the spring. Once a firm footing is established, it is only a question of time when the spring will be filled to the brim with earth. Then gradually the seed blown over the surface of the spring from the weeds and grass near by will take root, and, in the course of a few years, a strong turf will be formed, through which the water may percolate in many places, though giving to the unsuspecting traveler no sign of its treacherous character. I think that it was through such a turf as this that the fore legs of my horse and my right hand were plunged.[T] [Illustration: BREAKING THROUGH THE TURF, FORMED OVER THE SURFACE OF SUCH A SPRING AS THAT SHOWN ABOVE.] My pack horse which I rode to-day, a buckskin colored broncho, which is docile under the pack saddle, "bucked" as I mounted him this morning; but I kept my seat in the saddle without difficulty. Walter Trumbull, however, on my return to-night, presented me with a sketch which he says is a faithful portrayal of both horse and rider in the acrobatic act. I think the sketch is an exaggeration, and that I hugged the saddle in better form than it indicates. [Illustration: MY BUCKING BRONCHO.] Tuesday, September 13.--It was Jake Smith's turn to stand guard last night, but he refused to do so, and Washburn took his place. We have remained in camp all day. At about 9 o'clock this morning it began to rain and hail, and we have had a little snow, which continued to fall at intervals all day. At about 6 o'clock this evening Hauser and Gillette arrived in camp, having returned on the trail to within three miles of the place where we camped on the night of September 7th. They examined the trail and the beach with the utmost care, but without discovering any trace of Mr. Everts. They say that the trail over which our train passed, or, rather, the path which our train made, was hardly plain enough to be followed, and in many places where the pine leaves had fallen thick upon the ground, it was totally invisible, so that no one could have followed it with certainty except by dismounting and closely observing the ground at every step. They made the journey very well, from the fact that they had traveled the route once before, and their horses instinctively followed the back path for a great part of the distance without any special guidance. On their near approach to camp, when the trail was no longer discernible, their dog "Booby" took the lead when they were at fault, and brought them into camp all right. They think they might have been forced to lie out all night but for the sagacity of "Booby." They made on each of the two days nearly as great a distance as our train traveled in four days. Their report has fully set at rest the question of Mr. Everts having followed us. It settles as a fact that he did not again strike our trail, and that had he done so he could not have followed it, owing to his short-sightedness. Hauser and Gillette are probably the two best trailers and woodsmen in our party, and their report of the condition of the trail and the difficulty experienced in following it has satisfied us that Mr. Everts has either struck off in a southerly direction, following perhaps the headwaters of the Snake river, or that he has made an effort to reach the head of the lake with a view of returning by our trail to Boteler's ranch. It is snowing hard to-night, and the prospect for a day or two more in this camp is very good. The murky atmosphere to-night brings to view a number of springs on the opposite shore of this arm of the lake and farther back in the hills which we have not heretofore seen, and the steam is rising from fifty craters in the timbered ridge, giving it the appearance of a New England factory village. After holding a council this evening we have resolved to remain at this place two days more, hoping that Mr. Everts may overtake us, this arm of the lake being the _objective point_ of our travel, fixed on the day before that on which Mr. Everts was lost. Wednesday, September 14.--We have remained in camp all day, as it is next to impossible to move. The snow is nearly two feet deep, and is very wet and heavy, and our horses are pawing in it for forage. Our large army tent is doing us good service, and, as there is an abundance of dry wood close by our camp, we are extremely comfortable. I am the only one of the party who has a pair of water-proof boots, and I was up and out of the tent this morning before daylight cutting into cordwood a pine log, and before noon I had more than a half cord at the tent door. Washburn and Hauser offered to do some of this work if I would loan them my water-proof boots; but, as they are of a full size for me, and would probably drop off of their feet, I told them that I would get the wood. Lieutenant Doane to-day requested me to loan him this diary from which to write up his records, as the condition of his thumb has interfered with his use of a pen or pencil. I have accordingly loaned it to him, and Private Moore has been busy the greater part of the day copying portions of it. For myself, I am very glad to have a day of rest, for I have felt much wearied for several days. I think that I am certainly within bounds when I say that I have put in sixteen hours a day of pretty hard work, attending to camp duties, and writing each day till late at night, and I realize that this journal of travel is becoming ponderous. Yet there is daily crowded upon my vision so much of novelty and wonder, which should be brought to the notice of the world, and which, so far as my individual effort is concerned, will be lost to it if I do not record the incidents of each day's travel, that I am determined to make my journal as full as possible, and to purposely omit no details. It is a lifetime opportunity for publishing to all who may be interested a complete record of the discoveries of an expedition which in coming time will rank among the first and most important of American explorations. It is cold to-night, and the water in a pail standing at our tent door was frozen at 7 o'clock in the evening. The water fowl are more abundant at this point than they have been elsewhere on the lake on our journey around it, and we could see to-day hundreds of swans, geese and ducks, and many pelicans and gulls. Thursday, September 15.--This forenoon the weather moderated, and one-half the snow has melted, so that it is but about ten inches deep to-night. Still, our horses are becoming restless for want of sufficient food. The patches of grass which may be found under the snow are very limited in extent, and as the animals are confined to the length of their lariats, foraging is much more difficult than if they were running loose. We have seen no signs of Indians following us since we made our first camp upon the lake, and but little evidence that they have ever been here, except some few logs piled so as to conceal from view a hunter who may be attempting to bring down some of the game swimming on the lake. We feel convinced that Jake Smith drew upon both his imagination and his fears three days ago, when he reported that he had seen Indians on the beach of the lake. [Illustration: LIEUT. GUSTAVUS C. DOANE.] Each night that we have been camped here we have heard the shrill cries of the mountain lions, and under a momentary illusion I have each time been half convinced that it was a human being in distress. Because of the mountain lions we are keeping close watch upon our horses. They are very fond of horse flesh, and oftentimes will follow a horseman a long distance, more to make a meal upon the flesh of the horse than for the purpose of attacking the rider. [Illustration: JACK BARONETTE.] During the three days we have spent in this camp, I have been enabled to complete my diary for September 8th, 9th and 10th, which were red letter days--days of great anxiety. I had a good nap this afternoon while my diary was being used for Lieutenant Doane, and I feel greatly refreshed. My first thought on awakening was for poor Everts. I wonder where he can be throughout all this fierce storm and deep snow! Perhaps the snow did not reach him, for I noticed to-night that the ground was quite bare on the opposite side of this arm of the lake, while the snow is eight or ten inches deep here at our camp. Hauser is not feeling very well to-night. Friday, September 16.--We this morning resolved to move over to the vicinity of the hot springs on the opposite side of this arm of the lake, from which point we will leave the Yellowstone for the Madison river or some one of its branches. We followed up the beach for half a mile, and then journeyed along the bank of the lake through the woods for a mile to avoid the quicksands on the lake shore; then, taking the beach again, we followed it to the springs where we are now camped.[U] These springs surpass in extent, variety and beauty any which we have heretofore seen. They extend for the distance of nearly a mile along the shore of the lake, and back from the beach about one hundred yards. They number between ninety and one hundred springs, of all imaginable varieties. Farthest from the beach are the springs of boiling mud, in some of which the mud is very thin, in others of such a consistency that it is heaped up as it boils over, gradually spreading under its own weight until it covers quite a large surface. The mud or clay is of different colors. That in some of the springs is nearly as white as white marble; in others it is of a lavender color; in others it is of a rich pink, of different shades. I have taken specimens of each, which I will have analyzed on my return home.[V] In close proximity to these are springs discharging water nearly clear and apparently odorless, the bottoms and sides of which, as well as of the channels of the streams running from them, are covered with soft deposits of some substance they contain in solution. These deposits and the hard incrustations around the edges of the springs are of various colors, in some cases being dark red, in others scarlet, in others yellow, and in still others green. Along the shore of the lake are several boiling springs situated in the top of incrusted craters, but which do not boil over, the sediment which has been deposited around them forming a wall or embankment, holding back the water. But the most remarkable of all the springs at this point are six or seven of a character differing from any of the rest. The water in them is of a dark blue or ultra-marine hue, but it is wonderfully clear and transparent. Two of these springs are quite large; the remaining five are smaller, their diameters ranging from eight to fifteen feet. The water in one of these latter is thrown up to the height of two feet. The largest two of these springs are irregular in their general outline of nearly an oval shape, the larger of the two being about twenty-five feet wide by forty long, and the smaller about twenty by thirty feet. The discharge from each of them is about one gallon per minute. The sides of the springs are funnel-shaped, and converge until at the depth of thirty feet, the opening is about eight feet in diameter. From the surface or rim down to the lowest point of convergence where the opening enlarges, the sides of the funnel (which are corrugated and very uneven and irregular) are covered with a white deposit or incrustation which contrasts vividly with the dark opening at its base, which is distinctly visible at the depth of forty feet. These two springs are distant from each other about twenty yards, and there is a difference of about four feet in the elevation or level of the water. One peculiar feature of all these springs is that they seem to have no connection with each other beneath the surface. We find springs situated five or six feet apart, of the same general appearance but of different temperatures, and with the water upon different levels. The overflow from these springs for a great number of years has formed an incrusted bank overlooking the border of the lake, rising to the height of six feet; and, as the streams running from the springs are bordered with incrustations of various hues, depending upon the nature of the deposit or substance in solution, so the incrusted bank, which has been in process of formation for ages, exhibits all of these varied colors. In a number of places along the bank of the lake, this incrusted deposit is broken down and has crumbled into small pieces, upon which the waves have dashed until they have been moulded into many curious shapes, and having all the colors of the deposits in the springs--white, red and white blended, yellow and green. Cavernous hollows which fill the shore incrustation respond in weird and melancholy echoes to the dash of the billows. The bottoms of the streams flowing from the deeper springs have for some distance a pure white incrustation; farther down the slope the deposit is white in the center with sides of red, and still farther down the white deposit is hidden entirely by the red combined with yellow. From nearly all these springs we obtained specimens of the adjoining incrustations, all of which were too hot to be held for more than a moment even with the gloved hand. Between the springs all along the border of the lake were small craters from which issued hot steam or vapor, besides which there were many cold craters. Along the edge of the lake, out in the water from ten to thirty feet from the shore are to be found springs with the water bubbling up a few inches above the surface. None of the springs in this locality appeared to be very strongly impregnated with sulphur. Some of the incrustations on the beach are as white and delicate as alabaster. These are the springs which we observed on September 5th from our camp on the eastern shore of the lake. Our explorations of the Yellowstone will cease at this point, and to-morrow we start in our search for Firehole Basin. Our journey around Yellowstone lake in close proximity to the beach is doubtless the first ever attempted; and, although it has been attended with difficulty and distress, these have been to me as nothing compared with the enjoyment the journey has afforded, and it is with the greatest regret that I turn my face from it homewards. How can I sum up its wonderful attractions! It is dotted with islands of great beauty, as yet unvisited by man, but which at no remote period will be adorned with villas and the ornaments of civilized life. The winds from the mountain gorges roll its placid waters into a furious sea, and crest its billows with foam. Forests of pine, deep, dark and almost impenetrable, are scattered at random along its banks, and its beautiful margin presents every variety of sand and pebbly beach, glittering with crystals, carnelians and chalcedony. The Indians approach it under the fear of a superstition originating in the volcanic forces surrounding it, which amounts almost to entire exclusion. It possesses adaptabilities for the highest display of artificial culture, amid the greatest wonders of Nature that the world affords, and is beautified by the grandeur of the most extensive mountain scenery, and not many years can elapse before the march of civil improvement will reclaim this delightful solitude, and garnish it with all the attractions of cultivated taste and refinement. Strange and interesting as are the various objects which we have met with in this vast field of natural wonders, no camp or place of rest on our journey has afforded our party greater satisfaction than the one we are now occupying, which is our first camp since emerging from the dense forest. Filled with gloom at the loss of our comrade, tired, tattered, browned by exposure and reduced in flesh by our labors, we resemble more a party of organized mendicants than of men in pursuit of Nature's greatest novelties. But from this point we hope that our journey will be comparatively free from difficulties of travel. Mr. Hauser's experience as a civil engineer has been an invaluable aid in judging of the "lay of the land," and so in giving direction to our party in its zig-zag journeying around the lake. In speaking of this, Hauser says that he thinks that I have a more correct idea of mountain heights, distances and directions, and can follow a direct course through dense timber more unerringly than any man he knows, except James Stuart--a compliment which I accept most graciously. Some of our party declare that they would have had no expectation of finding their way back to camp, if they had ventured into the forest in search of Mr. Everts. I recited to Washburn and Hauser to-night an extract from "The Task," by the poet Cowper, which, in my younger days, I memorized for declamation, and which, I think, is at once expressive of our experience in the journey around the lake and of our present relief. "As one who long in thickets and in brakes Entangled, winds now this way and now that, His devious course uncertain, seeking home, Or having long in miry ways been foiled And sore discomfited, from slough to slough Plunging, and half despairing of escape, If chance at length he finds a green-sward Smooth and faithful to the foot, his spirits rise. He chirrups brisk his ear-erecting steed, And winds his way with pleasure and with ease." It is a source of great regret to us all that we must leave this place and abandon the search for Mr. Everts; but our provisions are rapidly diminishing, and force of circumstances obliges us to move forward. We still indulge the hope that he may have found and followed down some branch of the Madison river and reached Virginia City, or down Snake river and reached some settlement in that valley; and but for our anxiety to reach home and prove or disprove our expectations, we might have devoted much more time to visiting the objects of interest we have seen, and which we have been obliged to pass by. Mr. Hauser has eaten nothing to-day, and this evening he told me that he felt sick. Such an acknowledgment from him means far more than it would coming from many another man, for I know from intimate association with him for eight years that there is no man in our party who will more uncomplainingly reconcile himself to the hardships and privations of such a journey as this, and if he is too ill to travel to-morrow morning, and if the rest of our party think that they ought to take up the journey homeward, I will remain with him here for a day, and as the others will have to search out a path through the fallen timber, we can make their two days' journey in one by following their beaten trail without obstacles, and overtake them by the time they reach the Firehole river, if they find it at all. Saturday, September 17, morning.--We were awakened before daylight this morning by loud roaring sounds proceeding from the hot springs close by our camp, some of which were in violent action, though entirely quiescent yesterday. Some of them in which the surface of the water, last night, was several feet below the rim, are now overflowing. My saddle horse broke his lariat, frightened by the roaring of the springs, and plunged along too near one of them, when the surrounding incrustation gave way and he sank down to his body, but frantically extricated himself without standing upon the order of his extrication;--but he has cut his foot so badly that I do not think it will be prudent to ride him to-day. In his stead I will ride my smaller pack horse, who has nearly recovered from the effects of the scalding he received on my trip to Brown mountain. The hair has come off his legs in several places as the result of that mishap, yet his wonderful vitality always leaves him in a cheerful frame of mind and ready for any duty. This has been a gloomy morning in our camp, for we all have been depressed at the thought of leaving the lake and abandoning the search for Mr. Everts. We have discussed the situation from every point of view, and have tried to put ourselves in his place and have considered all the possibilities of fate that may befall him. At one moment he may be buoyed up with hope, however faint--at another weighed down by despair and fear, with all their mental terrors. Has he met death by accident, or may he be injured and unable to move, and be suffering the horrors of starvation and fever? Has he wandered aimlessly hither and thither until bereft of reason? As I contemplate all these possibilities, it is a relief to think that he may have lost his life at the hand of some vagabond Indian. As the result of this conference we have decided upon a final plan of action. We will give to Gillette from our remnant of provisions, ten days' rations, and Lieutenant Doane will detail Privates Moore and Williamson, with ten days' rations, and the three will continue the search from this point. Mr. Gillette says that with the ten days' rations they can devote five days to a continuous search, and the remaining five days will be sufficient, with forced traveling, for them to overtake us. Hauser has endeavored to throw a little cheer into the conference by saying to Gillette: "I think that I should be willing to take the risk of spending ten days more in this wilderness, if I thought that by so doing I could find a father-in-law." This provoked an uproarious shout of laughter, for we well understood that Hauser alluded to the many social courtesies which Gillette, in Helena, had extended to Miss Bessie Everts, the charming daughter of our lost comrade, and one of the most attractive of Montana belles. This sally of Mr. Hauser gives to me the assurance of his own convalescence; and, if it so happens that Gillette finds Mr. Everts, we will have the realization of another image in "Childe Harold," "A rapture on the lonely shore."[W] Saturday, September 17, evening.--Gillette, Moore and Williamson left us this morning about 9 o'clock on their final quest for Mr. Everts, and the rest of our party soon resumed our journey. We have traveled about twelve miles to-day, about one-half of the distance being through open timber, and the other half over prostrate pines unmarked by any trail, and through which we found it difficult to make our way, although the obstructions were not so formidable as those on the south shore of Yellowstone lake.[X] About noon we crossed a high ridge which we had reached by a steep ascent, and on descending the opposite side we saw upon our left a large lake which Lieutenant Doane and some others of our party think is at the head of Firehole river, and they suggested that we make our way to this lake and take as a guide to the Firehole the stream which they believe will be found flowing from it. They argued that by so doing we would be relieved from all uncertainty concerning the course to be pursued in order to reach the Firehole river; but they were easily persuaded that if the Firehole does take its rise in that lake, we can as certainly strike that river by pursuing our present westwardly direction as if we followed the plan suggested by them. Hauser and I feel sure that this large lake is the head of Snake river. In the afternoon we passed another ridge and descended into a small open valley where we found a spring of good water, and where we are now camped, near a very small creek, which runs in a direction a little north of west, and which I believe flows to the Firehole or the Madison river. Our direction of travel to-day has been governed somewhat by our compasses, but we have neglected to make allowance for the variation of the magnetic needle, which I think is about twenty degrees east of the true meridian. Therefore in trying to follow a westerly course, we have in reality taken a course about twenty degrees north of west. As we passed the large lake on our left to-day, I observed that there was no ridge of land between us and the lake; therefore I believe that it is in the Snake river valley, and that we have to-day twice crossed the main range of the Rocky Mountains. The fact that the Snake river valley is so readily accessible from Yellowstone lake, gives me hope to-night that Mr. Everts may have made his way out of the forest to some settlement in the Snake river valley. There is still four or five inches of snow on the ground, but there is plenty of long grass under it, and our horses are faring tolerably well, and will soon fill themselves with either grass or snow. There is no clear space large enough for us to pitch our tent. We have had our supper--an indifferent and scanty meal--and each man is now seeking with varied success a dry spot beneath the sheltering branches of the pines whereon to spread his blankets. Some of our party seem terribly fatigued, and others mentally depressed. The question of our present locality is still unsolved in their minds, and has been intensified by the discussions in camp to-night as to whether or not the large lake we saw discharges its waters into the Snake river, and they ask: "If it does so, have we re-crossed the main range to the eastern slope?" For myself I do not know of any day since we left home when I have been in better spirits. I am sure we are on the right course and feel no anxiety. The sky to-night is clear and cloudless, but the snow is melting fast, and there is a peculiar odor in the air that gives assurance of rain before morning. Hedges (my bed fellow) and I have selected our sleeping place, and I have placed over it a ridge-pole, supported by branches of a tree, and have erected a "wickiup" of green pine boughs overlapping like a thatched roof, which will turn off the rain if it comes, and I have advised the others of our party to make similar preparations for a rain. Hedges says that he feels worried and very much discouraged. Sunday, September 18, 8 o'clock a.m.--There occurred a half hour ago the first serious mishap affecting the welfare of the entire party; and while the packers, Bean and Reynolds, are repairing the damage resulting therefrom, I will go back a few hours and chronicle in the order of their occurrence the events of the early morning. Mr. Hedges and I, sleeping securely under the sheltering roof of our pine-thatched wickiup, were aroused from our sweet dreams of home about 4 o'clock this morning by several members of our party, who sought shelter from the rain which came down abundantly, or, as a Westmoreland deacon used to say, "in cupious perfusion." The rain storm broke about 3 o'clock in the morning, and all of the party except Hedges and myself were well drenched, as their only protection from the rain was their blankets. An effort had been made by some of the party to kindle a fire under the shelter of a large standing tree, but with indifferent success. Hedges and I crawled out of our dry blankets, and sat upright, so as to make as much room as possible for the others, and we welcomed all our comrades to our dry shelter. General Washburn, who is suffering somewhat from a cold, was especially grateful for the protection from the storm, which continued until about 7 o'clock. The roof of our wickiup had completely protected Hedges and myself from the rain except at one spot directly over Hedges' exposed ear, where a displacement of the pine leaves allowed a small stream to trickle through the roof, filling his ear with water, much to his discomfort. Some members of our party, at our early breakfast this morning, sitting upon logs at various distances from our camp fire in their half-dried clothing, and eating their scanty meal in silence, presented a sorry appearance. Some are disappointed that we did not, last night, reach the Firehole river, or some large branch of the Madison, which may guide us homeward, and are wondering if we are moving in the right direction. I feel so perfectly confident that we are traveling the right course that I am in the best of spirits. It may be that my cheerfulness is owing, in some degree, to my having dry clothing and a dry skin, which few of my comrades have, but I see no reason for discouragement. I think that Mr. Hauser is the best and most accurate judge of distances, of heights of mountains, and direction of travel, of any man I know, and he does not doubt that we are moving in the right direction. It is a satisfaction to have my opinion confirmed by his judgment. [Illustration: Nathaniel P. Langford] We had just finished our breakfast a half hour ago when something--some wild animal, or, perhaps, a snake--moving in the brush near where our horses were picketed, frightened three of them, and in their violent plunging they pulled up the iron picket pins attached to their lariats, and dashed at a gallop directly through our camp, over the campfire, and upsetting and scattering hither and thither our cooking utensils. The iron picket pins flying through the air at the lariat ends narrowly missed several of our party, but became entangled with the only two sound pack saddles remaining of the entire number with which we started, and dashed them against the adjacent trees, tearing off the side pieces of the saddletrees, and rendering them useless. Our first thought was that the damage done was beyond repair. We had, however, a few thin boards, the remnants of our canned goods boxes, and from my seamless sack of personal baggage I produced two gimlets, a screwdriver, a pair of nippers, some wrought nails and two dozens of screws of various sizes. When all these things were laid out, my comrades expressed great surprise, for not one of them or the packers had any idea that there were any tools or screws in our "outfit." On the other hand, it is a matter of surprise to me that I am the only member of our party who has a rubber coat, or a pair of oil-tanned water-proof boots, or who has brought with him any medicines, tools, screws, etc.; and, except myself, there is but one member of our party (whom I will not "give away" by here recording his name) who had the foresight to bring with him a flask of whiskey. I think we will be known among those who will hereafter visit this marvelous region as "The Temperance Party," though some of our number who lacked the foresight to provide, before leaving Helena, a needed remedy for snake bites, have not lacked the hindsight required in using it. Bean and Reynolds have just announced that the pack saddles have been repaired, and that preparations are being made for the start, so on this hint I suspend my record until night. Sunday, September 18, evening.--We left our morning camp about 9 o'clock, pursuing our uncertain course through fallen timber for a distance of about three miles, when we had all our fears of misdirection relieved by coming suddenly upon the banks of the Firehole river, the largest fork of the Madison, down which we followed five miles, passing several groups of boiling springs and a beautiful cascade[Y] (to which we gave no name), when we emerged from the dense forest into a sequestered basin two miles above the union of the Firehole river with a stream which comes in from the southwest, the basin extending to the width of a mile, and traversing the river until contracted between proximate ranges two miles below our camp. I have spent the entire afternoon and part of this evening in examining the geysers and springs, but will not further record the explorations of to-day until we are ready to leave the basin. Monday, September 19.--When we left Yellowstone lake two days ago, the desire for home had superceeded all thought of further explorations. Five days of rapid travel would, we believed, bring us to the upper valley of the Madison, and within twenty-five miles of Virginia City, and we indulged the remote hope that we might there find some trace of Mr. Everts. We had within a distance of fifty miles seen what we believed to be the greatest wonders on the continent. We were convinced that there was not on the globe another region where within the same limits Nature had crowded so much of grandeur and majesty with so much of novelty and wonder. Judge, then, of our astonishment on entering this basin, to see at no great distance before us an immense body of sparkling water, projected suddenly and with terrific force into the air to the height of over one hundred feet. We had found a real geyser. In the valley before us were a thousand hot springs of various sizes and character, and five hundred craters jetting forth vapor. In one place the eye followed through crevices in the crust a stream of hot water of considerable size, running at nearly right angles with the river, and in a direction, not towards, but away from the stream. We traced the course of this stream by the crevices in the surface for twenty or thirty yards. It is probable that it eventually flows into the Firehole, but there is nothing on the surface to indicate to the beholder the course of its underground passage to the river. On the summit of a cone twenty-five feet high was a boiling spring seven feet in diameter, surrounded with beautiful incrustations, on the slope of which we gathered twigs encased in a crust a quarter of an inch in thickness. On an incrusted hill opposite our camp are four craters from three to five feet in diameter, sending forth steam jets and water to the height of four or five feet. But the marvelous features of this wonderful basin are its spouting geysers, of which during our brief stay of twenty-two hours we have seen twelve in action. Six of these threw water to the height of from fifteen to twenty feet, but in the presence of others of immense dimensions they soon ceased to attract attention. Of the latter six, the one we saw in action on entering the basin ejected from a crevice of irregular form, and about four feet long by three wide, a column of water of corresponding magnitude to the height of one hundred feet. Around this crevice or mouth the sediment is piled in many capricious shapes, chiefly indented globules from six inches to two feet in diameter. Little hollows in the crust filled with water contained small white spheres of tufa, of the size of a nutmeg, formed as it seemed to me around some nuclei.[Z] We gave such names to those of the geysers which we saw in action as we think will best illustrate their peculiarities. The one I have just described General Washburn has named "Old Faithful," because of the regularity of its eruptions, the intervals between which being from sixty to sixty-five minutes, the column of water being thrown at each eruption to the height of from eighty to one hundred feet. The "Fan" has a distorted pipe from which are projected two radiating sheets of water to the height of sixty feet, resembling a feather fan. Forty feet from this geyser is a vent connected with it, two feet in diameter, which, during the eruption, expels with loud reports dense volumes of vapor to the height of fifty feet. [Illustration: OLD FAITHFUL. NAMED BY GENERAL WASHBURN.] The "Grotto," so named from the singularly winding apertures penetrating the sinter surrounding it, was at rest when we first discovered it. Externally it presented few indications of its character as a geyser. Private Williamson, one of our escort, crawled through an aperture and looked into the discharging orifice. When afterwards, he saw it belching forth a column of boiling water two feet in diameter to the height of sixty feet, and a scalding stream of two hundred square inches flowing from the cavern he had entered a short time before, he said that he felt like one who had narrowly escaped being summarily cooked. The "Castle" is on the summit of an incrusted elevation. This name was given because of its resemblance to the ruins of some old tower with its broken down turrets. The silicious sinter composing the formation surrounding it takes the form of small globules, resembling a ripe cauliflower, and the massive nodules indicate that at some former period the flow of water must have been much larger than at present. The jet is sixty feet high by four feet in diameter, and the vent near it, which is in angry ebullition during the eruption, constantly flows with boiling water. One of the most wonderful of the springs in this basin is that of ultra-marine hue directly in front of the "Castle" geyser. It is nearly round, having diameters of about twenty and twenty-five feet, the sides being corrugated and funnel-shaped, and at the depth of thirty feet opening out into a cavern of unfathomable depth, the rim of the spring having beautifully escalloped edges. It does not boil over, but a very small stream of water flows from it, and it is not affected in its appearance by the spouting of the geyser in its immediate proximity. There is evidently no connection between this spring and the geyser. The "Giant" is a rugged deposit presenting in form a miniature model of the Colosseum. It has an opening three feet in diameter. A remarkable characteristic of this geyser is the duration of its discharges, which yesterday afternoon continued for more than an hour in a steady stream about three feet in diameter and one hundred and forty feet high. Opposite our camp, on the east side of the Firehole river, is a symmetrical cone resembling an old-fashioned straw beehive with the top cut off. It is about five feet in diameter at its base, with an irregular oval-shaped orifice having escalloped edges, and of twenty-four by thirty-six inches interior diameter. No one supposed that it was a geyser, and until this morning, among so many wonders, it had escaped a second notice. Suddenly, while we were at breakfast this morning, a column of water shot from it, which by quite accurate triangular measurement proved to be two hundred and nineteen feet in height. Our method of triangulation was as follows: A point on the surface of the ground was marked, which was in a direct line with a branch of a tree near by, and of the top of the column of water when at its greatest height. Having obtained the perpendicular height of the branch of the tree from the ground, and the distance from this perpendicular to the point of observation and to the geyser cone, we were enabled to make a very accurate calculation of the height of the column of water. We named this geyser the "Bee Hive." Near by is situated the "Giantess," the largest of all the geysers we saw in eruption. Ascending a gentle slope for a distance of sixty yards we came to a sink or well of an irregular oval shape, fifteen by twenty feet across, into which we could see to the depth of fifty feet or more, but could discover no water, though we could distinctly hear it gurgling and boiling at a fearful rate afar down this vertical cavern. Suddenly it commenced spluttering and rising with incredible rapidity, causing a general stampede among our company, who all moved around to the windward side of the geyser. When the water had risen within about twenty-five feet of the surface, it became stationary, and we returned to look down upon the foaming water, which occasionally emitted hot jets nearly to the mouth of the orifice. As if tired of this sport the water began to ascend at the rate of five feet in a second, and when near the top it was expelled with terrific momentum in a column the full size of the immense aperture to a height of sixty feet. The column remained at this height for the space of about a minute, when from the apex of this vast aqueous mass five lesser jets or round columns of water varying in size from six to fifteen inches in diameter shot up into the atmosphere to the amazing height of two hundred and fifty feet. This was without exception the most magnificent phenomenon I ever beheld. We were standing on the side of the geyser exposed to the sun, whose sparkling rays filled the ponderous column with what appeared to be the clippings of a thousand rainbows. These prismatic illusions disappeared, only to be succeeded by myriads of others which continually fluttered and sparkled through the spray during the twenty minutes the eruption lasted. These lesser jets, thrown so much higher than the main column and shooting through it, doubtless proceed from auxiliary pipes leading into the principal orifice near the bottom, where the explosive force is greater. The minute globules into which the spent column was diffused when falling sparkled like a shower of diamonds, and around every shadow produced by the column of steam hiding the sun was the halo so often represented in paintings as encircling the head of the Savior We unhesitatingly agreed that this was the greatest wonder of our trip. Mr. Hedges and I forded the Firehole river a short distance below our camp. The current, as it dashed over the boulders, was swift, and, taking off our boots and stockings, we selected for our place of crossing what seemed to be a smooth rock surface in the bottom of the stream, extending from shore to shore. When I reached the middle of the stream I paused a moment and turned around to speak to Mr. Hedges, who was about entering the stream, when I discovered from the sensation of warmth under my feet that I was standing upon an incrustation formed over a hot spring that had its vent in the bed of the stream. I exclaimed to Hedges: "Here is the river which Bridger said was _hot at the bottom_."[AA] How many more geysers than those we saw in eruption there are in this remarkable basin, it is impossible to determine. We will be compelled reluctantly to leave it before it can be half explored. At least a thousand pipes rise to the plain, one or two hundred of which, to all appearances, are as likely to be geysers as any we have seen. This entire country is seemingly under a constant and active internal pressure from volcanic forces, which seek relief through the numberless springs, jets, volcanoes and geysers exhibited on its surface, and which but for these vents might burst forth in one terrific eruption and form a volcano of vast dimensions. It is undoubtedly true that many of the objects we see are of recent formation, and that many of the extinguished craters recently ceased their condition of activity. They are constantly breaking forth, often assuming new forms, and attesting to the active presence of volcanic force. The water in some of the springs presents to the eye the colors of all the precious gems known to commerce. In one spring the hue is like that of an emerald, in another like that of the turquoise, another has the ultra-marine hue of the sapphire, another has the color of the topaz; and the suggestion has been made that the names of these jewels may very properly be given to many of these springs. The packers with the pack train and several of our party broke camp at 9:30 this morning, a few of us remaining for an hour, hoping to have another view of an eruption of the "Giantess;" but in this we were disappointed, for it gave no sign of an eruption, save that the water, visible generally at a depth of about twenty feet, would rise suddenly eight or ten feet in the well, and as suddenly fall again. We moved down the river on the east bank, part of the way through an open valley and part through fallen timber. At about eight miles we came upon an enormous spring of dark blue water, the largest we have seen. Mr. Hauser measured it, and says it is four hundred feet in diameter. The mineral solution has been deposited by the overflow on all sides for two hundred yards, the spring itself being thirty feet above the general level of the valley. Out near the center of the lake the water boils up a few feet, but without any especial violent action. The lake has no well-defined outlet, but overflows on many sides, the water flowing down the slopes of the incrusted mound about one-quarter of an inch deep. As we stood on the margin of this immense lake a small flock of ducks came sailing down as if to alight; but as they skimmed the water a few inches above the surface, they seemed to scent danger, and with rapid flapping of their wings, all except one rose into the air. This one, in his descent, had gained too great an impetus to check his progress, and came down into the water, and his frantic efforts to rise again were futile, and with one or two loud squawks of distress, which were responded to by his mates who had escaped, he was in a moment "a dead duck." We gave no name to this lake.[AB] About one hundred yards from the lake on the side towards the river, the incrustation breaks off perpendicularly, and another large lake is formed, the surface of which is about fifteen feet below the upper and larger lake. There are a few other springs near the river farther down the stream. Jake Smith, for the first time on this trip, selected at this large lake a curious specimen of tufa. It was a circumstance so unusual that Hedges called our attention to it, but as Smith was riding along holding his treasure carefully in his hand, his horse stumbled, and he accidentally dropped his specimen, and with a remark which I will not here record, and which is at variance with his own Bible instruction, he denounced as worthless all the specimens of the party which he had seen, and inveighed against the folly of spending any time in gathering them. From this point we passed down the valley close by the bank of the river. The valley on our right was very marshy, and we saw at a considerable distance one very large fountain of water spouting into the atmosphere to a considerable height, and many steam jets, but, owing to the swampy character of the ground, we did not visit them.[AC] When we left Helena on August 17th, we believed that twenty-five days would be the limit of time which would be consumed before our return; but to meet all exigencies we laid in a thirty days' supply of provisions. We have now been absent thirty-four days, and as we cached some of our supply on Yellowstone lake for Mr. Everts' relief, we are now on short rations, but the fish we dried while camped on Yellowstone lake are doing good service. While riding to-day alongside of Stickney and bemoaning the lack in our larder of many articles of food, such as sugar, coffee and tea, the supply of which has become exhausted, I asked him if he was fond of maple sugar, and would like a lump of it. He requested me not to tantalize him by mentioning the subject, whereupon I astonished him by producing a goodly sized cake which I had brought with me from Helena, and which for five weeks I had preserved untouched in my seamless sack. It was enjoyed by all who shared it, but Stickney was especially grateful for his division of the sweet morsel, and received it gratefully and gracefully, and seemingly without reluctance, at the same time remarking, "You are always doing something to make me laugh!" and added, "You always seem to have another card up your sleeve when an emergency arises." By this last figure of speech he delicately suggested to me the methods adopted by Jake Smith in playing poker.[AD] We have traveled to-day about eighteen miles, crossing just before the day closed a timbered ridge, and we are now camped at the junction of the Firehole river with a stream coming into it from the east nearly as large as the Firehole, but to which we have given no name.[AE] Tuesday, September 20.--We broke camp at half past nine o'clock, traveling along the rocky edge of the river bank by the rapids, passing thence through a beautiful pine wood and over a long stretch of fallen timber, blackened by fire, for about four miles, when we again reached the river, which here bends in a westerly direction. Lieutenant Doane and I climbed to the top of one of the two prominent hills on our course, and had a fine view of the country for the distance of thirty miles. Last night, and also this morning in camp, the entire party had a rather unusual discussion. The proposition was made by some member that we utilize the result of our exploration by taking up quarter sections of land at the most prominent points of interest, and a general discussion followed. One member of our party suggested that if there could be secured by pre-emption a good title to two or three quarter sections of land opposite the lower fall of the Yellowstone and extending down the river along the cañon, they would eventually become a source of great profit to the owners. Another member of the party thought that it would be more desirable to take up a quarter section of land at the Upper Geyser Basin, for the reason that that locality could be more easily reached by tourists and pleasure seekers. A third suggestion was that each member of the party pre-empt a claim, and in order that no one should have an advantage over the others, the whole should be thrown into a common pool for the benefit of the entire party. Mr. Hedges then said that he did not approve of any of these plans--that there ought to be no private ownership of any portion of that region, but that the whole of it ought to be set apart as a great National Park, and that each one of us ought to make an effort to have this accomplished. His suggestion met with an instantaneous and favorable response from all--except one--of the members of our party, and each hour since the matter was first broached, our enthusiasm has increased. It has been the main theme of our conversation to-day as we journeyed. I lay awake half of last night thinking about it;--and if my wakefulness deprived my bed-fellow (Hedges) of any sleep, he has only himself and his disturbing National Park proposition to answer for it. Our purpose to create a park can only be accomplished by untiring work and concerted action in a warfare against the incredulity and unbelief of our National legislators when our proposal shall be presented for their approval. Nevertheless, I believe we can win the battle. I do not know of any portion of our country where a national park can be established furnishing to visitors more wonderful attractions than here. These wonders are so different from anything we have ever seen--they are so various, so extensive--that the feeling in my mind from the moment they began to appear until we left them has been one of intense surprise and of incredulity. Every day spent in surveying them has revealed to me some new beauty, and now that I have left them, I begin to feel a skepticism which clothes them in a memory clouded by doubt. Wednesday, September 21.--We broke camp soon after 9 o'clock, traveling northwesterly down the stream, which at six miles entered a cañon extending ten miles in a very tortuous course, the stream gradually bending to the west. The sides of the cañon are steep, and a great many small lateral streams flow into it, forming cascades of remarkable beauty. There are also many springs gushing out from the sides of the cañon afar up. Below the cañon we traveled over a high ridge for the distance of ten miles, and camped in a deep coulee, where we found good water and an abundance of wood and grass. Mr. Hauser and Mr. Stickney all through the day were a few miles in advance of the rest of the party, and just below the mouth of the cañon they met two men who manifested some alarm at sight of them. They had a supply of provisions packed on riding saddles, and were walking beside their horses. Mr. Hauser told them that they would meet a large party up the cañon, but we did not see them, and they evidently cached themselves as we went by. The Upper Madison in this vicinity is said to be a rendezvous for horse thieves. We have traveled about twenty-five miles to-day. As the outcome of a general conversation to-night, I will leave the party to-morrow morning, and start for Virginia City, where I have a forlorn hope that some tidings may be had of Mr. Everts. We think that Virginia City is not more than thirty miles distant; but, as we are not now on any trail leading to it, I shall have to take my chances of finding it. Jake Smith to-day asked me if I expected that the readers of my diary would believe what I had written. He said that he had kept no diary for the reason that our discoveries had been of such a novel character, that if he were to write an account of them he would not be believed by those who read his record, and he would be set down as a liar. He said that he did not mind being called a liar by those who had known him well for many years, but he would not allow strangers that privilege. This ambiguous remark indicates that Jake has more wit and philosophy than I have given him the credit of possessing. Thursday, September 22, Virginia City.--With a small supply of needed creature comforts (lunch, etc.), I left the party early this morning, uncertain as to the time which would be required to take me to Virginia City. About noon I met a horseman who had left Virginia City this morning, who directed me to the trail leading to the town. He paused long enough to let me scan a newspaper which he had, from which I learned of the capitulation of the French at Sedan. I asked him to hand the newspaper to General Washburn, whose party he would meet in the Madison valley. He said that he would stop at the cabin of "Bannack George." The distance from our morning camp to this place is much farther than we thought, and it was 9 o'clock this evening before I reached Virginia City. Nothing has been heard of Mr. Everts, and his friends are shocked at the intelligence of his loss from our party. Owing to the late hour of my arrival I have met but few of my old acquaintances, but these are greatly interested in the result of our explorations, and I have promised to remain here another day before starting for Helena, and give them a further description of what I have seen. I have enjoyed one good square meal. Tuesday, September 27, Helena.--I reached Helena last night. The intelligence of my arrival in Virginia City, and of the loss of Mr. Everts from our party, had been telegraphed to Helena from Virginia City, and on my arrival I was besieged by many of the friends of Mr. Everts for information concerning the manner in which he became separated from our party. I have spent the larger part of this day in describing the many wonders which we found on our trip, and I shall be most glad to have a few days' rest and put on some of my lost flesh. At the outset of this journey I tipped the beam of the scales at a little over one hundred and ninety (190) pounds, and to-day I weigh but one hundred and fifty-five (155) pounds, a loss of thirty-five (35) pounds. One of my friends says that I may consider myself fortunate in bringing back to civilization as much of my body as I did. I have already received several invitations from householders to meet their families and friends at their homes, and tell them of our trip, but the present dilapidated condition of my toilet renders it necessary for me to decline their hospitalities until some future period. My first duty to myself and my fellow citizens is to seek a tailor and replenish my wardrobe. Jake Smith is the only one of our party who has returned with a garment fit to wear in the society of ladies. My narrations to-day have excited great wonder, and I cannot resist the conviction that many of my auditors believe that I have "drawn a long bow" in my descriptions. I am perfectly free to acknowledge that this does not surprise me. It seems a most natural thing for them to do so; for, in the midst of my narrations, I find myself almost as ready to doubt the reality of the scenes I have attempted to describe as the most skeptical of my listeners. They pass along my memory like the faintly defined outlines of a dream. And when I dwell upon their strange peculiarities, their vastness, their variety, and the distinctive features of novelty which mark them all, so entirely out of the range of all objects that compose the natural scenery and wonders of this continent, I who have seen them can scarcely realize that in those far-off recesses of the mountains they have existed so long in impenetrable seclusion, and that hereafter they will stand foremost among the natural attractions of the world. Astonishment and wonder become so firmly impressed upon the mind in the presence of these objects, that belief stands appalled, and incredulity is dumb. You can see Niagara, comprehend its beauties, and carry from it a memory ever ready to summon before you all its grandeur. You can stand in the valley of the Yosemite, and look up its mile of vertical granite, and distinctly recall its minutest feature; but amid the cañon and falls, the boiling springs and sulphur mountain, and, above all, the mud volcano and the geysers of the Yellowstone, your memory becomes filled and clogged with objects new in experience, wonderful in extent, and possessing unlimited grandeur and beauty. It is a new phase in the natural world; a fresh exhibition of the handiwork of the Great Architect; and, while you see and wonder, you seem to need an additional sense, fully to comprehend and believe. * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [Footnote A: In his diary under date of August 22d General Washburn wrote: "Stood guard. Quite cold. Crows (Indians) near."] [Footnote B: On August 23d General Washburn wrote: "Indians of the Crow tribe."] [Footnote C: Near where Livingston is now located.] [Footnote D: Lieutenant Doane in his report to the War Department under date of August 24th writes: "Guards were established here during the night, as there were signs of a party of Indians on the trail ahead of us, all the members of the party taking their tours of this duty, and using in addition the various precautions of lariats, hobbles, etc., not to be neglected while traveling through this country."] [Footnote E: Under date of August 25th Lieutenant Doane writes: "From this camp was seen the smoke of fires on the mountains in front, while Indian signs became more numerous and distinct." Under date of August 25th General Washburn wrote in his diary: "Have been following Indian trails, fresh ones, all the way. They are about two days ahead of us."] [Footnote F: These blanks were left in my diary with the intention of filling them, upon the selection by our party of a name for the creek; but after going into camp at Tower fall, the matter of selecting a name was forgotten. A few years later the stream was named Lost creek.] [Footnote G: In making a copy of my original diary, it is proper at this point to interpolate an account of the circumstances under which the name "Tower" was bestowed upon the creek and fall. At the outset of our journey we had agreed that we would not give to any object of interest which we might discover the name of any of our party nor of our friends. This rule was to be religiously observed. While in camp on Sunday, August 28th, on the bank of this creek, it was suggested that we select a name for the creek and fall. Walter Trumbull suggested "Minaret Creek" and "Minaret Fall." Mr. Hauser suggested "Tower Creek" and "Tower Fall." After some discussion a vote was taken, and by a small majority the name "Minaret" was decided upon. During the following evening Mr. Hauser stated with great seriousness that we had violated the agreement made relative to naming objects for our friends. He said that the well known Southern family--the Rhetts--lived in St. Louis, and that they had a most charming and accomplished daughter named "Minnie." He said that this daughter was a sweetheart of Trumbull, who had proposed the name--her name--"Minnie Rhett"--and that we had unwittingly given to the fall and creek the name of this sweetheart of Mr. Trumbull. Mr. Trumbull indignantly denied the truth of Hauser's statement, and Hauser as determinedly insisted that it was the truth, and the vote was therefore reconsidered, and by a substantial majority it was decided to substitute the name "Tower" for "Minaret." Later, and when it was too late to recall or reverse the action of our party, it was surmised that Hauser himself had a sweetheart in St. Louis, a Miss Tower. Some of our party, Walter Trumbull especially, always insisted that such was the case. The weight of testimony was so evenly balanced that I shall hesitate long before I believe either side of this part of the story. N.P. LANGFORD.] [Footnote H: Now Called Inspiration Point.] [Footnote I: The above quotation is from a poem by John Keats.] [Footnote J: Dr. P.V. Hayden, geologist in charge of the U.S. Geological Survey, first visited this region in the summer of 1871--the year following the visit of the Washburn party, whose discoveries and explorations are recorded in this diary. Dr. Hayden, on his return, graphically described the various wonders which he saw, but had very little to say concerning the mud volcano. This fact was the more inexplicable to me for the reason that the Washburn party thought it one of the most remarkable curiosities to be found in that region, and I was greatly surprised to find that Dr. Hayden made so little allusion to it. In 1872, the year following Dr. Hayden's first visit, I again visited the volcano, and the omission by Hayden was explained as soon as I saw the volcano in its changed condition. The loud detonations which resembled the discharges of a gun-boat mortar were no longer heard, and the upper part of the crater and cone had in a great measure disappeared, leaving a shapeless and unsightly hole much larger than the former crater, in which large tree-tops were swaying to and fro in the gurgling mass, forty feet below--the whole appearance bearing testimony to the terrible nature of the convulsion which wrought such destruction. Lieutenant Doane, in his official report to the War Department, thus describes the volcano as it appeared in 1870: "A few hundred yards from here is an object of the greatest interest. On the slope of a small and steep wooded ravine is the crater of a mud volcano, 30 feet in diameter at the rim, which is elevated a few feet above the surface on the lower side, and bounded by the slope of the hill on the upper, converging, as it deepens, to the diameter of 15 feet at the lowest visible point, about 40 feet down. Heavy volumes of steam escape from this opening, ascending to the height of 300 feet. From far down in the earth came a jarring sound, in regular beats of five seconds, with a concussion that shook the ground at 200 yards' distance. After each concussion came a splash of mud, as if thrown to a great height; sometimes it could be seen from the edge of the crater, but none was entirely ejected while we were there. Occasionally an explosion was heard like the bursting of heavy guns behind an embankment, and causing the earth to tremble for a mile around. The distance to which this mud had been thrown is truly astonishing. The ground and falling trees near by were splashed at a horizontal distance of 200 feet. The trees below were either broken down or their branches festooned with dry mud, which appeared in the tops of the trees growing on the side hill from the same level with the crater, 50 feet in height, and at a distance of 180 feet from the volcano. The mud, to produce such effects, must have been thrown to a perpendicular elevation of at least 300 feet. It was with difficulty we could believe the evidence of our senses, and only after the most careful measurements could we realize the immensity of this wonderful phenomenon." The visitor to the Park who has read the description given by Washburn, Hedges, Doane or myself, of the mud volcano as it appeared in 1870, will readily perceive that it has undergone a great change since the time of its first discovery. In my account of my trip made in 1872, published in Scribner's (now Century) Magazine for June, 1873, I say, concerning this change: "A large excavation remained; and a seething, bubbling mass of mud, with several tree-tops swaying to and fro in the midst, told how terrible and how effectual must have been the explosions which produced such devastation. I could not realize that in this unsightly hole I beheld all that was left of those physical wonders which filled this extraordinary region. * * * Great trees that then decorated the hillside were now completely submerged in the boiling mass that remained." The trees with their green tops, which were visible in 1872, have now entirely disappeared. Can any one conjecture what has become of them?] [Footnote K: Lieutenant Doane, on page 19 of his report to the War Department, says with reference to this surgical operation: "I had on the previous evening been nine days and nights without sleep or rest, and was becoming very much reduced. My hand was enormously swelled, and even ice water ceased to relieve the pain. I could scarcely walk at all, from excessive weakness. The most powerful opiates had ceased to have any effect. A consultation was held, which resulted in having the thumb split open. Mr. Langford performed the operation in a masterly manner, dividing thumb, bone, and all. An explosion ensued, followed by immediate relief. I slept through the night, all day, and the next night, and felt much better. To Mr. Langford, General Washburn, Mr. Stickney and the others of the party I owe a lasting debt for their uniform kindness and attention in the hour of need."] [Footnote L: Repeated efforts to ascend the Grand Teton, made prior to the year 1872, all terminated in failure. On the 29th day of July of that year the summit was reached by James Stevenson, of the U.S. Geological Survey, and Nathaniel P. Langford, the writer of this diary. An account of this ascent was published in Scribner's (now Century) Magazine for June, 1873. The next ascent was made in 1898 by Rev. Frank S. Spalding, of Erie, Pennsylvania, and W.O. Owen, of Wyoming, and two assistants. This ascent was accomplished after two failures of Mr. Owen in previous years to reach the summit. Mr. Owen then asserted that the summit of the mountain was not reached in 1872 by Stevenson and Langford. His efforts--in which Mr. Spalding had no part--to impeach the statement of these gentlemen failed utterly. Mr. Spalding, who was the first member of his party to reach the summit, writes: "I believe that Mr. Langford reached the summit because he says he did, and because the difficulties of the ascent were not great enough to have prevented any good climber from having successfully scaled the peak, * * * and I cannot understand why Mr. Owen failed so many times before he succeeded."] [Footnote M: The bay here referred to is at the "Thumb" Station.] [Footnote N: Captain Raynolds wrote on May 10, 1860: "To our front and upon the right the mountains towered above us to the height of from 2,000 to 3,000 feet in the shape of bold, craggy peaks of basaltic formation, their summits crowned with glistening snow. * * * It was my original desire to go from the head of Wind river to the head of the Yellowstone, keeping on the Atlantic slope, thence down the Yellowstone, passing the lake, and across by the Gallatin to the Three forks of the Missouri. Bridger said, at the outset, that this would be impossible, and that it would be necessary to pass over to the head waters of the Columbia, and back again to the Yellowstone. I had not previously believed that crossing the main crest twice would be more easily accomplished than the travel over what in effect is only a spur; but the view from our present camp settled the question adversely to my opinion at once. Directly across our route lies a basaltic ridge, rising not less than 5,000 feet above us, the walls apparently vertical, with no visible pass nor even cañon. On the opposite side of this are the head waters of the Yellowstone."] [Footnote O: Later, in 1833, the indomitable Captain Bonneville was lost in this mountain labyrinth, and, after devising various modes of escape, finally determined to ascend the range. Washington Irving, in his charming history, "Bonneville's Adventures," thus describes the efforts of General Bonneville and one of his comrades to reach the summit of this range: "After much toil he reached the summit of a lofty cliff, but it was only to behold gigantic peaks rising all around, and towering far into the snowy regions of the atmosphere. He soon found that he had undertaken a tremendous task; but the pride of man is never more obstinate than when climbing mountains. The ascent was so steep and rugged that he and his companion were frequently obliged to clamber on hands and knees, with their guns slung upon their backs. Frequently, exhausted with fatigue and dripping with perspiration, they threw themselves upon the snow, and took handfuls of it to allay their parching thirst. At one place they even stripped off their coats and hung them upon the bushes, and thus lightly clad proceeded to scramble over these eternal snows. As they ascended still higher there were cool breezes that refreshed and braced them, and, springing with new ardor to their task, they at length attained the summit."] [Footnote P: Soon after the return of our party to Helena, General Washburn, then surveyor-general of Montana, made in his office for the Interior Department at Washington, a map of the Yellowstone region, a copy of which he gave to me. He told me that in recognition of the assistance I had rendered him in making a fair outline of Yellowstone lake, with its indented shore and promontories, he had named for me the mountain on the top of which I stood when I made the sketch of the south shore of the lake. I called his attention to the fact that Lieutenant Doane had been my comrade in making the ascent, and suggested that Doane's name be given to the adjoining peak on the north. He approved of this suggestion, and the map, with these mountains so named, was transmitted to the Interior Department. Dr. Hayden, the geologist in charge of the United States geological survey, made his first visit to this region the following year (1871), and on the map which he issued in connection with his 1871 report, the name "Mount Langford" was given to another mountain far to the northeast. Since that time my name has again been transferred to a mountain on the southeast. I think that Dr. Hayden must have been aware at that time that this mountain bore my name; for he had read the account of the Washburn exploration, which was published in Scribner's Magazine for May, 1871, accompanied by a copy of the map made by General Washburn. The significance of connecting my name with this mountain is centered in the circumstance that it was intended to mark or commemorate an important event--that of giving to the public a very correct outline map of Yellowstone lake. In confirmation of the fact that the first outline of the lake approximating any degree of accuracy was made from the mountain-top, I here quote from page 21 of Lieutenant Doane's report to the War Department. "The view from this peak commanded completely the lake, enabling us to sketch a map of its inlets and bearings with considerable accuracy." On page 23 of this report Lieutenant Doane speaks of this mountain as "Mount Langford." The map last published previous to that made by General Washburn was that of Captain Raynolds, of which I here present a copy, as well as a copy of the map made by me.] [Footnote Q: On our return to Helena, Walter Trumbull published, in the Helena Gazette, some incidents of our trip, and from his narrative I copy the following account of our hunt for the grizzly: "Some of the party who had gone a short distance ahead to find out the best course to take the next day, soon returned and reported a grizzly and her two cubs about a quarter of a mile from camp. Six of the party decorated themselves as walking armories, and at once started in pursuit. Each individual was sandwiched between two revolvers and a knife, was supported around the middle by a belt of cartridges, and carried in his hand a needle carbine. Each one was particularly anxious to be the first to catch the bear, and an exciting foot-race ensued until the party got within 300 yards of the place where the bear was supposed to be concealed. The foremost man then suddenly got out of breath, and, in fact, they all got out of breath. It was an epidemic. A halt was made, and the brute loudly dared to come out and show itself, while a spirited discussion took place as to what was best to do with the cubs. The location was a mountain side, thickly timbered with tall straight pines having no limbs within thirty feet of the ground. It was decided to advance more cautiously to avoid frightening the animal, and every tree which there was any chance of climbing was watched with religious care, in order to intercept her should she attempt to take refuge in its branches. An hour was passed in vain search for the sneaking beast, which had evidently taken to flight. Then this formidable war party returned to camp, having a big disgust at the cowardly conduct of the bear, but, as the darkie said, 'not having it bad.' Just before getting in sight of camp, the six invincibles discharged their firearms simultaneously, in order to show those remaining behind just how they would have slaughtered the bear, but more particularly just how they did not. This was called the 'Bear Camp.'" Mr. Trumbull was one of the party of hunters whose efforts to capture the bear he so well describes.] [Footnote R: Our subsequent journeying showed that Lieutenant Doane was right in his conjecture.] [Footnote S: The Honorable Granville Stuart, of Montana, in his book "Montana as It Is," published in 1865, says that there is another root found in portions of Montana which I have never seen. Mr. Stuart says: "Thistle-root is the root of the common thistle, which is very abundant in the bottoms along nearly all the streams in the mountain. They grow to about the size of a large radish, and taste very much like turnips, and are good either raw or cooked with meat." Captain William Clark, of the famous Lewis and Clark expedition, dropped the final _e_ from the word cowse, spelling it c-o-w-s. Unless this error is noticed by the reader, he will not understand what Captain Clark meant when he said that members of his party were searching for the _cows_.] [Footnote T: Lieutenant Doane, in his official report to the War Department, says, concerning this episode: "Washburn and Langford * * * became entangled in an immense swampy brimstone basin, abounding in sulphur springs. * * * Mr. Langford's horse broke through several times, coming back plastered with the white substance and badly scalded."] [Footnote U: The location of this camp is what is now called the "Thumb" station on the stage route.] [Footnote V: Analyses of the various specimens of mud taken from the springs in this locality, made on our return to Helena, gave the following results: White Sediment. Lavender Sediment. Pink Sediment. Silica......... 42.2 Silica ........ 28.2 Silica ........ 32.6 Magnesia....... 33.4 Alumina........ 58.6 Alumina........ 52.4 Lime........... 17.8 Boracic acid.... 3.2 Oxide of calcium 8.3 Alkalis......... 6.6 Oxide of iron... 0.6 Soda and potassa 4.2 ------ Oxide of calcium 4.2 Water and loss.. 2.5 100.0 Water and loss.. 5.2 ----- ----- 100.0 100.0 These analyses were made by Professor Augustus Steitz, assayer of the First National Bank of Helena, Mont.] [Footnote W: On our return home, finding that no tidings of Mr. Everts had been received, Jack Baronette and George A. Prichett, two experienced trappers and old mountaineers, were provided with thirty days' provisions and dispatched in search of him, and by them Mr. Everts was found on October 16th, after wandering in the forest for thirty-seven days from the time he was lost. From the letter of Mr. Prichett addressed to Mr. Gillette, myself and others, I quote: "We found him on the 16th inst. on the summit of the first big mountain beyond Warm Spring creek, about seventy-five miles from Fort Ellis. He says he subsisted all this time on one snow bird, two small minnows and the wing of a bird which he found and mashed between two stones, and made some broth of in a yeast powder can. This was all, with the exception of thistle roots, he had subsisted on." The narrative of Mr. Everts, of his thirty-seven days' sojourn in the wilderness (published in Scribner's Magazine for November, 1871, and in volume V. of the Montana Historical Society publications), furnishes a chapter in the history of human endurance, exposure, and escape, almost as incredible as it is painfully instructive and entertaining.] [Footnote X: Our general line of travel from the southwest estuary of the lake (Thumb) to the Firehole river was about one mile south of the present stage route. The tourist who to-day makes the rapid and comfortable tour of the park by stage, looking south from Shoshone Point, may catch a glimpse of a portion of the prostrate forest through and over which we struggled, and thus form some idea of the difficulties which beset us on our journey from the lake to the Firehole river.] [Footnote Y: Called now Kepler's cascade.] [Footnote Z: An incident of so amusing a character occurred soon after my return to Helena, that I cannot forbear narrating it here. Among the specimens of silica which I brought home were several dark globules about the size of nutmegs. I exhibited these to a noted physician of Helena, Dr. Hovaker, and soon after the return of Mr. Gillette from his search for Mr. Everts, I called upon him at his store and exhibited to him these specimens of silica. At the same time I took a nutmeg from a box upon the store counter, and playfully asked Gillette, in the presence of Dr. Hovaker, if he had found any of those singular incrustations. Dr. Hovaker, believing of course that the specimen I held in my hand came from the Yellowstone, took the nutmeg, and with wonder exhibited in every feature, proceeded to give it a critical examination, frequently exclaiming: "How very like it is to a nutmeg." He finally took a nutmeg from a box near by, and balanced the supposed incrustation with it, declaring the former to be the lighter. Asking my permission to do so, he took the nutmeg (which he supposed to be an incrustation) to a jeweler in the vicinity, and broke it. The aroma left him no doubt as to its character, but he was still deceived as to its origin. When I saw him returning to the store, in anticipation of the reproof I should receive, I started for the rear door; but the Doctor, entering before I reached it, called me back, and in a most excited manner declared that we had discovered real nutmegs, and nutmegs of a very superior quality. He had no doubt that Yellowstone lake was surrounded by nutmeg trees, and that each of our incrustations contained a veritable nutmeg. In his excitement he even proposed to organize a small party to go immediately to the locality to gather nutmegs, and had an interview with Charley Curtis on the subject of furnishing pack animals for purposes of transportation. When, on the following day, he ascertained the truth, after giving me a characteristic lecture, he revenged himself by good naturedly conferring upon the members of our party the title, by which he always called them thereafter, of "Nutmegs." N.P. LANGFORD.] [Footnote AA: James Bridger was famous for the marvelous stories he was accustomed to relate of his mountain life and experiences. He once told me that he had seen a river which flowed so rapidly over the smooth surface of a descending rock ledge in the bottom of the stream, that the water was "hot at the bottom." My experience in crossing the Firehole river that day, leads me to believe that Bridger had had, at some time, a similar experience. He well knew that heat and fire could be produced by friction. Like other mountain men, he had doubtless, many a time, produced a fire by friction; and he could not account for the existence of a hot rock in the bed of a cold stream, except upon the theory that the rapid flow of water over the smooth surface evolved the heat, by friction. N.P. LANGFORD.] [Footnote AB: This lake is now called "Hell's Half-acre;" and from the lower lake the "Excelsior" geyser has burst forth.] [Footnote AC: The fountain and jets here referred to are those of the Lower Geyser Basin, and the larger column of water which we saw is undoubtedly the "Fountain" geyser, named by Dr. Hayden in 1871.] [Footnote AD: In the course of a recent correspondence with Mr. Stickney, I asked him if he recalled this incident. Under date of May 20, 1905, he wrote me from Sarasota, Florida: "The maple sugar incident had almost faded from my memory, but like a spark of fire smouldering under rubbish it needed but a breath to make it live, and I recall my reflections, after my astonishment, that you did so many quaint things, that it was quite in accordance with them that you should produce maple sugar in a sulphurous region." N.P. LANGFORD.] [Footnote AE: This stream was afterwards named "Gibbon river."] APPENDIX. It is much to be regretted that our expedition was not accompanied by an expert photographer; but at the time of our departure from Helena, no one skilled in the art could be found with whom the hazards of the journey did not outweigh any seeming advantage or compensation which the undertaking promised. The accompanying sketches of the two falls of the Yellowstone, and of the cones of the Grand and Castle geysers, were made by Walter Trumbull and Private Moore. They are the very first ever made of these objects. Through an inadvertence in the preparation of the electroyped plates for the printer, they did not appear in their proper places in this diary. Major Hiram M. Chittenden, in his volume "The Yellowstone Park," says of the two sketches made by Private Moore: "His quaint sketches of the falls forcibly remind one of the original picture of Niagara, made by Father Hennepin, in 1697." 
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29312	----	[Transcriber's Note: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and other inconsistencies.] [Illustration: ARRIVAL AT GARDINER, MONT. (ENTRANCE TO YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK.)] CAMPING WITH PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT By JOHN BURROUGHS HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1906 BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. _Reprinted from The Atlantic Monthly May, 1906_ CAMPING WITH PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT BY JOHN BURROUGHS At the time I made the trip to Yellowstone Park with President Roosevelt in the spring of 1903, I promised some friends to write up my impressions of the President and of the Park, but I have been slow in getting around to it. The President himself, having the absolute leisure and peace of the White House, wrote his account of the trip nearly two years ago! But with the stress and strain of my life at "Slabsides,"--administering the affairs of so many of the wild creatures of the woods about me,--I have not till this blessed season found the time to put on record an account of the most interesting thing I saw in that wonderful land, which, of course, was the President himself. A STORM CENTRE When I accepted his invitation I was well aware that during the journey I should be in a storm centre most of the time, which is not always a pleasant prospect to a man of my habits and disposition. The President himself is a good deal of a storm,--a man of such abounding energy and ceaseless activity that he sets everything in motion around him wherever he goes. But I knew he would be pretty well occupied on his way to the Park in speaking to eager throngs and in receiving personal and political homage in the towns and cities we were to pass through. But when all this was over, and I found myself with him in the wilderness of the Park, with only the superintendent and a few attendants to help take up his tremendous personal impact, how was it likely to fare with a non-strenuous person like myself, I asked? I had visions of snow six and seven feet deep where traveling could be done only upon snowshoes, and I had never had the things on my feet in my life. If the infernal fires beneath, that keep the pot boiling so out there, should melt the snows, I could see the party tearing along on horseback at a wolf-hunt pace over a rough country; and as I had not been on a horse's back since the President was born, how would it be likely to fare with me there? THE PRESIDENT'S INTEREST IN NATURAL HISTORY I had known the President several years before he became famous, and we had had some correspondence on subjects of natural history. His interest in such themes is always very fresh and keen, and the main motive of his visit to the Park at this time was to see and study in its semi-domesticated condition the great game which he had so often hunted during his ranch days; and he was kind enough to think it would be an additional pleasure to see it with a nature-lover like myself. For my own part, I knew nothing about big game, but I knew there was no man in the country with whom I should so like to see it as Roosevelt. HIS LOVE OF ANIMALS Some of our newspapers reported that the President intended to hunt in the Park. A woman in Vermont wrote me, to protest against the hunting, and hoped I would teach the President to love the animals as much as I did,--as if he did not love them much more, because his love is founded upon knowledge, and because they had been a part of his life. She did not know that I was then cherishing the secret hope that I might be allowed to shoot a cougar or bobcat; but this fun did not come to me. The President said, "I will not fire a gun in the Park; then I shall have no explanations to make." Yet once I did hear him say in the wilderness, "I feel as if I ought to keep the camp in meat. I always have." I regretted that he could not do so on this occasion. I have never been disturbed by the President's hunting trips. It is to such men as he that the big game legitimately belongs,--men who regard it from the point of view of the naturalist as well as from that of the sportsman, who are interested in its preservation, and who share with the world the delight they experience in the chase. Such a hunter as Roosevelt is as far removed from the game-butcher as day is from night; and as for his killing of the "varmints,"--bears, cougars, and bobcats,--the fewer of these there are, the better for the useful and beautiful game. The cougars, or mountain lions, in the Park certainly needed killing. The superintendent reported that he had seen where they had slain nineteen elk, and we saw where they had killed a deer, and dragged its body across the trail. Of course, the President would not now on his hunting trips shoot an elk or a deer except to "keep the camp in meat," and for this purpose it is as legitimate as to slay a sheep or a steer for the table at home. We left Washington on April 1, and strung several of the larger Western cities on our thread of travel,--Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, St. Paul, Minneapolis,--as well as many lesser towns, in each of which the President made an address, sometimes brief, on a few occasions of an hour or more. MEETING THE PEOPLE He gave himself very freely and heartily to the people wherever he went. He could easily match their Western cordiality and good-fellowship. Wherever his train stopped, crowds soon gathered, or had already gathered, to welcome him. His advent made a holiday in each town he visited. At all the principal stops the usual programme was: first, his reception by the committee of citizens appointed to receive him,--they usually boarded his private car, and were one by one introduced to him; then a drive through the town with a concourse of carriages; then to the hall or open air platform, where he spoke to the assembled throng; then to lunch or dinner; and then back to the train, and off for the next stop--a round of hand-shaking, carriage-driving, speech-making each day. He usually spoke from eight to ten times every twenty-four hours, sometimes for only a few minutes from the rear platform of his private car, at others for an hour or more in some large hall. In Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, elaborate banquets were given him and his party, and on each occasion he delivered a carefully prepared speech upon questions that involved the policy of his administration. The throng that greeted him in the vast Auditorium in Chicago--that rose and waved and waved again--was one of the grandest human spectacles I ever witnessed. In Milwaukee the dense cloud of tobacco smoke that presently filled the large hall after the feasting was over was enough to choke any speaker, but it did not seem to choke the President, though he does not use tobacco in any form himself; nor was there anything foggy about his utterances on that occasion upon legislative control of the trusts. A PRETTY INCIDENT In St. Paul the city was inundated with humanity,--a vast human tide that left the middle of the streets bare as our line of carriages moved slowly along, but that rose up in solid walls of town and prairie humanity on the sidewalks and city dooryards. How hearty and happy the myriad faces looked! At one point I spied in the throng on the curbstone a large silk banner that bore my own name as the title of some society. I presently saw that it was borne by half a dozen anxious and expectant-looking schoolgirls with braids down their backs. As my carriage drew near them, they pressed their way through the throng, and threw a large bouquet of flowers into my lap. I think it would be hard to say who blushed the deeper, the girls or myself. It was the first time I had ever had flowers showered upon me in public; and then, maybe, I felt that on such an occasion I was only a minor side issue, and public recognition was not called for. But the incident pleased the President. "I saw that banner and those flowers," he said afterwards; "and I was delighted to see you honored that way." But I fear I have not to this day thanked the Monroe School of St. Paul for that pretty attention. [Illustration: THE PRESIDENT WITH MR. BURROUGHS AND SECRETARY LOEB JUST BEFORE ENTERING THE PARK. From stereograph, copyright 1906, by Underwood & Underwood, New York.] GRATIFYING THE CHILDREN The time of the passing of the presidential train seemed well known, even on the Dakota prairies. At one point I remember a little brown schoolhouse stood not far off, and near the track the school-ma'am, with her flock, drawn up in line. We were at luncheon, but the President caught a glimpse ahead through the window, and quickly took in the situation. With napkin in hand, he rushed out on the platform and waved to them. "Those children," he said, as he came back, "wanted to see the President of the United States, and I could not disappoint them. They may never have another chance. What a deep impression such things make when we are young!" COWBOY FRIENDS At some point in the Dakotas we picked up the former foreman of his ranch, and another cowboy friend of the old days, and they rode with the President in his private car for several hours. He was as happy with them as a schoolboy ever was in meeting old chums. He beamed with delight all over. The life which those men represented, and of which he had himself once formed a part, meant so much to him; it had entered into the very marrow of his being, and I could see the joy of it all shining in his face as he sat and lived parts of it over again with those men that day. He bubbled with laughter continually. The men, I thought, seemed a little embarrassed by his open-handed cordiality and good-fellowship. He himself evidently wanted to forget the present, and to live only in the memory of those wonderful ranch days,--that free, hardy, adventurous life upon the plains. It all came back to him with a rush when he found himself alone with these heroes of the rope and the stirrup. How much more keen his appreciation was, and how much quicker his memory, than theirs! He was constantly recalling to their minds incidents which they had forgotten, and the names of horses and dogs which had escaped them. His subsequent life, instead of making dim the memory of his ranch days, seemed to have made it more vivid by contrast. When they had gone, I said to him, "I think your affection for those men very beautiful." "How could I help it?" he said. "Still, few men in your station could or would go back and renew such friendships." "Then I pity them," he replied. RANCH LIFE THE MAKING OF HIM He said afterwards that his ranch life had been the making of him. It had built him up and hardened him physically, and it had opened his eyes to the wealth of manly character among the plainsmen and cattlemen. Had he not gone West, he said, he never would have raised the Rough Riders Regiment; and had he not raised that regiment and gone to the Cuban War, he would not have been made governor of New York; and had not this happened, the politicians would not unwittingly have made his rise to the Presidency so inevitable. There is no doubt, I think, that he would have got there some day; but without the chain of events above outlined, his rise could not have been so rapid. Our train entered the Bad Lands of North Dakota in the early evening twilight, and the President stood on the rear platform of his car, gazing wistfully upon the scene. "I know all this country like a book," he said. "I have ridden over it, and hunted over it, and tramped over it, in all seasons and weather, and it looks like home to me. My old ranch is not far off. We shall soon reach Medora, which was my station." It was plain to see that that strange, forbidding-looking landscape, hills and valleys to Eastern eyes utterly demoralized and gone to the bad,--flayed, fantastic, treeless, a riot of naked clay slopes, chimney-like buttes, and dry coulees,--was in his eyes a land of almost pathetic interest. There were streaks of good pasturage here and there where his cattle used to graze, and where the deer and the pronghorn used to linger. OLD NEIGHBORS When we reached Medora, where the train was scheduled to stop an hour, it was nearly dark, but the whole town and country round had turned out to welcome their old townsman. After much hand-shaking, the committee conducted us down to a little hall, where the President stood on a low platform, and made a short address to the standing crowd that filled the place. Then some flashlight pictures were taken by the local photographer, after which the President stepped down, and, while the people filed past him, shook hands with every man, woman, and child of them, calling many of them by name, and greeting them all most cordially. I recall one grizzled old frontiersman whose hand he grasped, calling him by name, and saying, "How well I remember you! You once mended my gunlock for me,--put on a new hammer." "Yes," said the delighted old fellow; "I'm the man, Mr. President." He was among his old neighbors once more, and the pleasure of the meeting was very obvious on both sides. I heard one of the women tell him they were going to have a dance presently, and ask him if he would not stay and open it! The President laughingly excused himself, and said his train had to leave on schedule time, and his time was nearly up. I thought of the incident in his "Ranch Life," in which he says he once opened a cowboy ball with the wife of a Minnesota man, who had recently shot a bullying Scotchman who danced opposite. He says the scene reminded him of the ball where Bret Harte's heroine "went down the middle with the man that shot Sandy Magee." Before reaching Medora he had told me many anecdotes of "Hell Roaring Bill Jones," and had said I should see him. But it turned out that Hell Roaring Bill had begun to celebrate the coming of the President too early in the day, and when we reached Medora he was not in a presentable condition. I forget now how he had earned his name, but no doubt he had come honestly by it; it was a part of his history, as was that of "The Pike," "Cold Turkey Bill," "Hash Knife Joe," and other classic heroes of the frontier. BAD LANDS AND BAD MEN It is curious how certain things go to the bad in the Far West, or a certain proportion of them,--bad lands, bad horses, and bad men. And it is a degree of badness that the East has no conception of,--land that looks as raw and unnatural as if time had never laid its shaping and softening hand upon it; horses that, when mounted, put their heads to the ground and their heels in the air, and, squealing defiantly, resort to the most diabolically ingenious tricks to shake off or to kill their riders; and men who amuse themselves in bar-rooms by shooting about the feet of a "tenderfoot" to make him dance, or who ride along the street and shoot at every one in sight. Just as the old plutonic fires come to the surface out there in the Rockies, and hint very strongly of the infernal regions, so a kind of satanic element in men and animals--an underlying devilishness--crops out, and we have the border ruffian and the bucking broncho. The President told of an Englishman on a hunting trip in the West, who, being an expert horseman at home, scorned the idea that he could not ride any of their "grass-fed ponies." So they gave him a bucking broncho. He was soon lying on the ground, much stunned. When he could speak, he said, "I should not have minded him, you know, _but 'e 'ides 'is 'ead_." THE PRESIDENT'S CORDIALITY At one place in Dakota the train stopped to take water while we were at lunch. A crowd soon gathered, and the President went out to greet them. We could hear his voice, and the cheers and laughter of the crowd. And then we heard him say, "Well, good-by, I must go now." Still he did not come. Then we heard more talking and laughing, and another "good-by," and yet he did not come. Then I went out to see what had happened. I found the President down on the ground shaking hands with the whole lot of them. Some one had reached up to shake his hand as he was about withdrawing, and this had been followed by such eagerness on the part of the rest of the people to do likewise, that the President had instantly got down to gratify them. Had the secret service men known it, they would have been in a pickle. We probably have never had a President who responded more freely and heartily to the popular liking for him than Roosevelt. The crowd always seem to be in love with him the moment they see him and hear his voice. And it is not by reason of any arts of eloquence, or charm of address, but by reason of his inborn heartiness and sincerity, and his genuine manliness. The people feel his quality at once. In Bermuda last winter I met a Catholic priest who had sat on the platform at some place in New England very near the President while he was speaking, and who said, "The man had not spoken three minutes before I loved him, and had any one tried to molest him, I could have torn him to pieces." It is the quality in the man that instantly inspires such a liking as this in strangers that will, I am sure, safeguard him in all public places. I once heard him say that he did not like to be addressed as "His Excellency;" he added laughingly, "They might just as well call me His Transparency, for all I care." It is this transparency, this direct, out-and-out, unequivocal character of him that is one source of his popularity. The people do love transparency,--all of them but the politicians. A friend of his one day took him to task for some mistake he had made in one of his appointments. "My dear sir," replied the President, "where you know of one mistake I have made, I know of ten." How such candor must make the politicians shiver! THE MULE-TEAM I have said that I stood in dread of the necessity of snowshoeing in the Park, and, in lieu of that, of horseback riding. Yet when we reached Gardiner, the entrance to the Park, on that bright, crisp April morning, with no snow in sight save that on the mountain-tops, and found Major Pitcher and Captain Chittenden at the head of a squad of soldiers, with a fine saddle-horse for the President, and an ambulance drawn by two span of mules for me, I confess that I experienced just a slight shade of mortification. I thought they might have given me the option of the saddle or the ambulance. Yet I entered the vehicle as if it was just what I had been expecting. The President and his escort, with a cloud of cowboys hovering in the rear, were soon off at a lively pace, and my ambulance followed close, and at a lively pace, too; so lively that I soon found myself gripping the seat with my hands. "Well," I said to myself, "they are giving me a regular Western send-off;" and I thought, as the ambulance swayed from side to side, that it would suit me just as well if my driver did not try to keep up with the presidential procession. The driver and his mules were shut off from me by a curtain, but, looking ahead out of the sides of the vehicle, I saw two good-sized logs lying across our course. Surely, I thought (and barely had time to think), he will avoid these. But he did not, and as we passed over them I was nearly thrown through the top of the ambulance. "This _is_ a lively send-off," I said, rubbing my bruises with one hand, while I clung to the seat with the other. Presently I saw the cowboys scrambling up the bank as if to get out of our way; then the President on his fine gray stallion scrambling up the bank with his escort, and looking ominously in my direction, as we thundered by. SIDETRACKING THE PRESIDENT "Well," I said, "this is indeed a novel ride; for once in my life I have sidetracked the President of the United States! I am given the right of way over all." On we tore, along the smooth, hard road, and did not slacken our pace till, at the end of a mile or two, we began to mount the hill toward Fort Yellowstone. And not till we reached the fort did I learn that our mules had run away. They had been excited beyond control by the presidential cavalcade, and the driver, finding he could not hold them, had aimed only to keep them in the road, and we very soon had the road all to ourselves. HUGE BOILING SPRINGS Fort Yellowstone is at Mammoth Hot Springs, where one gets his first view of the characteristic scenery of the Park,--huge, boiling springs with their columns of vapor, and the first characteristic odors which suggest the traditional infernal regions quite as much as the boiling and steaming water does. One also gets a taste of a much more rarefied air than he has been used to, and finds himself panting for breath on a very slight exertion. The Mammoth Hot Springs have built themselves up an enormous mound that stands there above the village on the side of the mountain, terraced and scalloped and fluted, and suggesting some vitreous formation, or rare carving of enormous, many-colored precious stones. It looks quite unearthly, and, though the devil's frying pan, and ink pot, and the Stygian caves are not far off, the suggestion is of something celestial rather than of the nether regions,--a vision of jasper walls, and of amethyst battlements. With Captain Chittenden I climbed to the top, stepping over the rills and creeks of steaming hot water, and looked at the marvelously clear, cerulean, but boiling, pools on the summit. The water seemed as unearthly in its beauty and purity as the gigantic sculpturing that held it. [Illustration: FORT YELLOWSTONE. From stereograph, copyright 1904, by Underwood & Underwood, New York.] THE STYGIAN CAVES The Stygian caves are still farther up the mountain,--little pockets in the rocks, or well-holes in the ground at your feet, filled with deadly carbon dioxide. We saw birds' feathers and quills in all of them. The birds hop into them, probably in quest of food or seeking shelter, and they never come out. We saw the body of a martin on the bank of one hole. Into one we sank a lighted torch, and it was extinguished as quickly as if we had dropped it into water. Each cave or niche is a death valley on a small scale. Near by we came upon a steaming pool, or lakelet, of an acre or more in extent. A pair of mallard ducks were swimming about in one end of it,--the cool end. When we approached, they swam slowly over into the warmer water. As they progressed, the water got hotter and hotter, and the ducks' discomfort was evident. Presently they stopped, and turned toward us, half appealingly, as I thought. They could go no farther; would we please come no nearer? As I took another step or two, up they rose and disappeared over the hill. Had they gone to the extreme end of the pool, we could have had boiled mallard for dinner. DEER FEEDING IN THE STREETS Another novel spectacle was at night, or near sundown, when the deer came down from the hills into the streets, and ate hay a few yards from the officers' quarters, as unconcernedly as so many domestic sheep. This they had been doing all winter, and they kept it up till May, at times a score or more of them profiting thus on the government's bounty. When the sundown gun was fired a couple of hundred yards away, they gave a nervous start, but kept on with their feeding. The antelope and elk and mountain sheep had not yet grown bold enough to accept Uncle Sam's charity in that way. The President wanted all the freedom and solitude possible while in the Park, so all newspaper men and other strangers were excluded. Even the secret service men and his physician and private secretaries were left at Gardiner. He craved once more to be alone with nature; he was evidently hungry for the wild and the aboriginal,--a hunger that seems to come upon him regularly at least once a year, and drives him forth on his hunting trips for big game in the West. We spent two weeks in the Park, and had fair weather, bright, crisp days, and clear, freezing nights. The first week we occupied three camps that had been prepared, or partly prepared, for us in the northeast corner of the Park, in the region drained by the Gardiner River, where there was but little snow, and which we reached on horseback. VISIT TO THE GEYSER REGION The second week we visited the geyser region, which lies a thousand feet or more higher, and where the snow was still five or six feet deep. This part of the journey was made in big sleighs, each drawn by two span of horses. On the horseback excursion, which involved only about fifty miles of riding, we had a mule pack train, and Sibley tents and stoves, with quite a retinue of camp laborers, a lieutenant and an orderly or two, and a guide, Billy Hofer. THE FIRST CAMP The first camp was in a wild, rocky, and picturesque gorge on the Yellowstone, about ten miles from the fort. A slight indisposition, the result of luxurious living, with no wood to chop or to saw, and no hills to climb, as at home, prevented me from joining the party till the third day. Then Captain Chittenden drove me eight miles in a buggy. About two miles from camp we came to a picket of two or three soldiers, where my big bay was in waiting for me. I mounted him confidently, and, guided by an orderly, took the narrow, winding trail toward camp. Except for an hour's riding the day before with Captain Chittenden, I had not been on a horse's back for nearly fifty years, and I had not spent as much as a day in the saddle during my youth. That first sense of a live, spirited, powerful animal beneath you, at whose mercy you are,--you, a pedestrian all your days,--with gullies and rocks and logs to cross, and deep chasms opening close beside you, is not a little disturbing. But my big bay did his part well, and I did not lose my head or my nerve, as we cautiously made our way along the narrow path on the side of the steep gorge, with a foaming torrent rushing along at its foot, nor yet when we forded the rocky and rapid Yellowstone. A misstep or a stumble on the part of my steed, and probably the first bubble of my confidence would have been shivered at once; but this did not happen, and in due time we reached the group of tents that formed the President's camp. THE PRESIDENT ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS The situation was delightful,--no snow, scattered pine trees, a secluded valley, rocky heights, and the clear, ample, trouty waters of the Yellowstone. The President was not in camp. In the morning he had stated his wish to go alone into the wilderness. Major Pitcher very naturally did not quite like the idea, and wished to send an orderly with him. "No," said the President. "Put me up a lunch, and let me go alone. I will surely come back." And back he surely came. It was about five o'clock when he came briskly down the path from the east to the camp. It came out that he had tramped about eighteen miles through a very rough country. The day before, he and the major had located a band of several hundred elk on a broad, treeless hillside, and his purpose was to find those elk, and creep up on them, and eat his lunch under their very noses. And this he did, spending an hour or more within fifty yards of them. He came back looking as fresh as when he started, and at night, sitting before the big camp fire, related his adventure, and talked with his usual emphasis and copiousness of many things. He told me of the birds he had seen or heard; among them he had heard one that was new to him. From his description I told him I thought it was Townsend's solitaire, a bird I much wanted to see and hear. I had heard the West India solitaire,--one of the most impressive songsters I ever heard,--and I wished to compare our Western form with it. A STRANGE BIRD SONG The next morning we set out for our second camp, ten or a dozen miles away, and in reaching it passed over much of the ground the President had traversed the day before. As we came to a wild, rocky place above a deep chasm of the river, with a few scattered pine trees, the President said, "It was right here that I heard that strange bird song." We paused a moment. "And there it is now," he exclaimed. THE SOLITAIRE Sure enough, there was the solitaire singing from the top of a small cedar,--a bright, animated, eloquent song, but without the richness and magic of the song of the tropical species. We hitched our horses, and followed the bird up as it flew from tree to tree. The President was as eager to see and hear it as I was. It seemed very shy, and we only caught glimpses of it. In form and color it much resembles its West India cousin, and suggests our catbird. It ceased to sing when we pursued it. It is a bird found only in the wilder and higher parts of the Rockies. My impression was that its song did not quite merit the encomiums that have been pronounced upon it. At this point, I saw amid the rocks my first and only Rocky Mountain woodchucks, and, soon after we had resumed our journey, our first blue grouse,--a number of them like larger partridges. Occasionally we would come upon black-tailed deer, standing or lying down in the bushes, their large ears at attention being the first thing to catch the eye. They would often allow us to pass within a few rods of them without showing alarm. Elk horns were scattered all over this part of the Park, and we passed several old carcasses of dead elk that had probably died a natural death. [Illustration: THE YELLOWSTONE RIVER AND CANYON. From stereograph, copyright 1904, by Underwood & Underwood, New York.] THE "SINGING GOPHER" In a grassy bottom at the foot of a steep hill, while the President and I were dismounted, and noting the pleasing picture which our pack train of fifteen or twenty mules made filing along the side of a steep grassy slope,--a picture which he has preserved in his late volume, "Out-Door Pastimes of an American Hunter,"--our attention was attracted by plaintive, musical, bird-like chirps that rose from the grass about us. I was almost certain it was made by a bird; the President was of like opinion; and I kicked about in the tufts of grass, hoping to flush the bird. Now here, now there, arose this sharp, but bird-like note. Finally we found that it was made by a species of gopher, whose holes we soon discovered. What its specific name is I do not know, but it should be called the singing gopher. Our destination this day was a camp on Cottonwood Creek, near "Hell Roaring Creek." As we made our way in the afternoon along a broad, open, grassy valley, I saw a horseman come galloping over the hill to our right, starting up a band of elk as he came; riding across the plain, he wheeled his horse, and, with the military salute, joined our party. He proved to be a government scout, called the "Duke of Hell Roaring,"--an educated officer from the Austrian army, who, for some unknown reason, had exiled himself here in this out-of-the-way part of the world. He was a man in his prime, of fine, military look and bearing. After conversing a few moments with the President and Major Pitcher, he rode rapidly away. THE SECOND CAMP Our second camp, which we reached in mid-afternoon, was in the edge of the woods on the banks of a fine, large trout stream, where ice and snow still lingered in patches. I tried for trout in the head of a large, partly open pool, but did not get a rise; too much ice in the stream, I concluded. Very soon my attention was attracted by a strange note, or call, in the spruce woods. The President had also noticed it, and, with me, wondered what made it. Was it bird or beast? Billy Hofer said he thought it was an owl, but it in no way suggested an owl, and the sun was shining brightly. It was a sound such as a boy might make by blowing in the neck of an empty bottle. Presently we heard it beyond us on the other side of the creek, which was pretty good proof that the creature had wings. "Let's go run that bird down," said the President to me. So off we started across a small, open, snow-streaked plain, toward the woods beyond it. We soon decided that the bird was on the top of one of a group of tall spruces. After much skipping about over logs and rocks, and much craning of our necks, we made him out on the peak of a spruce. I imitated his call, when he turned his head down toward us, but we could not make out what he was. "Why did we not think to bring the glasses?" said the President. "I will run and get them," I replied. TREEING AN OWL "No," said he, "you stay here and keep that bird treed, and I will fetch them." So off he went like a boy, and was very soon back with the glasses. We quickly made out that it was indeed an owl,--the pigmy owl, as it turned out,--not much larger than a bluebird. I think the President was as pleased as if we had bagged some big game. He had never seen the bird before. Throughout the trip I found his interest in bird life very keen, and his eye and ear remarkably quick. He usually saw the bird or heard its note as quickly as I did,--and I had nothing else to think about, and had been teaching my eye and ear the trick of it for over fifty years. Of course, his training as a big-game hunter stood him in good stead, but back of that were his naturalist's instincts, and his genuine love of all forms of wild life. ROOSEVELT THE NATURALIST I have been told that his ambition up to the time he went to Harvard had been to be a naturalist, but that there they seem to have convinced him that all the out-of-door worlds of natural history had been conquered, and that the only worlds remaining were in the laboratory, and to be won with the microscope and the scalpel. But Roosevelt was a man made for action in a wide field, and laboratory conquests could not satisfy him. His instincts as a naturalist, however, lie back of all his hunting expeditions, and, in a large measure, I think, prompt them. Certain it is that his hunting records contain more live natural history than any similar records known to me, unless it be those of Charles St. John, the Scotch naturalist-sportsman. The Canada jays, or camp-robbers, as they are often called, soon found out our camp that afternoon, and no sooner had the cook begun to throw out peelings and scraps and crusts than the jays began to carry them off, not to eat, as I observed, but to hide them in the thicker branches of the spruce trees. How tame they were, coming within three or four yards of one! Why this species of jay should everywhere be so familiar, and all other kinds so wild, is a puzzle. In the morning, as we rode down the valley toward our next camping-place, at Tower Falls, a band of elk containing a hundred or more started along the side of the hill a few hundred yards away. I was some distance behind the rest of the party, as usual, when I saw the President wheel his horse off to the left, and, beckoning to me to follow, start at a tearing pace on the trail of the fleeing elk. He afterwards told me that he wanted me to get a good view of those elk at close range, and he was afraid that if he sent the major or Hofer to lead me, I would not get it. I hurried along as fast as I could, which was not fast; the way was rough,--logs, rocks, spring runs, and a tenderfoot rider. WILD ELK Now and then the President, looking back and seeing what slow progress I was making, would beckon to me impatiently, and I could fancy him saying, "If I had a rope around him, he would come faster than that!" Once or twice I lost sight of both him and the elk; the altitude was great, and the horse was laboring like a steam-engine on an upgrade. Still I urged him on. Presently, as I broke over a hill, I saw the President pressing the elk up the opposite slope. At the brow of the hill he stopped, and I soon joined him. There on the top, not fifty yards away, stood the elk in a mass, their heads toward us and their tongues hanging out. They could run no farther. The President laughed like a boy. The spectacle meant much more to him than it did to me. I had never seen a wild elk till on this trip, but they had been among the notable game that he had hunted. He had traveled hundreds of miles, and undergone great hardships, to get within rifle range of these creatures. Now here stood scores of them, with lolling tongues, begging for mercy. After gazing at them to our hearts' content, we turned away to look up our companions, who were nowhere within sight. We finally spied them a mile or more away, and, joining them, all made our way to an elevated plateau that commanded an open landscape three or four miles across. It was high noon, and the sun shone clear and warm. From this lookout we saw herds upon herds of elk scattered over the slopes and gentle valleys in front of us. Some were grazing, some were standing or lying upon the ground, or upon the patches of snow. Through our glasses we counted the separate bands, and then the numbers of some of the bands or groups, and estimated that three thousand elk were in full view in the landscape around us. It was a notable spectacle. Afterward, in Montana, I attended a council of Indian chiefs at one of the Indian agencies, and told them, through their interpreter, that I had been with the Great Chief in the Park, and of the game we had seen. When I told them of these three thousand elk all in view at once, they grunted loudly, whether with satisfaction or with incredulity, I could not tell. In the midst of this great game amphitheatre we dismounted and enjoyed the prospect. And the President did an unusual thing, he loafed for nearly an hour,--stretched himself out in the sunshine upon a flat rock, as did the rest of us, and, I hope, got a few winks of sleep. I am sure I did. Little, slender, striped chipmunks, about half the size of ours, were scurrying about; but I recall no other wild thing save the elk. TOWER FALLS From here we rode down the valley to our third camp, at Tower Falls, stopping on the way to eat our luncheon on a washed boulder beside a creek. On this ride I saw my first and only badger; he stuck his striped head out of his hole in the ground only a few yards away from us as we passed. Our camp at Tower Falls was amid the spruces above a cañon of the Yellowstone, five or six hundred feet deep. It was a beautiful and impressive situation,--shelter, snugness, even cosiness,--looking over the brink of the awful and the terrifying. With a run and a jump I think one might have landed in the river at the bottom of the great abyss, and in doing so might have scaled one of those natural obelisks or needles of rock that stand up out of the depths two or three hundred feet high. Nature shows you what an enormous furrow her plough can open through the strata when mowing horizontally, at the same time that she shows you what delicate and graceful columns her slower and gentler aerial forces can carve out of the piled strata. At the Falls there were two or three of these columns, like the picket-pins of the elder gods. MOUNTAIN SHEEP Across the cañon in front of our camp, upon a grassy plateau which was faced by a wall of trap rock, apparently thirty or forty feet high, a band of mountain sheep soon attracted our attention. They were within long rifle range, but were not at all disturbed by our presence, nor had they been disturbed by the road-builders who, under Captain Chittenden, were constructing a government road along the brink of the cañon. We speculated as to whether or not the sheep could get down the almost perpendicular face of the chasm to the river to drink. It seemed to me impossible. Would they try it while we were there to see? We all hoped so; and sure enough, late in the afternoon the word came to our tents that the sheep were coming down. The President, with coat off and a towel around his neck, was shaving. One side of his face was half shaved, and the other side lathered. Hofer and I started for a point on the brink of the cañon where we could have a better view. "By Jove," said the President, "I must see that. The shaving can wait, and the sheep won't." WATCHING THE "STUNT" So on he came, accoutred as he was,--coatless, hatless, but not latherless, nor towelless. Like the rest of us, his only thought was to see those sheep do their "stunt." With glasses in hand, we watched them descend those perilous heights, leaping from point to point, finding a foothold where none appeared to our eyes, loosening fragments of the crumbling rocks as they came, now poised upon some narrow shelf and preparing for the next leap, zigzagging or plunging straight down till the bottom was reached, and not one accident or misstep amid all that insecure footing. I think the President was the most pleased of us all; he laughed with the delight of it, and quite forgot his need of a hat and coat till I sent for them. [Illustration: MR. BURROUGHS'S FAVORITE PASTIME. By kind permission of Forest and Stream.] In the night we heard the sheep going back; we could tell by the noise of the falling stones. In the morning I confidently expected to see some of them lying dead at the foot of the cliffs, but there they all were at the top once more, apparently safe and sound. They do, however, occasionally meet with accidents in their perilous climbing, and their dead bodies have been found at the foot of the rocks. Doubtless some point of rock to which they had trusted gave way, and crushed them in the descent, or fell upon those in the lead. TROUT FISHING The next day, while the rest of us went fishing for trout in the Yellowstone, three or four miles above camp, over the roughest trail that we had yet traversed on horseback, the President, who never fishes unless put to it for meat, went off alone again with his lunch in his pocket, to stalk those sheep as he had stalked the elk, and to feel the old sportsman's thrill without the use of firearms. To do this involved a tramp of eight or ten miles down the river to a bridge and up the opposite bank. This he did, and ate his lunch near the sheep, and was back in camp before we were. We took some large cut-throat trout, as they are called, from the yellow mark across their throats, and I saw at short range a black-tailed deer bounding along in that curious, stiff-legged, mechanical, yet springy manner, apparently all four legs in the air at once, and all four feet reaching the ground at once, affording a very singular spectacle. RETURN TO FORT YELLOWSTONE We spent two nights in our Tower Falls camp, and on the morning of the third day set out on our return to Fort Yellowstone, pausing at Yancey's on our way, and exchanging greetings with the old frontiersman, who died a few weeks later. AROUND THE CAMP FIRE While in camp we always had a big fire at night in the open near the tents, and around this we sat upon logs or camp-stools, and listened to the President's talk. What a stream of it he poured forth! and what a varied and picturesque stream!--anecdote, history, science, politics, adventure, literature; bits of his experience as a ranchman, hunter, Rough Rider, legislator, Civil Service commissioner, police commissioner, governor, president,--the frankest confessions, the most telling criticisms, happy characterizations of prominent political leaders, or foreign rulers, or members of his own Cabinet; always surprising by his candor, astonishing by his memory, and diverting by his humor. His reading has been very wide, and he has that rare type of memory which retains details as well as mass and generalities. One night something started him off on ancient history, and one would have thought he was just fresh from his college course in history, the dates and names and events came so readily. Another time he discussed palæontology, and rapidly gave the outlines of the science, and the main facts, as if he had been reading up on the subject that very day. He sees things as wholes, and hence the relation of the parts comes easy to him. At dinner, at the White House, the night before we started on the expedition, I heard him talking with a guest,--an officer of the British army, who was just back from India. And the extent and variety of his information about India and Indian history and the relations of the British government to it were extraordinary. It put the British major on his mettle to keep pace with him. THE PRESIDENT TELLING STORIES One night in camp he told us the story of one of his Rough Riders who had just written him from some place in Arizona. The Rough Riders, wherever they are now, look to him in time of trouble. This one had come to grief in Arizona. He was in jail. So he wrote the President, and his letter ran something like this:-- "DEAR COLONEL,--I am in trouble. I shot a lady in the eye, but I did not intend to hit the lady; I was shooting at my wife." And the presidential laughter rang out over the treetops. To another Rough Rider, who was in jail, accused of horse stealing, he had loaned two hundred dollars to pay counsel on his trial, and, to his surprise, in due time the money came back. The Ex-Rough wrote that his trial never came off. "_We elected our district attorney_;" and the laughter again sounded, and drowned the noise of the brook near by. On another occasion we asked the President if he was ever molested by any of the "bad men" of the frontier, with whom he had often come in contact. "Only once," he said. The cowboys had always treated him with the utmost courtesy, both on the round-up and in camp; "and the few real desperadoes I have seen were also perfectly polite." Once only was he maliciously shot at, and then not by a cowboy nor a _bona fide_ "bad man," but by a "broad-hatted ruffian of a cheap and commonplace type." He had been compelled to pass the night at a little frontier hotel where the bar-room occupied the whole lower floor, and was, in consequence, the only place where the guests of the hotel, whether drunk or sober, could sit. As he entered the room, he saw that every man there was being terrorized by a half-drunken ruffian who stood in the middle of the floor with a revolver in each hand, compelling different ones to treat. FLOORING A RUFFIAN "I went and sat down behind the stove," said the President, "as far from him as I could get; and hoped to escape his notice. The fact that I wore glasses, together with my evident desire to avoid a fight, apparently gave him the impression that I could be imposed upon with impunity. He very soon approached me, flourishing his two guns, and ordered me to treat. I made no reply for some moments, when the fellow became so threatening that I saw something had to be done. The crowd, mostly sheep-herders and small grangers, sat or stood back against the wall, afraid to move. I was unarmed, and thought rapidly. Saying, 'Well, if I must, I must,' I got up as if to walk around him to the bar, then, as I got opposite him, I wheeled and fetched him as heavy a blow on the chin-point as I could strike. He went down like a steer before the axe, firing both guns into the ceiling as he went. I jumped on him, and, with my knees on his chest, disarmed him in a hurry. The crowd was then ready enough to help me, and we hog-tied him and put him in an outhouse." The President alludes to this incident in his "Ranch Life," but does not give the details. It brings out his mettle very distinctly. He told us in an amused way of the attempts of his political opponents at Albany, during his early career as a member of the Assembly, to besmirch his character. His outspoken criticisms and denunciations had become intolerable to them, so they laid a trap for him, but he was not caught. His innate rectitude and instinct for the right course saved him, as it has saved him many times since. I do not think that in any emergency he has to debate with himself long as to the right course to be pursued; he divines it by a kind of infallible instinct. His motives are so simple and direct that he finds a straight and easy course where another man, whose eye is less single, would flounder and hesitate. RARE COMBINATION OF QUALITIES The President unites in himself powers and qualities that rarely go together. Thus, he has both physical and moral courage in a degree rare in history. He can stand calm and unflinching in the path of a charging grizzly, and he can confront with equal coolness and determination the predaceous corporations and money powers of the country. He unites the qualities of the man of action with those of the scholar and writer,--another very rare combination. He unites the instincts and accomplishments of the best breeding and culture with the broadest democratic sympathies and affiliations. He is as happy with a frontiersman like Seth Bullock as with a fellow Harvard man, and Seth Bullock is happy, too. He unites great austerity with great good-nature. He unites great sensibility with great force and will power. He loves solitude, and he loves to be in the thick of the fight. His love of nature is equaled only by his love of the ways and marts of men. He is doubtless the most vital man on the continent, if not on the planet, to-day. He is many-sided, and every side throbs with his tremendous life and energy; the pressure is equal all around. His interests are as keen in natural history as in economics, in literature as in statecraft, in the young poet as in the old soldier, in preserving peace as in preparing for war. And he can turn all his great power into the new channel on the instant. His interest in the whole of life, and in the whole life of the nation, never flags for a moment. His activity is tireless. All the relaxation he needs or craves is a change of work. He is like the farmer's fields, that only need a rotation of crops. I once heard him say that all he cared about being President was just "the big work." During this tour through the West, lasting over two months, he made nearly three hundred speeches; and yet on his return Mrs. Roosevelt told me he looked as fresh and unworn as when he left home. SLEIGHING AMONG THE GEYSERS We went up into the big geyser region with the big sleighs, each drawn by four horses. A big snowbank had to be shoveled through for us before we got to the Golden Gate, two miles above Mammoth Hot Springs. Beyond that we were at an altitude of about eight thousand feet, on a fairly level course that led now through woods, and now through open country, with the snow of a uniform depth of four or five feet, except as we neared the "formations," where the subterranean warmth kept the ground bare. The roads had been broken and the snow packed for us by teams from the fort, otherwise the journey would have been impossible. The President always rode beside the driver. From his youth, he said, this seat had always been the most desirable one to him. When the sleigh would strike the bare ground, and begin to drag heavily, he would bound out nimbly and take to his heels, and then all three of us--Major Pitcher, Mr. Childs, and myself--would follow suit, sometimes reluctantly on my part. Walking at that altitude is no fun, especially if you try to keep pace with such a walker as the President is. But he could not sit at his ease and let those horses drag him in a sleigh over bare ground. When snow was reached, we would again quickly resume our seats. [Illustration: SUNRISE IN YELLOWSTONE PARK. From stereograph, copyright 1904, by Underwood & Underwood, New York.] As one nears the geyser region, he gets the impression from the columns of steam going up here and there in the distance--now from behind a piece of woods, now from out a hidden valley--that he is approaching a manufacturing centre, or a railroad terminus. And when he begins to hear the hoarse snoring of "Roaring Mountain," the illusion is still more complete. At Norris's there is a big vent where the steam comes tearing out of a recent hole in the ground with terrific force. Huge mounds of ice had formed from the congealed vapor all around it, some of them very striking. OLD FAITHFUL The novelty of the geyser region soon wears off. Steam and hot water are steam and hot water the world over, and the exhibition of them here did not differ, except in volume, from what one sees by his own fireside. The "Growler" is only a boiling teakettle on a large scale, and "Old Faithful" is as if the lid were to fly off, and the whole contents of the kettle should be thrown high into the air. To be sure, boiling lakes and steaming rivers are not common, but the new features seemed, somehow, out of place, and as if nature had made a mistake. One disliked to see so much good steam and hot water going to waste; whole towns might be warmed by them, and big wheels made to go round. I wondered that they had not piped them into the big hotels which they opened for us, and which were warmed by wood fires. At Norris's the big room that the President and I occupied was on the ground floor, and was heated by a huge box stove. As we entered it to go to bed, the President said, "Oom John, don't you think it is too hot here?" "I certainly do," I replied. "Shall I open the window?" "That will just suit me." And he threw the sash, which came down to the floor, all the way up, making an opening like a doorway. The night was cold, but neither of us suffered from the abundance of fresh air. The caretaker of the building was a big Swede called Andy. In the morning Andy said that beat him: "There was the President of the United States sleeping in that room, with the window open to the floor, and not so much as one soldier outside on guard." The President had counted much on seeing the bears that in summer board at the Fountain Hotel, but they were not yet out of their dens. We saw the track of only one, and he was not making for the hotel. At all the formations where the geysers are, the ground was bare over a large area. I even saw a wild flower--an early buttercup, not an inch high--in bloom. This seems to be the earliest wild flower in the Rockies. It is the only fragrant buttercup I know. CAPTURING A MOUSE As we were riding along in our big sleigh toward the Fountain Hotel, the President suddenly jumped out, and, with his soft hat as a shield to his hand, captured a mouse that was running along over the ground near us. He wanted it for Dr. Merriam, on the chance that it might be a new species. While we all went fishing in the afternoon, the President skinned his mouse, and prepared the pelt to be sent to Washington. It was done as neatly as a professed taxidermist would have done it. This was the only game the President killed in the Park. In relating the incident to a reporter while I was in Spokane, the thought occurred to me, Suppose he changes that _u_ to an _o_, and makes the President capture a moose, what a pickle I shall be in! Is it anything more than ordinary newspaper enterprise to turn a mouse into a moose? But, luckily for me, no such metamorphosis happened to that little mouse. It turned out not to be a new species, as it should have been, but a species new to the Park. I caught trout that afternoon, on the edge of steaming pools in the Madison River, that seemed to my hand almost blood-warm. I suppose they found better feeding where the water was warm. On the table they did not compare with our Eastern brook trout. I was pleased to be told at one of the hotels that they had kalsomined some of the rooms with material from one of the devil's paint-pots. It imparted a soft, delicate, pinkish tint, not at all suggestive of things satanic. THE MOUNTAIN BLUEBIRD One afternoon at Norris's, the President and I took a walk to observe the birds. In the grove about the barns there was a great number, the most attractive to me being the mountain bluebird. These birds we saw in all parts of the Park, and at Norris's there was an unusual number of them. How blue they were,--breast and all. In voice and manner they were almost identical with our bluebird. The Western purple finch was abundant here also, and juncos, and several kinds of sparrows, with an occasional Western robin. A pair of wild geese were feeding in the low, marshy ground not over one hundred yards from us, but when we tried to approach nearer they took wing. A few geese and ducks seem to winter in the Park. The second morning at Norris's, one of our teamsters, George Marvin, suddenly dropped dead from some heart affection, just as he had finished caring for his team. It was a great shock to us all. I never saw a better man with a team than he was. I had ridden on the seat beside him all the day previous. On one of the "formations" our teams had got mired in the soft, putty-like mud, and at one time it looked as if they could never extricate themselves, and I doubt if they could have, had it not been for the skill with which Marvin managed them. We started for the Grand Cañon up the Yellowstone that morning, and, in order to give myself a walk over the crisp snow in the clear, frosty air, I set out a little while in advance of the teams. As I did so, I saw the President, accompanied by one of the teamsters, walking hurriedly toward the barn to pay his last respects to the body of Marvin. After we had returned to Mammoth Hot Springs, he made inquiries for the young woman to whom he had been told that Marvin was engaged to be married. He looked her up, and sat a long time with her in her home, offering his sympathy, and speaking words of consolation. The act shows the depth and breadth of his humanity. TRAVELING ON SKIS At the Cañon Hotel the snow was very deep, and had become so soft from the warmth of the earth beneath, as well as from the sun above, that we could only reach the brink of the Cañon on skis. The President and Major Pitcher had used skis before, but I had not, and, starting out without the customary pole, I soon came to grief. The snow gave way beneath me, and I was soon in an awkward predicament. The more I struggled, the lower my head and shoulders went, till only my heels, strapped to those long timbers, protruded above the snow. To reverse my position was impossible till some one came, and reached me the end of a pole, and pulled me upright. But I very soon got the hang of the things, and the President and I quickly left the superintendent behind. I think I could have passed the President, but my manners forbade. He was heavier than I was, and broke in more. When one of his feet would go down half a yard or more, I noted with admiration the skilled diplomacy he displayed in extricating it. The tendency of my skis was all the time to diverge, and each to go off at an acute angle to my main course, and I had constantly to be on the alert to check this tendency. Paths had been shoveled for us along the brink of the Cañon, so that we got the usual views from the different points. The Cañon was nearly free from snow, and was a grand spectacle, by far the grandest to be seen in the Park. The President told us that once, when pressed for meat, while returning through here from one of his hunting trips, he had made his way down to the river that we saw rushing along beneath us, and had caught some trout for dinner. Necessity alone could induce him to fish. Across the head of the Falls there was a bridge of snow and ice, upon which we were told that the coyotes passed. As the season progressed, there would come a day when the bridge would not be safe. It would be interesting to know if the coyotes knew when this time arrived. The only live thing we saw in the Cañon was an osprey perched upon a rock opposite us. Near the falls of the Yellowstone, as at other places we had visited, a squad of soldiers had their winter quarters. The President always called on them, looked over the books they had to read, examined their housekeeping arrangements, and conversed freely with them. In front of the hotel were some low hills separated by gentle valleys. At the President's suggestion, he and I raced on our skis down those inclines. We had only to stand up straight, and let gravity do the rest. As we were going swiftly down the side of one of the hills, I saw out of the corner of my eye the President taking a header into the snow. The snow had given way beneath him, and nothing could save him from taking the plunge. I don't know whether I called out, or only thought, something about the downfall of the administration. At any rate, the administration was down, and pretty well buried, but it was quickly on its feet again, shaking off the snow with a boy's laughter. I kept straight on, and very soon the laugh was on me, for the treacherous snow sank beneath me, and I took a header, too. "Who is laughing now, Oom John?" called out the President. The spirit of the boy was in the air that day about the Cañon of the Yellowstone, and the biggest boy of us all was President Roosevelt. HOMEWARD BOUND The snow was getting so soft in the middle of the day that our return to the Mammoth Hot Springs could no longer be delayed. Accordingly, we were up in the morning, and ready to start on the home journey, a distance of twenty miles, by four o'clock. The snow bore up the horses well till mid-forenoon, when it began to give way beneath them. But by very careful management we pulled through without serious delay, and were back again at the house of Major Pitcher in time for luncheon, being the only outsiders who had ever made the tour of the Park so early in the season. A few days later I bade good-by to the President, who went on his way to California, while I made a loop of travel to Spokane, and around through Idaho and Montana, and had glimpses of the great, optimistic, sunshiny West that I shall not soon forget. 
15526	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 15526-h.htm or 15526-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/5/5/2/15526/15526-h/15526-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/5/5/2/15526/15526-h.zip) JOHN L. STODDARD'S LECTURES, VOLUME 10 (of 10) Southern California Grand Cañon of the Colorado River Yellowstone National Park Illustrated and Embellished with Views of the World's Famous Places and People, Being the Identical Discourses Delivered during the Past Eighteen Years under the Title of the Stoddard Lectures Boston Balch Brothers Co. Norwood Press J. S. Gushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. Macdonald & Sons, Bookbinders, Boston MCM SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA [Illustration] Nature has carefully guarded Southern California. Ten thousand miles of ocean roll between her western boundary and the nearest continent; while eastward, her divinity is hedged by dreary deserts that forbid approach. Although the arid plains of eastern Arizona are frequently called deserts, it is not till the west-bound tourist has passed Flagstaff that the word acquires a real and terrible significance. Then, during almost an entire day he journeys through a region which, while it fascinates, inspires him with dread. Occasionally a flock of goats suggests the possibility of sustaining life here, but sometimes for a distance of fifty miles he may see neither man nor beast. The villages, if such they can be called, are merely clusters of rude huts dotting an area of rocky desolation. No trees are visible. No grazing-ground relieves the dismal monochrome of sand. The mountains stand forth dreary, gaunt, and naked. In one locality the train runs through a series of gorges the sides of which are covered with disintegrated rock, heaped up in infinite confusion, as if an awful ague-fit had seized the hills, and shaken them until their ledges had been broken into a million boulders. At another point, emerging from a maze of mountains, the locomotive shoots into a plain, forty or fifty miles square, and sentineled on every side by savage peaks. Once, doubtless, an enormous lake was held encompassed by these giants; but, taking advantage of some seismic agitation, it finally slipped through their fingers to the sea, and now men travel over its deserted bed. Sometimes these monsters seemed to be closing in upon us, as if to thwart our exit and crush us in their stony arms; but the resistless steed that bore us onward, though quivering and panting with the effort, always contrived to find the narrow opening toward liberty. Occasionally our route lay through enormous fields of cactus and yucca trees, twelve feet in height, and, usually, so hideous from their distorted shapes and prickly spikes, that I could understand the proverb, "Even the Devil cannot eat a cactus." [Illustration: LIFE ON THE DESERT.] [Illustration: THE DESERT'S MOUNTAINS.] [Illustration: DESERT VEGETATION.] As the day wore on, and we were drawn from one scene of desolation to another, I almost doubted, like Bunyan's Pilgrim, whether we should ever reach the promised land alive; but, finally, through a last upheaval of defiant hills which were, if possible, more desolate and weird than any we had seen, we gained the boundary of California and gazed upon the Colorado River. It is a stream whose history thrilled me as I remembered how in its long and tortuous course of more than a thousand miles to this point it had laboriously cut its way through countless desert cañons, and I felt glad to see it here at last, sweeping along in tranquil majesty as if aware that all its struggles were now ended, and peace and victory had been secured. It was sunset when our train, having crossed this river, ran along its western bank to our first stopping-place in California,--the Needles. Never shall I forget the impression made upon me as I looked back toward the wilderness from which we had emerged. What! was that it--that vision of transfiguration--that illumined Zion radiant with splendor? Across the river, lighted by the evening's after-glow of fire, rose a celestial city, with towers, spires, and battlements glittering as if sheathed in burnished gold. Sunshine and distance had dispelled all traces of the region's barrenness, and for a few memorable moments, while we watched it breathlessly, its sparkling bastions seemed to beckon us alluringly to its magnificence; then, fading like an exquisite mirage created by the genii of the desert, it swiftly sank into the desolation from which the sun had summoned it, to crown it briefly with supernal glory. Turning at last from its cold immobility to the activity around us, I saw some representatives of the fallen race of California, as Indian bucks and squaws came from their squalid hovels to sell the trifling products of their industry, and stare at what to them is a perpetual miracle,--the passing train. Five races met upon that railroad platform, and together illustrated the history of the country. First, in respect to time, was the poor Indian, slovenly, painted and degraded, yet characterized by a kind of bovine melancholy on the faces of the men, and a trace of animal beauty in the forms of the young squaws. Teasing and jesting with the latter were the negro porters of the train, who, though their ancestors were as little civilized as those of the Indians, have risen to a level only to be appreciated by comparing the African and the Indian side by side. There, also, was the Mexican, the lord of all this region in his earlier and better days, but now a penniless degenerate of Old Castile. Among them stood the masterful Anglo-Saxon, whose energy has pushed aside the Spaniard, civilized the Negro, developed half a continent, built this amazing path of steel through fifteen hundred miles of desert, and who is king where-ever he goes. While I surveyed these specimens of humanity and compared them, one with another, there suddenly appeared among them a fifth figure,--that of Sing Lee, formerly a subject of the oldest government on earth, and still a representative of the four hundred millions swarming in the Flowery Kingdom. Strangely enough, of all these different racial types, the Mongol seemed the most self-satisfied. The Yankee was continually bustling about, feeding passengers, transporting trunks, or hammering car-wheels; the Negroes were joking with the Indians, who appeared stolidly apathetic or resigned; the Mexicans stood apart in sullen gloom, as if secretly mourning their lost estate; but Sing Lee looked about him with a cheerful calmness which seemed indicative of absolute contentment and his face wore, continually, a complacent smile. What strange varieties of human destiny these men present, I thought as I surveyed them: the Indian and the Mexican stand for the hopeless Past; the Anglo-Saxon and the Negro for the active Present; while Sing Lee is a specimen of that yellow race which is embalmed in its own conservatism, like a fly in amber. [Illustration: LOOKING BACK AT THE MOUNTAINS.] [Illustration: A CALIFORNIA RANCH SCENE.] [Illustration: INDIAN HUTS.] [Illustration: "A FALLEN RACE."] [Illustration: A MEXICAN HOUSE AND FAMILY.] [Illustration: THE BLOSSOMING WILDERNESS.] [Illustration: COMPLACENT MONGOLS.] [Illustration: CHARACTERISTIC SCENERY.] The unsuspecting traveler who has crossed the Colorado River and entered Southern California, naturally looks around him for the orange groves of which he has so often heard, and is astonished not to find himself surrounded by them; but, gradually, the truth is forced upon his mind that, in this section of our country, he must not base his calculations upon eastern distances, or eastern areas. For, even after he has passed the wilderness of Arizona and the California frontier, he discovers that the Eldorado of his dreams lies on the other side of a desert, two hundred miles in breadth, beyond whose desolate expanse the siren of the Sunset Sea still beckons him and whispers: "This is the final barrier; cross it, and I am yours." The transit is not difficult, however, in days like these; for the whole distance from Chicago to the coast can be accomplished in seventy-two hours, and where the transcontinental traveler of less than half a century ago was threatened day and night with attacks from murderous Apaches, and ran the risk of perishing of thirst in many a waterless "Valley of Death," the modern tourist sleeps securely in a Pullman car, is waited on by a colored servant, and dines in railway restaurants the management of which, both in the quality and quantity of the food supplied, even in the heart of the Great American Desert, is justly famous for its excellence. At San Bernardino, we enter what is called the Garden of Southern California; but even here it is possible to be disappointed, if we expect to find the entire country an unbroken paradise of orange trees and roses. Thousands of oranges and lemons, it is true, suspend their miniature globes of gold against the sky; but interspersed between their groves are wastes of sand, reminding us that all the fertile portion of this region has been as truly wrested from the wilderness, as Holland from the sea. Accordingly, since San Bernardino County alone is twice as large as Massachusetts, and the County of Los Angeles nearly the size of Connecticut, it is not difficult to understand why a continuous expanse of verdure is not seen. The truth is, Southern California, with a few exceptions, is cultivated only where man has brought to it vivifying water. When that appears, life springs up from sterility, as water gushed forth from the rock in the Arabian desert when the great leader of the Israelites smote it in obedience to Divine command. Hence, there is always present here the fascination of the unattained, which yet is readily attainable, patiently waiting for the master-hand that shall unlock the sand-roofed treasure-houses of fertility with a crystal key. It can be easily imagined, therefore, that this is a land of striking contrasts. Pass, for example, through the suburbs of Los Angeles, and you will find that, while one yard is dry and bare, the next may be embellished with a palm tree twenty feet in height, with roses clambering over the portico of the house, and lilies blooming in the garden. Of the three things essential to vegetation--soil, sun, and water--man must contribute (and it is all he can contribute) water. [Illustration: STRIKING CONTRASTS.] [Illustration: WRESTED FROM THE SAND.] [Illustration: A PALM-GIRT AVENUE, LOS ANGELES.] Once let the tourist here appreciate the fact that almost all the verdure which delights his eyes is the gift of water at the hand of man, and any disappointment he may have at first experienced will be changed to admiration. Moreover, with the least encouragement this country bursts forth into verdure, crowns its responsive soil with fertility, and smiles with bloom. Even the slightest tract of herbage, however brown it may be in the dry season, will in the springtime clothe itself with green, and decorate its emerald robe with spangled flowers. In fact, the wonderful profusion of wild flowers, which, when the winter rains have saturated the ground, transform these hillsides into floral terraces, can never be too highly praised. Happy is he who visits either Palestine or Southern California when they are bright with blossoms and redolent of fragrance. The climax of this renaissance of Nature is, usually, reached about the middle of April, but in proportion as the rain comes earlier or later, the season varies slightly. At a time when many cities of the North and East are held in the tenacious grip of winter, their gray skies thick with soot, their pavements deep in slush, and their inhabitants clad in furs, the cities of Southern California celebrate their floral carnival, which is a time of great rejoicing, attended with an almost fabulous display of flowers. Los Angeles, for example, has expended as much as twenty-five thousand dollars on the details of one such festival. The entire city is then gay with flags and banners, and in the long procession horses, carriages, and riders are so profusely decked with flowers, that they resemble a slowly moving throng of animated bouquets. Ten thousand choice roses have been at such times fastened to the wheels, body, pole, and harness of a single equipage. Sometimes the individual exhibitions in these floral pageants take the form of floats, which represent all sorts of myths and allegories, portrayed elaborately by means of statues, as well as living beings, lavishly adorned with ornamental grasses, and wild and cultivated flowers. Southern California is not only a locality, it is a type. It cannot be defined by merely mentioning parallels of latitude. We think of it and love it as the dreamland of the Spanish Missions, and as a region rescued from aridity, and made a home for the invalid and the winter tourist. Los Angeles is really its metropolis, but San Diego, Pasadena, and Santa Barbara are prosperous and progressive cities whose population increases only less rapidly than their ambition. [Illustration: AN ARBOR IN WINTER.] [Illustration: MAIN STREET, LOS ANGELES.] One of the first things for an eastern visitor to do, on arriving at Los Angeles, is to take the soft sound of _g_ out of the city's name, and to remember that the Spaniards and Mexicans pronounce _e_ like the English _a_ in fate. This is not absolutely necessary for entrance into good society, but the pronunciation "Angeelees" is tabooed. The first Anglo-Saxon to arrive here was brought by the Mexicans, in 1822, as a prisoner. Soon after, however, Americans appeared in constantly increasing numbers, and, on August 13, 1846, Major Fremont raised at Los Angeles the Stars and Stripes, and the house that he occupied may still be seen. Nevertheless, the importance of Los Angeles is of recent date. In 1885 it was an adobe village, dedicated to the Queen of the Angels; to-day, a city of brick and stone, with more than fifty thousand inhabitants, it calls itself the Queen of the State. Its streets are broad, many of its buildings are massive and imposing, and its fine residences beautiful. It is the capital of Southern California, and the headquarters of its fruit-culture. The plains and valleys surrounding it are one mass of vineyards, orange groves and orchards, and, in 1891, the value of oranges alone exported from this city amounted to one and a quarter millions of dollars. It must be said, however, that there is less verdure here than in well-cared-for eastern towns of corresponding size, and that Los Angeles, and even Pasadena, notwithstanding their many palm trees, have on the whole a bare appearance, compared with a city like New Haven, with its majestic elms and robe of vivid green, which even in autumn seems to dream of summer bloom. Nevertheless, Los Angeles is clean, and poverty and squalor rarely show themselves; while, in the suburbs of the city, even the humblest dwellings are frequently surrounded by palm trees, and made beautiful by flowers. [Illustration: FREMONT'S HEADQUARTERS.] [Illustration: PALATIAL RESIDENCES IN LOS ANGELES.] [Illustration: LOS ANGELES.] Another charm of Los Angeles is the sudden contrasts it presents. Thus, a ride of three minutes from his hotel will bring the tourist to the remains of the humble Mexican village which was the forerunner of the present city. There he will find the inevitable Plaza with its little park and fountain, without which no Mexican town is complete. There, too, is the characteristic adobe church, the quaint interior of which presents a curious medley of old weather-beaten statues and modern furniture, and is always pervaded by that smell peculiar to long-inhabited adobe buildings, and which is called by Steele, in his charming "Old California Days," the national odor of Mexico. Los Angeles, also, has its Chinatown, which in its manners and customs is, fortunately, as distinct from the American portion of the city as if it were an island in the Pacific; but it gave me an odd sensation to be able to pass at once from the handsome, active settlement of the Anglo-Saxon into the stupidity of Mexico, or the heathenism of China. [Illustration: PLAZA AND ADOBE CHURCH, LOS ANGELES.] [Illustration: BROADWAY, LOS ANGELES.] "How can I distinguish here a native Californian from an eastern man?" I asked a resident. "There are no native Californians," was the somewhat exaggerated reply; "this is not only a modern, but an eastern city. Nine-tenths of our inhabitants came here from the East less than fifteen years ago, many of them less than five. We are an old people with a new home." Ostrich rearing is now a profitable industry of California, and farms have been established for this purpose at half a dozen points in the southern section of the State. Two of them are in the vicinity of Los Angeles, and well repay a visit; for, if one is unacquainted with the habits of these graceful birds, there is instruction as well as amusement in studying their appearance, character, and mode of life. My first view of the feathered bipeds was strikingly spectacular. As every one knows, the ostrich is decidedly _décolleté_ as well as utterly indifferent to the covering of its legs. Accordingly a troop of them, as they came balancing and tiptoeing toward me, reminded me of a company of ballet dancers tripping down the stage. While the head of the ostrich is unusually small, its eyes are large and have an expression of mischief which gives warning of danger. During a visit to one of the farms, I saw a male bird pluck two hats from unwary men, and it looked wicked enough to have taken their heads as well, had they not been more securely fastened. It is sometimes sarcastically asserted that the ostrich digests with satisfaction to itself such articles as gimlets, nails, and penknives; but this is a slander. It needs gravel, like all creatures of its class which have to grind their food in an interior grist-mill; but though it will usually bite at any bright object, it will not always swallow it. I saw one peck at a ribbon on a lady's hat, and, also, at a pair of shears in its keeper's hands, but this was no proof that it intended to devour either. On another occasion, an ostrich snatched a purse from a lady's hand and instantly dropped it; but when a gold piece fell from it, the bird immediately swallowed that, showing how easily even animals fall under the influence of Californian lust for gold. [Illustration: AN OSTRICH FARM.] [Illustration: ORANGE GROVE AVENUE, PASADENA.] Sixteen miles from Los Angeles, yet owing to the clear atmosphere, apparently, rising almost at the terminus of the city's streets, stand the Sierra Madre Mountains, whose copious reservoirs furnish this entire region with water. An excursion toward this noble range brought me one day to Pasadena, the pride of all the towns which, relatively to Los Angeles, resemble the satellites of a central sun. Pasadena seems a garden without a weed; a city without a hovel; a laughing, happy, prosperous, charming town, basking forever in the sunshine, and lying at the feet of still, white mountain peaks, whose cool breath moderates the semi-tropical heat of one of the most exquisitely beautiful valleys in the world. These mountains, although sombre and severe, are not so awful and forbidding as those of the Arizona desert, but they are notched and jagged, as their name _Sierra_ indicates, and scars and gashes on their surfaces give proof of the terrific battles which they have waged for ages with the elements. A striking feature of their scenery is that they rise so abruptly from the San Gabriel Valley, that from Pasadena one can look directly to their bases, and even ride to them in a trolley car; and the peculiar situation of the city is evidenced by the fact that, in midwinter, its residents, while picking oranges and roses in their gardens, often see snow-squalls raging on the neighboring peaks of the Sierra. [Illustration: THREE MILES FROM ORANGES TO SNOW.] It would be difficult to overpraise the charm of Pasadena and its environs. Twenty-five years ago the site of the present city was a sheep-pasture. To-day it boasts of a population of ten thousand souls, seventy-five miles of well-paved streets, numerous handsome public buildings, and hundreds of attractive homes embellished by well-kept grounds. One of its streets is lined for a mile with specimens of the fan palm, fifteen feet in height; and I realized the prodigality of Nature here when my guide pointed out a heliotrope sixteen feet in height, covering the whole porch of a house; while, in driving through a private estate, I saw, in close proximity, sago and date palms, and lemon, orange, camphor, pepper, pomegranate, fig, quince, and walnut trees. [Illustration: A PASADENA HOTEL.] [Illustration: A PASADENA RESIDENCE.] [Illustration: PASADENA.] As we stood spellbound on the summit of Pasadena's famous Raymond Hill, below us lay the charming town, wrapped in the calm repose that distance always gives even to scenes of great activity; beyond this stretched away along the valley such an enchanting vista of green fields and golden flowers, and pretty houses nestling in foliage, and orchards bending 'neath their luscious fruits, that it appeared a veritable paradise; and the effect of light and color, the combination of perfect sunshine and well-tempered heat, the view in one direction of the ocean twenty miles away, and, in the other, of the range of the Sierra Madre only seven miles distant, with the San Gabriel Valley sleeping at its base, produced a picture so divinely beautiful, that we were moved to smiles or tears with the unreasoning rapture of a child over these lavish gifts of Nature. Yet this same Nature has imposed an inexorable condition on the recipients of her bounty; for most of this luxuriance is dependent upon irrigation. "The palm," said my informant, "will grow with little moisture here, and so will barley and the grape-vine; but everything else needs water, which must be artificially supplied." "How do you obtain it?" I asked. "We buy the requisite amount of water with our land," was the reply. "Do you see that little pipe," he added, pointing to an orange grove, "and do you notice the furrows between the trees? Once in so often the water must be turned on there; and, as the land is sloping, the precious liquid gradually fills the trenches and finds its way to the roots of the trees." [Illustration: A RAISIN RANCH.] Dealers in California wines declare that people ought to use them in preference to the imported vintage of Europe, and the warehouses they have built prove the sincerity of their conviction. One storehouse in the San Gabriel Valley is as large as the City Hall of New York, and contains wooden receptacles for wine rivaling in size the great tun of Heidelberg. We walked between its endless rows of hogsheads, filled with wine; and, finally, in the sample-room were invited to try in turn the claret, burgundy, sherry, port, and brandy. [Illustration: AN ORANGE GROVE, PASADENA.] [Illustration: A CALIFORNIA VINEYARD.] "How much wine do you make?" I asked the gentleman in charge. "In one year," was the reply, "we made a million gallons." I thought of the Los Angeles River which I had crossed that morning, and of its sandy bed one hundred feet in width, with a current in the centre hardly larger than the stream from a hose-pipe, and remarked, "Surely, in some portions of this land there is more wine than water." "Where do you sell it?" I presently inquired. "Everywhere," was the answer, "even in France; and what goes over there you subsequently buy, at double the price, for real French wine." [Illustration: AT THE BASE OF THE MOUNTAINS.] It was the old story, and I doubt not there is truth in it; but the products of California vineyards, owing, possibly, to the very richness of the soil, do not seem to me to possess a flavor equal in delicacy to that of the best imported wines. This will, however, be remedied in time, and in the comparatively near future this may become the great wine-market of the world. Certainly no State in the Union has a climate better adapted to vine-growing, and there are now within its borders no less than sixty million vines, which yield grapes and raisins of the finest quality. No visit to Pasadena would be complete without an excursion to the neighboring mountains, which not only furnish the inhabitants with water, but, also, contribute greatly to their happiness and recreation. For, having at last awakened to the fact that comfort and delight awaited them in the recesses and upon the summits of their giant hills, the Californians have built fine roads along the mountain sides, established camping-grounds and hostelries at several attractive points, and, finally, constructed a remarkable elevated railroad, by which the people of Los Angeles can, in three hours, reach the crest of the Sierra Madre, six thousand feet above the sea. Soon after leaving Pasadena, a trolley takes the tourist with great rapidity straight toward the mountain wall, which, though presenting at a distance the appearance of an unbroken rampart, disintegrates as he approaches it into separate peaks; so that the crevices, which look from Pasadena like mere wrinkles on the faces of these granite giants, prove upon close inspection to be cañons of considerable depth. I was surprised and charmed to see the amount of cultivation which is carried to the very bases of these cliffs. Orchards and orange groves approach the monsters fearlessly, and shyly drop golden fruit, or fragrant blossoms at their feet; while lovely homes are situated where the traveler would expect to find nothing but desolate crags and savage wildness. The truth is, the inhabitants have come to trust these mountains, as gentle animals sometimes learn by experience to approach man fearlessly; and, seeing what the snow-capped peaks can do for them in tempering the summer heat and furnishing them water from unfailing reservoirs, men have discerned behind their stern severity the smile of friendship and benevolence, and have perceived that these sublime dispensers of the gifts of Nature are in reality beneficent deities,--their feet upon the land which they make fertile, their hands uplifted to receive from the celestial treasure-house the blessings they in turn give freely to the grateful earth. [Illustration: LOOKING DOWN ON THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY.] [Illustration: THE ALPINE TAVERN.] [Illustration: THE GREAT INCLINE.] To reach their serrated crests the trolley car, already mentioned, conveys us through a wild gorge known as Rubio Cañon, and leaves us at the foot of an elevated cable-road to ascend Mount Lowe. Even those familiar with the Mount Washington and Catskill railways, or who have ascended in a similar manner to Mürren from the Vale of Lauterbrunnen, or to the summit of Mount Pilate from Lucerne, look with some trepidation at this incline, the steepest part of which has a slope of sixty-two degrees, and, audaciously, stretches into the air to a point three thousand feet above our heads. Once safely out of the cable car, however, at the upper terminus, we smile, and think the worst is over. It is true, we see awaiting us another innocent looking electric car by which we are to go still higher; but we are confident that nothing very terrible can be experienced in a trolley. This confidence is quickly shattered. I doubt if there is anything in the world more "hair lifting" than the road over which that car conveys its startled occupants. Its very simplicity makes it the more horrifying; for, since the vehicle is light, no massive supports are deemed essential; and, as the car is open, the passengers seem to be traveling in a flying machine. I never realized what it was to be a bird, till I was lightly swung around a curve beneath which yawned a precipice twenty-five hundred feet in depth, or crossed a chasm by a bridge which looked in the distance like a thread of gossamer, or saw that I was riding on a scaffolding, built out from the mountain into space. For five appalling miles of alternating happiness and horror, ecstasy and dread, we twisted round the well-nigh perpendicular cliffs, until, at last the agony over, we walked into the mountain tavern near the summit, and, seating ourselves before an open fire blazing in the hall, requested some restorative nerve-food. Yet this aërial inn is only one hundred and eighty minutes from Los Angeles; and it is said that men have snow-balled one another at this tavern, picked oranges at the base of the mountain, and bathed in the bay of Santa Monica, thirty miles distant, all in a single afternoon. It certainly is possible to do this, but it should be remembered that stories are almost the only things in California which do not need irrigation to grow luxuriantly. I was told that although this mountain railway earns its running expenses it pays no interest on its enormous cost. This can readily be believed; and one marvels, not only that it was ever built, but that it was not necessary to go to a lunatic asylum for the first passenger. Nevertheless, it is a wonderfully daring experiment, and accomplishes perfectly what it was designed to do; while in proportion as one's nervousness wears away, the experience is delightful. [Illustration: THE CIRCULAR BRIDGE.] [Illustration: IMITATING A BIRD.] [Illustration: SWINGING ROUND A CURVE.] [Illustration: THE INNOCENT TROLLEY.] Living proofs of the progress made in California are the patient burros, which, previous to the construction of this railroad, formed the principal means of transportation up Mount Lowe. Why has the donkey never found a eulogist? The horse is universally admired. The Arab poet sings of the beauties of his camel. The bull, the cow, the dog, and even the cat have all been praised in prose or verse; but the poor donkey still remains an ass, the butt of ridicule, the symbol of stupidity, the object of abuse. Yet if there be another and a better world for animals, and if in that sphere patience ranks as a cardinal virtue, the ass will have a better pasture-ground than many of its rivals. The donkey's small size is against it. Most people are cruel toward dumb beasts, and only when animals have power to defend themselves, does caution make man kinder. He hesitates to hurt an elephant, and even respects, to some extent, the rear extremities of a mule; but the donkey corresponds to the small boy in a crowd of brutal playmates. It is difficult to see how these useful animals could be replaced in certain countries of the world. Purchased cheaply, reared inexpensively, living on thistles if they get nothing better, and bearing heavy burdens till they drop from exhaustion, these little beasts are of incalculable value to the laboring classes of southern Europe, Egypt, Mexico, and similar lands. If they have failed to win affection, it is, perhaps, because of their one infirmity,--their fearful vocal tones, which in America have won for them the sarcastic title of "Rocky Mountain Canaries." [Illustration: MIDWINTER IN CALIFORNIA.] [Illustration: A CALIFORNIAN BURRO.] [Illustration: ROMEO AND JULIET.] Westward from Los Angeles stretches the famous "kite-shaped" track which takes the traveler through the most celebrated orange and lemon districts of the State. Starting upon this memorable excursion, our route lay through the world-renowned San Gabriel Valley, a glorious expanse ten miles in width and seventy in length, steeped in sunshine, brilliant with every shade of yellow, emerald, and brown, and here and there enriched by spots of brighter color where beds of wild flowers swung their sweet bells noiselessly, or the light green of orange trees, with mounds of golden fruit heaped in profusion on the ground, relieved the sombre groves of eucalyptus whose foliage was so dark as to be nearly black. Occasionally, however, our train traversed a parched area which illustrated how the cloven-foot of the adversary always shows itself in spots unhallowed by the benison of water. In winter and spring, these sterile points would not be so conspicuous, but on that summer day, in spite of the closed windows, dust sometimes filled the cars, and for a little while San Gabriel Valley was a paradise lost. For seventy miles contrasts of hot sand and verdant orchards, arid wastes and smiling valley, followed one another in quick succession,--and down upon it all frowned the long wall of the Sierra Madre. [Illustration: SAN GABRIEL VALLEY.] [Illustration: GATHERING POPPIES AT THE BASE OF THE SIERRA MADRE.] It is a wonderful experience to ride for such a distance in a perfectly level valley, and see an uninterrupted range of mountains, eight thousand feet in height, rising abruptly from the plain like the long battle-line of an invading army. What adds to its impressiveness is the fact that these peaks are, for the entire country which they dominate, the arbiters of life and death. Beyond them, on one side, the desert stretches eastward for a thousand miles; upon the other, toward the ocean, whose moisture they receive and faithfully distribute, extends this valley of delight. The height of the huge granite wall is generally uniform, save where, like towers on the mighty rampart, old San Antonio and the San Bernardino Brothers lift their hoary heads two miles above the sea,--their silvery crowns and dazzling features standing out in the crystalline clearness of the atmosphere as if they had been carved in high relief. [Illustration: AN ADOBE HOUSE.] [Illustration: A PASADENA LEMON TREE.] We sped along, with feelings alternating between elation and dejection, as the scenery was beautiful or barren, till, suddenly, some sixty miles from Los Angeles, our train drew up before a city, containing asphalt pavements, buildings made of brick, and streets embowered in palms. This city which, in 1872, was a sheep-ranch, yet whose assessed valuation, in 1892, was more than four million dollars, is called Riverside; but, save in the rainy season, one looks in vain for the stream from which it takes its name. The river has retired, as so many western rivers do, to wander in obscurity six feet below the sand. "A providential thing," said a wag to me, "for, in such heat as this, if the water rose to the surface it would all evaporate." The sun was, indeed, ardent as we walked through the town, and we were impressed by the fact that the dwellings most appropriate for this region are those which its first settlers seem to have instinctively adopted; for the white, one-storied adobe house, refreshing to the eye, cool in the heat, warm in the cold, caressed by clinging vines and overhung with trees, is surely the ideal residence for Southern California. Such buildings can, of course, be greatly varied and embellished by wealthy owners; but modern houses of red brick, fanciful "Queen Annes," and imitations of castles, seem less suited to this land of sun and sand, where nothing is so much to be desired as repose in form and color. I always welcomed, therefore, genuine southern dwellings and, in the place of asphalt pavements, natural roadways domed by arching trees. [Illustration: A HOUSE MODELED AFTER THE OLD MEXICAN FASHION.] [Illustration: THE IDEAL HOME.] The pride of Riverside is its far-famed Magnolia Avenue, fifteen miles in length, with two broad driveways lined with pepper and eucalyptus trees. Beyond these also are palm-girt sidewalks twenty feet in breadth; while, here and there, reflecting California's golden sunshine from their glistening leaves, stand groups of the magnificent magnolias which give the avenue its name. "Why did you make this splendid promenade?" I asked in mingled curiosity and admiration. "It is one of our ways of booming things," was the reply; "out of the hundreds of people who come to see it, some stay, build houses, and go into business. Without it they might never have come at all." "Was not the cost of laying it out enormous?" I inquired. "Not so great as you would naturally suppose," was the answer, "for after this country has once been irrigated, whatever is planted on watered land will grow like interest, day and night, summer and winter." [Illustration: MAGNOLIA AVENUE, RIVERSIDE.] [Illustration: A MAGNOLIA BLOSSOM.] Riverside's fortunes were made in orange culture, and there was a time when every one who planted orange trees was prosperous; but now, under inevitable competition, this enterprise is rivaled in value by other large industries, particularly the cultivation of lemons and olives. Thousands of acres of olive orchards are now flourishing in Southern California, and are considered a sure and profitable investment. Another celebrated "orange city" is Redlands, where the visitor ceases to wonder at nature, and devotes himself to marveling at man. How can he do otherwise when, in a place that was a wilderness ten years ago, he drives for twenty miles over well-curbed roads, sixty feet wide and as hard as asphalt, or strolls through handsome streets adorned with palms and orange trees, and frequently embellished with residences worthy of Newport? No doubt it is a surprise to many tourists to find such elegant homes in these cities which were born but yesterday; for Americans in the East, though far from conservative themselves, do not, as a rule, appreciate the wonderful growth of these towns which but a few years since had no existence. Occasionally some neighbor goes out to the Pacific coast, and tells his friends on his return what he has seen; but it makes little impression until they go themselves. They think he is exaggerating. "Would you like to see a converted mountain?" inquired my guide. "What do you mean?" I asked incredulously. "You will see," he replied, "and in ten minutes we shall be there." [Illustration: PART OF THE "CONVERTED MOUNTAIN," REDLANDS.] Accordingly, up we drove over magnificent, finely graded roads, till we arrived at what appeared to be a gentleman's private park. The park, however, seemed to have no limit, and we rode on through a bewildering extent of cemented stone walls, umbrageous trees, luxuriant flowers, trailing vines, and waving palms. At last we reached the summit, and what a view unrolled itself before us! Directly opposite, the awful wall of the Sierra swept up to meet our vision in all its majesty of granite glory, like an immense, white-crested wave, one hundred miles in length, which had by some mysterious force been instantaneously curbed and petrified, just as it was about to break and overwhelm the valley with destruction. Beneath it, for seventy miles in exquisitely blended hues, stretched the wonderful San Gabriel intervale, ideal in its tranquil loveliness. Oh, the splendor, opulence, and sweetness of its countless flowers, whose scarlet, gold, and crimson glowed and melted into the richest sheen of velvet, and rendered miles of pure air redolent with perfume, as grapes impart their flavor to good wine! In gazing on this valley from a distance one would fain believe it to be in reality, as in appearance, an idyllic garden of Arcadian innocence and happiness, and, forgetting the disillusions of maturer years, dream that all human hearts are as transparent as its atmosphere, and that all life is no less sweet and pure. [Illustration: A DRIVEWAY IN REDLANDS.] But, presently, I asked again, "What do you mean by a _converted_ mountain?" "Eight years ago," was the reply, "this elevation on which we stand was a heap of yellow sand, like many unconverted mountains that we see about us; now it has been transformed into a dozen miles of finished roads and extensive gardens enclosing two fine residences." "Pardon me," I exclaimed, "here are trees thirty feet high." "All grown in eight years," he answered. "Still," I again protested, "here are stone walls, and curbed and graded roads." "All made in eight years," he reiterated. "But, in addition to this mountain, how about the twenty miles of orange groves surrounding it, the thirty thousand dollar public library of Redlands, and its miles of asphalt streets?" "All in eight years," he said again, as if, like Poe's raven, he had been taught one refrain. [Illustration: THE SIERRA MADRE AND THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY.] [Illustration: A FEW "UNCONVERTED MOUNTAINS," NEAR REDLANDS.] In fact, it should be said that this entire mountain was purchased by two wealthy brothers who now come every winter from the East to this incomparable hill, the whole of which has been, as if by magic, metamorphosed into an estate, where visitors are allowed to find instruction and delight upon its lofty terraces of forest and of flowers. Is it strange, then, that such sudden transformations of sterile plains and mountains into bits of paradise make tourists in Southern California wildly enthusiastic? They actually see fulfilled before their eyes the prophecy of Isaiah, "The desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose." The explanation is, however, simple. The land is really rich. The ingredients are already here. Instead of being worthless, as was once supposed, this is a precious soil. The Aladdin's wand that unlocks all its treasures is the irrigating ditch; its "open sesame" is water; and the divinity who, at the call of man, bestows the priceless gift, is the Madre of the Sierras. A Roman conqueror once said that he had but to stamp upon the earth and legions would spring up to do his bidding. So Capital has stamped upon this sandy wilderness, and in a single generation a civilized community has leaped into astonished life. Yet do we realize the immense amount of labor necessitated by such irrigation? This mountain, for example, is covered with water pipes, as electric wires are carried through our houses. Every few rods a pipe with a faucet rises from the ground; and as there are miles of roads and hundreds of cultivated acres, it can with difficulty be imagined how many of these pipes have been laid, and how innumerable are the little ditches, through which the water is made to flow. Should man relax his diligence for a single year, the region would relapse into sterility; but, on the other hand, what a land is this for those who have the skill and industry to call forth all its capabilities! What powers of productiveness may still be sleeping underneath its soil, awaiting but the kiss of water and the touch of man to waken them to life! Beside its hidden rivers what future cities may spring forth to joyous being; and what new, undiscovered chemistry may not this mingling of mountain, sun, and ocean yet evolve to prove a permanent blessing to mankind! [Illustration: GROUNDS OF THE SMILEY BROTHERS ON THE "CONVERTED MOUNTAIN."] [Illustration: IRRIGATING DITCHES.] One hundred and twenty-six miles southwest of Los Angeles, one could imagine that he had reached the limit of the civilized world: eastward, the desert stretches far away to the bases of the San Jacinto Mountains; westward, thousands of miles of ocean billows shoulder one another toward the setting sun; southward, extends that barren, almost unknown strip of earth, the peninsula of Lower California; yet in this _cul-de-sac_, this corner between mountain, desert, and sea, rises a charming and inspiring picture,--San Diego. [Illustration: SAN DIEGO.] The beautiful harbor of this city is almost closed, on one side, by a bold majestic promontory called Point Loma; and on the other, by a natural breakwater, in the form of a crescent, twelve miles long, upon the outer rim of which the ocean beats a ceaseless monody. At one extremity of this silver strand, directly opposite Point Loma and close to the rhythmic surf, stands the Hotel Coronado; its west front facing the Pacific, its east side looking on the azure of the peaceful bay, beyond which rises San Diego with a population of twenty thousand souls. To reach this hotel, the tourist crosses the harbor from the city by a ferry, and then in an electric car is whirled for a mile along an avenue which he might well suppose was leading him to some magnificent family estate. The pavement is delightfully smooth and hard; on either side are waving palms and beds of radiant flowers; two charming parks, with rare botanical shrubs and trees, are, also, visible and hold invitingly before him the prospect of delightful hours in their fragrant labyrinths; and, finally, out of a semi-tropical garden, the vast extent of which he does not comprehend at first, rises the far-famed hostelry which, itself, covers about four and a half acres of ground, at the extreme southwestern corner of the Union, and on a spot which yesterday was a mere tongue of sand. In the tourist season this palatial place of entertainment presents a brilliant throng of joyous guests who have, apparently, subscribed to the motto: "All care abandon ye, who enter here." It is one of the few spots on this continent where the great faults of our American civilization--worry and incessant work--are not conspicuous. Men of the North too frequently forget that the object of life is not work, but that the object of work is life. In lands like Southern California, however, where flowers fill the air with fragrance, where fruits are so abundant that starvation is impossible, and where the nerves are not continually whipped by atmospheric changes into restless energy, men live more calmly, probably more rationally. Sunshine, roses, and the throbbing tones of the guitar would seem to be the most appropriate sources of amusement here. Meanwhile the northern millionaire breaks down from overwork and leaves his money to be squandered by his relatives. Yet he also, till the last gasp, claims that he is happy. What is happiness? _Quien sabe_? [Illustration: POINT LOMA.] [Illustration: HOTEL CORONADO.] [Illustration: COURTYARD OF THE HOTEL.] The country about San Diego is a miniature reproduction of the plains of Arizona and New Mexico, and just above the city rises a genuine _mesa_, which, though comparatively small, resembles the large table-lands of the interior, and was formed in the same way. Cutting it, here and there, are little cañons, like that through which the Colorado rolls, not a mile deep, but still illustrative of the erosion made here by the rivers of a distant age; for these gashes are the result of rushing water, and every stone upon this small plateau has been worn round and smooth by friction with its fellows, tossed, whirled, and beaten by the waves of centuries. Strange, is it not, that though, like many other areas of our continent, this region was once fashioned and completely ruled by water, at present it has practically none; and men must often bring the precious liquid fifty miles to crown the soil with beauty and fertility. [Illustration: VIEW FROM THE TABLE-LAND.] [Illustration: PACHANGO INDIANS AT HOME.] [Illustration: A CHRISTIANIZED INDIAN.] [Illustration: THE MISSION BELLS.] The old town of San Diego, four miles north of the present city, is now almost abandoned. Only a dozen adobe buildings kept in fair repair, and as many more in ruins, mark the site. The little chapel is still used for worship, and from an uncouth wooden frame outside its walls hang two of the old Mission bells which formerly rang out the Angelus over the sunset waves. My guide carelessly struck them with the butt of his whip, and called forth from their consecrated lips of bronze a sound which, in that scene of loneliness, at first seemed like a wail of protest at the sacrilege, and finally died away into a muffled intonation resembling a stifled sob. Roused by the unexpected call, there presently appeared an Indian who looked as if he might have been contemporary with Methuselah. No wrinkled leaf that had been blown about the earth for centuries could have appeared more dry and withered than this centenarian, whose hair drooped from his skull like Spanish moss, and whose brown hands resembled lumps of adobe. [Illustration: AN AGED SQUAW.] "I am glad to have you see this man," said the guide, "for he has rung these bells for seventy years, and is said to be more than a hundred years old." I could not obtain a portrait of this decrepit bell-ringer, for many Indians are superstitiously opposed to being photographed; but I procured the picture of an equally shriveled female aged one hundred and thirty who might have been his sister. [Illustration: RELICS OF AN ANCIENT RACE.] [Illustration: "ECSTATIC BATHERS."] "This," remarked my guide with a smile, "is what the climate of San Diego does for the natives." "The glorious climate of California" has been for years a theme of song and story, and a discussion of its merits forms one of the principal occupations of the dwellers on the Pacific coast. It is indeed difficult to see how tourists could pass their time here without this topic of conversation, so infinite is its variety and so debatable are many of the conclusions drawn from it. It is the Sphinx of California; differing, however, from the Sphinx of Egypt in that it offers a new problem every day. The literature that treats of the Pacific coast fairly bristles with statistics on this subject, and many writers have found it impossible to resist the temptation of adorning their pages with tables of humidity, temperature, and rainfall. Some hotels even print in red letters at the top of the stationery furnished to their guests: "The temperature to-day is ----." Among the photographs of San Diego are several which represent groups of ecstatic bathers, ranging from small boys to elderly bald-headed gentlemen, apparently ready to take a plunge into the Pacific; while beneath them is displayed the legend, "January 1, 18--." Candor compels me, however, to state that, as far as I was able to ascertain, these pictured bathers rarely pay a New Year's call to Neptune in his mighty palace, but content themselves in winter with going no further than his ante-chambers,--the sheltered, sun-warmed areas of public bath-houses. [Illustration: MIDWINTER AT LOS ANGELES.] "I believe this to be the best climate in the world," said a gentleman to me in San Diego, "but I confess that, when strangers are visiting me, it occasionally does something it ought not to do." The truth is, there are several climates in Southern California, some of which are forced upon the resident, while others can be secured by going in search of them in a trolley car or a railway carriage. The three determining factors in the problem of temperature are the desert, the ocean, and the mountains. Thus, in midsummer, although it may be fiercely hot in the inland valleys, it is invariably cool in the mountains on account of their altitude, and near the shore because the hot air rising from the desert invites a daily ocean breeze. Even at a distance from the comfortable coast, humanity never passes into that abject, panting, and perspiring condition in which the inhabitants of the Eastern States are usually seen when the mercury goes to ninety. The nights are always cool; although not quite as much so in July as the enthusiasts tell us who have never seen the country later in the season than the month of May, and who weary us with the threadbare tale of never sleeping without a blanket. "Is it true, madam," I said to a lady of San Diego, "that here one must always take a blanket to bed with him?" "Hush," she replied, "never ask that question unless you are sure that there are no tourists within hearing." [Illustration: PIER AT SANTA MONICA.] [Illustration: AVALON, SANTA CATALINA ISLAND.] Three statements are, I think, unquestionably accurate: first, that for many months of the year the residents need not take into consideration for a moment the possibility of rain; second, that on account of this drought there must inevitably be during that period a superfluity of dust; and, third, that every day there will be felt "a cool refreshing breeze," which frequently increases to a strong wind. My memory of California will always retain a vivid impression of this wind, and the effect of it upon the trees is evident from the fact that it has compelled most of them to lean toward the east, while one of the last sights I beheld in San Diego was a man chasing his hat. Nevertheless, acclimated Californians would no more complain of their daily breeze, however vigorous, than a man would speak disrespectfully of his mother. As in most semi-tropical countries, there is a noticeable difference in temperature between sun and shade. In the sun one feels a genial glow, or even a decided heat; but let him step into the shade, or stand on a street-corner waiting for a car, and the cool wind from the mountains or the ocean will be felt immediately. People accustomed to these changes pay little heed to them; but to new-comers the temperature of the shade, and even that of the interiors of the hotels and houses, appears decidedly cool. [Illustration: NOT AFRAID OF THE SUN.] One day, in June, I was invited to dine at a fruit-ranch a few miles from Pasadena. The heat in the sun was intense, and I noticed that the mercury indicated ninety-five degrees; but, unlike the atmosphere of New York in a heated term, the air did not remind me of a Turkish bath. The heat of Southern California is dry, and it is absolutely true that the highest temperature of an arid region rarely entails as much physical discomfort as a temperature fifteen or twenty degrees lower in the Eastern States, when accompanied by humidity. The moisture in a torrid atmosphere is what occasions most of the distress and danger, the best proof of which is the fact that while, every summer, hundreds of people are prostrated by sunstroke near the Atlantic coast, such a calamity has never occurred in New Mexico, Arizona, or California. Moreover, when the mercury in Los Angeles rises, as it occasionally does, to one hundred degrees, the inhabitants of that city have a choice of several places of refuge: in two or three hours they can reach the mountains; or in an hour they can enjoy themselves upon Redondo Beach; or they may take a trolley car and, sixty minutes later, stroll along the sands of Santa Monica, inhaling a refreshing breeze, blowing practically straight from Japan; or, if none of these resorts is sufficiently attractive, three hours after leaving Los Angeles they can fish on Santa Catalina Island, a little off the coast; or linger in the groves of Santa Barbara; or, perhaps, best of all can be invigorated by the saline breath of the Pacific sweeping through the corridors of the Coronado. Santa Catalina Island is, in particular, a delightful pleasure-resort, whose beautiful, transparent waters, remarkable fishing-grounds, and soft, though tonic-giving air, which comes to it from every point of the compass over a semi-tropic sea, are so alluring that thousands of contented people often overflow its hotels and camp in tents along the beach. [Illustration: IN COTTONWOOD CAÑON, SANTA CATALINA.] [Illustration: LILIPUTIAN AND GIANT.] [Illustration: ON THE BEACH AT SANTA CATALINA.] That the winter climate of Southern California, not only on the coast, but in the interior, is delightful, is beyond question. What was healthful a hundred years ago to the Spanish monks who settled here, proved equally so to those adventurous "Forty-niners" who entered California seeking gold, and is still more beneficial to those who now come to enjoy its luxuries and comforts. Flowers and fruit are found here throughout the entire year. The rainy days are few, and frosts are as ephemeral as the dew; and to the aged, the invalids, the fugitives from frost, and the "fallen soldiers of civilization," who are no longer able to make a courageous fight with eastern storms and northern cold, San Diego is a climatic paradise. Accordingly, from early October until April the overland trains roll westward from a land of snow and frost to one of sun and flowers, bearing an annually increasing multitude of invalids and pleasure-seekers, some of whom have expensive permanent homes and costly ranches here--like that of Mr. Andrew McNally, at Altadena--while others find abundant comfort in the fine hotels. [Illustration: AN OLD CALIFORNIAN TRADING POST.] [Illustration: A BIT OF NATURE ON THE COAST.] Perhaps the principal secret of the charm of the winter climate of Southern California, as well as that of its wonderfulhealth-restoring properties, lies in the fact that its dry, pure air and even temperature make it possible for one to live continuously out of doors. Yet, though not cold, it is a temperature cool enough to be free from summer languor. [Illustration: CALIFORNIAN PALMS.] Especially attractive to the visitors from the North are the palms of Southern California. Many of these resemble monstrous pineapples terminating in gigantic ferns. What infinite variety the palm tree has, now dwarfed in height, yet sending out on every side a mass of thick green leaves; now rising straight as an obelisk from the desert sand, and etching its fine feathery tufts against the sky; now bearing luscious fruit of different kinds; now furnishing material for clothing, fishing-nets, and matting; or putting forth those slender fronds, frequently twenty feet in length, which are sent North by florists to decorate dwellings and churches for festivals and weddings! The palm is typical of the South, as the pine is of the North. One hints to us of brilliant skies, a tropic sun, and an easy, indolent existence; the other suggests bleak mountains and the forests of northern hills, and symbolizes the conflict there between man and nature, in which both fortitude and daring have been needful to make man the conqueror. One finds a fascination in contrasting these two children of old Mother Earth, and thinks of Heine's lines: "A pine tree standeth lonely On a northern mountain's height; It sleeps, while around it is folded A mantle of snowy white. "It is dreaming of a palm tree In a far-off Orient land, Which lonely and silent waiteth In the desert's burning sand." [Illustration: HERMIT VALLEY NEAR SAN DIEGO.] On my last day at San Diego, I walked in the morning sunshine on Coronado Beach. The beauty of the sea and shore was almost indescribable: on one side rose Point Loma, grim and gloomy as a fortress wall; before me stretched away to the horizon the ocean with its miles of breakers curling into foam; between the surf and the city, wrapped in its dark blue mantle, lay the sleeping bay; eastward, the mingled yellow, red, and white of San Diego's buildings glistened in the sunlight like a bed of coleus; beyond the city heaved the rolling plains, rich in their garb of golden brown, from which rose distant mountains, tier on tier, wearing the purple veil which Nature here loves oftenest to weave for them; while, in the foreground, like a jewel in a brilliant setting, stood the Coronado. [Illustration: THE PACIFIC.] The fascination of Southern California had at last completely captured me. Its combination of ocean, desert, and mountain, its pageantry of color, and its composite life of city, ranch, and beach had cast over me a magic spell. It was, however, a lonely sea that spread its net of foam before my feet. During my stay I had not seen a single steamer on its surface, and only rarely had a few swift sea-birds, fashioned by man's hand, dotted the azure for a little with their white wings, ere they dipped below the horizon's rim. Hence, though the old, exhilarating, briny odor was the same, I felt that, as an ocean, this was unfamiliar. The Atlantic's waves are haunted by historic memories, but few reminders of antiquity rise ghostlike from the dreary waste of the Pacific. Few battles have been fought, few conquests made upon these shores. On the Atlantic coast one feels that he is looking off toward civilized and friendly lands, across a sea which ocean greyhounds have made narrow; but here three purple islands, floating on the limitless expanse, suggest mysterious archipelagoes scattered starlike on its area, thousands of miles away, before a continent is reached; and one vaguely imagines unknown races, coral reefs, and shores of fronded palms, where Nature smiles indulgently upon a pagan paradise. Nevertheless its very mystery and vastness give to the Pacific a peculiar charm, which changeful Orient seas, and even the turbulent Atlantic, never can impart. Instinctively we stand uncovered in the presence of the mightiest ocean on our planet. It is at once the symbol and the fact of majesty; and the appalling sense of trackless space which it inspires, the rhythm of unmeasured and immeasureable waves, together with the moaning of the surf upon the sand, at times completely overwhelm us with suggestions of the Infinite, until no language seems appropriate, unless it shapes itself in prayer. [Illustration: "A SEA-BIRD FASHIONED BY MAN'S HAND."] [Illustration: A LONELY OCEAN.] In Helen Hunt Jackson's novel, "Ramona," the romance of this region has found immortality. What "Romola" is to mediaeval Florence, "Ramona" is to Southern California. It has embalmed in the memory of the nation a lost cause and a vanished race. Less than one hundred years ago, where the Anglo-Saxon has since built railroads, erected manufactories, and created cities, a life was lived, so different in its character from all that followed or preceded it, that only a story like "Ramona" could make it appear real. At that time about twenty "Missions"--which were in reality immense ecclesiastical farms--bordered the coast for seven hundred miles. For when the New World had been suddenly revealed to the astonished gaze of Europe, it was not merely the adventurous conqueror who hastened to these shores. The priest accompanied him, and many enthusiastic soldiers of the Cross embarked to bear to the benighted souls beyond the sea the tidings of salvation. Missionary enterprises were not then what they are to-day. Nothing was known with certainty of the strange tribes on this side of the globe, and there was often a heroism in the labors of self-sacrificing missionaries to America, which far surpassed the courage of the buccaneer. Many exploring expeditions to this western land received the blessing of the Church, and were conducted, not alone for obtaining territory and gold, but for the conversion of the inhabitants. In Mexico and Peru the priests had followed, rather than led the way; but in California, under the lead of Father Junipero, they took the initiative, and the salvation of souls was one of the principal purposes of the invaders. This did not, however, prevent the Franciscans, who took possession of the land, from selecting with great wisdom its very best locations; but, having done so, they soon brought tens of thousands of Indians under spiritual and temporal control. These natives were, for the most part, as gentle and teachable as the Fathers were patient and wise; and, in 1834, a line of Missions stretched from San Diego to Monterey, and the converted Indians numbered about twenty thousand, many of whom had been trained to be carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, saddlers, tailors, millers, and farmers. Three-quarters of a million cattle grazed upon the Mission pastures, as well as sixty thousand horses; fruits, grain, and flowers grew in their well-cultivated valleys until the country blossomed like the Garden of the Lord; and in the midst of all this industry and agricultural prosperity the native converts obeyed their Christian masters peacefully and happily, and came as near to a state of civilization as Indians have ever come. [Illustration: RAMONA'S HOME.] [Illustration: THE CHAPEL, RAMONA'S HOME.] [Illustration: PALMS NEAR SAN FERNANDO MISSION.] [Illustration: CORRIDOR, SAN FERNANDO MISSION.] Presently the Mexicans made their appearance here; but, though they held and managed enormous ranches, the situation was comparatively unchanged; for they maintained harmonious relations with the Missions, and had no serious difficulties with the Indians. Thus life went on for nearly half a century, and seemed to the good Fathers likely to go on forever; for who, they thought, would ever cross the awful eastern plains to interfere with their Arcadian existence, or what invading force would ever approach them over the lonely sea? But history repeats itself. The Missions soon became too rich not to excite cupidity; and those who coveted their lands and herds declared, as an excuse for violence, that the poor Indians were held in a state of slavery, and should be made to depend upon themselves. At length, in 1833, the Mexican Government by a decree of secularization ruined the Missions; but the Indians, although not so prosperous and well treated as under the Fathers, still kept, through Mexican protection, most of their privileges and the lands they owned. Finally came the Anglo-Saxon, and, under the imperious civilization that poured into California from 1840 to 1860, the pastoral age soon disappeared. The Missions, which had already lost much of their property and power under the Mexican Government, quickly shrank after this new invasion into decrepitude. The practical Anglo-Saxon introduced railroads, electricity, commerce, mammoth hotels, and scientific irrigation, all of which the Fathers, Mexicans, and Indians never would have cared for. Nevertheless, with his arrival, the curtain fell upon as peaceful a life-drama as the world had seen. [Illustration: SANTA BARBARA.] [Illustration: SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO.] [Illustration: GROUP OF FRANCISCAN FRIARS.] To the reader, thinker, and poet the memories and associations of these Missions form, next to the gifts of Nature, the greatest charm of Southern California; and, happily, although that semi-patriarchal life has passed away, its influence still lingers; for, scattered along the coast--some struggling in poverty, some lying in neglect--are the adobe churches, cloisters, and fertile Mission-fields of San Juan Capistrano, San Fernando Rey, Santa Monica, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz, all of which still preserve the soft and gracious names, so generously given in those early days, and fill us with a genuine reverence for the sandaled monks, who by incessant toil transformed this barren region into a garden, covered these boundless plains with flocks and herds, and dealt so wisely with the Indians that even their poor descendants, to-day, reverence their memory. [Illustration: CHIEF OF A TRIBE OF MISSION INDIANS.] The Saxon has done vastly more, it is true; but, in some ways, he has done much less. The very names which he bequeathed to places not previously christened by the Spaniards, such as Gold Gulch, Hell's Bottom, and Copperopolis, tell a more forcible, though not as beautiful a tale, as the melodious titles, San Buenaventura, San Francisco Dolores, Santa Clara, San Gabriel, and La Purissima. [Illustration: INDIAN WOMEN.] It is not, therefore, the busy streets and handsome dwellings of Los Angeles and Pasadena, but the adobe ruins, the battered statues, the cracked and voiceless bells, the poor remnants of the Indian tribes, and even the old Spanish names, behind which lies a century of sanctity and romance, which give to Southern California an atmosphere of the Old World and harmonize most perfectly with its history. [Illustration: SAN DIEGO MISSION.] Most of the Mission buildings are in a sad condition. Earthquakes have shattered some; neglect and malice have disfigured others; but a society, composed alike of Catholics and Protestants, is now, in the interest of the past, endeavoring to rescue them from utter ruin. It is a worthy task. What subjects for a painter most of them present! How picturesque are their old cloisters, looming up dark, grand, and desolate against the sky! How worn and battered are they by the storms of years! How tremblingly stands the Cross upon their ancient towers, as if its sacred form had become feeble like the fraternity that once flourished here! What witnesses they are of an irrevocable past! Their crumbling walls, if they could speak, might grow sublimely eloquent, and thrill us with inspiring tales of heroism, patience, tact, and fortitude exhibited when these Missions bloomed like flowery oases on the arid areas of the South and West, and taught a faith of which their melancholy cloisters are the sad memorials. Ten miles from Los Angeles, the Southern Pacific railroad passes a long edifice, the massive walls of which might lead us to suppose it was a fortress, but for its cross and a few antiquated bells. It is the church of the San Gabriel Mission. All other buildings of the institution have disappeared; but this old edifice remains, and, unless purposely destroyed by man, may stand here for five centuries more, since its enormous walls are five feet thick, and the mortar used in their construction has rendered them almost as solid as if hewn from rock. As I descended, at the station a quarter of a mile away, a little barefooted Mexican boy approached and shyly offered me his hand. "Are you the Father," he asked? "No," I said, "I am not the Father, but I have come to see the church; can you show it to me?" "But Padre Joaquin said I was to meet a Father." "Well," I answered, "I am the only passenger who has come by this train, so you had better walk back with me." [Illustration: SAN GABRIEL MISSION CHURCH.] The Mexican boys seem to be the best part of what Mexico has left in California. This lad, for example, was attending an American school, and appeared bright and ambitious, though so extremely courteous and respectful that he seemed almost timid. The little hut in which he lived was opposite the church, and he seemed perfectly familiar with the sacred structure. "See," he said, pointing to some mutilated wooden statues in the poor, scantily furnished sacristy, "here are some images which cannot be used, they are so broken, and here are more," he added, opening some drawers and displaying four or five smaller figures in various stages of dilapidation. Thus, for some time he continued to call my attention to different curious relics with such interest and reverence that I was almost sorry when Father Joaquin appeared. It was sad to see the altar of the church defaced and cracked, and its statues, brought a hundred years ago from Spain, scarcely less battered than those which the boy had shown me in the sacristy. Yet it was plain that worshipers as well as vandals had been here. The basins for holy water, cut in the solid wall, were worn, like the steps of an ancient building, with countless fingers, long since turned to dust. There, also, were two old confessionals, one of which was so hopelessly infirm that it had been set aside at last, to listen to no more whispered tales of sin and sorrow. The doors of the church at first looked ancient, but wore a really modern air, when compared with the original portals, which, no longer able to stand upright, had been laid against the wall, to show to tourists. Yet, eighty years ago, this church stood proudly at the head of all the Missions, and reared its cross above the richest of their valleys. According to Father Joaquin's estimate, the Fathers of San Gabriel must have had twenty thousand acres under cultivation, and, in 1820, this Mission alone possessed one hundred and sixty thousand vines, two thousand three hundred trees, twenty-five thousand head of cattle, and fifteen thousand sheep. "It was all ours," he said, with a sweep of his hand, "we had reclaimed it from the desert, and, by the treaty between the United States and Mexico, we were allowed to retain all lands that we had cultivated. Yet of those twenty thousand acres, one hundred and fifty are all that are left us!" The Padre accompanied me to the station. "How large is your parish, Father?" I asked. "It is thirteen miles long," was his reply, "and I have in it eight hundred souls, but most of them live too far away to walk to church, and are too poor to ride." "And how many Indians have you?" "Perhaps a hundred," he answered, "and even they are dying off." "What of their character?" I asked. "They have sadly fallen away," was the response. "True, they are Christians as far as they are anything, but they are hopelessly degraded, yet they respect the Church, and are obedient and reverential when under its influence." [Illustration: DISCARDED SAINTS, SAN GABRIEL.] [Illustration: MUTILATED STATUES.] [Illustration: THE BAPTISMAL FONT.] [Illustration: SAN GABRIEL, FROM THE SOUTHEAST.] Most of the Californian Missions are really dead, and near that of La Purissima may still be seen the rent in the ground made by the earthquake which destroyed it. Others, like San Gabriel and San Juan Capistrano, are dragging out a moribund existence, under the care of only one or two priests, who move like melancholy phantoms through the lonely cloisters, and pray among the ruins of a noble past. The Mission of Santa Barbara, however, is in fairly good repair, and a few Franciscan Fathers still reside there and carry on a feeble imitation of their former life. [Illustration: A DEGENERATE.] It is on his way to this Mission that the traveler passes the reputed residence of Ramona. There is, it is true, another structure near San Diego which, also, claims this distinction; but the ranch on the route from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara perfectly corresponds to "H.H.'s" descriptions of her heroine's home, with its adjoining brook and willows, and hills surmounted by the cross. The house is almost hidden by the trees with which a Mexican ordinarily surrounds his dwelling, and is, as usual, only one story high, with a projecting roof, forming a porch along the entire front. As we learn in "Ramona," much of the family life in those old days--sewing, visiting, and siesta-taking--went on in the open air, under the shade of the porticos which were wide and low. Here it was that Alessandro brought Felipe back to health, watching and nursing him as he slept outdoors on his rawhide bed; and we may see the arbor where the lovers met, the willows where they were surprised by Señora Moreno, and the hills on which the pious lady caused wooden crosses to be reared, that passers-by might know that some good Catholics were still left in California. [Illustration: THE CROSS ON THE HILL.] [Illustration: SANTA BARBARA MISSION.] The Mission of Santa Barbara is of solid brick and stone, with walls six feet in thickness. Its cloisters look sufficiently massive to defy an earthquake, and are paved with enormous bricks each twelve inches square. The huge red tiles of the roof, also, tell of a workmanship which, although rude, was honest and enduring. The interior, however, is of little interest, for the poor relics which the Fathers keep are even less attractive than those displayed at the Mission of San Gabriel; yet there are shown at least two enormous missals which are no less than four feet long by two feet wide, and beautifully inscribed on parchment. [Illustration: SANTA BARBARA MISSION FROM THE FARM.] [Illustration: WHERE THE FATHERS WALKED.] "What is the Mission's income?" I asked the gentle monk who acted as my guide. "Alas!" he answered, "we have very little. You know our lands are gone. We have barely twenty-five acres now. Moreover, we are outside the village; and, as there is another church, most Catholics go there. We receive, indeed, occasional offerings from travelers; but we are very poor." "Who cultivates your twenty-five acres?" I inquired. "According to our ability, we are all busy," was the answer, "some till the garden; others train young men for the priesthood; one of our number is a carpenter; and another," he added, evidently laughing at his own expense, "knows just enough about machinery to make a bad break worse." "And the Indians?" I said. "Not one is left," was the reply. "Though once the Mission counted them by thousands, they are all dead and gone. There are their monuments," he added, pointing to the fragments of a mill and one or two industrial shops. [Illustration: THE CEMETERY, SANTA BARBARA.] I looked and saw the remnants of a giant wheel which formerly had been turned by water, brought from the hills to feed the Fathers' lands. The water was still flowing, but the wheel lay, broken,--symbolic of the link which bound the Mission to the vanished past. The first Roman Catholic Bishop of California and some of the early Fathers are buried in the chapel of the monastery, but interments are now made in a neighboring cemetery, strictly reserved for members of the Mission, each of whom has there his predestined place. Yet even in this humble Campo Santo life will not yield entirely to death. The hum of droning insects breaks the stillness of the empty cloisters; occasionally a lizard darts like a tongue of flame along the walls; grasses and trailing plants adorn impartially the ground containing human dust, and that which still awaits an occupant; while round a stately crucifix, which casts its shadow like a benediction on the sleeping dead, sweet wild flowers bloom throughout the year, and from their swinging censers offer incense to the figure of the Saviour with each passing breeze. The hush of melancholy broods over the entire place. The mountains, gazing down upon it in stony silence, are haggard and forbidding; below it lies the modern town; while from a neighboring hillside the inmates of a villa look directly into the monastery garden, on which the earlier Fathers little dreamed a female eye would ever rest. A little life, however, was still visible about this Santa Barbara Mission. Two brown-robed monks were hoeing in the field; occasionally, visitors came and went; and, just as I was leaving, one of the priests, in obedience to a summons, hurried away to minister to the sick; yet over all there hung an atmosphere of unreality and sadness. I felt myself the guest of an anachronism. [Illustration: DREAMING OF OTHER DAYS.] A fashionable city has risen at the feet of these old monks, but they regard it not. A trolley car brings curious tourists to their doors; but the ways of the Santa Barbara Fathers are those of long ago. Like agèd pilgrims, dreaming by their firesides, they seem to be living in the past; they certainly have no present worthy of the name; and when I sought to draw forth from my priestly guide some idea of their future, he answered me by pointing to a grave. [Illustration] GRAND CAÑON OF THE COLORADO RIVER [Illustration] While the Old World is better able than the New to satisfy the craving of the mind for art and history, no portion of our globe can equal the North American continent in certain forms of natural scenery which reach the acme of sublimity. Niagara, the Yosemite, the Yellowstone National Park, and the Grand Cañon of the Colorado in Arizona are the four great natural wonders of America. Niagara is Nature in the majesty of liquid motion, where, as the outlet of vast inland seas, a mighty river leaps in wild delirium into a gorge two hundred feet below, and boils and seethes tumultuously till its heart is set at rest and its fever cooled by the embrace of Lake Ontario. The Yosemite is Nature pictured, in a frame of granite precipices, as reclining on a carpet woven with a million flowers, above which rise huge trees three centuries old, which, nevertheless, to the spectator, gazing from the towering cliffs, appear like waving ferns. The Yellowstone Park is the arena of an amphitheatre in which fire and water, the two great forces which have made our planet what it is, still languidly contend where formerly they struggled desperately for supremacy. But the Grand Cañon of Arizona is Nature wounded unto death, and lying stiff and ghastly with a gash, two hundred miles in length and a mile in depth, in her bared breast, from which is flowing fast a stream of life-blood called the Colorado. [Illustration: A PETRIFIED FOREST, ARIZONA.] [Illustration: PACK-MULES OF THE DESERT.] [Illustration: EVIDENCES OF EROSION.] [Illustration: THE NAVAJO CHURCH.] [Illustration: FANTASTIC FORMS.] The section of country through which one travels to behold this last-named marvel is full of mystery and fascination. It is a land where rivers frequently run underground or cut their way through gorges of such depth that the bewildered tourist, peering over their precipitous cliffs, can hardly gain a glimpse of the streams flowing half a mile below; a land of colored landscapes such as elsewhere would be deemed impossible, with "painted deserts," red and yellow rocks, petrified forests, brown grass and purple grazing grounds; a land where from a sea of tawny sand, flecked here and there with bleached bones, like whitecaps on the ocean, one gazes upon mountains glistening with snow; and where at times the intervals are so brief between aridity and flood, that one might choose, like Alaric, a river-bed for his sepulchre, yet see a host like that of Pharaoh drowned in it before the dawn. In almost every other portion of the world Nature reveals her finished work; but here she partially discloses the secrets of her skill, and shows to us her modes of earth-building. Thus, the entire country is dotted with _mesas_, or table-lands of sandstone, furrowed and fashioned in a tremendous process of erosion, caused by the draining through this area of a prehistoric ocean, whose rushing, whirling, and receding waters molded the mountains, carved the cañons, and etched innumerable grotesque figures and fantastic forms. A feeling of solemnity steals over us, as we reflect upon the lapse of geologic time which such a record covers, unnumbered ages before man's advent on this planet; and these deep cañons and eroded valleys, whose present streams are only miniature representatives of those which formerly wrought havoc here, teach lessons of patience to the restless mortals who behold them; while some of the singular formations on the cliffs present perplexing problems which Nature, as it were in mocking humor, bids us solve. [Illustration: A SPECIMEN OF NATURE'S HANDIWORK.] Was Nature ever really sportive? In the old days, when she produced her uncouth monsters of the deep, was she in manner, as in age, a child? Did she then play with her continents, and smile to see them struggle up from the sea only to sink again? Was it caprice that made her wrap her vast dominions in the icy bands of glaciers, or pour upon them lava torrents, and frequently convulse them with a mighty earthquake? If so, New Mexico and Arizona must have been her favorite playgrounds. At many points her rock formations look like whimsical imitations of man's handicraft, or specimens of the colossal vegetation of an earlier age. Some are gigantic, while others bear a ludicrous resemblance to misshapen dwarfs, suggesting, as they stand like pygmies round their mightier brethren, a group of mediaeval jesters in a court of kings. In the faint dusk of evening, as one flits by them in the moving train, their weird, uncanny forms appear to writhe in pain, and he is tempted to regard them as the material shapes of tortured souls. [Illustration: A MESA.] The _mesas_ of New Mexico and Arizona are, usually, regular in outline, sometimes resembling in the distance cloud-banks on the edge of the horizon, but oftener suggesting mighty fortresses, or ramparts to resist invasion, like the wall of China. These are not only beautiful in form and color, but from the fact that they recall the works of man, we gaze at them with wonder, and find in them a fascinating interest. They prove that Nature needs some human association to appeal strongly to us, and how man's history of smiles and tears gives pathos, mystery, and romance to scenes which otherwise would be merely coldly beautiful or terribly sublime. It is for this reason, doubtless, that we are always endeavoring to personify Nature. We think of solitary trees as lonely, of storm-tossed waves as angry, and of a group of mountains as members of one family. Thus some of the Arizona mountains are called brothers. No doubt their birth was attended by the same throes of Mother Earth, and they possess certain family resemblances in their level summits, huge square shoulders, and the deep furrows in their rugged cheeks; while all of them evince the same disdain for decoration, scorning alike the soft rich robes of verdure and the rough storm-coats of the pines. [Illustration: A GROUP OF MESAS.] [Illustration: ON THE OLD SANTA FÉ TRAIL.] The idea of companionship in Nature is not wholly fanciful. Is not the fundamental law of the universe the attraction which one mass of matter has for another? Even the awful distances in interstellar space form no exception to this rule; for telescopic scrutiny reveals the fact that planets, suns, and systems move in harmony, on paths which indicate that they are all associated in the stupendous drama of the skies. The human interest connected with the mountains and the _mesas_ of New Mexico and Arizona is not very great. No mediaeval mystery haunts these castles sculptured by the hand of Nature. No famous romancer has lighted on their cliffs the torch of his poetic fancy. No poet has yet peopled them with creatures of his imagination. We can, unfortunately, conjure up from their majestic background no more romantic picture than that of some Pueblo Indian wooing his dusky bride. Yet they are not without some reminiscences of heroism; for valiant men, a half century ago, following the westward moving star of empire, braved almost inconceivable hardships in their shadow, when, after four thousand years, American pioneers repeated the old, old story, begun upon the plains of Shinar, as the "Sons of the East" went westward in their quest of fortune. How few of us think of those unrecorded heroes now, as we cross this region in luxurious cars! To most of us the dead, whose bones once whitened many of these lonely plains, are nothing more than the last winter's snowdrifts melted by the sun; yet how effectively the Saxon has succeeded in his conquest of the continent we have continual evidence as we glide swiftly, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, through glowing grain fields, prosperous cities, and states that rival empires in size. Where formerly the Spanish conquerors, in their fruitless search for the reputed Seven Cities glittering with gold, endured privations and exhibited bravery which have hardly been surpassed in the entire history of the world; and where, too, as if it were but yesterday, the American Argonauts toiled painfully for months through tribes of hostile Indians, across desert wastes and over cloud-encompassed mountains, we find ourselves the inmates of a rolling palace, propelled by one of Nature's tireless forces, and feel at times in our swift flight as if we were the occupants of a cushioned cannon-ball of glass. Even the crossing of one of the many viaducts along our route is a reminder of how science has been summoned to assist the invader in his audacious enterprise of girdling a continent with steel. [Illustration: AN ARIZONA CLOUD-EFFECT.] [Illustration: OLD HOME OF KIT CARSON, TAOS, N.M.] [Illustration: GRAVE OF KIT CARSON, TAOS, N.M.] [Illustration: THE BRIDGE OF CAÑON DIABLO.] The art of bridge-building in some form or other is one of the earliest necessities of civilization. Even the apes in equatorial regions will link themselves together, and swing their living line across a stream to trees on the opposite bank, thus forming a connected path of bodies along which other monkeys pass in safety. Bridges of ropes or reeds are, also, made by the most primitive of men; while viaducts of stone rose gradually in perfection, from the rude blocks heaped up by savages to the magnificent structures fashioned by the Romans. But with the introduction of iron and steel into their composition, bridges are now constructed quickly, with consummate skill, and in a multitude of different forms assist in making possible the safe and rapid transit of our great Republic. [Illustration: HOMES OF CLIFF DWELLERS.] [Illustration: SKULLS OF CLIFF DWELLERS.] In addition to all the wonderful natural features of Arizona and New Mexico, the insight into ancient and modern Indian life which they afford is of extraordinary interest, particularly as aboriginal civilization, evidently, reached a higher level here than was attained by any of the tribes which roamed throughout the regions now known as the Middle and Eastern States. The natives of the arid regions of the great Southwest, though subdivided into numerous tribes, are usually known under the general title of Pueblos. The name itself, bestowed upon them by the Spaniards, is significant; since _pueblo_ is the Spanish word for village, and this would seem to prove that the race thus designated three hundred and fifty years ago was not nomadic, but had been settled here for many years. [Illustration: LAGUNA.] [Illustration: CLIFF PALACES.] Antiquity and mystery impart a charm to these Pueblo Indians. They are foundlings of history. We see their immemorial settlements, and know that, centuries before Columbus landed on San Salvador, a number of advantageously situated places in the western portion of this continent served as the homes of powerful tribes, whose towns and villages formed the scenes of warfare and barbaric splendor. But of the men who built those villages we know comparatively nothing. Their origin is almost as trackless as the sand which hides so many of their relics in a tawny sepulchre. We may be certain, however, that the remnants who survive are the representatives of myriads who once made most of the American valleys palpitant with life, but over whom oblivion has swept like a huge tidal wave, leaving the scattered fragments of their history like peaks rising from a submerged world. [Illustration: A TWO-STORY CLIFF PALACE.] The best conclusions of scientists in regard to the geological periods of our planet consider that the Glacial Epoch began about two hundred and forty thousand, and ended about eighty thousand, years ago. Traces of the existence of men in North America during that glacial period have been found in abundance, and make it probable that a human population existed, toward the close of that era, all the way from the Atlantic Coast to the Upper Mississippi Valley. Where these men of the Ice Age originally came from is a matter of conjecture; but it seems probable that they migrated hither from the Old World, since it is certain that during the various elevations and depressions of the two continents, it was possible, several times, for men to go from Europe or from Asia into America without crossing any ocean, either by the northwestern corner of Alaska, which has been repeatedly joined to Siberia through the elevation of the shallow Bering Sea, or by the great Atlantic ridge which more than once has risen above the ocean between Great Britain and Greenland. Yet, though the first inhabitants of America, in all probability, came thus from the Old World at a very distant period of antiquity, it is believed by the best students of the subject that, until within the last few centuries, there had been no intercourse between America and either Europe or Asia, for at least twenty thousand years. Hence the Aborigines of this continent developed in the course of ages peculiarities which distinguish them from other races, and justify their being regarded as, practically, native to the soil. [Illustration: AN EARLY PLACE OF SHELTER.] The Indians of New Mexico and Arizona were, probably, fugitives from more fertile lands, whence they had been expelled by the ancestors of the bloodthirsty and cruel Apaches. The country to which they came, and where they made a final stand against their predatory foes, was well adapted to defense. For hundreds of square miles the land is cleft with chasms, and dotted with peculiar, isolated table-lands hundreds of feet in height, with almost perfectly level surfaces and precipitous sides. The origin and formation of these _mesas_, due to erosion through unnumbered centuries, by water draining from an inland sea, has been already referred to, and it can be readily seen that they originally formed ideal residences for the peace-loving Pueblos, who either made their homes as Cliff Dwellers in the crevices of cañon walls, or took advantage of these lofty rocks, already shaped and fortified by Nature, and built on them their dwellings. These in themselves were no mean strongholds. Their thick walls, made of rock fragments cemented with adobe, constituted a natural fortress, against which weapons such as savages used before they acquired fire-arms could do little harm; and even these houses the Indians constructed like the cliffs themselves, lofty and perpendicular, tier above tier, and, save for ladders, almost as inaccessible as eagles' nests. Again, since these _pueblos_ stood on table-lands, the approach to which could be easily defended, they were almost impregnable; while their isolation and elevation, in the treeless regions of New Mexico, enabled watchmen to discover the approach of an enemy at a considerable distance and to give warning for the women, children, and cattle roaming on the plain to be brought to a place of safety. The instinct of self-preservation and even the methods of defense are, after all, almost identical in every age and clime; and the motive which led the Indians to the summits of these _mesas_ was, no doubt, the same that prompted the Athenians to make a citadel of their Acropolis, and mediaeval knights to build their castles on the isolated crags of Italy, or on the mountain peaks along the Rhine. [Illustration: "CREVICES OF CAÑON WALLS."] [Illustration: THE SUMMIT OF A MESA.] [Illustration: THE MESA ENCANTADA.] As times became more peaceful, the Pueblos located their villages upon the plains, and one of these, called Laguna, is now a station of the Santa Fé railway. But a mere glance at this, in passing, was far too brief and unsatisfactory for our purpose, aside from the fact that its proximity to the railroad had, naturally, robbed the settlement of much of its distinctive character. We therefore resolved to leave our train, and go directly into the interior, to visit a most interesting and typical _pueblo,_ known as Ácoma. Arriving at the station nearest to it, early in the morning, we found a wagon and four horses waiting to receive us, and quickly started for our destination over a natural road across the almost level prairie. At the expiration of about two hours we saw before us, at a distance of three miles, a _mesa_ of such perfect symmetry and brilliant pinkish color, that it called forth a unanimous expression of enthusiasm. Although the form of this "noblest single rock in America" changes as one beholds it from different points of view, the shape which it presented, as we approached it, was circular; and this, together with its uniform height and perpendicular walls, reminded me of the tomb of Cæcilia Metella on the Appian Way, magnified into majesty, as in a mirage. It was with added interest, therefore, that we learned that this was the Enchanted Mesa, about which there had been recently considerable scientific controversy. Enchanting, if not enchanted, it certainly appeared that morning, and, as we drew nearer, its imposing mass continued to suggest old Roman architecture, from Hadrian's Mausoleum by the Tiber to the huge circle of the Colosseum. [Illustration: HOUSES AT LAGUNA.] [Illustration: THE MESA FROM THE EAST.] The Indian name of this remarkable cliff is _Katzímo_, and the title _Haunted Mesa_ would be a more appropriate translation of the Spanish name, _Mesa Encantada_, than _Enchanted;_ for the people of Ácoma believe its summit to be haunted by the spirits of their ancestors. A sinister tradition exists among them that one day, many centuries ago, when all the men of the village were at work upon the plain, a mass of rock, detached by the slow action of the elements, or else precipitated by an earthquake shock, fell into the narrow cleft by which alone an ascent or descent of the _mesa_ was made, and rendered it impassable. The women and children, left thus on the summit of a cliff four hundred and thirty feet in height, and cut off from communication with their relatives and friends, who were unable to rejoin and rescue them, are said to have slowly perished by starvation, and their bones, pulverized in the course of centuries, are believed to have been, finally, blown or washed away. To test the truth of this tradition, at least so far as traces of a previous inhabitancy of the _mesa_ could confirm it, Mr. Frederick W. Hodge, in 1895, made an attempt to reach the summit; but, though he climbed to within sixty feet of the top, he could on that occasion go no higher. He found, however, along the sides of the cliffs enormous masses of _débris_, washed down by the streams of water which, after a tempest, drain off from the summit in a thousand little cataracts. Not only did Mr. Hodge discover in this rubbish several fragments of Indian pottery, but he, also, observed certain holes in the cliff which seemed to him to have been cut there specially for hands and feet. These he believed to be traces of an ancient trail. Stimulated by the announcement of this discovery, Professor William Libbey, of Princeton College, in July, 1896, made the ascent of the Enchanted Mesa by means of a life line fired over the mound from a Lyle gun. Stout ropes having then been drawn over the cliffs and made secure, the adventurous aëronaut was actually hauled up to the summit in a boatswain's chair, as sailors are sometimes pulled ashore from a sinking ship. On his descent, however, he declared that he had found nothing to indicate that the crest had ever been inhabited, or even previously visited. Nothing daunted by this statement, a few weeks later Mr. Hodge again attempted the ascent in which he had failed the year before. This time he was successful, and scaled the cliff by means of an extension ladder and several hundred feet of rope. But very different were the conclusions reached by him as to the probable authenticity of the tradition; for after having been on the _mesa_ only a short time, he found a piece of ancient pottery, and, during a search of twenty hours, not only were several more fragments of earthenware discovered, but also two stone ax-heads, an arrow-point of flint, and part of a shell bracelet. Moreover, a little monument of stone, arranged with evident design, was found on the edge of the cliff. Mr. Hodge and his party concluded, therefore, that beyond a doubt the Mesa Encantada had once been inhabited, and that the legend of the destruction of its last occupants may be true. [Illustration: LOOKING THROUGH A CREVICE OF THE ENCHANTED MESA.] [Illustration: THE LYLE GUN AND ROPES.] [Illustration: MAN IN BOATSWAIN'S CHAIR.] [Illustration: THE HODGE PARTY.] [Illustration: INDIAN RELICS.] The discovery of pieces of pottery here does not of itself prove great advancement in the race that made them; for, curiously enough, the manufacture of rude pottery is one of the first steps taken by man from a savage to a semi-civilized state. The various races of mankind have usually reached this art soon after their discovery of fire. In fact, such an invention is almost inevitable. Thus, an early method of cooking food has always been to put it into a basket smeared with clay, which is supported over a fire. The clay served the double purpose of preventing liquids from escaping and protecting the basket from the flame. Now, even the dullest savage could not have failed to notice, after a time, that the clay became hardened by the fire, and in that state was sufficient for his purpose without the basket. Simple as it seems, the discovery of this fact marks an important epoch in the progress of every primitive race, and some authorities on ethnology distinguish the two great divisions of Savagery and Barbarism by placing in the lower grade those who have not arrived at the knowledge of making pottery. [Illustration: THE TOP OF THE MESA ENCANTADA.] [Illustration: THE APPROACH TO ÁCOMA.] Soon after passing this haunted rock, and driving further over the _mesa_-dotted plain, we came in sight of the weird city of the sky called Ácoma. It occupies the summit of a table-land, the ascent to which is now a winding defile, flanked by frowning cliffs. Even this path, though readily ascended on horseback, is too precipitous and sandy for a wagon. Accordingly, as none of our party that day enjoyed the privilege of being an equestrian, we left our vehicle at the foot of the _mesa,_ and completed the journey on foot. Some adventurous spirits, however, chose a short cut up the precipice along a natural fissure in the rocks, which, having been transformed with loose stones into a kind of ladder, was formerly, before these peaceful times, the only means of access to the summit. A steeper scramble would be hard to find. I must confess, however, that before taking either of these routes, we halted to enjoy a lunch for which the drive had given us the keenest appetite, and which we ate _al fresco_ in the shadow of a cliff, surrounded by a dozen curious natives. Then, the imperious demands of hunger satisfied, we climbed three hundred and fifty feet above the surrounding plain, and stood in what is, with perhaps the exception of Zuñi, the oldest inhabited town in North America. Before us, on what seemed to be an island of the air, was a perfect specimen of the aboriginal civilization found here by the Spanish conqueror, Coronado, and his eager gold-seekers, in 1540. For now, as then, the members of the tribe reside together in one immense community building. It is rather droll to find among these natives of the desert the idea of the modern apartment house; but, in this place, as in all the settlements of the Pueblo Indians, communal dwellings were in existence long before the discovery of America, and the _mesa_ of Ácoma was inhabited as it now is, when the Pilgrims landed upon Plymouth Rock. [Illustration: RAIN WATER BASIN, ÁCOMA.] [Illustration: THE COURTYARD OF ÁCOMA.] An Indian _pueblo_ is really a honeycomb of adobe cells, built up in terraces. The outer walls, being the most exposed, are the highest, and from them toward the centre of the village, projecting stories descend in such a way that the balcony of one series of rooms forms a roof for the next below it. Finally, in the heart of the _pueblo_ is an open area where horses are corralled. When the space on the summit of the _mesa_ is sufficient, these apartment dwellings may be increased indefinitely by adding cells to the original mass, till it is six or seven stories high, and may contain one hundred, five hundred, or even a thousand persons, according to the size of the tribe. Formerly there were no doorways in the lowest stories; but in these peaceful days they are now introduced occasionally by Indian architects. Where they do not exist, the only means of entering the ground-floor rooms is by climbing a ladder from the courtyard to the first terrace, and thence descending by another ladder through a hole in the roof. The upper stories, being safer from attack, are more liberally supplied with doors and windows, the latter being sometimes glazed with plates of mica. At present, panes of glass are also used, though they were pointed out to us as special luxuries. At night, and in times of danger, the ladders in these _pueblos_ used always to be drawn up after the last climbers had used them; since these industrious and sedentary Indians were ever liable to raids from their nomadic enemies, who coveted their stores of food and the few treasures they had gradually accumulated. This precaution on the part of the Pueblos again reminds us that human nature, in its primitive devices for self-protection, is everywhere very much the same. Thus, there is no connection between the Swiss Lake Dwellers and the Indians of New Mexico; yet as the latter, on retiring to their houses, draw up their ladders after them, so the old occupants of the villages built on piles in the Swiss lakes pulled after them at night the bridges which connected them with the land. [Illustration: HOUSE OF A PUEBLO CHIEF.] [Illustration: A GROUP OF PUEBLO INDIANS.] [Illustration: A PUEBLO TOWN.] One can well imagine that the people of Ácoma do not spend many of their waking hours in their apartments. In this warm climate, with its superb air and almost rainless sky, every one lives as much as possible out of doors, and a true child of the sun always prefers the canopy of heaven to any other covering, and would rather eat on his doorstep and sleep on his flat roof, than to dine at a sumptuous table or recline on a comfortable bed. Nature seems to be peculiarly kind and indulgent to the people of warm climates. They need not only less clothing but less food, and it is only when we travel in the tropics that we realize on how little sustenance man can exist. A few dates, a cup of coffee, and a bit of bread appear to satisfy the appetites of most Aridians, whether they are Indians or Arabs. In the North, food, clothing, and fire are necessities of life; but to the people of the South the sun suffices for a furnace, fruits give sufficient nourishment, and clothing is a chance acquaintance. Yet life is full of compensation. Where Nature is too indulgent, her favorites grow shiftless; and the greatest amount of indoor luxury and comfort is always found where Nature seems so hostile that man is forced to fight with her for life. [Illustration: CHARACTERISTIC PUEBLO HOUSES.] [Illustration: IN THE PUEBLO.] Most of the cells which we examined in the many-chambered honeycomb of Ácoma had very little furniture except a primitive table and a few stools, made out of blocks of wood or trunks of trees. Across one corner of each room was, usually, stretched a cord on which the articles of the family wardrobe had been thrown promiscuously. The ornaments visible were usually bows and arrows, rifles, Navajo blankets, and leather pouches, hung on wooden pegs. Of beds I could find none; for Indians sleep by preference on blankets, skins, or coarse-wool mattresses spread every night upon the floor. When we consider that the forty millions of Japan, even in their comparatively high degree of civilization, still sleep in much the same way, we realize how unnecessary bedsteads are to the majority of the human race. In a few rooms I discovered wooden statuettes of saints, one or two crucifixes, and some cheap prints, which were evidently regarded with great veneration. The floors, which were not of wood, but of smooth adobe nearly as hard as asphalt, were in every instance remarkably clean. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF A PUEBLO APARTMENT.] It is an interesting fact, in the domestic economy of the Indian life led in these aërial villages, that the woman is always the complete owner of her apartment and its contents; for it is the women of the tribe who build the dwellings. Accordingly, the position of a Pueblo woman is extraordinary; and should her husband ill-treat her, she has the right and power to evict him, and to send him back to his original home. On the other hand, the man is sole possessor of the live stock of the family and of the property in the field; but when the crops are housed, the wife is at once invested with an equal share in their ownership. Pueblo children, too, always trace their descent through the mother and take her clan name instead of the father's. I noticed that at Ácoma the children seemed to be obedient to their parents and respectful to age, as I have invariably found them to be in all partially civilized countries of the world; for, paradoxical as it may seem, it is only in highly civilized communities, where individualism is cultivated at the expense of strict discipline and parental control, that children become indifferent to their fathers and mothers, and insolent to their superiors in age and wisdom. [Illustration: PUEBLO WATER-CARRIERS.] We lingered for some time upon this citadel of Ácoma, profoundly interested in the life and customs of a people that asks no aid of the United States, but is, to-day, as self-supporting as it has always been. The number of Pueblo Indians was never very large. It is probable that there were in all about thirty thousand of them at the time of the Spanish conquest, in 1540, and there are now about one-third that number scattered through more than twenty settlements. In an arid land where the greatest need is water, it is not strange that the dwellers on these rocky eyries should be called in the Indian dialect "Drinkers of the dew," for it would seem as if the dew must be their only beverage. But there are springs upon the neighboring plains whose precious liquid is brought up the steep trail daily on the heads of women, in three or five gallon jars, the carrying of which gives to the poise of the head and neck a native grace and elegance, as characteristic of Pueblo women as of the girls of Capri. Moreover, on the summit of the _mesa_ there are, usually, hollows in the rock, partly natural, partly artificial, which serve as reservoirs to retain rain water and keep it fresh and cool. [Illustration: AN ESTUFA.] Besides the communal apartment-house, every _pueblo_ contains two characteristic edifices. One is as ancient as the tribe itself and thoroughly aboriginal, the other is comparatively modern and bears the imprint of the Spaniard; they are the _estufa_ and the Roman Catholic church. The _estufa_ has always played a prominent part in the history of these Indians. It is a semi-subterranean council hall, where matters of public business are discussed by the chiefs. The government of the Pueblos is practically the same as when the Spanish found them. Each village seems to be completely independent of its neighbors, and no member of one tribe is allowed to sell real estate to members of another, or to marry into another clan without permission from his own. Each settlement is governed by a council, the members of which, including its chief, are chosen annually. Heredity counts for nothing among them, and official positions are conferred only by popular vote. Even their war-chieftains are elected and are under the control of the council. All matters of public importance are discussed by this body in the _estufa_, the walls of which are usually whitewashed; but a more dismal place can hardly be imagined, not only from the dubious light which there prevails, but from the fact that it contains no furniture whatever, and no decoration. Sometimes a village will have several _estufas_, each being reserved for a separate clan of the tribe. In any case, whether many or few, they are used exclusively by men, women never being allowed to enter them except to bring food to their male relatives. As we approached the Ácoma _estufa_, it presented the appearance of a monstrous bean pot, from the opening of which a ladder rose to a height of twenty feet. This proved to be the only means of descending into an enclosure, to which we were politely but firmly denied admission. Peering into the aperture, however, and noting the warm, close air which came from it, I understood why the Spanish word _estufa_, or oven, was applied to these underground cells by their European discoverers; for neither light nor ventilation is obtainable except through the one opening, and in summer the temperature of the shallow cavern must be warm indeed. [Illustration: ESTUFA AND SURROUNDINGS.] [Illustration: MEXICAN OVENS.] [Illustration: THE OLD CHURCH AT ÁCOMA.] The only other notable structure in Ácoma is the Roman Catholic church, the walls of which are sixty feet in height and ten feet thick. One can realize the enormous amount of labor involved in its construction, when he reflects that every stone and every piece of timber used in building it had to be brought hither on the backs of Indians, over the plains, from a considerable distance, and up the desperately difficult and narrow trail. Even the graveyard, which occupies a space in front of the church, about two hundred feet square, is said to have required a labor of forty years, since the cemetery had to be enclosed with stone walls, forty feet deep at one edge and filled with earth brought in small basket-loads up the steep ascent from the plain below. The church itself is regarded by the Indians with the utmost reverence, although it must be said that their religion is still almost as much Pagan as Christian. Thus, while they respect the priests who come to minister to them, they also have a lurking reverence for the medicine man, who is known as the _cacique_. He is really the religious head of the community, a kind of augur and prophet, who consults the gods and communicates to the people the answers he claims to have received. This dignitary is exempt from all work of a manual kind, such as farming, digging irrigation-ditches, and even hunting, and receives compensation for his services in the form of a tract of land which the community cultivates for him with more care than is bestowed on any other portion of their territory, while his crops are the first harvested in the autumn. He also derives an income in the form of grain, buckskin, shells, or turquoises, from those who beg him to fast for them, and to intercede with the gods in case of sickness. On the other hand, the _cacique_ must lodge and feed all the strangers who come to the village, as long as they stay, and he is, also, the surgeon and the nurse of the community. [Illustration: THE ALTAR.] [Illustration: DANCE IN THE PUEBLO.] While, therefore, the Pueblos go to church and repeat prayers in accordance with Christian teaching, they also use the prayer-sticks of their ancestors, and still place great reliance on their dances, most of which are of a strictly religious character, and are not only dedicated to the sun, moon, rainbow, deer, elk, and sheep, but are usually performed for the specific purpose of obtaining rain. Formerly, too, when their lives were far less peaceful than they are to-day, the Pueblos indulged in war and scalp dances; but these are now falling into disuse. The most remarkable exhibition of dancing, still in vogue, is the repulsive Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona, which takes place every year alternately in four villages between the 10th and the 30th of August according to the phase of the moon. The origin of this extraordinary custom is not intelligible now even to the Indians themselves, but the object in performing it is to obtain rain, and the dance, itself, is the culmination of a religious ceremonial which continues for nine days and nights. During that time only those who have been initiated into the Sacred Fraternities of the tribe may enter the _estufa_, on the floor of which weird pictures have been made with colored sand. [Illustration: PUEBLO GIRLS.] [Illustration: THREE SNAKE PRIESTS.] In the tribe of Moquis there are two fraternities known as the Antelopes and the Snakes, Each has from twenty to thirty members, some of whom are boys who serve as acolytes. When the open air ceremony of the Snake Dance begins, the members of these brotherhoods appear scantily clothed, with their faces painted red and white, and with tortoise-shell rattles tied to their legs. The Antelope fraternity first enters the square, preceded by a venerable priest carrying two bags filled with snakes. These serpents, which have been previously washed and covered with sacred meal, are deposited by the priest in a small leaf-embowered enclosure called the _kisi_. Around this the Antelopes now march, stamping with the right foot violently, to notify the spirits of their ancestors (presumably in the lower world) that the ceremony has begun. After making the circuit of the enclosure four times, they halt, and stand in line with their backs turned toward it. Then the Snake fraternity appears, headed by its priest, and performs the same ceremony. Then they too form a line, facing the Antelopes, and all of them, for about five minutes, wave their wands and chant some unintelligible words. Suddenly one Antelope and one Snake man rush to the _kisi_, and the priest who is presiding over the serpents presents them with a snake. The Snake man immediately places the wriggling reptile in his mouth, and holds it by the centre of its body between his teeth, as he marches around the little plaza, taking high steps. Meantime the, Antelope man accompanies him, stroking the snake continually with a wand tipped with feathers. Then all the members of the two fraternities follow in couples and do the same thing. Finally, each Snake man carries at least two snakes in his mouth and several in his hands; and even little boys, five years old, dressed like the adults, also hold snakes in their hands, fearlessly. Once in a while a snake is purposely dropped, and a man whose special duty it is to prevent its escape rushes after it and catches it up. [Illustration: THE SNAKE DANCE.] All the time that this hideous ceremony is going on, a weird chant is sung by the men and women of the tribe; and, at last, the chief priest draws on the ground a mystic circle with a line of sacred meal, and into this the men unload their snakes until the whole space becomes a writhing mass of serpents. Suddenly the members rush into this throng of squirming reptiles, most of which are rattlesnakes, and each, grabbing up a handful of them, runs at full speed down the _mesa_ and sets them at liberty, to act as messengers to carry to the gods their prayers for rain. This ends the ceremony for the snakes, but not for the men; for after they have liberated the reptiles, the members of the brotherhoods return and bathe themselves in a kind of green decoction, called Frog-water. Then they drink a powerful emetic, and having lined up on the edge of the _mesa_, vomit in unison! This is to purge them from the evil effects of snake-handling; and lest it should not be sufficiently effectual, the dose is repeated. Then they sit down, and eat bread, given them by the women as a kind of communion or religious rite. [Illustration: AFTER THE EMETIC.] [Illustration: CHIEF SNAKE PRIEST.] The seventy or eighty snakes used in this dance are treated from first to last with the utmost kindness and respect, especially the rattlesnakes, a dozen of which will frequently be squirming on the ground at once. It is noticeable that the Indians never pick up a rattlesnake when coiled, but always wait until it straightens itself out under the feather stroking, for it is claimed that the rattlesnake cannot strike uncoiled. At all events, when one is at its full length, the Indians not only catch it up fearlessly, but carry it with impunity in their mouths and hands. As might be supposed, however, the Moquis are said to possess an antidote against the poison of a rattlesnake, which, if a man is bitten, is given to him at once; and it is said that none of them ever dies from the effects of a snake-bite. [Illustration: WHERE THE SNAKES ARE KEPT.] The religious element in all these ceremonies should not be lost sight of, for the life of the Pueblo Indians is permeated with religion, or superstition, to the minutest details. Thus, it is an interesting fact that vicarious atonement has been a custom among them from time immemorial, and their _cacique_ is compelled to fast and do penance in many ways for the sins of his people. In some of the villages, also, certain men and women are chosen to expiate the wrongdoings of the tribe; and for more than a century there has been in New Mexico an order of Penitents, who torture themselves by beating their bodies with sharp cactus thorns, by carrying heavy crosses for great distances, and even by actual crucifixion. The severest of these cruel rites have, finally, been suppressed by the Roman Catholic church, but it encountered great difficulty in so doing, and the last crucifixion took place in 1891. [Illustration: RELICS OF CLIFF DWELLERS.] [Illustration: SUMMIT OF A MOQUI MESA.] Such, then, are the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona; a race uniting aboriginal Pagan rites with Christian ceremonies: cherishing at the same time their idols and their churches; using to-day their rifles, and to-morrow their bows and arrows; pounding occasionally with a hammer, but preferably with a stone; and handling American money for certain purchases, while trading beads, shells, and turquoises for others. Sometimes we wonder that they have not made more progress during the centuries in which they have been associated with Europeans; but it is hard to realize the difficulties which they have encountered in trying to comprehend our civilization, and in grasping its improvements. Even the adoption of the antique Spanish plow, the clumsy two-wheeled cart, the heavy ax and the rude saw, which are still found among them, caused them to pass at one stride from the Stone to the Iron Age, which, but for the intervention of the Spaniards, they would not naturally have reached without centuries of patient plodding. Moreover, before the arrival of the Europeans, the Aborigines of America had never seen horses, cows, sheep, or dogs, and the turkey was the only domestic animal known to them. Hence, in ancient American society there was no such thing as a pastoral stage of development; and the absence of domestic animals from the western hemisphere is a very important reason why the progress of mankind in this part of the world was not more rapid. Still it is a remarkable fact that the most ancient race, of which we have any actual knowledge on this continent, is, also, the most peaceful, self-supporting, and industrious, subsisting principally on the sale of their curiously decorated pottery, and the products of their arid soil. We saw here a young man who had been educated in the Government School at Carlisle; but, like most of his race, after returning to his village he had reverted to the ways of his ancestors, disqualified by his birth and instincts of heredity from doing anything else successfully. [Illustration: MOQUI CART AND PLOW.] [Illustration: MOQUI CHILDREN.] It was late on the night succeeding our visit to Ácoma that we arrived at Flagstaff, and our entire party was asleep. Suddenly we were aroused by a prolonged shout and the discharge of half a dozen revolvers. Five minutes later there came a general fusillade of pistol shots, and near and distant cries were heard, in which our half-awakened faculties could distinguish only the words: "Hurry up!" "Call the crowd!" "Down the alley!" Then a gruff voice yelled just beneath my window: "Let her go," and instantly our locomotive gave a whistle so piercing and continuous that all the occupants of our car sprang from their couches, and met in a demoralized group of multicolored pajamas in the corridor. What was it? Had the train been held up? Were we attacked? No; both the whistle and the pistol shots were merely Flagstaff's mode of giving an alarm of fire. We hastily dressed and stepped out upon the platform. A block of buildings just opposite the station was on fire, and was evidently doomed; yet Flagstaff's citizens, whose forms, relieved against the lurid glow, looked like Comanche Indians in a war dance, fought the flames with stubborn fury. The sight of a successful conflagration always thrills me, partly with horror, partly with delight. Three hundred feet away, two buildings formed an ever-increasing pyramid of golden light. We could distinguish the thin streams of water thrown by two puny engines; but, in comparison with the great tongues of fire which they strove to conquer, they appeared like silver straws. Nothing could check the mad carousal of the sparks and flames, which danced, leaped, whirled, reversed, and intertwined, like demons waltzing with a company of witches on Walpurgis Night. A few adventurous men climbed to the roofs of the adjoining structures, and thence poured buckets of water on the angry holocaust; but, for all the good they thus accomplished, they might as well have spat upon the surging, writhing fire, which flashed up in their faces like exploding bombs, whenever portions of the buildings fell. Meantime huge clouds of dense smoke, scintillant with sparks, rolled heavenward from this miniature Vesuvius; the neighboring windows, as they caught the light, sparkled like monster jewels; two telegraph poles caught fire, and cut their slender forms and outstretched arms against the jet black sky, like gibbets made of gold. How fire and water serve us, when subdued as slaves; but, oh, how terribly they scourge us, if ever for a moment they can gain the mastery! Too interested to exchange a word, we watched the struggle and awaited the result. The fury of the fire seemed like the wild attack of Indians, inflamed with frenzy and fanaticism, sure to exhaust itself at last, but for the moment riotously triumphant. Gradually, however, through want of material on which to feed itself, the fiery demon drooped its shining crest, brandished its arms with lessening vigor, and seemed to writhe convulsively, as thrust after thrust from the silver spears of its assailants reached a vital spot. Finally, after hurling one last shower of firebrands, it sank back into darkness, and its hereditary enemy rushed in to drown each lingering spark of its reduced vitality. [Illustration: FLAGSTAFF STATION.] [Illustration: PACKING WOOD.] [Illustration: A MEXICAN HOME.] [Illustration: OUR CAR AT FLAGSTAFF.] [Illustration: THE HEAVENS FROM THE OBSERVATORY, FLAGSTAFF.] [Illustration: TWILIGHT.] Upon a hill near Flagstaff stands an astronomical observatory from which distinguished students of the midnight skies search for the secrets of the moon and stars. Few better sites on earth could have been chosen for this purpose, since Arizona's atmosphere is so transparent that the extent of celestial scenery here disclosed is extraordinary. We visited the structure at the solemn hour that marks the hush between two days, when the last sound of one has died away, and before the first stir of the other thrills the morning air. Then, gazing through the lenses of its noble telescope, we welcomed the swift waves of light pulsating toward us from the shoreless ocean we call space. There is a mysterious beauty about the radiance of a star that far surpasses that of the moon. The latter glitters only with reflected light; but a star (that is to say a distant sun), when seen through a telescope, frequently scintillates with different colors like a diamond, and quivers like a thing of life. Moreover, the moon, forever waxing, waning, or presenting almost stupidly its great flat face, is continually changing; but the fixed star is always there. It fills the thoughtful soul with awe to look upon the starry heavens through such an instrument as that at Flagstaff. Space for the moment seems annihilated. We are apparently transported, as observers, from our tiny planet to the confines of our solar system, and, gazing thence still farther toward infinity, we watch with bated breath the birth, the progress, and the death of worlds. To one of the most distant objects in the depths of space, known as the Ring Nebula, the author addressed the following lines: TO THE RING NEBULA. O, pallid spectre of the midnight skies! Whose phantom features in the dome of Night Elude the keenest gaze of wistful eyes Till amplest lenses aid the failing sight, On heaven's blue sea the farthest isle of fire. From thee, whose glories it would fain admire, Must vision, baffled, in despair retire! What art thou, ghostly visitant of flame? Wouldst thou 'neath closer scrutiny dissolve In myriad suns that constellations frame, Round which life-freighted satellites revolve, Like those unnumbered orbs which nightly creep In dim procession o'er the azure steep, As white-wing'd caravans the desert sweep? Or, art thou still an incandescent mass, Acquiring form as hostile forces urge, Through whose vast length a million lightnings pass As to and fro its fiery billows surge, Whose glowing atoms, whirled in ceaseless strife Where now chaotic anarchy is rife. Shall yet become the fair abodes of life? We know not; for the faint, exhausted rays Which hither on Light's wingèd coursers come From fires which ages since first lit their blaze, One instant gleam, then perish, spent and dumb! How strange the thought that, whatsoe'er we learn, Our tiny globe no answer can return, Since with but dull, reflected beams we burn! Yet this we know; yon ring of spectral light, Whose distance thrills the soul with solemn awe, Can ne'er escape in its majestic might The firm control of omnipresent law. This mote descending to its bounden place. Those suns whose radiance we can scarcely trace, Alike obey the Power pervading space. [Illustration: NIGHT.] [Illustration: THE SAN FRANCISCO VOLCANOES.] [Illustration: STARTING FOR THE GRAND CAÑON.] One glorious September morning, leaving our train at Flagstaff, we started in stage-coaches for a drive of sixty-five miles to the Grand Cañon. I had looked forward to this drive with some misgiving, dreading the heat of the sun, and the dust and sand which I had supposed we should encounter; but to my astonishment and delight it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. It was only eleven hours in duration, and not only was most of the route level, but two-thirds of it lay through a section of beautifully rolling land, diversified with open glades and thousands upon thousands of tall pines and cedars entirely free from undergrowth. It is no exaggeration to say that we drove that day for miles at a time over a road carpeted with pine needles. The truth is, Arizona, though usually considered a treeless and rainless country, possesses some remarkable exceptions; and the region near Flagstaff not only abounds in stately pines, but is at certain seasons visited by rainstorms which keep it fresh and beautiful. During our stay at the Grand Cañon we had a shower every night; the atmosphere was marvelously pure, and aromatic with the odors of a million pines; and so exhilarating was exercise in the open air, that however arduous it might be, we never felt inconvenienced by fatigue, and mere existence gave us joy. Decidedly, then, it will not do to condemn the whole of Arizona because of the heat of its arid, southern plains; for the northern portion of the state is a plateau, with an elevation of from five thousand to seven thousand feet. Hence, as it is not latitude, so much as altitude, that gives us healthful, pleasing temperature, in parts of Arizona the climate is delightful during the entire year. [Illustration: THE DRIVE THROUGH THE PINES.] [Illustration: THE SAN FRANCISCO MOUNTAIN.] A portion of this stage-coach journey led us over the flank of the great San Francisco Mountain. The isolated position, striking similarity, and almost uniform altitude of its four peaks, rising nearly thirteen thousand feet above the sea, have long made them famous. Moreover, they are memorable for having cast a lurid light upon the development of this portion of our planet. Cold, calm, and harmless though they now appear, the time has been when they contained a molten mass which needed but a throb of Earth's uneasy heart to light the heavens with an angry glare, and cover the adjoining plains with floods of fire. Lava has often poured from their destructive cones, and can be traced thence over a distance of thirty miles; proving that they once served as vents for the volcanic force which the thin crust of earth was vainly striving to confine. But their activity is apparently ended. The voices with which they formerly shouted to one another in the joy of devastation have been silenced. Conquered at last, their fires smolder now beneath a barrier too firm to yield, and their huge forms appear like funeral monuments reared to the memory of the power buried at their base. Another fascinating sight upon this drive was that of the Painted Desert whose variously colored streaks of sand, succeeding one another to the rim of the horizon, made the vast area seem paved with bands of onyx, agate, and carnelian. [Illustration: THE LUNCH STATION.] About the hour of noon we reached a lunch-station at which the stages, going to and from the Cañon, meet and pass. The structure itself is rather primitive; but a good meal is served to tourists at this wayside halting-place, and since our appetites had been sharpened by the long ride and tonic-giving air, it seemed to us the most delicious of repasts. The principal object of one of the members of our party, in making the journey described in these pages, was to determine the advisability of building a railroad from Flagstaff to the Cañon. Whether this will be done eventually is not, however, a matter of vital interest to travelers, since the country traversed can easily be made an almost ideal coaching-route; and with good stages, frequent relays of horses, and a well-appointed lunch-station, a journey thus accomplished would be preferable to a trip by rail. [Illustration: HANCE'S CAMP.] [Illustration: OUR TENT AT HANCE'S CAMP.] Night had already come when we arrived at our destination, known as Hance's Camp, near the border of the Cañon. As we drove up to it, the situation seemed enchanting in its peace and beauty; for it is located in a grove of noble pines, through which the moon that night looked down in full-orbed splendor, paving the turf with inlaid ebony and silver, and laying a mantle of white velvet on the tents in which we were to sleep. Hance's log cabin serves as a kitchen and dining-room for travelers, and a few guests can even find lodging there; but, until a hotel is built, the principal dormitories must be the tents, which are provided with wooden floors and furnished with tables, chairs, and comfortable beds. This kind of accommodation, however, although excellent for travelers in robust health, is not sufficiently luxurious to attract many tourists. The evident necessity of the place is a commodious, well-kept inn, situated a few hundred feet to the rear of Hance's Camp, on the very edge of the Cañon. If such a hotel, built on a spot commanding the incomparable view, were properly advertised and well-managed, I firmly believe that thousands of people would come here every year, on their way to or from the Pacific coast--not wishing or expecting it to be a place of fashion, but seeking it as a point where, close beside a park of pines, seven thousand feet above the level of the sea, one of the greatest marvels of the world can be enjoyed, in all the different phases it presents at morning, noon, and night, in sunshine, moonlight, and in storm. [Illustration: OLD HANCE.] [Illustration: THE FIRST VIEW.] Early the next morning I eagerly climbed the little knoll at the foot of which our tents were located, for I well knew that from its summit I should see the Cañon. Many grand objects in the world are heralded by sound: the solemn music of Niagara, the roar of active geysers in the Yellowstone, the intermittent thunder of the sea upon a rocky coast, are all distinguishable at some distance; but over the Grand Cañon of the Colorado broods a solemn silence. No warning voice proclaims its close proximity; no partial view prepares us for its awful presence. We walk a few steps through the pine trees from the camp and suddenly find ourselves upon the Cañon's edge. Just before reaching it, I halted for a moment, as has always been my wont when approaching for the first time any natural or historic object that I have longed for years to look upon. Around me rose the stately pines; behind me was a simple stretch of rolling woodland; nothing betrayed the nearness of one of the greatest wonders of the world. Could it be possible that I was to be disappointed? At last I hurried through the intervening space, gave a quick look, and almost reeled. The globe itself seemed to have suddenly yawned asunder, leaving me trembling on the hither brink of two dissevered hemispheres. Vast as the bed of a vanished ocean, deep as Mount Washington, riven from its apex to its base, the grandest cañon on our planet lay glittering below me in the sunlight like a submerged continent, drowned by an ocean that had ebbed away. At my very feet, so near that I could have leaped at once into eternity, the earth was cleft to a depth of six thousand six hundred feet--not by a narrow gorge, like other cañons, but by an awful gulf within whose cavernous immensity the forests of the Adirondacks would appear like jackstraws, the Hudson Palisades would be an insignificant stratum, Niagara would be indiscernible, and cities could be tossed like pebbles. [Illustration: THE EARTH-GULF OF ARIZONA.] [Illustration: A PORTION OF THE GULF.] [Illustration: "A VAST, INCOMPARABLE VOID."] As brain grew steadier and vision clearer, I saw, directly opposite, the other side of the Cañon thirteen miles away. It was a mountain wall, a mile in height, extending to the right and left as far as the eye could reach; and since the cliff upon which I was standing was its counterpart, it seemed to me as if these parallel banks were once the shore-lines of a vanished sea. Between them lay a vast, incomparable void, two hundred miles in length, presenting an unbroken panorama to the east and west until the gaze could follow it no farther. Try to conceive what these dimensions mean by realizing that a strip of the State of Massachusetts, thirteen miles in width, and reaching from Boston to Albany, could be laid as a covering over this Cañon, from one end to the other; and that if the entire range of the White Mountains were flung into it, the monstrous pit would still remain comparatively empty! Even now it is by no means without contents; for, as I gazed with awe and wonder into its colossal area, I seemed to be looking down upon a colored relief-map of the mountain systems of the continent. It is not strictly one cañon, but a labyrinth of cañons, in many of which the whole Yosemite could be packed away and lost. Thus one of them, the Marble Cañon, is of itself more than three thousand feet deep and sixty-six miles long. In every direction I beheld below me a tangled skein of mountain ranges, thousands of feet in height, which the Grand Cañon's walls enclosed, as if it were a huge sarcophagus, holding the skeleton of an infant world. It is evident, therefore, that all the other cañons of our globe are, in comparison with this, what pygmies are to a giant, and that the name Grand Cañon, which is often used to designate some relatively insignificant ravine, should be in truth applied only to the stupendous earth-gulf of Arizona. [Illustration: A SECTION OF THE LABYRINTH.] [Illustration: MOUNT AYER.] At length, I began to try to separate and identify some of these formations. Directly in the foreground, a savage looking mountain reared its splintered head from the abyss, and stood defiantly confronting me, six thousand feet above the Cañon's floor. Though practically inaccessible to the average tourist, this has been climbed, and is named Mount Ayer, after Mrs. Edward Ayer, the first woman who ever descended into the Cañon to the river's edge. Beyond this, other mountains rise from the gulf, many of which resemble the Step Pyramid at Sakhara, one of the oldest of the royal sepulchres beside the Nile. But so immeasurably vaster are the pyramids of this Cañon than any work of man, that had the tombs of the Pharaohs been placed beside them, I could not have discovered them without a field-glass. Some of these grand constructions stand alone, while others are in pairs; and many of them resemble Oriental temples, buttressed with terraces a mile or two in length, and approached by steps a hundred feet in height. Around these, too, are many smaller mountainous formations, crude and unfinished in appearance, like shrines commenced and then abandoned by the Cañon's Architect. Most of us are but children of a larger growth, and love to interpret Nature, as if she reared her mountains, painted her sunsets, cut her cañons, and poured forth her cataracts solely for our instruction and enjoyment. So, when we gaze on forms like these, shaped like gigantic temples, obelisks, and altars fashioned by man's hands, we try to see behind them something personal, and even name them after Hindu, Grecian, and Egyptian gods, as if those deities made them their abodes. Thus, one of these shrines was called by the artist, Thomas Moran, the Temple of Set; three others are dedicated respectively to Siva, Vishnu, and Vulcan; while on the apex of a mighty altar, still unnamed, a twisted rock-formation, several hundred feet in height, suggests a flame, eternally preserved by unseen hands, ascending to an unknown god. [Illustration: SOME OF THE CAÑON TEMPLES.] [Illustration: SIVA'S TEMPLE.] It is difficult to realize the magnitude of these objects, so deceptive are distances and dimensions in the transparent atmosphere of Arizona. Siva's Temple, for example, stands upon a platform four or five miles square, from which rise domes and pinnacles a thousand feet in height. Some of their summits call to mind immense sarcophagi of jasper or of porphyry, as if they were the burial-places of dead deities, and the Grand Cañon a Necropolis for pagan gods. Yet, though the greater part of the population of the world could be assembled here, one sees no worshipers, save an occasional devotee of Nature, standing on the Cañon's rim, lost in astonishment and hushed in awe. These temples were, however, never intended for a human priesthood. A man beside them is a pygmy. His voice here would be little more effective than the chirping of an insect. The God-appointed celebrant, in the cathedrals of this Cañon, must be Nature. Her voice alone can rouse the echoes of these mountains into deafening peals of thunder. Her metaphors are drawn from an experience of ages. Her prayers are silent, rapturous communings with the Infinite. Her hymns of praise are the glad songs of birds; her requiems are the meanings of the pines; her symphonies the solemn roaring of the winds. "Sermons in stone" abound at every turn; and if, as the poet has affirmed, "An undevout astronomer is mad," with still more truth can it be said that those are blind who in this wonderful environment look not "through Nature up to Nature's God." These wrecks of Tempest and of Time are finger-posts that point the thoughts of mortals to eternal heights; and we find cause for hope in the fact that, even in a place like this, Man is superior to Nature; for he interprets it, he finds in it the thoughts of God, and reads them after Him. [Illustration: NEAR THE TEMPLE OF SET.] [Illustration: HANCE'S TRAIL, LOOKING UP.] The coloring of the Grand Cañon is no less extraordinary than its forms. Nature has saved this chasm from being a terrific scene of desolation by glorifying all that it contains. Wall after wall, turret after turret, and mountain range after mountain range belted with tinted strata, succeed one another here like billows petrified in glowing colors. These hues are not as brilliant and astonishing in their variety as are the colors of the Yellowstone Cañon, but their subdued and sombre tones are perfectly suited to the awe-inspiring place which they adorn. The prominent tints are yellow, red, maroon, and a dull purple, as if the glory of unnumbered sunsets, fading from these rugged cliffs, had been in part imprisoned here. Yet, somehow, specimens of these colored rocks lose all their brilliancy and beauty when removed from their environment, like sea-shells from the beach; a verification of the sentiment so beautifully expressed in the lines of Emerson: "I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore, With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar." [Illustration: MIST IN THE CAÑON.] To stand upon the edge of this stupendous gorge, as it receives its earliest greeting from the god of day, is to enjoy in a moment compensation for long years of ordinary uneventful life. When I beheld the scene, a little before daybreak, a lake of soft, white clouds was floating round the summits of the Cañon mountains, hiding the huge crevasse beneath, as a light coverlet of snow conceals a chasm in an Alpine glacier. I looked with awe upon this misty curtain of the morn, for it appeared to me symbolic of the grander curtain of the past which shuts out from our view the awful struggles of the elements enacted here when the grand gulf was being formed. At length, however, as the light increased, this thin, diaphanous covering was mysteriously withdrawn, and when the sun's disk rose above the horizon, the huge facades of the temples which looked eastward grew immediately rosy with the dawn; westward, projecting cliffs sketched on the opposite sides of the ravines, in dark blue silhouettes, the evanescent forms of castles, battlements, and turrets from which some shreds of white mist waved like banners of capitulation; stupendous moats beneath them were still black with shadow; while clouds filled many of the minor cañons, like vapors rising from enormous cauldrons. Gradually, as the solar couriers forced a passage into the narrow gullies, and drove the remnant of night's army from its hiding-places, innumerable shades of purple, yellow, red, and brown appeared, varying according to the composition of the mountains, and the enormous void was gradually filled to the brim with a luminous haze, which one could fancy was the smoke of incense from its countless altars. A similar, and even more impressive, scene is visible here in the late afternoon, when all the western battlements in their turn grow resplendent, while the eastern walls submit to an eclipse; till, finally, a gray pall drops upon the lingering bloom of day, the pageant fades, the huge sarcophagi are mantled in their shrouds, the gorgeous colors which have blazed so sumptuously through the day grow pale and vanish, the altar fires turn to ashes, the mighty temples draw their veils and seem deserted by both gods and men, and the stupendous panorama awaits, beneath the canopy of night, the glory of another dawn. [Illustration: A STUPENDOUS PANORAMA.] [Illustration: A TANGLED SKEIN OF CAÑONS.] It was my memorable privilege to see, one afternoon, a thunder storm below me here. A monstrous cloud-wall, like a huge gray veil, came traveling up the Cañon, and we could watch the lightning strike the buttes and domes ten or twelve miles away, while the loud peals of thunder, broken by crags and multiplied by echoes, rolled toward us through the darkening gulf at steadily decreasing intervals. Sometimes two flashes at a time ran quivering through the air and launched their bolts upon the mountain shrines, as though their altars, having been erected for idolatrous worship, were doomed to be annihilated. Occasionally, through an opening in the clouds, the sun would suddenly light up the summit of a mountain, or flash a path of gold through a ravine; and I shall never forget the curious sensation of seeing far beneath me bright sunshine in one cañon and a violent storm in another. At last, a rainbow cast its radiant bridge across the entire space, and we beheld the tempest disappear like a troop of cavalry in a cloud of dust beneath that iridescent arch, beyond whose curving spectrum all the temples stood forth, still intact in their sublimity. [Illustration: ON THE BRINK.] At certain points along the Cañon, promontories jut out into the abyss, like headlands which in former times projected into an ocean that has disappeared. Hence, riding along the brink, as one may do for miles, we looked repeatedly into many lateral fissures, from fifteen hundred to three thousand feet in depth. All these, however, like gigantic fingers, pointed downward to the centre of the Cañon, where, five miles away, and at a level more than six thousand feet below the brink on which we stood, extended a long, glittering trail. This, where the sunlight struck it, gleamed like an outstretched band of gold. It was the sinuous Colorado, yellow as the Tiber. [Illustration: RIPLEY'S BUTTE.] [Illustration: A BIT OF THE RIVER.] [Illustration: ON HANCE'S TRAIL.] One day of our stay here was devoted to making the descent to this river. It is an undertaking compared with which the crossing of the Gemmi on a mule is child's play. Fortunately, however, the arduous trip is not absolutely necessary for an appreciation of the immensity and grandeur of the scenery. On the contrary, one gains a really better idea of these by riding along the brink, and looking down at various points on the sublime expanse. Nevertheless, a descent into the Cañon is essential for a proper estimate of its details, and one can never realize the enormity of certain cliffs and the extent of certain valleys, till he has crawled like a maimed insect at their base and looked thence upward to the narrowed sky. Yet such an investigation of the Cañon is, after all, merely like going down from a balloon into a great city to examine one of its myriad streets, since any gorge we may select for our descending path is but a tiny section of a labyrinth. That which is unique and incomparable here is the view from the brink; and when the promised hotel is built upon the border of the Cañon, visitors will be content to remain for days at their windows or on the piazzas, feasting their souls upon a scene always sublime and sometimes terrible. [Illustration: A VISION OF SUBLIMITY.] Nevertheless, desirous of exploring a specimen of these chasms (as we often select for minute examination a single painting out of an entire picture gallery) we made the descent to the Colorado by means of a crooked scratch upon a mountain side, which one might fancy had been blazed by a zigzag flash of lightning. As it requires four hours to wriggle down this path, and an equal amount of time to wriggle up, I spent the greater part of a day on what a comrade humorously styled the "quarter-deck of a mule." A square, legitimate seat in the saddle was usually impossible, so steep was the incline; and hence, when going down, I braced my feet and lay back on the haunches of the beast, and, in coming up, had to lean forward and clutch the pommel, to keep from sliding off, as a human avalanche, on the head of the next in line. In many places, however, riding was impossible, and we were compelled to scramble over the rocks on foot. The effect of hours of this exercise on muscles unaccustomed to such surprises may be imagined; yet, owing to the wonderfully restorative air of Arizona, the next day after this, the severest physical exertion I had ever known, I did not feel the slightest bad result, and was as fresh as ever. That there is an element of danger in this trip cannot be doubted. At times the little trail, on which two mules could not possibly have passed each other, skirts a precipice where the least misstep would hurl the traveler to destruction; and every turn of the zigzag path is so sharp that first the head and then the tail of the mule inevitably projects above the abyss, and wig-wags to the mule below. Moreover, though not a vestige of a parapet consoles the dizzy rider, in several places the animal simply puts its feet together and toboggans down the smooth face of a slanting rock, bringing up at the bottom with a jerk that makes the tourist see a large variety of constellations, and even causes his beast to belch forth an involuntary roar of disenchantment, or else to try to pulverize his immediate successor. In such a place as this Nature seems pitiless and cruel; and one is impressed with the reflection that a million lives might be crushed out in any section of this maze of gorges and not a feature of it would be changed. There is, however, a fascination in gambling with danger, when a desirable prize is to be gained. The stake we risk may be our lives, yet, when the chances are in our favor, we often love to match excitement against the possibility of death; and even at the end, when we are safe, a sigh sometimes escapes us, as when the curtain falls on an absorbing play. [Illustration: STARTING DOWN THE TRAIL.] [Illustration: A YAWNING CHASM.] [Illustration: OBLIGED TO WALK.] As we descended, it grew warmer, not only from the greater elevation of the sun at noon, but from the fact that in this sudden drop of six thousand feet we had passed through several zones of temperature. Snow, for example, may be covering the summits of the mountains in midwinter, while at the bottom of the Cañon are summer warmth and vernal flowers. When, after two or three hours of continuous descent, we looked back at our starting-point, it seemed incredible that we had ever stood upon the pinnacles that towered so far above us, and were apparently piercing the slowly moving clouds. The effect was that of looking up from the bottom of a gigantic well. Instinctively I asked myself if I should ever return to that distant upper world, and it gave me a memorable realization of my individual insignificance to stand in such a sunken solitude, and realize that the fissure I was exploring was only a single loop in a vast network of ravines, which, if extended in a straight line, would make a cañon seven hundred miles in length. It was with relief that we reached, at last, the terminus of the lateral ravine we had been following and at the very bottom of the Cañon rested on the bank of the Colorado. The river is a little freer here than elsewhere in its tortuous course, and for some hundred feet is less compressed by the grim granite cliffs which, usually, rise in smooth black walls hundreds of feet in almost vertical height, and for two hundred miles retain in their embrace the restless, foaming flood that has no other avenue of escape. The navigation of this river by Major J.W. Powell, in 1869, was one of the most daring deeds of exploration ever achieved by man, and the thrilling story of his journey down the Colorado, for more than a thousand miles, and through the entire length of the Grand Cañon, is as exciting as the most sensational romance. Despite the remonstrances of friends and the warnings of friendly Indians, Major Powell, with a flotilla of four boats and nine men, started down the river, on May 24th, from Green River City, in Utah, and, on the 30th of August, had completed his stupendous task, with the loss of two boats and four men. Of the latter, one had deserted at an early date and escaped; but the remaining three, unwilling to brave any longer the terrors of the unknown Cañon, abandoned the expedition and tried to return through the desert, but were massacred by Indians. It is only when one stands beside a portion of this lonely river, and sees it shooting stealthily and swiftly from a rift in the Titanic cliffs and disappearing mysteriously between dark gates of granite, that he realizes what a heroic exploit the first navigation of this river was; for nothing had been known of its imprisoned course through this entanglement of chasms, or could be known, save by exploring it in boats, so difficult of access were, and are, the two or three points where it is possible for a human being to reach its perpendicular banks. Accordingly, when the valiant navigators sailed into these mysterious waters, they knew that there was almost every chance against the possibility of a boat's living in such a seething current, which is, at intervals, punctured with a multitude of tusk-like rocks, tortured into rapids, twisted into whirlpools, or broken by falls; while in the event of shipwreck they could hope for little save naked precipices to cling to for support. Moreover, after a heavy rain the Colorado often rises here fifty or sixty feet under the veritable cataracts of water which, for miles, stream directly down the perpendicular walls, and make of it a maddened torrent wilder than the rapids of Niagara. All honor, then, to Powell and his comrades who braved not alone the actual dangers thus described, but stood continually alert for unknown perils, which any bend in the swift, snake-like river might disclose, and which would make the gloomy groove through which they slipped a black-walled _oubliette_, or gate to Acheron. [Illustration: A CABIN ON THE TRAIL.] [Illustration: A HALT.] [Illustration: AT THE BOTTOM.] [Illustration: TAKING LUNCH NEAR THE RIVER.] [Illustration: BESIDE THE COLORADO.] If any river in the world should be regarded with superstitious reverence, it is the Colorado, for it represents to us, albeit in a diminished form, the element that has produced the miracle of the Arizona Cañon,--water. Far back in the distant Eocene Epoch of our planet's history, the Colorado was the outlet of an inland sea which drained off toward the Pacific, as the country of northwestern Arizona rose; and the Grand Cañon illustrates, on a stupendous scale, the system of erosion which, in a lesser degree, has deeply furrowed the entire region. At first one likes to think of the excavation of this awful chasm as the result of some tremendous cataclysm of Nature; but, in reality, it has all been done by water, assisted, no doubt, by the subtler action of the winds and storms in the disintegration of the monster cliffs, which, as they slowly crumbled into dust, were carried downward by the rains, and, finally, were borne off by the omnivorous river to the sea. [Illustration: MONSTER CLIFFS, AND A NOTCH IN THE CAÑON WALL.] [Illustration: MILES OF INTRA-CAÑONS.] But though, at first, these agents do not seem as forceful and extraordinary as a single terrible catastrophe, the slow results thus gained are even more impressive. For what an appalling lapse of time must have been necessary to cut down and remove layers of sandstone, marble, and granite, thousands of feet in thickness; to carve the mighty shrines of Siva and of Vishnu, and to etch out these scores of interlacing cañons! To calculate it one must reckon a century for every turn of the hourglass. It is the story of a struggle maintained for ages between the solid and the fluid elements, in which at last the yielding water won a victory over adamant. It is an evidence, too, of Nature's patient methods; a triumph of the delicate over the strong, the liquid over the solid, the transitory over the enduring. At present, the softer material has been exhausted, and the rapacious river, shrunken in size, must satisfy itself by gnawing only the archaic granite which still curbs its course. Yet if this calculation overpowers us, what shall we say of the reflections awakened by the fact that all the limestone cliffs along the lofty edges of the Cañon are composed of fossils,--the skeletons of creatures that once lived here covered by an ocean, and that ten thousand feet of strata, which formerly towered above the present summits of the Cañon walls, have been eroded and swept downward to the sea! Hence, were the missing strata (all of which are found in regular sequence in the high plateaus of Utah) restored, this Cañon would be sixteen thousand feet in depth, and from its borders one could look down upon a mountain higher than Mont Blanc! To calculate the æons implied in the repeated elevations and subsidences which made this region what it is would be almost to comprehend eternity. In such a retrospect centuries crumble and disappear into the gulf of Time as pebbles into the Cañon of the Colorado. On my last evening in the pine tree camp I left my tent and walked alone to the edge of the Grand Cañon. The night was white with the splendor of the moon. A shimmering lake of silvery vapor rolled its noiseless tide against the mountains, and laved the terraces of the Hindu shrines. The lunar radiance, falling into such profundity, was powerless to reveal the plexus of subordinate cañons, and even the temples glimmered through the upper air like wraiths of the huge forms which they reveal by day. Advancing cautiously to an isolated point upon the brink, I lay upon my face, and peered down into the spectral void. No voice of man, nor cry of bird, nor roar of beast resounded through those awful corridors of silence. Even thought had no existence in that sunken realm of chaos. I felt as if I were the sole survivor of the deluge. Only the melancholy murmur of the wind ascended from that sepulchre of centuries. It seemed the requiem for a vanished world. [Illustration] YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK [Illustration] On certain portions of our globe Almighty God has set a special imprint of divinity. The Alps, the Pyrénées, the Mexican volcanoes, the solemn grandeur of Norwegian fjords, the sacred Mountain of Japan, and the sublimity of India's Himalayas--at different epochs in a life of travel--had filled my soul with awe and admiration. But, since the summer of 1896, there has been ranked with these in my remembrance the country of the Yellowstone. Two-thirds across this continent, hidden away in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, there lies a marvelous section of our earth, about one-half as large as the State of Connecticut. On three sides this is guarded by lofty, well-nigh inaccessible mountains, as though the Infinite Himself would not allow mankind to rashly enter its sublime enclosure. In this respect our Government has wisely imitated the Creator. It has proclaimed to all the world the sanctity of this peculiar area. It has received it as a gift from God and, as His trustee, holds it for the welfare of humanity. We, then, as citizens of the United States, are its possessors and its guardians. It is our National Park. Yet, although easy of access, most of us let the years go by without exploring it! How little we realize what a treasure we possess is proven by the fact that, until recently, the majority of tourists here were foreigners! I thought my previous store of memories was rich, but to have added to it the recollections of the Yellowstone will give a greater happiness to life while life shall last. Day after day, yes, hour after hour, within the girdle of its snow-capped peaks I looked upon a constant series of stupendous sights--a blending of the beautiful and terrible, the strange and the sublime--which were, moreover, so peculiar that they stand out distinct and different from those of every other portion of our earth. [Illustration: LONE STAR GEYSER.] [Illustration: THE GROTTO, GEYSER'S CONE.] [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE PARK.] To call our National Park the "Switzerland of America" would be absurd. It is not Switzerland; it is not Iceland; it is not Norway; it is unique; and the unique cannot be compared. If I were asked to describe it in a dozen lines, I should call it the arena of an enormous amphitheatre. Its architect was Nature; the gladiators that contended in it were volcanoes. During unnumbered ages those gladiators struggled to surpass one another in destruction by pouring forth great floods of molten lava. Even now the force which animated them still shows itself in other forms, but harmlessly, much as a captive serpent hisses though its fangs are drawn. But the volcanoes give no sign of life. They are dead actors in a fearful tragedy performed here countless centuries before the advent of mankind, with this entire region for a stage, and for their only audience the sun and stars. I shall never forget our entrance into this theatre of sublime phenomena. The Pullman car, in which we had taken our places at St. Paul, had carried us in safety more than a thousand miles and had left us at the gateway of the park. Before us was a portion of the road, eight miles in length, which leads the tourist to the Mammoth Springs Hotel. On one side an impetuous river shouted a welcome as we rode along. Above us rose gray, desolate cliffs. They are volcanic in their origin. The brand of fire is on them all. They are symbolic, therefore, of the entire park; for fire and water are the two great forces here which have, for ages, struggled for supremacy. [Illustration: THE WATCHFUL SENTINEL.] [Illustration: THE MAMMOTH SPRINGS HOTEL.] No human being dwells upon those dreary crags, but at one point, as I looked up at them, I saw--poised statue-like above a mighty pinnacle of rock--a solitary eagle. Pausing, with outstretched wings above its nest, it seemed to look disdainfully upon us human pygmies crawling far below. Living at such a height, in voluntary isolation, that king of birds appeared the very embodiment of strength and majesty. Call it a touch of superstition, if you will, yet I confess it thrilled me to the heart to find that here, above the very entrance to the Wonderland of our Republic, there should be stationed midway between earth and heaven, like a watchful sentinel, our national bird,--the bird of freedom! At length a sudden turn revealed to us our first halting-place within the Park,--the Mammoth Springs Hotel. The structure in itself looked mammoth as we approached it, for its portico exceeds four hundred feet in length. Our first impressions were agreeable. Porters rushed forth and helped us to alight, and on the broad piazza the manager received us cordially. Everything had the air of an established summer resort. This, I confess, surprised me greatly, as I had expected primitive accommodations, and supposed that, though the days of camping-out had largely passed away, the resting-places in the Park were still so crude that one would be glad to leave them. But I lingered here with pleasure long after all the wonders of the Park had been beheld. The furniture, though simple, is sufficient; to satisfy our national nervousness, the halls are so well-stocked with rocking-chairs that European visitors look about them with alarm, and try to find some seats that promise a more stable equilibrium; the sleeping-rooms are scrupulously clean; soft blankets, snow-white sheets, and comfortable beds assure a good night's rest; and the staff of colored waiters in the dining-room, steam-heat, a bell-boy service, and electric lights made us forget our distance from great cities and the haunts of men. Moreover, what is true of this is true, as well, of the other hotels within the Park; and when I add that well-cooked food is served in all of them, it will be seen that tourists need not fear a lengthy sojourn in these hostelries. [Illustration: HALL OF THE MAMMOTH SPRINGS HOTEL.] [Illustration: THE PHOTOGRAPHER'S HOUSE.] [Illustration: MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS.] [Illustration: FORT YELLOWSTONE.] Standing on the veranda of the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, I saw between me and the range of mountains opposite a broad plateau, on which were grouped a dozen neat and tasteful structures. With the exception of the photographer's house in the foreground, these constitute Fort Yellowstone. "A fort!" the visitor exclaims, "impossible! These buildings are of wood, not stone. Where are its turrets, battlements, and guns?" Nevertheless, this is a station for two companies of United States Cavalry; most of the houses being residences for the officers, while in the rear are barracks for the soldiers. [Illustration: A FOREST IN THE PARK.] No one who has visited the National Park ever doubts the necessity of having soldiers there. Thus, one of the most important duties of the United States troops, stationed within its area, is to save its splendid forests from destruction. To do this calls for constant vigilance. A fire started in the resinous pines, which cover many of the mountain sides, leaps forward with such fury that it would overtake a horseman fleeing for his life. To guard against so serious a calamity, soldiers patrol the Park continually to see that all the camp-fires have been extinguished. Thanks to their watchful care, only one notable conflagration has occurred here in the last eight years, and that the soldiers fought with energy for twenty days, till the last vestige of it was subdued. The tourist comprehends the great importance of this work when he beholds the rivers of the Park threading, like avenues of silver, the sombre frame-work of the trees, and recollects that just such forests as adjoin these streams cover no less than eighty-four per cent. of its entire area. In a treeless country like Wyoming these forests are of priceless value, because of their utility in holding back, in spring, the melting snow. Some of the largest rivers of our continent are fed from the well-timbered area of the Yellowstone; and if the trees were destroyed, the enormous snowfall in the Park, unsheltered from the sun, would melt so rapidly that the swollen torrents would quickly wash away roads, bridges, and productive farms, even, far out in the adjacent country, and, subsequently, cause a serious drought for many months. [Illustration: FIRE-HOLE RIVER.] Another very important labor of the United States soldiers here is to preserve the game within the Park. It is the purpose of our Government to make this area a place of refuge for those animals which man's insatiate greed has now almost destroyed. The remoteness of this lofty region, together with its mountain fastnesses, deep forests, and sequestered glens, makes it an almost perfect game-preserve. There are at present thirty thousand elk within the Park; its deer and antelopes are steadily increasing; and bears, foxes, and small game roam unmolested here. Buffaloes, however, are still few in number. They have become too valuable. A buffalo head, which formerly could be bought for a mere trifle, commands, to-day, a price of five hundred dollars. Hence, daring poachers sometimes run the risk of entering the Park in winter and destroying them. [Illustration: MOUNTAIN SHEEP.] It is sad to reflect how the buffaloes of this continent have been almost exterminated. As late as thirty years ago, trains often had to halt upon the prairies; and even steamboats were, occasionally, obliged to wait an hour or two in the Missouri River until enormous herds of buffalo had crossed their path. Now only about two hundred of these animals are in existence,--the sole survivors of the millions that once thundered over the western plains, and disputed with the Indians the ownership of this great continent. [Illustration: YELLOWSTONE ELK.] Until very recently, travelers on our prairies frequently beheld the melancholy sight of laborers gathering up the buffalo bones which lay upon the plains, like wreckage floating on the sea. Hundreds of carloads of these skeletons were shipped to factories in the east. Now, to protect the few remaining buffaloes, as well as other animals, our troops patrol the Park even in winter. The principal stations are connected by telephone, and information given thus is promptly acted on. No traveler is allowed to carry fire-arms; and any one who attempts to destroy animal life is liable to a fine of one thousand dollars, or imprisonment for two years, or both. [Illustration: BUFFALOES IN THE SNOW.] [Illustration: GATHERING BUFFALO BONES.] Still another task, devolving upon the Military Governor of the Park, is the building and repairing of its roads. No doubt the Superintendent is doing all he can with the amount of money that the Government allows him; but there is room for great improvement in these thoroughfares, if Congress will but make a suitable appropriation for the purpose. At present, a part of the coaching-route is of necessity traveled over twice. This should be obviated by constructing one more road, by which the tourist could be brought to several interesting features of the Park that are now rarely seen. Every one knows how roads in Europe climb the steepest grades in easy curves, and are usually as smooth as a marble table, free from obstacles, and carefully walled-in by parapets of stone. Why should not we possess such roads, especially in our National Park? Dust is at present a great drawback to the traveler's pleasure here; but this could be prevented if the roads were thoroughly macadamized. Surely, the honor of our Government demands that this unique museum of marvels should be the pride and glory of the nation, with highways equal to any in the world. [Illustration: A YELLOWSTONE ROAD.] [Illustration: LIBERTY CAP.] Only a few hundred feet distant from the Mammoth Springs Hotel stands a strange, naturally molded shaft of stone, fifty-two feet in height. From certain points its summit calls to mind the head-dress of the Revolution, and hence its name is Liberty Cap. It is a fitting monument to mark the entrance into Wonderland, for it is the cone of an old geyser long since dead. Within it is a tube of unknown depth. Through that, ages since, was hurled at intervals a stream of boiling water, precisely as it comes from active geysers in the Park to-day. But now the hand of Time has stilled its passionate pulsations, and laid upon its stony lips the seal of silence. At only a little distance from this eloquent reminder of the past I peered into a cavern hundreds of feet deep. It was once the reservoir of a geyser. An atmosphere of sulphur haunts it still. No doubt this whole plateau is but the cover of extinguished fires, for other similar caves pierce the locality on which the hotel stands. A feeling of solemnity stole over me as I surveyed these dead or dying agents of volcanic power. In the great battle of the elements, which has been going on here for unnumbered centuries, they doubtless took an active part. But Time has given them a mortal wound; and now they are waiting patiently until their younger comrades, farther up the Park, shall, one by one, like them grow cold and motionless. [Illustration: A MOUND OF THE HOT SPRING TERRACES.] Not more than fifty feet from Liberty Cap rise the famous Hot Spring Terraces. They constitute a veritable mountain, covering at least two hundred acres, the whole of which has been, for centuries, growing slowly through the agency of hot water issuing from the boiling springs. This, as it cools, leaves a mineral deposit, spread out in delicate, thin layers by the soft ripples of the heated flood. Strange, is it not? Everywhere else the flow of water wears away the substance that it touches; but here, by its peculiar sediment, it builds as surely as the coral insect. Moreover, the coloring of these terraces is, if possible, even more marvelous than their creation; for, as the mineral water pulsates over them, it forms a great variety of brilliant hues. Hot water, therefore, is to this material what blood is to the body. With it the features glow with warmth and color; without it they are cold and ghostlike. Accordingly, where water ripples over these gigantic steps, towering one above another toward the sky, they look like beautiful cascades of color; and when the liquid has deserted them, they stand out like a staircase of Carrara marble. Hence, through the changing centuries, they pass in slow succession, from light to shade, from brilliancy to pallor, and from life to death. This mineral water is not only a mysterious architect; it is, also, an artist that no man can equal. Its magic touch has intermingled the finest shades of orange, yellow, purple, red, and brown; sometimes in solid masses, at other places diversified by slender threads, like skeins of multicolored silk. Yet in producing all these wonderful effects, there is no violence, no uproar. The boiling water passes over the mounds it has produced with the low murmur of a sweet cascade. Its tiny wavelets touch the stone work like a sculptor's fingers, molding the yielding mass into exquisitely graceful forms. [Illustration: MINERVA TERRACE.] The top of each of these colored steps is a pool of boiling water. Each of these tiny lakes is radiant with lovely hues, and is bordered by a colored coping, resembling a curb of jasper or of porphyry. Yet the thinnest knife-blade can be placed here on the dividing line between vitality and death. The contrast is as sudden and complete as that between the desert and the valley of the Nile. Where Egypt's river ends its overflow the desert sands begin; and on these terraces it is the same. Where the life-giving water fails, the golden colors become ashen. This terraced mountain, therefore, seemed to me like a colossal checker-board, upon whose colored squares, the two great forces, Life and Death, were playing their eternal game. There is a pathos in this evanescent beauty. What lies about us in one place so gray and ghostly was once as bright and beautiful as that which we perceive a hundred feet away. But nothing here retains supremacy. The glory of this century will be the gravestone of the next. Around our feet are sepulchres of vanished splendor. It seems as if the architect were constantly dissatisfied. No sooner has he finished one magnificent structure than he impatiently begins another, leaving the first to crumble and decay. Each new production seems to him the finest; but never reaching his ideal, he speedily abandons it to perish from neglect. [Illustration: JUPITER TERRACE.] [Illustration: "VITALITY AND DEATH."] It cannot be said of these terraces that "distance lends enchantment to the view." The nearer you come to them the more beautiful they appear. They even bear the inspection of a magnifying glass, for they are covered with a bead-like ornamentation worthy of the goldsmith's art. In one place, for example, rise pulpits finer than those of Pisa or Siena. Their edges seem to be of purest jasper. They are upheld by tapering shafts resembling richly decorated organ-pipes. From parapets of porphyry hang gold stalactites, side by side with icicles of silver. Moreover, all its marvelous fretwork is distinctly visible, for the light film of water pulsates over it so delicately that it can no more hide the filigree beneath than a thin veil conceals a face. It is a melancholy fact that were it not for United States troops, these beautiful objects would be mutilated by relic-hunters. Hence, another duty of our soldiers is to watch the formations constantly, lest tourists should break off specimens, and ruin them forever, and lest still more ignoble vandals, whose fingers itch for notoriety, should write upon these glorious works of nature their worthless names, and those of the towns unfortunate enough to have produced them. All possible measures are taken to prevent this vandalism. Thus, every tourist entering the Park must register his name. Most travelers do so, as a matter of course, at the hotels, but even the arrivals of those who come here to camp must be duly recorded at the Superintendent's office, If a soldier sees a name, or even initials, written on the stone, he telephones the fact to the Military Governor. At once the lists are scanned for such a name. If found, the Superintendent wires an order to have the man arrested, and so careful is the search for all defacers, that the offending party is, usually, found before he leaves the Park. Then the Superintendent, like the Mikado, makes the punishment fit the crime. A scrubbing brush and laundry soap are given to the desecrator, and he is made to go back, perhaps forty miles or more, and with his own hands wash away the proofs of his disgraceful vanity. Not long ago a young man was arrested at six o'clock in the morning, made to leave his bed, and march without his breakfast several miles, to prove that he could be as skillful with a brush as with a pencil. [Illustration: "SEPULCHRES OF VANISHED SPLENDOR."] [Illustration: MAN AND NATURE.] [Illustration: THE PULPIT TERRACE.] [Illustration: A CAMPING-PARTY.] After spending several days at the Mammoth Hot Springs, we started out to explore the greater marvels that awaited us in the interior. The mode of travel through the Park is a succession of coaching-parties over a distance of one hundred and eighty miles. The larger vehicles are drawn by six, the smaller ones by four, strong horses, well fed, well groomed, high spirited, yet safe. This feature of our National Park astonished me. I had formed no idea of its perfection or its magnitude. Here, for example, are vehicles enough to accommodate seven hundred tourists for a continuous journey of five days! Here, too, are five hundred horses, all of which can be harnessed at twenty-four hours' notice; and, since the Park is so remote, here also are the company's blacksmith and repair shops. Within the stables, also, are the beautifully varnished coaches, varying in cost from one to two thousand dollars, and made in Concord, New Hampshire, twenty-five hundred miles away. On one of these I read the number, "13-1/2." "Why did you add the fraction?" I inquired of the Manager of Transportation. "Because," he replied, "some travelers would not take a number thirteen coach. They feared a breakdown or a tumble into the river; so I put on the half to take ill-luck away." I dwell at length upon these practical details, because I have found that people, in general, do not know them. Most Americans have little idea whether the driving distance in the Park is ten miles, or a hundred. Especially are they ignorant of the fact that they may leave the coaches at any point, remain at a hotel as long as they desire, and then resume their journey in other vehicles, without the least additional expense for transportation, precisely as one uses a stop-over ticket on a railroad. [Illustration: A COACHING-PARTY.] [Illustration: NO. 13-1/2.] [Illustration: HOTEL AT YELLOWSTONE LAKE.] The fact that it is possible to go through the Park in four or five days is not a reason why it is best to do so. Hundreds of tourists make the trip three times as rapidly as they would were they aware that they could remain comfortably for months. When this is better known, people will travel here more leisurely. Even now, parents with little children sometimes leave them at the Mammoth Springs Hotel in charge of nurses, and receive messages by telephone every day to inform them how they are. An important consideration, also, for invalids is the fact that two skilled surgeons, attendant on the army, are always easily accessible. Moreover, the climate of the Park in summer is delightful. It is true, the sun beats down at noonday fiercely, the thin air offering scant resistance to its rays, but in the shade one feels no heat at all. Light overcoats are needed when the sun goes down. There is scarcely a night here, through the year, which passes without frost. To me the pure dry air of that great height was more invigorating than any I had ever breathed, save, possibly, that of Norway, and it is, probably, the tonic of the atmosphere that renders even the invalid and aged able to support long journeys in the Park without exhaustion. In all these years no tourist has been made ill here by fatigue. [Illustration: THE GOLDEN GATE.] [Illustration: THE GOLDEN GATE, LOOKING OUTWARD.] A few miles after leaving the Hot Springs, we reached the entrance to a picturesque ravine, the tawny color of whose rocks has given it the name of Golden Gate. This is, alike, the entrance to, and exit from, the inner sanctuary of this land of marvels. Accordingly a solitary boulder, detached from its companions on the cliff, seems to be stationed at this portal like a sentinel to watch all tourists who come and go. At all events it echoes to the voices of those who enter almost as eager as seekers after gold; and, a week later, sees them return, browned by the sun, invigorated by the air, and joyful in the acquisition of incomparable memories. Emerging from this Golden Gate, I looked about me with surprise, as the narrow walls of the ravine gave place to a plateau surrounded everywhere by snow-capped mountains, from which the Indians believed one could obtain a view of Paradise. Across this area, like a railroad traversing a prairie, stretched the driveway for our carriages. "Do tourists usually seem delighted with the park?" I asked our driver. "Invariably," he replied. "Of course I cannot understand the words of the foreigners, but their excited exclamations show their great enthusiasm. I like the tourists," he continued, "they are so grateful for any little favor! One of them said to me the other day, 'Is the water here good to drink?' 'Not always,' I replied, 'you must be careful.' At once he pressed my hand, pulled out a flask, and said, 'I thank you!" [Illustration: THE PLATEAU.] While crossing the plateau we enjoyed an admirable view of the loftiest of the mountains which form, around the Park, a rampart of protection. Its sharply pointed summit pierces the transparent air more than eleven thousand feet above the sea, and it is well named Electric Peak, since it appears to be a storage battery for all of the Rocky Mountains. Such are the mineral deposits on its sides, that the best instruments of engineers are thrown into confusion, and rendered useless, while the lightning on this favorite home of electricity is said to be unparalleled. [Illustration: ELECTRIC PEAK.] [Illustration: THE GLASS MOUNTAIN.] Presently a turn in the road revealed to us a dark-hued mountain rising almost perpendicularly from a lake. Marvelous to relate, the material of which this mountain is composed is jet-black glass, produced by volcanic fires. The very road on which we drove between this and the lake also consists of glass too hard to break beneath the wheels. The first explorers found this obsidian cliff almost impassable; but when they ascertained of what it was composed, they piled up timber at its base, and set it on fire. When the glass was hot, they dashed upon the heated mass cold water, which broke it into fragments. Then with huge levers, picks, and shovels, they pushed and pried the shining pieces down into the lake, and opened thus a wagon-road a thousand feet in length. [Illustration: AN INDIAN CHIEF.] The region of the Yellowstone was to most Indian tribes a place of horror. They trembled at the awful sights they here beheld. But the obsidian cliff was precious to them all. Its substance was as hard as flint, and hence well suited for their arrow-heads. This mountain of volcanic glass was, therefore, the great Indian armory; and as such it was neutral ground. Hither all hostile tribes might come for implements of war and then depart unharmed. While they were here a sacred, inter-tribal oath protected them. An hour later, those very warriors might meet in deadly combat, and turn against each other's breasts the weapons taken from that laboratory of an unknown power. [Illustration: A TRAPPER.] Can we wonder that, in former times, when all this region was still unexplored, and its majestic streams rolled nameless through a trackless wilderness, the statements of the few brave men who ventured into this enclosure were disbelieved by all who heard them? One old trapper became so angry when his stories of the place were doubted, that he deliberately revenged himself by inventing tales of which Münchhausen would have been proud. Thus, he declared, that one day when he was hunting here he saw a bear. He fired at it, but without result. The animal did not even notice him. He fired again, yet the big bear kept on grazing. The hunter in astonishment then ran forward, but suddenly dashed against a solid mountain made of glass. Through that, he said, he had been looking at the animal. Unspeakably amazed, he finally walked around the mountain, and was just taking aim again, when he discovered that the glass had acted like a telescope, and that the bear was twenty-five miles away! Not far from the volcanic cliff which gave the trapper inspiration for his story, we reached one of the most famous basins of the Park. In briefest terms, these basins are the spots in the arena where the crust is thinnest. They are the trap-doors in a volcanic stage through which the fiery actors in the tragedy of Nature, which is here enacted, come upon the scene. Literally, they are the vents through which the steam and boiling water can escape. In doing so, however, the water, as at the Mammoth Springs, leaves a sediment of pure white lime or silica. Hence, from a distance, these basins look like desolate expanses of white sand. Beside them always flows a river which carries off the boiling water to the outer world. [Illustration: THE NORRIS BASIN.] [Illustration: A PLACE OF DANGER.] No illustration can do justice to what is called the Norris Basin, but it is horrible enough to test the strongest nerves. Having full confidence in our guide (the Park photographer) we ventured with him, outside the usual track of tourists, and went where all the money of the Rothschilds would not have tempted us to go alone. The crust beneath our feet was hot, and often quivered as we walked. A single misstep to the right or left would have been followed by appalling consequences. Thus, a careless soldier, only a few days before, had broken through, and was then lying in the hospital with both legs badly scalded. Around us were a hundred vats of water, boiling furiously; the air was heavy with the fumes of sulphur; and the whole expanse was seamed with cracks and honeycombed with holes from which a noxious vapor crept out to pollute the air. I thought of Dante's walk through hell, and called to mind the burning lake, which he describes, from which the wretched sufferers vainly sought to free themselves. [Illustration: A CAMPING-STATION.] Leaving, at last, this roof of the infernal regions, just as we again stood apparently on solid ground, a fierce explosion close beside us caused us to start and run for twenty feet. Our guide laughed heartily. "Come back," he said, "don't be afraid. It is only a baby geyser, five years old." In fact, in 1891, a sudden outburst of volcanic fury made an opening here, through which, at intervals of thirty minutes, day and night, hot water now leaps forth in wild confusion. "This, then, is a geyser!" I exclaimed. "Bah!" said the guide, contemptuously, "if you had seen the real geysers in the Upper Basin, you would not look at this." [Illustration: A BABY GEYSER.] Meantime, for half an hour we had been hearing, more and more distinctly, a dull, persistent roar, like the escape of steam from a transatlantic liner. At last we reached the cause. It is a mass of steam which rushes from an opening in the ground, summer and winter, year by year, in one unbroken volume. The rock around it is as black as jet; hence it is called the Black Growler. Think of the awful power confined beneath the surface here, when this one angry voice can be distinctly heard four miles away. Choke up that aperture, and what a terrible convulsion would ensue, as the accumulated steam burst its prison walls! It is a sight which makes one long to lift the cover from this monstrous caldron, learn the cause of its stupendous heat, and trace the complicated and mysterious aqueducts through which the steam and water make their way. [Illustration: THE BLACK GROWLER.] Returning from the Black Growler, we halted at a lunch-station, the manager of which is Larry. All visitors to the Park remember Larry. He has a different welcome for each guest: "Good-day, Professor. Come in, my Lord. The top of the morning to you, Doctor." These phrases flow as lightly from his tongue as water from a geyser. His station is a mere tent; but he will say, with most amusing seriousness: "Gintlemen, walk one flight up and turn to the right, Ladies, come this way and take the elevator. Now thin, luncheon is ready. Each guest take one seat, and as much food as he can get." "Where did you come from, Larry?" I asked. [Illustration: LARRY.] "From Brooklyn, Sor," was his reply, "but I'll niver go back there, for all my friends have been killed by the trolley cars." Larry is very democratic. The other day a guest, on sitting down to lunch, took too much room upon the bench. "Plaze move along, Sor," said Larry. The stranger glared at him. "I am a Count," he remarked at last. "Well, Sor," said Larry, "here you only count wun!" "Hush!" exclaimed a member of the gentleman's suite, "that is Count Schouvaloff." "I'll forgive him that," said Larry, "if he won't shuffle off this seat," Pointing to my companion. Larry asked me: "What is that gintleman's business?" "He is a teacher of singing," I answered. [Illustration: LARRY'S LUNCH-STATION.] "Faith," said Larry, "I'd like to have him try my voice. There is something very strange about my vocal chords. Whenever I sing, the Black Growler stops. One tourist told me it was a case of professional jealousy, and said the Black Growler was envious of my _forte_ tones. 'I have not forty tones,' I said, 'I've only one tone,' 'Well,' says he, 'make a note of it!'" [Illustration: THE BISCUIT BASIN.] Only once in his life has Larry been put to silence. Two years ago, a gentleman remarked to him: "Well, Larry, good-by; come and visit me next winter in the East. In my house you shall have a nice room, and, if you are ill, shall enjoy a doctor's services free of all expense." "Thank you," said Larry, "plaze give me your card." The tourist handed it to him; and Larry, with astonishment and horror, read beneath the gentleman's name these words: "Superintendent of the Insane Asylum, Utica, New York." Some hours after leaving Larry's lunch-station, we reached another area of volcanic action. Our nerves were steadier now. The close proximity to Hades was less evident; yet here hot mineral water had spread broadcast innumerable little mounds of silica, which look so much like biscuits grouped in a colossal pan that this is called the Biscuit Basin; but they are not the kind that "mother used to make." If a tourist asked for bread here, he would receive a stone; since all these so-called biscuits are as hard as flint. We walked upon their crusts with perfect safety; yet, in so doing, our boots grew warm beneath our feet, for the water in this miniature archipelago is heated to the boiling point. [Illustration: A GEYSER POOL.] "Show me a geyser!" I at last exclaimed impatiently, "I want to see a genuine geyser." Accordingly our guide conducted us to what he announced as "The Fountain." I looked around me with surprise. I saw no fountain, but merely a pool of boiling water, from which the light breeze bore away a thin, transparent cloud of steam. It is true, around this was a pavement as delicately fashioned as any piece of coral ever taken from the sea. Nevertheless, while I admired that, I could not understand why this comparatively tranquil pool was called a geyser, and frankly said I was disappointed. But, even as I spoke, I saw to my astonishment the boiling water in this reservoir sink and disappear from view. "Where has it gone?" I eagerly inquired. "Stand back!" shouted the guide, "she's coming." [Illustration: "A CLOUD-BURST OF JEWELS."] I ran back a few steps, then turned and caught my breath; for at that very instant, up from the pool which I had just beheld so beautiful and tranquil, there rose in one great outburst of sublimity such a stupendous mass of water as I had never imagined possible in a vertical form. I knew that it was boiling, and that a deluge of those scalding drops would probably mean death, but I was powerless to move. Amazement and delight enchained me spellbound. Talk of a fountain! This was a cloud-burst of the rarest jewels which, till that moment, had been held in solution in a subterranean cavern, but which had suddenly crystallized into a million radiant forms on thus emerging into light and air. The sun was shining through the glittering mass; and myriads of diamonds, moonstones, pearls, and opals mingled in splendid rivalry two hundred feet above our heads. [Illustration: THE OBLONG GEYSER.] We soon approached another of the many geysers in the basin. They are all different. Around one, a number of colored blocks, exquisitely decorated by the geyser's waves, appeared to have been placed artistically in an oblong frame. When I first beheld them, they looked like huge sea-monsters which, startled by our footsteps, were about to plunge into the depths. What is there in the natural world so fascinating and mysterious as a geyser? What, for example, is the depth of its intensely-colored pool of boiling water? No one can tell. One thing, however, is certain; the surface of the pool is but the summit of a liquid column. Its base is in a subterranean reservoir. Into that reservoir there flows a volume of cold water, furnished by the rain or snow, or by infiltration from some lake, or river. Meantime, the walls of the deep reservoir are heated by volcanic fire. Accordingly the water, in contact with these walls, soon begins to boil, and a great mass of steam collects above it. There must, of course, be some escape for this, and, finally, it makes its exit, hurling the boiling water to a height of one or two hundred feet, according to the force of the explosion. Imagine, then, the amount of water that even one such reservoir contains; for some of these volcanic fountains play for more than half an hour before their contents are discharged! Think, also, that in this basin there are no less than thirty geysers, seventeen of which have been observed in action simultaneously. [Illustration: THE GIANT GEYSER.] [Illustration: THE CASTLE GEYSER.] Thus far we had seen merely geysers which arise from pools; but, presently, we approached one which in the course of ages has built up for itself a cone, or funnel, for its scalding waves. "That," said our guide, "is the Castle Geyser." "That rock a geyser!" I exclaimed incredulously, "it looks like an old ruin, without a single indication of activity; save, possibly, the little cloud of steam that hangs above it, as if it were the breath of some mysterious monster sleeping far below." "If you doubt it," he replied, "go nearer and examine it." [Illustration: ON "ITS FLINTY SIDES."] We did so. I scrambled up its flinty sides, and found an opening in the summit three feet wide. I touched the rock. It was still warm, and yet no water was discernible. No sound was audible within its depths. [Illustration: THE CASTLE GEYSER'S CONE.] "If this be really a geyser," I remarked, "it is no doubt a lifeless one like Liberty Cap." My comrade smiled, looked at his watch, then at his notebook, and finally replied: "Wait half an hour and see." Accordingly, we lingered on the massive ledges of the Castle Geyser, and learned that it is the largest, probably the oldest, of all the active geyser cones within the Park. Once its eruptions were no doubt stupendous; but now its power is waning. The gradual closing up of its huge throat, and the increasing substitution of steam for water, prove that the monster has now entered on the final stage of its career; for here, as on the terraces, we are surrounded by specimens of life, decay, and death. The young, the middle-aged, the old, the dead,--they are all here! The fiery agitation of the pool and the impulsive spurts of water are indicative of youth. A steady, splendid outburst proves maturity. The feebler action of the Castle shows the waning powers of old age. Last of all comes the closed cone, like a sealed sarcophagus, and that is death. [Illustration: THE CASTLE AND THE BEEHIVE IN ACTION.] Meantime, the thirty minutes of expectancy had passed; and, suddenly, with a tremendous rush of steam, the Castle proved that its resources were by no means exhausted. At the same instant, half a mile away, the Beehive Geyser threw into the air a shaft of dazzling spray fully two hundred feet in height. I realized then, as never before, the noble action of our Government in giving this incomparable region to the people. If this had not been done, the selfishness and greed of man would have made a tour here almost unbearable. A fence would, doubtless, have been built around every geyser, and fees would have been charged to witness each wonderful phenomenon; whereas, to-day, thanks to the generosity of Congress, the Park itself, and everything that it contains, are absolutely free to all, rich and poor, native and foreigner,--forever consecrated to the education and delight of man. [Illustration: THE CRATER OF OLD FAITHFUL.] But no enumeration of the geysers would be complete without a mention of the special favorite of tourists, Old Faithful. The opening through which this miracle of Nature springs is at the summit of a beautifully ornamented mound, which is itself a page in Nature's wonder-book. The lines upon its wrinkled face tell of a past whose secrets still remain a mystery. It hints of an antiquity so vast that one contemplates it with bated breath; for this entire slope has been built up, atom after atom, through unnumbered ages; during which time, no doubt, the geyser hour by hour has faithfully performed its part, without an eye to note its splendor, or a voice to tell its glory to the world. Old Faithful does not owe its popularity entirely to height or beauty, though it possesses both. It is beloved for its fidelity. Whatever irregularities other geysers show, Old Faithful never fails. Year in, year out, winter and summer, day and night, in cold and heat, in sunshine and in storm, Old Faithful every seventy minutes sends up its silvery cascade to the height of about one hundred and eighty feet. Of all the geysers known to man this is the most reliable and perfect. Station yourself before it watch in hand and, punctual to the moment, it will never disappoint you. Few realize on how large a scale the forces of Nature work here. At each eruption, Old Faithful pours forth about one million five hundred thousand gallons, or more than thirty-three million gallons in one day! This geyser alone, therefore, could easily supply with water a city of the size of Boston. [Illustration: CASTLE AND OLD FAITHFUL GEYSERS.] [Illustration: OLD FAITHFUL IN ACTION.] Within this area of the active geysers is a place called Hell's Half Acre. It is rightly named. Rough, perpendicular ledges project over a monstrous gulf of unknown depth, from which great clouds of steam are constantly emerging. When the wind draws back for a moment a portion of this sulphur-laden curtain, the visitor perceives a lake below, seething and boiling from internal heat. For years no one suspected this to be a geyser; but suddenly, in 1881, the underlying force hurled the entire lake up bodily to the height of two hundred and fifty feet, and even repeated frequently. After some months the exhibition ceased, and all was calm again for seven years. In 1888, however, it once more burst forth with prodigious energy, ejecting at each explosion more boiling water than all the other geysers in the Park combined. Even the surrounding ledges could not withstand this terrible upheaval, and tons of rock were sometimes thrown up, with the water, more than two hundred feet. It is not strange, therefore, that this is called Excelsior, the King of Geysers. It is the most tremendous, awe-inspiring fountain in the world. When it will be again aroused, no one can tell. Its interval would seem to be from seven to ten years. Said an enthusiastic traveler to me: "If the Excelsior ever plays again, I will gladly travel three thousand miles to see it." [Illustration: HELL'S HALF ACRE.] [Illustration: THE EXCELSIOR, IN 1888.] [Illustration: EVENING IN THE UPPER BASIN.] I have a vivid remembrance of my last night at the Upper Basin. The hush of evening hallowed it. Alone and undisturbed we looked upon a scene unequaled in the world. Around us liquid columns rose and fell with ceaseless regularity. The cooler air of evening made many shafts of vapor visible which in the glare of day had vanished unperceived. So perfect were their images in the adjoining stream, that it was easy to believe the veil had been at last withdrawn, and that the hidden source of all this wonderful display had been revealed. No sound from them was audible; no breeze disturbed their steadfast flight toward heaven; and in the deepening twilight, the slender, white-robed columns seemed like the ghosts of geysers, long since dead, revisiting the scenes of their activity. [Illustration: THE MORNING-GLORY POOL.] [Illustration: PRISMATIC LAKE.] But geysers do not constitute the only marvels of these volcanic basins. The beauty of their pools of boiling water is almost inconceivable to those who have not seen them. No illustration can do them justice; for no photographer can adequately reproduce their clear, transparent depths, nor can an artist's brush ever quite portray their peculiar coloring, due to the minerals held in solution, or else deposited upon their sides. I can deliberately say, however, that some of the most exquisitely beautiful objects I have ever seen in any portion of the world are the superbly tinted caldrons of the Yellowstone. Their hues are infinitely varied. Many are blue, some green, some golden, and some wine-colored, in all gradations of tone; and could we soar aloft and take of them a bird's-eye view, the glittering basin might seem to us a silver shield, studded with rubies, emeralds, turquoises, and sapphires. Moreover, these miniature lakes are lined with exquisite ornamentation. One sees in them, with absolute distinctness, a reproduction of the loveliest forms that he has ever found in floral or in vegetable life. Gardens of mushrooms, banks of goldenrod, or clusters of asparagus, appear to be growing here, created by the Architect and colored by the Artist of these mineral springs. [Illustration: THE ROAD NEAR THE GOLDEN GATE.] [Illustration: THE EMERALD POOL.] The most renowned of all these reservoirs of color is called the Emerald Pool. Painters from this and other lands have tried repeatedly to depict this faithfully upon canvas, but, finally, have left it in despair. In fact, its coloring is so intense, that as the bubbles, rising to its surface, lift from this bowl their rounded forms, and pause a second in the air before they break, they are still just as richly tinted as the flood beneath. Accordingly this pool appeared to me like a colossal casket, filled with emeralds, which spirit hands from time to time drew gently upward from its jeweled depths. [Illustration: SUNLIGHT LAKE.] Close by this is another boiling pool called the Sunlight Lake. On this I saw one of the most marvelous phenomena I have ever looked upon. The colors of this tiny sheet of water appeared not only in concentric circles, like the rings of a tree, but also in the order of the spectrum. The outer band was crimson, and then the unbroken sequence came: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet in the centre! Moreover, the very steam arising from it (reflecting as it did the varied tints beneath) was exquisitely colored, and vanished into air like a dissolving rainbow. All these prismatic pools are clasped by beautifully decorated curbs of silica, and seem to be set in rings of gold, with mineral colors running through them like enamel. So delicate are the touches of the magic water, as the persistent heart-beats of old Mother Earth propel it over their ornamental rims, that every ripple leaves its tiny mark. Hence it is no exaggeration, but literal truth, to say that beautiful mosaic work is being formed each time the films of boiling water are dimpled by the passing breeze. [Illustration: THE DEVIL'S PUNCH-BOWL.] [Illustration: THE MAMMOTH PAINT POT.] The great variety of wonders in our National Park was a continual source of pleasure and surprise to me. Thus, in the midst of all the pools and geysers in the Upper Basin is one known as the Mammoth Paint Pot. The earth surrounding it is cracked and blistered by heat, and from this rises a parapet five feet high, enclosing a space resembling a circus ring. Within this area is a mixture of soft clay and boiling water, suggesting an enormous caldron of hot mush. This bubbling slime is almost as diversely tinted as the pools themselves. It seemed to me that I was looking into a huge vat, where unseen painters were engaged in mixing colors. The fact is easily explained. The mineral ingredients of the volcanic soil produce these different hues. In a new form, it is the same old story of the Mammoth Terraces. Fire supplies the pigments, and hot water uses them. All other features of the Park are solemn and impressive; but the Mammoth Paint Pot provokes a smile. There is no grandeur here. It seems a burlesque on volcanic power. The steam which oozes through the plastic mass tosses its substance into curious Liliputian shapes, which rise and break like bubbles. A mirthful demon seems to be engaged in molding grotesque images in clay, which turn a somersault, and then fall back to vanish in the seething depths. Now it will be a flower, then a face, then, possibly, a manikin resembling toys for children. Meanwhile one hears constantly a low accompaniment of groanings, hiccoughs, and expectorations, as if the aforesaid demon found this pudding difficult to digest. [Illustration: THE ROAD BY GIBBON RIVER.] [Illustration: "GROTESQUE IMAGES IN CLAY."] [Illustration: ON THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE.] Soon after leaving the Upper Geyser Basin, we approached a tiny lake which has, in some respects, no equal in the world. With the exception of some isolated mountain peaks, it marks the highest portion of our country. In winter, therefore, when encircled by mounds of snow, it rests upon the summit of our continent like a crown of sapphire set with pearls. So evenly is it balanced, that when it overflows, one part of it descends to the Atlantic, another part to the Pacific. This little streamlet, therefore, is a silver thread connecting two great oceans three thousand miles apart. Accordingly, one might easily fancy that every drop in this pure mountain reservoir possessed a separate individuality, and that a passing breeze or falling leaf might decide its destiny, propelling it with gentle force into a current which should lead it eastward to be silvered by the dawn, or westward to be gilded by the setting sun. [Illustration: THE "SILVER THREAD CONNECTING TWO OCEANS."] On either side of this elevation, known as the Continental Divide, the view was glorious. In one direction, an ocean of dark pines rolled westward in enormous billows. The silver surfaces of several lakes gleamed here and there like whitecaps on the rolling waves. Far off upon the verge of the horizon, fifty miles away, three snow-capped, sharply pointed mountains looked like a group of icebergs drifting from the Polar Sea. They did not move, however, nor will they move while this old earth shall last. They antedate by ages the Pyramids which they resemble. They will be standing thus, in majesty, when Egypt's royal sepulchres shall have returned to dust. Forever anchored there, those three resplendent peaks rise fourteen thousand feet above the sea, and form the grand tiara of our continent, the loftiest summits of the Rocky Mountains. [Illustration: THE THREE TETONS.] As we began the descent from this great elevation, another splendid vision greeted us. We gazed upon it with delight. Beyond a vast expanse of dark green pines we saw, three hundred feet below us, Lake Yellowstone. It stirred my heart to look at last upon this famous inland sea, nearly eight thousand feet above the ocean level, and to realize that if the White Mountain monarch, Washington, were planted in its depths (its base line on a level with the sea), there would remain two thousand feet of space between its' summit and the surface of this lake! In this respect it has but one real rival, Lake Titicaca, in the Andes of Peru. [Illustration: LAKE YELLOWSTONE, FROM A DISTANCE.] Descending to the shore, however, we found that even here, so far from shipyards and the sea, a steamboat was awaiting us. Imagine the labor of conveying such a vessel sixty-five miles, from the railroad to this lake, up an ascent of more than three thousand feet. Of course, it was brought in several sections; but even then, in one or two mountain gorges, the cliffs had to be blasted away to make room for it to pass. It is needless to add that this steamer has no rivals. It was with the greatest interest that I sailed at such a height on this adventurous craft; and the next time that I stand upon the summit of Mount Washington, and see the fleecy clouds float in the empyrean, one-third of a mile above me, I shall remember that the steamer on Lake Yellowstone sails at precisely the same altitude as that enjoyed by those sun-tinted galleons of the sky. [Illustration: RUSTIC FALLS, YELLOWSTONE PARK.] [Illustration: THE SOLITARY STEAMBOAT.] [Illustration: ON LAKE YELLOWSTONE.] To appreciate the beauty of Lake Yellowstone, one should behold it when its waves are radiant with the sunset glow. It is, however, not only beautiful; it is mysterious. Around it, in the distance, rise silver crested peaks whose melting snow descends to it in ice-cold streams. Still nearer, we behold a girdle of gigantic forests, rarely, if ever, trodden by the foot of man. Oh, the loneliness of this great lake! For eight long months scarcely a human eye beholds it. The wintry storms that sweep its surface find no boats on which to vent their fury. Lake Yellowstone has never mirrored in itself even the frail canoes of painted savages. The only keels that ever furrow it are those of its solitary steamer and some little fishing-boats engaged by tourists. Even these lead a very brief existence. Like summer insects, they float here a few weeks, and disappear, leaving the winds and waves to do their will. [Illustration: THE SLEEPING GIANT.] In sailing on this lake, I observed a distant mountain whose summit bore a strange resemblance to an upturned human face, sculptured in bold relief against the sky. It is appropriately called the Sleeping Giant; for it has slept on, undisturbed, while countless centuries have dropped into the gulf of Time, like leaves in the adjoining forest. How many nights have cast their shadows like a veil upon that giant's silhouette! How many dawns have flooded it with light, and found those changeless features still confronting them! We call it human in appearance, and yet that profile was the same before the first man ever trod this planet. Grim, awful model of the coming race, did not its stern lips smile disdainfully at the first human pygmy fashioned in its likeness? [Illustration: ALONG THE SHORE.] This lake has one peculiarity which, in the minds of certain tourists, eclipses all the rest. I mean its possibilities for fishing. We know that sad experience has taught mankind to invent the proverb: "Once a fisherman, always a liar." I wish, then, at the start, to say I am no fisherman; but what I saw here would inevitably make me one if I should remain a month or two upon these shores. Lake Yellowstone is the fisherman's paradise. Said one of Izaak Walton's followers to me: "I would rather be an angler here than an angel." Nor is this strange. I saw two men catch from this lake in one hour more than a hundred splendid trout, weighing from one to three pounds apiece! They worked with incredible rapidity. Scarcely did the fly touch the water when the line was drawn, the light rod dipped with graceful curve, and the revolving reel drew in the speckled beauty to the shore. Each of these anglers had two hooks upon his line, and both of them once had two trout hooked at the same time, and landed them; while we poor eastern visitors at first looked on in dumb amazement, and then enthusiastically cheered. [Illustration: GREAT FISHING.] Can the reader bear something still more trying to his faith? Emerging from the lake is a little cone containing a boiling pool, entirely distinct from the surrounding water. I saw a fisherman stand on this and catch a trout, which, without moving from his place, or even unhooking the fish, he dropped into the boiling pool, and cooked! When the first scientific explorers of this region were urging upon Congress the necessity of making it a National Park, their statements in regard to fishing were usually received with courteous incredulity. But when one of their number gravely declared that trout could there be caught and boiled in the same lake, within a radius of fifteen feet, the House of Representatives broke forth into roars of laughter, and thought the man a monumental liar. We cannot be surprised, therefore, that enthusiastic fishermen almost go crazy here. I have seen men, after a ride of forty miles, rush off to fish without a moment's rest as if their lives depended on it. Some years ago, General Wade Hampton visited the Park and came as far as Lake Yellowstone. On his return, some one inquired what he thought of Nature's masterpiece, the cañon of the Yellowstone. [Illustration: LARRY, AS FISHERMAN AND COOK.] "The cañon!" cried the general, "no matter about the cañon; but I had the most magnificent fishing I ever saw in my life." One day, while walking along the shore, my comrade suddenly pressed my arm and pointed toward the lake. "An Indian!" I cried in great astonishment, "I thought no Indians ever came here." Our guide laughed heartily; and, as he did so, I perceived my error. What I had thought to be an Indian was but a portion of a tree, which had been placed upright against a log. The only artificial thing about it was a bunch of feathers. Everything else was absolutely natural. No knife had sculptured it. No hand had given a support to its uplifted arm. Even the dog which followed us appeared deceived, for he barked furiously at the strange intruder. There was to me a singular fascination in this solitary freak of nature; and, surrounded though I was by immeasurably greater wonders, I turned again and again to take a farewell look at this dark, slender figure, raising its hand, as if in threatening gesture to some unseen foe. [Illustration: A FALSE ALARM.] Leaving the lake, we presently entered the loveliest portion of the Park,--a level, sheltered area of some fifty square miles, to which has been given the appropriate name of Hayden Valley, in commemoration of the distinguished geologist, Doctor Ferdinand V. Hayden, who did so much to explore this region and to impress upon the Government the necessity of preserving its incomparable natural features. Even this tranquil portion of the Park is undermined by just such fiery forces as are elsewhere visible, but which here manifest themselves in different ways. Thus, in the midst of this natural beauty is a horrible object, known as the Mud Geyser. We crawled up a steep bank, and shudderingly gazed over it into the crater. Forty feet below us, the earth yawned open like a cavernous mouth, from which a long black throat, some six feet in diameter, extended to an unknown depth. This throat was filled with boiling mud, which rose and fell in nauseating gulps, as if some monster were strangling from a slimy paste which all its efforts could not possibly dislodge. Occasionally the sickening mixture would sink from view, as if the tortured wretch had swallowed it. Then we could hear, hundreds of feet below, unearthly retching; and, in a moment, it would all come up again, belched out with an explosive force that hurled a boiling spray of mud so high that we rushed down the slope. A single drop of it would have burned like molten lead. Five minutes of this was enough; and even now, when I reflect that every moment, day and night, the same regurgitation of black slime is going on, I feel as I have often felt, when, on a stormy night at sea, I have tried to sit through a course-dinner on an ocean steamer. [Illustration: HAYDEN VALLEY.] [Illustration: APPROACHING THE MUD GEYSER.] [Illustration: A STRANGER IN THE YELLOWSTONE.] Not far from this perpetually active object is one that has been motionless for ages,--a granite boulder enclosed by trees as by the bars of a gigantic cage. It is a proof that glaciers once plowed through this region, and it was, no doubt, brought hither in the glacial period on a flood of ice, which, melting in this heated basin, left its burden, a grim reminder of how worlds are made. Think what a combination of terrific forces must have been at work here, when the volcanoes were in full activity, and when the mass of ice which then encased our northern world strove to enclose this prison-house of fire within its glacial arms! One of our party remarked that the covering of this seething, boiling area with ice must have been the nearest approach to "hell's freezing over" that our earth has ever seen. Another striking feature of our National Park is its Petrified Forest, where, scattered over a large area, are solitary columns, which once were trunks of trees, but now are solid shafts of agate. The substance of the wood, however, is still apparent, the bark, the worm-holes, and even the rings of growth being distinctly visible; but every fibre has been petrified by the mysterious substitution of a mineral deposit. No doubt these trees were once submerged in a strong mineral solution, tinted with every color of the rainbow. Still, more marvelous to relate, an excavation on the hillside proves that there are eleven layers of such forests, one above another, divided by as many cushions of lava. Think of the ages represented here, during which all these different forests grew, and were successively turned to stone! This, therefore, is another illustration of the conflict between Life and Death. Each was in turn a victor, and rested on his laurels for unnumbered centuries. Life is triumphant now; but who shall say that Death may not again prove conqueror? If not immediately, Death may well be patient. He will rule all this planet in the end. [Illustration: A NATURAL BRIDGE.] [Illustration: A PETRIFIED FOREST.] No one can travel through the Yellowstone Park without imagining how it looks in winter. The snowfall is enormous, some drifts in the ravines being hundreds of feet deep, and, owing to the increased supply of water, the geysers throw higher streams. No traveling is possible then except on snowshoes; and it is with difficulty that some of the Park hotels are reached as late as the middle of May. Of course, in such a frigid atmosphere, the steam arising from the geysers is almost instantly congealed; and eye-witnesses affirm that, in a temperature of forty degrees below zero, the clouds of vapor sent up by Old Faithful rose fully two thousand feet, and were seen ten miles away. [Illustration: THE PARK IN WINTER.] It can be well imagined that to do much exploration here, in winter, is not alone immensely difficult, but dangerous. In 1887 an expedition was formed, headed by Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka; but, though he was experienced as an Arctic traveler, in three days he advanced only twenty miles, and finally gave out completely. Most of the exploring party turned back with him; but four kept heroically on, one of whom was the photographer, Mr. F.J. Haynes, of St. Paul. Undismayed by Schwatka's failure, he and his comrades bravely persisted in their undertaking. For thirty days the mercury never rose higher than ten degrees below zero. Once it marked fifty-two degrees below! Yet these men were obliged to camp out every night, and carry on their shoulders provisions, sleeping-bags, and photographic instruments. But, finally, they triumphed over every obstacle, having in midwinter made a tour of two hundred miles through the Park. Nevertheless, they almost lost their lives in the attempt. At one point, ten thousand feet above the sea, a fearful blizzard overtook them. The cold and wind seemed unendurable, even for an hour, but they endured them for three days. A sharp sleet cut their faces like a rain of needles, and made it perilous to look ahead. Almost dead from sheer exhaustion, they were unable to lie down for fear of freezing; chilled to the bone, they could make no fire; and, although fainting, they had not a mouthful for seventy-two hours. What a terrific chapter for any man to add to the mysterious volume we call life! One might suppose by this time that all the marvels of our National Park had been described; but, on the contrary, so far is it from being true, that I have yet to mention the most stupendous of them all,--the world-renowned cañon of the Yellowstone. The introduction to this is sublime. It is a waterfall, the height of which is more than twice as great as that of Niagara. To understand the reason for the presence of such a cataract, we should remember that the entire region for miles was once a geyser basin. The river was then near the surface; and has been cutting down the walls of the cañon ever since. The volcanic soil, decomposed by heat, could not resist the constant action of the water. Only a granite bluff at the upper end of the cañon has held firm; and over that the baffled stream now leaps to wreak its vengeance on the weaker foe beneath. [Illustration: THE EXPEDITION OF 1887.] [Illustration: F.J. HAYNES.] [Illustration: THE CAÑON FROM A DISTANCE.] Through a colossal gateway of vast height, yet only seventy feet in breadth, falls the entire volume of the Yellowstone River. It seems enraged at being suddenly compressed into that narrow space; for, with a roar of anger and defiance and without an instant's hesitation, it leaps into the yawning gulf in one great flood of dazzling foam. When looked upon from a little distance, a clasp of emerald apparently surmounts it, from which descends a spotless robe of ermine, nearly four hundred feet in length. The lower portion is concealed by clouds of mist, which vainly try to climb the surrounding cliffs, like ghosts of submerged mountains striving to escape from their eternal prison. We ask ourselves instinctively: What gives this river its tremendous impetus, and causes it to fill the air with diamond-tinted spray, and send up to the cliffs a ceaseless roar which echoes and reëchoes down the cañon? How awe-inspiring seems the answer to this question, when we think upon it seriously! The subtle force which draws this torrent down is the same power that holds the planets in their courses, retains the comets in their fearful paths, and guides the movements of the stellar universe. What is this power? We call it gravitation; but why does it invariably act thus with mathematical precision? Who knows? Behind all such phenomena there is a mystery that none can solve. This cataract has a voice. If we could understand it, perhaps we should distinguish, after all, but one word,--_God_. [Illustration: YELLOWSTONE RIVER ABOVE THE FALLS.] [Illustration: THE GREAT FALLS OF THE YELLOWSTONE.] [Illustration: UPPER FALLS OF THE YELLOWSTONE.] [Illustration: THE CAÑON FROM BRINK OF FALLS.] As for the gorge through which this river flows, imagine if you can a yawning chasm ten miles long and fifteen hundred feet in depth. Peer into it, and see if you can find the river. Yes, there it lies, one thousand five hundred feet below, a winding path of emerald and alabaster dividing the huge cañon walls. Seen from the summit, it hardly seems to move; but, in reality, it rages like a captive lion springing at its bars. Scarcely a sound of its fierce fury reaches us; yet, could we stand beside it, a quarter of a mile below, its voice would drown our loudest shouts to one another. [Illustration: THE CAÑON FROM GRAND POINT.] Attracted to this river innumerable little streams are trickling down the colored cliffs. They are cascades of boiling water, emerging from the awful reservoir of heat which underlies this laboratory of the Infinite. One of them is a geyser, the liquid shaft of which is scarcely visible, yet in reality is one hundred and fifty feet in height. From all these hot additions to its waves the temperature of the river, even a mile or two beyond the cañon, is twenty degrees higher than at its entrance. "Are there not other cañons in the world as large as this?" it may be asked. [Illustration: DOWN THE CAÑON FROM INSPIRATION POINT.] Yes, but none like this. For, see, instead of sullen granite walls, these sides are radiant with color. Age after age, and aeon after aeon, hot water has been spreading over these miles of masonry its variegated sediment, like pigments on an artist's palette. Here, for example, is an expanse of yellow one thousand feet in height. Mingled with this are areas of red, resembling jasper. Beside these is a field of lavender, five hundred feet in length, and soft in hue as the down upon a pigeon's breast. No shade is wanting here except the blue, and God replaces that. It is supplied by the o'erspreading canopy of heaven. Yet there is no monotony in these hues. Nature, apparently, has passed along this cañon, touching the rocks capriciously; now staining an entire cliff as red as blood, now tingeing a light pinnacle with green, now spreading over the whole face of a mountain a vast Persian rug. Hence both sides of the cañon present successive miles of Oriental tapestry. Moreover, every passing cloud works here almost a miracle; for all the lights and shades that follow one another down this gorge vary its tints as if by magic, and make of it one long kaleidoscope of changing colors. [Illustration: BELOW THE UPPER FALLS.] [Illustration: MILES OF COLORED CLIFFS.] Nor are these cliffs less wonderful in form than color. The substance of their tinted rocks is delicate. The rain has, therefore, plowed their faces with a million furrows. The wind has carved them like a sculptor's chisel. The lightning's bolts have splintered them, until, mile after mile, they rise in a bewildering variety of architectural forms. Old castles frown above the maddened stream, a thousand times more grand than any ruins on the Rhine. Their towers are five hundred feet in height. Turrets and battlements, portcullises and draw-bridges, rise from the deep ravine, sublime and inaccessible; yet they are still a thousand feet below us! What would be the effect could we survey them from the stream itself, within the gloomy crevice of the cañon? Only their size convinces us that they are works of Nature, not of Art. Upon their spires we see a score of eagles' nests. The splendid birds leave these at times, and swoop down toward the stream; not in one mighty plunge, but gracefully, in slow, majestic curves, lower and lower, till we can follow them only through a field-glass, as they alight on trees which look to us like shrubs. [Illustration: TEMPLES SCULPTURED BY THE DEITY.] But many of these forms are grander than any castles. In one place is an amphitheatre. Within its curving arms a hundred thousand people could be seated. Its foreground is the emerald river; its drop-curtain the radiant cañon wall. Cathedrals, too, are here, with spires twice as high as those which soar above the minster of Cologne. Fantastic gargoyles stretch out from the parapets. A hundred flying buttresses connect them with the mountain side. From any one of them as many shafts shoot heavenward as statues rise from the Duomo of Milan; and each of these great cañon shrines, instead of stained glass windows, has walls, roof, dome, and pinnacles, one mass of variegated color. The awful grandeur of these temples, sculptured by the Deity, is overpowering. We feel that we must worship here. It is a place where the Finite prays, the Infinite hears, and Immensity looks on. [Illustration: THE CAÑON FROM ARTIST POINT.] Two visions of this world stand out within my memory which, though entirely different, I can place side by side in equal rank. They are the Himalayas of India, and the Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone. On neither of them is there any sign of human life. No voice disturbs their solemn stillness. The only sound upon earth's loftiest mountains is the thunder of the avalanche. The only voice within this cañon is the roar of its magnificent cascade. It is well that man must halt upon the borders of this awful chasm. It is no place for man. The Infinite allows him to stand trembling on the brink, look down, and listen spellbound to the anthem of its mighty cataract; but beyond this he may not, cannot go. It is as if Almighty God had kept for His own use one part of His creation, that man might merely gaze upon it, worship, and retire. [Illustration] 
33053	----	CAMPING & TRAMPING WITH ROOSEVELT BY JOHN BURROUGHS Books by John Burroughs #WORKS.# 19 vols., uniform, 16mo, with frontispiece, gilt top. WAKE-ROBIN. WINTER SUNSHINE. LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY. FRESH FIELDS. INDOOR STUDIES. BIRDS AND POETS, WITH OTHER PAPERS. PEPACTON, AND OTHER SKETCHES. SIGNS AND SEASONS. RIVERBY. WHITMAN: A STUDY. THE LIGHT OF DAY. LITERARY VALUES. FAR AND NEAR. WAYS OF NATURE. LEAF AND TENDRIL. TIME AND CHANGE. THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS. THE BREATH OF LIFE. UNDER THE APPLE-TREES. FIELD AND STUDY. #FIELD AND STUDY.# _Riverside Edition._ #UNDER THE APPLE-TREES.# _Riverside Edition._ #THE BREATH OF LIFE.# _Riverside Edition._ #THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS.# _Riverside Edition._ #TIME AND CHANGE.# _Riverside Edition._ #LEAF AND TENDRIL.# _Riverside Edition._ #WAYS OF NATURE.# _Riverside Edition._ #FAR AND NEAR.# _Riverside Edition._ #LITERARY VALUES.# _Riverside Edition._ #THE LIGHT OF DAY.# _Riverside Edition._ #WHITMAN: A Study.# _Riverside Edition._ #A YEAR IN THE FIELDS.# Selections appropriate to each season of the year, from the writings of John Burroughs. Illustrated from Photographs by CLIFTON JOHNSON. #IN THE CATSKILLS.# Illustrated from Photographs by CLIFTON JOHNSON. #CAMPING AND TRAMPING WITH ROOSEVELT.# Illustrated from Photographs. #BIRD AND BOUGH.# Poems. #WINTER SUNSHINE.# _Cambridge Classics Series._ #WAKE-ROBIN.# _Riverside Aldine Series._ #SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS.# Illustrated. #BIRD STORIES FROM BURROUGHS.# Illustrated. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON AND NEW YORK [Illustration: THE PRESIDENT ON GLACIER POINT, YOSEMITE VALLEY From stereograph, copyright 1905, by Underwood & Underwood, New York] CAMPING & TRAMPING WITH ROOSEVELT BY JOHN BURROUGHS _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_ [Illustration] BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY #The Riverside Press Cambridge# COPYRIGHT 1906 BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. COPYRIGHT 1907 BY THE OUTLOOK COMPANY COPYRIGHT 1907 BY JOHN BURROUGHS _Published October 1907_ ILLUSTRATIONS THE PRESIDENT ON GLACIER POINT, YOSEMITE VALLEY _Frontispiece_ ARRIVAL AT GARDINER, MONTANA 10 THE PRESIDENT, MR. BURROUGHS AND SECRETARY LOEB 24 THE PRESIDENT IN THE BEAR COUNTRY 38 MR. BURROUGHS'S FAVORITE PASTIME 50 SUNRISE IN THE YELLOWSTONE 64 THE PRESIDENT ON A TRAIL 72 THE PRESIDENT'S HOME ON SAGAMORE HILL, SHOWING ADDITION KNOWN AS THE TROPHY ROOM 82 A BIT OF WOODLAND ON THE SLOPE TOWARDS OYSTER BAY 88 A PATH IN THE WOODS LEADING TO COLD SPRING HARBOR 92 A YEARLING IN THE APPLE ORCHARD 98 HALLWAY, SAGAMORE HILL 106 INTRODUCTION This little volume really needs no introduction; the two sketches of which it is made explain and, I hope, justify themselves. But there is one phase of the President's many-sided character upon which I should like to lay especial emphasis, namely, his natural history bent and knowledge. Amid all his absorbing interests and masterful activities in other fields, his interest and his authority in practical natural history are by no means the least. I long ago had very direct proof of this statement. In some of my English sketches, following a visit to that island in 1882, I had, rather by implication than by positive statement, inclined to the opinion that the European forms of animal life were, as a rule, larger and more hardy and prolific than the corresponding forms in this country. Roosevelt could not let this statement or suggestion go unchallenged, and the letter which I received from him in 1892, touching these things, is of double interest at this time, as showing one phase of his radical Americanism, while it exhibits him as a thoroughgoing naturalist. I am sure my readers will welcome the gist of this letter. After some preliminary remarks he says:-- "The point of which I am speaking is where you say that the Old World forms of animal life are coarser, stronger, fiercer, and more fertile than those of the New World." (My statement was not quite so sweeping as this.) "Now I don't think that this is so; at least, comparing the forms which are typical of North America and of northern Asia and Europe, which together form but one province of animal life. "Many animals and birds which increase very fast in new countries, and which are commonly spoken of as European in their origin, are really as alien to Europe as to their new homes. Thus the rabbit, rat, and mouse are just as truly interlopers in England as in the United States and Australia, having moved thither apparently within historic times, the rabbit from North Africa, the others from southern Asia; and one could no more generalize upon the comparative weakness of the American fauna from these cases of intruders than one could generalize from them upon the comparative weakness of the British, German, and French wild animals. Our wood mouse or deer mouse retreats before the ordinary house mouse in exactly the same way that the European wood mouse does, and not a whit more. Our big wood rat stands in the same relation to the house rat. Casting aside these cases, it seems to me, looking at the mammals, that it would be quite impossible to generalize as to whether those of the Old or the New World are more fecund, are the fiercest, the hardiest, or the strongest. A great many cases could be cited on both sides. Our moose and caribou are, in certain of their varieties, rather larger than the Old World forms of the same species. If there is any difference between the beavers of the two countries, it is in the same direction. So with the great family of the field mice. The largest true arvicola seems to be the yellow-cheeked mouse of Hudson's Bay, and the biggest representative of the family on either continent is the muskrat. In most of its varieties the wolf of North America seems to be inferior in strength and courage to that of northern Europe and Asia; but the direct reverse is true with the grizzly bear, which is merely a somewhat larger and fiercer variety of the common European brown bear. On the whole, the Old World bison, or so-called aurochs, appears to be somewhat more formidable than its American brother; but the difference against the latter is not anything like as great as the difference in favor of the American wapiti, which is nothing but a giant representative of the comparatively puny European stag. So with the red fox. The fox of New York is about the size of that of France, and inferior in size to that of Scotland; the latter in turn is inferior in size to the big fox of the upper Missouri, while the largest of all comes from British America. There is no basis for the belief that the red fox was imported here from Europe; its skin was a common article of trade with the Canadian fur traders from the earliest times. On the other hand, the European lynx is much bigger than the American. The weasels afford cases in point, showing how hard it is to make a general law on the subject. The American badger is very much smaller than the European, and the American otter very much larger than the European otter. Our pine marten, or sable, compared with that of Europe, shows the very qualities of which you speak; that is, its skull is slenderer, the bones are somewhat lighter, the teeth less stout, the form showing more grace and less strength. But curiously enough this is reversed, with even greater emphasis, in the minks of the two continents, the American being much the largest and strongest, with stouter teeth, bigger bones, and a stronger animal in every way. The little weasel is on the whole smaller here, while the big weasel, or stoat, is, in some of its varieties at least, largest on this side; and, of the true weasels, the largest of all is the so-called fisher, a purely American beast, a fierce and hardy animal which habitually preys upon as hard fighting a creature as the raccoon, and which could eat all the Asiatic and European varieties of weasels without an effort. "About birds I should be far less competent to advance arguments, and especially, my dear sir, to you; but it seems to me that two of the most self-asserting and hardiest of our families of birds are the tyrant flycatchers, of which the kingbird is chief, and the blackbirds, or grackles, with the meadow lark at their head, both characteristically American. "Did you ever look over the medical statistics of the half million men drafted during the Civil War? They include men of every race and color, and from every country of Europe, and from every State in the Union; and so many men were measured that the average of the measurements is probably pretty fair. From these it would appear that the physical type in the Eastern States had undoubtedly degenerated. The man from New York or New England, unless he came from the lumbering districts, though as tall as the Englishman or Irishman, was distinctly lighter built, and especially was narrower across the chest; but the finest men physically of all were the Kentuckians and Tennesseeans. After them came the Scandinavians, then the Scotch, then the people from several of the Western States, such as Wisconsin and Minnesota, then the Irish, then the Germans, then the English, etc. The decay of vitality, especially as shown in the decreasing fertility of the New England and, indeed, New York stock, is very alarming; but the most prolific peoples on this continent, whether of native or foreign origin, are the native whites of the southern Alleghany region in Kentucky and Tennessee, the Virginians, and the Carolinians, and also the French of Canada. "It will be difficult to frame a general law of fecundity in comparing the effects upon human life of long residence on the two continents when we see that the Frenchman in Canada is healthy and enormously fertile, while the old French stock is at the stationary point in France, the direct reverse being the case when the English of Old and of New England are compared, and the decision being again reversed if we compare the English with the mountain whites of the Southern States." CAMPING WITH PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT At the time I made the trip to Yellowstone Park with President Roosevelt in the spring of 1903, I promised some friends to write up my impressions of the President and of the Park, but I have been slow in getting around to it. The President himself, having the absolute leisure and peace of the White House, wrote his account of the trip nearly two years ago! But with the stress and strain of my life at "Slabsides,"--administering the affairs of so many of the wild creatures of the woods about me,--I have not till this blessed season (fall of 1905) found the time to put on record an account of the most interesting thing I saw in that wonderful land, which, of course, was the President himself. When I accepted his invitation I was well aware that during the journey I should be in a storm centre most of the time, which is not always a pleasant prospect to a man of my habits and disposition. The President himself is a good deal of a storm,--a man of such abounding energy and ceaseless activity that he sets everything in motion around him wherever he goes. But I knew he would be pretty well occupied on his way to the Park in speaking to eager throngs and in receiving personal and political homage in the towns and cities we were to pass through. But when all this was over, and I found myself with him in the wilderness of the Park, with only the superintendent and a few attendants to help take up his tremendous personal impact, how was it likely to fare with a non-strenuous person like myself? I asked. I had visions of snow six and seven feet deep, where traveling could be done only upon snow-shoes, and I had never had the things on my feet in my life. If the infernal fires beneath, that keep the pot boiling so furiously in the Park, should melt the snows, I could see the party tearing along on horseback at a wolf-hunt pace over a rough country; and as I had not been on a horse's back since the President was born, how would it be likely to fare with me then? I had known the President several years before he became famous, and we had had some correspondence on subjects of natural history. His interest in such themes is always very fresh and keen, and the main motive of his visit to the Park at this time was to see and study in its semi-domesticated condition the great game which he had so often hunted during his ranch days; and he was kind enough to think it would be an additional pleasure to see it with a nature-lover like myself. For my own part, I knew nothing about big game, but I knew there was no man in the country with whom I should so like to see it as Roosevelt. Some of our newspapers reported that the President intended to hunt in the Park. A woman in Vermont wrote me, to protest against the hunting, and hoped I would teach the President to love the animals as much as I did,--as if he did not love them much more, because his love is founded upon knowledge, and because they had been a part of his life. She did not know that I was then cherishing the secret hope that I might be allowed to shoot a cougar or bobcat; but this fun did not come to me. The President said, "I will not fire a gun in the Park; then I shall have no explanations to make." Yet once I did hear him say in the wilderness, "I feel as if I ought to keep the camp in meat. I always have." I regretted that he could not do so on this occasion. I have never been disturbed by the President's hunting trips. It is to such men as he that the big game legitimately belongs,--men who regard it from the point of view of the naturalist as well as from that of the sportsman, who are interested in its preservation, and who share with the world the delight they experience in the chase. Such a hunter as Roosevelt is as far removed from the game-butcher as day is from night; and as for his killing of the "varmints,"--bears, cougars, and bobcats,--the fewer of these there are, the better for the useful and beautiful game. The cougars, or mountain lions, in the Park certainly needed killing. The superintendent reported that he had seen where they had slain nineteen elk, and we saw where they had killed a deer and dragged its body across the trail. Of course, the President would not now on his hunting trips shoot an elk or a deer except to "keep the camp in meat," and for this purpose it is as legitimate as to slay a sheep or a steer for the table at home. We left Washington on April 1, and strung several of the larger Western cities on our thread of travel,--Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, St. Paul, Minneapolis,--as well as many lesser towns, in each of which the President made an address, sometimes brief, on a few occasions of an hour or more. He gave himself very freely and heartily to the people wherever he went. He could easily match their Western cordiality and good-fellowship. Wherever his train stopped, crowds soon gathered, or had already gathered, to welcome him. His advent made a holiday in each town he visited. At all the principal stops the usual programme was: first, his reception by the committee of citizens appointed to receive him,--they usually boarded his private car, and were one by one introduced to him; then a drive through the town with a concourse of carriages; then to the hall or open-air platform, where he spoke to the assembled throng; then to lunch or dinner; and then back to the train, and off for the next stop,--a round of hand-shaking, carriage-driving, speech-making each day. He usually spoke from eight to ten times every twenty-four hours, sometimes for only a few minutes from the rear platform of his private car, at others for an hour or more in some large hall. In Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, elaborate banquets were given him and his party, and on each occasion he delivered a carefully prepared speech upon questions that involved the policy of his administration. The throng that greeted him in the vast Auditorium in Chicago--that rose and waved and waved again--was one of the grandest human spectacles I ever witnessed. In Milwaukee the dense cloud of tobacco smoke that presently filled the large hall after the feasting was over was enough to choke any speaker, but it did not seem to choke the President, though he does not use tobacco in any form himself; nor was there anything foggy about his utterances on that occasion upon legislative control of the trusts. [Illustration: ARRIVAL AT GARDINER, MONT. (ENTRANCE TO YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK.) From stereograph, copyright 1906, by Underwood & Underwood, New York.] In St. Paul the city was inundated with humanity,--a vast human tide that left the middle of the streets bare as our line of carriages moved slowly along, but that rose up in solid walls of town and prairie humanity on the sidewalks and city dooryards. How hearty and happy the myriad faces looked! At one point I spied in the throng on the curbstone a large silk banner that bore my own name as the title of some society. I presently saw that it was borne by half a dozen anxious and expectant-looking schoolgirls with braids down their backs. As my carriage drew near them, they pressed their way through the throng and threw a large bouquet of flowers into my lap. I think it would be hard to say who blushed the deeper, the girls or myself. It was the first time I had ever had flowers showered upon me in public; and then, maybe, I felt that on such an occasion I was only a minor side issue, and public recognition was not called for. But the incident pleased the President. "I saw that banner and those flowers," he said afterwards; "and I was delighted to see you honored that way." But I fear I have not to this day thanked the Monroe School of St. Paul for that pretty attention. The time of the passing of the presidential train seemed well known, even on the Dakota prairies. At one point I remember a little brown schoolhouse stood not far off, and near the track the school-ma'am, with her flock, drawn up in line. We were at luncheon, but the President caught a glimpse ahead through the window, and quickly took in the situation. With napkin in hand, he rushed out on the platform and waved to them. "Those children," he said, as he came back, "wanted to see the President of the United States, and I could not disappoint them. They may never have another chance. What a deep impression such things make when we are young!" At some point in the Dakotas we picked up the former foreman of his ranch and another cowboy friend of the old days, and they rode with the President in his private car for several hours. He was as happy with them as a schoolboy ever was in meeting old chums. He beamed with delight all over. The life which those men represented, and of which he had himself once formed a part, meant so much to him; it had entered into the very marrow of his being, and I could see the joy of it all shining in his face as he sat and lived parts of it over again with those men that day. He bubbled with laughter continually. The men, I thought, seemed a little embarrassed by his open-handed cordiality and good-fellowship. He himself evidently wanted to forget the present, and to live only in the memory of those wonderful ranch days,--that free, hardy, adventurous life upon the plains. It all came back to him with a rush when he found himself alone with these heroes of the rope and the stirrup. How much more keen his appreciation was, and how much quicker his memory, than theirs! He was constantly recalling to their minds incidents which they had forgotten, and the names of horses and dogs which had escaped them. His subsequent life, instead of making dim the memory of his ranch days, seemed to have made it more vivid by contrast. When they had gone I said to him, "I think your affection for those men very beautiful." "How could I help it?" he said. "Still, few men in your station could or would go back and renew such friendships." "Then I pity them," he replied. He said afterwards that his ranch life had been the making of him. It had built him up and hardened him physically, and it had opened his eyes to the wealth of manly character among the plainsmen and cattlemen. Had he not gone West, he said, he never would have raised the Rough Riders regiment; and had he not raised that regiment and gone to the Cuban War, he would not have been made governor of New York; and had not this happened, the politicians would not unwittingly have made his rise to the Presidency so inevitable. There is no doubt, I think, that he would have got there some day; but without the chain of events above outlined, his rise could not have been so rapid. Our train entered the Bad Lands of North Dakota in the early evening twilight, and the President stood on the rear platform of his car, gazing wistfully upon the scene. "I know all this country like a book," he said. "I have ridden over it, and hunted over it, and tramped over it, in all seasons and weather, and it looks like home to me. My old ranch is not far off. We shall soon reach Medora, which was my station." It was plain to see that that strange, forbidding-looking landscape, hills and valleys to eastern eyes, utterly demoralized and gone to the bad,--flayed, fantastic, treeless, a riot of naked clay slopes, chimney-like buttes, and dry coulees,--was in his eyes a land of almost pathetic interest. There were streaks of good pasturage here and there where his cattle used to graze, and where the deer and the pronghorn used to linger. When we reached Medora, where the train was scheduled to stop an hour, it was nearly dark, but the whole town and country round had turned out to welcome their old townsman. After much hand-shaking, the committee conducted us down to a little hall, where the President stood on a low platform, and made a short address to the standing crowd that filled the place. Then some flashlight pictures were taken by the local photographer, after which the President stepped down, and, while the people filed past him, shook hands with every man, woman, and child of them, calling many of them by name, and greeting them all most cordially. I recall one grizzled old frontiersman whose hand he grasped, calling him by name, and saying, "How well I remember you! You once mended my gunlock for me,--put on a new hammer." "Yes," said the delighted old fellow; "I'm the man, Mr. President." He was among his old neighbors once more, and the pleasure of the meeting was very obvious on both sides. I heard one of the women tell him they were going to have a dance presently, and ask him if he would not stay and open it! The President laughingly excused himself, and said his train had to leave on schedule time, and his time was nearly up. I thought of the incident in his "Ranch Life," in which he says he once opened a cowboy ball with the wife of a Minnesota man, who danced opposite, and who had recently shot a bullying Scotchman. He says the scene reminded him of the ball where Bret Harte's heroine "went down the middle with the man that shot Sandy Magee." Before reaching Medora he had told me many anecdotes of "Hell-Roaring Bill Jones," and had said I should see him. But it turned out that Hell-Roaring Bill had begun to celebrate the coming of the President too early in the day, and when we reached Medora he was not in a presentable condition. I forget now how he had earned his name, but no doubt he had come honestly by it; it was a part of his history, as was that of "The Pike," "Cold-Turkey Bill," "Hash-Knife Joe," and other classic heroes of the frontier. It is curious how certain things go to the bad in the Far West, or a certain proportion of them,--bad lands, bad horses, and bad men. And it is a degree of badness that the East has no conception of,--land that looks as raw and unnatural as if time had never laid its shaping and softening hand upon it; horses that, when mounted, put their heads to the ground and their heels in the air, and, squealing defiantly, resort to the most diabolically ingenious tricks to shake off or to kill their riders; and men who amuse themselves in bar-rooms by shooting about the feet of a "tenderfoot" to make him dance, or who ride along the street and shoot at every one in sight. Just as the old plutonic fires come to the surface out there in the Rockies, and hint very strongly of the infernal regions, so a kind of satanic element in men and animals--an underlying devilishness--crops out, and we have the border ruffian and the bucking broncho. The President told of an Englishman on a hunting trip in the West, who, being an expert horseman at home, scorned the idea that he could not ride any of their "grass-fed ponies." So they gave him a bucking broncho. He was soon lying on the ground, much stunned. When he could speak, he said, "I should not have minded him, you know, _but 'e 'ides 'is 'ead_." At one place in Dakota the train stopped to take water while we were at lunch. A crowd soon gathered, and the President went out to greet them. We could hear his voice, and the cheers and laughter of the crowd. And then we heard him say, "Well, good-by, I must go now." Still he did not come. Then we heard more talking and laughing, and another "good-by," and yet he did not come. Then I went out to see what had happened. I found the President down on the ground shaking hands with the whole lot of them. Some one had reached up to shake his hand as he was about withdrawing, and this had been followed by such eagerness on the part of the rest of the people to do likewise, that the President had instantly got down to gratify them. Had the secret service men known it, they would have been in a pickle. We probably have never had a President who responded more freely and heartily to the popular liking for him than Roosevelt. The crowd always seem to be in love with him the moment they see him and hear his voice. And it is not by reason of any arts of eloquence, or charm of address, but by reason of his inborn heartiness and sincerity, and his genuine manliness. The people feel his quality at once. In Bermuda last winter I met a Catholic priest who had sat on the platform at some place in New England very near the President while he was speaking, and who said, "The man had not spoken three minutes before I loved him, and had any one tried to molest him, I could have torn him to pieces." It is the quality in the man that instantly inspires such a liking as this in strangers that will, I am sure, safeguard him in all public places. I once heard him say that he did not like to be addressed as "His Excellency;" he added laughingly, "They might just as well call me 'His Transparency,' for all I care." It is this transparency, this direct out-and-out, unequivocal character of him that is one source of his popularity. The people do love transparency,--all of them but the politicians. A friend of his one day took him to task for some mistake he had made in one of his appointments. "My dear sir," replied the President, "where you know of one mistake I have made, I know of ten." How such candor must make the politicians shiver! I have said that I stood in dread of the necessity of snowshoeing in the Park, and, in lieu of that, of horseback riding. Yet when we reached Gardiner, the entrance to the Park, on that bright, crisp April morning, with no snow in sight save that on the mountain-tops, and found Major Pitcher and Captain Chittenden at the head of a squad of soldiers, with a fine saddle-horse for the President, and an ambulance drawn by two span of mules for me, I confess that I experienced just a slight shade of mortification. I thought they might have given me the option of the saddle or the ambulance. Yet I entered the vehicle as if it was just what I had been expecting. The President and his escort, with a cloud of cowboys hovering in the rear, were soon off at a lively pace, and my ambulance followed close, and at a lively pace, too; so lively that I soon found myself gripping the seat with both hands. "Well," I said to myself, "they are giving me a regular Western send-off;" and I thought, as the ambulance swayed from side to side, that it would suit me just as well if my driver did not try to keep up with the presidential procession. The driver and his mules were shut off from me by a curtain, but, looking ahead out of the sides of the vehicle, I saw two good-sized logs lying across our course. Surely, I thought (and barely had time to think), he will avoid these. But he did not, and as we passed over them I was nearly thrown through the top of the ambulance. "This _is_ a lively send-off," I said, rubbing my bruises with one hand, while I clung to the seat with the other. Presently I saw the cowboys scrambling up the bank as if to get out of our way; then the President on his fine gray stallion scrambling up the bank with his escort, and looking ominously in my direction, as we thundered by. [Illustration: THE PRESIDENT WITH MR. BURROUGHS AND SECRETARY LOEB JUST BEFORE ENTERING THE PARK. From stereograph, copyright 1906, by Underwood & Underwood, New York.] "Well," I said, "this is indeed a novel ride; for once in my life I have sidetracked the President of the United States! I am given the right of way over all." On we tore, along the smooth, hard road, and did not slacken our pace till, at the end of a mile or two, we began to mount the hill toward Fort Yellowstone. And not till we reached the fort did I learn that our mules had run away. They had been excited beyond control by the presidential cavalcade, and the driver, finding he could not hold them, had aimed only to keep them in the road, and we very soon had the road all to ourselves. Fort Yellowstone is at Mammoth Hot Springs, where one gets his first view of the characteristic scenery of the Park,--huge, boiling springs with their columns of vapor, and the first characteristic odors which suggest the traditional infernal regions quite as much as the boiling and steaming water does. One also gets a taste of a much more rarefied air than he has been used to, and finds himself panting for breath on a very slight exertion. The Mammoth Hot Springs have built themselves up an enormous mound that stands there above the village on the side of the mountain, terraced and scalloped and fluted, and suggesting some vitreous formation, or rare carving of enormous, many-colored precious stones. It looks quite unearthly, and, though the devil's frying pan, and ink pot, and the Stygian caves are not far off, the suggestion is of something celestial rather than of the nether regions,--a vision of jasper walls, and of amethyst battlements. With Captain Chittenden I climbed to the top, stepping over the rills and creeks of steaming hot water, and looked at the marvelously clear, cerulean, but boiling, pools on the summit. The water seemed as unearthly in its beauty and purity as the gigantic sculpturing that held it. The Stygian caves are still farther up the mountain,--little pockets in the rocks, or well-holes in the ground at your feet, filled with deadly carbon dioxide. We saw birds' feathers and quills in all of them. The birds hop into them, probably in quest of food or seeking shelter, and they never come out. We saw the body of a martin on the bank of one hole. Into one we sank a lighted torch, and it was extinguished as quickly as if we had dropped it into water. Each cave or niche is a death valley on a small scale. Near by we came upon a steaming pool, or lakelet, of an acre or more in extent. A pair of mallard ducks were swimming about in one end of it,--the cool end. When we approached, they swam slowly over into the warmer water. As they progressed, the water got hotter and hotter, and the ducks' discomfort was evident. Presently they stopped, and turned towards us, half appealingly, as I thought. They could go no farther; would we please come no nearer? As I took another step or two, up they rose and disappeared over the hill. Had they gone to the extreme end of the pool, we could have had boiled mallard for dinner. Another novel spectacle was at night, or near sundown, when the deer came down from the hills into the streets and ate hay, a few yards from the officers' quarters, as unconcernedly as so many domestic sheep. This they had been doing all winter, and they kept it up till May, at times a score or more of them profiting thus on the government's bounty. When the sundown gun was fired a couple of hundred yards away, they gave a nervous start, but kept on with their feeding. The antelope and elk and mountain sheep had not yet grown bold enough to accept Uncle Sam's charity in that way. The President wanted all the freedom and solitude possible while in the Park, so all newspaper men and other strangers were excluded. Even the secret service men and his physician and private secretaries were left at Gardiner. He craved once more to be alone with nature; he was evidently hungry for the wild and the aboriginal,--a hunger that seems to come upon him regularly at least once a year, and drives him forth on his hunting trips for big game in the West. We spent two weeks in the Park, and had fair weather, bright, crisp days, and clear, freezing nights. The first week we occupied three camps that had been prepared, or partly prepared, for us in the northeast corner of the Park, in the region drained by the Gardiner River, where there was but little snow, and which we reached on horseback. The second week we visited the geyser region, which lies a thousand feet or more higher, and where the snow was still five or six feet deep. This part of the journey was made in big sleighs, each drawn by two span of horses. On the horseback excursion, which involved only about fifty miles of riding, we had a mule pack train, and Sibley tents and stoves, with quite a retinue of camp laborers, a lieutenant and an orderly or two, and a guide, Billy Hofer. The first camp was in a wild, rocky, and picturesque gorge on the Yellowstone, about ten miles from the fort. A slight indisposition, the result of luxurious living, with no wood to chop or to saw, and no hills to climb, as at home, prevented me from joining the party till the third day. Then Captain Chittenden drove me eight miles in a buggy. About two miles from camp we came to a picket of two or three soldiers, where my big bay was in waiting for me. I mounted him confidently, and, guided by an orderly, took the narrow, winding trail toward camp. Except for an hour's riding the day before with Captain Chittenden, I had not been on a horse's back for nearly fifty years, and I had not spent as much as a day in the saddle during my youth. That first sense of a live, spirited, powerful animal beneath you, at whose mercy you are,--you, a pedestrian all your days,--with gullies and rocks and logs to cross, and deep chasms opening close beside you, is not a little disturbing. But my big bay did his part well, and I did not lose my head or my nerve, as we cautiously made our way along the narrow path on the side of the steep gorge, with a foaming torrent rushing along at its foot, nor yet when we forded the rocky and rapid Yellowstone. A misstep or a stumble on the part of my steed, and probably the first bubble of my confidence would have been shivered at once; but this did not happen, and in due time we reached the group of tents that formed the President's camp. The situation was delightful,--no snow, scattered pine trees, a secluded valley, rocky heights, and the clear, ample, trouty waters of the Yellowstone. The President was not in camp. In the morning he had stated his wish to go alone into the wilderness. Major Pitcher very naturally did not quite like the idea, and wished to send an orderly with him. "No," said the President. "Put me up a lunch, and let me go alone. I will surely come back." And back he surely came. It was about five o'clock when he came briskly down the path from the east to the camp. It came out that he had tramped about eighteen miles through a very rough country. The day before, he and the major had located a band of several hundred elk on a broad, treeless hillside, and his purpose was to find those elk, and creep up on them, and eat his lunch under their very noses. And this he did, spending an hour or more within fifty yards of them. He came back looking as fresh as when he started, and at night, sitting before the big camp fire, related his adventure, and talked with his usual emphasis and copiousness of many things. He told me of the birds he had seen or heard; among them he had heard one that was new to him. From his description I told him I thought it was Townsend's solitaire, a bird I much wanted to see and hear. I had heard the West India solitaire,--one of the most impressive songsters I ever heard,--and I wished to compare our Western form with it. The next morning we set out for our second camp, ten or a dozen miles away, and in reaching it passed over much of the ground the President had traversed the day before. As we came to a wild, rocky place above a deep chasm of the river, with a few scattered pine trees, the President said, "It was right here that I heard that strange bird song." We paused a moment. "And there it is now!" he exclaimed. Sure enough, there was the solitaire singing from the top of a small cedar,--a bright, animated, eloquent song, but without the richness and magic of the song of the tropical species. We hitched our horses, and followed the bird up as it flew from tree to tree. The President was as eager to see and hear it as I was. It seemed very shy, and we only caught glimpses of it. In form and color it much resembles its West India cousin, and suggests our catbird. It ceased to sing when we pursued it. It is a bird found only in the wilder and higher parts of the Rockies. My impression was that its song did not quite merit the encomiums that have been pronounced upon it. At this point, I saw amid the rocks my first and only Rocky Mountain woodchucks, and, soon after we had resumed our journey, our first blue grouse,--a number of them like larger partridges. Occasionally we would come upon black-tailed deer, standing or lying down in the bushes, their large ears at attention being the first thing to catch the eye. They would often allow us to pass within a few rods of them without showing alarm. Elk horns were scattered all over this part of the Park, and we passed several old carcasses of dead elk that had probably died a natural death. In a grassy bottom at the foot of a steep hill, while the President and I were dismounted, and noting the pleasing picture which our pack train of fifteen or twenty mules made filing along the side of a steep grassy slope,--a picture which he has preserved in his late volume, "Out-Door Pastimes of an American Hunter,"--our attention was attracted by plaintive, musical, bird-like chirps that rose from the grass about us. I was almost certain it was made by a bird; the President was of like opinion; and we kicked about in the tufts of grass, hoping to flush the bird. Now here, now there, arose this sharp, but bird-like note. Finally, we found that it was made by a species of gopher, whose holes we soon discovered. What its specific name is I do not know, but it should be called the singing gopher. Our destination this day was a camp on Cottonwood Creek, near "Hell-Roaring Creek." As we made our way in the afternoon along a broad, open, grassy valley, I saw a horseman come galloping over the hill to our right, starting up a band of elk as he came; riding across the plain, he wheeled his horse, and, with the military salute, joined our party. He proved to be a government scout, called the "Duke of Hell Roaring,"--an educated officer from the Austrian army, who, for some unknown reason, had exiled himself here in this out-of-the-way part of the world. He was a man in his prime, of fine, military look and bearing. After conversing a few moments with the President and Major Pitcher, he rode rapidly away. Our second camp, which we reached in mid-afternoon, was in the edge of the woods on the banks of a fine, large trout stream, where ice and snow still lingered in patches. I tried for trout in the head of a large, partly open pool, but did not get a rise; too much ice in the stream, I concluded. Very soon my attention was attracted by a strange note, or call, in the spruce woods. The President had also noticed it, and, with me, wondered what made it. Was it bird or beast? Billy Hofer said he thought it was an owl, but the sound in no way suggested an owl, and the sun was shining brightly. It was a sound such as a boy might make by blowing in the neck of an empty bottle. Presently we heard it beyond us on the other side of the creek, which was pretty good proof that the creature had wings. [Illustration: THE PRESIDENT IN THE BEAR COUNTRY From stereograph, copyright 1905, by Underwood & Underwood, New York] "Let's go run that bird down," said the President to me. So off we started across a small, open, snow-streaked plain, toward the woods beyond it. We soon decided that the bird was on the top of one of a group of tall spruces. After much skipping about over logs and rocks, and much craning of our necks, we made him out on the peak of a spruce. I imitated his call, when he turned his head down toward us, but we could not make out what he was. "Why did we not think to bring the glasses?" said the President. "I will run and get them," I replied. "No," said he, "you stay here and keep that bird treed, and I will fetch them." So off he went like a boy, and was very soon back with the glasses. We quickly made out that it was indeed an owl,--the pigmy owl, as it turned out,--not much larger than a bluebird. I think the President was as pleased as if we had bagged some big game. He had never seen the bird before. Throughout the trip I found his interest in bird life very keen, and his eye and ear remarkably quick. He usually saw the bird or heard its note as quickly as I did,--and I had nothing else to think about, and had been teaching my eye and ear the trick of it for over fifty years. Of course, his training as a big-game hunter stood him in good stead, but back of that were his naturalist's instincts, and his genuine love of all forms of wild life. I have been told that his ambition up to the time he went to Harvard had been to be a naturalist, but that there they seem to have convinced him that all the out-of-door worlds of natural history had been conquered, and that the only worlds remaining were in the laboratory, and to be won with the microscope and the scalpel. But Roosevelt was a man made for action in a wide field, and laboratory conquests could not satisfy him. His instincts as a naturalist, however, lie back of all his hunting expeditions, and, in a large measure, I think, prompt them. Certain it is that his hunting records contain more live natural history than any similar records known to me, unless it be those of Charles St. John, the Scotch naturalist-sportsman. The Canada jays, or camp-robbers, as they are often called, soon found out our camp that afternoon, and no sooner had the cook begun to throw out peelings and scraps and crusts than the jays began to carry them off, not to eat, as I observed, but to hide them in the thicker branches of the spruce trees. How tame they were, coming within three or four yards of one! Why this species of jay should everywhere be so familiar, and all other kinds so wild, is a puzzle. In the morning, as we rode down the valley toward our next camping-place, at Tower Falls, a band of elk containing a hundred or more started along the side of the hill a few hundred yards away. I was some distance behind the rest of the party, as usual, when I saw the President wheel his horse off to the left, and, beckoning to me to follow, start at a tearing pace on the trail of the fleeing elk. He afterwards told me that he wanted me to get a good view of those elk at close range, and he was afraid that if he sent the major or Hofer to lead me, I would not get it. I hurried along as fast as I could, which was not fast; the way was rough,--logs, rocks, spring runs, and a tenderfoot rider. Now and then the President, looking back and seeing what slow progress I was making, would beckon to me impatiently, and I could fancy him saying, "If I had a rope around him, he would come faster than that!" Once or twice I lost sight of both him and the elk; the altitude was great, and the horse was laboring like a steam engine on an upgrade. Still I urged him on. Presently, as I broke over a hill, I saw the President pressing the elk up the opposite slope. At the brow of the hill he stopped, and I soon joined him. There on the top, not fifty yards away, stood the elk in a mass, their heads toward us and their tongues hanging out. They could run no farther. The President laughed like a boy. The spectacle meant much more to him than it did to me. I had never seen a wild elk till on this trip, but they had been among the notable game that he had hunted. He had traveled hundreds of miles, and undergone great hardships, to get within rifle range of these creatures. Now here stood scores of them with lolling tongues, begging for mercy. After gazing at them to our hearts' content, we turned away to look up our companions, who were nowhere within sight. We finally spied them a mile or more away, and, joining them, all made our way to an elevated plateau that commanded an open landscape three or four miles across. It was high noon, and the sun shone clear and warm. From this lookout we saw herds upon herds of elk scattered over the slopes and gentle valleys in front of us. Some were grazing, some were standing or lying upon the ground, or upon the patches of snow. Through our glasses we counted the separate bands, and then the numbers of some of the bands or groups, and estimated that three thousand elk were in full view in the landscape around us. It was a notable spectacle. Afterward, in Montana, I attended a council of Indian chiefs at one of the Indian agencies, and told them, through their interpreter, that I had been with the Great Chief in the Park, and of the game we had seen. When I told them of these three thousand elk all in view at once, they grunted loudly, whether with satisfaction or with incredulity, I could not tell. In the midst of this great game amphitheatre we dismounted and enjoyed the prospect. And the President did an unusual thing, he loafed for nearly an hour,--stretched himself out in the sunshine upon a flat rock, as did the rest of us, and, I hope, got a few winks of sleep. I am sure I did. Little, slender, striped chipmunks, about half the size of ours, were scurrying about; but I recall no other wild things save the elk. From here we rode down the valley to our third camp, at Tower Falls, stopping on the way to eat our luncheon on a washed boulder beside a creek. On this ride I saw my first and only badger; he stuck his striped head out of his hole in the ground only a few yards away from us as we passed. Our camp at Tower Falls was amid the spruces above a cañon of the Yellowstone, five or six hundred feet deep. It was a beautiful and impressive situation,--shelter, snugness, even cosiness, looking over the brink of the awful and the terrifying. With a run and a jump I think one might have landed in the river at the bottom of the great abyss, and in doing so might have scaled one of those natural obelisks or needles of rock that stand up out of the depths two or three hundred feet high. Nature shows you what an enormous furrow her plough can open through the strata when moving horizontally, at the same time that she shows you what delicate and graceful columns her slower and gentler aerial forces can carve out of the piled strata. At the Falls there were two or three of these columns, like the picket-pins of the elder gods. Across the cañon in front of our camp, upon a grassy plateau which was faced by a wall of trap rock, apparently thirty or forty feet high, a band of mountain sheep soon attracted our attention. They were within long rifle range, but were not at all disturbed by our presence, nor had they been disturbed by the road-builders who, under Captain Chittenden, were constructing a government road along the brink of the cañon. We speculated as to whether or not the sheep could get down the almost perpendicular face of the chasm to the river to drink. It seemed to me impossible. Would they try it while we were there to see? We all hoped so; and sure enough, late in the afternoon the word came to our tents that the sheep were coming down. The President, with coat off and a towel around his neck, was shaving. One side of his face was half shaved, and the other side lathered. Hofer and I started for a point on the brink of the cañon where we could have a better view. "By Jove," said the President, "I must see that. The shaving can wait, and the sheep won't." So on he came, accoutred as he was,--coatless, hatless, but not latherless, nor towelless. Like the rest of us, his only thought was to see those sheep do their "stunt." With glasses in hand, we watched them descend those perilous heights, leaping from point to point, finding a foothold where none appeared to our eyes, loosening fragments of the crumbling rocks as they came, now poised upon some narrow shelf and preparing for the next leap, zig-zagging or plunging straight down till the bottom was reached, and not one accident or misstep amid all that insecure footing. I think the President was the most pleased of us all; he laughed with the delight of it, and quite forgot his need of a hat and coat till I sent for them. In the night we heard the sheep going back; we could tell by the noise of the falling stones. In the morning I confidently expected to see some of them lying dead at the foot of the cliffs, but there they all were at the top once more, apparently safe and sound. They do, however, occasionally meet with accidents in their perilous climbing, and their dead bodies have been found at the foot of the rocks. Doubtless some point of rock to which they had trusted gave way, and crushed them in the descent, or fell upon those in the lead. The next day, while the rest of us went fishing for trout in the Yellowstone, three or four miles above the camp, over the roughest trail that we had yet traversed on horseback, the President, who never fishes unless put to it for meat, went off alone again with his lunch in his pocket, to stalk those sheep as he had stalked the elk, and to feel the old sportsman's thrill without the use of firearms. To do this involved a tramp of eight or ten miles down the river to a bridge and up the opposite bank. This he did, and ate his lunch near the sheep, and was back in camp before we were. We took some large cut-throat trout, as they are called, from the yellow mark across their throats, and I saw at short range a black-tailed deer bounding along in that curious, stiff-legged, mechanical, yet springy manner, apparently all four legs in the air at once, and all four feet reaching the ground at once, affording a very singular spectacle. [Illustration: MR. BURROUGHS'S FAVORITE PASTIME. By kind permission of Forest and Stream.] We spent two nights in our Tower Falls camp, and on the morning of the third day set out on our return to Fort Yellowstone, pausing at Yancey's on our way, and exchanging greetings with the old frontiersman, who died a few weeks later. While in camp we always had a big fire at night in the open near the tents, and around this we sat upon logs or camp-stools, and listened to the President's talk. What a stream of it he poured forth! and what a varied and picturesque stream!--anecdote, history, science, politics, adventure, literature; bits of his experience as a ranchman, hunter, Rough Rider, legislator, civil service commissioner, police commissioner, governor, president,--the frankest confessions, the most telling criticisms, happy characterizations of prominent political leaders, or foreign rulers, or members of his own Cabinet; always surprising by his candor, astonishing by his memory, and diverting by his humor. His reading has been very wide, and he has that rare type of memory which retains details as well as mass and generalities. One night something started him off on ancient history, and one would have thought he was just fresh from his college course in history, the dates and names and events came so readily. Another time he discussed palæontology, and rapidly gave the outlines of the science, and the main facts, as if he had been reading up on the subject that very day. He sees things as wholes, and hence the relation of the parts comes easy to him. At dinner, at the White House, the night before we started on the expedition, I heard him talking with a guest,--an officer of the British army, who was just back from India. And the extent and variety of his information about India and Indian history and the relations of the British government to it were extraordinary. It put the British major on his mettle to keep pace with him. One night in camp he told us the story of one of his Rough Riders who had just written him from some place in Arizona. The Rough Riders, wherever they are now, look to him in time of trouble. This one had come to grief in Arizona. He was in jail. So he wrote the President, and his letter ran something like this:-- "DEAR COLONEL,--I am in trouble. I shot a lady in the eye, but I did not intend to hit the lady; I was shooting at my wife." And the presidential laughter rang out over the tree-tops. To another Rough Rider, who was in jail, accused of horse stealing, he had loaned two hundred dollars to pay counsel on his trial, and, to his surprise, in due time the money came back. The ex-Rough wrote that his trial never came off. "_We elected our district attorney_;" and the laughter again sounded, and drowned the noise of the brook near by. On another occasion we asked the President if he was ever molested by any of the "bad men" of the frontier, with whom he had often come in contact. "Only once," he said. The cowboys had always treated him with the utmost courtesy, both on the round-up and in camp; "and the few real desperadoes I have seen were also perfectly polite." Once only was he maliciously shot at, and then not by a cowboy nor a _bona fide_ "bad man," but by a "broad-hatted ruffian of a cheap and common-place type." He had been compelled to pass the night at a little frontier hotel where the bar-room occupied the whole lower floor, and was, in consequence, the only place where the guests of the hotel, whether drunk or sober, could sit. As he entered the room, he saw that every man there was being terrorized by a half-drunken ruffian who stood in the middle of the floor with a revolver in each hand, compelling different ones to treat. "I went and sat down behind the stove," said the President, "as far from him as I could get; and hoped to escape his notice. The fact that I wore glasses, together with my evident desire to avoid a fight, apparently gave him the impression that I could be imposed upon with impunity. He very soon approached me, flourishing his two guns, and ordered me to treat. I made no reply for some moments, when the fellow became so threatening that I saw something had to be done. The crowd, mostly sheep-herders and small grangers, sat or stood back against the wall, afraid to move. I was unarmed, and thought rapidly. Saying, 'Well, if I must, I must,' I got up as if to walk around him to the bar, then, as I got opposite him, I wheeled and fetched him as heavy a blow on the chin-point as I could strike. He went down like a steer before the axe, firing both guns into the ceiling as he went. I jumped on him, and, with my knees on his chest, disarmed him in a hurry. The crowd was then ready enough to help me, and we hog-tied him and put him in an outhouse." The President alludes to this incident in his "Ranch Life," but does not give the details. It brings out his mettle very distinctly. He told us in an amused way of the attempts of his political opponents at Albany, during his early career as a member of the Assembly, to besmirch his character. His outspoken criticisms and denunciations had become intolerable to them, so they laid a trap for him, but he was not caught. His innate rectitude and instinct for the right course saved him, as it has saved him many times since. I do not think that in any emergency he has to debate with himself long as to the right course to be pursued; he divines it by a kind of infallible instinct. His motives are so simple and direct that he finds a straight and easy course where another man, whose eye is less single, would flounder and hesitate. One night he entertained us with reminiscences of the Cuban War, of his efforts to get his men to the firing line when the fighting began, of his greenness and general ignorance of the whole business of war, which in his telling was very amusing. He has probably put it all in his book about the war, a work I have not yet read. He described the look of the slope of Kettle Hill when they were about to charge up it, how the grass was combed and rippled by the storm of rifle bullets that swept down it. He said, "I was conscious of being pale when I looked at it and knew that in a few moments we were going to charge there." The men of his regiment were all lying flat upon the ground, and it became his duty to walk along their front and encourage them and order them up on their feet. "Get up, men, get up!" One big fellow did not rise. Roosevelt stooped down and took hold of him and ordered him up. Just at that moment a bullet struck the man and went the entire length of him. He never rose. On this or on another occasion when a charge was ordered, he found himself a hundred yards or more in advance of his regiment, with only the color bearer and one corporal with him. He said they planted the flag there, while he rushed back to fetch the men. He was evidently pretty hot. "Can it be that you flinched when I led the way!" and then they came with a rush. On the summit of Kettle Hill he was again in advance of his men, and as he came up, three Spaniards rose out of the trenches and deliberately fired at him at a distance of only a few paces, and then turned and fled. But a bullet from his revolver stopped one of them. He seems to have been as much exposed to bullets in this engagement as Washington was at Braddock's defeat, and to have escaped in the same marvelous manner. The President unites in himself powers and qualities that rarely go together. Thus, he has both physical and moral courage in a degree rare in history. He can stand calm and unflinching in the path of a charging grizzly, and he can confront with equal coolness and determination the predaceous corporations and money powers of the country. He unites the qualities of the man of action with those of the scholar and writer,--another very rare combination. He unites the instincts and accomplishments of the best breeding and culture with the broadest democratic sympathies and affiliations. He is as happy with a frontiersman like Seth Bullock as with a fellow Harvard man, and Seth Bullock is happy, too. He unites great austerity with great good nature. He unites great sensibility with great force and will power. He loves solitude, and he loves to be in the thick of the fight. His love of nature is equaled only by his love of the ways and marts of men. He is doubtless the most vital man on the continent, if not on the planet, to-day. He is many-sided, and every side throbs with his tremendous life and energy; the pressure is equal all around. His interests are as keen in natural history as in economics, in literature as in statecraft, in the young poet as in the old soldier, in preserving peace as in preparing for war. And he can turn all his great power into the new channel on the instant. His interest in the whole of life, and in the whole life of the nation, never flags for a moment. His activity is tireless. All the relaxation he needs or craves is a change of work. He is like the farmer's fields, that only need a rotation of crops. I once heard him say that all he cared about being President was just "the big work." During this tour through the West, lasting over two months, he made nearly three hundred speeches; and yet on his return Mrs. Roosevelt told me he looked as fresh and unworn as when he left home. We went up into the big geyser region with the big sleighs, each drawn by four horses. A big snow-bank had to be shoveled through for us before we got to the Golden Gate, two miles above Mammoth Hot Springs. Beyond that we were at an altitude of about eight thousand feet, on a fairly level course that led now through woods, and now through open country, with the snow of a uniform depth of four or five feet, except as we neared the "formations," where the subterranean warmth kept the ground bare. The roads had been broken and the snow packed for us by teams from the fort, otherwise the journey would have been impossible. The President always rode beside the driver. From his youth, he said, this seat had always been the most desirable one to him. When the sleigh would strike the bare ground, and begin to drag heavily, he would bound out nimbly and take to his heels, and then all three of us--Major Pitcher, Mr. Childs, and myself--would follow suit, sometimes reluctantly on my part. Walking at that altitude is no fun, especially if you try to keep pace with such a walker as the President is. But he could not sit at his ease and let those horses drag him in a sleigh over bare ground. When snow was reached, we would again quickly resume our seats. As one nears the geyser region, he gets the impression from the columns of steam going up here and there in the distance--now from behind a piece of woods, now from out a hidden valley--that he is approaching a manufacturing centre, or a railroad terminus. And when he begins to hear the hoarse snoring of "Roaring Mountain," the illusion is still more complete. At Norris's there is a big vent where the steam comes tearing out of a recent hole in the ground with terrific force. Huge mounds of ice had formed from the congealed vapor all around it, some of them very striking. The novelty of the geyser region soon wears off. Steam and hot water are steam and hot water the world over, and the exhibition of them here did not differ, except in volume, from what one sees by his own fireside. The "Growler" is only a boiling tea-kettle on a large scale, and "Old Faithful" is as if the lid were to fly off, and the whole contents of the kettle should be thrown high into the air. To be sure, boiling lakes and steaming rivers are not common, but the new features seemed, somehow, out of place, and as if nature had made a mistake. One disliked to see so much good steam and hot water going to waste; whole towns might be warmed by them, and big wheels made to go round. I wondered that they had not piped them into the big hotels which they opened for us, and which were warmed by wood fires. [Illustration: SUNRISE IN YELLOWSTONE PARK. From stereograph, copyright 1904, by Underwood & Underwood, New York.] At Norris's the big room that the President and I occupied was on the ground floor, and was heated by a huge box stove. As we entered it to go to bed, the President said, "Oom John, don't you think it is too hot here?" "I certainly do," I replied. "Shall I open the window?" "That will just suit me." And he threw the sash, which came down to the floor, all the way up, making an opening like a doorway. The night was cold, but neither of us suffered from the abundance of fresh air. The caretaker of the building was a big Swede called Andy. In the morning Andy said that beat him: "There was the President of the United States sleeping in that room, with the window open to the floor, and not so much as one soldier outside on guard." The President had counted much on seeing the bears that in summer board at the Fountain Hotel, but they were not yet out of their dens. We saw the track of only one, and he was not making for the hotel. At all the formations where the geysers are, the ground was bare over a large area. I even saw a wild flower--an early buttercup, not an inch high--in bloom. This seems to be the earliest wild flower in the Rockies. It is the only fragrant buttercup I know. As we were riding along in our big sleigh toward the Fountain Hotel, the President suddenly jumped out, and, with his soft hat as a shield to his hand, captured a mouse that was running along over the ground near us. He wanted it for Dr. Merriam, on the chance that it might be a new species. While we all went fishing in the afternoon, the President skinned his mouse, and prepared the pelt to be sent to Washington. It was done as neatly as a professed taxidermist would have done it. This was the only game the President killed in the Park. In relating the incident to a reporter while I was in Spokane, the thought occurred to me, Suppose he changes that _u_ to an _o_, and makes the President capture a moose, what a pickle I shall be in! Is it anything more than ordinary newspaper enterprise to turn a mouse into a moose? But, luckily for me, no such metamorphosis happened to that little mouse. It turned out not to be a new species, as it should have been, but a species new to the Park. I caught trout that afternoon, on the edge of steaming pools in the Madison River that seemed to my hand almost blood-warm. I suppose they found better feeding where the water was warm. On the table they did not compare with our Eastern brook trout. I was pleased to be told at one of the hotels that they had kalsomined some of the rooms with material from one of the devil's paint-pots. It imparted a soft, delicate, pinkish tint, not at all suggestive of things satanic. One afternoon at Norris's, the President and I took a walk to observe the birds. In the grove about the barns there was a great number, the most attractive to me being the mountain bluebird. These birds we saw in all parts of the Park, and at Norris's there was an unusual number of them. How blue they were,--breast and all! In voice and manner they were almost identical with our bluebird. The Western purple finch was abundant here also, and juncos, and several kinds of sparrows, with an occasional Western robin. A pair of wild geese were feeding in the low, marshy ground not over one hundred yards from us, but when we tried to approach nearer they took wing. A few geese and ducks seem to winter in the Park. The second morning at Norris's one of our teamsters, George Marvin, suddenly dropped dead from some heart affection, just as he had finished caring for his team. It was a great shock to us all. I never saw a better man with a team than he was. I had ridden on the seat beside him all the day previous. On one of the "formations" our teams had got mired in the soft, putty-like mud, and at one time it looked as if they could never extricate themselves, and I doubt if they could have, had it not been for the skill with which Marvin managed them. We started for the Grand Cañon up the Yellowstone that morning, and, in order to give myself a walk over the crisp snow in the clear, frosty air, I set out a little while in advance of the teams. As I did so, I saw the President, accompanied by one of the teamsters, walking hurriedly toward the barn to pay his last respects to the body of Marvin. After we had returned to Mammoth Hot Springs, he made inquiries for the young woman to whom he had been told that Marvin was engaged to be married. He looked her up, and sat a long time with her in her home, offering his sympathy, and speaking words of consolation. The act shows the depth and breadth of his humanity. At the Cañon Hotel the snow was very deep, and had become so soft from the warmth of the earth beneath, as well as from the sun above, that we could only reach the brink of the Cañon on skis. The President and Major Pitcher had used skis before, but I had not, and, starting out without the customary pole, I soon came to grief. The snow gave way beneath me, and I was soon in an awkward predicament. The more I struggled, the lower my head and shoulders went, till only my heels, strapped to those long timbers, protruded above the snow. To reverse my position was impossible till some one came and reached me the end of a pole, and pulled me upright. But I very soon got the hang of the things, and the President and I quickly left the superintendent behind. I think I could have passed the President, but my manners forbade. He was heavier than I was, and broke in more. When one of his feet would go down half a yard or more, I noted with admiration the skilled diplomacy he displayed in extricating it. The tendency of my skis was all the time to diverge, and each to go off at an acute angle to my main course, and I had constantly to be on the alert to check this tendency. Paths had been shoveled for us along the brink of the Cañon, so that we got the usual views from the different points. The Cañon was nearly free from snow, and was a grand spectacle, by far the grandest to be seen in the Park. The President told us that once, when pressed for meat, while returning through here from one of his hunting trips, he had made his way down to the river that we saw rushing along beneath us, and had caught some trout for dinner. Necessity alone could induce him to fish. Across the head of the Falls there was a bridge of snow and ice, upon which we were told that the coyotes passed. As the season progressed, there would come a day when the bridge would not be safe. It would be interesting to know if the coyotes knew when this time arrived. The only live thing we saw in the Cañon was an osprey perched upon a rock opposite us. [Illustration: THE PRESIDENT ON A TRAIL From stereograph, copyright 1905, by Underwood & Underwood, New York] Near the falls of the Yellowstone, as at other places we had visited, a squad of soldiers had their winter quarters. The President called on them, as he had called upon the others, looked over the books they had to read, examined their housekeeping arrangements, and conversed freely with them. In front of the hotel were some low hills separated by gentle valleys. At the President's suggestion, he and I raced on our skis down those inclines. We had only to stand up straight, and let gravity do the rest. As we were going swiftly down the side of one of the hills, I saw out of the corner of my eye the President taking a header into the snow. The snow had given way beneath him, and nothing could save him from taking the plunge. I don't know whether I called out, or only thought, something about the downfall of the administration. At any rate, the administration was down, and pretty well buried, but it was quickly on its feet again, shaking off the snow with a boy's laughter. I kept straight on, and very soon the laugh was on me, for the treacherous snow sank beneath me, and I took a header, too. "Who is laughing now, Oom John?" called out the President. The spirit of the boy was in the air that day about the Cañon of the Yellowstone, and the biggest boy of us all was President Roosevelt. The snow was getting so soft in the middle of the day that our return to the Mammoth Hot Springs could no longer be delayed. Accordingly, we were up in the morning, and ready to start on the home journey, a distance of twenty miles, by four o'clock. The snow bore up the horses well till mid-forenoon, when it began to give way beneath them. But by very careful management we pulled through without serious delay, and were back again at the house of Major Pitcher in time for luncheon, being the only outsiders who had ever made the tour of the Park so early in the season. A few days later I bade good-by to the President, who went on his way to California, while I made a loop of travel to Spokane, and around through Idaho and Montana, and had glimpses of the great, optimistic, sunshiny West that I shall not soon forget. PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AS A NATURE-LOVER AND OBSERVER PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AS A NATURE-LOVER AND OBSERVER Our many-sided President has a side to his nature of which the public has heard but little, and which, in view of his recent criticism of what he calls the nature fakirs, is of especial interest and importance. I refer to his keenness and enthusiasm as a student of animal life, and his extraordinary powers of observation. The charge recently made against him that he is only a sportsman and has only a sportsman's interest in nature is very wide of the mark. Why, I cannot now recall that I have ever met a man with a keener and more comprehensive interest in the wild life about us--an interest that is at once scientific and thoroughly human. And by human I do not mean anything akin to the sentimentalism that sicklies o'er so much of our more recent natural history writing, and that inspires the founding of hospitals for sick cats; but I mean his robust, manly love for all open-air life, and his sympathetic insight into it. When I first read his "Wilderness Hunter," many years ago, I was impressed by his rare combination of the sportsman and the naturalist. When I accompanied him on his trip to the Yellowstone Park in April, 1903, I got a fresh impression of the extent of his natural history knowledge and of his trained powers of observation. Nothing escaped him, from bears to mice, from wild geese to chickadees, from elk to red squirrels; he took it all in, and he took it in as only an alert, vigorous mind can take it in. On that occasion I was able to help him identify only one new bird, as I have related in the foregoing chapter. All the other birds he recognized as quickly as I did. During a recent half-day spent with the President at Sagamore Hill I got a still more vivid impression of his keenness and quickness in all natural history matters. The one passion of his life seemed natural history, and the appearance of a new warbler in his woods--new in the breeding season on Long Island--seemed an event that threw the affairs of state and of the presidential succession quite into the background. Indeed, he fairly bubbled over with delight at the thought of his new birds and at the prospect of showing them to his visitors. He said to my friend who accompanied me, John Lewis Childs, of Floral Park, a former State Senator, that he could not talk politics then, he wanted to talk and to hunt birds. And it was not long before he was as hot on the trail of that new warbler as he had recently been on the trail of some of the great trusts. Fancy a President of the United States stalking rapidly across bushy fields to the woods, eager as a boy and filled with the one idea of showing to his visitors the black-throated green warbler! We were presently in the edge of the woods and standing under a locust tree, where the President had several times seen and heard his rare visitant. "That's his note now," he said, and we all three recognized it at the same instant. It came from across a little valley fifty yards farther in the woods. We were soon standing under the tree in which the bird was singing, and presently had our glasses upon him. [Illustration: THE PRESIDENT'S HOME ON SAGAMORE HILL, SHOWING ADDITION KNOWN AS THE TROPHY ROOM From stereograph, copyright 1907, by Underwood & Underwood, New York] "There is no mistake about it, Mr. President," we both said; "it is surely the black-throated green," and he laughed in glee. "I knew it could be no other; there is no mistaking that song and those markings. 'Trees, trees, murmuring trees!' some one reports him as saying. Now if we could only find the nest;" but we did not, though it was doubtless not far off. Our warblers, both in color and in song, are bewildering even to the experienced ornithologist, but the President had mastered most of them. Not long before he had written me from Washington that he had just come in from walking with Mrs. Roosevelt about the White House grounds looking up arriving warblers. "Most of the warblers were up in the tops of the trees, and I could not get a good glimpse of them; but there was one with chestnut cheeks, with bright yellow behind the cheeks, and a yellow breast thickly streaked with black, which has puzzled me. Doubtless it is a very common kind which has for the moment slipped my memory. I saw the Blackburnian, the summer yellowbird, and the black-throated green." The next day he wrote me that he had identified the puzzling warbler; it was the Cape May. There is a tradition among newspaper men in Washington that a Cape May warbler once broke up a Cabinet meeting; maybe this was that identical bird. At luncheon he told us of some of his ornithological excursions in the White House grounds, how people would stare at him as he stood gazing up into the trees like one demented. "No doubt they thought me insane." "Yes," said Mrs. Roosevelt, "and as I was always with him, they no doubt thought I was the nurse that had him in charge." In his "Pastimes of an American Hunter" he tells of the owls that in June sometimes came after nightfall about the White House. "Sometimes they flew noiselessly to and fro, and seemingly caught big insects on the wing. At other times they would perch on the iron awning bars directly overhead. Once one of them perched over one of the windows and sat motionless, looking exactly like an owl of Pallas Athene." He knew the vireos also, and had seen and heard the white-eyed at his Virginia place, "Pine Knot," and he described its peculiar, emphatic song. As I moved along with the thought of this bird in mind and its snappy, incisive song, as I used to hear it in the old days near Washington, I fancied I caught its note in a dense bushy place below us. We paused to listen. "A catbird," said the President, and so we all agreed. We saw and heard a chewink. "Out West the chewink calls like a catbird," he observed. Continuing our walk, we skirted the edge of an orchard. Here the President called our attention to a high-hole's nest in a cavity of an old apple tree. He rapped on the trunk of the tree that we might hear the smothered cry for food of the young inside. A few days before he had found one of the half-fledged young on the ground under the tree, and had managed to reach up and drop it back into the nest. "What a boiling there was in there," he said, "when the youngster dropped in!" A cuckoo called in a tree overhead, the first I had heard this season. I feared the cold spring had cut them off. "The yellow-billed, undoubtedly," the President observed, and was confirmed by Mr. Childs. I was not certain that I knew the call of the yellow-billed from that of the black-billed. "We have them both," said the President, "but the yellow-billed is the more common." We continued our walk along a path that led down through a most delightful wood to the bay. Everywhere the marks of the President's axe were visible, as he had with his own hand thinned out and cleared up a large section of the wood. A few days previous he had seen some birds in a group of tulip-trees near the edge of the woods facing the water; he thought they were rose-breasted grosbeaks, but could not quite make them out. He had hoped to find them there now, and we looked and listened for some moments, but no birds appeared. Then he led us to a little pond in the midst of the forest where the night heron sometimes nested. A pair of them had nested there in a big water maple the year before, but the crows had broken them up. As we reached the spot the cry of the heron was heard over the tree-tops. "That is its alarm note," said the President. I remarked that it was much like the cry of the little green heron. "Yes, it is, but if we wait here till the heron returns, and we are not discovered, you would hear his other more characteristic call, a hoarse quawk." Presently we moved on along another path through the woods toward the house. A large, wide-spreading oak attracted my attention--a superb tree. "You see by the branching of that oak," said the President, "that when it grew up this wood was an open field and maybe under the plough; it is only in fields that oaks take that form." I knew it was true, but my mind did not take in the fact when I first saw the tree. His mind acts with wonderful swiftness and completeness, as I had abundant proof that day. [Illustration: A BIT OF WOODLAND ON THE SLOPE TOWARDS OYSTER BAY From stereograph, copyright 1907, by Underwood & Underwood, New York] As we walked along we discussed many questions, all bearing directly or indirectly upon natural history. The conversation was perpetually interrupted by some bird-note in the trees about us which we would pause to identify--the President's ear, I thought, being the most alert of the three. Continuing the talk, he dwelt upon the inaccuracy of most persons' seeing, and upon the unreliability as natural history of most of the stories told by guides and hunters. Sometimes writers of repute were to be read with caution. He mentioned that excellent hunting book of Colonel Dodge's, in which are described two species of the puma, one in the West called the "mountain lion," very fierce and dangerous; the other called in the East the "panther,"--a harmless and cowardly animal. "Both the same species," said the President, "and almost identical in disposition." Nothing is harder than to convince a person that he has seen wrongly. The other day a doctor accosted me in the street of one of our inland towns to tell me of a strange bird he had seen; the bird was blood-red all over and was in some low bushes by the roadside. Of course I thought of our scarlet tanager, which was then just arriving. No, he knew that bird with black wings and tail; this bird had no black upon it, but every quill and feather was vivid scarlet. The doctor was very positive, so I had to tell him we had no such bird in our state. There was the summer redbird common in the Southern States, but this place is much beyond its northern limit, and, besides, this bird is not scarlet, but is of a dull red. Of course he had seen a tanager, but in the shade of the bushes the black of the wings and tail had escaped him. This was simply a case of mis-seeing in an educated man; but in the untrained minds of trappers and woodsmen generally there is an element of the superstitious, and a love for the marvelous, which often prevents them from seeing the wild life about them just as it is. They possess the mythopoeic faculty, and they unconsciously give play to it. Thus our talk wandered as we wandered along the woods and field paths. The President brought us back by the corner of a clover meadow where he was sure a pair of red-shouldered starlings had a nest. He knew it was an unlikely place for starlings to nest, as they breed in marshes and along streams and in the low bushes on lake borders, but this pair had always shown great uneasiness when he had approached this plot of tall clover. As we drew near, the male starling appeared and uttered his alarm note. The President struck out to look for the nest, and for a time the Administration was indeed in clover, with the alarmed black-bird circling above it and showing great agitation. For my part, I hesitated on the edge of the clover patch, having a farmer's dread of seeing fine grass trampled down. I suggested to the President that he was injuring his hay crop; that the nest was undoubtedly there or near there; so he came out of the tall grass, and, after looking into the old tumbled-down barn--a regular early settler's barn, with huge timbers hewn from forest trees--that stood near by, and which the President said he preserved for its picturesqueness and its savor of old times, as well as for a place to romp in with his dogs and children, we made our way to the house. The purple finch nested in the trees about the house, and the President was greatly pleased that he was able to show us this bird also. [Illustration: A PATH IN THE WOODS LEADING TO COLD SPRING HARBOR From stereograph, copyright 1907, by Underwood & Underwood, New York] A few days previous to our visit the children had found a bird's nest on the ground, in the grass, a few yards below the front of the house. There were young birds in it, and as the President had seen the grasshopper sparrow about there, he concluded the nest belonged to it. We went down to investigate it, and found the young gone and two addled eggs in the nest. When the President saw those eggs, he said: "That is not the nest of the grasshopper sparrow, after all; those are the eggs of the song sparrow, though the nest is more like that of the vesper sparrow. The eggs of the grasshopper sparrow are much lighter in color--almost white, with brown specks." For my part, I had quite forgotten for the moment how the eggs of the little sparrow looked or differed in color from those of the song sparrow. But the President has so little to remember that he forgets none of these minor things! His bird-lore and wood-lore seem as fresh as if just learned. I asked him if he ever heard that rare piece of bird music, the flight song of the oven-bird. "Yes," he replied, "we frequently hear it of an evening, while we are sitting on the porch, right down there at the corner of the woods." Now, this flight song of the oven-bird was unknown to the older ornithologists, and Thoreau, with all his years of patient and tireless watching of birds and plants, never identified it; but the President had caught it quickly and easily, sitting on his porch at Sagamore Hill. I believe I may take the credit of being the first to identify and describe this song--back in the old "Wake Robin" days. In an inscription in a book the President had just given me he had referred to himself as my pupil. Now I was to be his pupil. In dealing with the birds I could keep pace with him pretty easily, and, maybe, occasionally lead him; but when we came to consider big game and the animal life of the globe, I was nowhere. His experience with the big game has been very extensive, and his acquaintance with the literature of the subject is far beyond my own; and he forgets nothing, while my memory is a sieve. In his study he set before me a small bronze elephant in action, made by the famous French sculptor Barye. He asked me if I saw anything wrong with it. I looked it over carefully, and was obliged to confess that, so far as I could see, it was all right. Then he placed before me another, by a Japanese artist. Instantly I saw what was wrong with the Frenchman's elephant. Its action was like that of a horse or a cow, or any trotting animal--a hind and a front foot on opposite sides moving together. The Japanese had caught the real movement of the animal, which is that of a pacer--both legs on the same side at a time. What different effects the two actions gave the statuettes! The free swing of the Japanese elephant you at once recognize as the real thing. The President laughed, and said he had never seen any criticism of Barye's elephant on this ground, or any allusion to his mistake; it was his own discovery. I was fairly beaten at my own game of observation. He then took down a copy of his "Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail," and pointed out to me the mistakes the artist had made in some of his drawings of big Western game. "Do you see anything wrong in the head of the pronghorn?" he asked, referring to the animal which the hunter is bringing in on the saddle behind him. Again I had to confess that I could not. Then he showed me the mounted head of a pronghorn over the mantel in one of his rooms, and called my attention to the fact that the eye was close under the root of the horn, whereas in the picture the artist had placed it about two inches too low. And in the artist's picture of the pronghorn, which heads Chapter IX, he had made the tail much too long, as he had the tail of the elk on the opposite page. I had heard of Mr. Roosevelt's attending a fair in Orange County, while he was Governor, where a group of mounted deer were exhibited. It seems the group had had rough usage, and one of the deer had lost its tail and a new one had been supplied. No one had noticed anything wrong with it till Mr. Roosevelt came along. "But the minute he clapped his eyes on that group," says the exhibitor, "he called out, 'Here, Gunther, what do you mean by putting a white-tail deer's tail on a black-tail deer?" Such closeness and accuracy of observation even few naturalists can lay claim to. I mentioned the incident to him, and he recalled it laughingly. He then took down a volume on the deer family which he had himself had a share in writing, and pointed out two mistakes in the naming of the pictures which had been overlooked. The picture of the "white-tail in flight" was the black-tail of Colorado, and the picture of the black-tail of Colorado showed the black-tail of Columbia--the difference this time being seen in the branching of the horns. The President took us through his house and showed us his trophies of the chase--bearskins of all sorts and sizes on the floors, panther and lynx skins on the chairs, and elk heads and deer heads on the walls, and one very large skin of the gray timber wolf. We examined the teeth of the wolf, barely more than an inch long, and we all laughed at the idea of its reaching the heart of a caribou through the breast by a snap, or any number of snaps, as it has been reported to do. I doubt if it could have reached the heart of a gobbler turkey in that way at a single snap. [Illustration: A YEARLING IN THE APPLE ORCHARD From stereograph, copyright 1907, by Underwood & Underwood, New York] The President's interest in birds, and in natural history generally, dates from his youth. While yet in his teens he published a list of the birds of Franklin County, New York. He showed me a bird journal which he kept in Egypt when he was a lad of fourteen, and a case of three African plovers which he had set up at that time; and they were well done. Evidently one of his chief sources of pleasure at Sagamore Hill is the companionship of the birds. He missed the bobolink, the seaside finch, and the marsh wren, but his woods and grounds abounded in other species. He knew and enjoyed not only all the more common birds, but many rarer and shyer ones that few country people ever take note of--such as the Maryland yellow-throat, the black and white creeper, the yellow-breasted chat, the oven-bird, the prairie warbler, the great crested flycatcher, the wood pewee, and the sharp-tailed finch. He enjoyed the little owls, too. "It is a pity the little-eared owl is called a screech owl. Its tremulous, quavering cry is not a screech at all, and has an attraction of its own. These little owls come up to the house after dark, and are fond of sitting on the elk's antlers over the gable. When the moon is up, by choosing one's position, the little owl appears in sharp outline against the bright disk, seated on his many-tined perch." A few days after my visit he wrote me that he had identified the yellow-throated or Dominican warbler in his woods, the first he had ever seen. I had to confess to him that I had never seen the bird. It is very rare north of Maryland. The same letter records several interesting little incidents in the wild life about him: "The other night I took out the boys in rowboats for a camping-out expedition. We camped on the beach under a low bluff near the grove where a few years ago on a similar expedition we saw a red fox. This time two young foxes, evidently this year's cubs, came around the camp half a dozen times during the night, coming up within ten yards of the fire to pick up scraps and seeming to be very little bothered by our presence. Yesterday on the tennis ground I found a mole shrew. He was near the side lines first. I picked him up in my handkerchief, for he bit my hand, and after we had all looked at him I let him go; but in a few minutes he came back and deliberately crossed the tennis grounds by the net. As he ran over the level floor of the court, his motion reminded all of us of the motion of those mechanical mice that run around on wheels when wound up. A chipmunk that lives near the tennis court continually crosses it when the game is in progress. He has done it two or three times this year, and either he or his predecessor has had the same habit for several years. I am really puzzled to know why he should go across this perfectly bare surface, with the players jumping about on it, when he is not frightened and has no reason that I can see for going. Apparently he grows accustomed to the players and moves about among them as he would move about, for instance, among a herd of cattle." The President is a born nature-lover, and he has what does not always go with this passion--remarkable powers of observation. He sees quickly and surely, not less so with the corporeal eye than with the mental. His exceptional vitality, his awareness all around, gives the clue to his powers of seeing. The chief qualification of a born observer is an alert, sensitive, objective type of mind, and this Roosevelt has in a preëminent degree. You may know the true observer, not by the big things he sees, but by the little things; and then not by the things he sees with effort and premeditation, but by his effortless, unpremeditated seeing--the quick, spontaneous action of his mind in the presence of natural objects. Everybody sees the big things, and anybody can go out with note-book and opera-glass and make a dead set at the birds, or can go into the northern forests and interview guides and trappers and Indians, and stare in at the door of the "school of the woods." None of these things evince powers of observation; they only evince industry and intention. In fact, born observers are about as rare as born poets. Plenty of men can see straight and report straight what they see; but the men who see what others miss, who see quickly and surely, who have the detective eye, like Sherlock Holmes, who "get the drop," so to speak, on every object, who see minutely and who see whole, are rare indeed. President Roosevelt comes as near fulfilling this ideal as any man I have known. His mind moves with wonderful celerity, and yet as an observer he is very cautious, jumps to no hasty conclusions. He had written me, toward the end of May, that while at Pine Knot in Virginia he had seen a small flock of passenger pigeons. As I had been following up the reports of wild pigeons from various parts of our own state during the past two or three years, this statement of the President's made me prick up my ears. In my reply I said, "I hope you are sure about those pigeons," and I told him of my interest in the subject, and also how all reports of pigeons in the East had been discredited by a man in Michigan who was writing a book on the subject. This made him prick up his ears, and he replied that while he felt very certain he had seen a small band of the old wild pigeons, yet he might have been deceived; the eye sometimes plays one tricks. He said that in his old ranch days he and a cowboy companion thought one day that they had discovered a colony of _black_ prairie dogs, thanks entirely to the peculiar angle at which the light struck them. He said that while he was President he did not want to make any statement, even about pigeons, for the truth of which he did not have good evidence. He would have the matter looked into by a friend at Pine Knot upon whom he could depend. He did so, and convinced himself and me also that he had really seen wild pigeons. I had the pleasure of telling him that in the same mail with his letter came the news to me of a large flock of wild pigeons having been seen near the Beaverkill in Sullivan County, New York. While he was verifying his observation I was in Sullivan County verifying this report. I saw and questioned persons who had seen the pigeons, and I came away fully convinced that a flock of probably a thousand birds had been seen there late in the afternoon of May 23. "You need have no doubt about it," said the most competent witness, an old farmer. "I lived here when the pigeons nested here in countless numbers forty years ago. I know pigeons as I know folks, and these were pigeons." [Illustration: HALLWAY, SAGAMORE HILL From stereograph, copyright 1907, by Underwood & Underwood, New York] I mention this incident of the pigeons because I know that the fact that they have been lately seen in considerable numbers will be good news to a large number of readers. The President's nature-love is deep and abiding. Not every bird student succeeds in making the birds a part of his life. Not till you have long and sympathetic intercourse with them, in fact, not till you have loved them for their own sake, do they enter into and become a part of your life. I could quote many passages from President Roosevelt's books which show how he has felt and loved the birds, and how discriminating his ear is with regard to their songs. Here is one:-- "The meadow-lark is a singer of a higher order [than the plains skylark], deserving to rank with the best. Its song has length, variety, power, and rich melody, and there is in it sometimes a cadence of wild sadness inexpressibly touching. Yet I cannot say that either song would appeal to others as it appeals to me; for to me it comes forever laden with a hundred memories and associations--with the sight of dim hills reddening in the dawn, with the breath of cool morning winds blowing across lonely plains, with the scent of flowers on the sunlit prairie, with the motion of fiery horses, with all the strong thrill of eager and buoyant life. I doubt if any man can judge dispassionately the bird-songs of his own country; he cannot disassociate them from the sights and sounds of the land that is so dear to him." Here is another, touching upon some European song-birds as compared with some of our own: "No one can help liking the lark; it is such a brave, honest, cheery bird, and moreover its song is uttered in the air, and is very long-sustained. But it is by no means a musician of the first rank. The nightingale is a performer of a very different and far higher order; yet though it is indeed a notable and admirable singer, it is an exaggeration to call it unequaled. In melody, and above all in that finer, higher melody where the chords vibrate with the touch of eternal sorrow, it cannot rank with such singers as the wood-thrush and the hermit-thrush. The serene ethereal beauty of the hermit's song, rising and falling through the still evening, under the archways of hoary mountain forests that have endured from time everlasting; the golden, leisurely chiming of the wood-thrush, sounding on June afternoons, stanza by stanza, through the sun-flecked groves of tall hickories, oaks, and chestnuts; with these there is nothing in the nightingale's song to compare. But in volume and continuity, in tuneful, voluble, rapid outpouring and ardor, above all in skillful and intricate variation of theme, its song far surpasses that of either of the thrushes. In all these respects it is more just to compare it with the mocking-bird's, which, as a rule, likewise falls short precisely on those points where the songs of the two thrushes excel." In his "Pastimes of an American Hunter" he says: "It is an incalculable added pleasure to any one's sense of happiness if he or she grows to know, even slightly and imperfectly, how to read and enjoy the wonder-book of nature. All hunters should be nature-lovers. It is to be hoped that the days of mere wasteful, boastful slaughter are past, and that from now on the hunter will stand foremost in working for the preservation and perpetuation of the wild life, whether big or little." Surely this man is the rarest kind of a sportsman. 
37278	----	[Illustration: FLY FISHING in WONDERLAND Cover] _A HILL VAGABOND_ _Snakin' wood down the mount'ins, Fishin' the little streams; Smokin' my pipe in the twilight, An' dreamin' over old dreams;_ _Breathin' the breath o' the cool snows, Sniffin' the scent o' the pine; Watchin' the hurryin' river, An' hearin' the coyotes whine._ _This is life in the mount'ins, Summer an' winter an' fall, Up to the rainy springtime, When the birds begin to call._ _Then I fix my rod and tackle, I read, I smoke an' I sing. Glad like the birds to be livin'-- Livin' the life of a king!_ --_Louise Paley in The Saturday Evening Post._ COPYRIGHT, 1910, By O. P. BARNES [Illustration] TO JOHN GILL IN WHOSE COMPANIONSHIP I HAVE PASSED MANY DELIGHTFUL DAYS ALONG THE STREAMS AND IN THE WOODS; QUIET ENJOYABLE EVENINGS WATCHING THE ALPENGLOW ILLUMINATE THE SNOW-CAPPED MOUNTAINS; AND STORMY NIGHTS BESIDE THE SEA [Illustration] _TABLE OF CONTENTS_ _GOOD FISHING! A FOREWORD_ _6_ _IN THE DIM, RED DAWN_ _9_ _THE TROUT--NATIVE AND PLANTED_ _14_ _LET'S GO A-FISHING!_ _21_ _A CHAPTER ON TROUT FLIES_ _28_ _GRIZZLY LAKE AND LAKE ROSE_ _35_ _A MORNING ON IRON CREEK_ _40_ _AN AFTERNOON ON THE FIREHOLE_ _45_ _TRAILS FROM YANCEY'S AND OTHER TRAILS_ _51_ [Illustration] _GOOD FISHING!_ _This little writing has to do with the streams and the trout therein of that portion of our country extending southward from the southern boundary of Montana to the Teton mountains, and eastward from the eastern boundary of Idaho to the Absaroka range. Lying on both sides of the continental divide, its surface is veined by the courses of a multitude of streams flowing either to the Pacific Ocean or to the Gulf of Mexico, while from the southern rim of this realm of wonders the waters reach the Gulf of California through the mighty canyons carved by the Colorado._ _This region has abundant attractions for seekers of outdoor pleasures, and for none more than for the angler. Here, within a space about seventy miles square, nature has placed a bewildering diversity of rivers, mountains, lakes, canyons, geysers and waterfalls not found elsewhere in the world. Fortunately, Congress early reserved the greater part of this domain as a public pleasure ground. Under the wise administration of government officials the natural beauties are protected and made accessible by superb roads. The streams also, many of which were barren of fish, have, by successful plantings and intelligent protection, become all that the sportsman can wish. The angler who wanders through the woods in almost any direction will scarcely fail to find some picturesque lake or swift flowing stream where the best of sport may be had with the rod._ _Several years ago I made my first visit to this country, and it has been my privilege to return thither annually on fishing excursions of varying duration. These outings have been so enjoyable and have yielded so much pleasure at the time and afterwards, that I should like to sound the angler's pack-cry, "Good Fishing!" loudly enough to lead others to go also._ _The photographs from which the illustrations were made, except where due credit is given to others, were taken with a small hand camera which has hung at my belt in crossing mountains and wading streams, and are mainly of such scenes as one comes upon in out-of-the-way places while following that "most virtuous pastime" of fly-casting._ _THE AUTHOR._ [Illustration] [Illustration: _THE DIM, RED DAWN_] _IN THE DIM, RED DAWN_ [Illustration: _A Leaping Salmon_ _Photo by Hugh M. Smith_] BEFORE exercising the right of eminent domain over these waters, it may be profitable to say a word in explanation of the fact that hardly more than a score of years ago many of these beautiful lakes and streams were absolutely without fish life. This will aid us in understanding what the government has done and is still doing to create an ideal paradise for the angler among these mountains and plateaus. There was a time, and this too in comparatively recent geological eras, when the waters of that region now under consideration abounded with fish of many species. The clumsy catfish floundered along the shallows and reedy bayous in company with the solemn red-horse and a long line of other fishes of present and past generations. The lordly salmon found ideal spawning grounds in the gravelly beds of the streams draining to the westward, and doubtless came hither annually in great numbers. It may be that the habit of the Columbia river salmon to return yearly from the Pacific and ascend that stream was bred into the species during the days when its waters ran in an uninterrupted channel from source to sea. It is true that elsewhere salmon manifest this anadromous impulse in as marked a degree as in the Columbia and its tributaries, yet, the conclusion that these heroic pilgrimages are _habit_ resulting from similar movements, accidental at first, but extending over countless years, is natural, and probably correct. When one sees these noble fish congested by thousands at the foot of some waterfall up which not one in a hundred is able to leap, or observes them ascending the brooks in the distant mountains where there is not sufficient water to cover them, gasping, bleeding, dying, but pushing upward with their last breath, the figure of the crusaders in quest of an ancient patrimony arises in the mind, so strong is the simile and so active is your sympathy with the fish. [Illustration: _Mammoth Hot Springs_] In those distant days the altitude of this region was not great, nor was the ocean as remote from its borders as now. The forces which already had lifted considerable areas above the sea and fashioned them into an embryo continent were still at work. The earth-shell, yet soft and plastic, was not strong enough to resist the double strain caused by its cooling, shrinking outer crust and the expanding, molten interior. Volcanic eruptions, magnificent in extent, resulted and continued at intervals throughout the Pliocene period. These eruptions were accompanied by prodigious outpours of lava that altered the topography of the entire mountain section. Nowhere else in all creation has such an amount of matter been forced up from the interior of the earth to flow in red-hot rivers to the distant seas as in the western part of the United States. What a panorama of flame it was, and what a sublime impression it must have made on the minds of the primeval men who witnessed it from afar as they paddled their canoes over the troubled waters that reflected the red-litten heavens beneath them! Is it remarkable that the geyser region of the Park is a place of evil repute among the savages and a thing to be passed by on the other side, even to the present day? [Illustration: _Detail from Jupiter Terrace_] When the elemental forces subsided the waters were fishless, and all aquatic life had been destroyed in the creation of the glories of the Park and its surroundings. Streams that once had their origins in sluggish, lily-laden lagoons, now took their sources from the lofty continental plateaus. In reaching the lower levels these streams, in most instances, fell over cataracts so high as to be impassable to fish, thus precluding their being restocked by natural processes. From this cause the upper Gardiner, the Gibbon and the Firehole rivers and their tributaries--streams oftenest seen by the tourist--were found to contain no trout when man entered upon the scene. From a sportsman's viewpoint the troutless condition of the very choicest waters was fortunate, as it left them free for the planting of such varieties as are best adapted to the food and character of each stream. The blob or miller's thumb existed in the Gibbon river, and perhaps in other streams, above the falls. Its presence in such places is due to its ability to ascend very precipitous water courses by means of the filamentous algae which usually border such torrents. I once discovered specimens of this odd fish in the algous growth covering the rocky face of the falls of the Des Chutes river, at Tumwater, in the state of Washington, and there is little doubt that they do ascend nearly vertical walls where the conditions are favorable. [Illustration: _Tumwater Falls_] The presence of the red-throat trout of the Snake river in the head waters of the Missouri is easily explained by the imperfect character of the water-shed between the Snake and Yellowstone rivers. Atlantic Creek, tributary to the Yellowstone, and Pacific Creek, tributary to the Snake, both rise in the same marshy meadow on the continental divide. From this it is argued that, during the sudden melting of heavy snows in early times, it was possible for specimens to cross from one side to the other, and it is claimed that an interchange of individuals might occur by this route at the present day.[A] Certain it is that these courageous fish exhibit the same disregard for their lives that is spoken of previously as characteristic of their congeners, the salmon. Trout are frequently found lying dead on the grass of a pasture or meadow where they were stranded the night previous in an attempt to explore a rivulet caused by a passing shower. The mortality among fish of this species in irrigated districts is alarming. At each opening of the sluice gates they go out with the current and perish in the fields. Unless there is a more rigid enforcement of the law requiring that the opening into the ditches be screened, trout must soon disappear from the irrigated sections. The supposition that these fish have crossed the continental divide, as it were, overland, serves the double purpose of explaining the presence of the trout, and the absence of the chub, sucker and white-fish of the Snake River from Yellowstone Lake. The latter are feeble fish at best, and generally display a preference for the quiet waters of the deeper pools where they feed near the bottom and with little exertion. Neither the chub, sucker nor white-fish possesses enough hardihood to undertake so precarious a journey nor sufficient vitality to survive it. [Illustration: _Gibbon Falls_] FOOTNOTE: [Footnote A: NOTE--"As already stated, the trout of Yellowstone Lake certainly came into the Missouri basin by way of Two-Ocean Pass from the Upper Snake River basin. One of the present writers has caught them in the very act of going over Two-Ocean Pass from Pacific into Atlantic drainage. The trout of the two sides of the pass cannot be separated, and constitute a single species." Jordan & Evermann.] _THE TROUT--NATIVE AND PLANTED_ [Illustration: _A Place to be Remembered_] TO MANY people a trout is merely a _trout_, with no distinction as to variety or origin; and some there be who know him only as a _fish_, to be eaten without grace and with much gossip. Again, there are those who have written at great length of this and that species and sub-species, with many words and nice distinctions relative to vomerine teeth, branchiostegal rays and other anatomical differences. I would not lead you, even if your patience permitted, along the tedious path of the scientist, but will follow the middle path and note only such differences in the members of this interesting family as may be apparent to the unpracticed eye and by which the novice may distinguish between the varieties that come to his creel. In a letter to Doctor David Starr Jordan, in September, 1889, Hon. Marshall McDonald, then U. S. Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries, wrote, "I have proposed to undertake to stock these waters with different species of Salmonidae, reserving a distinct river basin for each." Every one will commend the wisdom of the original intent as it existed in the mind of Mr. McDonald. It implied that a careful study would be made of the waters of each basin to determine the volume and character of the current, its temperature, the depth to which it froze during the sub-arctic winters, and the kinds and quantities of fish-food found in each. With this data well established, and knowing, as fish culturists have for centuries, what conditions are favorable to the most desirable kinds of trout, there was a field for experimentation and improvement probably not existing elsewhere. [Illustration: _Willow Park Camp_] [Illustration: _Klahowya_] The commission began its labors in 1889, and the record for that year shows among other plants, the placing of a quantity of Loch Leven trout in the Firehole above the Kepler Cascade. The year following nearly ten thousand German trout fry were planted in Nez Perce Creek, the principal tributary of the Firehole. Either the agents of the commission authorized to make these plants were ignorant of the purpose of the Commissioner at Washington, or they did not know with what immunity fish will pass over the highest falls. Whatever the reason for this error, the die is cast, and the only streams that have a single distinct variety are the upper Gardiner and its tributaries, where the eastern brook trout has the field, or rather the waters, to himself. The first attempt to stock any stream was a transfer of the native trout of another stream to Lava Creek above the falls. I mention this because the presence of the native trout in this locality has led some to believe that they were there from the first, and thus constituted an exception to the rule that no trout were found in streams above vertical waterfalls. [Illustration: _On the Trail to Grizzly Lake_] [Illustration: _The Little Firehole_] Many are confused by the variety of names applied to the native trout of the Yellowstone, _Salmo lewisi_. Red-throat trout, cut-throat trout, black-spotted trout, mountain trout, Rocky Mountain trout, salmon trout, and a host of other less generally known local names have been applied to him. This is in a measure due to the widely different localities and conditions under which he is found, and to the very close resemblance he bears to his first cousins, _Salmo clarkii_, of the streams flowing into the Pacific from northern California to southern Alaska; and to _Salmo mykiss_ of the Kamchatkan rivers. Perhaps the very abundance of this trout has cheapened the estimate in which he is held by some anglers. Nevertheless, he is a royal fish. In streams with rapid currents he is always a hard fighter, and his meat is high-colored and well-flavored. The name "black-spotted" trout describes this fish more accurately than any other of his cognomens. The spots are carbon-black and have none of the vermilion and purple colors that characterize the brook trout. The spots are not, however, always uniform in size and number. In some instances they are entirely wanting on the anterior part of the body, but their absence is not sufficiently important to constitute a varietal distinction. The red dash under the throat (inner edge of the mandible) from which the names "cut-throat" and "red-throat" are derived, is never absent in specimens taken here, and, as no other trout of this locality is so marked, it affords the tyro an unfailing means of determining the nature of his catch. [Illustration: _The Path Through the Pines_] If the eastern brook trout, _Salvelinus fontinalis_, could read and understand but a part of the praises that have been sung of him in prose and verse through all the years, what a pampered princeling and nuisance he would become! But to his credit, he has gone on being the same sensible, shrewd, wary and delightful fish, adapting himself to all sorts of mountain streams, lakes, ponds and rivers, and always giving the largest returns to the angler in the way of health and happiness. The literature concerning the methods employed in his capture alone would make a library in which we should find the names of soldiers, statesmen and sovereigns, and the great of the earth. Aelian, who lived in the second century A. D., describes, in his _De Animalium Natura_, how the Macedonians took a fish with speckled skin from a certain river by means of a hook tied about with red wool, to which were fitted two feathers from a cock's wattle. More than four hundred years prior to this Theocritus mentioned a method of fishing with a "fallacious bait suspended from a rod," but unfortunately failed to tell us how the fly was made. If by any chance you have never met the brook trout you may know him infallibly from his brethren by the dark olive, worm-like lines, technically called "vermiculations," along the back, as he alone displays these heraldic markings. [Illustration: _The Melan Bridge_] Throughout the northwest the brown trout, _Salmo fario_, is generally known as the "von Behr" trout, from the name of the German fish-culturist who sent the first shipment of their eggs to this country. This fish may be distinguished at sight by the coarse scales which give his body a dark grayish appearance, slightly resembling a mullet, and by the large dull red spots along the lateral line. There are also three beautiful red spots on the adipose fin. The Loch Leven trout, _Salmo levenensis_, comes from a lake of that name in southern Scotland. He is a canny, uncertain fellow, and nothing like as hardy as we might expect from his origin. In the Park waters he has not justified the fame for gameness which he brings from abroad, but there are occasions, particularly in the vicinity of the Lone Star geyser, when he comes on with a very pretty rush. In general appearance he somewhat resembles the von Behr trout, but is a more graceful and finely organized fish than the latter. He is the only trout of this locality that has no red on his body, and its absence is sufficient to distinguish him from all others. [Illustration: _Distant View of Mt. Holmes_] No one can possibly mistake the rainbow trout, _Salmo irideus_, for any other species. The large, brilliant spots with which his silvery-bluish body is covered, and that filmy iridescence so admired by every one, will identify him anywhere. There is, however, a marked difference in the brilliance of this iridescence between fish of different ages as well as between stream-raised and hatchery-bred specimens, and even among fish from the upper and lower courses of the same stream. [Illustration: _Learning to Cast_] The question as to which is the more beautiful, the rainbow or the brook trout, has often been debated with much feeling by their respective champions, and will doubtless remain undecided so long as both may be taken from clear-flowing brooks, where sky and landscape blend with the soul of man to make him as supremely happy as it is ever the lot of mortals to become. For it is the joy within and around you that supplies a mingled pleasure far deeper than that afforded by the mere beauty of the fish. You will remember that "Doctor Boteler" said of the strawberry, "Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did." So, I have said at different times of _both_ brook and rainbow trout, "Doubtless God could have made a more beautiful fish than this, but doubtless God never did." [Illustration: _Scene on the Gibbon River_] [Illustration: _Above Kepler Cascade_] During a recent trip through the Rocky Mountains I remained over night in a town of considerable mining importance. In the evening I walked up the main street passing an almost unbroken line of saloons, gambling houses and dance halls, then crossed the street to return, and found the same conditions on that side, except that, if possible, the crowds were noisier. Just before reaching the hotel, I came upon a small restaurant in the window of which was an aquarium containing a number of rainbow trout. One beautiful fish rested quivering, pulsating, resplendent, poised apparently in mid air, while the rays from an electric light within were so refracted that they formed an aureola about the fish, seemingly transfiguring it. I paused long in meditation on the scene, till aroused from my revery by the blare of a graphophone from a resort across the street. It sang: "Last night as I lay sleeping, there came a dream so fair, I stood in old Jerusalem, beside the temple there; I heard the children singing and ever as they sang Methought the voice of angels from heaven in answer rang, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, lift up your gates and sing Hosanna in the highest, hosanna to your king." I made the sign of Calvary in the vapor on the glass and departed into the night pondering of many things. _LETS GO A-FISHING_ "No man is in perfect condition to enjoy scenery unless he has a fly-rod in his hand and a fly-hook in his pocket." _Wm. C. Prime_ [Illustration: _Lower Falls of the Yellowstone_] MANY who know these mountains and valleys best have gained their knowledge with a rod in hand, and you will hear these individuals often express surprise that a greater number of tourists do not avail themselves of the splendid opportunities offered for fishing. In no other way can so much pleasure be found on the trip, and by no other means can you put yourself so immediately and completely in sympathy with the spirit of the wilderness. Besides, it is this doing something more than being a mere passenger that gives the real interest and zest to existence and that yields the best returns in the memories of delightful days. The ladies may be taken along without the least inconvenience and to the greater enjoyment of the outing. What if the good dame has never seen an artificial fly! Take her anyway, if she will go, and we will make her acquainted with streams where she shall have moderate success if she but stand in the shadow of the willows and tickle the surface of the pool with a single fly. You will feel mutually grateful, each for the presence of the other; and, depend upon it, it will make the recollection doubly enjoyable. We shall never know and name all the hot springs and geysers of this wonderland, but we may become acquainted with the voice of a stream and know it as the speech of a friend. We may establish fairly intimate relations with the creatures of the wood and be admitted to some sort of brotherhood with them if we conduct ourselves becomingly. The timid grouse will acknowledge the caress of our bamboo with an arching of the neck, and the beaver will bring for our inspection his freight of willow or alder, and will at times swim confidently between our legs when we are wading in deep water. [Illustration: _The Black Giant Geyser_] The author of "Little Rivers" draws this pleasing picture of the delights of fishing: "You never get so close to the birds as when you are wading quietly down a little river, casting your fly deftly under the branches for the wary trout, but ever on the lookout for all the pleasant things that nature has to bestow upon you. Here you shall come upon the catbird at her morning bath, and hear her sing, in a clump of pussy-willows, that low, tender, confidential song which she keeps for the hours of domestic intimacy. The spotted sand-piper will run along the stones before you, crying, 'wet-feet, wet-feet!' and bowing and teetering in the friendliest manner, as if to show you the best pools." Surely, if this invitation move you not, no voice of mine will serve to stir your laggard legs. One should not, however, go to the wilderness and expect it to receive him at once with open arms. It was there before him and will remain long after he is forgotten. But approach it humbly and its asperities will soften and in time become akin to affection. As one looks for the first time through the black, basaltic archway at the entrance to the Park, the nearby mountains have an air of distance and unfriendliness, nor do they speedily assume a more sympathetic relation toward the visitor. A region in which the world's formative forces linger ten thousand years after they have disappeared elsewhere will make no hasty alliance with strangers. The heavy foot of time treads so slowly here that one must come often and with observant eye to note the advance from season to season and to feel that he has any part or interest in it. [Illustration: _Park Gateway_] When we can judge correctly from the height of the up-springing vegetation whether the forest fire that blackened this hillside raged one year ago or ten; when we have noted that the bowl of this terrace, increasing in height by the insensible deposit of carbonate of lime from the overflowing waters, appears to outstrip from year to year the growth of the neighboring cedars; when these and a multitude of kindred phenomena are comprehended, how interested we become! Nothing said here is intended to encourage undue familiarity with the wild game. "Shinny on your own side," is a good motto with any game, and more than one can testify of sudden and unexpected trouble brought on themselves by meddlesomeness. In following an elk trail through the woods one afternoon, I found a pine tree had fallen across the path making a barrier about hip-high. While looking about to see whether any elk had gone over the trail since the tree fell, and, if so, whether they had leaped the barrier or had passed around it by way of the root or top, a squirrel with a pine cone in his teeth, sprang on the butt of the tree and came jauntily along the log. Some twenty feet away he spied me, and suddenly his whole manner and bearing changed. He dropped the cone and came on with a bow-legged, swaggering air, the very embodiment of insolent proprietorship. The top of my rod extended over the log, and as he came under it I gave him a smart switch across the back. Now, there had been nothing in my previous acquaintance with squirrels to lead me to think them other than most timid animals. But the slight blow of the rod-tip transformed this one into a Fury. With a peculiar half-bark, half-scream, he leaped at my face and slashed at my neck and ears with his powerful jaws. So strong was he that I could not drag him loose when his teeth were buried in my coat collar. I finally choked him till he loosened his hold and flung him ten feet away. Back he came to the attack with the speed of a wild cat. It was either retreat for me or death to the squirrel, and I retreated. Never before had I witnessed such an exhibition of diabolical malevolence, and, though I have laughed over it since, I was too much upset for an hour afterward to see the funny side of the encounter. [Illustration: _Bear Cubs_ _Photo by F. J. Haynes_] The ways of the wilderness have ever been pleasant to my feet, and whether it was taking the ouananiche in Canada or the Beardslee trout in the shadow of the Olympics, it has all been good. Without detracting from the sport afforded by any other locality, I honestly believe that, taking into consideration climate, comfort, scenery, environment, and the opportunities for observing wild life, this region has no equal for trout fishing under the sun. I am aware that he who praises the fishing on any stream will ever have two classes of critics--the unthinking and the unsuccessful. To these I would say, "Whether your success shall be greater or less than mine will depend upon the conditions of weather and stream and on your own skill, and none of these do I control." In that splendid book, "Fly-Rods and Fly-Tackle," Mr. Henry P. Wells relates an instance in which he and his guide took an angler to a distant lake with the certain promise and expectation of fine fishing. After recording the keen disappointment he felt that not a single trout would show itself, he says, "Then I vowed a vow, which I commend to the careful consideration of all anglers, old and new alike--never again, under any circumstances, will I recommend any fishing locality in terms substantially stronger than these 'At that place I have done so and so; under like conditions it is believed that you can repeat it.' We are apt to speak of a place and the sport it affords as we found it, whereas reflection and experience should teach us that it is seldom exactly the same, even for two successive days." [Illustration: _Elk In Winter_ _Photo by F. J. Haynes_] There is a large number of fly-fishermen in the east who sincerely believe that the best sport cannot be had in the streams of the Rocky Mountains, and this belief has a grain of truth when the fishing is confined solely to native trout and to streams of indifferent interest. But when the waters flow through such picturesque surroundings as are found in the Yellowstone National Park, when from among these waters one may select the stream that shall furnish the trout he loves most to take, the objection is most fully answered. The writer can attest how difficult it was to outgrow the conviction that a certain brook of the Alleghanies had no equal, but he now gladly concedes that there are streams in the west just as prolific of fish and as pleasant to look upon as the one he followed in boyhood. It is proper enough to maintain that: "The fields are greenest where our childish feet have strayed," but when we permit a mere sentiment to prevent the fullest enjoyment of the later opportunities of life, your beautiful sentiment becomes a harmful prejudice. When the prophet required Naaman to go down and bathe in the river Jordan, Naaman was exceeding wroth, and exclaimed, "Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than any in Israel?" The record hath it that Naaman went and bathed in the Jordan, and that his _body_ was healed of its _leprosy_ and his _mind_ of its _conceit_. So, when my angling friend from New Brunswick inquires whether I have fished the Waskahegan or have tried the lower pools of the Assametaquaghan for salmon, I am compelled to answer _no_. But there comes a longing to give him a day's outing on Hell-Roaring Creek or to see him a-foul of a five-pound von Behr trout amid the steam of the Riverside Geyser. The streams of Maine and Canada are delightful and possess a charm that lingers in the mind like the minor chords of almost forgotten music, but they cannot be compared with the full-throated torrents of the Absarokas. As well liken a fugue with flute and cymbals to an oratorio with bombardon and sky-rockets! [Illustration: _Having Eaten and Drunk_] [Illustration: _Who Hath Seen the Beaver Busied?_ _Photo by Biological Survey_] Who hath seen the beaver busied? Who hath watched the black-tail mating? Who hath lain alone to hear the wild-goose cry? Who hath worked the chosen water where the ouananiche is waiting, Or the sea-trout's jumping-crazy for the fly? He must go--go--go--away from here! On the other side the world he's overdue. 'Send your road is clear before you when the old Spring-fret comes o'er you And the Red Gods call for you! Do you know the blackened timber--do you know that racing stream With the raw right-angled log-jam at the end: And the bar of sun-warmed shingle where a man may bask and dream To the click of shod canoe poles round the bend? It is there that we are going with our rods and reels and traces, To a silent smoky Indian that we know-- To a couch of new-pulled hemlock with the starlight on our faces, For the Red Gods call us out and we must go! The Feet of the Young Men--_Kipling._ _A CHAPTER ON TROUT FLIES_ "Thyse ben xij. flyes wyth whytch ye shall angle to ye trought and graylling, and dubbe lyke as ye shall now hear me tell." _Dame Juliana Berners._ [Illustration: Water is the Master Mason] FIVE centuries have passed since the dignified and devout prioress of St. Albans indited the above sentence, and the tribute to the sterling good sense therein is that the growing years have but added to its authority. A dozen well selected varieties of flies, dubbe them how ye lyke, are well-nigh sufficient for any locality. There may be streams that require a wider range of choice, but these are so rare that they may safely be considered as exceptional. Not that any particular harm has resulted from the unreasonable increase in the number and varieties of artificial flies. They amuse and gratify the tyro and in no wise disturb the master of the art. But an over-plethoric fly book in the possession of a stranger will, with the knowing, place the angling ability of the owner under suspicion. Better a thousand-fold, are the single half-dozen flies the uses and seasons of which are fully understood than a multitude of meaningless creations. The angler should strive to attain an intelligent understanding of the principal features of the artificial fly and how a change in the form and color of these features affects the behavior of the fish for which he angles. In studying this matter men have gone down in diving suits that they might better see the fly as it appeared when presented to the fish, and there is nothing in their reports to encourage extremely fine niceties in fly-dressing. One may know a great deal of artists and their work and yet truly know but little of the value of _art_ itself; or have been a great reader of economics, and yet have little practical knowledge of that complex product of society called _civilization_. So, I had rather possess the knowledge a dear friend of mine has of Dickens, Shakespeare, and the Bible alone than to be able to discuss "literature" in general before clubs and societies. Several years of angling experience in the far west have convinced the writer that flies of full bodies and positive colors are the most killing, and that the palmers are slightly better than the hackles. Of the standard patterns of flies the most successful are the coachman, royal coachman, black hackle, Parmacheene Belle, with the silver doctor for lake fishing, in the order named. The trout here, with the exception of those in Lake Yellowstone, are fairly vigorous fighters, and it is important that your tackle should be strong and sure rather than elegant. With a view of determining whether it were possible to make a fly that would answer nearly all the needs of the mountain fisherman, I began, in 1897, a series of experiments in fly-tying that continued over a period of five years. The result is the production of what is widely known in the west as the Pitcher fly. As before indicated, this fly did not spring full panoplied into being, but was evolved from standard types by gradual modifications. The body is a furnace hackle, tied palmer; tail of barred wood-duck feather; wing snow-white, to which is added a blue cheek. The name, "Pitcher," was given to it as a compliment to Major John Pitcher, who, as acting superintendent of the Yellowstone National Park, has done much to improve the quality of the fishing in these streams. From a dozen states anglers have written testifying to the killing qualities of the Pitcher Fly, and the extracts following show that its success is not confined to any locality nor to any single species of trout: "The Pitcher flies you gave me have aided me in filling my twenty-pound basket three times in the last three weeks. Have had the best sport this season I have ever enjoyed on the Coeur d'Alene waters, and I can truthfully say I owe it all to the Pitcher fly and its designer." E. R. DENNY, Wallace, Idaho. [Illustration: _Following a Little River_] [Illustration: _At the Head of the Meadow_] [Illustration: _The Tongue River_ _Photo by N. H. Darton_] "One afternoon I had put up my rod and strolled down to the river where one of our party was whipping a pool of the Big Hole, trying to induce a fish to strike. He said: 'There's an old villain in there; he wants to strike but can't make up his mind to do it.' I said: 'I have a fly that will make him strike,' and as I had my book in my pocket I handed him a No. 8 Pitcher. He made two casts and hooked a beautiful trout, that weighed nineteen ounces, down. I regard the Pitcher as the best killer in my book." J. E. MONROE, Dillon, Montana. * * * * * "I determined to follow the stream up into the mountains, but as I neared the woods at the upper end of the meadow I stopped to cast into a long, straight reach of the river where the breeze from the ocean was rippling the surface of the stream. The grassy bank rose steep behind me and only a little fringe of wild roses partly concealed me from the water. I cast the Pitcher flies you gave me well out on the rough water, allowed them to sink a hand-breadth, and at the first movement of the line I saw that heart-expanding flash of a broad silver side gleaming from the clear depths. The trout fastened on savagely, and as he was coming my way, I assisted his momentum with all the spring of the rod, and he came flying out into the clean, fresh grass of the meadow behind me. It was a half-pound speckled brook trout. I did not stop to pouch him, but cast again. In a moment I was fast to another such, and again I sprung him bodily out, glistening like a silver ingot, to where his brother lay. In my first twelve casts I took ten such fish, all from ten to twelve inches long, mostly without any playing. I took twenty-two fine fish without missing one strike, and landed every one safely. I was not an hour in taking the lot. Then oddly enough, I whipped the water for fifty yards without another rise. Satisfied that the circus was over, I climbed up into the meadow and gathered the spoils into my basket. Nearly all were brook trout, but two or three silvery salmon trout among them had struck quite as gamely. I had such a weight of fish as I never took before on the Nekanicum in our most fortunate fishing." [Illustration: _Talking It Over_] * * * * * [Illustration: _Beaver Dam and Reservoir_] "Walking back along the trail, I came again to the long reach where I had my luck an hour before, and cast again to see if there might be another fish. Two silver glints shone up through the waves in the same instant. I struck one of the two fish, though I might have had both if I had left the flies unmoved the fraction of a second. Three times I refused such doublets, for I had not changed an inch of tackle, and scarcely even looked the casting line over. It was no time to allow two good fish to go raking that populous pool. However I did take chances with one doublet. So out of the same lucky spot on my return, I took ten more fish each about a foot long. I brought nearly every one flying out as I struck him, and I never put such a merciless strain on a rod before. [Illustration: "_That Populous Pool_" _Photo by John Gill_] "I had concluded again that the new tenantry had all been evicted, and was casting 'most extended' trying the powers of the rod and reaching, I should say, sixty feet out. As the flies came half-way in and I was just about snatching them out for a long back cast, the father of the family soared after them in a gleaming arc. He missed by not three inches and bored his way straight down into the depths of the clear green water. 'My heart went out to him,' as our friend Wells said, but coaxing was in vain. I tried them above and below, sinking the flies deeply, or dropping them airily upon the waves, but to no purpose. I had the comforting thought that we may pick him up when you are here this summer." JOHN GILL, Portland, Oregon. _THE BONNY RED HECKLE_ Away frae the smoke an' the smother, Away frae the crush o' the thrang! Away frae the labour an' pother That have fettered our freedom sae lang! For the May's i' full bloom i' the hedges And the laverock's aloft i' the blue, An' the south wind sings low i' the sedges, By haughs that are silvery wi' dew. Up, angler, off wi' each shackle! Up, gad and gaff, and awa'! Cry 'Hurrah for the canny red heckle, The heckle that tackled them a'!' * * * * * Then back to the smoke and the smother, The uproar and crush o' the thrang; An' back to the labour and pother, But happy and hearty and strang. Wi' a braw light o' mountain and muirland, Outflashing frae forehead and e'e, Wi' a blessing flung back to the norland, An' a thousand, dear Coquet, to thee! As again we resume the old shackle, Our gad an' our gaff stowed awa', An'--goodbye to the canny 'red heckle,' The heckle that tackled them a'!' --From "The Lay of the Lea." By _Thomas Westwood_. NOTE--I am indebted to Mrs. Mary Orvis Marbury, author of "Favorite Flies," for copies of "Hey for Coquet," and "Farewell to Coquet," from the former of which the foregoing are extracts. _GRIZZLY LAKE AND LAKE ROSE_ "And best of all, through twilight's calm The hermit-thrush repeats his psalm." _Henry Van Dyke_ [Illustration: _Grizzly Lake_] GRIZZLY LAKE lies secluded among the timbered hills, four miles south--south and west--from Willow Park. The long narrow bed of the lake was furrowed by a glacier that once debouched here from the mountains to the west, and through the gravel and detritus that surround it the melting snows and rain are filtered till the water is fit for the Olympian deities. No more profitable place can be found for the angler to visit. The lake swarms with brook trout weighing from one to five pounds, and in the ice-cold water which is supplied with an abundance of insect and crustacean food the fish are in prime condition after July first. The best fishing is at the southern end, near where Straight Creek enters the lake. A little investigation will discover close at hand, several large springs that flow into the lake at this point, and here the trout congregate after the spawning season. [Illustration: _Lake Rose_] In order to reach this location conveniently, I, early in 1902, constructed a light raft of dry pine logs, about six by ten feet, well spiked together with drift bolts; since which time other parties have added a substantial row boat. Both the boat and the raft may be found at the lower end of the lake, just where the trail brings you to it. The canvas boat that was set up on the lake earlier, was destroyed the first winter by bears, but the boat and raft now there will probably hold their own against the beasts of the field for some time. If you use either of them you will, of course, return it to the outlet of the lake, that he who cometh after may also enjoy. The route to Grizzly Lake follows very closely the Bannock Indian trail from the point where Straight Creek enters the meadows of Willow Park to the outlet of the lake. The trail itself is interesting. It was the great Indian thoroughfare between Idaho and the Big Horn Basin in Wyoming, and was doubtless an ancient one at the time the Romans dominated Britain. How plainly the record tells you that it was made by an aboriginal people. Up hill and down hill, across marsh or meadow, it is always a single trail, trodden into furrow-like distinctness by moccasined feet. Nowhere does it permit the going abreast of the beasts of draft or burden. At no place does it suggest the side-by-side travel of the white man for companionship's sake, nor the hand-in-hand converse of mother and child, lover and maid. Ease your pony a moment here and dream. Here comes the silent procession on its way to barter in the land of the stranger, and here again it will return in the autumn, as it has done for a thousand years. In the van are the blanketed braves, brimful of in-toeing, painful dignity. Behind these follow the ponies drawing the lodge-poles and camp outfit, and then come the squaws and the children. Just there is a bend in the trail and the lodge-poles have abraded the tree in the angle till it is worn half through. A little further on, in an open glade, they camped for the night. Decades have come and gone since the last Indian party passed this way, yet a cycle hence the trail will be distinct at intervals. [Illustration: _The Bighorn Range_ _Photo by N. H. Darton_] By turning to the west at Winter Creek and passing over the sharp hills that border that stream you will come, at the end of a nine-mile journey, to Lake Rose. The way is upward through groves of pane, thickets of aspen, and steep open glades surrounded by silver fir trees that would be the delight of a landscape gardener if he could cause them to grow in our city parks as they do here. Elk are everywhere. We ride through and around bands of them, male, female, and odd-shapen calves with wobbly legs and luminous, questioning eyes. As you pause now and then to contemplate some new view of the wilderness unfolding before you, the beauty, and freedom and serenity of it are irresistible, and you comprehend for the first time the spirit of the Argonauts of '49 and the nobility of the pæan they chanted to express their exalted brotherhood: "The days of old, The days of gold, The days of '49." [Illustration: _Gorge of the Firehole River_] [Illustration: _A Wooded Islet_] Suddenly the ground slopes away before us and Lake Rose lies at our feet, like an amethyst in a chalice of jade-green onyx. The surroundings are picturesque. The mountains descend abruptly to the water's edge and the snow never quite disappears from its banks in the longest summer. Here in June may be seen that incredible thing, the wild strawberry blossoming bravely above the slush-snow that still hides the plant below, and the bitter-root putting forth buds in the lee of a snow bank. A small stream enters the lake at the northwest, and here the trout are most abundant. They rise eagerly to the silver doctor fly, a half dozen often breaking at once, any one of which is a weight for a rod. Probably not more than a score of anglers have ever cast a fly from this point, and a word of caution may for this reason be pardoned. The low temperature of the water retards the spawning season till midsummer, consequently trout should not be taken here earlier than the third week of July. Again, nature has given to every true sportsman the good sense to stop when he has enough, and as this unwritten law is practically his only restraint, he should feel that its observance is in safe hands and that the sportsman's limit will be strictly observed. [Illustration: _Bear Up!_] _A MORNING ON IRON CREEK_ [Illustration: _The Boy and the von Behr_] WHEN the snows have disappeared from the valleys and lower hills, and the streams have fallen to the level of their banks and their waters have lost the brown stain filtered from decaying leaves, and have resumed the chatty, confidential tones of summer, then is the time to angle for the brown trout. If you would know the exact hour, listen for the brigadier bird as he sings morning and evening from a tall tree at the mouth of Iron Creek. When you hear his lonely wood-note, joint your rod and take the path through the lodge-pole pines that brings you to the creek about three hundred yards above its confluence with the river. The lush grass of the meadow is ankle-deep with back water from the main stream, and Iron Creek and the Little Firehole lie level-lipped and currentless. As you look quietly on from the shade of a tree, the water breaks into circles in a dozen places, and just at the edge of a bank where the sod overhangs the stream there is a mighty splash which is repeated several times. Move softly, for the ground is spongy and vibrates under a heavy tread sufficiently to warn the fish for many yards, then the stream becomes suddenly silent and you will wait long for the trout to resume their feeding. [Illustration: _Rapids of the Gibbon River_] [Illustration: _Along Iron Creek_] Stealthily drop the fly just over the edge of the bank, as though some witless insect had lost his hold above and fallen!--Right Honorable Dean of the Guild, I read the other day an article in which you stated that the brown trout never leaps on a slack line. Surely you are right, and this is not a trout after all, but a flying fish, for he went down stream in three mighty and unexpected leaps that wrecked your theory and the top joint of the rod before the line could be retrieved. Then the fly comes limply home and nothing remains of the sproat hook but the shank. [Illustration: _Divinity and Infinity_] These things happened to a friend in less time than is taken in the telling. When he had recovered from the shock he remarked, smilingly, "That wasn't half bad for a Dutchman, now, was it?" As he is a sensible fellow and has no "tendency toward effeminate attenuation" in tackle, he graciously accepted and used the proffered cast of Pitcher flies tied on number six O'Shaughnessy hooks. Having ventured this much concerning what the writer considers _proper_ tackle, he would like to go further and record here his disapproval of the individual who turns up his nose at any rod of over five ounces in weight, and who tells you with an air from which you are expected to infer much, that fly fishing is really the only _honorable_ and _gentlemanly_ manner of taking trout. In the language of one who was a master of concise and forceful phrase, "This is one of the deplorable fishing affectations and pretences which the rank and file of the fraternity ought openly to expose and repudiate. Our irritation is greatly increased when we recall the fact that every one of these super-refined fly-casting dictators, when he fails to allure trout by his most scientific casts, will chase grasshoppers to the point of profuse perspiration, and turn over logs and stones with feverish anxiety in quest of worms and grubs, if haply he can with these save himself from empty-handedness."[B] Fly fishing as a recreation justifies all good that has been written of it, but it is a tell-tale sport that infallibly informs your associates what manner of being you are. It is self-purifying like the limpid mountain stream its followers love, and no wrong-minded individual nor set of individuals can ever pollute it. It is too cosmopolitan a pleasure to belong to the exclusive, and too robust in sentiment to be confined to gossamer gut leaders and midge hooks. Much, in fact everything, of your success in taking fish in Iron Creek depends on the time of your visit. For three hundred, thirty days of the year it is profitless water. Then come the days when the German trout begin their annual _auswanderung_. No one need be told that these trout do not live in this creek throughout the year. For trout are brook-wise or river-wise according as they have been reared, and the habits, attitudes and behavior of the one are as different from the other as are those of the boys and girls reared in the country from the city-bred. If one of these river-bred fish breaks from the hook here he does not immediately bore up stream into deep water and disappear beneath a sheltering log, bank or submerged tree-top as one would having a claim on these waters, but heading down-stream, he stays not for brake and he stops not for stone till the river is reached. In his headlong haste to escape he reminds one of a country boy going for a doctor. [Illustration: _Virginia Cascade_] It is one of the unexplained phenomena of trout life and habit, why these fish leap as they do here at this season, when hooked. In no other stream and at no other time have I known them to exhibit this quality. It is one of those problems of trout activity for which apparently no reason can be given further than the one which is said to control the fair sex; "When she will she will, And you may depend on't; When she won't she won't, And that's an end on't." [Illustration] "I'm wrapped up in my plaid, and lyin' a' my length on a bit green platform, fit for the fairies' feet, wi' a craig hangin' ower me a thousand feet high, yet bright and balmy a' the way up wi' flowers and briars, and broom and birks, and mosses maist beautiful to behold wi' half shut e'e, and through aneath ane's arm guardin' the face frae the cloudless sunshine; and perhaps a bit bonny butterfly is resting wi' faulded wings on a gowan, no a yard frae your cheek; and noo waukening out o' a simmer dream floats awa' in its wavering beauty, but, as if unwilling to leave its place of mid-day sleep, comin' back and back, and roun' and roun' on this side and that side, and ettlin in its capricious happiness to fasten again on some brighter floweret, till the same breath o' wund that lifts up your hair so refreshingly catches the airy voyager and wafts her away into some other nook of her ephemeral paradise." CHRISTOPHER NORTH. FOOTNOTE: [Footnote B: Hon. Grover Cleveland in _The Saturday Evening Post_.] _AN AFTERNOON ON THE FIREHOLE_ [Illustration: _First View of the Firehole_] THE Firehole is a companionable river. Notwithstanding its forbidding name, it is pre-eminently a stream for the angler, and always does its best to put him at his ease. Like some hospitable manorial lord, it comes straight down the highway for a league to greet the stranger and to offer him the freedom of its estate. Every fisherman who goes much alone along streams will unconsciously associate certain human attributes with the qualities of the waters he fishes. It may be a quiet charm that lulls to rest, or a bold current that challenges his endurance and caution. Between these extremes there is all that infinite range of moods and fancies which find their counterpart in the emotions. The Firehole possesses many of these qualities in a high degree. It can be broad, sunny and genial, or whisper with a scarcely audible lisp over languid, trailing beds of conferva; and anon, lead you with tumultuous voice between rocky walls where a misstep would be disastrous. The unfortunate person who travels in its company for the time required to make the tour of the Park and remains indifferent to all phases of its many-sidedness, should turn back. Nature will have no communion with him, nor will he gain her little secrets and confidences: "They're just beyond the skyline, Howe'er so far you cruise." [Illustration: _Cascades of the Madison_] [Illustration: _Below the Cascades_] During the restful period following the noon-hour, when there is a truce between fisherman and fish, we lie in the shadow of the pines and read "Our Lady's Tumbler," till, in the drowsy mind fancy plays an interlude with fact. The ripple of the distant stream becomes the patter of priestly feet down dim corridors, and the whisper of the pines the rustle of sacerdotal robes. Through half-shut lids we see the clouds drift across the slopes of a distant mountain, double as it were, cloud and snow bank vying with each other in whiteness. [Illustration: _Undine Falls_] Neither the companionship of man nor that of a boisterous stream will accord with our present mood. So, with rod in hand, we ford the stream above the island and lie down amid the wild flowers in the shadow of the western hill. For wild flowers, like patriotism, seemingly reach their highest perfection amid conditions of soil and climate that are apparently most uncongenial. Here almost in reach of hand, are a variety and profusion of flowers rarely found in the most favored spots; columbines, gentians, forget-me-nots, asters and larkspurs, are all in bloom at the same moment, for the summer is short and nature has trained them to thrust forth their leaves beneath the very heel of winter and to bear bud, flower, and fruit within the compass of fifty days. I strongly urge every tourist, angling or otherwise, to carry with him both a camera and a herbarium. With these he may preserve invaluable records of his outing; one to remind him of the lavish panorama of beauty of mountain, lake and waterfall; the other to hold within its leaves the delicately colored flowers that delight the senses. A great deal is said about the cheap tourist nowadays, with the emphasis so placed on the word "cheap" as to create a wrong impression. With the manner of your travel, whether in Pullman cars, Concord coaches, buck-board wagons, or on foot, this adjective has nothing to do. It does, however, describe pretty accurately a quality of mind too often found among visitors to such places--a mind that looks only to the present and passing events, and that between intervals of geyser-chasing, is busied with inconsequential gabble, with no thought of selecting the abiding, permanent things as treasures for the storehouse of memory. What fisherman is there who has not in his fly-book a dozen or more flies that are perennial reminders of great piscatorial events? And what angler is there who does not love to go over them at times, one by one, and recall the incidents surrounding the history of each? We fondle the flies in our fancy, Selecting a cast that will kill, Then wait till a breeze from the canyon Has rimpled the water so still;-- Teal, and Fern, and Beaver, Coachman, and Caddis, and Herl,-- And dream that the king of the river Lies under the foam of that swirl. There's a feather from far Tioga, And one from the Nepigon, And one from the upper Klamath That tell of battles won-- Palmer, and Hackle, and Alder, Claret, and Polka, and Brown,-- Each one a treasured memento Of days that have come and gone. A joust of hardiest conflict With knight in times of eld Would bring a lesser pleasure Than each of these victories held. Rapids, and foam, and smother, Lunge, and thrust, and leap,-- And to know that the barbed feather Is fastened sure and deep. Abbey, and Chantry, and Quaker, Dorset and Canada, Premier, Hare's Ear, and Hawthorne, Brown Ant, and Yellow May, Jungle-Cock, Pheasant, and Triumph, Romeyn, and Montreal, Are names that will ever linger In the sunlight of Memory Hall. The whole field of angling literature contains nothing more exquisite than the following description of the last days of Christopher North, as written by his daughter: "It was an affecting sight to see him busy, nay, quite absorbed with the fishing tackle scattered about the bed, propped up with pillows--his noble head, yet glorious with its flowing locks, carefully combed by attentive hands, and falling on each side of his unfaded face. How neatly he picked out each elegantly dressed fly from its little bunch, drawing it out with trembling hand along the white coverlet, and then replacing it in his pocket-book, he would tell ever and anon of the streams he used to fish in of old." * * * * * [Illustration: _Picturesque Rocks in River_] By four o'clock the stream is hidden from the sun and the shadow of the wooded summit at your back has crossed the roadway and is climbing the heights beyond. As if moved by some signal unheard by the listener, the trout begin to feed all along the surface of the water. Leap follows or accompanies leap as far as the eye can discern up stream, and down stream to where the water breaks to the downpull of the gorge below. Select a clear space for your back-cast, wait till a cloud obscures the sun. * * * * The trout took the fly from below and with a momentum that carried him full-length into the air. But there was no turning of the body in the arc that artists love to picture. He dropped straight down as he arose and the waters closed over him with a "plop" which you learn afterward is characteristic of the rise and strike of the German trout. All this may not be observed at first, for if he is one of the big fellows, he will cut out some busy-work for you to prevent his going under the top of that submerged tree which you had not noticed before. As it was, you brought him clear by a scant hand's breadth, only to have him dive for another similar one with greater energy. [Illustration: "_That Delectable Island_"] Well, it's the same old story over again, but one that never becomes altogether tedious to the angler. And the profitable part of this tale is that it may be re-enacted here on any summer afternoon. Some day a canoe will float down the river and land on the gravelly beach at the upper end of that delectable island, just where the trees are mirrored in the water so picturesquely. Then a tent will be set up and two shall possess that island for a whole, happy week. If you are coming by that road then, give the "Hallo" of the fellow craft and you shall have a loaf and as many fish as you like, and be sent on your way as becomes a man and brother. _TRAILS FROM YANCEY'S AND OTHER TRAILS_ [Illustration: _Yancey's_] WHEN "Uncle" John Yancey, peace to his ashes, selected the site for his home and built his cabin under the shelter of the mountain at the north end of Pleasant Valley, he displayed that capacity to discover and appropriate the best things of the earth which is characteristic of American pioneers. Here game was abundant and everything that a remote, mountainous country could supply to the frontiersman was at hand. A stream of purest water ran by the door, and the open, grassy meadows were ample for the supply of hay and pasturage. The scenery is delightful, varied and picturesque. No other locality in the Park is comparable with it as a place of abode, and there is no pleasanter place in which to spend a week than at "Yancey's." The government has recently completed a road from the canyon of the Yellowstone, over Mt. Washburn, down the valley near Yancey's, and reaching Mammoth Hot Springs by way of Lava Creek. This has added another day to the itinerary of the Park as planned by the transportation companies, and one which for scenic interest surpasses any other day of the tour. A mere category of the places of interest that may be seen in this region would be lengthy. The lower canyon of the Yellowstone with its overhanging walls five hundred feet high, with pillars of columnar basalt reaching more than half-way from base to summit, the petrified trees, lofty cliffs, and romantic waterfalls, will delight and charm the visitor. [Illustration: "_Swirl and Sweep of the Water_"] The angler will find the waters of this region as abundantly supplied with trout as any area of like extent anywhere. No amount of fishing will ever exhaust the "Big Eddy" of the Yellowstone, and it is worth a day's journey to witness the swirl and sweep of the water after it emerges from the confining, vertical walls. The velocity of the current at this point is very great, and surely, during a flood, attains a speed of sixteen or more miles an hour. In the eddy itself the trout rise indifferently to the fly, but will come to the red-legged grasshopper as long as the supply lasts. Strange to say, they will not take the grasshopper on the surface of the water. Two bright faced boys who had climbed down into the canyon watched me whip the pool in every direction for a quarter of an hour without taking a single trout. Satisfied that something was wrong, I fastened a good sized Rangeley sinker to the leader about a foot above the hook and pitched the grasshopper into the buffeting currents. An hour later we carried back to camp twenty-five trout which, placed endwise, head to tail, measured twenty-five feet on a tape line. This use of a sinker under the circumstances was not a great discovery, but it spelled the difference between success and failure at the time. So I have been glad at most times to learn by experience and from others the little things that help make a better day's angling. [Illustration: _The Palisades_] Once when I knew more about trout fishing than I have ever convinced myself that I knew since, I visited a famous stream in a wilderness new and unknown to me, fully resolved to show the natives how to do things. Near the end of the third day of almost fruitless fishing, the modest guide volunteered to take me out that evening, if I cared to go. Of course I cared to go, and I shall never forget that moonlight night on Beaver Creek. We returned to camp about ten o'clock with twenty-eight trout, four of which weighed better than three pounds apiece. [Illustration: _A Young Corsair of the Plains_] It may be a severe shock to the sensibilities of the "super-refined fly-caster" to suggest so mean a bait as grasshoppers, yet he may obtain some comfort, as did one aforetime, by labeling the can in which the hoppers are carried: "_CALOPTENOUS FEMUR-RUBRUM_." * * * * * Then there are Slough Creek, Hell-Roaring Creek, East Fork, Trout Lake, and a host of other streams and lakes that have been favorite resorts with anglers for years, and in which may be taken the very leviathans of six, seven, eight, and even ten, pounds' weight. He must be difficult to please who finds not a day of days among them. Up to the present time only the red-throat trout inhabit these waters, but plants of other varieties have been made and will doubtless thrive quite as well as the native trout. [Illustration: _Tower Falls_] Owing probably to the fact that, until recently, the region around Tower Creek and Falls was not accessible by roads, this stream received no attention from the fish commission till the summer of 1903, when a meager plant of 15,000 brook trout fry was made there. The scenery in this neighborhood is unsurpassed, and when the stream becomes well stocked it will, doubtless, be a favorite resort with anglers who delight in mountain fastnesses or in the study of geological records of past ages. The drainage basin of Tower Creek coincides with the limits of the extinct crater of an ancient volcano. As you stand amid the dark forests with which the walls of the crater are clothed and see the evidences on all sides of the Titanic forces once at work here, fancy has but little effort in picturing something of the tremendous scenes once enacted on this spot. Now all is peace and quiet, the quiet of the wilderness, which save for the rush of the torrential stream, is absolutely noiseless. No song of bird gladdens the darkened forests, and in its gloom the wild animals are seldom or never seen. How strikingly the silence and wonder of the scene proclaim that nature has formed the world for the happiness of man. Within two hundred yards of the Yellowstone River, Tower Creek passes over a fall of singular and romantic beauty. Major Chittenden in his book "The Yellowstone" thus describes it: "This waterfall is the most beautiful in the Park, if one takes into consideration all its surroundings. The fall itself is very graceful in form. The deep cavernous basin into which it pours itself is lined with shapely evergreen trees, so that the fall is partially screened from view. Above it stand those peculiar forms of rock characteristic of that locality--detached pinnacles or towers which give rise to the name. The lapse of more than thirty years since Lieutenant Doane saw these falls, has given us nothing descriptive of them that can compare with the simple words of his report penned upon the first inspiration of a new discovery: 'Nothing can be more chastely beautiful than this lovely cascade, hidden away in the dim light of overshadowing rocks and woods, its very voice hushed to a low murmur unheard at the distance of a few hundred yards. Thousands might pass by within half a mile and not dream of its existence; but once seen, it passes to the list of most pleasant memories.'" [Illustration: _The Shadow of a Cliff_] If the angler wanders farther into the wilderness than any waters named herein would lead him, he will find other streams to bear him company amid scenes that will live long in his memory and where the trout are ever ready to pay him the compliment of a rise. To the eastward flows Shoshone river with its myriad tributaries, teeming with trout and draining a region far more rugged and lofty than the Park proper. To the south and west are those wonderfully beautiful lakes that form the source of the Snake river. Here, early in the season, the great lake or Macinac trout, _Salvelinus namaycush_, are occasionally taken with a trolling spoon. From north to south, from the Absaroka Mountains to the Tetons, on both sides of the continental divide, this peerless pleasuring-ground is netted with a lace-work of streams. Two score lakes and more than one hundred, sixty streams are named on the map of this domain which is forever secured and safeguarded "_FOR THE BENEFIT AND ENJOYMENT OF THE PEOPLE_" [Illustration: _Good Bye Till Next Year_] * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Obvious punctuation errors repaired. Page 26, "Whpskehegan" changed to "Waskahegan" (fished the Waskahegan) 
30924	----	Thirty-seven Days of Peril. Mr. T. C. Everts is spoken of frequently in Bishop Tuttle's contribution. He was commissioned Assessor of Internal Revenue for Montana in 1861. A graphic description of Mr. Everts' wanderings, in his own language, appeared in Scribner's Magazine of November, 1871, as follows: SCRIBNER'S MONTHLY VOL. III. November, 1871. No. 1 THIRTY-SEVEN DAYS OF PERIL [Illustration: Imaginary Companions.] I have read with great satisfaction the excellent descriptive articles on the wonders of the Upper Yellowstone, in the May and June numbers of your magazine. Having myself been one of the party who participated in many of the pleasures, and suffered all the perils of that expedition, I can not only bear testimony to the fidelity of the narrative, but probably add some facts of experience which will not detract from the general interest it has excited. A desire to visit the remarkable region, of which, during several years' residence in Montana, I had often heard the most marvelous accounts, led me to unite in the expedition of August last. The general character of the stupendous scenery of the Rocky Mountains prepared my mind for giving credit to all the strange stories told of the Yellowstone, and I felt quite as certain of the existence of the physical phenomena of that country, on the morning that our company started from Helena, as when I afterwards beheld it. I engaged in the enterprise with enthusiasm, feeling that all the hardships and exposures of a month's horseback travel through an unexplored region would be more than compensated by the grandeur and novelty of the natural objects with which it was crowded. Of course, the idea of being lost in it, without any of the ordinary means of subsistence, and the wandering for days and weeks, in a famishing condition, alone, in an unfrequented wilderness, formed no part of my contemplation. I had dwelt too long amid the mountains not to know that such a thought, had it occurred, would have been instantly rejected as improbable; nevertheless, "man proposes and God disposes," a truism which found a new and ample illustration in my wanderings through the Upper Yellowstone region. On the day that I found myself separated from the company, and for several days previous, our course had been impeded by the dense growth of the pine forest, and occasional large tracts of fallen timber, frequently rendering our progress almost impossible. Whenever we came to one of these immense windfalls, each man engaged in the pursuit of a passage through it, and it was while thus employed, and with the idea that I had found one, that I strayed out of sight and hearing of my comrades. We had a toilsome day. It was quite late in the afternoon. As separations like this had frequently occurred, it gave me no alarm, and I rode on, fully confident of soon rejoining the company, or of finding their camp. I came up with the pack-horse, which Mr. Langford afterwards recovered, and tried to drive him along, but failing to do so, and my eyesight being defective, I spurred forward, intending to return with assistance from the party. This incident tended to accelerate my speed. I rode on in the direction which I supposed had been taken, until darkness overtook me in the dense forest. This was disagreeable enough, but caused me no alarm. I had no doubt of being with the party at breakfast the next morning. I selected a spot for comfortable repose, picketed my horse, built a fire, and went to sleep. The next morning I rose at early dawn, saddled and mounted my horse, and took my course in the supposed direction of the camp. Our ride of the previous day had been up a peninsula jutting into the lake, for the shore of which I started, with the expectation of finding my friends camped on the beach. The forest was quite dark, and the trees so thick, that it was only by a slow process I could get through them at all. In searching for the trail I became somewhat confused. The falling foliage of the pines had obliterated every trace of travel. I was obliged frequently to dismount, and examine the ground for the faintest indications. Coming to an opening, from which I could see several vistas, I dismounted for the purpose of selecting one leading in the direction I had chosen, and leaving my horse unhitched, as had always been my custom, walked a few rods into the forest. While surveying the ground my horse took fright, and I turned around in time to see him disappearing at full speed among the trees. That was the last I ever saw of him. It was yet quite dark. My blankets, gun, pistols, fishing tackle, matches--everything, except the clothing on my person, a couple of knives, and a small opera-glass were attached to the saddle. [Illustration: "The Last I Ever Saw of Him."] I did not realize the possibility of a permanent separation from the company. Instead of following up the pursuit of their camp, I engaged in an effort to recover my horse. Half a day's search convinced me of its impracticability. I wrote and posted in an open space several notices, which, if my friends should chance to see, would inform them of my condition and the route I had taken, and then struck out into the forest in the supposed direction of their camp. As the day wore on without any discovery, alarm took the place of anxiety at the prospect of another night alone in the wilderness, and this time without food or fire. But even this dismal foreboding was cheered by the hope that should soon rejoin my companions, who would laugh at my adventure, and incorporate it as a thrilling episode into the journal of our trip. The bright side of a misfortune, as I found by experience, even under the worst possible circumstances, always presents some features of encouragement. When I began to realize that my condition was one of actual peril, I banished from my mind all fear of an unfavorable result. Seating myself on a log, I recalled every foot of the way I had traveled since the separation from my friends, and the most probable opinion I could form of their whereabouts was, that they had, by a course but little different from mine, passed by the spot where I had posted the notices, learned of my disaster, and were waiting for me the rejoin them there, or searching for me in that vicinity. A night must be spent amid the prostrate trunks before my return could be accomplished. At no time during my period of exile did I experience so much mental suffering from the cravings of hunger as when, exhausted with this long clay of fruitless search, I resigned myself to a couch of pine foliage in the pitchy darkness of a thicket of small trees. Naturally timid in the night, I fully realized the exposure of my condition. I peered upward through the darkness, but all was blackness and gloom. The wind sighed mournfully through the pines. The forest seemed alive with the screeching of night birds, the angry barking of coyotes, and the prolonged, dismal howl of the gray wolf. These sounds, familiar by their constant occurrence throughout the journey, were now full of terror, and drove slumber from my eyelids. Above all this, however, was the hope that I should be restored to my comrades the next day. Early the next morning I rose unrefreshed, and pursued my weary way over the prostrate trunks. It was noon when I reached the spot where my notices were posted. No one had been there. My disappointment was almost overwhelming. For the first time, I realized that I was lost. Then came a crushing sense of destitution. No food, no fire; no means to procure either; alone in an unexplored wilderness, one hundred and fifty miles from the nearest human abode, surrounded by wild beasts, and famishing with hunger. It was no time for despondency. A moment afterwards I felt how calamity can elevate the mind, in the formation of the resolution "not to perish in that wilderness." The hope of finding the party still controlled my plans. I thought, by traversing the peninsula centrally, I would be enabled to strike the shore of the lake in advance of their camp, and near the point of departure for the Madison. Acting upon this impression, I rose from a sleepless couch, and pursued my way through the timber-entangled forest. A feeling of weakness took the place of hunger. Conscious of the need of food, I felt no cravings. Occasionally, while scrambling over logs and through thickets, a sense of faintness and exhaustion would come over me, but I would suppress it with the audible expression, "This won't do; I must find my company." Despondency would sometimes strive with resolution for the mastery of my thoughts. I would think of home--of my daughter--and of the possible chance of starvation, or death in some more terrible form; but as often as these gloomy forebodings came, I would strive to banish them with reflections better adapted to my immediate necessities. I recollect at this time discussing the question, whether there was not implanted by Providence in every man a principle of self-preservation equal to any emergency which did not destroy his reason. I decided this question affirmatively a thousand times afterwards in my wanderings, and I record this experience here, that any person who reads it, should he ever find himself in like circumstances, may not despair. There is life in the thought. It will revive hope, allay hunger, renew energy, encourage perseverance, and, as I have proved in my own case, bring a man out of difficulty, when nothing else can avail. It was mid-day when I emerged from the forest into an open space at the foot of the peninsula. A broad lake of beautiful curvature, with magnificent surroundings, lay before me, glittering in the sunbeams. It was full twelve miles in circumference. A wide belt of sand formed the margin which I was approaching, directly opposite to which, rising seemingly from the very depths of the water, towered the loftiest peak of a range of mountains apparently interminable. The ascending vapor from innumerable hot springs, and the sparkling jet of a single geyser, added the feature of novelty to one of the grandest landscapes I ever beheld. Nor was the life of the scene less noticeable than its other attractions. Large flocks of swans and other water-fowl were sporting on the quiet surface of the lake; otters in great numbers performed the most amusing aquatic evolutions; mink and beaver swam around unscared, in the most grotesque confusion. Deer, elk, and mountain sheep stared at me, manifesting more surprise than fear at my presence among them. The adjacent forest was vocal with the songs of birds, chief of which were the chattering notes of a species of mockingbird, whose imitative efforts afforded abundant merriment. Seen under favorable circumstances, this assemblage of grandeur, beauty, and novelty would have been transporting; but, jaded with travel, famishing with hunger, and distressed with anxiety, I was in no humor for ecstacy. My tastes were subdued and chastened by the perils which environed me. I longed for food, friends and protection. Associated with my thoughts, however, was the wish that some of my friends of peculiar tastes could enjoy this display of secluded magnificence, now, probably, for the first time beheld by mortal eyes. The lake was at least one thousand feet lower than the highest point of the peninsula, and several hundred feet below the level of Yellowstone Lake. I recognized the mountain which overshadowed it as the landmark which a few days before, had received from Gen. Washburn the name of Mount Everts; and as it is associated with some of the most agreeable and terrible incidents of my exile, I feel that I have more than a mere discoverer's right to the perpetuity of that christening. The lake is fed by innumerable small streams from the mountains, and the countless hot springs surrounding it. A large river flows from it, through a canon a thousand feet in height, in a southeasterly direction, to a distant range of mountains, which I conjectured to be Snake River; and with the belief that I had discovered the source of the great southern tributary of the Columbia, I gave it the name of Bessie Lake, after the "Sole daughter of my house and heart." During the first two days, the fear of meeting with Indians gave me considerable anxiety, but, when conscious of being lost, there was nothing I so much desired as to fall in with a lodge of Bannacks or Crows. Having nothing to tempt their cupidity, they would do me no personal harm, and, with the promise of reward, would probably minister to my wants and aid my deliverance. Imagine my delight, while gazing upon the animated expanse of water, at seeing sail out from a distant point a large canoe containing a single oarsman. It was rapidly approaching the shore where I was seated. With hurried steps I paced the beach to meet it, all my energies stimulated by the assurance it gave of food, safety and restoration to friends. As I drew near to it it turned towards the shore, and oh! bitter disappointment, the object which my eager fancy had transformed into an angel of relief stalked from the water, an enormous pelican, flapped its dragon-wings, as if in mockery of my sorrow, and flew to a solitary point farther up the lake. This little incident quite unmanned me. The transition from joy to grief brought with it a terrible consciousness of the horrors of my condition. But night was fast approaching, and darkness would come with it. While looking for a spot where I might repose in safety, my attention was attracted to a small green plant of so lively a hue as to form a striking contrast with deep pine foliage. For closer examination I pulled it up by the root, which was long and tapering, not unlike a radish. It was a thistle. I tasted it; it was palatable and nutritious. My appetite craved it, and the first meal in four days was made on thistle-roots. Eureka! I had found food. No optical illusion deceived me this time; I could subsist until I rejoined my companions. Glorious counterpoise to the wretchedness of the preceding half-hour! Overjoyed at this discovery, with hunger allayed, I stretched myself under a tree, upon the foliage which had partially filled a space between contiguous trunks, and fell asleep. How long I slept I know not; but suddenly I was roused by a loud, shrill scream, like that of a human being in distress, poured, seemingly, into the very portals of my ear. There was no mistaking that fearful voice. I had been deceived by and answered it a dozen times while threading the forest, with the belief that it was a friendly signal. It was the screech of a mountain lion, so alarmingly near as to cause every nerve to thrill with terror. To yell in return, seize with convulsive grasp the limbs of the friendly tree, and swing myself into it, was the work of a moment. Scrambling hurriedly from limb to limb, I was soon as near the top as safety would permit. The savage beast was snuffing and growling below apparently on the very spot I had just abandoned. I answered every growl with a responsive scream. Terrified at the delay and pawing of the beast, I increased my voice to its utmost volume, broke branches from the limbs, and, in the impotency of fright, madly hurled them at the spot whence the continued howlings proceeded. Failing to alarm the animal, which now began to make a circuit of the tree, as if to select a spot for springing into it, I shook, with a strength increased by terror, the slender trunk until every limb rustled with the motion. All in vain. The terrible creature pursued his walk around the tree, lashing the ground with his tail, and prolonging his howlings almost to a roar. It was too dark to see, but the movements of the lion kept me apprised of its position. Whenever I heard it on one side of the tree I speedily changed to the opposite--an exercise which, in my weakened state, I could only have performed under the impulse of terror. I would alternately sweat and thrill with horror at the thought of being torn to pieces and devoured by this formidable monster. All my attempts to frighten it seemed unavailing. Disheartened at its persistency, and expecting every moment it would take the deadly leap, I tried to collect my thoughts, and prepare for the fatal encounter which I knew must result. Just at this moment it occurred to me that I would try silence. Clasping the trunk of the tree with both arms, I sat perfectly still. The lion, at this time ranging around, occasionally snuffing and pausing, and all the while filling the forest with the echo of his howlings, suddenly imitated my example. This silence was more terrible, if possible, than the clatter and crash of his movements through the brushwood, for now I did not know from what direction to expect his attack. Moments passed with me like hours. After a lapse of time which I cannot estimate, the beast gave a spring into the thicket and ran screaming into the forest. My deliverance was effected. [Illustration: The Mountain Lion.] Had strength permitted, I should have retained my perch till daylight, but with the consciousness of escape from the jaws of the ferocious brute came a sense of overpowering weakness which almost palsied me, and made my descent from the tree both difficult and dangerous. Incredible as it may seem, I lay down in my old bed, and was soon lost in a slumber so profound that I did not awake until after daylight. The experience of the night seemed like a terrible dream; but the broken limbs which in the agony of consternation I had thrown from the tree, and the rifts made in fallen foliage by my visitant in his circumambulations, were too convincing evidences of its reality. I could not dwell upon my exposure and escape without shuddering, and reflecting that probably like perils would often occur under less fortunate circumstances, and with a more fatal issue. I wondered what fate was in reserve for me--whether I should ultimately sink from exhaustion and perish of starvation, or become the prey of some of the ferocious animals that roamed these vast fastnesses. My thoughts then turned to the loved ones at home. They could never know my fate, and would indulge a thousand conjectures concerning it, not the least distressing of which would be that I had been captured by a band of hostile Sioux, and tortured to death at the stake. I was roused from this train of reflections by a marked change in the atmosphere. One of those dreary storms of mingled snow and rain, common to these high latitudes, set in. My clothing, which had been much torn, exposed my person to its "pitiless peltings." An easterly wind, rising to a gale, admonished me that it would be furious and of long duration. None of the discouragements I had met with dissipated the hope of rejoining my friends; but foreseeing the delay, now unavoidable, I knew that my escape from the wilderness must be accomplished, if at all, by my own unaided exertions. This thought was terribly afflicting, and brought before me, in vivid array, all the dreadful realities of my condition. I could see no ray of hope. In this condition of mind I could find no better shelter than the spreading branches of a spruce tree, under which, covered with earth and boughs, I lay during the two succeeding days; the storm, meanwhile, raging with unabated violence. While thus exposed, and suffering from cold and hunger, a little benumbed bird, not larger than a snow-bird, hopped within my reach. I instantly seized and killed it, and, plucking its feathers, ate it raw. It was a delicious meal for a half-starved man. Taking advantage of a lull in the elements, on the morning of the third day I rose early and started in the direction of a large group of hot springs which were steaming under the shadow of Mount Everts. The distance I traveled could not have been less than ten miles. Long before I reached the wonderful cluster of natural caldrons, the storm had recommenced. Chilled through, with my clothing thoroughly saturated, I lay down under a tree upon the heated incrustation until completely warmed. My heels and the sides of my feet were frozen. As soon as warmth had permeated my system, and I had quieted my appetite with a few thistle-roots, I took a survey of my surroundings, and selected a spot between two springs sufficiently asunder to afford heat at my head and feet, On this spot I built a bower of pine branches, spread its incrusted surface with fallen foliage and small boughs, and stowed myself away to await the close of the storm. Thistles were abundant, and I had fed upon them long enough to realize that they would, for a while at least, sustain life. In convenient proximity to my abode was a small, round, boiling spring, which I called my dinner-pot, in which, from time to time, I cooked my roots. This establishment, the best I could improvise with the means at hand, I occupied seven days--the first three of which were darkened by one of the most furious storms I ever saw. The vapor which supplied me with warmth saturated my clothing with its condensations. I was enveloped in a perpetual steam-bath. At first this was barely preferable to the storm, but I soon became accustomed to it, and before I left, though thoroughly parboiled, actually enjoyed it. I had little else to do during my imprisonment but cook, think, and sleep. Of the variety and strangeness of my reflections it is impossible to give the faintest conception. Much of my time was given to devising means for escape. I recollected to have read, at the time of their publication, the narratives of Lieutenant Strain and Doctor Kane, and derived courage and hope from the reflection that they struggled with--and survived perils not unlike those which environed me. The chilling thought would then occur, that they were not alone. They had companions in suffering and sympathy. Each could bear his share of the burden of misery which it fell to my lot to bear alone, and make it lighter from the encouragement of mutual counsel and aid in a cause of common suffering. Selfish as the thought may seem, there was nothing I so much desired as a companion in misfortune. How greatly it would alleviate my distress! What a relief it would be to compare my wretchedness with that of a brother sufferer, and with him devise expedients for every exigency as it occurred! I confess to the weakness, if it be one, of having squandered much pity upon myself during the time I had little else to do. Nothing gave me more concern than the want of fire. I recalled everything I had ever read or heard of the means by which fire could be produced; but none of them were within my reach. An escape without it was simply impossible. It was indispensable as a protection against night attacks from wild beasts. Exposure to another storm like the one just over would destroy my life, as this one would have done, but for the warmth derived from the springs. As I lay in my bower anxiously awaiting the disappearance of the snow, which had fallen to the depth of a foot or more, and impressed with the belief that for want of fire I should be obliged to remain among the springs, it occurred to me that I would erect some sort of monument, which might, at some future day, inform a casual visitor of the circumstances under which I had perished. A gleam of sunshine lit up the bosom of the lake, and with it the thought flashed upon my mind that I could, with a lens from my opera-glasses, get fire from Heaven. Oh happy, life-renewing thought! Instantly subjecting it to the test of experiment, when I saw the smoke curl from the bit of dry wood in my fingers, I felt, if the whole world were offered me for it, I would cast it all aside before parting with that little spark. I was now the happy possessor of food and fire. These would carry me through. All thoughts of failure were instantly abandoned. Though the food was barely adequate to my necessities--a fact too painfully attested by my attenuated body--I had forgotten the cravings of hunger, and had the means of producing fire. I said to myself, "I will not despair." [Illustration: The First Fire.] My stay at the springs was prolonged several days by an accident that befell me on the third night after my arrival there. An unlucky movement while asleep broke the crust on which I reposed, and the hot steam, pouring upon my hip, scalded it severely before I could escape. This new affliction, added to my frost-bitten feet, already festering, was the cause of frequent delays and unceasing pain through all my wanderings. After obtaining fire, I set to work making preparations for as early departure as my condition would permit. I had lost both knives since parting from the company, but I now made a convenient substitute by sharpening the tongue of a buckle which I cut from my vest. With this I cut the legs and counters from my boots, making of them a passable pair of slippers, which I fastened to my feet as firmly as I could with strips of bark. With the ravelings of a linen handkerchief, aided by the magic buckle-tongue, I mended my clothing. Of the same material I made a fish-line, which, on finding a piece of red tape in one of my pockets better suited to the purpose, I abandoned as a "bad job." I made of a pin that I found in my coat a fish-hook, and, by sewing up the bottoms of my bootlegs, constructed a good pair of pouches to carry my food in, fastening them to my belt by the straps. Thus accoutered, on the morning of the eighth day after my arrival at the springs I bade them a final farewell, and started on my course directly across that portion of the neck of the peninsula between me and the southeast arm of Yellowstone Lake. It was a beautiful morning. The sun shone bright and warm, and there was a freshness in the atmosphere truly exhilarating. As I wandered musingly along, the consciousness of being alone, and of having surrendered all hope of finding my friends, returned upon me with crushing power. I felt, too, that those friends, by the necessities of their condition, had been compelled to abandon all efforts for my recovery. The thought was full of bitterness and sorrow. I tried to realize what their conjectures were concerning my disappearance; but could derive no consolation from the long and dismal train of circumstances they suggested. Weakened by a long fast, and the unsatisfying nature of the only food I could procure, I know that from this time onward to the day of my rescue, my mind, though unimpaired in those perceptions needful to self-preservation, was in a condition to receive impressions akin to insanity. I was constantly traveling in dream-land, and indulging in strange reveries such as I had never before known. I seemed to possess a sort of duality of being, which, while constantly reminding me of the necessities of my condition, fed my imagination with vagaries of the most extravagant character. Nevertheless, I was perfectly conscious of the tendency of these morbid influences, and often tried to shake them off, but they would ever return with increased force, and I finally reasoned myself into the belief that their indulgence, as it afforded me pleasure, could work no harm while it did not interfere with my plans for deliverance. Thus I lived in a world of ideal happiness, and in a world of positive suffering at the same time. A change in the wind and an overcast sky, accompanied by cold, brought with them a need of warmth. I drew out my lens and touchwood, but alas! there was no sun. I sat down on a log to await his friendly appearance. Hours passed; he did not come. Night, cold, freezing night, set in, and found me exposed to all its terrors. A bleak hill-side sparsely covered with pines afforded poor accommodations for a half-clad, famished man. I could only keep from freezing by the most active exertion in walking, rubbing, and striking my benumbed feet and hands against the logs. It seemed the longest, most terrible night of my life, and glad was I when the approaching dawn enabled me to commence retracing my steps to Bessie Lake. I arrived there at noon, built my first fire on the beach, and remained by it, recuperating, for the succeeding two days. The faint hope that my friends might be delayed by their search for me until I could rejoin them now foresook me altogether. I made my arrangements independent of it. Either of three directions I might take would effect my escape, if life and strength held out. I drew upon the sand of the beach a map of these several courses with reference-to my starting-point from the lake, and considered well the difficulties each would present. All were sufficiently defined to avoid mistake. One was to follow Snake River a distance of one hundred miles or more to Eagle Rock bridge; another, to cross the country between the southern shore of Yellowstone Lake and the Madison Mountains, by scaling which I could easily reach the settlements in the Madison valley; and the other, to retrace my journey over the long and discouraging route by which I had entered the country. Of these routes the last-mentioned seemed the least inviting, probably because I had so recently traversed it, and was familiar with its difficulties. I had heard and read so much concerning the desolation and elemental upheavals and violent waters of the upper valley of the Snake, that I dared not attempt to return in that direction. The route by the Madison Range, encumbered by the single obstruction of the mountain barrier, was much the shortest, and so, most unwisely as will hereafter appear, I adopted it. Filling my pouches with thistle-roots, I took a parting survey of the little solitude that had afforded me food and fire the preceding ten days, and with something of that melancholy feeling experienced by one who leaves his home to grapple with untried adventures, started for the nearest point on Yellowstone Lake. All that day I traveled over timber-heaps, amid tree-tops, and through thickets. At noon I took the precaution to obtain fire. With a brand which I kept alive by frequent blowing, and constant waving to and fro, at a late hour in the afternoon, faint and exhausted, I kindled a fire for the night on the only vacant spot I could find amid a dense wilderness of pines. The deep gloom of the forest, in the spectral light which revealed on all sides of me a compact and unending growth of trunks, and an impervious canopy of somber foliage; the shrieking of night-birds; the supernaturally human scream of the Mountain lion; the prolonged howl of the wolf, made me insensible to all other forms of suffering. [Illustration: A Night of Terror.] The burn on my hip was so inflamed that I could only sleep in a sitting posture. Seated with my back against a tree, the smoke from the fire almost enveloping me in its suffocating folds, I vainly tried, amid the din and uproar of this horrible serenade, to woo the drowsy god. My imagination was instinct with terror. At one moment it seemed as if, in the density of a thicket, I could see the blazing eyes of a formidable forest monster fixed upon me, preparatory to a deadly leap; at another I fancied that I heard the swift approach of a pack of yelping wolves through the distant brushwood, which in a few minutes would tear me limb from limb. Whenever, by fatigue and weakness, my terror yielded to drowsiness, the least noise roused me to a sense of the hideousness of my condition. Once, in a fitful slumber, I fell forward into the fire, and inflicted a wretched burn on my hand. Oh! with what agony I longed for day! A bright and glorious morning succeeded the dismal night, and brought with it the conviction that I had been the victim of uncontrollable nervous excitement. I resolved henceforth to banish it altogether; and, in much better spirits than I anticipated, resumed my journey towards the lake. Another day of unceasing toil among the tree-tops and thickets overtook me, near sunset, standing upon a lofty headland jutting into the lake, and commanding a magnificent prospect of the mountains and valley over an immense area. In front of me, at a distance of fifty miles away, in the clear blue of the horizon, rose the arrowy peaks of the three Tetons. On the right, and apparently in close proximity to the eminence I occupied, rolled the picturesque range of the Madison, scarred with clefts, ravines, gorges and canons, each of which glittered in the sunlight or deepened in shadow as the fitful rays of the descending luminary glanced along their varied rocky irregularities. Above where I stood were the lofty domes of Mounts Langford and Doane, marking the limits of that wonderful barrier which had so long defied human power in its efforts to subdue it. Rising seemingly from the promontory which favored my vision was the familiar summit of Mount Everts, at the base of which I had dwelt so long, and which still seemed to hold me within its friendly shadow. All the vast country within this grand enclosure of mountains and lake, scarred and seamed with the grotesque ridges, rocky escarpments, undulating hillocks, and miniature lakes, and steaming with hot springs, produced by the volcanic forces of a former era, lay spread out before me like a vast panorama. I doubt if distress and suffering can ever entirely obliterate all sense of natural grandeur and magnificence. Lost in the wonder and admiration inspired by this vast world of beauties, I nearly forgot to improve the few moments of remaining sunshine to obtain fire. With a lighted brand in my hand, I effected a most difficult and arduous descent of the abrupt and stony headland to the beach of the lake. The sand was soft and yielding. I kindled a fire, and removing the stiffened slippers from my feet, attached them to my belt and wandered barefoot along the sandy shore to gather wood for the night. The dry warm sand was most grateful to my lacerated and festering feet, and for a long time after my wood-pile was supplied, I sat with them uncovered. At length, conscious of the need of every possible protection from the freezing night atmosphere, I sought my belt for the slippers, and one was missing. In gathering the wood it had become detached, and was lost. Darkness was closing over the landscape, when, sorely disheartened with the thought of passing the night with one foot exposed to freezing temperature, I commenced a search for the missing slipper. I knew I could not travel a day without it. Fearful that it had dropped into the lake, and been carried by some recurrent wave beyond recovery, my search for an hour among fallen trees and bushes, up the hill-side and along the beach, in darkness and with naming brands, at one moment crawling on hands and feet into a brush-heap, another peering among logs and bushes and stones, was filled with anxiety and dismay. Success at length rewarded my perseverance, and no language can describe the joy with which I drew the cause of so much distress from beneath the limb that, as I passed, had torn it from my belt. With a feeling of great relief, I now sat down in the sand, my back to a log, and listened to the dash and roar of the waves. It was a wild lullaby, but had no terrors for a worn-out man. I never passed a night of more refreshing sleep. When I awoke my fire was extinguished save a few embers, which I soon fanned into a cheerful flame. I ate breakfast with some relish, and started along the beach in pursuit of a camp, believing that if successful I should find directions what to do, and food to sustain me. The search which I was making lay in the direction of my pre-arranged route to the Madison Mountains, which I intended to approach at their lowest point of altitude. Buoyed by the hope of finding food and counsel, and another night of undisturbed repose in the sand, I resumed my journey along the shore, and at noon found the camp last occupied by my friends on the lake. A thorough search for food in the ground and trees revealed nothing, and no notice to apprise me of their movements could be seen. A dinner-fork, which afterwards proved to be of infinite service in digging roots, and a yeast-powder can, which would hold half a pint, and which I converted into a drinking-cup and dinner-pot, were the only evidences that the spot had ever been visited by civilized man. "Oh!" thought I, "why did they forget to leave me food!" it never occurring to me that they might have cached it, as I have since learned they did, in several spots nearer the place of my separation from them. I left the camp in deep dejection, with the purpose of following the trail of the party to the Madison. Carefully inspecting the faint traces left of their course of travel, I became satisfied that from some cause they had made a retrograde movement from this camp, and departed from the lake at a point further down stream. Taking this as an indication that there were obstructions above, I commenced retracing my steps along the beach. An hour of sunshine in the afternoon enabled me to procure fire, which, in the usual manner, I carried to my camping-place. There I built a fire, and to protect myself from the wind, which was blowing violently, lashing the lake into foam, I made a bower of pine boughs, crept under it, and very soon fell asleep. How long I slept I know not, but I was aroused by the snapping and cracking of the burning foliage, to find my shelter and the adjacent forest in a broad sheet of flame. My left hand was badly burned, and my hair singed closer than a barber would have trimmed it, while making my escape from the semi-circle of burning trees. Among the disasters of this fire, there was none I felt more seriously than the loss of my buckle-tongue knife, my pin fish-hook, and tape fish-line. [Illustration: The Burning Forest.] The grandeur of the burning forest surpasses description. An immense sheet of flame, following to their tops the lofty trees of an almost impenetrable pine forest, leaping madly from top to top, and sending thousands of forked tongues a hundred feet or more athwart the midnight darkness, lighting up with lurid gloom and glare the surrounding scenery of lake and mountains, fills the beholder with mingled feelings of awe and astonishment. I never before saw anything so terribly beautiful. It was marvelous to witness the flash-like rapidity with which the flames would mount the loftiest trees. The roaring, cracking, crashing, and snapping of falling limbs and burning foliage was deafening. On, on, on traveled the destructive element, until it seemed as if the whole forest was enveloped in flame. Afar up the wood-crowned hill, the overtopping trees shot forth pinnacles and walls and streamers of arrowy fire. The entire hill-side was an ocean of glowing and surging fiery billows. Favored by the gale, the conflagration spread with lightning swiftness over an illimitable extent of country, filling the atmosphere with driving clouds of suffocating fume, and leaving a broad and blackened trail of spectral trunks shorn of limbs and foliage, smoking and burning, to mark the immense sweep of its devastation. Resolved to search for a trail no longer, when daylight came I selected for a landmark the lowest notch in the Madison Range. Carefully surveying the jagged and broken surface over which I must travel to reach it, left the lake and pushed into the midst of its intricacies. All the day, until nearly sunset, I struggled over rugged hills, through windfalls, thickets, and matted forests, with the rock-ribbed beacon constantly in view. As I advanced it receded, as if in mockery of my toil. Night overtook me with my journey half accomplished. The precaution of obtaining fire gave me warmth and sleep, and long before daylight I was on my way. The hope of finding an easy pass into the valley of the Madison inspired me with fresh courage and determination, but long before I arrived at the base of the range, I scanned hopelessly its insurmountable difficulties. It presented to my eager vision an endless succession of inaccessible peaks and precipices, rising thousands of feet sheer and bare above the plain. No friendly gorge or gully or canon invited such an effort as I could make to scale this rocky barrier. Oh, for the faith that could remove mountains! How soon should this colossal fabric open at my approach! What a feeling of helpless despair came over me with the conviction that the journey of the last two days had been in vain! I seated myself on a rock, upon the summit of a commanding hill, and cast my eyes along the only route which now seemed tenable--down the Yellowstone. How many dreary miles of forest and mountain filled the terrible panorama! I thought that before accepting this discouraging alternative I would spend a day in search for a pass. Twenty miles at most would take me into the Madison Valley, and thirty more restore me to friends who had abundance. Supposing that I should find plenty of thistles, I had left the lake with a small supply, and that was entirely spent. I looked in vain for them where I then was. While I was thus considering whether to remain and search for a passage or return to the Yellowstone, I experienced one of those strange hallucinations which many of my friends have misnamed insanity, but which to me was Providence. An old clerical friend, for whose character and counsel I had always cherished peculiar regard, in some unaccountable manner seemed to be standing before me, charged with advice which would relieve my perplexity. I seemed to hear him say, as if in a voice and with the manner of authority: "Go back immediately, as rapidly as your strength will permit. There is no food here, and the idea of scaling these rocks is madness." "Doctor," I rejoined, "the distance is too great. I cannot live to travel it." "Say not so. Your life depends upon the effort. Return at once. Start now, lest your resolution falter. Travel as fast and as far as possible--it is your only chance." "Doctor, I am rejoiced to meet you in this hour of distress, but doubt the wisdom of your counsel. I am within seventy miles of Virginia. Just over these rocks, a few miles away, I shall find friends. My shoes are nearly worn out, my clothes are in tatters, and my strength is almost overcome. As a last trial, it seems to me I can but attempt to scale this mountain or perish in the effort, if God so wills." "Don't think of it. Your power of endurance will carry you through. I will accompany you. Put your trust in Heaven. Help yourself and God will help you." [Illustrations: The Ghostly Counsellor.] Overcome by these and other persuasions, and delighted with the idea of having a traveling companion, I plodded my way over the route I had come, intending at a certain point to change it so as to strike the river at the foot of the lake. Stopping after a few miles of travel, I had no difficulty in procuring fire, and passed a comfortable night. When I resumed my journey the next day the sun was just rising. Whenever I was disposed, as was often the case, to question the wisdom of the change of routes, my old friend appeared to be near with words of encouragement, but his reticence on other subjects both surprised and annoyed me. I was impressed at times, during the entire journey with the belief that my return was a fatal error, and if my deliverance had failed should have perished with that conviction. Early this day I deflected from my old route and took my course for the foot of the lake, with the hope, by constant travel, to reach it the next day. The distance was greater than I anticipated. Nothing is more deceptive than distance in these high latitudes. At the close of each of the two suceeding days, my point of destination was seemingly as far from me as at the moment I took leave of the Madison Range, and when, cold and hungry, on the afternoon of the fourth day, I gathered the first food I had eaten in nearly five days, and lay down by my fire near the debouchure of the river, I had nearly abandoned all hope of escape. At daybreak I was on the trail down the river. The thought I had adopted from the first, "I will not perish in this wilderness," often revived my sinking spirits, when, from faintness and exhaustion, I felt but little desire for life. Once, while struggling through a field of tangled trunks which seemed interminable, at one of the pauses I found myself seriously considering whether it was not preferable to die there than renew the effort to proceed. I felt that all attempt to escape was but a bitter prolongation of the agony of dissolution. A seeming whisper in the air, "While there is life there is hope; take courage," broke the delusion, and I clambered on. I did not forget to improve the mid-day sun to procure fire. Sparks from the lighted brands had burned my hands and crisped the nails of my fingers, and the smoke from them had tanned my face to the complexion of an Indian. While passing through an opening in the forest I found the tip of a gull's wing; it was fresh. I made a fire upon the spot, mashed the bones with a stone, and consigning them to my camp kettle, the yeast-powder box, made half a pint of delicious broth. The remainder of that day and the night ensuing were given to sleep. I lost all sense of time. Days and nights came and went, and were numbered only by the growing consciousness that I was gradually starving. I felt no hunger, did not eat to appease appetite, but to renew strength. I experienced but little pain. The gaping sores on my feet, the severe burn on my hip, the festering crevices at the joints of my fingers, all terrible in appearance, had ceased to give me the least concern. The roots which supplied my food had suspended the digestive power of the stomach, and their fibres were packed in it a matted, compact mass. Not so with my hours of slumber. They were visited by the most luxurious dreams. I would apparently visit the most gorgeously decorated restaurants of New York and Washington; sit down to immense tables spread with the most appetizing viands; partake of the richest oyster stews and plumpest pies; engage myself in the labor and preparation of curious dishes, and with them fill range upon range of elegantly furnished tables until they fairly groaned beneath the accumulated dainties prepared by my own hands. Frequently the entire night would seem to have been spent in getting up a sumptuous dinner. I would realize the fatigue of roasting, boiling, baking, and fabricating the choicest dishes known to the modern cuisine, and in my disturbed slumber's would enjoy with epicurean relish the food thus furnished even to repletion. Alas! there was more luxury than life in these somnolent vagaries. It was a cold, gloomy day when I arrived in the vicinity of the falls. The sky was overcast and the snow-capped peaks rose chilly and bleak through the biting atmosphere. The moaning of the wind through the pines, mingling with the sullen roar of the falls, was strangely in unison with my own saddened feelings. I had no heart to gaze upon a scene which a few weeks before had inspired me with rapture and awe. One moment of sunshine was of more value to me than all the marvels amid which I was famishing. But the sun had hid his face and denied me all hope of obtaining fire. The only alternative was to seek shelter in a thicket. I penetrated the forest a long distance, before finding one that suited me. Breaking and crowding my way into its very midst, I cleared a spot large enough to recline upon, interlaced the surrounding brushwood, gathered the fallen foliage into a bed, and lay down with a prayer for sleep and forgetfulness. Alas! neither came. The coldness increased through the night. Constant friction with my hands and unceasing beating with my legs and feet saved me from freezing. It was the most terrible night of my journey, and when, with the early dawn, I pulled myself into a standing posture, it was to realize that my right arm was partially paralyzed, and my limbs so stiffened with cold as to be almost immovable. Fearing lest paralysis should suddenly seize the entire system, I literally dragged myself through the forest to the river. Seated near the verge of the great canon below the falls, I anxiously awaited the appearance of the sun. That great luminary never looked so beautiful as when, a few moments afterwards, he emerged from the clouds and exposed his glowing beams to the concentrated powers of my lens. I kindled a mighty flame, fed it with every dry stick and broken tree-top I could find, and without motion, and almost without sense, remained beside it several hours. The great falls of the Yellowstone were roaring within three hundred yards, and the awful canon yawned almost at my feet; but they had lost all charm for me. In fact, I regarded them as enemies which had lured me to destruction, and felt a sullen satisfaction in morbid indifference. My old friend and adviser, whose presence I had felt more than seen the last few days, now forsook me altogether. But I was not alone. By some process which I was too weak to solve, my arms, legs, and stomach were transformed into so many traveling companions. Often for hours I would plod along conversing with these imaginary friends. Each had his peculiar wants which he expected me to supply. The stomach was importunate in his demand for a change of diet--complained incessantly of the roots I fed him, their present effect and more remote consequences. I would try to silence him with promises, beg of him to wait a few days, and when this failed of the quiet I desired, I would seek to intimidate him by declaring, as a sure result of negligence, our inability to reach home alive. All to no purpose--he tormented me with his fretful humors through the entire journey. The others would generally concur with him in these fancied altercations. The legs implored me for rest, and the arms complained that I gave them too much to do. Troublesome as they were, it was a pleasure to realize their presence. I worked for them, too, with right good will, doing many things for their comfort, which, had I felt alone, would have remained undone. They appeared to be perfectly helpless of themselves; would do nothing for me or for each other. I often wondered, while they ate and slept so much that they did not aid in gathering wood and kindling fires. As a counterpoise to their own inertia, whenever they discovered languor in me on necessary occasions, they were not wanting in words of encouragement and cheer. I recall as I write an instance where by prompt and timely interposition, the representative of the stomach saved me from a death of dreadful agony. One day I came to a small stream issuing from a spring of mild temperature on the hillside, swarming with minnows. I caught some with my hands and ate them raw. To my taste they were delicious. But the stomach refused them, accused me of attempting to poison him, and would not be reconciled until I had emptied my pouch of the few fish I had put there for future use. Those that I ate made me very sick. Poisoned by the mineral in the water, had I glutted my appetite with them as I intended, I should doubtless have died in the wilderness, in excruciating torment. A gradual mental introversion grew upon me as physical weakness increased. The grand and massive scenery which, on the upward journey, had aroused every enthusiastic impulse of my nature, was now tame and spiritless. My thoughts were turned in upon myself--upon the dreadful fate which apparently lay just before me--and the possible happiness of the existence beyond. All doubt of immortality fled in the light of present realities. So vivid were my conceptions of the future that at times I longed for death, not less as the beginning of happiness than as a release from misery. Led on by these reflections, I would recall the varied incidents of my journey--my escape from the lion, from fire, my return from Madison Range--and in all of them I saw how much I had been indebted to that mysterious protection which comes only from the throne of the Eternal. And yet, starving, foot-sore, half blind, worn to a skeleton, was it surprising that I lacked the faith needful to buoy me above the dark waters of despair, which I now felt were closing around me? In less serious moods, as I struggled along, my thoughts would revert to the single being on whom my holiest affections centered--my daughter. What a tie was that to bind me to life! Oh! could I be restored to her for a single hour, long enough for parting counsel and blessing, it would be joy unspeakable! Long hours of painful travel were relieved of physical suffering by this absorbing agony of the mind which, when from my present standpoint I contrast it with the personal calamities of my exile, swells into mountains. To return from this digression. At many of the streams on my route I spent hours in endeavoring to catch trout, with a hook fashioned from the rim of my broken spectacles, but in no instance with success. The tackle was defective. The country was full of game in great variety. I saw large herds of deer, elk, antelope, occasionally a bear, and many smaller animals. Numerous flocks of ducks, geese, swans, and pelicans inhabited the lakes and rivers. But with no means of killing them, their presence was a perpetual aggravation. At all the camps of our company I stopped and recalled many pleasant incidents associated with them. One afternoon, when approaching "Tower Falls," I came upon a large hollow tree, which, from the numerous tracks surrounding it, and the matted foliage in the cavity, I recognized as the den of a bear. It was a most inviting couch. Gathering a needful supply of wood and brush, I lighted a circle of piles around the tree, crawled into the nest, and passed a night of unbroken slumber. I rose the next morning to find that during the night the fires had communicated with the adjacent forest, and burned a large space in all directions, doubtless intimidating the rightful proprietor of the nest, and saving me from another midnight adventure. At "Tower Falls" I spent the first half of a day in capturing a grasshopper, and the remainder in a fruitless effort to catch a mess of trout. In the agony of disappointment, I resolved to fish no more. A spirit of rebellion seized me. I determined that thistles should thenceforth be my only sustenance. "Why is it," I asked myself, "that in the midst of abundance, every hour meeting with objects which would restore strength and vigor and energy, every moment contriving some device to procure the nourishment my wasting frame requires, I should meet with these repeated and discouraging failures." Thoughts of the early teaching of a pious mother suppressed these feelings. Oh! how often have the recollections of a loved New England home, and the memories of a happy childhood, cheered my sinking spirits, and dissipated the gathering gloom of despair! There were thoughts and feelings and mental anguishes without number, that visited me during my period of trial, that never can be known to any but my God and myself. Bitter as was my experience, it was not unrelieved by some of the most precious moments I have ever known. Soon after leaving "Tower Falls," I entered the open country. Pine forests and windfalls were changed for sage brush and desolation, with occasional tracts of stinted verdure, barren hillsides, exhibiting here and there an isolated clump of dwarf trees, and ravines filled with the rocky debris of adjacent mountains. My first camp on this part of the route, for the convenience of getting wood, was made near the summit of a range of towering foot-hills. Towards morning a storm of wind and snow nearly extinguished my fire. I became very cold; the storm was still raging when I arose, and the ground white with snow. I was perfectly bewildered and had lost my course of travel. No visible object, seen through the almost blinding storm, reassured me, and there was no alternative but to find the river and take my direction from its current, Fortunately after a few hours of stumbling and scrambling among rocks and over crests, I came to the precipitous side of the canyon through which it ran, and with much labor, both of hands and feet, descended it to the margin. I drank copiously of its pure waters, and sat beside it for a long time, waiting for the storm to abate, so that I could procure fire. The day wore on, without any prospect of a termination to the storm. Chilled through, my tattered clothing saturated, I saw before me a night of horrors unless I returned to my fire. The scramble up the side of the rocky canyon in many places nearly perpendicular, was the hardest work of my journey. Often while clinging to the jutting rocks with hands and feet, to reach a shelving projection, my grasp would unclose and I would slide many feet down the sharp declivity. It was night when, sore from the bruises I had received, I reached my fire; the storm, still raging, had nearly extinguished it. I found a few embers in the ashes, and with much difficulty kindled a flame. Here on this bleak mountain side, as well as I now remember, I must have passed two nights beside the fire in the storm. Many times during each night I crawled to a little clump of trees to gather wood, and brush, and the broken limbs of fallen tree-tops. All the sleep I obtained was snatched from the intervals which divided these labors. It was so harassed with frightful dreams as to afford little rest. I remember, before I left this camp, stripping up my sleeves to look at my shrunken arms. Flesh and blood had apparently left them. The skin clung to the bones like wet parchment. A child's hand could have clasped them from wrist to shoulder. "Yet" thought I, "It is death to remain; I cannot perish in this wilderness." [Illustration: Descending the Precipice.] Taking counsel of this early formed resolution, I hobbled on my course through the snow, which was rapidly disappearing before the rays of the warm sun. Well knowing that I should find no thistles in the open country, I had filled my pouches with them before leaving the forest. My supply was running low, and there was several days of heavy mountain travel between me and Boteler's ranch. With the most careful economy, it could last but two or three days longer. I saw the necessity of placing myself and imaginary companions upon allowance. The conflict which ensued with the stomach, when I announced this resolution, required great firmness to carry through. I tried wheedling and coaxing and promising; failing in these, I threatened to part company with a comrade so unreasonable, and he made no further complaint. Two or three days before I was found, while ascending a steep hill, I fell from exhaustion into a sage brush, without the power to rise. Unbuckling my belt, as was my custom, I soon fell asleep. I have no idea of the time I slept, but upon awakening I fastened my belt, scrambled to my feet, and pursued my journey. As night drew on I selected a camping-place, gathered wood into a heap, and felt for my lens to procure fire. It was gone. If the earth had yawned to swallow me I would not have been more terrified. The only chance for life was lost. The last hope had fled. I seemed to feel the grim messenger who had been long pursuing me knocking at the portals of my heart as I lay down by the side of the wood pile and covered myself with limbs and sage brush, with the dreadful conviction that my struggle of life was over, and I should rise no more. The flood gates of misery seemed now to be opened, and it rushed in living tide upon my soul. With the rapidity of lightning, I ran over every event of my life. Thoughts doubled and trebled upon me, until I saw, as if in vision, the entire past of my existence. It was all before me, as if painted with a sunbeam, and all seemingly faded like the phantoms of a vivid dream. As calmness returned, reason resumed her empire. Fortunately the weather was comfortable. I summoned all the powers of my memory, thought over every foot of the day's travel, and concluded that the glass must have become detached from my belt while sleeping. Five long miles over the hills must be retraced to regain it. There was no alternative, and before daylight I had staggered over half the distance. I found the lens on the spot where I had slept. No incident of my journey brought with it more of joy and relief. Returning to the camp of the previous night, I lighted the pile I had prepared, and lay down for a night of rest. It was very cold, and towards morning commenced snowing. With difficulty I kept the fire alive. Sleep was impossible. When daylight came, I was impressed with the idea that I must go on despite the storm. A flash--momentary but vivid--came over me, that I should be saved. Snatching a lighted brand, I started through the storm. In the afternoon the storm abated and the sun shone at intervals. Coming to a small clump of trees, I set to work to prepare a camp. I laid the brand down which I had preserved with so much care, to pick up a few dry sticks with which to feed it, until I could collect wood for a camp-fire and in the few minutes thus employed it expired. I sought to revive it, but every spark was gone. Clouds obscured the sun, now near the horizon, and the prospect of another night of exposure without fire became fearfully imminent. I sat down with my lens and the last remaining piece of touchwood I possessed to catch a gleam of sunshine, feeling that my life depended upon it. In a few minutes the cloud passed, and with trembling hands I presented the little disk to the face of the glowing luminary. Quivering with excitement lest a sudden cloud should interpose, a moment passed before I could hold the lens steadily enough to concentrate a burning focus. At length it came. The little thread of smoke curled gracefully upwards from the Heaven-lighted spark, which, a few moments afterwards, diffused with warmth and comfort my desolate lodgings. I resumed my journey the next morning, with the belief that I should make no more fires with my lens. I must save a brand, or perish. The day was raw and gusty; an east wind, charged with storm, penetrated my nerves with irritating keenness. After walking a few miles the storm came on, and a coldness unlike any other I had ever felt seized me. It entered all my bones. I attempted to build a fire, but could not make it burn. Seizing a brand, I stumbled blindly on, stopping within the shadow of every rock and clump to renew energy for a final conflict for life. A solemn conviction that death was near, that at each pause I made my limbs would refuse further service, and that I should sink helpless and dying in my path, overwhelmed me with terror. Amid all this tumult of the mind, I felt that I had done all that man could do. I knew that in two or three days more I could effect my deliverance, and I derived no little satisfaction from the thought that, as I now was in the broad trail, my remains would be found, and my friends relieved of doubt as to my fate. Once only the thought flashed across my mind that I should be saved, and I seemed to hear a whispered command to "Struggle on." Groping along the side of a hill, I became suddenly sensible of a sharp reflection, as of burnished steel. Looking up, through half-closed eyes, two rough, but kindly faces met my gaze. "Are you Mr. Everts?" "Yes. All that is left of him." "We have come for you." "Who sent you?" "Judge Lawrence and other friends." "God bless him and them and you! I am saved!" and with these words, powerless of further effort, I fell forward into the arms of my preservers, in a state of unconsciousness. I was saved. On the very brink of the river which divides the known from the unknown, strong arms snatched me from the final plunge, and kind ministrations wooed me back to life. [Illustration: The Rescue.] Baronet and Prichette, my two preservers, by the usual appliances, soon restored me to consciousness, made a camp upon the spot, and while one went to Fort Ellis, a distance of seventy miles, to return with remedies to restore digestion and an ambulance to convey me to that post, the other sat by my side, and with all the care, sympathy, and solicitude of a brother, ministered to my frequent necessities. In two days I was sufficiently recovered in strength to be moved twenty miles down the trail to the cabin of some miners who were prospecting in that vicinity. From these men I received every possible attention which their humane and generous natures could devise. A good bed was provided, game was killed to make broth, and the best stores of their larder placed at my command. For four days, at a time when every day's labor was invaluable in their pursuit, they abandoned their work to aid in my restoration. Owing to the protracted inaction of the system, and the long period which must transpire before Prichette's return with remedies, my friends had serious doubts of my recovery. The night after my arrival at the cabin, while suffering the most excruciating agony, and thinking that I had only been saved to die among friends, a loud knock was heard at the cabin door. An old man in mountain costume entered--a hunter, whose life was spent among the mountains. He was on his way to find a brother. He, listened to the story of my sufferings, and tears rapidly coursed each other down his rough, weather-beaten face. But when he was told of my present necessity, brightening in a moment, he exclaimed: "Why, Lord bless you, if that is all, I have the very remedy you need. In two hours' time all shall be well with you." He left the cabin, returning in a moment with a sack filled with the fat of a bear which he had killed a few hours before. From this he rendered out a pint measure of oil. I drank the whole of it. It proved to be the needed remedy, and the next day, freed from pain, with appetite and digestion reestablished, I felt that good food and plenty of it were only necessary for an early recovery. In a day or two I took leave of my kind friends, with a feeling of regret at parting, and gratitude for their kindness as enduring as life. Meeting the carriage on my way, I proceeded to Bozeman, where I remained among old friends, who gave me every attention until my health was sufficiently restored to allow me to return to my home in Helena. My heartfelt thanks are due to the members of the Expedition, all of whom devoted seven, and some of them twelve days to the search for me before they left Yellowstone Lake; and to Judge Lawrence, of Helena, and the friends who cooperated with him in the offer of reward which sent Baronet and Prichette to my rescue. My narrative is finished. In the course of events the time is not far distant when the wonders of the Yellowstone will be made accessible to all lovers of sublimity, grandeur, and novelty in natural scenery, and its majestic waters become the abode of civilization and refinement; and when that arrives, I hope, in happier mood and under more auspicious circumstances, to revisit scenes fraught for me with such thrilling interest; to ramble along the glowing beach of Bessie Lake; to sit down amid the hot springs under the shade of Mount Everts; to thread unscarred the mazy forests, retrace the dreary journey to the Madison Range, and with enraptured fancy gaze upon the mingled glories and terrors of the great falls and marvelous canon, and to enjoy, in happy contrast with the trials they recall, their power to delight, elevate, and overwhelm the mind with wondrous and majestic beauty. 
40658	----	Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals. Variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been retained except in obvious cases of typographical error. The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs, thus the page number of the illustration might not match the page number in the List of Illustrations. [Illustration: ALMA WHITE] WITH GOD IN THE YELLOWSTONE BY ALMA WHITE AUTHOR OF _Looking Back from Beulah_ (in both English and German), _Gems of Life_, _Golden Sunbeams_, _Demons and Tongues_, _The Chosen People_, _My Trip to the Orient_, _The New Testament Church_ (2 vols.), _The Titanic Tragedy--God Speaking to the Nations_, _Truth Stranger than Fiction_, _Why I do not Eat Meat_, _Restoration of Israel, the Hope of the World_, _The Story of My Life_ (Vol. I); and Editor of the _Pillar of Fire_, the _Good Citizen_, the _Rocky Mountain Pillar of Fire_, the _London Pillar of Fire_, the _British Sentinel_, and the _Occidental Pillar of Fire_. PILLAR of FIRE Zarephath,--New Jersey 1920 _Copyright, 1920, by Alma White_ PREFACE In this volume I have attempted not simply to give a brief account of a recent trip to Yellowstone National Park and to describe some of Nature's grandeurs, but to elucidate spiritual truths that were demonstrated in this place of many "wonders" in a thousand miracles before my eyes. There is no more poetical, picturesque, and fascinating spot on the globe, and no other place where magnificence and sublimity blend so harmoniously with the softest tints and colorings as in the Yellowstone region. Here are geological formations in which the book of ages has been written in inks of variegated hues. In the canyons, rivers, and waterfalls, in the lakes, springs, and pools, specimens of Eden have been preserved on the outside of a thin crust, covering the sulphurous flames of the regions below, where the rumblings of God's wrath are heard threatening the world with judgments. The mighty forces that operated in ages past are still at His command, demonstrated by the boiling springs, the volcanoes and spouting geysers. Ten thousand omens are heralding the approach of the winding-up of this age, and the beginning of a new dispensation in which all men shall acknowledge Jehovah in His majesty and power as the one and only Potentate worthy of the adoration and homage of the human race. CONTENTS PAGE Historical Statement 9 CHAPTER I--Enroute to the Park 19 CHAPTER II--Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone 33 CHAPTER III--Upper and Lower Falls 47 CHAPTER IV--Mammoth Hot Springs 59 CHAPTER V--Norris Geyser Basin 73 CHAPTER VI--Upper Geyser Basin 84 CHAPTER VII--Upper Geyser Basin (Cont.) 102 CHAPTER VIII--The Bottomless Pit 109 CHAPTER IX--The Voice of God 123 The Yellowstone and How it was Made 136 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE ALMA WHITE _Frontispiece_ Map of Yellowstone Park 8 Group of Bannock Indian War Chiefs 12 Bannock Indian Papoose 14 Arch at Northern Entrance to Yellowstone Park 18 Shoshone Canyon 22 Shoshone Dam 24 The Holy City 27 Pahaska Tepee Lodge 29 Chittenden Bridge 32 Sylvan Lake 35 Yellowstone Lake 37 Eagle's Nest Rock 40 Grand Canyon, from Inspiration Point 42 Willow Park Camp 45 Lower Yellowstone Fall 48 Bear Feeding "A La Carte" 52 Upper Yellowstone Fall 55 Beaver Dam 61 Mammoth Hot Springs 63 Fort Yellowstone 66 Obsidian Cliff 69 Roaring Mountain 72 Norris Geyser Basin 75 National Park Mountain 78 "Hell's Half Acre" 80 Mammoth Paint Pots 83 Office Old Faithful Inn 85 Old Faithful Geyser 86 Giantess Geyser in Action 89 The Sponge Geyser 93 The Beehive Geyser 95 Castle Geyser 98 Butterfly Spring 100 Riverside Geyser 105 Giant Geyser 107 Morning Glory Spring 108 Grotto Geyser 111 Sapphire Pool--Biscuit Basin 114 Punch Bowl 116 Handkerchief Pool 118 Emerald Pool 121 Jupiter Terrace 125 Buffalo Herd 127 Elk Stalled in Snow 130 Golden Gate Canyon and Viaduct 132 [Illustration: MAP OF YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK] HISTORICAL STATEMENT In a book entitled, _The Discovery of Yellowstone Park_, written by Nathaniel P. Langford, the author gives an account of an expedition of 130 persons who started from St. Paul, June 16, 1862, for the Salmon River, as it had been widely rumored that extensive placer mines had been discovered there. The expedition was led by Captain James L. Fisk, the noted Indian fighter. Among his assistants were E. H. Burritt, Nathaniel P. Langford, and Samuel R. Bond, who acted as secretary. David E. Folsom, Robert C. Knox, Cornelius Bray, Patrick Doherty, Ard Godfrey, and Patrick Bray, were selected for guard duty. Many well-known pioneers of Montana were in this company, whose names are familiar to the writer. After eighteen weeks of hazardous adventure, the expedition arrived, on the 23d of October, at Grasshopper Creek. The weather being too cold for them to proceed on the journey, they decided to camp in that locality for the winter. This region was then the rendezvous of the Bannack Indians; and the St. Paul expedition named the settlement Bannack. To me it is a strange coincidence that this expedition of pioneers should have left St. Paul on the day of my birth, the 16th of June, 1862; and that on March 31st, 1882, a little more than nineteen years, later, I should reach this same locality, having been engaged to teach the Bannack public school, which I began the 4th of April. Frequently the early history of the town and its inhabitants was rehearsed in my hearing, but many deplored the fact that some of the old-timers had moved to Virginia City, Helena, Butte, and other places, and that the placer mines of Bannack were not so prosperous as in former days. But there were enough of the pioneers left to keep fresh in the memories of the younger generation the stories of adventures with wild beasts, the Indians, etc. Some of the stories were looked upon as fabrications, while others were known to be plain statements of facts. I heard so much about the Indians, their reprisals and cruelty, that I lived in constant dread of them, even when there was no cause for alarm. A short time before I reached Montana, which was then a territory, there had been an uprising of some tribes, and a number of persons living in Bannack and vicinity had been killed. When they were on the warpath at this particular time, the inhabitants of Bannack had to barricade themselves in the new brick courthouse and stay for days to protect themselves from a general slaughter. I was not afraid of the squaws with their papooses strapped to boards on their backs, but when the "bucks," as they were called, pressed their flat noses against the window-panes asking for muck-a-muck (food), they frightened me so that I could not get over it for hours. No one else seemed to have any fear of them, even though harrowing stories were everywhere being told about their treachery and cruelty. I made my home with Aunt Eliza, my mother's sister, who had married Dillon B. Mason, a pioneer of Montana, about ten years before. It was she who had engaged the public school for me and had insisted on my coming to Montana, from Kentucky, to teach at Bannack. When the Indians on their foraging expeditions came around to the back door and windows of the kitchen, it seemed to be my lot to see them first. When they saw how I was disturbed at their presence, they would throw their heads back and laugh, and say, "White squaw, heaply big fool." My uncle and aunt were always on friendly terms with them, calling them John, Jim, and other familiar names. This pleased them very much, especially when food was given them; and I knew they would be around again in a few days, much to my annoyance. [Illustration: No 61 A GROUP OF BANNOCK WAR CHIEFS POCATELLO IDAHO] Patrick Bray of Bannack, whose name is mentioned in the St. Paul expedition, was one of the old pioneers who could tell more "blood and thunder" stories than anyone else in the community. [Illustration: No 58 BANNOCK PAPOOSE POCATELLO IDAHO] In 1870, a party composed of some of the most prominent citizens of Montana, under the leadership of General Washburn, then the Surveyor-General of the Territory, went on an exploring expedition to the Yellowstone regions. The names of some of the members of this party were household words in the early days of Montana, and familiar to the writer. Among them were Cornelius Hedges, Nathaniel P. Langford, the first superintendent of the Park, T. C. Everts, S. T. Hauser, and Lieut. G. C. Doane. The reader will note the fact that N. P. Langford was a member of the St. Paul party under the leadership of Captain Fisk, that landed on Grasshopper Creek, Montana, in the fall of 1862; and much of the success of the expedition was due to his heroism. Also much credit is due him for his unabating devotion to the cause of the republic, and the service he rendered in having the region set apart as a National Park, March 1st, 1872. Until this time, there were no restrictions on hunting, trapping, gathering of specimens, etc., or to fencing in the geysers by private individuals. THE ACT OF THE DEDICATION OF YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, approved March 1st, 1872, was as follows: "BE IT ENACTED BY THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN CONGRESS ASSEMBLED: "That the tract of land in the Territories of Montana and Wyoming, lying near the headwaters of the Yellowstone River, and described as follows, to-wit: Commencing at the junction of Gardiner River with the Yellowstone River, and running east to the meridian passing ten miles to the eastward of the most eastern point of Yellowstone Lake; thence south along the said meridian to the parallel of latitude passing ten miles south of the most southern point of Yellowstone Lake; thence west along said parallel to the meridian passing fifteen miles west of the most western point of Madison Lake; thence north along said meridian to the latitude of the junction of the Yellowstone and Gardiner Rivers; thence east to place of beginning--is hereby reserved and withdrawn from settlement, occupancy or sale under the laws of the United States, and dedicated and set apart as a public park or pleasure ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people; and all persons who shall locate, settle upon or occupy the same or any part thereof, except as hereinafter provided, shall be considered trespassers and removed therefrom. "Sec. 2. The said public Park shall be under the exclusive control of the Secretary of the Interior, whose duty it shall be, as soon as practicable, to make and publish such rules and regulations as he may deem necessary and proper for the care and management of the same. Such regulations shall provide for the preservation from injury or spoliation of all timber, mineral deposits, natural curiosities or wonders within said park and their retention in their natural condition. "The Secretary may, in his discretion, grant leases for building purposes, for terms not exceeding ten years, of small parcels of ground, at such places in said park as shall require the erection of buildings for the accommodation of visitors; all the proceeds of said leases, and all other revenues that may be derived from any source connected with said park, to be expended under his direction in the management of the same, and the construction of roads and bridle paths therein. He shall provide against the wanton destruction of the fish and game found within said park, and against their capture or destruction for the purpose of merchandise or profit. He shall also cause all persons trespassing upon the same after the passage of this act to be removed therefrom, and generally shall be authorized to take all such measures as shall be necessary or proper to fully carry out the objects and purpose of this act." [Illustration: ARCH AT NORTHERN ENTRANCE TO YELLOWSTONE PARK, DEDICATED BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT] With God In the Yellowstone CHAPTER I ENROUTE TO THE PARK On September 2, 1919, I left Zarephath, New Jersey for Denver, Colorado. Seven days later, accompanied by my brother and his wife, Rev. Charles W. and Lillian O. Bridwell, I started on a trip to the Yellowstone National Park. Traffic on the railroads was so heavy out of Denver that we had some difficulty in getting properly routed, but finally succeeded. Twenty-four hours later, we reached Cody, Wyoming, the eastern entrance to the Park. We secured lodging at the Irma Hotel, founded by William F. Cody (Buffalo Bill), and named for his favorite daughter. On the walls of the office and in the halls of this hotel were splendid paintings, in which the whole history of the famous frontiersman and Indian fighter was shown. Hours could profitably be spent studying these pictures, in which one could learn more about the "Wild West," of former days, than one could get from the average history. All of the famous Indian chiefs were there, among them, Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, and Black Bird. Their features were so perfectly outlined I almost felt I was looking into their faces. There were so many tourists we were fortunate in getting accommodations at this place, when arrangements had not been made ahead. Since I felt the need of rest, and my brother wanted more information concerning the tour through the Park, we concluded to stay over for a day. We held an open-air Gospel meeting here, and had the opportunity of getting acquainted with some of the people whom we told about the work of the Pillar of Fire organization. At one time we had about decided to hire an automobile and drive through the Park, but later, concluded it would be too much of an undertaking, and made arrangements with the Yellowstone Park Transportation Company to take us through for about forty-three dollars each; this included board and lodging at the Yellowstone Camps. At 8:15, on the morning of September 12, we boarded one of the big, yellow touring-cars, with a number of other passengers, and proceeded on our journey. We had nothing to do with the selection of our automobile party, but could not have been better suited. About four miles west of Cody, we entered the SHOSHONE CANYON, three miles from the first tunnel. In the meantime, we were climbing up the mountainside so rapidly that it was soon hundreds of feet to the chasm below. In a little while we reached the top of the SHOSHONE DAM, to the left, and here made our first stop. The scenery, while approaching and when leaving the dam, was the most magnificent I have ever beheld. Word-pictures fail to give even a slight idea of the depths of the canyon, the wonderful tints and hues caused by mineral formations and volcanic action in ages past. The trees on either side were of such immense height, that I was almost staggered. I was not expecting anything like this, on the run from Cody to the boundary of the Park; and surprises awaited me every moment of the time. While waiting at the dam, I copied from a board the following dimensions: [Illustration: SHOSHONE CANYON © _Haynes, St. Paul_] Height, 328 feet, Thickness at base, 108 feet, Thickness at top, 10 feet, Length of crest, 200 feet, Capacity of reservoir, 456,000 acre-feet, Area of water surface, 10 square miles, Maximum width, 4 miles, Maximum depth, 233 feet, Length of spillway, 300 feet, Work begun, 1905, Work completed, 1910, Total cost, $1,354,000. The scenery approaching the dam on both sides, was to me so unparalleled and inspiring, my heart cried out with the Psalmist: "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.... For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night." After leaving the dam, we passed slowly through the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth tunnels. Twelve miles from Cody we had a magnificent view of the great SHOSHONE RESERVOIR at our left. Then we passed the Morris Ranch, crossed the bridge over the Shoshone River and turned to the right. We passed a school house, Hollister's Ranch, Frost and Richard's Ranch, entered Shoshone National Forest and took the left side road to Canyon Forest Ranger Station. Two miles farther was the overhanging Rock Cliff, and other places of less importance between it and the Holy City at the right. [Illustration: SHOSHONE DAM © _Haynes, St. Paul_] About forty-one miles from Cody we came to the Palisades; then followed Mesa Creek, Good Camp, Elephant Head at the right, Mutilated Hand, and Eagle Creek. About fifty-three miles from Cody we arrived at PAHASKA TEPEE LODGE, founded by Buffalo Bill. This station is only two miles from the boundary of the Park. The yellow cars turn in at the lodge for luncheon. A stop of about an hour and a half was allowed here. The house is built of unplaned logs with a large fireplace and small windows. It has wide porches, provided with easy chairs for the tourists. While it has a wild, rustic appearance it is homelike. A little brown bear chained to a tree on the grass plot in front furnished much amusement for the company by turning somersaults. Three or four bears had been killed a few days before, somewhere in the neighborhood of the lodge, and bear meat was served at luncheon. However, none of the three members of our party ate animal flesh. We asked that eggs might be substituted, but our request was not granted, and we had to be content with what we could get. We did not find the courtesy and interest manifested in our welfare here, on the part of the managers, that we expected; and we felt that if we had to meet the same difficulties farther on, it would be a matter of regret to us that we did not hire a conveyance and make an independent tour. Fortunately, we found a decided difference in the management at the camps. Two young women, who had been residing in the park camps for the summer, had arranged with the driver of our car to sit on the front seat with him on the trip from Cody to Yellowstone Camp. However, they were not on hand in the morning when we were ready to start, and a person who had later secured the front seat kindly let me have it. I was grateful for the protection the wind-shield gave me, and of being able to keep my feet warm near the engine. When the young women found that they had been left, they hired an automobile and overtook us. They paid a woman chauffeur, clad in men's clothing, ten dollars for this trip; and just as we were halting at the dam they drove up, to the delight of the young man who was driving our car. [Illustration: THE HOLY CITY © _Haynes, St. Paul_] Nothing was said to me about giving them the front seat, but they made some remarks in the presence of others that showed plainly what was on their minds. I kept my place until we reached Pahaska Lodge. In the meantime "Heine," the driver, as he was called, seemed more or less excited, and occasionally called to them in the rear seat. He was running at such speed it was difficult for some of the passengers to keep their places, especially where there were sharp curves in the road. He was, no doubt, a skilful driver. He seemed to know that he was exceeding the speed limit, and shouted out to one of the young women, "Ruth, are you all there?" A few minutes after this he ran against the post of a bridge and came near having a wreck, but no one said anything to him, nor made a protest against his carelessness and levity when he should have been attending to business. "Heine" spent the time at Pahaska Lodge in the company of the two girls; and when the time came to go, he did not wait, as others did, to load up in front of the building, but took them out to the rear where the car was standing and put them in the front seat. There was a protest on the part of all the other passengers, who insisted that he should give me the seat I had occupied in the morning, but he was unyielding; and after a half hour's delay and controversy they saw the utter futility of trying to convince him of his act of injustice, and proceeded on the journey. However, it served the purpose of quieting him down and causing him to be more careful in the dangerous places of the road. [Illustration: PAHASKA TEPEE LODGE © _Haynes, St. Paul_] The woman in charge at the Pahaska Lodge, who had failed to serve us with eggs, after one of the waitresses had promised them to me, was chafing under an impeachment of her lack of good will and hospitality toward some of her patrons; and came boldly out to the car, and in the presence of every one took sides with the driver, assuring him that she would stand for the delay. This greatly strengthened him in the stand he had taken. It was not very pleasant to ride behind a driver with so much responsibility, who was carrying on a flirtation. I once saw a brakeman flirting with a young woman when he should have been attending to business. Suddenly, he lost his footing, fell between the cars and was crushed to death. Human nature has been so weakened through the fall that there is not much dependence to be put in one where a play by the opposite sex is being made on the heartstrings. Samson was shorn of his strength by the fair-faced Delilah, and made to grind without eyes in the mills of the Philistines, after he had rent a lion, carried off the gates of Gaza, and defied all the enemies of Israel. There is too much good-natured toleration of such things, where human lives are involved. Most people choose the path of least resistance, when it does not seriously interfere with their rights or comfort, but not so with our fellow passengers, four of whom were devout members of the Friends' Church. There was a principle involved, and they did not hesitate to show on which side they were. We enjoyed the company of these "Friends" very much. The two gentlemen and their wives were our companions on the trip from the morning we left Cody till the day we parted at the Old Faithful Camp at the Upper Geyser Basin. [Illustration: CHITTENDEN BRIDGE © _Haynes, St. Paul_] CHAPTER II GRAND CANYON OF THE YELLOWSTONE After crossing the Yellowstone boundary, about two miles west of Pahaska Tepee Lodge, I began to feel an atmosphere of freedom that I had not hitherto enjoyed on the trip. I felt that the Yellowstone National Park, with all of its wonders and many interests, belonged to me as much as to any other person on the earth; and from that moment it seemed that I was walking with God to the very gates of heaven and to the brink of hell. The freedom of animal life in the Park, brought to my mind vivid pictures of the Millennium, when, as Isaiah says, nothing shall hurt or destroy in all God's holy mountain. It should be a matter of great interest and satisfaction to Americans that our government has the custody of the Yellowstone--that man with selfish interests is prohibited from laying claim to anything within its boundaries, and is compelled to refrain from marring or defacing the formations around the geysers and other places, and from destroying animal life. It is to be deplored that so few know how rich they are in the gifts that God and nature have bestowed upon us as a people, in this vast region of more than 3,000 square miles of so many miracles and wonders. About eight miles from the border, we came to Sylvan Pass; then followed Snow Fall, Lake Eleanor, Sylvan Lodge, Sylvan Lake, and Wedded Trees, at the left. About eleven miles from Sylvan Pass, we came to Turbid Lake, Osprey Nest in a tree at the right, Fishing Bridge, Yellowstone River, and turned to the right to Grand Canyon. Our first stop after leaving Pahaska Lodge was at MUD VOLCANO and GREEN GABLE SPRING, at the left. This was the first place where we had found any disturbance on the surface caused by the heated regions below. The angry crater of the volcano resembled, in some respects, the Mammoth Paint Pots in the Lower Geyser Basin, but unlike the latter, there was nothing beautiful about it,--it was simply a great mass of boiling mud, manifesting such intense heat as to spout up several feet, threatening to bespatter those who came too near. It was enclosed by a railing, around which was a board walk. Below the mud geyser was a boiling spring where the water, clear as crystal, poured out of the ground and was carried away. [Illustration: SYLVAN LAKE © _Haynes, St. Paul_] I ventured to put my finger into the water and was nearly burned. This place was only a suggestion of what we were to see later in the Geyser Basins. At our left, eight miles from Sylvan Pass, we had a splendid view of YELLOWSTONE LAKE in the distance. In the heart of the Park Plateau, averaging more than eight thousand feet elevation, surrounded by mountains, waterfalls, and cascades, is the lake, twenty miles in length, which, at its elevation, has but one rival, Lake Titicaca, in the Andes. As our party did not visit West Thumb, it was our privilege to see the lake only at a distance, where we could have but a slight idea of its beauty and immensity. "David E. Folsom, of the Folsom and Cook Exploring Party, in 1869 says: 'As we were about departing on our homeward trip, we ascended the summit of a neighboring hill and took a final look at Yellowstone Lake. Nestled among the forest-crowned hills which bounded our vision, lay this inland sea, its crystal waves dancing and sparkling in the sunlight as if laughing with joy for their wild freedom. It is a scene of transcendent beauty, which has been viewed by but few white men, and we felt glad to have looked upon it before its primeval solitude should be broken by the crowds of pleasure-seekers, which at no distant day will throng its shores.'" [Illustration: YELLOWSTONE LAKE © _Haynes, St. Paul_] For the next few miles the scenery was most fascinating, but it was only a prelude to what awaited us in the first glimpse we were to get of the GRAND CANYON. We halted at INSPIRATION POINT, where I followed others down the steps to a great ledge of rocks overhanging the chasm. The scene that greeted my vision was so overwhelming and unexpected that I became dizzy and had to make my way back to the car, supported by the railing. This yawning gulf with its awful depths of nearly two thousand feet, through which the river, like a silver thread was wending its way, and the sublime coloring produced by nature, reflected from the mineral formations on the sides of the great canyon, was a sight too much for human frailty, and I had to be satisfied to take a glimpse and wait until I could recuperate from the shock before attempting another adventure. Before leaving Inspiration Point, some one shouted, "See the eagle's nest!" and there, looking down into a tall pine tree at the right of the descent, was the nest; but I was more interested in the canyon, for I had never had the faintest conception of what it really is. When I had recuperated somewhat from the bewilderment, I was inclined to charge those who had visited the Park before, among whom were my brother and his wife, with stupidity and a lack of appreciation for not having done more to tell of such grandeur. But afterwards I had to admit that the half cannot be told however much anyone might try. Unlike the Royal Gorge in Colorado, we were not at the bottom looking up, but at the top looking down into the silent and awful depths. It was as if the earth had rent asunder and we were standing on the brink looking over into the abyss. "Of all the marvels of the Yellowstone National Park, the most sublime is the Grand Canyon. Through this the Yellowstone River, which is a tributary of the Missouri, flows in one place for twenty continuous miles between perpendicular cliffs only about 200 yards apart and from 1,200 to 1,500 feet in height. At the entrance of this part of the canyon the whole river makes a stupendous leap of 308 feet, in what is known as the 'Lower Fall.' The sides of this gigantic chasm have literally almost all the colors of the rainbow displayed upon their vertical surfaces. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, and white tints, are constantly succeeding one another here in wonderful variety, thus lighting up with glory countless architectural forms, which Nature, it would seem, had fashioned here to make the proudest works of man appear diminutive and tame. These colors doubtless have been formed by the percolating through the cliffs of the hot mineral waters from the neighboring springs. Distinguished painters have sadly declared that any adequate representation of these brilliant, variegated hues is utterly beyond the power of human art. What an unrivalled combination is there, therefore, in this canyon, of awe-inspiring grandeur and enchanting beauty! And what a magnificent pathway has been given to the Yellowstone River! Leaving the famous Yellowstone Lake enclosed by snow-clad mountains, it passes through a series of rapids and a fall of 140 feet before it even reaches the Grand Canyon, and just beyond this it receives a tributary, which in its haste to join it, makes a leap of 156 feet. Thus cradled in sublimity, the Yellowstone River must be called in some respects the most extraordinary stream upon our continent." [Illustration: EAGLE'S NEST ROCK © _Haynes, St. Paul_] Why was this place kept concealed from the eyes of civilized man for nearly four hundred years after America was discovered? Even now only a small per cent of the 100,000,000 people of the United States know what they possess in this romantic and mysterious region, which in some places seems to be the ante-chamber of heaven and the very mouth of hell. Many, for lack of opportunity or interest, will never see the Yellowstone National Park, while multitudes from foreign shores will swarm like bees within its boundaries and reap the benefits of the sacrifice and toil of its discoverers and of God's free gift to America. [Illustration: NO. 147. UP THE GRAND CANYON FROM INSPIRATION PT.--YELLOWSTONE PARK. HAYNES-PHOTO.] When the Queen of Sheba came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and he answered all her questions, showing her the riches and glory of his kingdom, she said, "It was a true report that I heard in mine own land of thy acts and of thy wisdom. Howbeit I believed not the words, until I came, and mine eyes had seen it: and, BEHOLD, THE HALF WAS NOT TOLD ME." This truly could be said of the Grand Canyon. I have been many times through the Rocky Mountain regions, passed through the Royal Gorge, have seen most of the places of interest that the mountain passes, fastnesses, and peaks afford, but nothing had ever so charmed, awed, inspired, and bewildered me as did the first glimpse of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Solomon's kingdom symbolizes the second work of grace, taught in the Scriptures, an experience which no one can understand unless he is in possession of it. Experience is necessary to enjoy it in its fulness, and so with nature's grandeur and magnificence on such a tremendous scale as in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. One must see with the eyes what the mind fails to grasp by the hearing of the ear. Language, with its adaptability to the usages of mortal man, is inadequate. Word-pictures, though drawn by the most visionary and gifted, fail to convey in a slight degree the grandeur of nature's activities and exhibitions in this the most inspiring and picturesque spot on the globe. After I was again seated in the car, for a few moments my eyes were closed to all the world about me, and in a new sense I began to realize the infinite depths of divine power and wisdom, and how small is the creature when compared with the Creator. At ARTIST'S VIEW we stopped again for another look at the canyon. In the opinion of some persons, a better view was to be had here than at Inspiration Point, but I did not think so, and did not tarry long. Feeling that enough had been crowded into one day, I went back to the stage anxious to get where I could relax and rest. A few minutes later we arrived at YELLOWSTONE CAMP, near the Upper and Lower Falls. After we had registered and were shown the way to our tents, the evening meal was served in a large, spacious dining-room. In the office of the camp we found a log fire burning. A score or more of tourists seated around it were engaged in conversation; and the new arrivals received a cordial welcome. Everything presented so homelike an appearance, it made me feel as if I should like to spend a week here. The greatest courtesy was manifested on the part of the managers and those who rendered us service, and I felt that they had a real heart interest in our welfare. The accommodations in the tents were all that one could ask. The tents had floors, were boarded up the sides, and furnished with all the conveniences necessary. In each one there was a stove that was lighted both morning and evening, as it was late in the season and sometimes the temperature was almost at freezing point. When a fire was needed, one of the attendants at the camp came to light it. [Illustration: WILLOW PARK CAMP, YELLOWSTONE PARK © _Haynes, St. Paul_] CHAPTER III UPPER AND LOWER FALLS After dinner was served on the evening of our arrival, my brother and his wife took a trip down UNCLE TOM'S TRAIL to the base of the Lower Yellowstone Fall. They returned later, excited not a little, to tell of their adventure and what they had seen. I regretted that they did not wait until morning so that I could go with them, but I was so elated with the description of the fall that I was determined to go down the trail, if I had to go alone. The next morning when I saw how hazardous the undertaking would be, there was nothing that could have induced me to descend the rocky steep over which they had traveled. Sister Lillian and I got a good view of the fall from a prominence near the edge of the canyon, and this satisfied me. Just before the water makes its tremendous leap, it is compressed within a width of about 100 feet, where it seems to slow down to prepare for the shock before it dashes 308 feet over the rocks. Here from the foaming mass of spray, gorgeous rainbows may be seen. The eye is then inclined to follow the little stream that dwindles away between the rocky sides of the great chasm, foaming and dashing as it goes, until it looks like a silver thread in the distance. The rainbow colors at the fall, blending with the various tints and hues reflected from the mineral formations on the sides of the canyon, presented a picture that no artist could paint. My sister and I took the trail along the edge of the canyon and finally made intersection with the automobile road within a short distance of the camp. On the way back, I felt as if I had lighted down on another sphere where I could stay for only a brief period, and that I must profit by every moment of time that was allotted me. Pausing by the roadside, I asked the question, "What shall it be when these mortal bodies put on immortality, when they shall no longer be subject to the laws of gravitation or others governing material substances? What shall it be to wing one's flight to unseen worlds where there is still a greater comprehension to be had of Him who created the world and threw it from the tips of His fingers into space!" It took thousands of years for astronomers to learn that the earth is hung upon nothing; that when God created it He made it out of nothing, and set the forces in action that were continually demonstrating His omnipotence before their eyes. The plan of salvation, of which it is my privilege to be a partaker, was never more precious to me than at this time, and I had a new appreciation of the fact that an infinite price had been paid for man's redemption. I felt renewed inspiration to press the battle against sin and unrighteousness to the gates of heaven or to the depths of hell. The Calvary route is often rugged. There are many dangerous places, where if the Infinite One did not clasp our hands and hold them tightly, we would plunge to the depths of the chasm and be wrecked and ruined for time and eternity. We have the blessed consolation, however, that He has promised to guide us with His eye, and never to leave or forsake those who put their trust in Him. There is an atmosphere of sincerity among the people around the hotels and camps of the Yellowstone that is rarely found in summer resorts in other places. Here the voice of God in nature is heard in the smallest whisper, and again in tones of thunder; those who are inclined to be giddy and possessed with a spirit of levity, suddenly find themselves sobering up and beginning to think upon those things that involve the interests of their immortal souls. Many of the helpers about the camps and hotels of the Park, I was told, were students and teachers who had come to the Yellowstone unprepared financially to make the tour, and had accepted positions as waiters, waitresses, etc., in order to pay their way through, and to be able to return by the time their schools opened. Some of them received only slight compensation, and depended on the good will of the tourists to reimburse them for services. The familiarity that was seen everywhere between man and beast betokens the fact that an earnest of Isaiah's prophecy of the Millennium is being fulfilled. These native animals are free to go wherever they please, and seem to have little or no fear. In many instances they come close enough to eat out of the hands of the tourists. At the park camps and around the kitchens of the hotels, black, brown, and occasionally grizzly bears could be seen at almost any hour of the day eating out of tins or otherwise in search of food. At our camp, near the kitchen, I found a brown bear with two little cubs. She looked at me with an independent toss of her head as much as to say, "You may be surprised to see me here, but I am enjoying the rights and privileges accorded me under the laws governing the Park; I am taking no undue liberties nor committing any offense." She then took an affectionate look at her cubs and warned me to keep my distance. I assured her that I had no thought of disturbing them, and so there was an understanding between us. I afterward made frequent visits to the brow of the hill where I could get a good view of her and her little ones. Tourists often make a mistake in trying to feed and pet the bears. Signs are up everywhere warning them of this danger. A short time before our party arrived, some person tried to pet a bear and was bitten in the wrist. It taught him and others a lesson. These animals have not been tamed, and the reason they are not so vicious as in primeval days is because no one is allowed to wound or kill them. When one becomes unmanageable and it is necessary to dispose of it, the government rangers who have charge of the Park remove all traces of blood, and even burn the hide, so as to keep from arousing suspicion on the part of others. Thus we see, in part, what the Millennium will be when nothing shall hurt or destroy, and when "righteousness shall be the girdle of his lions, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins." [Illustration: BEAR FEEDING "A LA CARTE" © _Haynes, St. Paul_] "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den. THEY SHALL NOT HURT NOR DESTROY IN ALL MY HOLY MOUNTAIN: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea" (Isa. II:5:9). We could have spent another day at the Grand Canyon, as we had arranged for a five-day tour, but decided to spend more time at Old Faithful Camp near the Upper Geyser Basin, and therefore planned to leave in the afternoon. In the meantime I packed up my things, made some notes in my diary, and went alone to the Upper Yellowstone Fall. Here, with no one present but the unseen host, I spent one of the most profitable hours of my life. I was in a position to get a good view of the Fall, where the water was dashing more than a hundred feet over the rocks, preparatory to the final plunge of three hundred feet a half mile below. For a short time, surrounded by nature, with all of its primitive beauty and grandeur, I seemed to forget my burdens, and had a foretaste of what it will be when the cross is laid down and the crown is won. But to be an overcomer, I knew there must be no shrinking from duty until the last battle is fought. Time forbade my tarrying longer at this place, and I hurried to the camp where I found my brother and sister looking for me. In a few minutes we had bidden many of our newly-made friends good-by and were hurried off in the yellow touring car _via_ Tower Fall to Mammoth Hot Springs, a distance of about forty miles. [Illustration: UPPER YELLOWSTONE FALL © _Haynes, St. Paul_] In the car was a new driver, and among the passengers were the four "Friends" who had started with us from Cody, Wyoming. We were glad to have them, and also to have a change of drivers, so that we might forget the unpleasant experience of the day before at Pahaska Tepee Lodge. Every person in the car seemed to be in good spirits, and ready to enjoy the trip to the fullest extent. From the time we left the camp until we reached Mt. Washburn, a distance of about ten miles, my time was mostly taken up answering the questions of a woman from California who wanted information about our organization, the Pillar of Fire. I was glad to answer her questions and to give her all the enlightenment I could, but I found that it was taxing my physical strength when I should be at my best to profit by the trip. I silently prayed that a change of some kind might be made. We did not take the automobile road to the summit of Mt. Washburn, an altitude of 10,388 feet, but turned to the left through DUNRAVEN PASS, along the side of the mountain, a much shorter road than over the summit. I had no desire to go to the summit. I had so often been over the highest peaks of the Rockies on all the scenic railroad lines, that I did not care to tax my nerves on such a trip; other passengers felt much the same. The drive around the side of the mountain was hazardous enough for me; and while others expressed no fear, there were times when I felt I should be compelled to get out of the car and walk. A good-natured pilot seated by the driver, who, no doubt, was sent out by the Park company, was skilful enough to divert my attention from the distance to the base of the mountain at our left until we had passed over the dangerous part of the road. I shall not forget the manner in which he undertook to make me forget that I was nervous. TOWER FALL was our first stop. The dizzy heights had almost unfitted me for what awaited us at this place, but my brother and the pilot assisted me up the steps and I followed others down the trail to the fall, dashing 132 feet over the rocks. The snowy, foaming water has the appearance of white satin ribbon, falling perpendicularly between two towering rocks, whence it gets its name. It lacks the volume of some other falls in the Yellowstone, but its grace and beauty are nowhere surpassed. About four miles from the fall, we turned aside to CAMP ROOSEVELT, where we found a great display of elk horns. I was constantly on the lookout for elk, deer, and other animals, as I was told that they were often seen in herds in that locality, but I saw nothing except a lonely coyote, trotting along utterly indifferent to our presence. It seems that the continual blowing of automobile horns has frightened the more timid creatures back from the highways, and only occasionally do they venture close enough to be seen. CHAPTER IV MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS The distance from Grand Canyon Camp to Mammoth Hot Springs, near Fort Yellowstone, was made in about three and one-half hours, with only the one stop at Tower Fall, and the few minutes that we halted at Camp Roosevelt, and the Cold Spring. But there was not one moment of monotony. The harmonious blending of colors, the distant mountain peaks and ranges, the soft-tinted sky, the trees, the water, in fact, all of Nature's best, in a milder form than we had seen about the Grand Canyon at the Upper and Lower Yellowstone Falls, was constantly presented in shifting scenes before our vision, relieving, in a measure, the tension we had been under since arriving in the vicinity of the Grand Canyon. One place, in particular, that attracted my attention, was a beaver dam and hut that had been constructed by an order of masons whose operations are conducted exclusively upon the principles of home protection, and whose chief aim is to protect the fur trade of which they are the producers. In order to do this and to keep from being stranded, it is often necessary for the beavers to dam up the waters and build a house in which to live. When they cut down trees, they have the faculty of felling them where they want to build, so as to save as much labor as possible. At our left was a creek and a dam they had built and a house they had constructed, independent of the laws controlling the builders' association or that of the labor unions. Their tools are very simple, as they use their teeth for saws, their tails for trowels, etc. In the midst of the dam was the hut, built of unplaned logs, with a well-constructed roof. Under less favorable circumstances than is found for animal life in the Park, these little workers with their soft, silken fur would have been hunted down and captured before they could have brought the work to completion. Again, I could not help but exclaim, What a blessing are the laws governing the Yellowstone Park! [Illustration: BEAVER DAM © _Haynes, St. Paul_] The rangers, with stations interspersed throughout the vast area of more than 3,000 square miles, are employed by the government for the protection of life and property, and arrests are quickly made and penalties fixed when there is any violation of the law. These men are not soldiers, but patrolmen on horseback, dressed in cowboy's uniform. An ordinary soldier would be unfitted for such work. Men in leather shaps are needed who can break and ride bronchos, throw the lariat, and round up the herds; those who are used to the mountain fastnesses and the buffalo path, the haunts of black, brown, and grizzly bears, and are acquainted with the habits of the elk, moose, mountain sheep, the antelope, the deer, etc.; those who know the habits and lurking places of the unscrupulous hunters and poachers who defy the laws and by any or all means seek to evade punishment. No one is better fitted than the western ranger to track them down and see that they are brought to justice. When we arrived at the MAMMOTH SPRINGS, we found a welcome at the camp and soon felt very much at home. It was cool enough for a fire, and many of the tourists gathered around the stove in the office and chatted with one another until the evening meal, which proved to be a plentiful repast and well served. Our tents were furnished after the same pattern as those of the Grand Canyon Camp, with the exception that these were lighted with electricity. The MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS and the beautiful terraces, in attempting description of which all language has been exhausted, were only a short distance from the camp; without waiting for a guide, we were soon winding our way up the side of the hill and around the road where we could find an entrance to the plateau. I had seen pictures of the many springs and terraces in colors, and had supposed they were overdrawn, but I found myself in the same bewildered state as when I first saw the Grand Canyon. Before I was aware, my tears were flowing freely at the thought of how impossible it would be to describe these springs to my friends and others who, perhaps, would never have the opportunity of seeing them. The blending of colors cannot be reproduced by the brush of the most gifted artist. I was thankful that God had permitted me to see the work of His hands that I might help others in the battle for eternal life. Some of our party were looking for the DEVIL'S KITCHEN, but in the absence of a guide were having difficulty in finding it; I had no inclination to participate in the search. I had been in the ante-chamber of heaven and at the gates of perdition, and this was sufficient for one day, so I started back toward the camp, with a lady who seemed to be satisfied to stay by my side, even though she missed seeing many of the places of interest. I knew she was tired, and hoped that she might ride the remainder of the way. Soon an automobile came along and took her in. By this time my brother and sister and other members of the party had given up the search for the Devil's Kitchen and overtaken us. Later I was told that it is in the crater of an extinct boiling spring, not far from some of the terraces. After reaching the camp, I was about to retire, when I decided to go to the office and see what was going on. A number of persons were preparing a program for an entertainment, and asked me to make an address, but I felt that enough had been crowded into one day, and declined. Before morning, the weather became very chilly, and I had to use both the heavy comforters that had been provided for my bed. My circulation was not good, and my rest was more or less disturbed. I feared a greater change might come in the weather, and decided to get over the ground as quickly as possible even though we should have to miss many of the details of the place. We had breakfast with Mr. Hayes, president of the Yellowstone Camp Company, who officially, or otherwise, has been connected with operations in the Yellowstone for the past twenty-five years. Mr. Hayes was able to give us some valuable information, which we greatly appreciated. MAMMOTH CAMP is situated at the foot of Jupiter Terrace. A short distance away is Fort Yellowstone, where the administration headquarters of the Park is located. I should have enjoyed seeing more of the springs, with their gorgeous hues and combinations, but with the hope that we should have the opportunity of visiting the Park again in the near future, our party took the morning stage to Old Faithful Camp, at the Upper Geyser Basin. [Illustration: FORT YELLOWSTONE © _Haynes, St. Paul_] Before leaving, I got a glimpse of the buffalo herd on the horizon in the distance, and was surprised to hear how rapidly these animals are becoming extinct in the Park, where they are so well protected. It seems that the buffalo and the Indian go together, and thrive only where civilization has not yet come. The weather was cold, and having to travel in an open car made it very uncomfortable until the sun had time to rise above the tall trees and the mountain peaks. A brisk wind was blowing, and most of the time I had to keep my face heavily veiled. This hindered me from getting the full benefit of the scenery on the way to the Norris Geyser Basin. Here, however, there was so much steam and boiling water I had no difficulty in getting warm. We had a skilful driver, who called out the names of the places in a clear voice. This kept the passengers from being under a strain of uncertainty and tense listening. OBSIDIAN CLIFF, formed as the result of volcanic action in ages past, is twelve miles south of Mammoth Hot Springs. It rises two hundred fifty feet above the road and is composed of jet-black, volcanic glass, usually opaque, streaked with red, yellow, and green. When the roadway was constructed, great fires were built around blocks of this glass, which, when heated, were cooled by dashing water upon them resulting in their being shattered into fragments. This is said to be the only stretch of glass road in existence. The cliff was "neutral ground" to the different tribes of Indians. Chips of obsidian and partly finished obsidian arrow-heads are found throughout the Park, usually at places where the Indians had their camps. When the cliff is illuminated by the rays of the sun, it has the appearance of a glistening mirror, and is of much interest to the tourists. Four and one-half miles from Norris is ROARING MOUNTAIN with steam escaping through countless apertures from its rugged side. The sound of the steam struggling to escape is not so audible now as in the past, but the whole picture reminds one of the inferno about ready to blow off its cap. [Illustration: OBSIDIAN CLIFF © _Haynes, St. Paul_] In close proximity to the mountain are greenish, milky pools fed by rivers of sulphur water from the springs. It was not our privilege to tarry here, from the fact that the weather was uncomfortably cold, but the mountain stands out before me as one of the most interesting places to be seen on the tour. The wind was blowing fiercely when we came to TWIN LAKES, four miles from Norris Geyser Basin, but I removed my heavy veil in order to get a better glimpse of them. They are beautiful, and although in such close proximity, their hues are entirely different. How often two objects are found so closely allied to each other as to be inseparable, each one depending upon the other for its existence! This cannot be a freak of nature or the result of chance. The only sensible conclusion is that it was so designed by the Creator to teach a most important spiritual lesson,--that of the two works of grace, which constitute the panoply of the soul. There is no way to discard either without serious results. There is something about clear, pure water, whether it is seen in the placid lake or the gushing, mountain torrent, that inspires and lifts a person above the toils and cares of this life, where he is able to breathe a pure and holy atmosphere. Hence we see why, as shown in the Scriptures, Jesus so often used water to illustrate the plan of salvation. Water is the symbol of life, and in the boiling springs, the pools, the lakes, the chasms, and the great, spouting geysers, a book is written in the Yellowstone that every one should learn to read. Our attention was next called to the FRYING PAN, a basin fifteen feet across, with numerous boiling jets in constant and violent agitation. I regretted that circumstances were not more favorable so that I could have a longer period of time to spend at these places, where Nature is so full of life and interest. [Illustrated: ROARING MOUNTAIN © _Haynes, St. Paul_] CHAPTER V NORRIS GEYSER BASIN When we arrived at NORRIS (formerly Gibbon) GEYSER BASIN, I was so cold I could scarcely use my limbs. The first attraction was a great, boiling spring at the left as we entered the basin. I immediately felt the change in the atmosphere, and soon got warm after reaching the board walk under which the boiling water was flowing, the hot steam everywhere being forced out through apertures. Here was my first sight of the clear water geysers. The CONSTANT, with a maximum height of twenty feet, plays at intervals of from thirty to sixty seconds. The MINUTE MAN plays at intervals of from one to three minutes with a duration of about the same length of time. In this basin are also the ECHINUS, the FEARLESS, the MONARCH, with a maximum height of fifty feet, playing at intervals of twenty-five to sixty minutes, the NEW CRATER, the WHIRLIGIG, and the VALENTINE. The maximum height of the Valentine is a hundred feet and the time of eruptions varies from twenty-two to thirty hours. The BLACK GROWLER STEAM VENT growled continually, sending forth great volumes of steam. The deposit around the crater is black in some places. The vent north of the Black Growler is called the HURRICANE. It looks much like the former, but is not so active. The BATH TUB does not erupt, but is in constant agitation. EMERALD POOL is a large lake of boiling water, green in appearance. NEW CRATER GEYSER is surrounded by large blocks of yellow rock. In the vicinity of this geyser, in 1891, a commotion occurred, very much like an earthquake, when great volumes of water were forced out. Since then there have been only ordinary eruptions, about every three minutes. The form of the crater is such that the water is prevented from attaining any great height. MONARCH GEYSER, near the base of the hill, is almost surrounded by beautifully colored rocks. The crater has two openings, the larger of which is twenty feet long and three feet wide. Eruptions occur without warning, and water is thrown a hundred feet high. The intervals between eruptions are about six hours. [Illustration: NORRIS GEYSER BASIN © _Haynes, St. Paul_] The FEARLESS GEYSER throws water in every direction, apparently defying those who wish to approach it. NORRIS is a new geyser, and is probably changing more rapidly than any other in the basin. One never knows what changes a season may bring forth. The MINUTE MAN is always interesting, especially on account of its regularity. Its crater seems originally to have been merely a fissure in a rock. A few miles from Norris Basin is ELK PARK, a valley surrounded by timbered hills. Across the river from the road is CHOCOLATE SPRING, which has built a cone of chocolate color. MONUMENT GEYSER BASIN is on the summit of MT. SCHURZ. There is not much to justify the tourist in making the ascent, as there are only a dozen or two of crumbling geyser cones, some of which steam and rumble, while others are apparently extinct. On the east side of the river we entered GIBBON CANYON, and for several miles were shadowed by towering cliffs, in some places a thousand feet high. BERYL SPRING is the largest boiling spring in the canyon. It is fifteen feet across, and about a mile from the entrance. While our touring car was dashing around the mountainside, suddenly we came to GIBBON FALL. Here, from a height of over eighty feet, bubbling and foaming torrents of water tumble down the steep cascades. At NATIONAL PARK MOUNTAIN, our driver announced that we were at the confluence of the Gibbon and Firehole Rivers. It was here that the famous Washburn exploring party, in 1870, decided that the Yellowstone region should be set aside as a National Park, and from that time put forth their efforts to this end. Among the most enthusiastic were Cornelius Hedges, David E. Folsom, Lieut. Doane, and Nathaniel P. Langford. How providential it was that these unselfish, public-spirited men should have taken up the subject at that time! I did not know that the junction of the Gibbon and Firehole Rivers was an historical place, but was so fascinated with the scenery, I felt that I should like to camp there for a week, and have an opportunity to make notes preparatory to publishing an account of my trip. To me, there was unusual attraction, and something very romantic, about the Firehole River. I had heard how it was fed by the geysers and boiling springs, and this added enchantment to its many charms. At one place I saw a great boulder in the river, from the sides of which were growing two spruce or pine trees. [Illustration: NATIONAL PARK MOUNTAIN © _Haynes, St. Paul_] At the LOWER and MIDWAY BASINS are the GREAT FOUNTAIN and EXCELSIOR GEYSERS. The Excelsior, better known as "Hell's Half Acre," ceased to play in 1888. Previous to this it was known to throw water to a height of 300 feet, the time of the eruptions varying from one to four hours. GREAT FOUNTAIN expels the water to a height of 100 feet, playing for thirty minutes, and its eruptions are from eight to twelve hours apart. At the present time Excelsior Geyser is a boiling lake, where the steam often prevents one from getting a good view of it. The MAMMOTH PAINT POTS held my undivided interest for the limited time that I had. This is a boiling mass of mud, white at the center, and gradually developing into a beautiful pink, or flesh color toward the outer edges. The caldron of waxen mixture has a basin forty by sixty feet in size, with a rim about five feet high. The mud in the center bubbles up continually, "plop, plop," under the pressure of heat, and cools off toward the outer edges. [Illustration: "HELL'S HALF ACRE" © _Haynes, St. Paul_] David E. Folsom witnessed a display of the Great Fountain Geyser in 1869: "The hole through which the water was discharged was ten feet in diameter, and was situated in the center of a large circular shallow basin into which the water fell. There was a stiff breeze blowing at the time, and by going to the windward side and carefully picking our way over convenient stones we were enabled to reach the edge of the hole. At that moment the escaping steam was causing the water to boil up in a fountain five or six feet high. It stopped in an instant, and commenced settling down--twenty, thirty, forty feet--until we concluded that the bottom had fallen out, but the next instant, without any warning, it came rushing up and shot into the air at least eighty feet, causing us to stampede. It continued to spout at intervals of a few moments for some time, but finally subsided." PRISMATIC LAKE fairly dazzled me with its beauty. In the center it is a deep blue, blending into green toward the edges. In the shallow portion it is yellow, blending into orange at the edges. The water sparkles and flows off in every direction over the slightly raised rim of the lake. Its beauty and delicacy of coloring are impossible to describe. It is heated to nearly 150 degrees Fahrenheit. BISCUIT BASIN and SAPPHIRE POOL are places of much interest, also JEWEL GEYSER, ARTEMISIA GEYSER, etc. MORNING GLORY SPRING, near Riverside Bridge, presented to me an idea of what the earth will be when the curse is lifted and it is clothed in Edenic glory. It is twenty-three feet in diameter, with a temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and with an apparent depth of about thirty feet. I had not previously made a study of the Park, and never knew what was coming next, but before I reached Old Faithful Camp at the Upper Geyser Basin, I felt that I had seen enough to repay me a thousand-fold for any expense or effort that was being made in the tour of the Yellowstone, which to me was truly a world of wonders. [Illustration: MAMMOTH PAINT POTS © _Haynes, St. Paul_] CHAPTER VI UPPER GEYSER BASIN It was about noon when we reached the UPPER GEYSER BASIN, and I felt that it would be profitable to take a little rest before going any further into the mysteries of this "wonderland." OLD FAITHFUL was due to play shortly after we reached the camp, but I was too far away when it was announced she was in action to get the full benefit of the display, and went back to the camp to wait another seventy minutes. The long drive in the forenoon, and the exposure to the cold, caused me to feel weary and dull, nevertheless I made an effort to be on hand at every eruption, which to me became more and more fascinating. OLD FAITHFUL INN accommodates 400 guests. It is constructed of boulders and logs, with peaks, angles, dormers, French windows, etc. This most restful and impressive abode of the tourists is only two or three minutes' walk from Old Faithful Geyser, and so located as to give from its balconies a splendid view of the display. [Illustration: OFFICE OLD FAITHFUL INN © _Haynes, St. Paul_] The office-room is 75 feet square and 92 feet high, and reaches to the roof, with a massive chimney that rises to the top. The building is surrounded with beautiful grounds, furnished with rustic seats. The chimney is fourteen feet square with eight fireplaces, and balconies are built around three sides. While everything is of the rustic order, there is nothing commonplace about the hotel or its furnishings. "It is a creation of art from the foundation to the peak of the roof." OLD FAITHFUL GEYSER in the forefront of Old Faithful Inn is like a sentinel, and so named because of the regularity of its eruptions. Its crater, from which the water is expelled to a height of 150 feet, is an oblong opening, two by six feet, at the top of a mound of geyserite. Its eruptions sometimes vary a few minutes, in the meantime giving warning with two or three short spurts, increasing in volume until the maximum height is reached. The display is short, most of the water falling back into the crater, but no more fascinating or impressive scene could be found. The formations around are brilliant in color, resembling the more subdued tints and hues seen at the Mammoth Hot Springs. In the early part of the afternoon, a number of tourists, including my brother and sister, went with a guide to GEYSER HILL. After their return, they had much to say about what they had seen and heard. Later in the day I felt rested and wanted to make the trip, and my brother and sister went with me. They had learned all they could from the guide and were ready to name the various geysers, springs, and pools, and describe their operations to me. Of these, the Giantess, Beehive, and Sponge Geysers, were the most interesting. The GIANTESS occupies the most prominent position on the hill. Its displays attain a height of about 100 feet, and are accompanied by shocks and tremors much like earthquakes. The entire eruption lasts from twelve to twenty-four hours. The crater appears to be about thirty feet in diameter, and after each eruption a steam period ensues. In 1911, the eruptions varied from four to twelve days. Some years previous to this, the eruptions took place about once a month. It is believed that while activity, as a whole, is decreasing in the geyser regions, a century brings only a slight change. I stood near the crater of the Giantess during the steam period. For a moment the vapor cleared away, and I could see down the great neck of the crater into a yawning chasm, so angry and terrible, as to make me feel that I had seen with the eye what the Bible describes as the bottomless pit, where the sulphurous flames belch forth, and "where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched" (Mark 9:44). If there are those who have doubts as to the reality of the lake of fire, of which Jesus told His disciples, in the 16th chapter of St. Luke, they should by all means go to the regions of the Yellowstone: for here, vividly presented to the vision, are the realities of a burning underworld, with only a thin crust between it and the habitation of human beings. The Bible clearly teaches that hell is located in the center of this earth, and therefore it must be conceded that the ebon throne of Diabolus is somewhere in the heated regions below, the intensity of which the geysers, pools, springs, and volcanoes are continually demonstrating. [Illustration: GIANTESS GEYSER IN ACTION © _Haynes, St. Paul_] Whatever may be involved in the separation of soul and body, it is nevertheless true that the immortal spirit that has not appropriated the atoning blood must dwell in the confines of the bottomless pit, which is described in the Scriptures as being in the center of this earth. Here are the flames by which Dives was tormented when he begged Abraham to send Lazarus with a drop of water to cool his parched tongue, and made an appeal for some one to go to his father's house to warn his five brothers not to come to that place of torment. Abraham had to refuse both requests, saying, "Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence." Then, when he wanted some one to go to his father's house to warn his brothers, Abraham said, "They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them." But still the doomed man continued and said, "If one went unto them from the dead, they will repent," but he was told, "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." How true this is! After all the influence that can be brought to bear upon people, they rebel against God and follow their own precepts; and true to fallen human nature, ask for greater evidence of His power. "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God" (Ps. 9:17). This and other plain scriptures should be sufficient to warn men to flee the wrath to come. Optimism and presumption everywhere characterize the multitudes when it comes to this most important question concerning the future welfare of the soul. The man who had allowed the devil to deceive him and take him at last to his abode in the regions of torment, was still presumptuous and persistent. He wanted help, which it was impossible for him to receive, and also warning given to his father's house, which they had refused to take through Moses and the prophets. It is necessary at this period of the world's history to have an object lesson like that of the Yellowstone National Park to convince people of the infallibility of God's word. It is the time of the fulfilment of prophecy concerning the last days, of which Paul says, "This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, LOVERS OF PLEASURES MORE THAN LOVERS OF GOD" (2 Tim. 3:1-5). Many pleasure seekers are now thronging Yellowstone Park, and in ten thousand demonstrations are having to face the realities of God's word and the life that is to come. I saw some of them standing near the yawning craters of the geysers under deep conviction, and no doubt silently resolving to live different lives, while others frankly stated that the depths of their beings had been disturbed, and that it was no time to trifle with the soul. There is no such thing as shirking the responsibility, where Nature co-operates with the Almighty on such a tremendous scale in the display of His power. A person may try to stifle his conscience and refuse to yield to the voice that speaks from above, but he can not evade the fact that the issue must be met; and why not yield to the pressure and make the decision now? Life at best is short, and it is perilous to crowd into some future time the things that should be taken under consideration now. [Illustration: THE SPONGE GEYSER © _Haynes, St. Paul_] The TEAKETTLE and the VAULT give warning before the Giantess erupts. The Vault plays eight feet high, twenty-four hours before the Giantess. TOPAZ at the base of the Giantess mound is a pool of remarkable beauty. I was much interested in the PUMP near the Sponge Geyser. It is a hole eighteen inches across, out of which comes a thumping sound, resembling a hydraulic ram. The SPONGE GEYSER has a beautiful cone of flinty formation resembling that of a sponge. Eruptions are about four feet high, occuring a minute and a quarter apart. The BEEHIVE GEYSER has a cone four feet high and three feet across, and plays to the height of 200 feet. Its indicator, a small fissure north of the cone, foretells its eruptions. It is supposed that there is some relationship between the Beehive and the Giantess from the fact that the Beehive plays at intervals of from eight to twelve hours after the Giantess and has been seen to play before the Giantess. [Illustration: THE BEEHIVE GEYSER © _Haynes, St. Paul_] The DOUBLET POOL is near the Giantess and is marked "Dangerous." The geyser formations accumulate very slowly and the water here flows out over a thin crust. The LION GEYSER, with the LIONESS and two CUBS, occupies a prominent place not far from the Giant. Its eruptions occur usually in series of three, about two and one-half hours apart, after which follows a quiet period of about twelve hours. The first eruption is the highest and most charming in appearance. The water is forced up fifty or sixty feet high, the eruption lasting about five minutes. During some seasons the Lioness has not played at all. In 1903 it is said that the Lioness and both Cubs played at the same time to a large party of tourists. The larger Cub plays with the Lioness to a height of about thirty feet, the smaller one plays oftener, but only a few feet high. CASTLE GEYSER is on a prominence opposite Geyser Hill. The mound on which it is situated covers about three acres, rising more than forty feet above the river. It has the most prominent cone in the Upper Basin, resembling an old castle. At intervals the steam escapes and throws out jets of water, though it erupts only every two days. Near Castle Geyser is CASTLE SPRING, a beautiful pool of water, highly colored. The SAWMILL GEYSER gets its name from the peculiar noise it makes during an eruption. It plays at intervals of three or four hours and at a height of about forty feet. Its indicator is near-by; they both start together and suddenly begin to throw water in all directions. The GRAND GEYSER discharges water in forked columns 200 feet high. It is said to play much more frequently in the spring than in the fall. This is because the water supply is greater in the mountain regions at this season. TURBAN GEYSER is near the Grand. The early explorers believed that internal fires were seen in its crater; if so, it was caused, no doubt, by the light playing on bubbles of gas. Firehole Lake furnishes a good example of this phenomenon. The Turban Geyser plays about twenty-five feet high. Sometimes its eruptions occur with the Grand Geyser. The ECONOMIC GEYSER gets its name from the fact that during its eruptions nearly all the water flows back into its crater. In form it resembles Old Faithful, but plays only about fifteen feet high. [Illustration: CASTLE GEYSER © _Haynes, St. Paul_] BEAUTY SPRING attracts much attention. It is a large, silent pool remarkable for its coloring. Almost every person, when approaching it for the first time, remarks about its beauty, hence, our guide said, it received its name. A rusty color predominates in various shades from the richest brown, blending into green and yellow tints. BUTTERFLY SPRING is about four feet across and has an opening in each wing. It looks like a butterfly in both color and shape. These double springs, of which I saw a number, as heretofore stated, have a spiritual significance, illustrating the two works of grace, justification and sanctification, so clearly taught in both the Old and the New Testament. The EAR is a most remarkable small spring. Not only is it in the shape of an ear, but its lobe seems to be pierced, and the earring is a tiny geyser. "It is here that messages are transmitted, so the story goes, to regions below." BEACH SPRING reminded me of an oyster, the opening in the center corresponding to the dark spot. It is surrounded by a flat, submerged beach. [Illustration: BUTTERFLY SPRING © _Haynes, St. Paul_] After we had visited the springs and geysers on the hill, we returned to the camp to await the next number on the day's program. CHAPTER VII UPPER GEYSER BASIN (CONT.) Shortly after dinner the news was circulated that a religious service was to be held in the office of the camp, where the guests assembled around the large fireplace. I learned from some friends that our party was expected to conduct the meeting. Later, the manager asked me to take charge of the service. She said that it would be impossible to get the people in until after 8:30 o'clock, as Old Faithful would be due to make a display about that time, and that the great searchlight from the hotel would be turned on the geyser when the water reached its maximum height. This caused much excitement among the guests, and every person sought the best position to get a view of the display. Immediately afterward the people gathered in for the service. Song books were passed around and a lively interest was taken in the singing, in which nearly every one joined. My brother and his wife sang a number of pieces together which greatly pleased the audience. My brother then preached a short sermon and I followed, giving them some interesting history concerning the Pillar of Fire church. This seemed to be the subject in which most of them were interested, and I was glad to be able to give them the information they desired. There is so much akin to the supernatural in the Yellowstone it made the preaching of the Gospel easy on this occasion. The day, after having been full of interest and inspiration, closed with a message of salvation for the people, which was best of all. Many gathered around us to express their appreciation of the service. The next morning I arose refreshed and ready to finish the tour of the Upper Geyser Basin, which contains twenty-six geysers and more than four hundred hot pools and springs. A party of "hikers," with a guide, started out about nine o'clock to make the rounds before luncheon. I was not quite sure that I could keep up with them, but as many of the places are not accessible to vehicles I had to make the attempt or miss my opportunity. The basin is drained in the center by the Firehole River. Everywhere steaming hot springs are seen, also mounds and cones of geyserite. In this basin, within a square mile, are the grandest and mightiest geysers in the world. There are pools of scalding water whose marvelous beauty and delicacy of coloring cannot be described. Everywhere are undulations crowned with geyser cones, or hot spring vents of a grayish white appearance. In places, the earth trembles, strange rumblings are heard, and the air is heavy with sulphurous fumes. How could it be otherwise but that a person should feel that he is in close proximity to the Inferno which Dante so vividly described! The RIVERSIDE GEYSER, on the banks of the Firehole River, plays, we were told, "Over the River" at intervals of six or seven hours. Sometimes eruptions occur more frequently for a period of several days. GROTTO GEYSER has the most attractive formation of any geyser in the park. The Washburn party named it in 1870. Its eruptions are irregular, occurring at intervals of two to eight hours and lasting from fifteen minutes to eight hours. Sometimes the Grotto ceases and the ROCKET plays to a height of fifty feet. After it has ceased, the Grotto resumes action. [Illustration: RIVERSIDE GEYSER © _Haynes, St. Paul_] The GIANT GEYSER, south of the Grotto, is the highest in the world. We found a person near it in soldier's uniform who said he had been waiting there a week to see it play. Its maximum height is 250 feet, which is reached during the first twenty minutes of its eruption. Its cone is ten feet high with one side partly broken off. Eruptions occur every seven to twelve days. Near the Giant are three "boiling caldrons," CATFISH, BIJOU, and MASTIFF. These are supposed to be indicators, but it is uncertain whether the eruptions of the Giant are foretold by them. The DAISY is a very beautiful and reliable geyser, erupting every one and a half to two hours. Seventy-five feet is its maximum height. The BONITA POOL, across the road, acts as an indicator. The BRILLIANT is a beautiful blue hot spring and near to it is the COMET, which has built up a small cone of geyserite. When our party reached Castle Geyser on a hill opposite the Giantess, our guide called attention to the fact that the Giantess was in action. Our time was limited, but every member of the party wanted to cross the bridge and go to Geyser Hill and get as near to its crater as possible. We did so, and it was at this time, during the steam period, when the water had receded, that I got a glimpse into its awful depths; and trembled at the yawning chasm which threatened to engulf us. It looked as if it might be connected with the place where the king of darkness dwells and his organized forces operate. We had only a few minutes to tarry, and hastened back to the vicinity of Castle Geyser to renew the journey. [Illustration: GIANT GEYSER © _Haynes, St. Paul_] I was grateful for this little diversion, which broke in on the regular program of the tour, feeling that I had been fortunate to see at least one eruption from the crater of the Giantess. MORNING-GLORY SPRING, or GEYSER, as it is sometimes called, was to me the climax in beauty of all the springs in the geyser basins. It looked as if it might be a gem of Paradise that had survived the curse. It appears to be a mass of many-colored liquids, resembling a giant morning-glory, hence its name. CHAPTER VIII THE BOTTOMLESS PIT Proof is often asked for statements made that hell is located in the center of the earth. John, as recorded in the 20th chapter of Revelation, said, "And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the BOTTOMLESS PIT and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, And cast him into the BOTTOMLESS PIT, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled." Where else could the bottomless pit be but in the center of this earth, when it is implicitly stated that the angel came down from heaven with the chain to bind Satan? Ours is the sphere for which he is contending and where he has so long deceived the nations. Where else could the angel lock him up but on the inside of the earth? In the 16th chapter of Numbers we have an account of Korah's company, who murmured and rebelled against the Lord, and Moses, in trying to show how great was their crime against God, said, "If these men die the common death of all men, or if they be visited after the visitation of all men; then the Lord hath not sent me. But if the Lord make a new thing, and the earth open her mouth, and swallow them up, with all that appertain unto them, and they go down quick into the PIT; then ye shall understand that these men have provoked the Lord. "And it came to pass, as he had made an end of speaking all these words, that the ground clave asunder that was under them. And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses, and all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all their goods. They, and all that appertained to them, went down alive into the PIT, and the earth closed upon them: and they perished from among the congregation. And all Israel that were round about them fled at the cry of them: for they said, Lest the earth swallow us up also." [Illustration: GROTTO GEYSER © _Haynes, St. Paul_] In the first chapter of Job, we have an account of a controversy between the Lord and Satan. And the Lord said unto Satan, "Whence comest thou?" Then Satan answered, "From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it." The Lord asked Satan if he had considered His servant Job, a perfect and an upright man, one who "feareth God, and escheweth evil." Satan, unwilling to admit Job's loyalty to God, said, "Hast not thou made an hedge about him, ... on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face." The Lord took the challenge, and said, "Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand." It follows that calamity fell upon Job's household, and he lost his sons and his daughters and all that he had. And again Satan presented himself before the Lord, after he had lost in the battle with Job, who maintained his integrity through his afflictions, and sinned not nor charged God foolishly. The second time the Lord said unto Satan, "Whence comest thou?" And again the answer was, "From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it." Here is an admission from Satan himself which proves without a doubt where he dwells; and it is here that the mighty angel will capture him and bind him with a great chain and lock him up in the center of this earth for a thousand years. It is comforting to know that Job won in the second battle, after Satan had afflicted him with boils from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head, and so will Satan be defeated at the closing up of this age, when judgments shall fall upon the wicked, as upon Korah's company, and great demonstrations of God's power be seen and felt. Jude speaks of the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitations (that is, came down to earth) whom God "hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day." He also makes mention of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. These are but a few of the instances mentioned in the Scriptures showing the location of hell, which is the abode of the wicked, and where Diabolus has his throne. [Illustration: SAPPHIRE POOL--BISCUIT BASIN © _Haynes, St. Paul_] The impression that was made on the explorers of the Yellowstone regions is indicated by certain names that were given to some places, such as "Devil's Kitchen," "Devil's Frying Pan," "Black Growler," "Hell Broth Springs," "Devil's Hoof," "Devil's Inkwell," "Hell's Half Acre," etc. That the suggestion of these things should be a mere freak, or fancy of the mind is out of the question, when there is so much scriptural proof to the contrary. Man has been created in the image of God, and a little lower than the angels (Heb. 2:7). There is a voice that speaks to the soul when all others are hushed. Intuitively he knows that punishment awaits the wicked, however much he may try to stifle his conscience and evade the issue. The only way to escape the wrath that is to come, is through the atoning blood, the efficacy of which is proved when conditions are met. "Without shedding of blood is no remission" (Heb. 9:22). [Illustration: PUNCH BOWL © _Haynes, St. Paul_] The PUNCH BOWL is situated in a narrow divide in the valley. Its rim is ornamented with yellow, saffron, and red. It is one of the gems of beauty in the upper basin, and is so located as to revive the spirits of those who, starting out on foot, from the Upper Basin Camp and Old Faithful Inn, have grown weary in making the tour. When our guide called it out, I felt that I could go no farther without resting, but after tarrying a few minutes, and admiring its beauty, I was refreshed. I was, perhaps, the only one in the company who was overtaxed physically, and had to trust to the good will of the guide not to leave me too far behind. He kindly took notice, and halted, giving everybody a few minutes to rest, while he explained the scientific action of the geysers. These beautiful springs in remote places reminded me of the gems of salvation that are obtained only through sacrifice and suffering. There is always a price to be paid for anything that is of worth. It cost me something to visit some of them on foot, but I was well paid. After leaving the Punch Bowl we followed the trail down across the bridge where a number of surprises awaited us. The HANDKERCHIEF POOL, which is sometimes called the LAUNDRY, was among them. We threw our handkerchiefs in and they were carried down into the opening, and then brought back and delivered, as carefully as if they were being handled by unseen hands. [Illustration: HANDKERCHIEF POOL © _Haynes, St. Paul_] EMERALD POOL is not far from the Handkerchief Spring, and is by far the most beautiful in the upper basin. It thrilled me as I looked at it from different angles, blending from a deep green in the center to yellow toward the edge. The formations around the pool are red, the water is hot, but never boils, and slightly overflows. CLIFF SPRING boils violently. Some people call it a geyser, but it is supposed to be only a spring. BLACK SAND SPRING and SPECIMEN LAKE simply defy language in trying to describe them, the coloring presents such remarkable varieties. The extremely delicate pinks are mingled with equally delicate tints of saffron and yellow, with here and there shades of green. While the springs in this neighborhood are fascinating in the extreme, we did not tarry long, as it was nearly noon, and our guide said we would have to hasten. When the party started toward Old Faithful Inn and the camp, I decided to take my time and go alone. I had gone only a short distance through the wood when a harmless snake crossed my path. It frightened me, and I tried to kill it, but did not succeed. There was a significance to me in running on to the reptile; it settled something in my mind, whereas I had not as yet been able to come to a decision; and I took it as being among the all things that work together for good to them that love God and who are the called according to His purpose. On my way to the camp, I came to three boiling pools, and was surprised that no mention had been made of them on the tour. Later, I learned that they were the THREE SISTERS, not far from Castle Geyser on the road leading from Riverside Geyser, to Old Faithful Inn. I stopped at Haynes' Picture Shop. Here I saw some marvelous specimens of art, showing the wonders of the Yellowstone, but none, of course, could do justice to what I had seen. To finish up the tour it would take another day, but our time was limited, and as we had spent a day at Cody and the weather was getting cool, we decided to leave in the afternoon. [Illustration: EMERALD POOL © _Haynes, St. Paul_] Among some of the attractions that we would have to miss in not finishing the tour to Yellowstone Lake, were Kepler Cascade, Two Ocean Pond, Moose Fall, and the Continental Divide which extends from Canada to Mexico. At the THUMB there are several geyser cones, springs, and paint pots. The FISHING CONE with a boiling spring in the center, is surrounded by the cold water of the lake. At one time fishermen, without moving out of their tracks caught fish from the lake and swung them into the spring where they were cooked while still on the hook. This practice, however, is now prohibited by law. CHAPTER IX THE VOICE OF GOD Thirty-four years ago, while teaching school, I had an opportunity of going to Yellowstone National Park with a camping party of school teachers and others from Southern Montana, but as I needed money, I decided to teach a summer school and to postpone the trip until some future time. When the party returned and tried to tell me about the many wonders they had seen, I resolved not to lose another opportunity to go, but I did, and for the same reason that kept me from going before. After this I was not so enthusiastic over the Yellowstone and the many miracles to be seen there. However, I was always interested in some of the descriptions of the geysers,--Old Faithful, the Giant, Giantess, and others, that threw boiling water, at intervals, from 150 to 250 feet into the air. In Gospel messages I used them to illustrate spiritual truths, but no one had ever given me the slightest conception of the Grand Canyon, the Upper and Lower Yellowstone Falls, the boiling pools, the paint pots, the cascades, Mammoth Hot Springs, the exquisite colorings of the mineral formations, Roaring Mountain, "Hell's Half Acre," the majestic mountain peaks and ranges, Rainbow Lake, the Punch Bowl, Amethyst Spring, and a thousand other things which so awed and inspired me that out of the depths of my being, I exclaimed, "What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet." But how unworthy has he proved to be! Amidst the magnificence and grandeur of the wonders of Nature, he is ever showing his ingratitude, and the tendency to prostitute these things to the uses of his baser nature, and take all the glory to himself. He makes use of the gold and silver to build himself a habitation that storms are destined to shatter, leaving him exposed to divine wrath. As I meditated upon these things, my heart cried out, "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; ... He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation" (Ps. 24:3-5). My heart overflowed like the boiling springs and the gushing geysers, which symbolize the sanctified life. [Illustration: JUPITER TERRACE © _Haynes, St. Paul_] When I first had opportunity to go to Yellowstone Park, I did not enjoy the experience of sanctification, and therefore could not have appreciated its many wonders as I do now. Who knows but this is the reason why the door closed and did not open for me to go until I should be in the enjoyment of this experience, and able to impart spiritual truths to others? There is an inner chamber of the soul that corresponds to the hill of the Lord. It is the place where the Shekinah dwells and His secrets are made manifest. Those who know Him in the relationship of the Bride can better appreciate His handiwork. Submission to the whole will of God is the price of such an experience. There are those who appreciate the grandeur and magnificence of the Yellowstone as a whole, but there are thousands of spiritual lessons which the book of nature unfolds that the ordinary sightseer fails to grasp. [Illustration: BUFFALO HERD © _Haynes, St. Paul_] At one place, there are two openings in a pool, or two springs so close together that they are called THE GOGGLES. Here again the two works of grace are beautifully set forth. Our guide illustrated some love affair by the two springs to the amusement of the young people in the company, but inadvertently my mind turned to the deeper spiritual truths of which they furnish a splendid example. It takes the Holy Spirit to read God in nature as much as it does to interpret His word. Jesus said, "But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." Also, "Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth; ... and he will shew you things to come" (John 16:13). The two springs, to me, represented Justification and Sanctification,--the two works of grace in the atonement, without which the soul is exposed to the wrath of God. It is the office work of the Holy Spirit to reveal Jesus to the heart and to act in the capacity of the Comforter, but when He takes possession He cleanses and purifies His temple. This is done when the heart is sanctified wholly. It is thenceforth the abiding place of the Holy Spirit. I could not help but think of what it shall be when the earth shall be rent, the mountains removed from their places, and men shall cry for the rocks and hills to fall upon them to hide them from the presence of Him that sitteth on the throne. There is no fear where the Holy Spirit is the abiding Guest. The rocks may rend and the earth be removed out of its place, but peace will flow like a river. Those who are so fortunate as to see the wonders of the Yellowstone will either soften or harden as the result of coming in touch with that which is so closely allied to the supernatural. It is like the melting influence of the Holy Spirit under a Gospel message when men are compelled to make their decision for eternity. God forbid that they should harden. If so, what could awaken them to their danger? The great war that has so recently terminated, bringing so much suffering and sacrifice, has made people better or worse. It has been a blessing or a curse, and so will the geyser region be to those who visit it. [Illustration: ELK STALLED IN SNOW © _Haynes, St. Paul_] Should there be those who pass by the wonders of the Yellowstone with cold indifference and a lack of response to what is seen there, it is proof that the world has already played havoc with their finer sensibilities, and as a result of this hardening process the mind and heart refuse to yield when brought under the strongest moral and spiritual influences. May God save people from such a calamity,--from becoming clay that is irresponsive to the divine touch. May they learn to magnify His name while suspended by the brittle thread of life over a yawning chasm of burning lava which is threatening to engulf them. Should man not be prepared for the great event that must come to everyone, there will be no one to blame but himself. God has made him a free moral agent, capable of choosing between right and wrong. If he should make the wrong decision, he will have to abide by the consequences. How many tourists will see the spring called the Ear and yet fail to hear the voice of God speaking to the soul through its many beauties! How many fail to hear Him speaking through the great subterranean channels hundreds of feet below the surface, thundering the terrors of a broken law and heralding the news of His impending judgments! [Illustration: GOLDEN GATE CANYON AND VIADUCT] A great author said, "O woman, thy name is frailty." The many short-comings of the gentler sex provoked this expression, but does not the word frailty equally apply to every individual on whom the curse has fallen? There is ever a downward tendency and a proneness to place the affections on material things, to worship the creature rather than the Creator. It is with much difficulty that tourists in the Yellowstone are prevented from defacing the formations around the geysers, which have been centuries in making. There are those who would pay almost any price to be permitted to carry away souvenirs, but if they were allowed to do so one can readily see what the consequence would be. Of what use are pieces of geyserite when taken away from their natural environment? It would be impossible to form an opinion as to what they represent. Likewise there are those who are satisfied with mere forms of religion,--baptism, church membership, or any substitute for real salvation. What knowledge would a piece of geyserite give a person of Old Faithful, the Giant, or the Giantess, in action? Baptism with water is an outward sign of an inner work, but there are multitudes who are satisfied with the souvenir and go blindly on to the Judgment to find their mistake when it is too late to make amends. There can be no excuse on account of ignorance, for the Scriptures furnish abundant evidence that there must be a work wrought by the Holy Spirit in the heart before a person is ready for the skies. There is no better illustration of the sanctified experience than that which the geysers demonstrate. Jesus said to the woman at the well, "But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." So with one who obtains the living water,--he has an inexhaustible supply, springing up in his soul. Outward conditions do not affect the deep whence it has its source, but it flows on regardless of conditions on the surface, bringing life and happiness to multitudes. At three o'clock in the afternoon, we boarded one of the touring cars to Yellowstone, Montana, the Western Entrance to the Park, where there is a branch terminal of the Union Pacific Railroad. A little more than four days had elapsed since we started on the tour at Cody, Wyoming, but to me it was the beginning of a new epoch, and I felt that enough had been crowded into the four days to talk and write about for the rest of my life. I had stocked up my storehouse with a supply of illustrations to be used in books and Gospel exhortations; and not only expected to profit by what I had seen, but to do what I could to make an impression upon others; and the result so far has been satisfactory. THE YELLOWSTONE PARK AND HOW IT WAS NAMED The Devil was sitting in Hades one day, In a very disconsolate sort of a way. One could tell from his vigorous switching of tail, His scratching his horn with the point of his nail, That something had gone with His Majesty wrong, The steam was so thick and the sulphur so strong. He rose from his throne with a gleam in his eye, And beckoning an agate-eyed imp standing by, Commanded forthwith to be sent to him there Old Charon, employed in collecting the fare Of the wicked, who crossed the waters of Styx, And found themselves soon in a deuce of a fix. Old Charon, thus summoned, came soon to his chief, As the Devil was angry, the confab was brief. Says the Devil to Charon, "Now, what shall I do? The world it grows worse and grows wickeder, too; What with Portland, Chicago, Francisco, New York, I get in my mortals too fast for my fork; I haven't the room in these caverns below, St. Peter, above, is rejecting them so. So hie you, my Charon, to earth, far away, Fly over the globe without any delay, And find me a spot, quite secluded and drear, Where I can drill holes from the center in here. I must blast out more space; so survey the spot well, For the project on hand is the enlargement of Hell. "But recollect one thing, Old Charon, when you Can locate the district where I can bore through, There must be conveniences scattered around To carry on business when I'm above ground. An 'ink-pot' must always be ready at hand To write out the names of the parties I strand. There must be a 'punch-bowl,' a 'frying pan,' too, A 'caldron' in which to concoct a 'ragout.' An 'old faithful' sentinel showing my power, Must shoot a salute on the earth every hour, And should any mortal by accident view The spot you have chosen, why, this you must do: Develop a series of pools, green and blue, That while these poor earth bugs may beauties admire, They'll forget that below I'm poking the fire. Now fly away, Charon, be quick as you can, For my place here's so full that I can't roast a man." To earth flew fleet Charon, to regions of ice; He found these too cold--so away in a trice He sought a location in Africa's sands, He prospected, and finding too much on his hands, He cut out Australia, Siberia, too, The north part of China--no! they would not do; Till, just as about to relinquish the chase, He stumbled upon a most singular place, 'Twas deep in the midst of a mountainous range, Surrounded by valleys secluded and strange, In a country the greatest, the grandest, the best To be found upon earth--America's West. Here the crust seemed quite thin, and the purified air, With the chemicals hidden around everywhere, Would soon make the lakes that the Devil desired; So he flew to Chicago, and there to him wired: "I've found you a place never looked at before; You may heat up the rocks, turn on water, and bore." Then the Devil with mortals kept plying the fire, Extracting the water around from the mire, And boring great holes with a terrible dust, Till soon quite a number appeared near the crust, Then he turned on the steam--and lo! upward did fly, Through rents in the surface, the rocks to the sky. Then with a rumble there came from each spot, Huge volumes of water remarkably hot, That had been there in caverns since Lucifer fell-- Thus immensely enlarging the confines of Hell, And it happens that now when Old Charon brings in A remarkable load of original sin, That His Majesty quietly rakes up the coals, And up spouts the water, in jets, through the holes, One may tell by the number of spurts when they come, How many poor mortals the Devil takes home. But Yankees can sometimes, without doing evil, O'ermatch in sagacity even the Devil. For not long ago Uncle Sam came that way And said to himself, "Here's the Devil to pay. Successful I've been in all previous wars; Now Satan shall bow to the Stripes and the Stars. This property's mine, and I hold it in fee; And all of this earth shall its majesty see. The deer and the elk unmolested shall roam, The bear and the buffalo each have a home; The eagle shall spring from her eyrie and soar O'er crags in the canyons where cataracts roar; The wild fowls shall circle the pools in their flight, The geysers shall flash in the moonbeams at night, Now I christen the country--let all nations hark! I name it the Yellowstone National Park." --WM. TOD HELMUTH. (Reprinted from Haynes' Guide of Yellowstone National Park). [Illustration: Administration Building, Zarephath Bible Institute and Zarephath Academy, Zarephath, N. J.] ZAREPHATH BIBLE INSTITUTE ZAREPHATH, N. J. ALMA WHITE (Bishop Pillar of Fire Church), _Founder_. REV. RAY B. WHITE, A. B., _President_. For the training of PREACHERS, EVANGELISTS, and MISSIONARIES. 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41657	----	Transcriber's Note: text originally italicized is rendered herein with underscores before and after. Small-caps are rendered as all uppercase. COPYRIGHT 1910 BY OREGON SHORT LINE TEXT BY EDWARD F. COLBORN PHOTOS BY F. J. HAYNES TO GEYSERLAND [Illustration: Geyser.] UNION PACIFIC--OREGON SHORT LINE RAILROADS TO THE YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK Connecting with Transcontinental Trains from all points East and West thence through the Park by the four-horse Concord coaches of the M-Y STAGE COMPANY [Illustration: The Great Falls of the Yellowstone] GEYSERLAND Where in confusion canyons and mountains and swift running rivers with painted banks abound, and elk and deer, buffalo and bear range through the wilds unterrified by man and gun, and tall, straight pines in almost unbroken forests plant their feet in a tangle of down-timber that centuries were required to produce; where in the earth there are vents through which roar and rush at exact intervals columns of boiling water, sometimes more than two hundred feet high, or in which painted mud blubbers and spurts; where pools by thousands at scalding heat boil and murmur; where under one's feet is felt the hollow of the earth and through hundreds of holes of unfathomable depth come deep growls of Nature in her confinement; where dyes have been daubed in delirium on hillsides and river's brink; where a canyon gashes the earth thousands of feet through colors so vivid and varied that no record can write them down; where one of the highest navigable lakes in the world washes the feet of mountains that hold aloft the snows through every month of the year; where the supernal and the infernal are blended in a harmony that only Infinitude can produce, and every miracle of Creation has been worked; where one can be lost in a wilderness as long as he will and come face to face with almost every form of creative eccentricity--there is _Geyserland_. _The Way in and Out_ Yellowstone National Park is reached via the Union Pacific and its connection, the Oregon Short Line, the New and Direct Route, over one stem from Kansas City and Leavenworth, and over another from Council Bluffs and Omaha. By way of the latter you cross the Missouri River over a magnificent steel bridge and traverse the "Lane Cut Off," a splendid illustration of modern railroad construction. If you journey over the stem from Kansas City, your way leads through a succession of thriving cities and towns amid the finest farming region of the West, and through beautiful Denver, through Cheyenne, thence through Wyoming, and a portion of Utah, to Ogden, from which point Salt Lake City, 37 miles distant, is reached. [Illustration: _The Cascades of the Firehole River_] [Illustration: _Hayden Valley between Yellowstone Lake and the Falls_] Leaving the central system of transcontinental lines, access to the Park is had in a night by way of the Oregon Short Line Railroad from Salt Lake City, Ogden, or Pocatello to the station, Yellowstone, Montana, at the western border, nineteen miles from the Fountain Hotel. All along this route are strewn stretches of delightful scenery, and fields of rare fertility; but these things the tourist does not see--he awakens for breakfast at Yellowstone, and an hour thereafter is following the course of the beautiful Madison, well on his way into the Park and to the wonders that there await him. _The Scenery_ As a whole, the scenery of the Park is restful and satisfying. What it lacks in the stupendous it makes up in softness of coloring and the gentle undulations that lead gradually to the massive mountains. The green of the pines, lightened and darkened here and there with the shades of different species, is everywhere. The waters of the rivers are dimmed by the shadows; the cascades have a glimmer and sparkle quite their own, and now and then peep out in the sweeps of the distance, little lakes that shimmer in the sun. Vagrant clouds of steam, signs of the geysers and boiling springs, are seen all over the landscape, especially in the early morning when a little of the night frost still lingers in the air. Many grotesque shapes are taken on by the rocks, and there is hardly a spring or pool that does not suggest its name by its form. From the Lake Hotel can be seen facing skyward, the profile of a human face so perfect it has long been called "The Sleeping Giant." Yellowstone Lake is a marvel of beauty; the dense forest comes down to its shores, little dots of islands sprinkle its surface, its waters are crystal clear away into the deep, and under the kiss of the sun the face of the sea takes on a glory altogether splendid. [Illustration: _Keppler Cascades_] [Illustration: Western Entrance] [Illustration] [Illustration: Gibbon Falls] [Illustration] _Coaching in the Park_ The stage coach, the old-fashioned one with the lofty seat for the driver and the boot and the thorough-brace, the rocking-cradle vehicle that served so well when civilization was beating its way westward fifty years ago, holds the first right-of-way through the Park. Driven from use almost everywhere else by the iron horse, it has found safe refuge there, and neither the railways nor the automobiles can enter to oppose it. [Illustration: _The Mud Geyser_] [Illustration: _A Coaching Party_] A good half of the pleasures of the tour is found in the coaching. To watch for the coming of the stage at the door of the Inn where the baggage is piled, and the porters and bell boys stand expectant--to hear the clatter of the wheels, the sound of hoofs, and to see the gaily harnessed horses in conscious pride swing the coach gracefully under the Porte Cochere--to be wheeled over the winding, dustless roads at ten miles an hour behind prancing leaders and wheelers--to be garbed as you please without thought of style or detail--to breathe air distilled among the fragrant pines--to be touched by breezes that fan your cheek and dishevel your hair--to be free from all care and abandon yourself to the delights that come with the everchanging scenes that panoramic Nature is constantly unfolding to your gaze--is to experience an exhilaration never to be found among the busy haunts of men. The drivers, gentlemanly and skillful, are full of information, and you do the 158 miles from Yellowstone around the circle back to Yellowstone with so little fatigue that you regret the trip is not longer. _Park Regulations and Improvements_ Two companies of United States Cavalry are stationed at Fort Yellowstone, and, during the summer detachments of these troops are placed in different parts of the reservation. Their duties are to patrol the Park, prevent the spreading of forest fires and the commission of acts of vandalism. The troops have authority to make arrests for any violation of Park regulations. Hunting is especially prohibited, and all guns are officially sealed at the entrance to the Park. The commanding officer at Fort Yellowstone is Acting Superintendent of the reservation. All rules and regulations emanate from the Department of the Interior, and printed copies of them will be found posted in all Park Hotels. The Government has constructed a system of macadamized roads of easy grade throughout the Park, and these are kept sprinkled daily during the Park season. [Illustration: _The Crater of Oblong Geyser_] [Illustration: _Punch Bowl Spring_] [Illustration: Grotto Geyser Formation] [Illustration] [Illustration: Rapids above Upper Falls] [Illustration] [Illustration: _Upper Geyser Basin_] _The Geysers_ Nature has lavished her gifts on the region of the Yellowstone--wild woodland, crystal rivers, gorgeous canyons and sparkling cascades--all under the guard of mountain sentinels around whose lofty heads group every form of cloud castle that vagrant winds can build. But of all the wonders that God in His mysterious way has there worked to perform, none is so strange--so startling--as the geysers. To count them, great and small, would be like counting the stars, and to measure in words their awful power, or picture their splendor of sparkle and symmetry--that, no one can do. They must be seen to be appreciated, and once seen--the memory and mystery of them will linger to the end of the longest life. They are as different as geysers can be. There are dead geysers--dead from bursted throats--mere boiling pools now--shaped to resemble a variety of familiar things; with depths that the eye cannot sound, and colors--blues, greens, purples, reds--down their deep sides and in the wonderful tracery about their rims, so blended, so beautiful that one may well believe that all the paints on the palette of the Master were commingled in their decoration. One blubbers and gurgles and grumbles awhile, and then with an angry roar lifts a great column of mud into the air. Another steams and growls through an orifice hundreds of feet wide in seeming angry spite that years ago it blew out its throat and ceased to gush forever.[A] But the geysers that most attract are the regular-timed spouting wonders--the Giant and Giantess, Old Faithful, the Grand, the Fountain, the Castle and others whose names mark the geography of the Park. [A] In 1888, Excelsior, then the greatest geyser in the known world, while playing with unusual vigor, ruptured its crater and has never spouted since. In its former periods of activity it is said to have raised the Firehole river seven feet in as many minutes with its waters. (_Ed._) [Illustration: _The Geysers in Winter_] They are variously located in three distinct basins which are far enough apart to give the traveler by stage a few geysers with each day's entertainment. These basins are great wastes of a white deposition called in Park vernacular "the formation" under which must be boiling one of the mighty cauldrons of the earth, for one can feel under foot a tremble, and can hear through a hundred orifices the hiss of steam and the angry murmur of the waters below. The coming and going of the geysers is an astonishing and awe-inspiring spectacle, and so accurately timed and so certain to perform are they, that no one need miss the experience. The geyser passive is a hole at the summit of a cone. The cone rises gradually from the plane of the formation and, ragged and deep, growls hoarsely and steams fitfully. Thus it is a moment before its time for activity, and then comes the geyser active. There is a loud preliminary roar and then suddenly, with a rush and power almost terrifying, a white obelisk of scalding, steaming water is lifted into the air sometimes 250 feet, and there held scintillating and glistening in the sun until the play is over, when it sinks gradually back from whence it came, and the fitful growling and steaming begins anew. Every geyser has a time of its own and there are thousands of them, varying in size from the little growler that sputters and spits a thimbleful from its tiny throat, to the Giant that three times a month plays for ninety minutes, 250 feet high. How old the geysers are, recorded time does not tell, but one or two of the wise men, who are always measuring the duration of things by some system of calculation, have determined by multiplying the deposition from each eruption by the height of the cone, that the Giant, for instance, has been playing some thousands of years. If those who come and go across the land every year on pleasure bent only knew how curious and beautiful geysers are, the National Park would count its visitors by multitudes. [Illustration: Old Faithful] [Illustration: The Great Falls From Below] [Illustration: _Old Faithful at Sunrise_] _Old Faithful_ In imagination, lift in a symmetrical cone two hundred and fifty thousand gallons of scalding, steaming water one hundred and fifty feet high and hold it there three minutes; jewel the grand fountain with a million diamonds; filter through it the hues of innumerable dancing rainbows; commingle in confusion every sound of splash and splutter--and you will have a faint idea of Old Faithful in action. It is the immutable water-clock of the Yellowstone--the most perfect illustration of geyseric phenomena--the most famous and beautiful geyser in the whole world. The note of the beginning of the play of the geyser is an angry growl down deep in its throat whence almost instantly the water, in rapid recurrent leaps, forms the stately fountain that plays for three minutes and then slowly sinks into the earth to await its time to rise again. Sometimes the winds unfold from its top an iridescent banner of spray; but more often the fountain form is a perfect cone. Old Faithful plays every seventy minutes and never disappoints. Visitors to the Park may therefore see it under various conditions of light. In the daytime, under the sun, it glistens and gleams with prismatic hues; but the most enchanting hour to witness its performance is that when night is falling--when the dusk is around it, and the last faint tints of the sun linger in the sky. Then it is a spectre in ghostly white standing against the sombre background of the wilderness--a sight strange and startling and never to be forgotten. It has long been the custom at Old Faithful Inn to flood the geyser at night with the rays of a searchlight. Then the spectacle takes on new features--all the rainbow hues are there, and looking through the fountain along the sweep of light, one sees a bediamonded form more beautiful than any ever wrought by the hands of the Ice King. Verily, Old Faithful is one of the most wonderful presentations in all the repertoire of Nature. [Illustration: _The Great Falls from Point Lookout_] _The Canyon and Falls of the Yellowstone_ The Canyon and Falls of the Yellowstone beggar description. They are twin wonders in a Wonderland. Is there any other gorge as gorgeous as that Canyon? With such gaiety of coloring--with such delicate and lovely shades of yellows and reds, purples and pinks, greens and crimsons, all commingling in harmony from the green-fringed brink, down, down the craggy sides into sombre depths where the writhing, gleaming ribbon of river thousands of feet below, plunges along on its winding way to the sea? And the falls--the drapery of the canyon--the two silvery curtains that hang at its head--a great river pouring over a precipice and falling in glassy sheets hundreds of feet, then ruffling and flouncing and festooning until lost into the rainbow-hued mist at their feet. See all this as thousands have and thousands will from "Inspiration Point"--a rocky balcony over the gorge, with the eagle's nests below you--or from "Artist's Point" on the other side, where Moran transferred the glories of canyon and falls to canvas; or see it from any of the other places where tourists love to linger and look, and you will see the most tremendous, stupendous, alluring and altogether splendid spectacle that Nature ever spread out for the wonder, amazement and delight of mortal eyes. [Illustration: MAP OF OREGON SHORT LINE, UNION PACIFIC, OREGON-WASHINGTON RAILROAD & NAVIGATION CO., SOUTHERN PACIFIC AND CONNECTIONS] [Illustration: Bridge above The Rapids] [Illustration] [Illustration: The Upper Falls] [Illustration] [Illustration: YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK Oregon Short Line Railroad] GEYSER TIME TABLE _Corrected by observations made during season 1910. From Haynes' Official Guide--Yellowstone National Park_ ================================================================== NAME HEIGHT DURATION INTERVALS OF ERUPTIONS FEET ------------------------------------------------------------------ UPPER BASIN Artemesia 50 10 minutes 12 to 24 hours Bee-Hive 200 8 minutes 12 hours to 40 days Castle 75 30 minutes 26 hours (freq. misses) Cliff 100 8 minutes 4 to 8 hours Comet 60 1 minute Irregular Cub (Big) 30 10 minutes With Lioness Geyser Cub (Little) 10 3 minutes With Lion Geyser Daisy 75 2 minutes 45 to 60 minutes Economic 20 10 seconds Follows Grand and plays every 5 min. for 2 days Fan 60 10 minutes 4 to 6 hours Giant 250 90 minutes 7 to 12 days Giantess 150 12-24 hours 16 to 25 days Grand 200 40-80 minutes 2 to 20 days Grotto 30 30 minutes 2 to 5 hours Jewel 40 1 minute 5 minutes Lion 60 8 minutes 6 to 12 hours Lioness 100 10 minutes 15 to 20 days Lone Star 75 10 minutes 1 to 2 hours Mortar 30 5 minutes 2 hours Oblong 35 5 minutes 7 to 8 hours Old Faithful 150 4 minutes 65 to 75 minutes Riverside 100 15 minutes 7 hours Saw-Mill 35 2 hours 2 to 3 hours Spasmodic 4 2 minutes 2 to 3 hours Splendid 200 ---------- Ceased to play about 1892 Surprise 100 2 minutes Irregular Turban 40 20 minutes With Grand Geyser ==================================================================== LOWER BASIN Fountain 75 20 minutes 3 to 6 hours Great Fountain 100 30 minutes 8 to 12 hours ==================================================================== MIDWAY BASIN Excelsior 300 Variable 1 to 4 hours, ceased in 1888 ==================================================================== NORRIS BASIN Constant 20 10 seconds 30 seconds Fearless 25 15 minutes 3 hours Minute Man 15 1-3 minutes 1 to 3 minutes Monarch 100 6 minutes 6 hours Mud 20-60 1-2 minutes New, irregular New Crater 20 1 minute 3 minutes Valentine 100 40 minutes 7-1/2 hours ==================================================================== A FEW OF THE IMPORTANT POOLS AND SPRINGS POOLS Ace of Clubs Black Sand (Deepest in Park--soundings, 300 feet) Cannon Ball Diamond Devil's Pump Devil's Well Emerald Five Sisters Gem Handkerchief Oyster Oyster Shell Orange Purple Punch Bowl Rainbow Sapphire Silver Bowl Sunset Surprise Three Sisters Tea Kettle Topaz Vault SPRINGS Arsenic Apollinaris Beauty Beryl Butterfly Cleopatra Castle Congress Devil's Ear Iron Morning Glory Pearl Peanut Sponge Soda Soda Butte Three Craters [Illustration: Mammoth Hot Springs] [Illustration] [Illustration: Hot Springs Cone] [Illustration] [Illustration] [Illustration] _The Mammoth Hot Springs_ The structural features are the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel and the garrison of Fort Yellowstone, around which, and in the vicinity of the springs, the landscape gardener has produced many beautiful effects. Here are found the most remarkable terrace-building hot springs in the world. The formation is calcareous, and the deposition by the waters has built up through the centuries cataracts in stone of indescribable beauty through which the paints from the earth have been mingled and blended with a vividness of coloring and a perfection of shading that none but the Master's hand could work. The waters are of such extraordinary transparency that the eye can only guess at their depth. They are held steaming and pulsating in great over-hanging bowls, from which they gently flow down over the stony cataracts, carving and decorating as they go. Jupiter and Pulpit Terraces are the master-pieces of Nature here; but there are hundreds of other curious and beautiful things to see. The drive to and from Norris is alive with interest. It leads through the Golden Gate, and on the way can be seen Obsidian Cliff, Roaring Mountain, Beaver and Twin Lakes and other attractive and curious features of topography. [Illustration: _Mammoth Hotel_] [Illustration] [Illustration] _The Tame Wild Animals_ The animals of the Park are objects of peculiar interest. No sound of gun or bark of dog is ever heard, and the animals, though wild, have become so tame that they give only curious notice to tourists as they pass. Deer, elk and bear roam at will throughout Geyserland. The red squirrel and the chipmunk scamper along the roadway, and those furry little bundles, the wood-chucks, flatten out on the rocks and take no heed of your passing. It is an everyday sight to see deer and their young by the roadside, and now and then you get a glimpse of an antlered elk, with his family of cows, swimming the streams of the Park. So much has been accomplished by law in robbing man of his terrors to the wild, that all of the animals in the Park, except those that--like the mountain lion and sheep, frequent places inaccessible to travelers--have well-nigh lost their fears. The bears, some of them wrapped in robes that would command a fancy price, come down in the evening from their homes in the hills to feed around the hotels. The after-dinner entertainment they afford to guests is an everyday pleasure. [Illustration: _Feeding the Bear_] [Illustration: The Giant Geyser] [Illustration: Eagle Nest Rock] [Illustration: _New Grand Canon Hotel_] _The Inns_ They happen along at the end of each day's drive--great roomy structures alive with light and full of comfort and good cheer. And such inns they are--generous lobbies to lounge in before old-fashioned fire-places, with their blazing, snapping logs--beds to sleep in, clean and restful--prettily furnished rooms--and cookery and service almost too good to be true. To find all these things in a far-away wilderness is to wonder what magic was worked to bring them all about. The great inn at Mammoth has in its foreground, three hundred feet high, the wonderful, many-colored, and beautifully-formed Hot Springs Terraces which belong in the list of the water-made wonders of the Park. One of the inns--Old Faithful--cannot be matched anywhere in the world. It is a lofty, wide-spreading structure of logs, with a touch of Swiss about its gables and windows. Within, the logs are everywhere--partitions, balustrades, stair-steps, and newel posts--even the drinking fountain is a log. It must have been a mighty task to search the forests for all the queer forms of growth that enter into the construction of the curious, rustic interior. And the lobby, with its four great cheerful fireplaces--its huge corn popper--its clock and twenty-foot pendulum, and all the log-made galleries above it--that charms and comforts beyond the power of words to tell. [Illustration: _Old Faithful Inn_] The inns are located nearby the greatest marvels of the Park and their sites have been selected to show them off with admirable skill. From the Fountain the geysers of the lower basin can be seen at their play. Old Faithful Inn looks out upon a great steaming, spouting field, and has its namesake--the glory of all the geysers--almost at its doors. So near, indeed, is it, that all the night through, at intervals of seventy minutes, can be heard the old monster in eruption. On a slope that sweeps gently down to the waters sits the Lake Inn. The forest creeps down to it on three sides, and the outlook from its goodly porches is over the broad expanse of Yellowstone Lake--one of the highest of navigated seas, and as passive, clear and prettily tree-trimmed a sheet of water as there is in the world. You may reach this inn from Thumb by steamer or by coach; but if you would have two hours of ecstacy, take the steamer. Thumb is a lunch station, and the lunch there is a creation. The Canyon Inn is almost on the brink of the gorge where falls the Yellowstone. It is a duplication in excellence of the other inns, and when you bid it good-bye it is to begin your last day's tour of the Park. Then comes Norris, with its geysers and its awful "Black Growler," and a lunch that will send the tourist on his homeward way with a grateful heart. After that--Yellowstone--and the whistle of the engine and the waiting Pullman--your tour is ended and the Park a pleasant memory. [Illustration: Golden Gate] [Illustration] [Illustration: Pulpit Terrace] [Illustration] _The Stage Line_ [Illustration: _Lone Star Geyser_] The M. & Y. Stage Company, operating from Yellowstone, Montana (The Oregon Short Line terminus at the western entrance to the Park) is licensed by and is under the direct supervision of the United States Government. The line is equipped with elegant new two and four-horse Concord coaches and two-horse surreys, and the finest of horses. The coaches accommodate eight and eleven passengers, the surreys three and five passengers. The drivers have been especially selected for the service, are well informed, and will point out every interesting feature of the Park. The five days' coaching over the line of this Company takes in all interesting sights in the Park, and every effort is made by the management to secure the comfort and pleasure of passengers. Stop-over privileges at any Park hotel are allowed without additional stage charge; but twenty-four hours' advance notice must be given to the Stage Company of the coach to be taken. Parties so desiring can arrange for special coaches or surreys for the Park trip. For further information regarding coaches and transportation facilities through the Park, address F. J. Haynes, President M. & Y. Stage Company, St. Paul, Minn., or Yellowstone Park, Wyo. THE YELLOWSTONE PARK FARES Owing to the frequent changes of fares throughout the United States, this publication will deal only with the round-trip fare from Salt Lake City, Ogden, Pocatello and Yellowstone. Following fares from Pocatello and Yellowstone are open to all passengers:--Fares from Ogden or Salt Lake are side-trip fares available to holders of transcontinental tickets of any class reading between Cheyenne, Denver, Colorado Springs, Pueblo and points east thereof, on the one hand, and points west of the eastern state line of Nevada via the Southern Pacific Company, San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake R. R. or Western Pacific Railway, or west of Pocatello, Idaho, via the Oregon Short Line R. R. on the other hand. COMPLETE TOUR OF THE PARK From Salt Lake From City, Ogden and Yellowstone. Pocatello. Rail, Stage and Stages and Hotel. Hotels. Five-Day Trip via the Fountain, Old Faithful, Lake and Canyon Inns, $55.50 $46.25 Mammoth Hot Springs and Norris Hotel accommodations in the Park (thirteen meals and four lodgings) included in the ticket. Fare for children covering rail transportation only 4.65 MAIN POINTS OF INTEREST Four-Day Trip via the Fountain, Old Faithful, Lake and Canyon Inns and Norris 45.50 36.25 Hotel accommodations in the Park (ten meals and three lodgings) included in the ticket. Fare for children covering rail transportation only 4.65 TO THE GEYSERS AND RETURN Two-Day Trip--among the Geysers 25.50 16.25 Hotel accommodations in the Park (four meals and one lodging) included in the ticket. Fare for children covering rail transportation only 4.65 Children under eight years of age will be granted half rates locally in the Park, on stage lines and at hotels. For the season of 1911 the first date that passengers can leave Yellowstone (western entrance) and make the tour of the Park is June 16th; the last date leaving Yellowstone, September 16th. BAGGAGE REGULATIONS The baggage limit on coaches is 25 pounds. Excess rate per pound 10 cents. Trunks are not transported through the Park. They may be stored free of charge at Yellowstone, Pocatello, Ogden or Salt Lake City, or they will be sent around to Gardiner by rail for tourists going out that way. Tourists entering via Gardiner and touring the Park by coaches operating from there, if routed out through the western entrance, will transfer to the M. & Y. Stage Line at Norris. They should arrange at Mammoth for transfer of baggage and Oregon Short Line Pullman reservations. Provisions will be made at Yellowstone station for the care of ladies' hats, and for cleaning and pressing clothing while passengers are en tour through the Park. A nominal charge will be made for this service. GERRIT FORT Passenger Traffic Manager OMAHA, NEBRASKA D. E. BURLEY General Passenger Agent SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH OREGON SHORT LINE RAILROAD [Illustration: Mammoth Hot Springs] [Illustration] [Illustration: Castle Geyser] [Illustration] FOR COMPLETE INFORMATION ADDRESS ANY OF THE FOLLOWING ATLANTA, GA. 121 Peachtree St. A. J. DUTCHER _General Agent_ BOSTON, MASS. 176 Washington St. WILLARD MASSEY _New England Pass'r Agent_ CHEYENNE, WYO. E. R. BREISCH _Ticket Agent_ CHICAGO, ILL. 73 West Jackson W. G. NEIMYER _General Agent_ Boulevard CINCINNATI, O. 53 East Fourth St. W. H. CONNOR _General Agent_ CLEVELAND, O. 305 Williamson Bldg. GEO. B. HILD _General Agent_ COUNCIL BLUFFS, IA. 522 Broadway WILLIAM B. _City Ticket Agent_ RICHARDS DENVER, COLO. 935-41 Seventeenth R. S. RUBLE _Assistant Gen'l Pass'r St. Agt. U. P. R. R._ DES MOINES, IA. 310 West Fifth St. J. W. TURTLE _Traveling Passenger Agent_ DETROIT, MICH. 11 Fort Street West J. C. FERGUSON _General Agent_ HOUSTON, TEXAS T. J. ANDERSON _Gen'l Pass'r Agt. G. H. & S. A. Ry._ HONG KONG, CHINA Kings Building _General Passenger Agent San Francisco Overland Route_ KANSAS CITY, MO. 901 Walnut St. H. G. KAILL _Asst. Gen'l Pass'r _ Agt. U. P. R. R._ LEAVENWORTH, KAN. 9-11 Leavenworth J. J. HARTNETT _General Agent_ Nat. Bank Bldg. LINCOLN, NEB. 1044 O St. E. B. SLOSSON _General Agent_ LOS ANGELES, CAL. 557 South Spring St. H. O. WILSON _General Agent_ MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. 25 South Third St. H. F. CARTER _District Passenger Agent_ NEW ORLEANS, LA. Magazine and J. H. R. PARSONS _Gen'l Pass'r Agt. Natchez Sts. M. L. & T. R. R. and S. S. Lines_ NEW YORK CITY, N. Y. 366 Broadway L. H. NUTTING _General Passenger Agent So. Pac. Co._ 287 Broadway J. B. DeFRIEST _General Eastern Agent U. P. R. R._ OAKLAND, CAL. 1122 Broadway H. V. BLASDEL _Agent Passenger Dept._ OMAHA, NEB. GERRIT FORT _Pass'r Traffic Mgr. U. P.-O. S. L. R. R's_ 1324 Farnam St. L. BEINDORFF _City Pass'r Agent U. P. R. R._ PHILADELPHIA, PA. 632 Chestnut St. R. J. SMITH _General Agent So. Pac. Co._ 841 Chestnut St. S. C. MILBOURNE _General Agent_ PITTSBURG, PA. 539 Smithfield St. G. G. HERRING _General Agent_ PORTLAND, ORE. WM. McMURRAY _Gen'l Pass'r Agt. O.-W. R. & N. Co._ Third and Washington C. W. STINGER _City Ticket Agent Sts. O.-W. R. & N. Co._ PUEBLO, COLO. 312 North Main St. L. M. TUDOR _Commercial Agent_ SACRAMENTO, CAL. 1007 Second St. JAMES WARRACK _Passenger Agent_ ST. JOSEPH, MO. 505 Francis St. C. T. HUMMER _Asst. Gen'l Pass'r Agt. St. J. & G. I. Ry._ ST. LOUIS, MO. 903 Olive St., J. G. LOWE _General Agent_ Century Bldg. SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH D. E. BURLEY _Gen'l Pass'r Agt. O. S. L. R. R. Co._ SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 42 Powell St. S. F. BOOTH _General Agent_ SAN JOSE, CAL. 19 North First St. F. W. ANGIER _Agent Passenger Dept._ SEATTLE, WASH. W. D. SKINNER _Gen'l Pass'r Agt. O.-W. R. & N. Co._ 608 First Avenue E. E. ELLIS _General Agent O.-W. R. & N. Co._ SPOKANE, WASH. 603 Sprague Avenue H. C. MUNSON _City Tkt. Agent O.-W. R. & N. Co._ SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA 40 Pitt St. V. A. SPROUL _Australian Passenger Agent_ TACOMA, WASH. Berlin Bldg. ROBERT LEE _General Agent O.-W. R. & N. Co._ TORONTO, CANADA Room 14, Janes Bldg. J. O. GOODSELL _Traveling Passenger Agent_ YOKOHAMA, JAPAN 4 Water St. _General Passenger Agent San Francisco Overland Route_ [Illustration] 
40824	----	ANOTHER SUMMER THE YELLOWSTONE PARK and ALASKA BY CHARLES J. GILLIS Printed for Private Distribution COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY CHARLES J. GILLIS. Press of J. J. Little & Co. Astor Place, New York The more I think of it, the more I find this conclusion impressed upon me, that the greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to _see_ something and tell what it saw in a plain way.--RUSKIN. With the Compliments of the Author. PREFACE. In the spring of 1892, a party was made up for a trip to Alaska. The different members thereof were to cross the continent by such routes as they pleased, and meet at Portland, Oregon, on the second of July. This plan was followed, and all the party boarded the steamer _Queen_ at Tacoma, prepared for the journey of a thousand miles up the coast of Alaska. Some account of this, and also of an excursion to the Yellowstone Park, made on the way westward, is given in the following pages. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I.--THE START FOR ALASKA, II.--ON THE WAY TO THE YELLOWSTONE, III.--YELLOWSTONE PARK, IV.--THE GEYSERS AND PAINT POT, V.--THE UPPER GEYSER BASIN, VI.--THE GRAND CANYON, AND THE FALLS OF THE YELLOWSTONE, VII.--DOWN THE COLUMBIA RIVER TO PORTLAND, VIII.--TACOMA AND SEATTLE, IX.--ON BOARD THE "QUEEN" FROM TACOMA TO VICTORIA, X.--ALASKA, XI.--THE MUIR GLACIER, XII.--SITKA, XIII.--AN ACCIDENT TO THE "QUEEN," XIV.--ICY BAY, TREADWELL, AND JUNEAU, XV.--THE RETURN VOYAGE, AND SOME STORIES TOLD ON THE WAY, XVI.--ON THE CANADIAN PACIFIC, XVII.--BANFF SPRINGS, XVIII.--CONCLUSION, THE YELLOWSTONE PARK AND ALASKA. CHAPTER I. THE START FOR ALASKA. Our long trip to Alaska and return, nine thousand miles in all, commenced on June 17, 1892, at the Grand Central Station, New York. Arriving at Chicago the next afternoon, we obtained a good view of the great exposition buildings from our car windows as we passed along the lake front. Shortly afterward we were dumped down at the wretched sheds of the Michigan Central Railroad. It rained very heavily, and ourselves and hand baggage were somewhat wet passing a short distance to a carriage. We soon crossed the Chicago River to the Northwestern Depot, boarded the train, which left at 11 P.M., and arrived at the beautiful modern city of St. Paul at 1 P.M. the next day. The Hotel Ryan was found to be very comfortable, and everything in and around the city is bright and cheerful. Great business activity, and immense and costly buildings are especially noticeable. Running along the streets are great numbers of spacious and elegant cars drawn by cables. We hailed a passing one, got in, and went slowly and carefully through the crowded streets, up and down hills, with great speed and ease, into the country for some miles, passing many elegant private residences, as costly and fine as any to be seen in any city in the world--notably one built and occupied by Mr. Hill, president of the Great Northern Railroad, now about completed to the Pacific Ocean, whose name you hear mentioned often as one of the great railroad magnates of the West. The streets are clean, the sidewalks wide, the front yards of the houses crowded with beautiful plants and flowers, and in all respects we concluded that St. Paul is a most delightful city. CHAPTER II. ON THE WAY TO THE YELLOWSTONE. LIVINGSTON, MONTANA, June 22, 1892. We left the city of St. Paul at 4.25 P.M. on the 20th, by the Northern Pacific Railroad, and arrived here at 8 A.M. this morning. A section on the sleeping-car had been previously engaged, and we found it and the dining-room car attached to the train all that could be desired, so that we thoroughly enjoyed the entire trip. Passing through the Bad Lands was a wonderful experience. Great mountains of clay or stone, in all sorts of grotesque shapes and of many colors, constantly attracted our attention until we reached the Yellowstone River, which was higher than it had been for many years. Here things began to look serious, as frequently the dirty and rushing flood came near to the track, and the rise of a foot or so would have caused a wash-out, and have stopped our progress; but for many miles before we reached this station, the engineer moved the train of ten cars very carefully, and we were only two hours behind time. There has been a bridge burned beyond this place, and some bad wash-outs are reported by passengers coming East, who say that they had to travel around six miles on foot, through a country infested with rattlesnakes, leaving their baggage behind; but we expect that all will be clear on Monday, when we shall have been through the park, and will be ready to go on from here West. There was the usual crowd of "all sorts and conditions" of men on the train--young ranchmen, bright eyed, intelligent, and alert, one of them being an English lord, but I did not know this until he left the car at a way station. All had tales to tell of life in these parts, one of which was that the stage running from one of the stations at which we stopped was "held up" three times last week, and the passengers robbed. This town is a new one, with a lot of small wooden houses and stores, but as the hotels did not look very attractive, we took our breakfast on the dining-car attached to a train about to start for Cinnabar, on a branch road, and an excellent meal we had. CHAPTER III. YELLOWSTONE PARK. MAMMOTH SPRINGS HOTEL, YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, June 23, 1892. Leaving Livingston at 9 A.M., we travelled by rail forty-two miles to Cinnabar, the entrance to the National Park. We passed along the valley of the Yellowstone River, now a much swollen, turbulent, and rushing stream, hemmed in by mountains reaching their lofty heads thousands of feet high. In one place there had been a land-slide some hundreds of feet long, which had carried down all the earth and trees into the valley, leaving the rock bare, and presenting a very rugged appearance. There were numerous farms and ranches on the route, with cattle and cultivated fields. The road bed was in good order, the cars excellent, and the trip exceedingly interesting and enjoyable. At Cinnabar, we took a stage for eight miles to this hotel. The road is a very good one, passing over rushing streams and along the bases of great mountains, amidst magnificent scenery. Beautiful flowers line the way and are in the fields, while the mountains are partly covered with snow. We hear that the road to the lake is blocked with snow, and impassable. This hotel is an excellent one, the food, attendance, and rooms are good, and for a day we are resting preparatory to commencing the tour of the park. Here are located the barracks for the United States soldiers in charge of the reservation, these being now two hundred mounted men, who act as police, and constantly patrol the roads, watching for poachers, and generally keeping everything in order. From the front of the hotel we look upon the hot springs, which have been throwing out hot water and steam, no doubt for ages, and have formed a large terraced hill of soda or lime-like material, the surplus water finding its way, partly through subterranean passages, to the river. CHAPTER IV. THE GEYSERS AND PAINT POT. FOUNTAIN HOTEL, YELLOWSTONE PARK, June 23, 1892. This morning at eight o'clock we left the Mammoth Spring, in a strongly built and comfortable wagon drawn by four horses, with eight passengers and a careful driver, and soon commenced to see the wonders of this remarkable park. The road ran near three lakes, each measuring a hundred acres or more--one green in color, one blue, and one yellow--the like of which cannot, I think, be seen anywhere else on earth. On examination, I found that the water was clear, and that the pronounced and brilliant colors came from chemical deposits on the bottom of the lakes. We did not linger long to look at these remarkable phenomena, but drove on, and were soon passing over a road made of natural glass, by the side of a great mountain of the same material. I picked up several pieces of this glass, and found that it was green in color, and looked like any other glass, while alongside the road and up the mountain we saw large masses of the same material. The only conclusion we could arrive at was, that in some prehistoric time the materials of which glass is composed must have been in juxtaposition, and were fused into their present form by a volcanic eruption. It is safe to say that nowhere else on earth is to be found a roadway made of glass. We reached this hotel at 6 P.M., and saw near by the first of the geysers, spouting hot water fifty feet high. We made our way over a thin crust to see this geyser, so thin that it seemed as if we might break through and disappear forever, reminding me of a former experience, when walking along the edge of a volcano in Japan, a place was pointed out where two guides who had wandered from the path, broke through the crust and were lost. We passed on to examine what I consider the most extraordinary natural phenomenon to be seen on the face of the earth. It is called the Paint Pot, and is a depression of about thirty by forty feet, with walls of hardened clay three or four feet high. In this so-called pot are half a dozen or more cones, much like inverted flower pots, about six inches in diameter at the top, and two or three feet high. From the centres of these there are constantly flowing streams of hot clay, each stream of a different color, varying from pure white to brown. In other parts of the big pot the soft clay was coming slowly up from centres and overflowing, forming figures like flowers, very beautiful to look at. The soldier who escorted us was very polite, but would not permit us to carry away a bit of the clay, though there were tens of thousands of tons lying about. We could see, near by and at a distance, several other geysers, spouting water fifty or more feet high, and we learned from the guide books that there are no less than ten or twelve thousand boiling springs and geysers within the reservation, which is sixty-five miles long by fifty-three wide, containing about three thousand four hundred and seventy-five square miles. We were informed that after sunset a bear came regularly, back of the hotel, to regale himself on the refuse thrown from the kitchen, and I went to see him; but the mosquitoes were very thick, and proved such an intolerable nuisance that I was obliged to go away without getting a look at the beast. CHAPTER V. THE UPPER GEYSER BASIN. June 24, 1892. After a good night's sleep, we left the hotel at half-past eight this morning for an excursion to the Upper Geyser Basin, forty miles distant. The roads were in bad order, very dusty, and the mosquitoes thick. Geysers and boiling springs were to the right and left, everywhere. At one place we got out of the wagon, and crossed a bridge over a small stream to what is called the Devil's Half Acre. There were really a dozen or more acres, containing great volumes of steam and hot water rushing up and around. Many little streams ran toward a big basin, some of them yellow, some green, and some blue, but on examination I found that the water itself was clear. The mud or clay which formed the bed of the streams, or was being carried along in the current, was colored. We thought the Devil's Half Acre a dangerous as well as a disagreeable place, and, recrossing the little stream, continued on our way, arriving at the hotel at the Upper Geyser Basin in four hours. We had just arrived when we were informed that the famous Old Faithful Geyser, which has spouted for many years every sixty-five minutes, would go off in a short time. It is situated a few rods from the hotel, and as we drew near, it commenced to spout up an immense column of water and steam one hundred and fifty feet or so in height. Then, in about five minutes, it subsided into a hole in the ground. We could hear the roar of the steam and water underneath, the commotion shaking the ground. Soon after this exhibition, another geyser, called the Bee Hive, situated near the hotel, spouted, and made a splendid display. I think we saw in this basin as many as twenty large spouting geysers, and hundreds of boiling springs, many of them of surprising beauty. One, which attracted my attention particularly, was a slowly boiling spring which threw up colored clay, and looked exactly like a large sponge. This was about three feet long, two feet wide, and as many high. Driving along the road, we frequently saw signs put up by the Government: "Do not drive on here," and "Danger"; so one is impressed with the idea that some day the tremendous volcanic power underlying this entire valley may burst out and make one vast crater of lava, mud, water, and steam. CHAPTER VI. THE GRAND CANYON, AND THE FALLS OF THE YELLOWSTONE. GRAND CANYON HOTEL, June 26, 1892. We left the Upper Geyser Basin at half-past eight yesterday morning, stopped for lunch at Norris's at noon, and, branching off, arrived here at 3.30 P.M. The road was on the banks of or near the Gibbon River for many miles, and was very rough. Twice we forded the river, and once the passengers were obliged to leave the wagon and remove a fallen tree from the way. At another place, a tree a foot in diameter had fallen across the road; the party all got out, and the driver had to jump the wagon over the obstruction, at the risk of breaking the vehicle. The road from Norris's was in good repair, and from it we had a fine view of the great Yellowstone Falls, and then drove on to find comfortable accommodations at this hotel, the views from which are very magnificent. Mrs. Marble and I, accompanied by a guide, and Mr. and Mrs. Hunter, of Canada, took a walk toward the Grand Canyon, about half a mile off. Crossing some fields, we entered the pine woods. The whole park has been repeatedly burnt over, and there is everywhere an immense number of prostrate pine-trees, some of which are very large, and appeared, when we saw them, to have been lying on the ground many years. In this vicinity, however, there is quite a forest of new growth, all about the same size, from six to ten inches in diameter, and ten to a dozen feet apart, making a very pretty park. Here we came suddenly upon a big black bear lying down; he got up, took a look at us, and then in a leisurely way walked off. It was a fine specimen, weighing, we judged, about two hundred and fifty pounds, with long, clean black hair. Mr. Hunter ran on toward the animal, but we called to him to come back, and the bear, turning his head, gave us another look, and disappeared in the forest. We walked along to the banks of the rushing and roaring river, ascended a high cliff, and looked down upon the great falls and the tremendous canyon, the walls of which are several hundred feet high, colored bright green in some places, and in others red, yellow, or violet. The whole scene was magnificent, grand, and gloomy. In the middle of the river, near where we stood, was a column of rock some hundreds of feet high, apparently ten yards in diameter at the bottom, and just large enough at the top for an eagle's nest. One had been built there, and we saw the young eagles stretching their necks, and opening their mouths, as all kinds of young ones do when hungry. The parents were soaring about, and evidently keeping a watchful eye upon us and their progeny, but the little ones were safe, as nothing but a ball from a rifle could reach that nest. From this point we had another fine view of the Falls of the Yellowstone, both lower and upper. The upper fall has been measured, and found to be one hundred and twelve feet high and eighty feet wide. The wild animals in the reservation are carefully protected by the custodians, no one being allowed to use a gun, and consequently they have become comparatively tame, and have increased in numbers. Passing along the roads, we saw on one occasion two deer, and at other times an elk and an antelope. The superintendent, in his official report, says that there are in the park four hundred head of buffalo, a few moose, numerous elk, estimated at twenty thousand, and large numbers of bears, which latter are sometimes troublesome. A herd of twenty or thirty elk was seen near this hotel on the morning before we arrived. CHAPTER VII. DOWN THE COLUMBIA RIVER TO PORTLAND. PORTLAND, OREGON, July 1, 1892. After spending six days in the Yellowstone Park, which would have been far more comfortable if there had been less dust, fewer mosquitoes, and better roads, we again returned to Livingston, and took the train coming from the East at 8.15 P.M. All the next day and night and the day following we were passing through mountain scenery of wonderful beauty and grandeur, until at 11 P.M. we were landed at Pasco Junction, there being a cross-country railroad from that point to the Union Pacific, on the banks of the Columbia, where we wanted to go. There was a large station at Pasco, but not a porter nor a carriage to be seen. Many drinking places were open, and I interviewed several of the patriots who were lounging about in their shirt sleeves--for the thermometer registered one hundred degrees--and they pointed out the way to Cook's Hotel, about a quarter of a mile off. Finally a porter came to our assistance and escorted us to the hotel, which was about as poor a one as could well be--close, hot, and uncomfortable. The beds were as hot as if there was a fire under them, and we, of course, slept but little. In the morning, after looking at a bad breakfast, which did not tempt our appetites, we got into the caboose of a freight train, and a very rough trip of two hours brought us to Wallula Junction, where the thermometer stood at one hundred degrees in the shade. Here we changed cars, and after two hours' more riding, reached the Union Pacific Railroad, where we once more enjoyed the luxury of seats in a Pullman. There was no dining-room car attached to this train, but it stopped at a station for half an hour, and we were supplied with an excellent dinner. The polite and kind conductor told us not to hurry, that he would not start until we had all the dinner we wanted. We were about eight hours running on or near the southern banks of the Columbia River. The water was very high, and often ran swiftly over rough rocks in the bed of the stream, and around the bends with great force. The river appeared much wider than the Hudson, about the same width as the Danube at Vienna. The great rivers of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America all have their attractive peculiarities, and I often recall my remembrances of the St. Lawrence, Hudson, Mississippi, Rhine, Elbe, Danube, Seine, Nile, and Ganges with the greatest pleasure and satisfaction, and am thankful that I have been permitted to see them; but I must acknowledge that the Columbia, in beauty and grandeur, far surpasses them all. For long distances, you look out upon the wide and rushing water, and up to the lofty mountains which border the banks and far beyond, some covered with snow, and as picturesque and beautiful as anything an artist could dream of. One of the most interesting things to be seen on the trip down the river is the method of catching salmon, which, as is well known, are as fine as any in the world. They are caught in immense numbers and sent to all parts of the country. During the dry season, a wall is built about twenty-five feet from the shore, forming a canal through which the water rushes with great force. In this canal is placed a large wheel, something like those on a sidewheel steamer, under which the water pours, causing it to revolve in a direction contrary to the current. The salmon swimming up stream try to jump over this obstruction, and falling into the wheel, are tossed up on a platform, and thus captured. Our train arrived at this city at 9 P.M., and we were furnished with luxurious accommodations at "The Portland," an hotel erected by a stock company, at a cost of one million dollars, and admirably kept by Mr. Leland, formerly of the Delavan, Albany, and the Clarendon, Saratoga. We found at the hotel all of the Alaska party in good health and spirits, and ready for the voyage as arranged. Two days of exceptionally fine weather have given us an opportunity to see this beautiful city to the best advantage. The Honorable Benjamin Stark, formerly United States Senator from Oregon, now residing in New London, Connecticut, informed me that when he first landed at Portland in 1845, from the bark _Toulon_, there was not a house in the place, and the party was obliged to sleep in tents where now is a fine city of sixty-six thousand inhabitants, wide streets, elegant public and private buildings, electric and cable street railways, and all the appliances of modern civilization, in many respects in advance of Eastern cities. We saw a number of Japanese and Chinese stores filled with elegant goods, and attended by native salesmen. CHAPTER VIII. TACOMA AND SEATTLE. TACOMA, WASHINGTON, July 5, 1892. We left Portland at 8 A.M. on the 2d by rail, and arrived at this fine hotel, "The Tacoma," at 3.30 P.M. after a very agreeable and comfortable trip. The first thing to attract our special attention was a view of Mount Tacoma, as seen from the rear windows of the hotel, truly a royal and splendid sight: a great mountain, of symmetrical shape, covered with pure white snow. There are not many such mountains to be seen anywhere; none so beautiful, as I remember, except the Jungfrau at Interlaken, and Fusiyama in Japan. We have been in this place for three days, going about everywhere, and find it a wonderful example of a rapidly built city--solid and substantial, wide streets, great and costly public and private buildings, an admirable system of swift-going street cars, running in every direction, by cable or electric power; fine dry-goods and other stores, and every indication of great business activity and success. The citizens inform us that in 1880 there were thirty thousand inhabitants in this city, and now there are fifty thousand. Judging from the crowds on the streets and in the street cars, and the business activity seen everywhere, this must be correct. We attended service on Sunday at St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal Church, built by Mr. Wright, of Philadelphia, in memory of his daughter. The church is a beautiful one; the service was rendered in an impressive manner, and the sermon was excellent. Wishing to see Seattle, the other famous city of the State of Washington, I went there by rail in two hours, and, accompanied by a relative, spent the day looking at the buildings and shops, and travelling on the electric street cars, which run everywhere, with what appeared to be dangerous speed. We had an excellent lunch at a good hotel, situated on top of a hill, from which we looked down on the city and harbor. Looking at the solid blocks of business houses, wholesale and retail, and the beautiful private residences, and knowing that there are now about fifty thousand inhabitants in the city, it is difficult to comprehend that fifteen or twenty years ago it was almost a wilderness. After lunch, we took seats in an electric car, and were carried five or six miles with the greatest ease, to a beautiful lake, where we found many interesting things to look at for an hour or two. We hear of a great deal of jealousy between Tacoma and Seattle, but to a stranger they appear to have much in common--large, substantial and handsome buildings, many of which would not be thought out of place in any city; prompt, energetic, and lively business men, and every appearance that the foundations have been laid for two great cities, to which the immense products of India, China, and Japan will naturally come for distribution throughout the United States and Europe. CHAPTER IX. ON BOARD THE "QUEEN" FROM TACOMA TO VICTORIA. STEAMER "QUEEN," July 7, 1892. At 9 P.M. on the 5th instant we went on board the steamer _Queen_, which, as there are no hotels in Alaska, is to be our home for two weeks. The steamer is a fine, large vessel, with ample accommodations for two hundred or more passengers. I had secured and paid for two first-class staterooms two months in advance, but found, the first night, that the ones given us were the worst on the ship, being directly over the boiler, and consequently so hot that it was impossible to live in them unless the doors were open. In addition to this annoyance, when the watch was changed at 9 P.M., and at 1, 4, and 8 A.M., the ashes were hoisted from the hold, the rough and noisy machinery used being located in the rear of our rooms, apparently within a foot or two. The iron ash-can was about eighteen inches in diameter and four feet high, and when it was rushed up by steam power, it made a tremendous noise, making sleep impossible. In the morning I called on the purser, and asked him to change the rooms. He said that he could not "change all the rooms in the ship," but on being informed that unless he gave my sister better accommodations we would abandon the trip and go ashore at the next stopping place, he changed his mind, and gave her a good room in the cabin below, but refused to change mine unless I would pay fifty dollars additional. On consultation with my roommate, Mr. Edwin S. Townsend, we concluded that the advance asked was a violation of our contract with the company, and that we would not pay it. We therefore endured the distress and annoyance of the ash-lifting machinery. I did not remove my clothing at night, but lay on the bed until the ash-can nuisance commenced, and then left the room and walked the deck until the noise stopped, in about half an hour. Being forced on deck at night had its inconveniences, but it had its compensations also, for it gave me the chance to see the magnificent scenery by moonlight; and, one night, there was a splendid display of aurora borealis, which illuminated the entire northern sky. After five nights spent in this disagreeable manner, one of our friends had a talk with the purser, and induced him to change the undesirable rooms for comfortable ones on the upper deck. We learned with much satisfaction that the steamer during the entire trip will go through a series of inland seas, and that we shall look upon the Pacific Ocean but two or three times, and then for only a few hours. We arrived off Seattle at 4 A.M. on the 6th, and remained there five hours, giving those who wished an opportunity to go ashore and see that famous place. All day the beautiful vessel steamed along the quiet waters, until we reached Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, at 9 P.M. Most of our party thought they would like to see the place, so half a dozen of us went ashore, and after consulting some natives, we concluded to walk to the settled part of the city. It was quite a long walk, a mile or more, passing government buildings and grounds, and many handsome houses, until we came to one of the business streets, and there we found the "Poodle Dog Restaurant," rendered famous from a notice of it in Mrs. General Collis's exceedingly interesting and beautifully illustrated book, "A Woman's Trip to Alaska." We had a little supper, and then took carriages back to the vessel, which soon afterward steamed away through the Gulf of Georgia, and along the coast of British Columbia toward Alaska, our goal. CHAPTER X. ALASKA. July 9, 1892. This morning we went ashore at Fort Wrangell, but found little there of interest. A lot of miserable Indians and dogs and old houses, a post-office and a court-house. An Indian dressed himself as a warrior in paint and feathers, and executed a war-dance in a barn for the amusement of the visitors. I saw him dancing along the walk into the barn, but did not care to see the show. At noon we left the fort, and since then have been passing through scenes of unsurpassed magnificence. Tall mountains were on either side, those nearest covered with spruce-trees, and the ranges back of them white with snow. Occasionally there were open spaces, where snow or land-slides had taken place, making good feeding grounds for wild animals, but we saw only one, a large elk, who kept on feeding and did not notice our ship. The sun set at a quarter past nine last evening. The steamer's route is generally between islands and the main land, the water smooth and everything comfortable; but yesterday we came out upon the broad Pacific Ocean for an hour or two, and some of the passengers were sea-sick, but none of our party were troubled in that way. All appeared regularly at meals, which were excellent: well-cooked meats and vegetables, and plenty of fruit. Just now, at 8 P.M., we are in a bay some twenty miles in extent, surrounded by great mountains covered with snow. The setting sun shining on these makes a picture of extreme beauty and grandeur. All day long we have been on deck admiring the beautiful sights, the weather being fine, numerous sea-gulls in view, occasionally a school of porpoises, and now and then a whale. Every day we pass numerous islands, large and small, all covered with spruce-trees and having a very charming appearance. CHAPTER XI. THE MUIR GLACIER. GLACIER BAY, July 10, 1892. We arrived here at nine this morning, and have the great Muir Glacier before us. It is about two miles wide, two or three hundred feet high, and several hundred miles long. Every quarter of an hour or so we hear a loud crack, followed by a noise like the discharge of a gun, then a rumbling like thunder, and a big piece of ice, as large as a house, and, sometimes, as a church, falls into the water, causing the great steamer to rock. Word was passed for us to get into boats for an excursion onto the glacier. We were cautioned to be prudent and not to wander too far, and were told the story of a young Methodist clergyman, who went out of sight of his companions and was never after seen or heard of. It fell to my lot to escort a lady who, accompanied by her maid, wished to go on the glacier. A glacier may be said to be a river of ice, formed on the mountains and forced downwards, travelling the same as water, only slower. This one moves at the rate of about forty feet a day, much faster than they do in the Alps. Those at Chamouny, for instance, make only a foot or two a day. Our party landed, and for some distance had the use of a plank walk. From various parts of this we had fine views of the front of the glacier, large pieces of which were frequently falling into the water, making a great noise. We then, after much rough walking over stones and ice, passed up to the main body of the glacier. The ice is forced up into hillocks and ranges, wet, slippery, and difficult to travel on. Mrs. B. tripped along lightly and safely, but not so her maid, whose shoes were treacherous, and twice she came to grief, but no harm was done. I had on arctic overshoes with corrugated soles, which served me well, for I did not slip once. For an hour or two we wandered about, admiring the ice, the views, the numerous small streams of clear water formed by melted ice, and then returned to our quarters on board. At 7 P.M. the stately vessel steamed around near the front of the glacier, when, as if to give us a parting salute, an immense mass of ice, as big as a church, fell into the water with a great noise. The passengers cheered, and we went on our course, passing numerous ice islands. The day was perfect, as the preceding ones had been. CHAPTER XII. SITKA. SITKA, July 11, 1892. At six o'clock this morning we arrived here. The weather was warm, tempered by a cool breeze. Not a cloud was in the sky. This is a small harbor, with many islands in sight. From the deck of the steamer we could see the town, and on top of a hill a large wooden edifice, where the Russian governor-general formerly resided. It is vacant now, and in a dilapidated condition. We went ashore, and saw many Indians sitting on the walks or by the side of the roads. They were dressed nicely, and were better looking than any I ever saw before. They had the usual supply of baskets and curios for sale. We went in and out of several stores, and bought some curios, and then visited the Russian church, where there were some fine paintings of saints and other religious subjects. Back about a rod from the water, with boats in front of them, were a hundred or more houses occupied by Indians. Accompanied by a resident doctor, we went into some of these houses, and saw how the Indians lived. Owing to the large number of dogs and quantities of bad-smelling fish, we were very glad to get away from that neighborhood. One of our friends had chartered the only wagon in the town, and took us for a trip of a mile or two along the shore, among the sweet-smelling spruce-trees, to a small stream of water, over which we passed, and then rested in the woods. On our return, we went to the Presbyterian Mission, which is a large and important one. It consists of a group of buildings: a church, a school-house, and two large edifices erected at the expense of Mrs. Elliott F. Shepard, in which the young Indians are to be taught carpentry and other mechanical industries. We attended a school in session, and heard the reverend gentleman in charge examine the Indian girls and boys in arithmetic, reading, and writing. They appeared as bright and intelligent as any white children, and as capable of being educated. It was reported to us that there were two hundred pupils in the school, and fourteen missionaries in charge. Mrs. Richard H. L. Townsend, of New York, saw among the pupils a sweet-faced and bright girl ten years of age, and after talking to her awhile, adopted her to educate, agreeing to pay the mission for her support and education for a number of years. This lady, when in Japan in 1889, adopted in a similar way a little native girl there, and another native girl in China. These two children in their respective countries are getting along nicely with their education, and write to Mrs. T. sweet letters every month. CHAPTER XIII. AN ACCIDENT TO THE "QUEEN." July 12, 1892. At 7 P.M. last evening the steamer's whistle sounded the last signal, all our passengers came on board, and we started. Going out of the harbor, we passed numerous small islands covered with spruce-trees. The view of the town, the harbor, and the surrounding mountains made a scene of great beauty. At half-past seven the steamer struck a rock. The bow was forced high up out of water, and the stern, where I was sitting with some ladies and gentlemen, careened over so much that we had to hold on to the railing to prevent ourselves from falling. There was no occasion for alarm, as we were within two hundred feet of an island, and about a mile from the harbor of Sitka, where we could see a revenue cutter lying, with her steam up, and numerous rowboats near. No one about us manifested any excitement, except one young woman who became hysterical and had to be restrained. The tide was rising, and our captain declined assistance from the captain of the revenue cutter, thinking it best to wait for the tide to rise high enough to float the vessel. The passengers were generally very cool, except one gentleman from Chicago, said to be worth several million dollars, who indulged in remarks about the proper way to navigate steamers, and insisted that the captain of the _Queen_ did not understand his business, or he would not have run the vessel on rocks in the daytime. Captain Carroll, hearing of these observations, stepped up to the great capitalist and said: "Sir, if you do not like the way I manage this ship, you can go ashore," to which the capitalist replied that he would. A boat was lowered, and the officer in charge was directed to take this gentleman, together with his wife and daughter, back to Sitka. There being no hotels in the town, and hardly any accommodations whatever, except for Indians and dogs, the prospect of being obliged to stop there for a week or two was not entertaining, so the wife and daughter remonstrated. The matter was therefore smoothed over with the captain, and all parties remained on board. Soon after this incident, a line was run to the shore of an island near by, and attached to the trunk of a tree, to assist in hauling the ship off. Every half hour or so the propeller would commence running, and attempts would be made to start the steamer, with no success, until 12.15 A.M., when, with much grating on the bottom, she was floated off into deep water. The captain thought best to take her back to Sitka, so we were soon anchored there again, opposite Mrs. Shepard's houses. When I awoke this morning, the water was as still as a mill pond, and the sky cloudless, giving us another perfect day. It was found that no damage had been done to the steamer, and at 8 A.M. she started on her course. We are now passing through Peril Straits, very narrow, with mountains near, covered with trees. The water is shallow, and sometimes our stanch vessel grates roughly over the bottom. At one time, when passing an opening of a dozen miles, we looked upon the ocean, with just enough swell to remind us how much more agreeable it is to sail on water where you are not liable to sea-sickness. The captain has issued his usual noon-day bulletin, stating that the ship will arrive at certain places during the next twenty-four hours, provided she does not run on rocks, and there is no fog, and that "after Juneau, we will go to Taku Glacier, where we will obtain our supply of ice." "Passengers are permitted to fill up with it, as it is exceedingly cheap, and cooling to the mind." CHAPTER XIV. ICY BAY, TREADWELL, AND JUNEAU. JUNEAU, July 13, 1892. Yesterday we were moving through the straits, and looking upon the majestic scenery which distinguishes Alaska, for a thousand miles from Tacoma. We passed the great Davidson Glacier, and during the afternoon and evening were constantly seeing immense ranges of mountains, until we reached Icy Bay at seven this morning. Here the steamer took in her supply of ice, fishing it out of the water and hoisting it on board, several tons at a time. Coming into Icy Bay, the scenery was of extraordinary grandeur, mountains many thousand feet high, the bases of which were near the water, and numerous waterfalls and glaciers. Some of us sat up nearly all night to see the wonders, the like of which cannot be seen anywhere in the world, except, perhaps, in Greenland. After midnight the moon came up in all her glory, and the northern lights played fantastic tricks in the sky. The great glacier in this bay is a wonder, a mile wide and several hundred feet high, the ice falling off every few minutes in great masses. Once I saw two great ice towers, looking much like those of the Church of Notre Dame in Paris, and I called the attention of a lady to them. Hardly had I made the remark, before they both crumbled down into the water with a tremendous crash, making our big ship feel the force of the waves caused by the fall. After leaving Icy Bay we touched at Treadwell at noon, where are located some famous gold mines. Most of the passengers went ashore and were permitted to go through the large buildings of the mining company, and see the operations of getting gold from rocks. The blasting was going on a short distance off. The ore was transported by rail to the mill, and then pounded into powder by several hundred powerful steam hammers, which made a prodigious din. This powdered stone was mixed with running water, and we were informed that the gold was obtained in that way, but we saw none of it. An hour was quite sufficient for Treadwell, so we steamed over to this place, nearly opposite, and went ashore. There are several hundred houses in this town, built at the base of the mountains. Near the water there was the usual number of Indian women squatting on the ground and offering baskets and curios for sale. The stores are well supplied with skins of foxes, bears, and other wild animals, and the usual goods required in country places. CHAPTER XV. THE RETURN VOYAGE, AND SOME STORIES TOLD ON THE WAY. On the evening of the 13th we left Juneau, and reached Chilcat, the most northerly place on our course, the following morning. Then commenced the return trip over much the same route which we took on the outgoing voyage, passing the mountains, glaciers, and islands we had seen before. The passengers amused themselves in various ways, one group in the cabin telling stories to pass away the time. One of this party interviewed an elderly gentleman, and asked him if there was not a history connected with the great scar which extended across his face, and the gentleman very kindly told the following, which may be called-- THE CAPTAIN'S STORY. "My name is Neilson, and I have been at sea since I was a boy. For many years I served before the mast, then as mate, and finally as captain, on many voyages in different parts of the world. Back in the fifties I was in command of a whaling ship owned in San Francisco, and we sailed from that port to the selected cruising ground in Behring Sea, between the Aleutian Islands and Behring Strait. Once we sailed through the strait into the Arctic Ocean, but the intense cold and immense masses of floating ice drove us back in a damaged condition. We secured a good many whales after some months' cruising about, until, one day, a violent storm came up, and we were driven ashore on St. Lawrence Island, near North Cape. The ship was a total loss, but all the officers and crew succeeded in getting ashore, and a passing ship took us back to San Francisco. I stopped in the city for some weeks, and talked a good deal with an old friend, Captain Samuel, who had also been so unfortunate as to lose his ship on a whaling voyage. We looked about and found some capitalists who purchased a ship for us, and we determined to try our luck again, searching for whales in the Behring Sea. Captain Samuel suggested that I should be captain and he would act as mate, but I told him no, that he, being the elder and more experienced, should be captain, and I the mate, and it was so arranged. The captain of a whaling craft always has a share of the results of the voyage, and the mate another, but not so large as the captain's. It was agreed between us that on this voyage we would divide the profits, if any, equally. It will be understood that at this time whaling voyages were very profitable, sperm oil often selling in the San Francisco market for two dollars and fifty cents per gallon. "We shipped a crew of ten men, and a second mate, took on provisions for a long voyage, and sailed for Behring Sea. We cruised about over three months, and had remarkable success, having harpooned and secured several large sperm whales, so we felt that we were going to have a good voyage. "The crew was a rough one, and sometimes we heard murmurs of discontent about the labor of trying out the oil, and about the food, but we paid no attention, thinking it only the usual growling among sailors. One day the captain and I were in the cabin, when he, hearing a noise, stepped on deck, and was at once assaulted by a man with a cutlass, and instantly killed. Hearing the uproar, I too rushed on deck only to be in season to see the prostrate form of the murdered captain, and a sailor with a drawn cutlass coming toward me. As I backed down the companion-way he hit me on the head, where the scar is, which has attracted your attention. I fell into the hold, and the mutineers, thinking I was dead, did not follow me. I found, in the hold, the second mate, unhurt, who staunched the flowing blood from my wound, and bound it up with some old canvas. At that time I was nearly forty years younger than I am now, and was as tough as men are made. The mutineers heard us moving about, and fired at us with muskets loaded with ball, but did not hit us. For some reason, they did not venture down after us, probably because they knew there were loaded muskets within our reach, and that we would be sure to use them. We found the muskets, but they were useless, having been wet. "As every moment's delay was dangerous, we being liable to be hunted down, killed, and thrown into the sea, to follow the body of our murdered captain, it became necessary for us to think and act quickly. "We could hear the men, who were collected together directly over the cabin, talking loudly and excitedly. I knew where the magazine was, and getting a keg of powder, placed it directly under where the mutineers were standing, laid a train from it to the bow of the vessel, and touched a match to it. The explosion was almost instantaneous, and tremendous in its results, throwing to the right and left that part of the cabin over which the mutineers were, and killing or drowning every man except three, who, evidently thinking the ship was a wreck, hastily got into a boat and rowed away. "We listened for some time, but hearing no noise, went on deck, and found on examination that the hull of the ship was perfectly sound, and that no damage had been done to the masts; so that with some assistance we could navigate her into port. We obtained the assistance required from a passing vessel, and in due season arrived at San Francisco. There was a good deal of valuable sperm oil on board, which was sold, and gave the second mate and myself quite a sum of money, the owners being disposed to be liberal under the extraordinary circumstances. "After this, I concluded to abandon the sea, and went into the business of supplying water to ships in the port of San Francisco. "I had followed this business for twelve years, when one day, as I was furnishing water for a whaling ship, I saw among the sailors a man who, I felt quite certain, was the ring-leader of the gang of murderous mutineers who killed our captain and came so near making an end of me. I communicated my suspicions to the captain of the whaler, but he said that his ship was ready to sail, and that he would take the man, but would keep a watch on him, and find out if he talked while at sea. When this ship returned, the captain sought me out, and said: 'He is your man, for he talked during the voyage, and told about being on a ship on which an explosion took place, and he and two others were the only survivors.' I had the man arrested, but the administration of justice was very lax at that time in California, and the time which had elapsed since the commission of the crime rendered proof difficult to obtain, so the man escaped the gallows. "This, gentlemen, is the story of how I became scarred for life, as you see." Another tale related by one of the storytelling group ran as follows: THE TRAVELLER'S STORY.--AN UMBRELLA. "I am an expert in umbrellas, take good care of them, and they generally serve me for many years. I have one purchased in Florence, another from the Bon Marché, Paris, and this one, which I hold in my hand, bought at the Burlington Arcade, London, has been a good and faithful servant, having been used as a cane when tramping through Italy, France, Germany, and England. It has sheltered me from the rains of Japan, and the terrible sun in China, Ceylon, India, Egypt, and Turkey. It has been re-covered in Vienna, and had a new stick put in at New York, and, as you see, is now in fair condition. One day, in Constantinople, I wandered along the street called La Grande Rue de Pera, which is about a mile long, and on which are located the principal foreign shops; but I failed to discover anything grand about it, and one is annoyed to have to avoid stepping on great yellow dogs, who are sleeping on the sidewalks, when there are any, and in the roadway. At one end of this street are cable cars, which carry you down a sharp incline to the streets on the water. I took one of these cars down, and in a few minutes passed over the famous bridge which connects Galata with Constantinople proper, to a wharf, where I was detained some time waiting for a steamboat to take me on the splendid and never-to-be-forgotten trip up the Bosphorus, to the entrance of the Black Sea. Many large yellow dogs were wandering about on the wharf, and one of them coming near me, I scratched his back with this umbrella, which he took for a hostile demonstration, and bit the umbrella in a most savage way, with his long, sharp teeth. I succeeded in getting it away from him, and was glad that he did not try his teeth on me. From that day I have been careful about undertaking to pet strange dogs with umbrellas, or anything else, but I forgot the Constantinople experience yesterday at Sitka, when I went ashore, and after wandering around among the Indian women, who were sitting on the grass surrounded by their mats, bottles, and various curios, I stopped opposite one of them, and saw, lying down in front of her, a very small dog, which I supposed was a puppy, but it proved to be full grown, and a very ugly little beast. I touched him with the umbrella, and he barked in a furious manner, and making one jump, fastened his teeth into my leg above the knee. I shook him off, the Indian woman put him under her blanket, and I returned to the ship to repair damages with court-plaster, vowing that never shall this umbrella be used again to pet a strange dog." Indian reminiscences being in order, one of our party related the following: SARAH ARBUCKLE AND THE INDIAN CHIEF. A STORY OF FRONTIER LIFE IN NEW HAMPSHIRE. "Sarah Arbuckle came to this country, with her father and brothers, about 1740, when she was sixteen years old. They settled in the midst of a dense wilderness, where the town of Merrimac now stands, many miles from neighbors, and she was their housekeeper. It was so lonely that many times a day, she would step out-of-doors to listen for the sound of their axes, and if it ceased for any length of time, she would tremble with fear lest the Indians or wild beasts had attacked them. "One morning she was stooping over the fireplace, making the 'stirabout' (Indian hasty pudding) for breakfast, when a shadow falling across the floor startled her, and turning hastily to the open door, she was frightened almost to death at the sight of a gigantic Indian standing at the threshold, with blood streaming down all over one side of his face. He tried to speak to her, but she could not understand him. When she was a little over her fright, she saw that there was an arrow sticking in his eye, which he wanted her to remove. She plucked up courage, drew the arrow out, dressed the wound, gave him food, and he stayed there and was cared for a few days, and then disappeared in the woods. Some years after this occurrence, a war broke out between the Indians and settlers, and the Arbuckles were preparing to remove to the garrison house for safety, when, one evening, a band of Indians, with fearful yells, burst in the doors of their house, and the tomahawk was just descending on Sarah's head, when at a word spoken by a chief, who rushed in after them, every warrior dropped his hand, and silently, one after another, filed out into the darkness, leaving the chief with the family. He had learned enough English to tell them that he had been there before, and had been assisted by them, and that they need fear nothing. They might remain on their place, and would not be molested. They did so throughout the war, and had no further trouble. This Indian came to see them annually, for years after, always bringing them some little present." * * * * * These and other stories helped us to while away the time until we arrived at Nanaimo, at six o'clock on the morning of July 16th. Here our party left the steamer and embarked on a ferry-boat. In two hours we landed at Vancouver, British Columbia, and found there a first-class hotel. Ten years ago, we were informed, the place on which the city is built was a wilderness, but when the Canadian Pacific Railroad made it the western terminus of its line, there was at once a "boom," such as has been seen so often in our own Western States, and now there are banks, public buildings, fine streets, electric cars, and all the appliances to make strangers and residents happy. CHAPTER XVI. ON THE CANADIAN PACIFIC. GLACIER HOUSE, CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY, July 19, 1892. We left Vancouver at 2.20 P.M. on the 16th, and made our acquaintance with this great transcontinental railway. I think it fully as good as any of those over which I have travelled in recent years. A good roadbed, fine and comfortable cars, polite attendants, and every thing supplied to make travelling agreeable. The road runs for many miles on the banks of the Frazier River. Great mountains tower above, covered with snow, and there are distant views of glaciers, which would have been thought immense if we had not seen those in Alaska. We were detained all day Sunday at a place called Kamloops, a telegram having been received that a freight train had been derailed eighty miles eastward. Some of us attended service at a small Methodist Church, and listened to a good sermon from a young man who had for a congregation only about twenty persons. Leaving Kamloops on the evening of the 17th, we arrived here at seven the next morning. This hotel, which was built and is kept by the railway company, is a fine one, and guests are made very comfortable by the excellent manager, Mr. Pearly. The valley through which the road passes does not contain more than two or three hundred acres, and is surrounded by immense mountains, one of which, Sir Donald, is a mile and a half high. Small streams of melted ice and snow come rushing down from the tops of these mountains, and form a pretty little river, in some places not more than twenty-five feet wide. Our party took a two-mile walk over a rough path to a great glacier among the mountains, Mr. Pearly acting as guide. It was a hard tramp through the woods, and over small streams, but we all survived it, and in a couple of hours returned to the hotel, very much fatigued, but well pleased. Near the hotel, the railway tracks are covered with substantial snow-sheds about a mile long, made of heavy planks and timber, affording an excellent place for walking and viewing the surrounding mountains. A party of ladies and gentlemen went out on these sheds this morning, and spent some time walking back and forth, viewing the magnificent scenery. The surrounding mountains appeared colossal in their grandeur. We had a fine view of them, and of the great glacier, and the valley below. The scenery all along this railway from Vancouver impresses me as the most splendid I have ever seen anywhere, with the exception of once, when we came up from the hot plains of India, crossed the Ganges, and taking a little narrow-gauge railway, crawled up the mighty Himalayas to Darjeeling, arriving at sunset. It was a glorious sight, four mighty ranges of mountains, among them Mount Everest, twenty-nine thousand feet high. But this is a digression. From our place of observation on the snow-sheds we were looking down into the valley, when suddenly Mr. Edwin T. Townsend shouted: "There is a bear," and all eyes were turned in the direction of the little stream running through the valley below, about one-third of a mile off. On a small island in this stream, wandering about, was a big grizzly, as large as a cow. He was in sight for half an hour, and seemed to be a playful kind of a beast. He would wade out into the stream, and get something to eat, probably refuse from the hotel, then go ashore and devour it; and once he got hold of a good-sized spruce-tree and shook it violently. Mr. Eden, of Winnipeg, went to the hotel for a gun, and, accompanied by another gentleman, tried to head off the bear and get a shot at him, but he disappeared and could not be found. CHAPTER XVII. BANFF SPRINGS. BANFF SPRINGS HOTEL, CANADIAN NATIONAL PARK, July 22, 1892. We left the Glacier Hotel on the 19th, at 1 P.M., or, as stated in the time tables of this country, at thirteen o'clock, and arrived here at 11 P.M. We spent the whole time on the observation car, viewing the mighty mountains and magnificent scenery along the banks of the Columbia and the Beaver. Banff is an ideal place for an hotel, being situated near the Bow River Falls and the mouth of the Spray, and surrounded by great mountains, often ten thousand feet high. There are fine roads and walks everywhere. The hotel is a splendid one, built and run by the railway company, and everything about it is first-class. Sulphur springs are located two miles up among the mountains, the water being brought down in pipes to the rear of the hotel, where there are bathing houses, and an open-air bathing tank, thirty by twenty feet and five feet deep. The water in this tank is strongly impregnated with sulphur. Young Mr. Townsend and I took a bath in this tank, and found the water so delightful, soft, and nice to swim about in, that we stopped in too long, or were not sufficiently cautious coming out, and I caught a bad cold, followed by a cough and headache, and consequently had to spend a couple of days in bed, seeking, with the aid of Doctors Diet and Quiet, to recuperate. CHAPTER XVIII. CONCLUSION. We left Banff at 10.20 P.M. on the 22d, and after two days and two nights on the cars, reached Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba. At the hotel there we found the rooms for which we had telegraphed ready for us. The sulphur bath at Banff, and the subsequent exposure, proved too much for me, and I was obliged to go to bed and stay there for a week. Very often I suffered extreme pain in the head, and was only conscious of being carefully nursed by my sister and travelling companions, and attended by a skilful doctor. After three days and nights of continuous illness I grew better, and began to appreciate how exceedingly kind every one was. One lady, Mrs. E., of Winnipeg, sent for my use calf's-foot jelly and beef tea prepared by her own fair hands, and accompanied with beautiful flowers from her garden. Another one, Mrs. B., of New Orleans, sent a pot of beautiful flowering fuchsia. All of which attentions were very acceptable. Ever since we left Vancouver, all along the railroad, there was a small-pox scare. There had been a hundred cases at Victoria, and the city had been quarantined; reports were also circulated that the disease was bad at Vancouver, and as a consequence the passengers on our train were looked upon with suspicion. At one stopping place, called Medicine Hat, ropes were put around the station, and the passengers were prevented from going into the town. The governor of North Dakota issued a proclamation forbidding all persons to come into that State from Manitoba, by rail or otherwise, because a Chinaman near the line, and a girl who nursed him, had the small-pox. In two or three days, however, this proclamation was withdrawn, much to my relief, as I wished to return home by the shortest route. The Manitoba Hotel, where we were located, is owned and managed by the Northern Pacific Railroad Co., and is a model one in every way. When sufficiently recovered from my at one time serious illness, I took several drives about the thriving and beautiful city, and finally, on August 2d, we started by the Great Northern Railroad for home. One day at Minneapolis was altogether too little time for seeing one of the finest cities of its size in the world. Two days were spent at Chicago, during which we drove around the Exposition buildings, now rapidly nearing completion; then we took places previously engaged on the Pennsylvania Limited, and in twenty-five hours were landed in Jersey City. We happened to occupy a car which had just been put on the road, containing many new appliances and conveniences, the latest inventions of Mr. Pullman. Thus pleasantly our journey ended, and we arrived safely home again, after an absence of just fifty-one days. 
46911	----	[Illustration: THE GREAT GEYSER BASIN OF THE UPPER YELLOWSTONE.] WONDERS OF THE YELLOWSTONE EDITED BY JAMES RICHARDSON. _New Edition, with new Map and Illustrations._ NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1886 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG & CO., In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington _CONTENTS._ PAGE CHAPTER I. The Crown of the Continent--Yellowstone Lake--Ancient Volcanic Action--Modern Thermal Phenomena 1 CHAPTER II. Early Explorations--Lewis and Clarke's Expeditions--Trappers' Yarns--Colonel Raynold's Expedition--The Washburn Expedition--Colonel Barlow's Expedition--Dr. Hayden's Geological Survey 5 CHAPTER III. Route from Fort Ellis to Bottlers' Ranch--Fort Ellis--Prospect from the Divide--Snowy Mountain--Trail Creek--Pyramid Mountain--The Bottler Brothers--Yellowstone Valley 15 CHAPTER IV. Bottlers' Ranch to Gardiner's River--River Valley--Second Cañon--Cinnabar Mountain--The Devil's Slide--Western Nomenclature--Precious Stones 21 CHAPTER V. Hot Springs of Gardiner's River--Third Cañon--Rapids--Valley of Gardiner's River--Thermal Springs--White Mountain--Hot Springs--Natural Bathing-pools--Diana's Bath--Liberty Cap--Bee-hive--Extinct Geysers--Beautiful Water--Vegetation in Hot Springs--Antiquity of Springs--Classification of Thermal Springs 27 CHAPTER VI. Gardiner's River to Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone--Forks of Gardiner's River--Gallatin Mountains--Basaltic Columns--Falls of Gardiner's River--Mountain Prospect--Over the Divide--Agatized Wood--Delightful Climate--Mountain Verdure--Volcanic Ridges--Ravines--Third Cañon of the Yellowstone--Hell-roaring River--Hell-roaring Mountain--East Fork of the Yellowstone--Ancient Springs and Calcareous Deposits--First Bridge over the Yellowstone--Rock Cutting--Tower-creek Cañon--Column Rock--The Devil's Den--Tower Falls--The Devil's Hoof--Mineral Springs--Mouth of Grand Cañon 43 CHAPTER VII. Over Mount Washburn to Falls of the Yellowstone--Ascent of Mount Washburn--Extensive View--Steam Puffs--Elephant's Back--Grand Cañon--Yellowstone Basin--The Three Tetons--First View of Yellowstone Lake--Madison Mountains--Gallatin Range--Emigrant Peak--Geological History of the Yellowstone Basin--Ancient Volcanic Action--Descent of Mount Washburn--Hell-broth Springs--The Devil's Caldron--Cascade Creek--The Devil's Den--Crystal Cascade 61 CHAPTER VIII. The Grand Cañon and the Falls of the Yellowstone--Description of Grand Cañon--Descent into the Cañon--History of Grand Cañon---Lower Falls--Upper Falls 78 CHAPTER IX. From the Falls to the Lake--River above the Falls--Alum Creek--Boiling Springs--Crater Hill--A Narrow Escape--The Locomotive Jet--Sulphur Springs--Mud Puffs--No Vegetation--Temperature of Springs--Muddy Geyser--Mud Volcano--Mud-sulphur Springs--The Grotto--The Giant's Caldron--Movements of Muddy Geyser 90 CHAPTER X. Yellowstone Lake--Setting of the Lake--Shape of the Lake--Shores of the Lake--Yellowstone Trout--Worms in Trout--Waterfowl--The Guide-bird--Fauna of Yellowstone Basin--Islands in the Lake--The First Explorers 105 CHAPTER XI. Around the Yellowstone Lake--Hot Springs of Pelican Creek--Hot Springs of Steam Point--Fire Slashes--Difficult Travelling--Little Invulnerable--Poetry in the Wilderness--Volcanic Peaks--Mounts Langford, Doane, and Stephenson--Brimstone Basin--Alum Creek--Upper Yellowstone--Wind River Mountains--Valley of Upper Yellowstone--The Five Forks--Bridger's Lake--Yellowstone Mountains--Heart Lake--Madison Lake--Mount Sheridan--Flat Mountain--Bridger's "Two Ocean River"--A Companion lost--Lakes and Springs--Hot Springs on the West Shore--Bridge Creek--Dead Springs--The Elephant's Back 114 CHAPTER XII. Upper Geyser Basin--The Grand Geyser Region--Firehole River--Madison Lake--Mountains about the Lake--Cascades--The Geysers--Old Faithful--The Bee-hive--The Giantess--Castle Geyser--Grand Geyser--The Saw-mill--The Comet--The Grotto--The Pyramid--The Punch Bowl--Black Sand Geyser--Riverside Geyser--The Fan--The Sentinels--Iron Spring Creek--Soda Geyser 133 CHAPTER XIII. Lower Geyser Basin--Down the Firehole--Prismatic Hot Springs--The Cauldron--Old Spring Basins--The Conch Spring--Horn Geyser--Bath Spring--The Cavern--Mud Springs--Thud Geyser--Fountain Geyser--Mud Pot--Fissure Spring--White Dome Geyser--Bee-hive--Petrifaction--Hot Spring Vegetation--Cold Spring--General View of the Basin--The Twin Buttes--Fall of the Fairies--Rainbow Spring 162 CHAPTER XIV. Natural History of Geysers and other Thermal Springs--Iceland Geysers--History of _The Geyser_--The Strokr--Eruption of _the_ Geyser--Growth of _the_ Geyser--Mechanism of Geysers--Artificial Geysers--Life and Death of Geysers--Laugs--New Zealand Hot Springs--_Te Tarata_--Hot Springs of the Waikato--Origin of Mineral Springs--Chemistry of Mineral Springs 180 CHAPTER XV. Mr. Everts's Thirty-seven Days of Peril--Lost--Loss of Horse--Midnight Dangers--Starvation--Return to Lake--No Food in the Midst of Plenty--Bessie Lake--Thistle Roots--Hunted by a Lion--Storms--First Fire--Vain Efforts to find Food--Attempt to cross the Mountains--The Lost Shoe--Forest on Fire--Hallucination--Turned back--The Doctor--Physiological Transformations--Descending the River--Loss of Lens--Discovery and Rescue 199 CHAPTER XVI. Our National Park--The Yellowstone Reservation--Dr. Hayden's Report--Text of Act of Congress--Appointment of Hon. N. P. Langford Superintendent of Park 250 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. GREAT GEYSER BASIN _Front_ HOT SPRINGS OF GARDNER'S RIVER 27 DIANA'S BATH, GARDNER'S RIVER 31 LIBERTY CAP, GARDNER'S RIVER 36 EXTINCT GEYSER, EAST FORK OF THE YELLOWSTONE 50 THE DEVIL'S HOOF 58 GETTING A SPECIMEN 72 THE DEVIL'S DEN 76 UPPER FALLS OF THE YELLOWSTONE 86 THE MUD VOLCANO 100 YELLOWSTONE LAKE 106 THE FIRST BOAT ON YELLOWSTONE LAKE 113 BREAKING THROUGH 122 THE GRAND GEYSER, FIREHOLE BASIN 144 THE GIANT GEYSER 153 FAN GEYSER, FIREHOLE BASIN 158 THE BEE-HIVE 161 GRAND CAÑON AND LOWER FALLS OF THE YELLOWSTONE 194 IMAGINARY COMPANIONS 236 THE GIANTESS, FIREHOLE BASIN 252 MAPS. HAYDEN'S GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK. [Illustration] CHAPTER I. THE CROWN OF THE CONTINENT. In the northwest corner of the Territory of Wyoming, about half way between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean, and in the same latitude as the State of New York, the grand Rocky Mountain system culminates in a knot of peaks and ranges enclosing the most remarkable lake basin in the world. From this point radiate the chief mountain ranges, and three of the longest rivers of the Continent--the Missouri, the Columbia, and the Colorado. On the south are the Wind River Mountains, a snow-clad barrier which no white man has ever crossed. On the east is the Snowy Mountain Range, and the grand cluster of volcanic peaks between it and Yellowstone Lake. On the west is the main divide of the Rocky Mountains. On the north are the bold peaks of the Gallatin Range, and the parallel ridges which give a northward direction to all the great tributaries of the Missouri from this region. Set like a gem in the centre of this snow-rimmed crown of the continent, is the loveliest body of fresh water on the globe, its dark-blue surface at an elevation greater than that of the highest clouds that fleck the azure sky of a summer's day, over the tops of the loftiest mountains of the East. Its waters teem with trout, and the primeval forests that cover the surrounding country are crowded with game. But these are the least of its attractions. It is the wildness and grandeur of the enclosing mountain scenery, and still more the curious, beautiful, wonderful and stupendous natural phenomena which characterize the region, that have raised it to sudden fame, and caused it to be set apart by our national government as a grand national play-ground and museum of unparalleled, indeed incomparable, marvels, free to all men for all time. Evidences of ancient volcanic action on the grandest scale are so abundant and striking throughout the lake basin, that it has been looked upon as the remains of a mammoth crater, forty miles across. It seems, however, to have been rather the focus of a multitude of craters. "It is probable," says the United States geologist, Dr. Hayden, with his usual caution, "that during the Pliocene period the entire country drained by the sources of the Yellowstone and the Columbia was the scene of volcanic activity as great as that of any portion of the globe. It might be called one vast crater, made up of a thousand smaller volcanic vents and fissures, out of which the fluid interior of the earth, fragments of rock and volcanic dust, were poured in unlimited quantities. Hundreds of the nuclei or cones of these volcanic vents are now remaining, some of them rising to a height of 10,000 to 11,000 feet above the sea. Mounts Doane, Longford, Stevenson, and more than a hundred other peaks, may be seen from any high point on either side of the basin, each of which formed a centre of effusion." All that is left of the terrific forces which threw up these lofty mountains and elevated the entire region to its present altitude, now finds issue in occasional earthquake shocks, and in the innumerable hot springs and geysers, whose description makes up so large a portion of this book of wonders. Nowhere else in the world can the last-named phenomena be witnessed on so grand a scale, in such limitless variety, or amid scenes so marvellous in beauty, so wild and unearthly in savage grandeur, so fascinating in all that awes or attracts the lover of the curious, the wonderful, the magnificent in nature. CHAPTER II. FIRST EXPLORATIONS. In their exploration of the headwaters of the Missouri in the summer of 1805, the heroic Captains Lewis and Clarke discovered and named the three terminal branches of that river--the Jefferson, the Madison, and the Gallatin; then ascending the first named to its springs among the Rocky Mountains, they crossed the lofty ridge of the divide and pursued their investigations along the Columbia to the sea. The following summer they returned, separately exploring the two main branches of the Great River of the Northwest, each perpetuating the name and fame of his brother explorer by calling a river after him. Ascending the southern, or Lewis Fork, Captain Clarke recrossed the mountains to Wisdom River, (a branch of the Jefferson,) then traversed the country of the Jefferson, the Madison and the Gallatin to the Rochejaune, or Yellowstone, which he followed to its junction with the Missouri, where he rejoined Captain Lewis. The map of the country explored by these brave men, makes the source of the Yellowstone a large lake, doubtless from information received from the Indians, but they seem to have heard nothing of the marvels along the upper reaches of the river and around the lake from which it flows. In later years--especially after the discovery of the Montana gold-mines had drawn to the upper valleys of the Missouri an adventurous, gold-seeking population, who scoured the mountains in all directions--rumors of burning plains, spouting springs, great lakes and other natural wonders, came down from the unknown regions up the Yellowstone. And not content with these, the imagination was freely drawn on, and the treasure valleys of the Arabian Nights were rivalled, if not reproduced. Our over-venturous party, hotly pursued by Indians, escaped, report said, by travelling night after night by the brilliant light of a huge diamond providentially exposed on a mountain. A lost trapper turned up after protracted wandering in this mysterious region, his pockets stuffed with nuggets of gold gathered in a stream which he could never find again. More astounding still was a valley which instantly petrified whatever entered it. Rabbits and sage-hens, even Indians were standing about there, like statuary, among thickets of petrified sage-brush, whose stony branches bore diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds and other gems by the thousand, as large as walnuts. "I tell you, sir," said one who had been there, to Colonel Raynolds, "it is true, for I gathered a quart myself and sent them down the country." The first earnest attempt to explore the valley of the upper Yellowstone was made in 1859, by Colonel Raynolds, of the Corps of Engineers. His expedition passed entirely around the Yellowstone basin, but could not penetrate it. In his report to the War Department, he says: "It was my original desire to go from the head of Wind River to the head of the Yellowstone, keeping on the Atlantic slope, thence down the Yellowstone, passing the lake, and across by the Gallatin to the three forks of the Missouri. Bridger said at the outset that this would be impossible, and that it would be necessary to cross over to the headwaters of the Columbia and back again to the Yellowstone. I had not previously believed that crossing the main crest twice would be more easily accomplished than the transit over what was in effect only a spur; but the view from our first camp settled the question adversely to my opinion at once. Directly across our route lies a basaltic ridge, rising not less than 5,000 feet above us, its walls apparently vertical, with no visible pass or even cañon. On the opposite side of this are the headwaters of the Yellowstone. Bridger remarked triumphantly and forcibly on reaching this spot, 'I told you you could not go through. A bird can't fly over that without taking a supply of grub along.' I had no reply to offer, and mentally conceded the accuracy of the information of 'the old man of the mountains.' * * * * * "After this obstacle had thus forced us over on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, an effort was made to recross and reach the district in question, but although it was June, the immense body of snow baffled all our exertions, and we were compelled to content ourselves with listening to marvellous tales of burning plains, immense lakes, and boiling springs, without being able to verify these wonders. I know of but two white men who claim to ever have visited this part of the Yellowstone Valley--James Bridger and Robert Meldrum. The narratives of both these men are very remarkable, and Bridger, in one of his recitals, described an immense boiling spring, that is a perfect counterpart of the Geysers of Iceland. As he is uneducated, and had probably never heard of the existence of such natural marvels elsewhere, I have little doubt that he spoke of that which he had actually seen. The burning plains described by these men may be volcanic, or, more probably, burning beds of lignite similar to those on Powder River, which are known to be in a state of ignition.... Had our attempt to enter this district been made a month later in the season, the snow would have mainly disappeared, and there would have been no insurmountable obstacles to overcome. "I cannot doubt, therefore, that at no very distant day the mysteries of this region will be fully revealed, and though small in extent, I regard the valley of the upper Yellowstone as the most interesting unexplored district of our widely expanded country." Ten years after Colonel Raynolds's unsuccessful attempt to solve the problem of the Yellowstone, a small party under Messrs. Cook and Folsom ascended the river to the lake, and crossed over the divide into the Geyser Basin of the Madison. No report, we believe, was published of their discoveries. At any rate, the general public were indebted for their first knowledge of the marvels of this region to an expedition organized in the summer of 1870 by some of the officials and leading citizens of Montana. This company, led by General Washburn, the Surveyor-General of the Territory, and accompanied by a small escort of United States cavalry under Lieutenant G. C. Doane, left Fort Ellis toward the latter part of August, and entered the valley of Yellowstone River on the 23d. During the next thirty days they explored the cañons of the Yellowstone and the shores of Yellowstone Lake; then crossing the mountains to the headwaters of the Madison, they visited the geyser region of Firehole River, and ascended that stream to its junction with the Madison, along whose valley they returned to civilization, confident, as their historian wrote, that they had seen "the greatest wonders on the Continent," and "convinced that there was not on the globe another region where, within the same limits, nature had crowded so much of grandeur and majesty, with so much of novelty and wonder." Mr. Langford's account of this expedition, published in the second volume of _Scribner's Monthly_, and the report of Lieutenant Doane, printed some time after by the United States Government, (Ex. Doc. No. 51, 41st Congress,) gave to the world the first authentic information of the marvels of this wonderful region. Though their route lay through a terrible wilderness, and most of the party were but amateur explorers at best, only one (Mr. Everts) met with a serious mishap. This gentleman's story of his separation from the company, and his thirty-seven days of suffering and perilous wandering, is one of the most thrilling chapters of adventure ever written. The path fairly broken, and the romance of the Yellowstone shown to have a substantial basis in reality, it was not long before others were ready to explore more fully the magnificent scenery and the strange and peculiar phenomena described by the adventurers of 1870. As soon as the following season was sufficiently advanced to admit of explorations among the mountains, the Chief Engineer of the Military Department of the Missouri, Brevet Colonel John W. Barlow, set out for a two months' survey of the Yellowstone Basin, under special orders from General Sheridan. His route lay along the river to the lake; thence along the northern shore of the lake to the hot springs on its western bank; thence across the mountains westward to the Geyser Basins of Firehole River, which he ascended to its source in Madison Lake; thence to Heart Lake, the source of Snake River; thence across the mountains to Bridger's Lake, in the valley of the Upper Yellowstone. Descending this stream to where it enters Yellowstone Lake, he returned by the east shore of the lake to Pelican Creek; thence across the country to the Falls of the Yellowstone; thence over the mountains to the East Fork of the Yellowstone, which he followed to its junction with the main stream. In the meantime, a large and thoroughly-organized scientific party, under Dr. F. V. Hayden, U. S. geologist, were making a systematic survey of the region traversed by Colonel Barlow. The work done by this party is briefly summarized by Dr. Hayden as follows: "From Fort Ellis, we passed eastward over the divide, between the drainage of the Missouri and Yellowstone, to Bottlers' Ranch. Here we established a permanent camp, leaving all our wagons and a portion of the party. A careful system of meteorological observations was kept at this locality for six weeks. From Bottlers' Ranch we proceeded up the valley of the Yellowstone, surveyed the remarkable hot springs on Gardiner's River, The Grand Cañon, Tower Falls, Upper and Lower Falls of the Yellowstone, thence into the basin proper, prepared charts of all the Hot Spring groups, which were very numerous, and continued up the river to the lake. We then commenced a systematic survey of the lake and its surroundings. Mr. Schönborn, with his assistant, made a careful survey of the lake and the mountains from the shore, and Messrs. Elliott and Carrington surveyed and sketched its shore-lines from the water in a boat. Careful soundings were also made, and the greatest depth was found to be three hundred feet. From the lake I proceeded, with Messrs. Schönborn, Peale, and Elliott to the Firehole Valley, by way of East Fork of the Madison; then ascended the Firehole Valley. We made careful charts of the Lower and Upper Geyser Basin, locating all the principal springs, and determining their temperatures. We then returned over the mountains by way of the head of Firehole River, explored Madison Lake, Heart Lake, etc. After having completed our survey of the lake, we crossed over to the headwaters of the East Fork by way of the valley of Pelican Creek, explored the East Fork to its junction with the main Yellowstone, and thence to Bottlers' Ranch, which we reached on the 28th of August. From this place we passed down the Yellowstone, through the lower cañon, to the mouth of Shield's River, to connect our work with that of Colonel Wm. F. Raynolds, in 1860. From there we returned to Fort Ellis." It is safe to say that no exploring expedition on this continent ever had a more interesting field of investigation, or ever studied so many grand, curious and wonderful aspects of nature in so short a time. CHAPTER III. FORT ELLIS TO BOTTLERS' RANCH. The Yellowstone tourist leaves the confines of civilization at Fort Ellis. This frontier military post, situated near the head of the beautiful and fertile valley of the East Gallatin, commands the valleys of the Yellowstone and the three forks of the Missouri--the finest and most productive portion of Montana. On the east and north are ranges of hills and mountains which form the divide between the waters of the Yellowstone and the Missouri. On the south and west, the beautiful Valley of the Gallatin. Abundant vegetation, beautiful scenery, streams of pure water flowing down the mountain-sides and across the plains on every hand, and a climate that can hardly be surpassed in any country, combine to make this pleasant station one of the most charming places on the continent. For the first six miles the road from Fort Ellis to the wonder-land of the Yellowstone Valley follows the general course of the East Gallatin, up steep acclivities and through the defiles of a hilly country to the crest of the divide. The road here takes advantage of a natural pass between hills that rise from six hundred to twelve hundred feet above the road, itself considerably more elevated than the summit of the White Mountains. From the tops of the hills on either side the view is wonderfully fine in every direction. To the west lies the Gallatin Valley, with its cordon of snow-capped peaks, its finely-timbered water courses, and its long, grassy declivities, dotted with the habitations of pioneers, and blooming with the fruits of industry. To the eastward lies the beautiful Valley of the Yellowstone, not yet laid under tribute to man. On the further side of this valley--the bed of an ancient lake--the eye takes in at a glance one of the most symmetrical and remarkable ranges of mountains in all the West. Indeed, Dr. Hayden says, in describing them: "Several of my party who had visited Europe regarded this range as in no way inferior in beauty to any in that far-famed country. A series of cone-shaped peaks, looking like gigantic pyramids, are grouped along the east side of the valley for thirty or forty miles, with their bald, dark summits covered with perpetual snow, the vegetation growing thinner and smaller as we ascend the almost vertical sides, until, long before reaching the summits, it has entirely disappeared. On all sides deep gorges have been gashed out by aqueous forces cutting through the very core of the mountains, and forming those wonderful gulches which only the hardy and daring miner has ventured to explore. This range, which is called on the maps Snowy Mountains, forms the great water-shed between two portions of the Yellowstone River, above and below the first cañon, and gives origin to some of the most important branches of that river. From the summit of Emigrant Peak, one of the highest of these volcanic cones, one great mass of these basaltic peaks can be seen as far as the eye can reach, rising to the height of 10,000 to 11,000 feet above the sea. Emigrant Peak, the base of which is cut by the Yellowstone River, is 10,629 feet above tide-water, while the valley plain near Bottlers' Ranch, on the opposite side of the river, was found to be 5,925 feet. This splendid group of peaks rises 5,000 feet and upward above the valley of the Yellowstone." About three miles from the divide the road strikes the valley of Trail Creek, a small-sized trout-stream of great clearness and purity, flowing southeastward to the Yellowstone, between high hills wooded at the summits. Approaching the river, the country becomes more and more volcanic in appearance, masses of basaltic lava cropping out from the high ridges on the right and left. Many of these masses show a perpendicular front of several hundred feet, with projections resembling towers, castles and the like. Several miles away on the right, is Pyramid Mountain, a snow-capped peak. Farther to the south is a long range of mountains, also covered with snow, even in midsummer. On the left of the valley the foot hills bear abundant verdure, the highest summits being covered with a vigorous growth of pines. Trail Creek enters the Yellowstone about thirty miles from Fort Ellis. Ten miles further up the Yellowstone is Bottlers' Ranch, the last abode of civilized man in this direction. The Bottler brothers, who have established themselves here, belong to that numerous class of pioneers who are satisfied only when their field of operation is a little in advance of civilization, exposed to privation and danger, yet possessing advantages for hunting, trapping and fishing not enjoyed by men content to dwell in safety. These, however are not their only occupations. They have under cultivation large fields of wheat, potatoes and other crops, possess extensive herds of cattle, and make large quantities of butter, for which they find a ready market in the mining camps of Emigrant Gulch across the river, which at this point is a very rapid stream, about three hundred feet wide and four feet deep on the riffles at low water. Of this part of the valley Dr. Hayden says: "It is about fifteen miles long, and will average three miles in width; it is well watered, soil fertile, and in every respect one of the most desirable portions of Montana. We may not look for any districts favorable for agriculture in the Yellowstone Valley above the second cañon; but this entire lake basin seems admirably adapted for grazing and for the cultivation of the usual crops of the country. The cereals and the roots have already been produced in abundance, especially wheat and potatoes. The mountains on either side are covered with snow, to a greater or less extent, all the year, which in melting feeds the numerous little streams that flow down the mountain-sides in the Yellowstone. Hundreds of springs flow out of the terraces. One terrace near Bottlers' Ranch gives origin to fifty springs within a mile, and then, all aggregating together in the river bottom, form a large stream. Thus there is the greatest abundance of water for irrigation, or for any of the purposes of settlement. The elevation of the valley at this ranch is 4,925 feet, and this may be regarded as the average in altitude. But a small portion of it is occupied as yet, but the time is not far distant when the valley will be covered with fine farms and the hills with stock. It will always be a region of interest, from the fact that it is probably the upper limit of agricultural effort in the Yellowstone Valley." CHAPTER IV. BOTTLERS' RANCH TO GARDINER'S RIVER. At Bottlers' Ranch the wagon road terminates. For the first ten miles beyond, the trail runs along the west bank of the river through the wildest imaginable scenery of rock, river and mountain. The path is narrow, rocky and uneven, frequently leading over steep hills of considerable height. From the top of one of these, a bold mountain spur coming down to the water's edge, the view up the valley is very fine, embracing the river fringed with cottonwoods, the foot hills covered with luxuriant, many-tinted herbage, and over all the snow-crowned summits of the distant mountains. Above this point the valley opens out to a "bottom" of large extent and great beauty. Across the river the steep lava mountains come close to the stream, their lofty fronts covered with stunted timber. A large portion of the bottom land is subject to overflow by the numerous mountain streams that come in from the right, and bears an abundance of grass, in many places waist high. The river is skirted with shrubbery and cedars, the latter having thick trunks, too short for ordinary lumber, yet of beautiful grain for small cabinet work, and susceptible of exquisite finish. At the head of this valley is the second cañon of the Yellowstone, granite walls rising on either side to the height of a thousand feet or more, and the river dashing through the narrow gorge with great velocity. Seen from the lofty mountain spur over which the trail is forced to pass, the bright green color of the water, and the numerous ripples, capped with white foam, as the roaring torrent rushes around and over the multitude of rocks that have fallen from above into the channel, present a most picturesque appearance. Above the cañon, which is about a mile in length, the valley widens slightly, then narrows so as to compel the traveller to cross a ridge, on whose summit lies a beautiful lake. Descending to the valley again the road traverses a tract of level bottom land, a mile or two wide, covered with a heavy growth of sage-brush. Throughout all this portion of its course, the Yellowstone is abundantly stocked with trout of the largest variety known this side the Rocky Mountains. Some ten miles above the second cañon on the edge of the river valley is Cinnabar Mountain, whose weather-beaten side presents one of the most singular freaks of nature in the world. Two parallel vertical walls of rock, fifty feet wide, traverse the mountain from base to summit, and project to the height of three hundred feet for a distance of fifteen hundred feet. The sides are as even as if wrought by line and plumb. The rock between the walls and on either side has been completely worn away. Speaking of this curious formation, Mr. Langford says: "We had seen many of the capricious works wrought by erosion upon the friable rocks of Montana, but never before upon so majestic a scale. Here an entire mountain-side, by wind and water, had been removed, leaving as the evidences of their protracted toil these vertical projections, which, but for their immensity, might as readily be mistaken for works of art as of nature. Their smooth sides, uniform width and height, and great length, considered in connection with the causes which had wrought their insulation, excited our wonder and admiration. They were all the more curious because of their dissimilarity to any other striking objects in natural scenery that we had ever seen or heard of. In future years, when the wonders of the Yellowstone are incorporated into the family of fashionable resorts, there will be few of its attractions surpassing in interest this marvellous freak of the elements." According to the observations of Dr. Hayden, the mountain is formed of alternate beds of sandstone, limestone, and quartzites, elevated to a nearly vertical position by those internal forces which acted in ages past to lift the mountain ranges to their present heights. Standing at the base and looking up the sides of the mountain, the geologist could not but be filled with wonder at the convulsions which threw such immense masses of rocks into their present position. Ridge after ridge extends down the steep sides of the mountain like lofty walls, the intervening softer portions having been washed away, leaving the harder layers projecting far above. In one place the rocks incline in every possible direction, and are crushed together in the utmost confusion. Between the walls at one point is a band of bright brick-red clay, which has been mistaken for cinnabar, and hence the name Cinnabar Mountain. The most conspicuous ridge is composed of basalt, which must have been poured out on the surface when all the rocks were in a horizontal position. For reasons best known to himself, one of the first explorers of this region gave these parallel ridges the title of "Devil's Slide." "The suggestion was unfortunate," writes the historian of the Expedition, "as, with more reason perhaps, but with no better taste, we frequently had occasion to appropriate other portions of the person of his Satanic Majesty, or of his dominion, in signification of the varied marvels we met with. Some little excuse may be found for this in the fact that the old mountaineers and trappers who preceded us had been peculiarly lavish in the use of the infernal vocabulary. Every river and glen and mountain had suggested to their imaginations some fancied resemblance to portions of a region which their pious grandmothers had warned them to avoid. It is common for them, when speaking of this region, to designate portions of its physical features, as "Firehole Prairie,"--the "Devil's Den,"--"Hell Roaring River," etc.--and these names, from a remarkable fitness of things, are not likely to be speedily superseded by others less impressive." These "impressive" titles stand in curious contrast with the fanciful names bestowed in this region by Capts. Lewis and Clarke,--Wisdom River, Philosophy River, Philanthropy Creek, and the like. From the Devil's Slide to the mouth of Gardiner's River, twelve miles, the ground rises rapidly, passing from a dead level alkali plain, to a succession of plateaus covered slightly with a sterile soil. Evidences of volcanic action begin to be frequent: old craters converted into small lakes appear here and there, prettily fringed with vegetation, and covered with waterfowl. Scattered over the hills and through the valleys are numerous beautiful specimens of chalcedony and chips of obsidian. Many of the chalcedonies are geodes, in which are crystals of quartz; others contain opal in the centre and agate on the exterior; and still others have on the outside attached crystals of calcite. [Illustration] CHAPTER V. HOT SPRINGS OF GARDINER'S RIVER. Ten miles above the Devil's Slide, Gardiner's River, a mountain torrent twenty yards wide, cuts through a deep and gloomy gorge and enters the Yellowstone at the lower end of the Third Cañon. At this point the Yellowstone shrinks to half its usual size, losing itself among huge granite boulders, which choke up the stream and create alternate pools and rapids, crowded with trout. Worn into fantastic forms by the washing water, these immense rock masses give an aspect of peculiar wildness to the scenery. But the crowning wonder of this region is the group of hot springs on the slope of a mountain, four miles up the valley of Gardiner's River. The first expedition passed on without seeing them, but they could not escape the vigilance of the scientific company that followed. The lower reaches of the valley of Gardiner's River, and the enclosing hillsides, are strewn with volcanic rock, having the appearance of furnace cinder. The tops of the rounded hills are covered with fragments of basalt and conglomerate, whose great variety of sombre colors add much to the appearance of desolation which characterizes the valley. Here and there are stagnant lakes fifty to a hundred yards in diameter, apparently occupying ancient volcanic vents. Crossing a barren, elevated region two miles in extent, and three or four hundred feet above the river-bed, the trail descends abruptly to a low "bottom" covered with a thick calcareous crust, deposited from hot springs, now for the most part dry. At one point, however, a large stream of hot water, six feet wide and two feet deep, flows swiftly from beneath the crust, its exposed portion clearly revealed by rising steam. The quantity of water flowing from this spring is greater than from any other in this region; its temperature ranges from 126° to 132° Fah. A little further above are three or four other springs near the margin of the river. These have nearly circular basins, six to ten feet in diameter, and a temperature not above 120°. Already these springs have become the resort of invalids, who speak highly of the virtues of the waters. A short distance up the hill are abundant remains of springs, which in time past must have been very active. For nearly a mile the steep hill-side is covered with a thick crust of spring deposits, which, though much decomposed and overgrown with pines and cedars, still bear traces of the wonderful forms displayed in the vicinity of the active springs further up the hill. Ascending the hill, Dr. Hayden's party came suddenly and unexpectedly upon these marvellous deposits, which they agreed in pronouncing one of the finest displays of natural architecture in the world. The snowy whiteness of the deposit, which has the form of a frozen cascade, at once suggested the name of White Mountain Hot Spring. The springs now in active operation cover an area of about one square mile, while the rest of the territory, three or four square miles in extent, is occupied by the remains of springs which have ceased to flow. Small streams flow down the sides of the Snowy Mountain in channels lined with oxide of iron of the most delicate tints of red. Others show exquisite shades of yellow, from a deep, bright sulphur, to a dainty cream-color. Still others are stained with shades of green, all these colors as brilliant as the brightest aniline dyes. The water after rising from the spring basin flows down the sides of the declivity, step by step, from one reservoir to another, at each one of them losing a portion of its heat, until it becomes as cool as spring-water. Within five hundred feet of its source Dr. Hayden's party camped for two days by the side of the little stream formed by the aggregated waters of these hot springs, and found the water most excellent for drinking as well as for cooking purposes. It was perfectly clear and tasteless, and harmless in its effects. During their stay here all the members of the party, as well as the soldiers comprising their escort, enjoyed the luxury of bathing in these most elegantly carved natural bathing-pools; and it was easy to select, from the hundreds of reservoirs, water of any desired temperature. These natural basins vary somewhat in size, but many of them are about four by six feet in diameter, and one to four feet in depth. Their margins are beautifully scalloped, and adorned with a natural beadwork of exquisite beauty. [Illustration: BATHING-POOLS (DIANA'S BATH.)] The level or terrace upon which the principal active springs are located, is about midway up the sides of the mountain, covered with the sediment. Still farther up are the ruins of what must have been at some period more active springs than any at present known. The sides of the mountain for two or three hundred feet in height, are thickly encrusted with calcareous deposit, originally ornamented with elegant sculpturing, like the bathing pools below; but atmospheric agencies, which act readily on the lime, have obliterated all their delicate beauty. The largest living spring is near the outer margin of the main terrace. Its dimensions are twenty-five feet by forty, and its water so perfectly transparent that one can look down into the beautiful ultramarine depth to the very bottom of the basin. Its sides are ornamented with coral-like forms of a great variety of shades, from pure white to a bright cream yellow, while the blue sky reflected in the transparent water gives an azure tint to the whole which surpasses all art. From various portions of the rim, water flows out in moderate quantities over the sides of the hill. Whenever it gathers into a channel and flows quite swiftly, basins with sides from two to eight feet high are formed with their ornamental designs proportionately coarse; but when the water flows slowly, myriads of little basins are formed, one below another, with a semblance of irregular system. The water holds in solution a great amount of lime, with some soda, alumina and magnesia, which are slowly deposited as the water flows down the sides of the mountain. Underneath the sides of many of the pools are rows of exquisitely-ornamented stalactites, formed by the dripping of the water over the margins. All these springs have one or more centres of ebullition which is constant, though seldom rising more than four or five inches above the surface. The ebullition is due mainly to the emission of carbonic acid gas. The springs in the centre of the main basin are probably all at the boiling point--194° at this elevation. Being inaccessible, however, it is impossible to determine their actual temperature. The hottest that could be reached was 162° Fah. The terrace immediately above the main basin is bordered by a long rounded ridge with a fissure extending its whole length, its interior lined with beautiful crystals of pure sulphur. Only hot vapors and steam issue from this fissure, though the bubbling and gurgling of water far beneath the surface can be distinctly heard. Back of this ridge are several small springs which throw up geyser-like jets of water intermittently to the height of three feet. On the west side of this deposit, about one-third of the way up the White Mountain from the river and terrace, where was once the theatre of many active springs, old chimneys or craters are scattered thickly over the surface, and there are several large holes and fissures leading to vast caverns below. The crust gives off a dull hollow sound beneath the tread, and the surface gives indistinct evidence of having been adorned with the beautiful pools or basins already described. At the base of the principal terrace is a large area covered with shallow pools some of them containing water, with all the ornamentations perfect, while others are fast going to decay, and the decomposed sediment is as white as snow. On this sub-terrace is a remarkable cone about 50 feet in height and 20 feet in diameter at the base. Its form has suggested the name of Liberty Cap. It is undoubtedly the remains of an extinct geyser. The water was forced up with considerable power, and probably without intermission, building up its own crater until the pressure beneath was exhausted, and the spring gradually closed itself over at the summit and perished. No water flows from it at the present time. The layers of lime were deposited around the cap like the layers of straw on a thatched roof, or hay on a conical stack. Not far from the Liberty Cap is a smaller cone, called, from its form, the "Bee-hive." These springs are constantly changing their position; some die out, others burst out in new places. On the northwest margin of the main terrace are examples of what have been called oblong mounds. There are several of them in this region, extending in different directions, from fifty to one hundred and fifty yards in length, from six to ten feet high, and from ten to fifteen feet broad at the base. There is in all cases a fissure from one end of the summit to the other, usually from six to ten inches wide, from which steam sometimes issues in considerable quantities, and on walking along the top one can hear the water seething and boiling below like a cauldron. The inner portion of the shell, as far down as can be seen, is lined with a hard, white enamel-like porcelain; in some places beautiful crystals of sulphur have been precipitated from the steam. These mounds have been built up by a kind of oblong fissure-spring in the same way that the cones have been constructed. The water, continually spouting up, deposited sediment around the edges of the fissure until the force was exhausted, and then the calcareous basin was rounded up something like a thatched roof by overlapping layers. [Illustration: THE LIBERTY CAP.] Near the upper terrace, which is really an old rim, are a number of these extinct, oblong geysers, some of which have been broken down so as to show them to be mere shells or caverns, now the abode of wild animals. Dr. Hayden attempted to enter one of them, and found it full of sticks and bones which had been carried in by wild beasts; and swarms of bats flitted to and fro. Some of the mounds have been worn away so that sections are exposed, showing the great number and thickness of the overlapping layers of sediment. Many mounds are overgrown with pine-trees, which must be at least eighty or a hundred years old. Indeed, the upper part of this mountain appears like a magnificent ruin of a once flourishing village of these unique structures, now fast decomposing, yet beautiful and instructive in their decay. One may now study the layers of deposit, sometimes thousands on a single mound, as he would the rings of growth in a tree. How long a period is required to form one of these mounds, or to build up its beautiful structure, there is no data for determining. On the middle terrace, where the principal portion of the active springs are, some of the pine-trees are buried in sediment apparently to the depth of six or eight feet. All of them are dead at the present time. There is, however, evidence enough around the springs to show that the mineral-water is precipitated with great rapidity. It is probable that all the deposits in the immediate vicinity of the active springs are constantly changing from the margin of the river to the top of the White Mountain and return. The deposits upon the summit are extensive, though now there is very little water issuing from the springs there, and that is of low temperature. Quantities of steam are ever ascending from the springs, and on damp mornings the entire slope of the mountain is enveloped in clouds of vapor. "But," observes Dr. Hayden, in summing up his account of this indescribable locality, "it is to the wonderful variety of exquisitely delicate colors that this picture owes the main part of its attractiveness. The little orifices from which the hot water issues are beautifully enamelled with the porcelain-like lining, and around the edges a layer of sulphur is precipitated. As the water flows along the valley, it lays down in its course a pavement more beautiful and elaborate in its adornment than art has ever yet conceived. The sulphur and the iron, with the green microscopic vegetation, tint the whole with an illumination of which no decoration-painter has ever dreamed. From the sides of the oblong mound, which is here from 30 to 50 feet high, the water has oozed out at different points, forming small groups of the semicircular, step-like basins. "Again, if we look at the principal group of springs from the high mound above the middle terrace, we can see the same variety of brilliant coloring. The wonderful transparency of the water surpasses anything of the kind I have ever seen in any other portion of the world. The sky, with the smallest cloud that flits across it, is reflected in its clear depths, and the ultramarine colors, more vivid than the sea, are greatly heightened by the constant gentle vibrations. One can look down into the clear depths and see, with perfect distinctness, the minutest ornament on the inner sides of the basins; and the exquisite beauty of the coloring and the variety of forms baffle any attempt to portray them, either with pen or pencil. And then, too, around the borders of these springs, especially those of rather low temperature, and on the sides and bottoms of the numerous little channels of the streams that flow from these springs, there is a striking variety of the most vivid colors. I can only compare them to our most brilliant aniline dyes--various shades of red, from the brightest scarlet to a bright rose tint; also yellow, from deep-bright sulphur, through all the shades, to light cream-color. There are also various shades of green, from the peculiar vegetation. These springs are also filled with minute vegetable forms, which under the microscope prove to be diatoms, among which Dr. Billings discovers _Palmella_ and _Oscillara_. There are also in the little streams that flow from the boiling springs great quantities of a fibrous, silky substance, apparently vegetable, which vibrates at the slightest movement of the water, and has the appearance of the finest quality of cashmere wool. When the waters are still these silken masses become incrusted with lime, the delicate vegetable threads disappear, and a fibrous, spongy mass remains, like delicate snow-white coral." The antiquity of these springs is a question of great interest, yet difficult of solution. When were these immense deposits begun? On the margin of the mountain, high above the present position of the hot springs, is a bed of white, or yellowish white limestone, from fifty to a hundred and fifty feet thick. It is regularly stratified and the jointing is complete. There is a belt a mile long and one fourth of a mile wide, covered with cubical masses of this rock that have fallen down the slope of the mountain. These immense blocks, fifty to one hundred feet in each dimension, appear as if the mass had slowly fallen down as the underlying rocks were worn away. So thickly is this belt covered with these huge masses that it is with the greatest difficulty one can walk across it. It would seem that this bed must at one time have extended over a portion or all of the valley of Gardiner's River. Much of the rock is very compact, and would make beautiful building-stone, on account of its close texture and color, and it could be converted into the whitest of lime. If the rocks are examined, however, over a considerable area, they are found to possess all the varieties of structure of a hot-spring deposit. Some portions are quite spongy, and decompose readily; others are made up of very thin laminæ, regular or wavy; enough to show the origin of the deposit without a doubt. But in what manner was it formed? Dr. Hayden believes that the limestone was precipitated in the bottom of a lake, which was filled with hot-springs, much as the calcareous matter is laid down in the bottom of the ocean at the present time. Indeed, portions of the rock do not differ materially from the recent limestones now forming in the vicinity of the West India Islands. The deposit was evidently laid down on a nearly level surface, with a moderately uniform thickness, and the strata are horizontal. Since this group of strata was formed, the country has been elevated, and the valley of Gardiner's River has been carved out, so that the commencement of the period of activity of these springs must date back to a period merging on, but just prior to, the present geological period--probably at the time of the greatest action of the volcanic forces in this region. Classed with reference to their chemical constituents, the springs here and elsewhere in the Yellowstone Valley are of two kinds: those in which lime predominates, and those in which silica is most abundant. The springs of Gardiner's River are mainly the former. Where does the lime come from? The geology of the country surrounding the springs shows already that there is underneath the spring deposits, at least a thickness of 1,500 feet, of carboniferous limestone; and if the origin of the heat which so elevates the temperature of the waters of these springs is as deep seated as is generally supposed, the heated waters have ample time and space for dissolving the calcareous rocks through which they flow. CHAPTER VI. GARDINER'S RIVER TO GRAND CAÑON. About a mile above the springs, Gardiner's River separates into three branches--the East, Middle, and West Forks, which rise high up in the mountains, among perpetual snows. They wind their way across a broad plateau covered mostly with a dense growth of pines, but with some broad, open, meadow-like spots, which, seen from some high mountain peak, lend a rare charm to the landscape. After gathering a sufficient supply of water, they commence wearing their channels down into the volcanic rocks, deeper and deeper as they descend. Each one has its water-fall, which would fill an artist with enthusiasm. From the high ridge between the East and Middle Forks a fine view is obtained of the surrounding country. Far to the southwest are lofty peaks covered with snow, rising to the height of 10,000 feet, and forming a part of the magnificent range of mountains that separates the Yellowstone from the sources of the Gallatin. From this high ridge one can look down into the chasm of the Middle Fork, carved out of the basalt and basaltic conglomerates to the depth of 500 to 800 feet, with nearly vertical sides. In the sides of this cañon, as well as those of the East Fork, splendid examples of basaltic columns are displayed, as perfect as those of the celebrated Fingal's Cave. They usually appear in regular rows, vertical, five and six sided, but far more sharply cut than elsewhere seen in the West, though occasionally the columns are spread out in the form of a fan. Sometimes there are several rows, usually about fifty feet high, one above the other, with conglomerate between. The cañon is about 500 yards from margin to margin at top, but narrows down until on the bottom it is not more than forty yards wide. At one point the water pours over a declivity of 300 feet or more, forming a most beautiful cascade. The direct fall is over 100 feet. The constant roar of the water is like that of a train of cars in motion. The pines are very dense, usually of moderate size, and among them are many open spaces, covered with stout grass, sometimes with large sage-bushes. Upon the high hills the vegetation is remarkably luxuriant, indicating great fertility of soil, which is usually very thick, and made up mostly of degraded igneous rocks. Above the falls the rows of vertical, basaltic columns continue in the walls of the cañon, and they may well be ranked among the remarkable wonders of this rare wonder-land. The lower portion of the cañon is composed of rather coarse igneous rocks, which have a jointage and a style of weathering like granite. The West Fork rolls over a bed of basalt, which is divided into blocks that give the walls the appearance of mason-work on a gigantic scale. Below the falls the river has cut the sides of the mountain, exposing a vertical section 400 feet high, with the same irregular jointage. South of the hot springs is a round dome-like mountain, rising 2,100 feet above them, or 8,500 feet above the sea. Its summit commands a prospect from thirty to fifty miles in every direction. To the north and west stands a group of lofty peaks over 10,000 feet above the sea, and covered with huge masses of snow. These peaks form a part of the range that separates the waters of the Gallatin from those of the Yellowstone. Farther on to the southward are the peaks of the head of the Madison, and in the interval one black mass of pine forest, covering high plateaus, with no point rising over 8,500 feet above the sea--the whole region being more or less wavy or rolling, interspersed here and there with beautiful lakes a few hundred yards in diameter; and here and there a bright-green grassy valley through which little streams wind their way to the large rivers. In one of these lakes the explorers saw the greatest abundance of yellow water-lily, which blooms in great profusion on the surface of all the mountain lakes of the Yellowstone Basin. On the east side of Gardiner's Cañon, and west of the Yellowstone, is a sort of wave-like series of ridges, with broad, open, grassy interspaces, with many groves of pines. These ridges gradually slope down to the Yellowstone, northeast. Far to the east and north is one jagged mass of volcanic peaks, some of them snow-clad, others bald and desolate to the eye. Far to the south, dimly outlined on the horizon, may be seen the three Tetons and Madison Peak--monarchs of all the region. A grander view could not well be conceived. Leaving Gardiner's River, Dr. Hayden's party ascended the broad slope of the dividing ridge between that river and the streamlets which flow into the Yellowstone. Immense boulders of massive granite, considerably rounded, are a marked feature of the country about the entrance of the East Fork. One of these, a mass of red feldspathic granite, is twenty-five feet thick and fifty feet long. The high wavy ridge, 9,000 feet above the sea, is composed of beds of steel-gray and brown sandstone and calcareous clay, in which are numerous impressions of deciduous leaves. Vast quantities of silicified wood of great perfection and beauty are scattered all over the surface. In some cases long trees have been turned to agate, the rings of growth as perfectly shown as in recent wood. The soil is very thick, and covered with luxuriant vegetation. "We were travelling through this region in the latter part of the month of July," writes Dr. Hayden, "and all the vegetation seemed to be in the height of its growth and beauty. The meadows were covered densely with grass and flowers of many varieties, and among the pines were charming groves of poplars, contrasting strongly by their peculiar enlivening foliage with the sombre hue of the pines. The climate was perfect, and in the midst of some of the most remarkable scenery in the world, every hour of our march only increased our enthusiasm. "The climate during the months of June, July, and August, in this valley, cannot be surpassed in the world for its health-giving powers. The finest of mountain water, fish in the greatest abundance, with a good supply of game of all kinds, fully satisfy the wants of the traveller, and render this valley one of the most attractive places of resort for invalids or pleasure-seekers in America." From the summit of the ridge the party descended to the valley of the Yellowstone, nearly opposite the mouth of the East Fork of that river. The road was a rough one. During the period of volcanic action in this region, the sedimentary rocks were crumpled into high, sharp, wave-like series of ridges; from innumerable fissures, igneous matter was poured out over the surface cooling into basalt; and from volcanic vents was also thrown out, into the great lake, rock fragments and volcanic dust, which were arranged by the water and cemented into a breccia. Deep into these ridges the little streams have cut their channels, forming what should be called valleys, rather than cañons, with almost vertical sides. These ravines, 500 to 800 feet deep, covered mostly with grass or trees, occur in great numbers, many of them entirely dry at present, but attesting the presence and power, at no very remote period, of aqueous forces compared with which those of the present are utterly insignificant. Before studying this portion of the Yellowstone Valley, it may be well to retrace our steps to the mouth of Gardiner's River, to explore the Third Cañon of the Yellowstone, so far as possible, and the rest of its interesting valley up to this point. As already noticed, the country about the mouth of Gardiner's River is desolate and gloomy. The hill-slopes are covered with sage brush, the constant sign of arid soil, and grass is scarce. This is the first poor camping-place on the route. The cañon being impassable, the trail passes to the right, crossing several high mountain-spurs, over which the way is much obstructed by fallen timber, and reaching at last a high rolling plateau. This elevated tract is about thirty miles in extent, with a general declivity to the north. Its surface is an undulating prairie, dotted with groves of pine and aspen. Numerous lakes are scattered throughout its whole extent, and great numbers of springs, which flow down the slopes, are lost in the volume of the Yellowstone. The river breaks through this plateau in a winding cañon over 2,000 feet in depth--the middle cañon of the Yellowstone rolling over volcanic boulders in some places, and in others forming still pools of seemingly fathomless depth. At one point it dashes to and fro, lashed to a white foam on its rocky bed; at another, where a deep basin occurs in the channel, it subsides into a crystal mirror. Numerous small cascades are seen tumbling from the rocky walls at different points and the river appears from the lofty summits a mere ribbon of foam in the immeasurable distance below. Standing on the brink of the chasm the heavy roaring of the imprisoned river comes to the ear only in a sort of hollow, hungry growl, scarcely audible from the depths. Lofty pines on the bank of the stream "dwindle to shrubs in dizziness of distance." Everything beneath, says Lieut. Doane, has a weird and deceptive appearance. The water does not look like water, but like oil. Numerous fish-hawks are seen busily plying their vocation, sailing high above the waters, and yet a thousand feet below the spectator. In the clefts of the rocks down, hundreds of feet down, bald eagles have their eyries, from which one can see them swooping still farther into the depths to rob the ospreys of their hard-earned trout. It is grand, gloomy, and terrible; a solitude peopled with fantastic ideas; an empire of shadows and of turmoil. The plateau formation is of lava, generally in horizontal layers, as it cooled in a surface flow, yet upheaved in many places into wave-like undulations. Occasionally granite shafts protrude through the strata, forming landmarks of picturesque form. Like dark icebergs stranded in an ocean of green, they rise high above the tops of the trees in wooded districts, or stand out grim and solid on the grassy expanse of the prairies. [Illustration: EXTINCT GEYSER, EAST FORK OF THE YELLOWSTONE.] Near the head of the Third Cañon a stream flows into the Yellowstone from the northeast, bearing the sonorous title, Hell-Roaring River. It is quite a large stream, rising high among the mountains, and flowing with tremendous impetuosity down the deep gorges. The mountains on either side come close down to the channel of the Yellowstone, and are among the most rugged in this rugged region. A huge peak of this sort, composed of stratified gneiss, with deep strata of massive red and grey granite, stands at the mouth of Hell-Roaring River, and takes to itself the same imposing name. A short distance above the mouth of Hell Roaring River, the East Fork of the Yellowstone comes in from the southeast. Its sources are high up among the most rugged and inaccessible portions of the basaltic range, several jagged peaks which rise from 10,000 to 11,000 feet above the sea. "The summits of these high peaks," observes Mr. Hayden, "are all close, compact trachyte, while all around the sides are built up walls of stratified conglomerate. It is plain that all of them are the nuclei of old volcanoes. The trachyte may sometimes be concealed by the conglomerates, but I am inclined to think that each one has formed a centre of effusion. Large quantities of silicified wood are found among the conglomerates, mostly inclosed in the volcanic cement, evidently thrown out of the active craters with the fragments of basalt. My impression is, that when the old volcanoes disgorged their contents into the great lake of waters around, they threw out also portions from the sedimentary formations, and thus the silicified wood comes from the Tertiary or Cretaceous beds, which may have formed the upper part of the walls of the crater. At any rate, these woods belong to the Coal Series of the West, and they are scattered profusely among the conglomerates. Interlaced among the massive beds of volcanic conglomerates are some layers of a light-grey or whitish sandy clay, which show that the whole breccia or conglomerates, with the intercalated layers of clay or sand, were deposited in water like any sedimentary water rocks." Interesting ruins of ancient springs abound in this valley. Mr. Hayden describes one, a very curious mammiform mound of calcareous deposit, about forty feet high, built up by overlapping layers like those of Liberty Cap on Gardiner's River. "This cone is a complete ruin. No water issues from it at the present time, and none of the springs in the vicinity are above the ordinary temperature of brook-water; sulphur, alum, and other chemical deposits are abundant. This old ruin is a fine example of the tendency of the cone to close up its summit in its dying stages. The top of the cone is somewhat broken; but it is eighteen feet in diameter at this time, and near the centre there is a hole or chimney two inches in diameter, plainly a steam-vent. This marks the closing history of this spring. The inner portions of this small chimney are lined with white enamel, thickly coated with sulphur, which gives it a sulphur-yellow hue. The base upon which the cone rests varies in thickness. On the east side huge masses have been broken off, exposing a vertical wall twenty feet high, built up of thin horizontal laminæ of limestone. On the west side the wall is not quite as high, perhaps eight or ten feet. It would seem, therefore, that it was at first an overflowing spring, depositing thin horizontal layers until it built up a broad base ten to twenty feet in height; then it gradually became a spouting spring, building up with overlapping layers like the thatch on a house, until it closed itself at the top and ceased." In the tongue that runs down between the junction of the East Fork and the Yellowstone, there is a singular _butte_ cut off from the main range, which at once attracts the traveller's attention. The basis or lower portion of the _butte_ is granite, while the summit is capped with the modern basalt, and the _débris_ on the sides and at the base is remarkable in quantity, and has very much the appearance of an anthracite coal-heap. This _butte_ will always form a conspicuous landmark, not only on account of its position, but also from its peculiar shape and structure. Just below the junction of the East Fork the first and only bridge across the Yellowstone was constructed in 1870 for the accommodation of miners bound for the "diggings" on Clark's Fork. It was a work of considerable boldness, as the river is some two hundred feet wide, and flows with great rapidity over its narrow and rocky channel. A short distance above the bridge, on the west side of the Yellowstone, is a splendid exhibition of black micaceous gneiss, forming a vertical wall on the right side of a little creek, while on the left the entire mass of the hills for miles in extent is composed of the usual igneous rocks. Through these rocks the stream, now not more than four feet wide and six inches deep, has cut a channel from two hundred to four hundred yards wide, through the hardest rocks to a depth varying from five hundred to a thousand feet! Further up the Yellowstone, on the same side, are a number of wonderful ravines and cañons carved in like manner into the very heart of the mountains. Most conspicuous of these is the Cañon of Tower Greek. Before reaching that stream, however, Column Rock, a noticeable feature in a landscape of great extent and beauty, demands at least a passing notice. Column Cliff would be a more appropriate name, since it extends along the east bank of the river upwards of two miles. Says Mr. Langford, whose observations were made from the west side: "At the distance from which we saw it, we could compare it in appearance to nothing but a section of the Giant's Causeway. It was composed of successive pillars of basalt overlying and underlying a thick stratum of cement and gravel resembling pudding-stone. In both rows, the pillars, standing in close proximity, were each about thirty feet high and from three to five feet in diameter. This interesting object, more from the novelty of its formation and its beautiful surroundings of mountain and river scenery than anything grand or impressive in its appearance, excited our attention, until the gathering shades of evening reminded us of the necessity of selecting a suitable camp." Tower Creek rises in the high divide between the valleys of the Missouri and the Yellowstone, and flows for about ten miles through a cañon so deep and gloomy that it has earned the appellation, "Devil's Den." About two hundred yards above its entrance into the Yellowstone, the stream pours over an abrupt descent of one hundred and fifty-six feet, forming one of the most beautiful falls to be found in any country. These falls are about 260 feet above the level of the Yellowstone at the junction, and are surrounded with columns of volcanic breccia, rising fifty feet above the falls and extending down to the foot, standing like gloomy sentinels, or like gigantic pillars at the entrance of some grand temple. "One could almost imagine," says Dr. Hayden, "that the idea of the Gothic style of architecture had been caught from such carvings of nature." Speaking of the symmetry of some of these columns, Mr. Langford says: "Some resemble towers, others the spires of churches, and others still shoot up as lithe and slender as the minarets of a mosque. Some of the loftiest of these formations, standing like sentinels upon the very brink of the fall, are accessible to an expert and adventurous climber. The position attained on one of their narrow summits, amid the uproar of waters and at a height of 250 feet above the boiling chasm, as the writer can affirm, requires a steady head and strong nerves; yet the view which rewards the temerity of the exploit is full of compensations. Below the fall the stream descends in numerous rapids, with frightful velocity, through a gloomy gorge, to its union with the Yellowstone. Its bed is filled with enormous boulders, against which the rushing waters break with great fury. Many of the capricious formations wrought from the shale excite merriment as well as wonder. Of this kind especially was a huge mass sixty feet in height, which, from its supposed resemblance to the proverbial foot of his Satanic Majesty, we called the "Devil's Hoof." The scenery of mountain, rock, and forest surrounding the falls is very beautiful. Here, too, the hunter and fisherman can indulge their tastes with the certainty of ample reward. As a half-way resort to the greater wonders still farther up the marvellous river, the visitor of future years will find no more delightful resting-place. The name of "Tower Falls," which we gave it, was suggested by some of the most conspicuous features of the scenery." [Illustration: THE DEVIL'S HOOF.] The sides of the chasm are worn into caverns lined with variously-tinted mosses, nourished by clouds of spray which rise from the cataract; while above, and to the left, a spur from the great plateau rises over all, with a perpendicular front of 400 feet. The fall is accessible both at the brink and at the foot, and fine views can be obtained from either side of the cañon. In appearance it strongly resembles Minnehaha, but is several times as high, and the volume of water is at least eight times as great. In the basin a large petrified log was found imbedded in the débris. "Nothing," says Lieutenant Doane, "can be more chastely beautiful than this lovely cascade, hidden away in the dim light of overshadowing rocks and woods, its very voice hushed to a low murmur, unheard at the distance of a few hundred yards. Thousands might pass by within a half mile and not dream of its existence; but once seen, it passes to the list of most pleasant memories." Along the Yellowstone, near the mouth of Tower Creek, is a system of small mineral springs distributed for a distance of two miles in the bottom of the deep cañon through which the river runs. Several of these springs have a temperature at the boiling point; many are highly sulphurous, holding, in fact, more sulphur than they can carry in solution, and depositing it in yellowish beds along their courses. Several of them are impregnated with iron, alum, and other substances. Their sulphurous fumes can be detected at the distance of half a mile. The excess of sulphur in the rock-walls of the cañon give a brilliant yellow color to the rocks in many places. The formation is usually very friable, falling with a natural slope to the edge of the stream, but occasionally masses of a more solid nature project from the wall in curious shapes of towers, minarets, and the like; while over all the solid ledge of trap, with its dark and well-defined columns, makes a rich and beautiful border inclosing the pictured rocks below. This is the mouth of the Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone. CHAPTER VII. OVER MOUNT WASHBURN TO THE FALLS OF THE YELLOWSTONE. The Upper or Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone extends from the mouth of Tower Creek to the foot of the Great Fall, a distance of twenty miles. It is impassable throughout its entire length, and accessible to the water's edge only at few points and by dint of severe labor. The trail ascends the divide between Tower Creek and the Yellowstone, skirting for six or eight miles the cañon of Tower Creek. The ground rises rapidly and is much broken by creek-beds running parallel with the river. Following the highest ridges, the first explorers reached at last a point whence they could overlook the Grand Cañon cleaving the slopes and breaking through the lofty mountain ranges in front. Here they caught their first glimpse of a phenomenon afterwards to become a familiar sight to them. Through the mountain gap formed by the cañon, and on the interior slopes some twenty miles distant, an object appeared which drew a simultaneous expression of wonder from every one in the party. It was a column of steam, rising from the dense woods to the height of several hundred feet. They had all heard fabulous stories of this region, and were somewhat skeptical of appearances. At first it was pronounced a fire in the woods, but presently some one noticed that the vapor rose in regular puffs, as if expelled with a great force. Then conviction was forced upon them. It was, indeed, a great column of steam, puffing away on the lofty mountain side, with a roaring sound, audible at a long distance, even through the heavy forest. A hearty cheer rang out at this discovery, and they pressed onward with renewed enthusiasm. The highest peak of this ridge was named by the first company who climbed it--Mount Washburn--in honor of their leader. The view from its summit is "grand beyond description;" yet some conception of its grandeur can be formed, let us hope, from the graphic review of its more striking features by Lieutenant Doane. "Looking northward, the great plateau stretches away from the base of the mountain to the front and left with its innumerable groves and sparkling waters, a variegated landscape of surpassing beauty, bounded on its extreme verge by the cañons of the Yellowstone. The pure atmosphere of this lofty region causes every outline of tree, rock, or lakelet to be visible with wonderful distinctness, and objects twenty miles away appear as if very near at hand. Still further to the left the snowy ranges on the headwaters of Gardiner's River stretch away to the westward, joining those on the head of the Gallatin, and forming, with the Elephant's Back, a continuous chain, bending constantly to the south, the rim of the Yellowstone Basin. On the verge of the horizon appear, like mole-hills in the distance, and far below, the white summits above the Gallatin Valley. These never thaw during the summer months, though several thousand feet lower than where we now stand upon the bare granite, and no snow visible near, save in the depths of shaded ravines. Beyond the plateau to the right front is the deep valley of the East Fork bearing away eastward, and still beyond, ragged volcanic peaks, heaped in inextricable confusion, as far as the limit of vision extends. On the east, close beneath our feet, yawns the immense gulf of the Grand Cañon, cutting away the bases of two mountains in forcing a passage through the range. Its yellow walls divide the landscape nearly in a straight line to the junction of Warm Spring (Tower) Creek below. The ragged edges of the chasm are from two hundred to five hundred yards apart, its depth so profound that the river bed is nowhere visible. No sound reaches the ear from the bottom of the abyss; the sun's rays are reflected on the farther wall and then lost in the darkness below. The mind struggles and then falls back upon itself, despairing in the efforts to grasp by a single thought the idea of its immensity. Beyond, a gentle declivity, sloping from the summit of the broken range, extends to the limit of vision, a wilderness of unbroken pine forest. "Turning southward, a new and strange scene bursts upon the view. Filling the whole field of vision, and with its boundaries in the verge of the horizon, lies the great volcanic basin of the Yellowstone--nearly circular in form, from fifty to seventy-five miles in diameter; and with a general depression of about 2,000 feet below the summits of the great ranges which form its outer rim. Mount Washburn lies in the point of the circumference, northeast from the centre of the basin; far away in the southwest, the three great Tetons on Snake River fill another space in the circle; connecting these two highest are crescent ranges, one westward and south, past Gardiner's River and the Gallatin, bounding the lower Madison, thence to the Jefferson and by the Snake River range to the Tetons; another eastward and south, a continuous range by the head of Rose Bud, inclosing the sources of the Snake, and joining the Tetons beyond. Between the south and west points, this vast circle is broken through in many places for the passage of the rivers; but a single glance at the interior slopes of the ranges shows that a former complete connection existed, and that the great basin has been one vast crater of a now extinct volcano. The nature of the rocks, the steepness and outline of the interior walls, together with other peculiarities to be mentioned hereafter, render this conclusion a certainty. The lowest point in this great amphitheatre lies directly in front of us, and about eight miles distant: a grassy valley, branching between low ridges, running from the river toward the centre of the basin. A small stream rises in this valley, breaking through the ridges to the west in a deep cañon, and falling into the channel of the Yellowstone, which here bears in a northeast course, flowing in view as far as the confluence of the small stream, thence plunged into the Grand Cañon, and hidden from sight. No falls can be seen, but their location is readily detected by the sudden disappearance of the river; beyond this open valley the basin appears to be filled with a succession of low, converging ridges, heavily timbered, and all of about an equal altitude. "To the south appears a broad sheet of water--the Yellowstone Lake. Across the Grand Cañon, on the slope of the great mountain wall, is the steam jet seen this morning; and in the next ravine beyond it are six more of inferior volume. Still farther south are others, to the number of perhaps twenty, and to the southwest more of them, scattered over the vast expanse of the basin, rising from behind the wooded hills in every direction. The view in this respect strongly resembles that from the Alleghanies, where they overlook iron and coal districts, with all their furnaces in active operation, save that one looks in vain here for the thrifty towns, country villas, steamboats, and railroad depots." Does this picture seem overdrawn? The briefer and less enthusiastic description of Dr. Hayden confirms its truth, though he does not accept in full Lieutenant Doane's interpretation of it. He says, in his official report: "The view from the summit of Mount Washburn is one of the finest I have ever seen, and although the atmosphere was somewhat obscured by smoke, yet an area of fifty to one hundred miles radius in every direction could be seen more or less distinctly. We caught the first glimpse of the great basin of the Yellowstone, with the lake, which reminded one much, from its bays, indentations, and surrounding mountains, of Great Salt Lake. To the south are the Tetons, rising high above all the rest, the monarchs of all they survey, with their summits covered with perpetual snow. To the southwest an immense area of dense pine forests extends for one hundred miles without a peak rising above the black, level mass. A little farther to the southwest and west are the Madison Mountains, a lofty, grand, snow-capped range, extending far to the northward. Nearer and in full view, to the west commence the bold peaks of the Gallatin Range, extending northward as far as the eye can reach. To the north we get a full view of the valley of the Yellowstone, with the lofty ranges that wall it in. Emigrant Peak, and the splendid group of mountains of which it is a part, can be clearly seen, and lose none of their marvellous beauty of outline, view them from what point we may. To the north and east the eye scans the most remarkable chaotic mass of peaks of the most rugged character, apparently without system, yet sending their jagged summits high up among the clouds. Farther distant are somewhat more regular ranges, snow-covered, probably the Big Horn. But with all this magnificent scenery around us from every side, the greatest beauty was the lake, in full view to the southeast, set like a gem amid the high mountains, which are literally bristling with peaks, many of them capped with snow. These are all of volcanic origin, and the fantastic shapes which many of them have assumed under the hand of time, called forth a variety of names from my party. There were two of them that represented the human profile so well that we called them the "Giant's Face "and "Old Man of the Mountain." These formed good landmarks for the topographer, for they were visible from every point of the basin." As regards the geological character of the country seen from Mount Washburn, Dr. Hayden observes, in discussing the geology of the region: "We may say, in brief, that the entire basin of the Yellowstone is volcanic. I am not prepared to pronounce it a crater, with a lake occupying the inner portion, while the mountains that surround the basin are the ruins of this great crater; but, at a period not very remote in the geological past, this whole country was a scene of wonderful volcanic activity. I regard the hot springs so abundant all over the valley as the last stages of this grand scene. Hot springs, geysers, etc., are so intimately connected with what we usually term volcanoes that their origin and action admit of the same explanation. Both undoubtedly form safety-valves or vents for the escape of the powerful forces that have been generated in the interior of the earth since the commencement of our present period; the true volcanic action has ceased, but the safety-valves are the thousands of hot springs all over this great area. I believe that the time of the greatest volcanic activity occurred during the Pliocene period--smoke, ashes, fragments of rock, and lava poured forth from thousands of orifices into the surrounding waters. Hundreds of cones were built up, fragments of which still remain; and around them were arranged by the water the dust and fragments of rock, the _ejectamenta_ of these volcanoes, in the form of the conglomerate or breccia as we find it now. These orifices may have been of every possible form--rounded or oblong, mere fissures, perhaps, extending for miles, and building up their own crater rims as the hot springs build up their rounded, conical peaks or oblong mounds at the present time." Leaving Mount Washburn, with its summit piles of basalt, and its precipitous slope scattered with agates and beautiful fragments of sardonyx, chalcedony, and malachite, let us descend to the valley. The trail pursues a tortuous way to avoid the fallen timber and the dense groves of pine, descending the almost vertical inner sides of the rim of the Yellowstone Basin, to the valley of a small creek. Two or three miles down this stream is a hideous glen, filled with sulphurous vapor emitted from six or eight boiling springs of great size and activity. Mr. Langford says of this unsavory place: "It looked like nothing earthly we had ever seen, and the pungent fumes which filled the atmosphere were not unaccompanied by a disagreeable sense of possible suffocation. Entering the basin cautiously, we found the entire surface of the earth covered with the incrusted sinter thrown from the springs. Jets of hot vapor were expelled through a hundred natural orifices with which it was pierced, and through every fracture made by passing over it. The springs themselves were as diabolical in appearance as the witches' caldron in Macbeth, and needed but the presence of Hecate and her weird band to realize that horrible creation of poetic fancy. They were all in a state of violent ebullition, throwing their liquid contents to the height of three or four feet. The largest had a basin twenty by forty feet in diameter. Its greenish-yellow water was covered with bubbles, which were constantly rising, bursting, and emitting sulphurous gas from various parts of its surface. The central spring seethed and bubbled like a boiling caldron. Fearful volumes of vapor were constantly escaping it. Near it was another, not so large, but more infernal in appearance. Its contents, of the consistency of paint, were in constant, noisy ebullition. A stick thrust into it, on being withdrawn, was coated with lead-colored slime a quarter of an inch in thickness. Nothing flows from this spring. Seemingly, it is boiling down. A fourth spring, which exhibited the same physical features, was partly covered by an overhanging ledge of rock. We tried to fathom it, but the bottom was beyond the reach of the longest pole we could find. Rocks cast into it increased the agitation of its waters. There were several other springs in the group, smaller in size, but presenting the same characteristics. "The approach to them was unsafe, the incrustation surrounding them bending in many places beneath our weight,--and from the fractures thus created would ooze a sulphury slime of the consistency of mucilage. It was with great difficulty that we obtained specimens from the natural apertures with which the crust is filled,--a feat which was accomplished by one only of our party, who extended himself at full length upon that portion of the incrustation which yielded the least, but which was not sufficiently strong to bear his weight while in an upright position, and at imminent risk of sinking into the infernal mixture, rolled over and over to the edge of the opening, and with the crust slowly bending and sinking beneath him, hurriedly secured the coveted prize." [Illustration: GETTING A SPECIMEN.] "There was something so revolting in the general appearance of the springs and their surroundings--the foulness of the vapors, the infernal contents, the treacherous incrustation, the noisy ebullition, the general appearance of desolation, and the seclusion and wildness of the location--that, though awestruck, we were not unreluctant to continue our journey without making them a second visit." Once more our amateur explorers had recourse to their western vocabulary, and bestowed on this unhappy locality the title, "Hell-broth Springs"--which, says the historian of the expedition, "fully expressed our appreciation of their character." The following season this remarkable group of springs was thoroughly examined by the party under Dr. Hayden. That careful observer says: "They are evidently diminishing in power, but the rims all around reveal the most powerful manifestations far back in the past. Sulphur, copper, alum, and soda cover the surface. There is also precipitated around the borders of some of the mud springs a white efflorescence, probably nitrate of potash. These springs are located on the side of the mountain, nearly 1,000 feet above the margin of the cañon, but extend along into the level portions below.... One of these springs was bubbling quite briskly, but had a temperature of only 100°. Near it is a turbid spring of 170°. In the valley are a large number of turbid, mud, and boiling springs, with temperatures from 175° to 185°. There are a number of springs that issue from the side of the mountain, and the waters, gathering into one channel, flow into the Yellowstone, The number of frying or simmering springs is great. The ground in many places, for several yards in every direction, is perforated like a sieve, and the water bubbles by with a simmering noise. There is one huge boiling spring which deposits fine black mud all around the sides. The depth of the crater of this spring, its dark, gloomy appearance, and the tremendous force which it manifested in its operations, led us to name it the "Devil's Caldron." There are a large number of springs here, but no true geysers. It is plainly the last stages of what was once a most remarkable group. Extending across the cañon on the opposite side of the Yellowstone, interrupted here and there, this group of springs extends for several miles, forming one of the largest deposits of silica, but only here and there are there signs of life. Many of the dead springs are mere basins, with a thick deposit of iron on the sides, lining the channel of the water that flows from them. These vary in temperature from 98° to 120°. The highest temperature was 192°. The steam-vents are very numerous, and the chimneys are lined with sulphur. Where the crust can be removed, we find the under side lined with the most delicate crystals of sulphur, which disappear like frost-work at the touch. Still there is a considerable amount of solid amorphous sulphur. The sulphur and the iron, with the vegetable matter which is always very abundant about the springs, give, through the almost infinite variety of shades, a most pleasing and striking picture. One of the mud springs, with a basin twenty by twenty-five feet, and six feet deep, is covered with large bubbles or puffs constantly bursting with a thud. There are a number of high hills in this vicinity entirely composed of the hot-spring deposits, at least nine-tenths silica, appearing snowy-white in the distance; one of the walls is 175 feet high, and another about 70 feet. They are now covered to a greater or less extent with pines. Steam is constantly issuing from vents around the base and from the sides of these hills. There is one lake 100 by 300 yards, with a number of bubbling and boiling springs rising to the surface. Near the shore is one of the sieve-springs, with a great number of small perforations, from which the water bubbles up with a simmering noise; temperature, 188°. This group really forms one of the great ruins." A short day's march from Hell-broth Spring brings the traveller to a little stream flowing into the Yellowstone, between the upper and the lower fall. From its rapid and tumultuous flow, the first explorers called it Cascade Creek. Just before its union with the Yellowstone it traverses a gloomy gorge cut through a kind of volcanic sandstone, largely made up of fragments of obsidian and other igneous rocks cemented with volcanic ash. This rock is worn by the water into so many fantastic shapes and cavernous recesses, that--with their usual poverty of invention and tartarean taste--the first observers straightway gave the uncanny channel over to the Prince of Darkness, and dubbed it the Devil's Den. A mile below this gorge the stream flows over a series of ledges, making a cascade as beautiful as its previous course has been weird and ugly. There is first a fall of five feet, which is immediately succeeded by another of fifteen, into a pool as clear as amber, nestled beneath overarching rocks. Here the stream lingers as if half reluctant to continue its course, then gracefully emerges from the grotto, and, veiling the rocks down an abrupt descent of eighty-four feet, passes rapidly on to the Yellowstone. For a wonder, this charming fall has received a corresponding name--Crystal Cascade. An infinite variety of volcanic specimens, quartz, feldspar, mica, granites, lavas, basalts, composite crystals--in fact, everything, from asbestos to obsidian, is represented by fragments in the bed of this stream. [Illustration: THE DEVIL'S DEN.] At the foot of the gorge and on the margin of the Yellowstone stands a high promontory of concretionary lava, literally filled with volcanic butternuts. Many of these are loose, and can be taken out of the rock with the hand; broken open, they are invariably hollow, and lined with minute quartz crystals of various tints. This rare formation occurs frequently in the great basin. CHAPTER VIII. THE GRAND CAÑON AND THE FALLS. No language," says Dr. Hayden, "can do justice to the wonderful grandeur and beauty of the Grand Cañon." It has no parallel in the world. Through the eye alone can any just idea be gained of its strange, awful, fascinating, unearthly blending of the majestic and the beautiful; and, even in its visible presence, the mind fails to comprehend the weird and unfamiliar, almost incredible scenes it reveals. Says Mr. Langford: "The brain reels as we gaze into this profound and solemn solitude. We shrink from the dizzy verge appalled, glad to feel the solid earth under our feet, and venture no more, except with forms extended, and faces barely protruding over the edge of the precipice. The stillness is horrible. Down, down, down, we see the river attenuated to a thread, tossing its miniature waves, and dashing, with puny strength, against the massive walls which imprison it. All access to its margin is denied, and the dark gray rocks hold it in dismal shadow. Even the voice of its waters in their convulsive agony cannot be heard. Uncheered by plant or shrub, obstructed with massive boulders and by jutting points, it rushes madly on its solitary course. The solemn grandeur of the scene surpasses description. The sense of danger with which it impresses you is harrowing in the extreme. You feel the absence of sound, the oppression of absolute silence. If you could only hear that gurgling river, if you could see a living tree in the depth beneath you, if a bird would fly past, if the wind would move any object in the awful chasm, to break for a moment the solemn silence that reigns there, it would relieve that tension of the nerves which the scene has excited, and you would rise from your prostrate condition and thank God that he had permitted you to gaze, unharmed, upon this majestic display of natural architecture. As it is, sympathizing in spirit with the deep gloom of the scene, you crawl from the dreadful verge, scared lest the firm rock give way beneath and precipitate you into the horrid gulf." "The fearful descent into this terrific cañon," Mr. Langford adds, "was accomplished with great difficulty by Messrs. Hauser and Stickney, at a point about two miles below the falls. By trigonometrical measurement they found the chasm at that point to be 1,190 feet deep. Their ascent from it was perilous, and it was only by making good use of hands and feet, and keeping the nerves braced to the utmost tension, that they were enabled to clamber up the precipitous rocks to a safe landing-place." Lieutenant Doane also made the descent, somewhat further down the river, accompanied by one of his company. Selecting the channel of a small creek, they scrambled down its steep descent, wading in the stream. "On entering the ravine, we came at once to hot springs of sulphur, sulphate of copper, alum, steam jets, etc., in endless variety, some of them of very peculiar form. One of them in particular, of sulphur, had built up a tall spire, standing out from the slope of the wall like an enormous horn, with hot water trickling down its sides. The creek ran on a bed of solid rock, in many places smooth and slippery, in others obstructed by masses of débris from the overhanging cliffs of the sulphureted limestone above. After descending for three miles in the channel we came to a sort of bench or terrace, the same one seen previously in following down the creek from our first camp in the basin. Here we found a large flock of mountain sheep, very tame, and greatly astonished, no doubt, at our sudden appearance. McConnell killed one and wounded another, whereupon the rest disappeared, clambering up the steep walls with a celerity truly astonishing. We were now 1,500 feet below the brink. From here the creek channel was more precipitous, and for a mile we made our way down over masses of rock and fallen trees, splashing in warm water, ducking under cascades, and skirting close against sidelong places to keep from falling into boiling caldrons in the channel. After four hours of hard labor we reached the bottom of the gulf and the margin of the Yellowstone, famished with thirst, wet and exhausted. The river-water here is quite warm, and of a villainously alum and sulphurous taste. Its margin is lined with all kinds of chemical springs, some depositing craters of calcareous rock, others muddy, black, blue, slaty, or reddish water. The internal heat renders the atmosphere oppressive, though a strong breeze draws through the cañon. A frying sound comes constantly to the ear, mingled with the rush of the current. The place abounds with sickening and purgatorial smells. We had come down the ravine at least four miles, and looking upward the fearful wall appeared to reach the sky. It was about three o'clock P.M., and stars could be distinctly seen, so much of the sunlight was cut off from entering the chasm. Tall pines on the extreme verge appeared the height of two or three feet. The cañon, as before said, was in two benches, with a plateau on either side, about half way down. This plateau, about a hundred yards in width, looked from below like a mere shelf against the wall; the total depth was not less than 2,500 feet, and more probably 3,000. There are perhaps other cañons longer and deeper than this one, but surely none combining grandeur and immensity with such peculiarity of formation and profusion of volcanic or chemical phenomena." The history of this tremendous chasm is not hard to read. Ages ago this whole region was the basin of an immense lake. Then it became a centre of volcanic activity; vast quantities of lava was erupted, which, cooling under water, took the form of basalt; volumes of volcanic ash and rock-fragments were thrown out from the craters from time to time, forming breccia as it sunk through the water and mingled with the deposits from silicious springs. Over this were spread the later deposits from the waters of the old lake. In time the country was slowly elevated, and the lake was drained away. The easily eroded breccia along the river channel was cut out deeper and deeper as the ages passed, while springs and creeks and the falling rain combined to carve the sides of the cañon into the fantastic forms they now present, by wearing away the softer rock, and leaving the hard basalt and the firmer hot-spring deposits standing in massive columns and Gothic pinnacles. The basis material of the old hot spring deposits in silica, originally white as snow, are now stained by mineral waters with every shade of red and yellow--from scarlet to rose color, from bright sulphur to the daintiest tint of cream. When the light falls favorably on these blended tints the Grand Cañon presents a more enchanting and bewildering variety of forms and colors than human artist ever conceived. The erosion was practically arrested at the upper end of the cañon by a sudden transition from the softer breccia to hard basalt, and the falls are the result. From below the Upper Fall the vertical wall of basalt can be clearly seen passing diagonally across the rim. The Lower Fall was formed in the same way. "A grander scene than the lower cataract of the Yellowstone," writes Mr. Langford, "was never witnessed by mortal eyes. The volume seemed to be adapted to all the harmonies of the surrounding scenery. Had it been greater or smaller it would have been less impressive. The river, from a width of two hundred feet above the fall, is compressed by converging rocks to one hundred and fifty feet, where it takes the plunge. The shelf over which it falls is as level and even as a work of art. The height, by actual line measurement, is a few inches more than 350 feet. It is a sheer, compact, solid, perpendicular sheet, faultless in all the elements of grandeur and picturesque beauties. The cañon which commences at the upper fall, half a mile above this cataract, is here a thousand feet in depth. Its vertical sides rise grey and dark above the fall to shelving summits, from which one can look down into the boiling, spray-filled chasm, enlivened with rainbows, and glittering like a shower of diamonds. From a shelf protruding over the stream, 500 feet below the top of the cañon, and 180 above the verge of the cataract, a member of our company, lying prone upon the rock, let down a cord, with a stone attached, into the gulf, and measured its profoundest depths. The life and sound of the cataract, with its sparkling spray and fleecy foam, contrasts strangely with the sombre stillness of the cañon a mile below. There all was darkness, gloom, and shadow; here all was vivacity, gayety, and delight. One was the most unsocial, the other the most social scene in nature. We could talk, and sing, and whoop, waking the echoes with our mirth and laughter in presence of the falls, but we could not thus profane the silence of the cañon. Seen through the cañon below the falls, the river for a mile or more is broken by rapids and cascades of great variety and beauty. "Between the Lower and Upper Falls the cañon is two hundred to nearly four hundred feet deep. The river runs over a level bed of rock, and is undisturbed by rapids until near the verge of the lower fall. The upper fall is entirely unlike the other, but in its peculiar character equally interesting. For some distance above it the river breaks into frightful rapids. The stream is narrowed between the rocks as it approaches the brink, and bounds with impatient struggles for release, leaping through the stony jaws, in a sheet of snow-white foam, over a precipice nearly perpendicular, 115 feet high.[1] Midway in its descent the entire volume of water is carried, by the sloping surface of an intervening ledge, twelve or fifteen feet beyond the vertical base of the precipice, gaining therefrom a novel and interesting feature. The churning of the water upon the rocks reduces it to a mass of foam and spray, through which all the colors of the solar spectrum are reproduced in astonishing profusion. What this cataract lacks in sublimity is more than compensated by picturesqueness. The rocks which overshadow it do not veil it from the open light. It is up amid the pine foliage which crowns the adjacent hills, the grand feature of a landscape unrivalled for beauties of vegetation as well as of rock and glen. The two confronting rocks, overhanging the verge at the height of a hundred feet or more, could be readily united by a bridge, from which some of the grandest views of natural scenery in the world could be obtained--while just in front of, and within reaching distance of the arrowy water, from a table one-third of the way below the brink of the fall, all its nearest beauties and terrors may be caught at a glance." "We rambled around the falls and cañon two days, and left them with the unpleasant conviction that the greatest wonder of our journey had been seen." A few scattered sentences, culled from Dr. Hayden's calmly scientific account of the falls, will suffice to show that Mr. Langford's description "o'ersteps not the modesty of nature." [Illustration: UPPER FALLS OF THE YELLOWSTONE.] "Above the Upper Falls the Yellowstone flows through a grassy, meadow-like valley, with a calm, steady current, giving no warning, until very near the falls, that it is about to rush over a precipice 140 feet, and then, within a quarter of a mile, again to leap down a distance of 350 feet. "From any point of view the Upper Falls are extremely picturesque and striking. The entire volume of water seems to be, as it were, hurled off of the precipice with the force which it has accumulated in the rapids above, so that the mass is detached into the most beautiful snow-white, bead-like drops, and as it strikes the rocky basin below, it shoots through the water with a sort of ricochet for the distance of 200 feet. The whole presents in the distance the appearance of a mass of snow-white foam. On the sides of the basalt walls there is a thick growth of vegetation, nourished by the spray above, which extends up as far as the moisture can reach.... After the waters roll over the upper descent, they flow with great rapidity over the apparently flat rocky bottom, which spreads out to nearly double its width above the falls, and continues thus until near the Lower Falls, when the channel again contracts, and the waters seem, as it were, to gather themselves into one compact mass and plunge over the descent of 350 feet in detached drops of foam as white as snow; some of the large globules of water shoot down like the contents of an exploded rocket.... The entire mass of the water falls into a circular basin, which has been worn into the hard rock, so that the rebound is one of the magnificent features of the scene.... It is a sight far more beautiful, though not so grand or impressive as that of Niagara Falls. A heavy mist always rises from the water at the foot of the falls, so dense that one cannot approach within 200 or 300 feet, and even then the clothes will be drenched in a few moments. Upon the yellow, nearly vertical wall of the west side, the mist mostly falls, and for 300 feet from the bottom the wall is covered with a thick matting of mosses, sedges, grasses, and other vegetation of the most vivid green, which have sent their small roots into the softened rocks, and are nourished by the ever-ascending spray. At the base and quite high up on the sides of the cañon, are great quantities of talus, and through the fragments of rocks and decomposed spring deposits may be seen the horizontal strata of breccia." On his return down the opposite or eastern side of the river, Colonel Barlow descended to the foot of the Lower Fall for the purpose of exploring the cañon. He says: "I expected this to be an undertaking of great difficulty and attended with some danger, but entering a sharp and narrow gorge or fissure in the side of the cañon, immediately below the great fall, I found the descent much easier than was anticipated. It proved to be very steep, but the rock being solid, with projecting angles, there was little danger to a careful climber. A slope of loose and finely broken rock, a hundred feet in height, moist from the falling spray, terminated the descent. Sliding to the bottom of this slope, I stood at the foot of the great fall, 350 feet below its crest, the walls of the cañon rising 700 feet. My first impression on beholding this fall from below was one of disappointment; it did not appear as high as I expected. The fall, however, was grand, and presented a symmetrical and unbroken sheet of white foam, set in dark masses of rock, while rainbows were formed in the spray from almost every point of view. The steep rocks near the falls, constantly wet with rising mist, were covered with vegetation of an intensely green color. The river below runs with the velocity of a torrent, rushing down declivities, spinning round sharp angles, and dashing itself into spray at every turn. I found it impossible to follow the bed of the stream, the steep and slippery side affording no footing whatever, and crumbling at the slightest touch." CHAPTER IX. FROM THE FALLS TO THE LAKE. Half a mile above the Upper Fall the Yellowstone gives no intimation of its approaching career of wildness and grandeur. It rolls peacefully between low verdant banks and over pebbly reaches or spaces of quicksand, with beautiful curves and a majestic motion. Its waters are clear and cold, and of the emerald hue characteristic of Niagara. Great numbers of small springs, fed by the slowly melting snows of the mountains, flow from the densely wooded foot-hills, irrigating the "bottoms," and sustaining a growth of grass and flowers that clothes the lowlands with freshness and vividness of color. Everything terrific, diabolic, volcanic, would seem to have been left behind. The first hint to the contrary is given by a pretty little rivulet, a yard wide and a few inches deep, clear as crystal, winding along through the rank grass to join the Yellowstone. It looks like any clear-watered mountain stream; but a single taste shows that it has a different origin. It is strongly charged with alum--hence its name, Alum Creek--and its source is in a remarkable group of sulphur and alum springs two or three miles further on,--that is, about ten miles above the falls. All about these springs are evidences of volcanic action in great variety and profusion. Mr. Langford says: "The region was filled with boiling springs and craters. Two hills, each 300 feet high, and from a quarter to half a mile across, had been formed wholly of the sinter thrown from adjacent springs--lava, sulphur, and reddish-brown clay. Hot streams of vapor were pouring from crevices scattered over them. Their surfaces answered in hollow intonations to every footstep, and in several places yielded to the weight of our horses. Steaming vapor rushed hissingly from the fractures, and all around the natural vents large quantities of sulphur in crystallized form, perfectly pure, had been deposited. This could be readily gathered with pick and shovel. A great many exhausted craters dotted the hill-side. One near the summit, still alive, changed its hues like steel under the process of tempering, to every kiss of the passing breeze. The hottest vapors were active beneath the incrusted surface everywhere. A thick leathern glove was no protection to the hand exposed to them. Around these immense thermal deposits, the country, for a great distance in all directions, is filled with boiling springs, all exhibiting separate characteristics. "The most conspicuous of the cluster is a sulphur spring twelve by twenty feet in diameter, encircled by a beautifully scolloped sedimentary border, in which the water is thrown to a height of from three to seven feet. The regular formation of this border, and the perfect shading of the scollops forming it, are among the most delicate and wonderful freaks of nature's handiwork. They look like an elaborate work of art. This spring is located at the western base of Crater Hill, above described, and the gentle slope around it for a distance of 300 feet is covered to considerable depth with a mixture of sulphur and brown lava. The moistened bed of a small channel, leading from the spring down the slope, indicated that it had recently overflowed. "A few rods north of this spring, at the base of the hill, is a cavern whose mouth is about seven feet in diameter, from which a dense jet of sulphurous vapor explodes with a regular report like a high-pressure engine. A little farther along we came upon another boiling spring, seventy feet long by forty wide, the water of which is dark and muddy and in unceasing agitation. "About a hundred yards distant we discovered a boiling alum spring, surrounded with beautiful crystals, from the border of which we gathered a quantity of alum, nearly pure, but slightly impregnated with iron. The violent ebullition of the water had undermined the surrounding surface in many places, and for the distance of several feet from the margin had so thoroughly saturated the incrustation with its liquid contents, that it was unsafe to approach the edge. As one of our company was unconcernedly passing near the brink, the incrustation suddenly sloughed off beneath his feet. A shout of alarm from his comrades aroused him to a sense of his peril, and he only avoided being plunged into the boiling mixture by falling suddenly backward at full length upon the firm portion of the crust, and rolling over to a place of safety. His escape from a horrible death was most marvellous, and in another instant he would have been beyond all human aid. Our efforts to sound the depths of this spring with a pole thirty-five feet in length were fruitless." The report of the Geological Expedition describes these curious springs somewhat more minutely. The first that attracted Dr. Hayden's attention was the powerful steam-vent above mentioned, which he calls the Locomotive Jet. "The aperture is about six inches in diameter, a sort of raised chimney, and all around are numerous small continuous steam-vents, all of which are elegantly lined with the bright-yellow sulphur. The entire surface is covered with the white silicious crust, which gives forth a hollow sound beneath the tread; and we took pleasure in breaking it up in the vicinity of the vents, and exposing the wonderful beauty of the sulphur-coating on the inner sides. This crust is ever hot, and yet so firm that we could walk over it anywhere. On the south side of these hills, close to the foot, is a magnificent sulphur-spring. The deposits around it are silica; but some places are white, and enamelled like the finest porcelain. The thin edges of the nearly circular rim extend over the waters of the basin several feet, yet the open portion is fifteen feet in diameter. The water is in a constant state of agitation. The steam that issues from this spring is so strong and hot that it was only on the windward side that I could approach it and ascertain its temperature, 197°. The agitation seemed to affect the entire mass, carrying it up impulsively to the height of four feet. It may be compared to a huge caldron of perfectly clear water somewhat superheated. But it is the decorations about this spring that lent the charm, after our astonishment at the seething mass before us--the most beautiful scolloping around the rim, and the inner and outer surface covered with a sort of pearl-like bead work. The base is the pure white silica, while the sulphur gave every possible shade, from yellow to the most delicate cream. No kind of embroidering that human art can conceive or fashion could equal this specimen of the cunning skill of nature. On the northeast side of the hills, extending from their summits, are large numbers of the steam-vents, with the sulphur linings and deposits of the sulphur over the surface. These hills are entirely due to the old hot springs, and are from 50 to 150 feet in height. The rock is mostly compact silica, but there is almost every degree of purity, from a kind of basalt to the snow-white silica. Some of it is a real conglomerate, with a fine silicious cement inclosing pebbles of white silica, like those seen around the craters of some geysers. Although at the present time there are no true geysers in this group, the evidence is clear that these were, in former times, very powerful ones, that have built up mountains of silica by their overflow. The steam-vents on the side and at the foot of these hills represent the dying stages of this once most active group. Quite a dense growth of pines now covers these hills, which rise up in the midst of the plains, and from their peculiar white appearance are conspicuous for a great distance. At one point there is a steam-vent so hot that it is difficult to approach it, emitting a strong sulphurous smell, and within two feet of it there is a larger spring, boiling like a caldron. So far as I can determine, there is no underground connection of any of the springs with each other. Sometimes the rims of these craters, as well as the inner sides of their basins, have a beautiful papulose surface, the silica just covered with a thin veil of delicate creamy sulphur. At this locality are some very remarkable turbid and mud springs. One of them has a basin twenty feet in diameter, nearly circular in form, and the contents have almost the consistency of thick hasty-pudding. Indeed, there is no comparison that can bring before the mind a clearer picture of such a mud volcano than a huge caldron of thick mush. The surface is covered all over with puffs of mud, which, as they burst, give off a thudlike noise, and then fine mud-waves recede from the centre of the puffs in the most perfect rings to the side. Although there are hundreds of these mudpots, yet it is very rare that the mud is in just the condition to admit of these peculiar rings. The thud is, of course, produced by the escape of the sulphureted hydrogen gas through the mud. The mud is so fine as to have no visible or sensible grain, and is very strongly impregnated with alum. For three hundred yards in length and twenty-five yards in width, the valley of this little branch of Alum Creek is perforated with these mud-vents of all sizes, and the contents are of all degrees of consistency, from merely turbid water to a thick mortar. The entire surface is perfectly bare of vegetation, and hot, yielding in many places to a slight pressure. I attempted to walk about among these simmering vents, and broke through to my knees, covering myself with the hot mud, to my great pain and subsequent inconvenience. One of the largest of the turbid springs has a basin with a nearly circular rim twenty feet from the margin to the water, and forty feet in diameter. There are two or three centres of ebullition; temperature, 188°." A couple of miles above these springs, near the banks of the Yellowstone, is a not less remarkable group of sulphur and mud springs. All the intermediate space abounds in the remains of similar springs, now quiescent or dead, yet giving evidence of former power and activity beyond that displayed by any now existing. "There were giants in those days!" Mr. Langford describes a group of these "unsightly caldrons," varying in size from two to ten feet in diameter; their surfaces from three to eight feet below the level of the plain: "The contents of the most of them were of the consistency of thick paint, which they greatly resembled, some being yellow, others pink, and others dark brown. This semi-fluid was boiling at a fearful rate, much after the fashion of a hasty-pudding in the last stages of completion. The bubbles, often two feet in height, would explode with a puff, emitting at each time a villainous smell of sulphuretted vapor. Springs six and eight feet in diameter, but four feet asunder, presented distinct phenomenal characteristics. There was no connection between them, above or below. The sediment varied in color, and not unfrequently there would be an inequality of five feet in their surfaces. Each, seemingly, was supplied with a separate force. They were embraced within a radius of 1,200 feet, which was covered with a strong incrustation, the various vents in which emitted streams of heated vapor. Our silver watches, and other metallic articles, assumed a dark leaden hue. The atmosphere was filled with sulphurous gases, and the river opposite our camp was impregnated with the mineral bases of adjacent springs. At the base of adjacent foot-hills we found three springs of boiling mud, the largest of which, forty feet in diameter, encircled by an elevated rim of solid tufa, resembles an immense caldron. The seething, bubbling contents, covered with steam, are five feet below the rim. The disgusting appearance of this spring is scarcely atoned for by the wonder with which it fills the beholder. The other two springs, much smaller, but presenting the same general features, are located near a large sulphur spring of milder temperature, but too hot for bathing. On the brow of an adjacent hillock, amid the green pines, heated vapor issues in scorching jets from several craters and fissures. Passing over the hill, we struck a small stream of perfectly transparent water flowing from a cavern, the roof of which tapers back to the water, which is boiling furiously, at a distance of twenty feet from the mouth, and is ejected through it in uniform jets of great force. The sides and entrance of the cavern are covered with soft, green sediment, which renders the rock on which it is deposited as soft and pliable as putty. "About two hundred yards from this cave is a most singular phenomenon, which we called the Muddy Geyser. It presents a funnel-shaped orifice, in the midst of a basin one hundred and fifty feet in diameter, with sloping sides of clay and sand. The crater or orifice, at the surface, is thirty by fifty feet in diameter. It tapers quite uniformly to the depth of about thirty feet, where the water may be seen, when the geyser is in repose, presenting a surface of six or seven feet in breadth. The flow of this geyser is regular every six hours. The water rises gradually, commencing to boil when about half way to the surface, and occasionally breaking forth in great violence. When the crater is filled, it is expelled from it in a splashing, scattered mass, ten or fifteen feet in thickness, to the height of forty feet. The water is of a dark lead color, and deposits the substance it holds in solution in the form of miniature stalagmites upon the sides and top of the crater. As this was the first object which approached a geyser, we, naturally enough, regarded it with intense curiosity.... "While returning by a new route to our camp, dull, thundering sounds, which General Washburn likened to frequent discharges of a distant mortar, broke upon our ears. We followed their direction, and found them to proceed from a mud volcano, which occupied the slope of a small hill, embowered in a grove of pines. Dense volumes of steam shot into the air with each report, through a crater thirty feet in diameter. The reports, though irregular, occurred as often as every five seconds, and could be distinctly heard half a mile. Each alternate report shook the ground a distance of two hundred yards or more, and the massive jets of vapor which accompanied them burst forth like the smoke of burning gunpowder. It was impossible to stand on the edge of that side of the crater opposite the wind, and one of our party, Mr. Hedges, was rewarded for his temerity in venturing too near the rim, by being thrown by the force of the volume of steam violently down the outer side of the crater. From hasty views, afforded by occasional gusts of wind, we could see at a depth of sixty feet the regurgitating contents." [Illustration: THE MUD VOLCANO.] "This volcano, as is evident from the freshness of the vegetation and the particles of dried clay adhering to the topmost branches of the trees surrounding it, is of very recent formation. Probably it burst forth but a few months ago. Its first explosion must have been terrible. We saw limbs of trees 125 feet high encased in clay, and found its scattered contents two hundred feet from it." On the east side of the Yellowstone, close to the margin of the river, are a few turbid springs, and mud-springs strongly impregnated with alum. The mud is yellow and contains much sulphur. These, the discoverers, Dr. Hayden and his company, called Mud-sulphur Springs. The main basin is 15 by 30 feet, and has three centres of ebullition, showing that deep in the earth are three independent orifices for the emission of heated waters. Dr. Hayden's description of the roaring spring issuing from a cavern, coincides with that given above. He called it the Grotto. Around all these springs he observed an abundance of grasses, rushes, mosses, and other plants growing with a surprising luxuriance. The recent mud-volcano described by Mr. Langford was considered by Dr. Hayden as the most remarkable mud-spring thus far discovered in the West. "It does not boil with an impulse like most of the mud-springs," he says, "but with a constant roar which shakes the ground for a considerable distance, and may be heard for half a mile. A dense column of steam is ever rising, filling the crater, but now and then a passing breeze will remove it for a moment, revealing one of the most terrific sights one could well imagine. The contents are composed of thin mud in a continual state of the most violent agitation, like an immense caldron of mush submitted to a constant, uniform, but most intense heat.... All the indications around this most remarkable caldron show that it has broken out at a recent period; that the caving in of the sides so choked up the orifice that it relieved itself, hurling the muddy contents over the living pines in the vicinity." The steam rising from this spring--the Giant's Caldron--can be seen for many miles in every direction. The movements of Muddy Geyser were closely watched for twenty-four hours by Mr. Campbell Carrington, who was specially detailed for that duty by Dr. Hayden. His observations began about nine o'clock A.M., July 1st. Then the pool was calm. Shortly after, he heard the loud, hissing noise of escaping steam. Hurrying to the geyser, he saw a wave about three feet in height rise and die away to the left; three similar waves followed in quick succession. Their dense columns of steam burst up to the height of twenty feet, with a dull, heavy explosion, the action continuing for fifteen minutes, when the spring ceased flowing as suddenly as it had begun. The average height of the flowing was about fifteen feet, though some of the jets reached fully thirty feet. Five minutes after the eruption the pool measured twenty-five feet in circumference and three in depth, where before it was a hundred feet in circumference and eleven in depth. Ten minutes later the mud began to rise slowly in the pool. This continued for a little over three hours, when the spring began to boil near the centre. The ebullition gradually increased in violence for twenty minutes, then it suddenly stopped, and the eruption began as at first. This rising, falling, and overflowing took place eight times in twenty-four hours. The following table shows the time of the observed flowings and their length: "First flowing, 9.20 A.M. to 9.35 A.M.; length, 15 minutes. "Second flowing, 1.30 P.M. to 1.50 P.M.; length, 20 minutes. "Third flowing, 5 P.M. to 5.15 P.M.; length, 15 minutes. "Fourth flowing, 8.30 P.M. to 8.50 P.M.; length, 20 minutes. "Fifth flowing, 12.30 P.M. to 12.45 P.M.; length, 15 minutes. "Sixth flowing, 4 A.M. to 4.15 A.M.; length, 15 minutes. "Seventh flowing, 7.30 A.M. to 7.45 A.M.; length, 15 minutes. "Eighth flowing, 11 A.M. to 11.10 A.M.; length, 10 minutes. "Total length of time, 26 hours. Aggregate time of flowing, three hours and 15 minutes. Average length of flowings, 15 minutes and 37 and one half seconds." CHAPTER X. YELLOWSTONE LAKE. "Such a vision," exclaims the sober-minded chief of the Geological Survey, "is worth a lifetime; and only _one_ of such marvellous beauty will ever greet human eyes." "Secluded amid the loftiest peaks of the Rocky Mountains," writes Mr. Langford, "possessing strange peculiarities of form and beauty, this watery solitude is one of the most attractive natural objects in the world. Its southern shore, indented with long narrow inlets, not unlike the frequent fiords of Iceland, bears testimony to the awful upheaval and tremendous force of the elements which resulted in its creation. The long pine-crowned promontories, stretching into it from the base of the hills, lend new and charming features to an aquatic scene full of novelty and splendor. Islands of emerald hue dot its surface, and a margin of sparkling sand forms its jewelled setting. The winds, compressed in their passage through the mountain gorges, lash it into a sea as terrible as the fretted ocean, covering it with foam. But now it lay before us calm and unruffled, save by the gentle wavelets which broke in murmurs along the shore. Water, one of the grandest elements of scenery, never seemed so beautiful before. It formed a fitting climax to all the wonders we had seen, and we gazed upon it for hours, entranced with its increasing attractions." The beautiful sheet of water so enthusiastically yet fittingly described, is somewhat more than twenty miles long and fifteen broad, with an irregular outline, presenting some of the loveliest shore-lines that water ever assumed. Its form has been compared to that of an outspread hand, the northern portion representing the palm, the southwestern a swollen thumb, the first and second fingers aborted, the third and fourth disproportionately large. A glance at the map will show that a juster comparison would be to the head and shoulders of some grotesque animal with two slender ears and a pair of huge knobby horns--the head facing the north. The greatest stretch of water extends from the end of the heavy lower jaw (the outlet of the Yellowstone) to the top of the upper horn, where the Upper Yellowstone comes in; while the great body of the water lies between the forehead and the base of the shoulder. The superficial area of the lake is about three hundred square miles; its greatest depth 300 feet, and its elevation above the sea 7,427 feet. In the last respect it has but one rival, Lake Titicaca in South America. [Illustration: YELLOWSTONE LAKE.] Lying upon the very crown of the continent, Yellowstone Lake receives no tributaries of any considerable size, its clear cold water coming solely from the snows that fall on the lofty mountain ranges that hem it in on every side. In the early part of the day, when the air is still and the bright sunshine falls on its unruffled surface, its bright green color, shading to a delicate ultramarine, commands the admiration of every beholder. Later in the day, when the mountain winds come down from their icy heights, it puts on an aspect more in accordance with the fierce wilderness around it. Its shores are paved with volcanic rocks, sometimes in masses, sometimes broken and worn into pebbles of trachyte, obsidian, chalcedony, cornelians, agates, and bits of agatized wood; and again, ground to obsidian-sand and sprinkled with crystals of California diamonds. Here and there hot-spring deposits show wave-worn bluffs of the purest white; and in sheltered bays, clay-concretions and casts from mud-puffs strew the beach with curious forms, that exploring trappers mistook for the drinking cups, stone war-clubs, and broken idols of some extinct race. Vegetation is abundant in the lake as well as around it. Several species of plants grow far out into the deep waters, living thickly on rocks twenty feet below the surface. After a severe storm their uptorn stems strew the beach like kelp on the seashore, and the water is discolored with vegetable matter for several yards from the shore. The water swarms with trout, but there is no other kind of fish, no shells, no shell-fish,--nothing but trout. Of these, Mr. Carrington, the naturalist of the Geological Survey, reports the following interesting observations: "Although I searched with diligence and care in the neighboring streams and waters around the Yellowstone Lake, I was unable to find any other species of fish except the salmon-trout; their numbers are almost inconceivable; average weight, one pound and a half; color, a light-grey above, passing into a light-yellow below; the fins, all except the dorsal and caudal, vary from a bright-yellow to a brilliant orange, they being a dark-grey and heavily spotted. A curious fact, and one well worthy of the closest attention of an aspiring icthyologist, is connected with these fish, namely, that among their intestines, and even interlaced in their solid flesh, are found intestinal worms, varying in size, length, and thickness, the largest measuring about six inches in length. On cutting one of these trout open, the first thing that attracts your attention is small oleaginous-looking spots clinging to the intestines, which, on being pressed between the fingers, break and change into one of these worms, small, it is true, but nevertheless perfect in its formation. From five or six up to forty or fifty will be found in a trout, varying, as I said before, in size, the larger ones being found in the solid flesh, through which they work their way, and which, in a very short while, becomes almost putrid. Their number can generally be estimated from the appearance of the fish itself; if many, the trout is extremely poor in flesh, the color changes from the healthy grey to a dull pale, it swims lazily near the top of the water, losing all its shyness and fear of man; it becomes almost savage in its appetite, biting voraciously at anything thrown in the water, and its flesh becomes soft and yielding. If, on the other hand, there are few or none, the flesh of the fish is plump and solid, and he is quick and sprightly in all his motions. I noticed that it was almost invariably the case when a trout had several scars on the outside of his body that it was free from these worms, and I therefore took it for granted that the worms finally worked their way through the body, and the flesh, on healing up, leaves the scars on the outside; the trout, in a short while, becomes plump and healthy again. The only way that I can account for the appearance of these worms is, that the fish swallows certain bugs or insects, and that the larvæ formed from them gradually develop into the full-grown intestinal worm. But even if this explanation of their appearance was received, does it not seem a little strange that while all the fish above the Upper Falls are more or less affected by them, that below and even between the Upper and Lower Falls such a thing as wormy trout is never heard of? Being unable, with my limited knowledge of icthyology, to arrive at any definite conclusion in regard to their appearance, I submit the above facts to those who are more learned than myself in this most interesting branch of natural history." Waterfowl make up in number and variety for the lack of life within the lake. The surface fairly swarms with them. Lieutenant Doane enumerates swans, pelicans, gulls, geese, brants, and many varieties of ducks and dippers; also herons and sand-hill cranes. The pelicans are very plentiful, immense fleets of them sailing in company with the majestic swan, and at nightfall the low, flat islands in the lake are white with them. The gulls are of the same variety as those of San Francisco Harbor. Eagles, hawks, ravens, ospreys, prairie chickens, grouse, mocking-birds and woodpeckers are common in and around the lake basin. Mention is also made of a guide-bird, whose habits correspond with its name. It resembles the blackbird, but is larger. Lieutenant Doane says: "I saw but one of these--the day I went to the bottom of the Grand Cañon; it hopped and flew along from rock to rock ahead of us during the whole trip down, waited perched upon a rock while we were resting, and led us clear to the summit again in the same manner, making innumerable sounds and gestures constantly to attract attention. Others of the party remarked birds of the same kind and acting in the same manner." Herds of deer, elk, and mountain sheep, throng the forests and mountain meadows about the lake. Buffalo signs, grizzly bears and California lions are far from uncommon, while the smaller lakes and creek-valleys of the basin are fairly alive with otter, beaver, mink, and muskrats. Lieutenant Doane observed several unnamed and undescribed species of squirrels and weasels, and doubtless there are many other new varieties of animal life peculiar to this little-known region. One department of natural history, however, is happily unrepresented in the basin. There are no snakes, though rattlesnakes are plentiful down the Yellowstone. There are but two considerable islands in the lake--Stephenson's and Frank's--each about a mile long, narrow and covered with a thick growth of pines. Dot Island, near Frank's, a small lozenge-shaped mud-bank, not over a third of a mile long, and half a dozen of smaller size, usually near the shore, complete the list. The first explorers constructed a rude raft for the purpose of visiting these islands and exploring the shore-line of the lake, but it was speedily wrecked by the choppy waves beat up by the sudden gusts from the mountains. The Geological Expedition took the precaution to carry from Fort Ellis the framework of a little craft, twelve feet long, three and a half feet wide, and twenty-two inches deep, which, covered with well-tarred canvas, made a very serviceable boat for fair-weather navigation. "Our little bark, whose keel was the first to plow the waters of the most beautiful lake on the continent," says Dr. Hayden, "was named by Mr. Stephenson in compliment to Miss Anna L. Dawes, the amiable daughter of Hon. H. L. Dawes. My whole party," he adds, "were glad to manifest, by this slight tribute, their gratitude to the distinguished statesman, whose generous sympathy and aid had contributed so much toward securing the appropriation which enabled them to explore this marvellous region." [Illustration: THE FIRST BOAT ON YELLOWSTONE LAKE.] The little craft rode the waves well and performed excellent service. Its first voyage was to Stephenson's Island, named after the first assistant of the expedition. CHAPTER XI. AROUND YELLOWSTONE LAKE. The Yellowstone leaves the Lake with an easy flow in a channel a quarter of a mile wide, and deep enough to swim a horse. A mile to the eastward of the outlet is the mouth of Pelican Creek, whose swampy valley is the resort of myriads of waterfowl. On the northern side, three or four miles from the lake, Sulphur Hills stand as monuments of a once magnificent system of boiling springs. The deposit covers the side of the mountain to an elevation of 600 feet above the lake shore. The huge white mass of silica, covering an area half a mile square, can be seen from any position on the lake shore, whence it appears like an immense bank of snow. In the valley near Pelican Creek, a few springs issue from beneath the crust, distributing their waters over the bottom and depositing oxide of iron, sulphur, and silica in the most beautiful blending of gay colors. Although the waters of the springs are 160° in temperature, the channels are lined with a thick growth of mosses and other plants, and in the water is an abundance of vividly green vegetation. The mass of hot-spring material built up here cannot be less than 400 feet in thickness. A large portion of it is pudding-stone or conglomerate. Some of the masses inclosed in the fine white silicious cement are themselves globes of pure white silica, eight inches in diameter. It is plain, from the evidence still remaining, that this old ruin has been the theatre of tremendous geyser action at some period not very remote, and that the steam-vents, which are very numerous, represent only the dying stages. These vents or chimneys are richly adorned with brilliant yellow sulphur, sometimes as a hard amorphous coating, and sometimes in delicate crystals that vanish like frost-work at the touch. It seems that it is only during the last stages of these springs that they adorn themselves with these brilliant and vivid colors. Hot springs are scattered along the valley of the creek for several miles, some of them of considerable size and beauty. The average width of the valley is about two miles; the heat from the springs and the extremely fertile soil combining to fill the valley with abundant vegetation. At the northeastern corner of the lake, five or six miles from the outlet, is a long, low spit of land built out into the lake by ancient geyser action. A few roaring steam-vents, giving name to the point, are all that remain of the violent action that once characterized the place. The hot spring area is four or five miles long by two wide; the ground in many places being perforated like a cullender with simmering vents. A mile or so from the lake is a large pond where there is another extensive group of springs, depositing sulphur, alum, common salt, and staining the ground with oxide of iron. South of Steam Point is a small bay bounded by a deposit of yellow clay, full of the remarkable concretions already referred to. Further up the eastern shore are pebbly beaches strewn with agates cornelians, and chips of chalcedony. Beyond, the narrow lake-shore is quite impassable. The adjacent lowlands, and the higher levels and hill-slopes further back, are almost as difficult of penetration, owing to the dense growth of lofty pines and the interminable fire-slashes that cover large areas. These fire-slashes are due to autumnal fires which sweep through the forests, burning the vegetable mould, so that the trees are left without support, and the first wind lays them down in the wildest confusion. Through these networks of fallen timber it is with the utmost difficulty that a passage can be forced. All the explorers speak of the exasperating nature of their tribulations in these wildernesses. Mr. Langford treats it with characteristic good humor. "Ascending the plateau from the beach," he says, "we became at once involved in all the intricacies of a primeval wilderness of pines. Difficulties increased with our progress through it, severely trying the amiability of every member of the company. Our pack-horses would frequently get wedged between the trees or caught in the traps of a network of fallen trunks, from which labor, patience, and ingenuity were severely taxed to extricate them. The ludicrous sometimes came to our relief, proving that there was nothing so effectual in allaying excitement as hearty laughter. We had a remarkable pony in our pack-train, which, from the moment we entered the forest, by his numerous acrobatic performances and mishaps furnished amusement for the company. One part of the process of travel through this forest could only be accomplished by leaping over the fallen trunks, an exploit which, with all the spirit needful for the purpose, our little broncho lacked the power always to perform. As a consequence, he was frequently found with the feat half accomplished, resting upon the midriff, his fore and hind feet suspended over the opposite sides of some huge log. His ambition to excel was only equalled by the patience he exhibited in difficulty. On one occasion, while clambering a steep rocky ascent, his head overtopping his haunches, he literally performed three of the most wonderful backward headsprings ever recorded in equine history. A continued experience of this kind, after three weeks' toilsome travel, found him as sound as on the day of its commencement, and we dubbed him the 'Little Invulnerable.'" In another place Mr. Langford writes: "Our journey of five miles, the next day, was accomplished with great difficulty and annoyance. Almost the entire distance was through a forest piled full of fallen trunks. Travelling was but another name for scrambling; and as man is at times the least amiable of animals, our tempers frequently displayed alarming activity, not only towards the patient creatures laden with our stores, but towards each other. Once, while involved in the reticulated meshes of a vast net of branches and tree-tops, each man, with varied expletive emphasis, clamorously insisting upon a particular mode of extrication, a member of the party, who was always jolly, restored us to instant good-humor by repeating, in theatrical tone and manner, those beautiful lines from Childe Harold:-- "There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore." Our 'Little Invulnerable,' too, was the unconscious cause of many bursts of laughter, which, like the plaudits of an appreciative audience, came in at the right time." The eastern rim of the Yellowstone Basin is formed by one of the grandest volcanic ranges in the world, the general level of their summits being about 10,000 feet above the sea, while numerous peaks thrust their rugged crests a thousand feet higher into the sky. Mr. Langford and Lieutenant Doane were the first to penetrate this range, climbing with great labor one of the highest of the groups of lofty peaks near the southeast corner of the Lake. "The grandeur and vast extent of the view from this elevation," writes Mr. Langford, "beggar description. The lake and valley surrounding it lay seemingly at our feet within jumping distance. Beyond them we saw with great distinctness the jets of the mud volcano and geyser. But beyond all these, stretching away into a horizon of cloud-defined mountains, was the entire Wind River range, revealing in the sunlight the dark recesses, gloomy cañons, stupendous precipices, and glancing pinnacles, which everywhere dotted its jagged slopes. Lofty peaks shot up in gigantic spires from the main body of the range, glittering in the sunbeams like solid crystal. The mountain on which we stood was the most westerly peak of a range which, in long-extended volume, swept to the southeastern horizon, exhibiting a continuous elevation more than thirty miles in width; its central line broken into countless points, knobs, glens, and defiles, all on the most colossal scale of grandeur and magnificence. Outside of these, on either border, along the entire range, lofty peaks rose at intervals, seemingly vying with each other in the varied splendors they presented to the beholder. The scene was full of majesty. The valley at the base of this range was dotted with small lakes and cloven centrally by the river, which, in the far distance, we could see emerging from a cañon of immense dimensions, within the shade of which two enormous jets of steam shot to an incredible height into the atmosphere." Between the lake and this group of mountains--the three highest of which bear the names of Langford, Doane, and Stephenson--is Brimstone Basin. For several miles the ground is impregnated with sulphur, and the air is tainted with sulphurous exhalations. Streams of warm sulphur-water course the hillsides and unite to form a considerable rivulet called Alum Creek, whose channel is coated with a creamy-white mixture of silica and sulphur. Old pine logs, once lofty trees, lie prostrate in every direction over the basin, which covers an area some three miles in extent. From all appearances this basin must have been the scene of thermal activity within a comparatively recent period; but now not a spring can be found with a temperature above that of ordinary spring-water. Similar brimstone basins are numerous around the lake, on the lower slopes of the mountains, at the foot of bluffs, or more frequently in level districts. The latter are always wet, and generally impassable, the thin crust covering an abundance of scalding mud, especially dangerous to horses. The Upper Yellowstone rises in the high volcanic range which shuts off the Yellowstone Basin from the Wind River drainage, forming what is known as the great water-shed of the continent. This range of mountains has a marvellous history. As it is the loftiest, so it is the most remarkable lateral ridge of the Rocky Range. The Indians regard it as the "crest of the world," and among the Blackfeet there is a fable that he who attains its summit catches a view of the land of souls, and beholds the happy hunting-grounds spread out below him, brightening with the abodes of free and generous spirits. In the expedition sent across the continent by Mr. Astor, in 1811, under command of Captain Wilson P. Hunt, that gentleman met with the first serious obstacle to his progress at the base of this range. After numerous efforts to scale it, he turned away and followed the valley of the Snake, encountering the most discouraging disasters until he arrived at Astoria. Later, in 1833, the indomitable Captain Bonneville was lost in this mountain labyrinth, and, after devising various modes of escape, finally determined to ascend the range, which tremendous task he succeeded in accomplishing, in company with one of his men. It was this same line of snow-clad, craggy peaks that turned back Captain Raynolds in 1859. [Illustration: BREAKING THROUGH.] Near its mouth the Upper Yellowstone is about half the size of the main stream as it leaves the lake. Its valley is about three miles wide and very marshy; all the little streams flowing down from the wooded hill-slopes being obstructed by beaver-dams, so as to form continuous chains of ponds. The sides of the valley are dark, sombre walls of volcanic rock, which weathers into curious and imposing forms. Looking up the valley from some high point, one almost imagines himself in the presence of the ruins of some gigantic city, so much like ancient castles and cathedrals do these rocks appear--a deception that is not a little heightened by the singular vertical furrows cut deep into the cliffs. At the base of the walls immense masses of breccia have fallen from the mountain tops, in many instances cutting long swaths through the pine forests. In the upper part of the valley, which in midsummer is lush with vegetation, five streams flow down from the mountains to swell the waters of the Yellowstone. These streams Colonel Barlow calls, in honor of his commander's greatest victory, the Five Forks. Here the valley terminates abruptly, the mountains rising like walls and shutting off the country beyond. Just at the head of the valley is a little lake, a hundred yards or so in width; the large lake which has been placed on maps as Bridger's Lake having no existence. Dr. Hayden with two assistants ascended the mountains to the west of the head of the valley to survey the district bordering on the great divide. From this point as far as the eye can reach on every side are bare, bald peaks, domes and ridges in great numbers. At least one hundred peaks worthy of a name can be located within the radius of vision. The rocks everywhere, though massive, black, and deeply furrowed vertically, have the appearance of horizontal stratification. In some instances the furrows are so regular that the breccia has a columnar appearance. The summits of the mountains are composed entirely of breccia, containing angular masses of trachyte, from 10 to 30 feet in diameter, though most of the fragments are small. Dr. Hayden's party camped at night near a small lake, by the side of a bank of snow, 10,000 feet above the sea, with short spring grass and flowers all around them. There are but two seasons on these mountain summits, spring and winter; as late as August fresh new grass may be seen springing up where a huge bank of snow has just disappeared. Little spring-flowers, seldom more than two or three inches high, cover the ground--_Clatonia_, _Viola_, _Ranunculus_, and many others. The following morning they travelled for several miles along a ridge not more than two hundred yards wide, from one side of which the waters flow into the Pacific, and on the other, into the Atlantic. To the westward the outlines of the Teton Range, with its shark-teeth summits, are most clearly visible, covered with snow. From whatever point of view, the sharp-pointed peaks of this range have the form of huge sharks' teeth. To the southward, for fifty miles at least, nothing but igneous rocks can be seen. Toward the Tetons there is a series of high ridges, passing off from the main Teton Range toward the northeast, and varying in height from 9,500 to 10,500 feet above the sea, and from 1,000 to 1,800 feet above the valleys at their base. The explorers ascended one of the high ridges, (not the highest, however,) and found it to be 1,650 feet above the valley at its foot. The northeast side is steep like a roof, the southwest breaking off abruptly. From the summit of this ridge, the view is grand in the extreme. To the westward the entire country, for the distance of fifty miles, seems to have been thrown up into high, sharp ridges, with gorges 1,000 to 1,500 feet in depth. Beautiful lakes, grassy meadows also, come within the field of vision. "I can conceive," says Dr. Hayden, "of no more wonderful and attractive region for the explorer. It would not be difficult for the traveller to make his way among these grand gorges, penetrating every valley, and ascending every mountain and ridge. The best of grass, wood, water and game are abundant to supply the wants of himself and animals. "I think," he continues, "that numerous passes could be found from the valley of Snake River to the basin of the Yellowstone. It seems to me there are many points on the south rim of the basin where a road could be made with ease into the valley of Snake River. From this ridge there appears to be but little difference in the altitude of Yellowstone Lake and Heart Lake, and they cannot be more than eight or ten miles apart, and yet the latter is one of the sources of Snake River. The little branches of Snake River nearly interlace with some streams that flow into the lake, and the gullies come up within two miles of the shore-line. There is a very narrow dividing ridge in one place, between the drainage, which may be within one mile of the lake." Heart Lake was visited by Colonel Barlow, who found it a pretty, pear-shaped sheet of water, four miles long and two wide in its broadest part. From the north it receives a warm creek fed by a considerable group of hot springs. Its outlet at the southern end joins the terminal creek of Snake River, a few miles from its source among the Yellowstone Mountains. Ten miles northwest of Heart Lake is Madison Lake, the source of Madison River, the country between being a somewhat rugged range of mountains, of which Red Mountain is the most conspicuous. To the eastward from Heart Lake is Mount Sheridan, from the summit of which a magnificent view of the Yellowstone Basin can be obtained. Nearer the great lake is Flat Mountain, whose altitude falls a little short of 10,000 feet. Between Flat Mountain and the Yellowstone Range the divide is very low, some of the branches of Snake River extending up to within two miles of the lake, where the elevation is not more than 400 feet above the lake level. It is doubtless this singular interlacing of the headwaters of the Yellowstone and Snake River that gave rise to Bridger's story of the "Two Ocean River." At sunrise on the morning of August 10th, at the west base of Flat Mountain, the thermometer stood at 15½° Fah., and water froze in Dr. Hayden's tent that night a quarter of an inch thick. It was in this neighborhood that Mr. Everts was lost from the first expedition. The country between Flat Mountain and the hot springs at the southwestern extremity of the lake is a level plateau with alternating spaces of grassy glade and dense thickets of pine around and between a perfect network of small, lily-covered lakes. The hot springs on the lake shore are numerous and of great variety and interest. There are no true geysers, however, though some of the springs are pulsating springs, the water rising and falling in their orifices with great regularity. Higher up the bank are a large number of mud-springs, two or three hundred in all, of variable temperatures, the most of them not differing materially from those already described. Some, however, have a character strikingly unique. The area covered by the springs is about three miles long and half a mile wide, a portion of it reaching out into the lake. Some of the submerged springs have built up funnel-shaped craters of silicious deposit, from five to twenty feet in height, rising from the bottom to the surface of the water. Extending a pole over the deep water, members of Dr. Hayden's party caught trout and cooked them in these boiling springs out in the lake without removing them from the hook. Four hundred yards from the lake shore is a large boiling basin of pink-colored mud, seventy feet in diameter, with a rim of conical mud craters, which project the hot mud in every direction. The deposit speedily hardens into a firm, laminated stone, of beautiful texture, though the brilliant pink color fades to a chalky white. Near and around this basin are a dozen springs, from six to twenty-five feet across, boiling muddy water of a paint-like consistency, varying in color from pure white to dark yellow. Close by are several flowing springs of clear hot water, from ten to fifty feet in diameter, their basins and channels lined with deposits of red, green, yellow, and black, giving them an appearance of gorgeous splendor. The bright colors are on the surface of the rock only, which is too friable to be preserved. Below these springs are several large craters of bluish water, boiling to the height of two feet in the centre, and discharging large streams of water; their rims are raised a few inches in a delicate rock-margin of a fringe-like appearance, deposited from the water. Beyond these are two lakes of purple water, hot, but not boiling, and giving deposits of great beauty. Near by are two more blue springs, one thirty by forty feet, and 173° in temperature. This spring discharges a considerable stream into the other, which is seventy feet distant, and six feet lower. The latter is forty feet by seventy-five, 183° in temperature, and discharges a stream of one hundred inches. The craters of these springs are lined with a silvery-white deposit of silica, which reflect the light so as to illuminate the water to an immense depth. Both craters have perpendicular but irregular walls, and the distance to which objects are visible down in their deep abysses is truly wonderful. West of these is another group of clear watered hot springs, which surpass all the rest in singularity if not in beauty. These have basins of different sizes and immeasurable depth, in which float what appear like raw bullock hides as they look in a tanner's vat, waving sluggishly with every undulation of the water. On examination, this leathery substance proves to be of fragile texture, like the vegetable scum of stagnant pools, and brilliantly colored red, yellow, green, etc., black on the under side. This singular substance is about two inches in thickness, jelly-like to the touch, and is composed largely of vegetable matter, which Dr. Hayden thinks to be diatoms. Of the beautiful transparency of the springs above described, Dr. Hayden says: "So clear was the water that the smallest object could be seen on the sides of the basin; and as the breeze swept across the surface, the ultramarine hue of the transparent depth in the bright sunlight was the most dazzlingly beautiful sight I ever beheld. There were a number of these large clear springs, but not more than two or three that exhibited all those brilliant shades, from deep sea green to ultramarine." Occasionally, says Lieutenant Doane, this anomaly is seen, namely: "two springs, at different levels, both boiling violently; one pours a large and constant stream into the other, yet the former does not diminish, nor does the latter fill up and overflow." Most of the springs, however, seem to be independent of each other, since they have different levels at the surface, different temperatures and pulsations, and rarely are the waters and deposits of any two exactly alike. Passing northward through dense woods and almost impenetrable fire-slashes, the next noteworthy region arrived at is the valley of Bridge Creek, the creek receiving its name from a natural bridge of trachyte thrown across the stream. The bridge is narrow, affording scanty room for the well-worn elk-trail two feet wide, while the descent on either hand is so great that a fall from the bridge would be fatal to man or beast. Numerous herds of elk make daily use of this convenient passway. Dead and dying springs are abundant all along the valley of this creek, the most of them being reduced to mere steam-vents. In one place the spring deposits cover several acres and present a most attractive picture. The ground is thickly covered with conical mounds, from a few inches in diameter to a hundred feet, full of steaming orifices lined with brillant sulphur-crystals. The under side of the heated crust is everywhere adorned in the same manner. The basis of the deposit is snow-white silica, but it is variegated with every shade of yellow from sulphur, and with scarlet from oxide of iron. From a distance the whole region has the appearance of a vast lime-kiln in full operation. Most of the country has been eroded into rounded hills from fifty to two hundred feet high, composed of the whitish-yellow and pinkish clays and sands of the modern lake deposit, which seems to prevail more or less all round the rim of the basin, reaching several hundred feet above the present level of the lake. Between Bridge Creek and the outlet of the lake, completing the circuit of the basin, is the Elephant's Back, a long, low mountain, noticeable only for its rounded summit and precipitous sides. CHAPTER XII. UPPER GEYSER BASIN OF FIREHOLE RIVER. Just over the western margin of the Yellowstone Basin, yet within the limits of our great National Park, is the grand geyser region of Firehole River. Here, in a valley a dozen miles long and two or three wide, is an exhibition of boiling and spouting springs on a scale so stupendous that if all the corresponding phenomena of all the rest of the world could be brought into an equal area the display would seem as nothing in comparison. Firehole River, the main fork of the Madison, has its source in Madison Lake, a beautiful sheet of water set like a gem among the mountains, dense forests of pines coming down to the very shores. A pointed ridge extends into the lake on the west side about half a mile, giving it the form of a heart. Its area is about three miles from north to south, and two from east to west. Its shores are paved with masses of trachyte and obsidian. The high mountains about the lake and along the river are gashed with deep gorges, with steep and jagged sides. Pines grow upon the mountain-sides where the declivity is so great that they cannot be scaled. In the obstructed gorges and on the mountain-tops, from 9,000 to 10,000 feet above the sea, little lakes occur every mile or so, nestled among the pines. Clear-watered mountain-torrents tumble down the almost vertical ridges to swell the Firehole, making cascades that in any other region would enjoy world-wide fame. Just before reaching the geyser-basin, some ten miles below the lake, the river roars through a deep gorge in the trachyte rock, and as it emerges, dashes over two cliffs, one twenty, the other fifty feet in height. "These pretty falls," writes Lieutenant Doane, "if located on an Eastern stream, would be celebrated in history and song; here, amid objects so grand as to strain conception and stagger belief, they were passed without a halt." Shortly after, the cañon widens and the dominion of the Fire King begins. Scattered along both banks of the river are boiling springs from two to twelve feet across, all in active eruption. The craters of these springs are from three to forty feet high. Like the springs on Gardiner's River, these gradually seal themselves up by depositing mineral matter around and over their orifices. Numbers of such self-extinguished craters, now cones of solid rock, are scattered along the river-side. Two miles further down the stream is the upper geyser-basin, an open, rolling valley, two miles wide and three long, the mountains on either side rising 1,500 feet above the valley, with steep, heavily-timbered ledges of dark rock. Hurrying down the Firehole, thinking the wonders of the Yellowstone country had been left behind, and anxious only to reach the settlements of the Madison Valley, the expedition of 1871 was startled and astonished to see at no great distance an immense volume of clear, sparkling water projected into the air to the height of one hundred and twenty-five feet. "Geysers! geysers!" exclaimed one of the company, and, spurring their jaded horses, they were soon gathered around an unexpected phenomenon--a perfect geyser. The aperture through which the column of water was projected was an irregular oval, three feet by seven in diameter. The margin of sinter was curiously piled up, the exterior crust filled with little hollows full of water, in which were globules of sediment, gathered around bits of wood and other nuclei This geyser stands on a mound, thirty feet above the level of the surrounding plain, its crater rising five or six feet higher. It spouted at regular intervals nine times during the explorers' stay, the columns of boiling water being thrown from ninety to one hundred and twenty-five feet at each discharge, which lasted from fifteen to twenty minutes. They gave it the name of "Old Faithful." "Near the crater, and as far as the irruptive waters reach," writes Lieutenant Doane, "the character of the deposit is very peculiar. Close around the opening are built up walls, eight feet in height, of spherical nodules, from six inches to three feet in diameter. These stony spheres, in turn, are covered with minute globules of stalagmite, incrusted with a thin glazing of silica. The rock, at a distance, appears the color of ashes of roses, but near at hand shows a metallic gray, with pink and yellow margins of the utmost delicacy. Being constantly wet, the colors are brilliant beyond description. Sloping gently from this rim of the crater in every direction the rocks are full of cavities in successive terraces, forming little pools, with margins of silica the color of silver, the cavities being of irregular shape, constantly full of hot water, and precipitating delicate, coral-like beads of a bright saffron. These cavities are also fringed with rock around the edges, in meshes as delicate as the finest lace. Diminutive yellow columns rise from their depths, capped with small tablets of rock, and resembling flowers growing in the water. Some of them are filled with oval pebbles of a brilliant white color, and others with a yellow frost-work which builds up gradually in solid stalagmites. Receding still farther from the crater, the cavities become gradually larger, and the water cooler, causing changes in the brilliant colorings, and also in the formations of the deposits. These become calcareous spar, of a white or slate color, and occasionally variegated. The water of the geyser is colorless, tasteless, and without odor. The deposits are apparently as delicate as the down on the butterfly's wing, both in texture and coloring, yet are firm and solid beneath the tread. Those who have seen the stage representations of "Aladdin's Cave," and the "Home of the Dragon Fly," as produced in a first-class theatre, can form an idea of the wonderful coloring, but not of the intricate frost-work, of this fairy-like, yet solid mound of rock, growing up amid clouds of steam and showers of boiling water. One instinctively touches the hot ledges with his hands, and sounds with a stick the depths of the cavities in the slope, in utter doubt in the evidence of his own eyes. The beauty of the scene takes away one's breath. It is overpowering, transcending the visions of the Moslem's Paradise." As the next party of explorers were leaving the basin, ascending the river, this grand old geyser, which stands sentinel at the head of the valley, gave them a magnificent parting display. "With little or no preliminary warning," writes Dr. Hayden, "it shot up a column of water about six feet in diameter to the height of 100 to 150 feet, and by a succession of impulses seemed to hold it up steadily for the space of fifteen minutes, the great mass of water falling directly back into the basin, and flowing over the edges and down the sides in large streams. When the action ceases, the water recedes beyond sight, and nothing is heard but the occasional escape of steam until another exhibition occurs. This is one of the most accommodating geysers in the basin, and during our stay played once an hour quite regularly." Old Faithful stands alone, though surrounded by a number of old geyser hills, whether built up in past ages by one spring shifting its position from time to time, or by a group of springs, now almost exhausted, it is impossible to tell. Just across the river, and close to the margin, stands a silicious cone, very symmetrical, slightly corrugated on its exterior surface, three feet in height and five in diameter at its base. Its orifice is oval, with scalloped edges, and two feet by three in diameter. Of this unpretending cone Mr. Langford writes: "Not one of our company supposed that it was a geyser; and among so many wonders it had almost escaped notice. While we were at breakfast upon the morning of our departure a column of water, entirely filling the crater, shot from it, which, by accurate triangular measurement, we found to be 219 feet in height. The stream did not deflect more than four or five degrees from a vertical line, and the eruption lasted eighteen minutes. We named it 'The Bee-hive.'" A hundred yards further from the river, near the centre of the large group of spouting and boiling geysers, of which the Bee-hive is one, is a large oval aperture with scalloped edges, the diameters of which were eighteen and twenty-five feet, the sides corrugated and covered with a greyish-white silicious deposit, which was distinctly visible at the depth of one hundred feet below the surface. "No water could be discovered," writes Mr. Langford, on his first approach to the spring, "but we could distinctly hear it gurgling and boiling at a great distance below. Suddenly it began to rise, boiling and spluttering, and sending out huge masses of steam, causing a general stampede of our company, driving us some distance from our point of observation. When within about forty feet of the surface it became stationary, and we returned to look down upon it. It was foaming and surging at a terrible rate, occasionally emitting small jets of hot water nearly to the mouth of the orifice. All at once it seemed seized with a fearful spasm, and rose with incredible rapidity, hardly affording us time to flee to a safe distance, when it burst from the orifice with terrific momentum, rising in a column the full size of this immense aperture to the height of sixty feet; and through and out of the apex of this vast aqueous mass, five or six lesser jets or round columns of water, varying in size from six to fifteen inches in diameter, were projected to the marvellous height of two hundred and fifty feet. These lesser jets, so much higher than the main column, and shooting through it, doubtless proceed from auxiliary pipes leading into the principal orifice near the bottom, where the explosive force is greater.... This grand eruption continued for twenty minutes, and was the most magnificent sight we ever witnessed. We were standing on the side of the geyser nearest the sun, the gleams of which filled the sparkling column of water and spray with myriads of rainbows, whose arches were constantly changing,--dipping and fluttering hither and thither and disappearing only to be succeeded by others, again and again, amid the aqueous column, while the minute globules into which the spent jets were diffused when falling sparkled like a shower of diamonds, and around every shadow which the denser clouds of vapor, interrupting the sun's rays, cast upon the column, could be seen a luminous circle radiant with all the colors of the prism, and resembling the halo of glory represented in paintings as encircling the head of Divinity. All that we had previously witnessed seemed tame in comparison with the perfect grandeur and beauty of this display. Two of these wonderful eruptions occurred during the twenty-two hours we remained in the valley. This geyser we named 'The Giantess.'" The central spring of this group stands on the summit of a great mound built up in thin layers, by the continual but moderate overflow of the spring. The crater is twenty feet in diameter, slightly bubbling or boiling near the centre, and with a thin, elegant ring projecting a few inches over the water. Looking down into the clear water of this spring one seems to be gazing into fathomless depths, while the bright blue of the water is unequalled even by the sea. There are many such central springs, usually crowning the summits of mounds, and with projecting rims carved with an intricate delicacy truly marvellous, and adorned with colors that defy description. "The great beauty of the prismatic colors," writes Dr. Hayden, "depends much on the sunlight; about the middle of the day, when the bright rays descend nearly vertically, and a slight breeze just makes a ripple on the surface, the colors exceed comparison; when the surface is calm there is one vast chaos of colors, dancing, as it were, like the colors of a kaleidoscope. As seen through this marvellous play of colors, the decorations on the sides of the basin are lighted up with a wild, weird beauty, which wafts one at once into the land of enchantment; all the brilliant feats of fairies and genii in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments are forgotten in the actual presence of such marvellous beauty; life becomes a privilege and a blessing after one has seen and thoroughly felt its cunning skill." Across the river, and a short distance below this group, is the largest and most imposing formation in the valley--the crater of Castle Geyser. This geyser receives its name from its resemblance to the ruins of an old castle as one enters the valley from the east. The deposited silica has crystallized in immense globular masses, like cauliflowers or spongiform corals, apparently formed about a nucleus at right angles to the centre. The entire mound is about forty feet high, and the chimney twenty feet. The lower portion rises in steps formed of thin laminæ of silica, mostly very thin, but sometimes compact, an inch or two thick. On the southeast side, where the water is thrown out continually, these steps are ornamented with the usual bead and shell work, with the large cauliflower-like masses: but the other portions are fast going to decay, and the débris are abundant. This has undoubtedly been one of the most active and powerful geysers in the basin; it still keeps up a great roaring inside, and every few moments, as observed by Dr. Hayden, it throws out a column of water to the height of ten or fifteen feet. Occasionally it seems to have more imposing eruptions, since on one occasion Lieutenant Doane saw it throw a column of water to the height of sixty feet, with the escape of heavy volumes of steam. The next year Colonel Barlow saw a similar display. According to the latter observer, the base of the crater is three hundred and twenty-five feet in circumference, and the turret one hundred and twenty-five. At the base of the turret lies a large petrified pine log, covered with a brilliant incrustation several inches thick. Across the river, and a little below the Castle, are some fifty springs and geysers, the chief of which has been called Grand Geyser, its power seeming greater than that of any other in the valley. Lieutenant Doane describes this magnificent geyser as follows: "Opposite camp, on the other side of the river, is a high ledge of stalagmite, sloping from the base of the mountain down to the river. Numerous small knolls are scattered over its surface; the craters of boiling springs from 15 to 25 feet in diameter; some of these throw water to the height of three and four feet. On the summit of this bank of rock is the grand geyser of the world, a well in the strata, 20 by 25 feet in diametric measurements, (the perceptible elevation of the rim being but a few inches,) and when quiet having a visible depth of 100 feet. The edge of the basin is bounded by a heavy fringe of rock, and stalagmite in solid layers is deposited by the overflowing waters. When an eruption is about to occur the basin gradually fills with boiling water to within a few feet of the surface, then suddenly, with heavy concussions, immense clouds of steam rise to the height of 500 feet, and the whole great body of water, 20 by 25 feet, ascends in one gigantic column to the height of 90 feet; from the apex of this column five great jets shoot up, radiating slightly from each other, to the unparalleled altitude of 250 feet from the ground. The earth trembles under the descending deluge from this vast fountain; a thousand hissing sounds are heard in the air; rainbows encircle the summits of the jets with a halo of celestial glory. The falling water plows up and bears away the shelly strata, and a seething flood pours down the slope and into the river. It is the grandest, the most majestic, and most terrible fountain in the world. After playing thus for twenty minutes it gradually subsides, the water lowers into the crater out of sight, the steam ceases to escape, and all is quiet. This grand geyser played three times in the afternoon, but appears to be irregular in its periods, as we did not see it in eruption again while in the valley. Its waters are of a deep ultramarine color, clear and beautiful. The waving to and fro of the gigantic fountain, in a bright sunlight, when its jets are at their highest, affords a spectacle of wonder of which any description can give but a feeble idea. Our whole party were wild with enthusiasm; many declared it was 300 feet in height; but I have kept, in the figures as set down above, within the limits of absolute certainty." [Illustration: THE GRAND GEYSER OF THE FIREHOLE BASIN.] Dr. Hayden describes it with equal enthusiasm. "We camped the evening of August 5th, in the middle of the Upper Geyser Basin, in the midst of some of the grandest geysers in the world. Colonel Barlow and Captain Heap, of the United States Engineers, were camped on the opposite side of the Firehole. Soon after reaching camp a tremendous rumbling was heard, shaking the ground in every direction, and soon a column of steam burst forth from a crater near the edge of the east side of the river. Following the steam by a succession of impulses, a column of water, apparently six feet in diameter, rose to the height of 200 feet, while the steam ascended a thousand feet or more. So steady and uniform did the force act, that the column of water appeared to be held there for some minutes, returning into the basin in millions of prismatic drops. This was continued for about fifteen minutes, and the rumbling and confusion attending it could be compared only to that of a charge in battle. It would be difficult to describe the intense excitement which attended such a display. It is probable that if we could have remained in the valley several days, and become accustomed to all the preliminary warnings, the excitement would have ceased, and we could have admired calmly the marvellous ease and beauty with which this column of hot water was held up to that great height for the space of twenty minutes. After the display is over the water settles down in the basin several inches and the temperature slowly falls to 150°. We called this the Grand Geyser, for its power seemed greater than any other of which we obtained any knowledge in the valley. The are two orifices in one basin; one of them seems to have no raised rim, and is a very modest-looking spring in a state of quiescence, and no one would for a moment suspect the power that was temporarily slumbering below. The orifice is oblong, two and a half by four feet, while for the space of ten feet in every direction around it are rounded masses of silica, from a few inches to three feet in diameter, looking like spongiform corals. Nothing could exceed the crystal clearness of the water. This is the Grand Geyser. Within twenty feet of this orifice is a second one, of irregular quadrangular form, fifteen by twenty-five feet; the east side of the main outer rim of reservoir extended twenty feet beyond the large orifice. The bottom of this great reservoir is covered with thick spongiform masses, and in addition the rim is most elegantly adorned with countless pearl-like beads, of all sizes. There are several beautiful triangular reservoirs, one and one half by three feet, set around the outer sides of the rim, with numerous smaller ones, full of clear water, with hundreds of small depressions most beautifully scalloped. As we recede from the rim, the waters as they pass slowly away produce, by evaporation, broad shallow basins, with thin, elegantly colored partitions, portions of which have the form of toad-stools. When the water settles into these depressions, or flows away toward the river in numerous small channels, the wonderful variety of coloring which is so attractive to the eye is produced. The larger orifice seems to be in a state of violent agitation as often as once in twenty minutes, raising up the entire mass of water ten or fifteen feet. It is never altogether quiet. Although these two orifices are within the same rim, I could not ascertain that there is the slightest connection with each other. When the large orifice is much agitated it does not disturb the equanimity of the Grand Geyser. They both operate perfectly independently of each other. Indeed I do not know that there is a connection between any of the springs in the whole basin, though there may be in some rare cases. The Grand Geyser operated twice while we were in the basin, with an interval of about thirty-two hours; of course the displays could not be exactly periodic, but it would be an interesting study to remain several days to watch carefully the movements of such a power." Just east of Grand Geyser is the Saw-mill, a moderate sized geyser, with three smaller ones by the side of it, all playing at the same time. From the larger a column of water is constantly shot up fifteen or twenty feet, with much the sound of the escape of steam from a pipe. The orifice is not more than six inches in diameter; but with the three smaller ones playing at the same time a great commotion is excited. Near this little group are several large boiling springs, which throw up the water in the centre from two to four feet. These are funnel-shaped, with orifices from six inches to two feet in diameter, in basins with nearly circular rims, from fifteen to forty feet in diameter. About one fourth of a mile northeast of the Castle, upon a mound thirty feet about above the river, built up of thin laminæ of silica, and rounded off, rise four chimneys of different sizes, which are geysers, though perhaps not spouting extensively at present. One is twelve inches high, nearly circular, and three feet in diameter; the second is oblong, four by six feet, with rather coarsely scolloped margins, with an aperture about fifteen inches in diameter; the third chimney is about three feet high and six feet in diameter at the base, with an orifice nearly quadrangular twelve inches across. The spongiform masses inside are covered all over with beautiful pearly beads of silica. The fourth chimney rises five feet above the mound, is ten feet in diameter at the base, with an orifice two feet across, lined inside with the spongiform masses. This has been at one time a first-class geyser, but is now fast going to decay, a beautiful ruin. The elegant bead work on the margin, and all the spongiform masses, now are falling into pieces, forming great quantities of _débris_ around the base of the mound. There is also one boiling spring of great beauty. The orifice, which is nearly circular and beautifully scolloped around the margin, extends straight down, and the water rises within an inch or two of the margin. The water is in a state of constant agitation, boiling up two feet at times. The margin has a coating of bright cream-yellow, while all around the surface there is the most delicate and intricate embroidering, surpassing the most elaborate lace-work. Surrounding the crater is an outer reservoir four feet wide, with a white and reddish-yellow rim, while in the bottom of the reservoir is the variegated sediment which aids in giving such a wonderfully gay appearance to the spring. A stream of water flows from the spring to the river, and the channel is lined for fifty yards with the variegated sediment. Near this is another mound which rises, with laminated steps, about six feet. Dr. Hayden called it the Bathtub. It has much the shape and size of an ordinary bathing-tub, five feet by ten, beautifully scolloped around the inner margin with the spongiform or cauliflower masses of silica, the outer surface being adorned with the greatest profusion of pearly beads. The water is constantly boiling up two feet high, though but a small quantity flows from the spring. The entire valley is full of similar springs, many of these no doubt geysers whose periods of activity have never been observed. "We could not distinguish," writes Lieut. Doane, "the geysers from the other hot springs except by seeing them play, and doubtless there are many besides in the valley of great size, which we saw when quiet, and classed as boiling springs. They all vary in times, force, deposits, and color of water. The number of springs of all kinds in the valley is not less than fifteen hundred; and, with the exception of the Bluestone Springs, scarcely any two are exactly alike. Taken as an aggregate, the Firehole Basin surpasses all the other great wonders of the continent. It produces an effect on the mind of the beholder utterly staggering and overpowering. During the night we were several times awakened by the rush of steam and the hissing of the waters, as the restless geysers spouted forth in the darkness. A constant rumbling, as of machinery in labor, filled the air, which was damp and warm throughout the night." Lieutenant Doane's suspicion that many quiet-looking springs were slumbering geysers, was speedily and grandly justified. The very next morning his company were awakened by a fearful hissing sound, accompanied by the rush of falling water. On looking out, they saw on the other side of the stream a small crater, three feet in height, with an opening 26 inches in diameter, which had scarcely been noticed on the previous day. Now it was playing a perpendicular jet to the height of 219 feet, amid great clouds of steam, and causing the ground to tremble as the heavy body of water fell with tremendous splashes upon the shelly strata below. Huge masses of rock were torn from their places and borne away into the river channel. It played thus, steadily, for ten minutes, giving time to obtain an accurate measurement by triangulation. This crater gave no notice of being a geyser, and its appearance and size, compared with others, were altogether insignificant. "We were more than ever convinced," adds Lieutenant Doane, "that continued observation would develop the knowledge of geysers in greater numbers, and perhaps of greater projectile force than any we had seen." Crossing the river once more to the south side--that of Old Faithful and the Castle--we find another large group of springs, the chief of which is the Giant. This is remarkable rather for its immense flow of water than for any peculiarity of structure. It has a rugged crater, shaped like the base of a broken horn, twelve feet high. Its cavity or nozzle is seven feet in diameter. [Illustration: THE GIANT GEYSER.] During its quiescent state the boiling water can be seen in its chambers at a depth of forty feet, the action of the steam and water together producing a loud, rumbling sound. Near, and acting in concert with it, are half a dozen smaller craters from two to eight feet in height, constantly full of water, and boiling violently from two to six feet into the air. "This great geyser," says Lieutenant Doane, "played several times while we were in the valley, on one occasion throwing constantly for over three hours a stream of water seven feet in diameter, from 90 to 200 feet perpendicularly. While playing it doubled the size of the Firehole River." At the base of the mountain further south is a remarkable geyser, discovered by Colonel Barlow, and called by him the Comet. The crater of this geyser is very beautiful, though, being but slightly elevated above the general slope of the plateau, it might easily be overlooked, should it not happen to play during the visit of an examining party. There are three openings. One, a very small aperture, emits puffs of steam, similar to the exhaust-pipe of a steam engine. The large one in the centre, six feet across, boils violently during an eruption, but does not throw water to a great height. The third opening is the geyser proper. It is twelve by eighteen inches in diameter, somewhat narrowed as it descends, and is of great depth--smooth and straight. These cavities are all lined with delicate deposit, beautifully enamelled, in appearance as delicate as frost-work, but hard and strong, requiring the assistance of a hammer to detach fragments for specimens. Soon after Colonel Barlow entered the basin he witnessed a grand eruption of this geyser. He says: "A roar was heard near the hill-side a hundred yards distant, and upon rushing out in that direction we saw a huge mass of steam issuing from a crater at the base of the hill, accompanied by a column of water rising to a height far exceeding that of any geyser yet seen. This grand fountain continued to play for several minutes, when, having subsided, I approached to obtain a closer view of the aperture whence had issued such a powerful stream. A sudden gush of steam drove me away, following which the water was again impelled upward and upward, far above the steam, until it seemed to have lost the controlling force of gravity. The roar was like the sound of a tornado, but there was no apparent effort--a steady stream, very graceful and perfectly vertical, except as a slight breeze may have waved it to and fro. Strong and smooth, it continued to ascend, like the stream from a powerful steam fire-engine. We were all lost in astonishment at the sudden and marvellous spectacle. I have no hesitancy in stating that this geyser played to the height of over two hundred feet. It commenced at five o'clock in the afternoon and continued twenty minutes. "The enthusiasm of the party as they watched this wondrous display knew no bounds. Those who were usually loud and boisterous in the exhibition of their feelings, became subdued and simply gazed in silent awe; while the more sober members seemed to lose their natural gravity and manifested their delight in shouts of rapture. For myself, I remember trying to obtain a view of the fountain from all points of the compass at once, and was brought to a realizing sense of the difficulties attending the execution of this desire, by discovering that I was waiting in the torrent of hot water which was now flooding the nearly level surface of the surrounding rock. "After the grand column of water subsided, vast clouds of steam, were for some time ejected from the throat of the geyser, and also from a small rent close beside the main orifice. "During the following day we watched this crater with increasing vigilance in the hope of witnessing another of its stupendous exhibitions. The photographer kept his camera levelled upon the spot all day, and careful arrangements for triangulating the height of the column were also made. But though numerous indications of another eruption were observed at intervals by the rising of the water with violent ebullitions, no explosion occurred till about ten o'clock at night, when the grand performance was repeated. The spectacle by moonlight was truly sublime, but less satisfactory than in the day, since it was more difficult to distinguish between the column of water and the masses of vapor escaping with it. The interval between its eruptions was approximately determined as about twenty-nine hours; we therefore reasoned that it would play again at three o'clock the following night, and at eight on the succeeding morning. But we were doomed to disappointment; the eruption persisted in taking-place before daylight on the three succeeding nights, thus preventing the observations we so much desired to make." Two hundred yards below the Giant is the Grotto so named from the curious irregularity of its inclosing walls. It has an exceedingly intricate formation, with fantastic arches, pillars, and turreted sides, and discharges several times a day. Several of the first explorers crawled through the sinuous apertures when all was quiet. It seemed as harmless as curious then, but their opinion was changed slightly when they saw it an hour after throwing a column of water six feet in diameter to the height of sixty feet. Near it are several vents in which the water boils constantly to the height of six feet, large streams running down the banks into the river. Around the point of a hill a few hundred yards south of the Grotto, and partially concealed by a grove of pines, is a white cone twenty-five feet high and a hundred feet in diameter at the base. It has evidently been a geyser of considerable importance, but it now merely sends forth puffs of steam from a small orifice at the top. Near it is a quiet hot-spring with a most elegantly scalloped rim. Back of this Pyramid is the Punch Bowl, and still further south, the Black Sand Geyser, neither of which has been specially described. Returning to the river and crossing we find at the water's edge, nearly opposite the Grotto, the Riverside Geyser, and a short distance below, on the same side, is the Fan. The latter geyser has a double orifice, which discharges five radiating jets to the height of sixty feet, the falling drops and spray giving the appearance of a feather fan. The effect is very beautiful. Its eruptions are frequent, lasting usually from ten to thirty minutes. A vent connected with it, about forty feet distant, expels dense masses of vapor fifty or sixty feet high, accompanied by loud, sharp reports, during the time the geyser is in action. Lieutenant Doane describes the curious action of these vents as follows: "First the steam would rush from the upper crater, roaring violently, then this would suddenly cease, to be followed by a fan-like jet of water rising from the lower crater to the height of over forty feet, playing for perhaps two minutes; then this would suddenly stop flowing, and the steam would rush forth again for a time. Occasionally the small crater threw a transverse stream, alternating with the others; and thus they played on for hours, after which all would subside to a gentle bubbling." [Illustration: FAN GEYSER.] Along both banks of the river are small craters built up in every conceivable shape. Several streams pour out cascades from round holes in the rocky bank of the river, and all around are little geysers playing at intervals from six to forty feet. A plateau opposite the Fan contains fifteen hot springs of various characteristics; some are of a deep blue color and have fantastic caverns distinctly visible below the surface of the water. The openings at the surface are often beautifully edged with delicately wrought rock fringes. One variety deposits a red or brown leathery substance, partially adhering to the sides and bottom of the cavern and waving to and fro like water plants. In size these springs vary from five to forty feet in diameter. Two hundred yards below the Fan are two lively geysers called the Sentinels. The one on the right bank of the stream is in constant agitation, its waters revolving horizontally with great violence, occasionally spouting upward to the height of twenty feet, with a lateral projection of fifty feet. Much steam is thrown off at each eruption. The crater of this geyser is three feet by ten. The companion Sentinel on the other side of the stream is smaller and less active. At this point the river-valley is narrow and the stream rapid, with a considerable fall. Forty or fifty comparatively unimportant geysers and boiling springs are scattered along the narrow valley to the junction of Iron Spring Creek, the lower limit of the Upper Geyser Basin. Iron Spring Creek, a stream about half the size of Firehole River, takes its name from a group of springs on its banks, about a mile south of the Giant. Among the most noticeable of these is a group of eight beautiful springs enclosed in a single rim, one hundred and forty feet in length. The interior of the basin is lined with a rose-colored deposit. These springs are situated on the crest of an eminence incrusted with rocky deposits which encroach on the adjacent forest, whose dead and whitened trunks bear evidence of the deadly effect of the hot water flowing among them. On a considerable mound, at the junction of Iron Creek with the main stream, is a group of geysers that do not differ materially from those already described. The central member of the group is known as Soda Geyser. [Illustration: THE BEE-HIVE.] CHAPTER XIII. LOWER GEYSER BASIN.--FIREHOLE RIVER. Between the Upper and Lower Geyser Basin is a space of two or three miles entirely free from hot springs; yet the abundance of spring deposit over all the valley shows that the region was once the scene of great thermal activity; the bottom over which the river flows is paved with silica. Vegetation grows remarkably rank along the stream, and in the valley where the crust of silica does not prevent it, the perpetual warmth caused by the proximity to the springs being very favorable to the growth of plants. The forest grows close down to the margin of the river, making travel very difficult, and in one place the hills of trachyte almost close in the valley. At the upper end of the basin--which comprises an area of about thirty square miles--are three large boiling springs, on the west margin of the river; nearly opposite are three more, and a short distance below, on the same side, four or five more. Anywhere else these springs would be accounted marvels; but they are so eclipsed by a group a few rods further down the stream that we can give them only a passing glance. This group includes some of the grandest hot-springs in the world. The most formidable is near the margin of the river. Dr. Hayden says: "It seems to have broken out close by the river, and to have continually enlarged its orifice by the breaking down of its sides. It evidently commenced on the east side, and the continual wear of the under side of the crust on the west side has caused the margin to fall in, until an aperture at least 250 feet in diameter has been formed, with walls or sides twenty to thirty feet high, showing the laminæ of deposition perfectly. The water is intensely agitated all the time, boiling like a caldron, from which a vast column of steam is ever rising, filling the orifice. As the passing breeze sweeps it away for a moment, one looks down into this terrible seething pit with terror. All around the sides are large masses of the silicious crust that have fallen from the rim. An immense column of water flows out of this caldron into the river. As it pours over the marginal slope, it descends by numerous small channels, with a large number of smaller ones spreading over a broad surface, and the marvellous beauty of the strikingly vivid coloring far surpasses anything of the kind we have seen in this land of wondrous beauty--every possible shade of color, from the vivid scarlet to a bright rose, and every shade of yellow to delicate cream, mingled with vivid green from minute vegetation. Some of the channels were lined with a very fine, delicate yellow, silky material, which vibrates at every movement of the waters. Mr. Thomas Moran, the distinguished artist, obtained studies of these beautiful springs, and from his well-known reputation as a colorist, we look for a painting that will convey some conception to the mind of the exquisite variety of colors around this spring. There was one most beautiful funnel-shaped spring, twenty feet in diameter at the top, but tapering down, lined inside and outside with the most delicate decorations. Indeed, to one looking down into its clear depths, it seemed like a fairy palace. The same jelly-like substance or pulp to which I have before alluded, covers a large area with the various shades of light-red and green. The surface yields to the tread like a cushion. It is about two inches in thickness, and although seldom so tenacious as to hold together, yet it may be taken up in quite large masses, and when it becomes dry it is blown about by the wind like fragments of variegated lichens." Near this magnificent spring is a hill of silica with a spring 150 feet in diameter on its summit. It is known as the Cauldron. The water boils up in the centre, and overflows with such uniformity on all sides as to form a succession of ornamental steps, from one to three inches in height, just as water would freeze in flowing down a gentle declivity. It has the same transparent clearness, the same brilliancy of coloring, as the spring above described, but the hot steam and the thinness of the rim prevented an approach near enough to observe its depth, or ascertain its temperature, except at one edge, where it was 180°. The average temperature of twenty of the springs of this group was 184°. About a mile below this group, on the west side of the river, are four small lakes, with quiet surfaces and water as blue as the sky. One of them is nearly half a mile in length. Their water is cold at the present time, but their basins give indications of their having once been enormous hot springs. A mile or so further down the river is a group of a hundred or more important springs besides a countless number of unimportant and dead springs, covering a space of nearly a square mile. Only a few of them can be specially noticed here. One, on the right bank of the river, is called the Conch Spring, from the resemblance of its basin to a shell, eight feet by ten. A little below the Conch Spring, on the very margin of the river, is a fine geyser, which has built for itself a crater three feet high, with a shell a foot thick. The inside of the crater is about six feet in diameter. The water is in constant agitation; sometimes it will boil up so violently as to throw the entire mass up four feet, and then it will die down so as to boil like a caldron. The water is perfectly clear, and the overflow forms a stream six inches wide and two inches deep, passing down the sides of the crater and thence into the river along a most exquisitely decorated channel. The entire surface of the crater is covered with pearl-like beads, formed by the spray. A section of the crater shows it to have been built up very slowly, in thin laminæ. Another spring has a crater like a horn, about a foot in diameter at the top and six feet at the base. It is called the Horn Geyser. It is in constant ebullition, and has the same ornamentations as the one just described. A spring on a level with the river has an enormous square basin, thirty feet across, of unknown depth. It is called the Bath Spring. A little below is another basin of wonderful beauty, called the Cavern. The water issues from several apertures beneath the crust near the margin of the river. The basin itself is fifteen by twenty feet, and twenty feet deep. Nothing can exceed the transparent clearness of the water; the slightest object is reflected in its clear depths, and the bright blue tints are indescribable. Mud springs are also numerous and important in this group. As usual, they are of all sizes, from an inch or two to twenty or thirty feet in diameter, with contents varying from turbid water to stiff mud. They seldom have any visible outlet, but are in constant agitation, with a sound which varies with the consistency of the contents; several give off a suppressed thud as the gases burst their way through the stiff mortar. Sometimes the mortar is as white as snow; sometimes brown, or tinged with a variety of vivid colors. One mud spring, located in the woods near a small lake, northeast of the Cavern, has a basin thirty by forty feet, with sides fifteen feet high. It is in constant action, frequently hurling the mud outside of the rim. All around it are a number of little vents, which keep up a simmering noise. Some of these vents have built up little cones, from four to twelve inches high, many of them sealed at the top. On removing the cone, the inside is found to be lined with delicate crystals of sulphur, deposited from the steam. On the opposite side of the river, along a little branch that flows in from the west, is a considerable group of geysers and boiling springs. Near the base of the mountains is a first-class boiling spring with a curious fungus-like rim. It is always in violent agitation, sending forth great columns of steam. It flows from beneath a hill, and is surrounded with springs whose silicious deposits take the form of the toad-stool fungus. Some of this group may be called spasmodic springs. One, with a most beautifully scalloped rim, fifteen by twenty feet in diameter, is always boiling, and occasionally explodes with great violence, shooting its water several feet into the air. Along the eastern side of this Lower Geyser Basin are several extensive areas abounding in mud-springs, boiling springs and geysers, whose infinitely varied characteristics can have no more than the briefest notice. Beginning at the north, the first that commands attention is that whose central object of interest is the Thud Geyser, so called from the peculiar noise it makes as the water rises and recedes. It is situated on the slope of a small hill, is about twenty feet in diameter, and has a crater five feet wide and five high, composed of geyserite of a greyish color, full of deep pockets containing balls of the same material, about the size of walnuts, each one covered with little rosette-like formations. The column of water thrown out by this geyser during its eruptions is very wide, and reaches the height of fifty feet. Near it was obtained some pieces of wood, coated with geyserite of a delicate pink tinge: the silica had thoroughly penetrated the woody fibre. There were found, also, pine-cones coated in the same manner, forming beautiful specimens. A few yards back of the geyser are three large mud-springs, in one of which the mud is red, in another white, and in the third pink--the jets of steam causing the mud to assume the form of small conical points throughout the basins. They are situated in a bed of clay, the red color being due to iron. Below these latter are some chalybeate springs whose bright-red iron deposit have spread over a considerable area, in glaring contrast with the white color of the silicious deposits of their neighbors. In the same group is a fissure spring forty feet long, four feet wide and ten deep, clear as crystal; also a large basin nearly circular, fifty feet in diameter with a number of huge apertures, some of which throw up water thirty feet. One orifice shoots a constant stream six feet high. All around this geyser-group are smaller springs continually bubbling, and large numbers of small geysers, some constantly playing to heights not exceeding ten feet, while others merely keep up a violent ebullition, rising and falling with a pulsating motion. There is also one beautiful quiet spring, with a basin so large that it looks like a small lake. Into its clear depths one may look down thirty or forty feet, beholding a fairy-like palace adorned with more brilliant colors than any structure made by human hands. The aggregate waters of the group form a little stream which flows westward into the small lake already noticed in connection with the mud-springs at the lower end of the basin. South of the Thud Geyser is a large basin 150 feet in diameter, enclosing a crater twenty-five feet in diameter. From the inner crater the water is thrown up in a vast column sixty feet high, falling back in silver-white globules, a natural fountain of marvellous beauty. A short distance south of this Fountain Geyser is the most remarkable mud-pot in the Firehole valley. Its surface, forty by sixty feet in diameter, is covered with large puffs, which, in exploding with suppressed thuds, throw the hot mud several feet into the air and spatter the broad rounded rim in every direction. The mud is an impalpable silicious clay, of every shade of color from the purest white to a bright pink. Within a few feet of this mud-spring is a large clear spring sixty feet across, with perhaps fifty centres of ebullition. It is filled with the rusty, leathery deposit already described, and all around the basin where the waters overflow is an extensive deposit of iron. A quarter of a mile east of the mud-springs, at the northwestern base of a mountain-spur and extending a thousand yards up a ravine, is a group of springs occupying a space five hundred yards wide. One of these, the Fissure Spring, is a hundred feet long and from four to ten feet wide. Quite a large stream flows from this spring. Many of the surrounding springs remain full to the rim, and are in constant ebullition, yet no water flows from them. Others discharge great quantities of water. In this group are three sulphur springs, the only ones in the region: the sulphur present however is not very abundant. Silica and iron seem to be the dominant constituents of nearly all the deposits. Some of the springs send forth a disagreeable odor, and deposit a curious black sediment like fine gunpowder. Near the centre of the group is a small lake 600 feet long and 150 wide. By its eastern shore is a geyser which spouts very regularly to the height of fifteen or twenty feet. West of the lake are two small geysers cones incrusted with a cauliflower-like formation; near them in a fissure are balls of geyserite coated in the same manner. A thousand yards further south, in the southeastern corner of the basin, is a ravine a mile and a half long and three hundred yards wide, occupied by a most interesting group of springs and geysers. Just below the mouth of the ravine, on a mound fifteen feet high, is a large cone twenty-five feet high, probably a geyser. Steam issues steadily from the top with the sound of a high-pressure engine. It is called the White Dome Geyser. In this lower basin there are very few raised craters, the most of the springs and geysers having funnel-shaped basins, with rims of various forms, but mostly circular. In this group there is besides the White Dome a small cone with its top broken off. It is four feet in diameter, with an aperture eighteen inches across. It is called the Bee-hive, For several feet around on all sides the surface of the ground is ornamented with pearly tubercles of silica, from the size of a pea to three inches in diameter. The spring basins in this group have every variety of form. One, a fine boiling spring, has an oval rim five feet by eight, its sides running straight down beyond the reach of vision. Another is funnel-shaped, tapering to a narrow aperture, with a scalloped rim, projecting several inches over the water. Some springs discharge no water; others send forth a stream two feet wide and six inches deep. In one of the streams, the channel of which is about two feet wide and one foot deep, the water is filled with a plant with a pinkish-yellow base, bordered with a very fine green silky fringe, perpetually vibrating with the flowing waters. "Except that they were a rich vegetable green, these fringes had the form and texture of the finest cashmere wool. The luxuriant growth of vegetation in and along the borders of these little streams," adds Dr. Hayden, "was a wonder of beauty. The whole view was there superior to anything of the kind I had seen." In some of the springs Dr. Hayden's assistants found butterflies which had fallen in and been scalded to death. On taking them out they were found to be partially petrified, and coated with silica. At the mouth of the ravine is the principal geyser of the group. Its basin is circular and about 60 feet in diameter, although the spring itself, which is in the centre, is only about 15 or 20 feet in diameter. The incrusted margin is full of sinuses, filled with hot water, which falls into them whenever the geyser is in operation. These pockets contain also smooth pebbles of geyserite, varying in size from that of a pea to a large-sized walnut, rounded by the action of the water. The water in the spring of the geyser is of a blue color and in constant agitation, though more violently so just before spouting. The column of water projected reaches the height of 100 feet, and is accompanied by immense clouds of steam. Not far from this geyser is an elegantly scalloped spring, nearly circular, twenty-five feet in diameter, and with vertical sides to an unknown depth. The entire mass of the water is most violently agitated at times, and, overflowing the sides of the basin, passes off in terrace pools or reservoirs to the main stream, producing a system of architecture out of silica similar to that of the calcareous springs on Gardiner's River. The gay colors, from bright pink to delicate rose, are well shown. The valley is filled with springs up to its very source; and springs which burst from the mountain side, eight hundred feet above the level of the basin, have temperatures ranging from 166° to 180°. Tracing one exceptionally cool stream up the south side of the cañon, Dr. Hayden found on the almost vertical side of the mountain a little spring so imbedded in bright green moss that it could hardly be seen. "With great difficulty," he says, "we managed to climb up the mountain side, and, clearing away the moss, obtained the first water that we could drink for eight hours. In all of our examination during the day we had not found a drop of water of sufficiently low temperature to take into our mouths, though there were hundreds of the most beautiful springs all around us. We were like Coleridge's mariner in the great ocean, 'Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.'" Looking back over the valley the morning before his departure for the Upper Basin, Dr. Hayden saw it literally filled with columns of steam, ascending from more than a thousand vents. "I can compare the view," he writes, "to nothing but that of some manufacturing city like Pittsburgh, as seen from a high point, except that instead of the black coal smoke, there are here the white delicate clouds of steam. Small groups or solitary springs that are scattered everywhere in the woods, upon the mountain-sides, and which would otherwise escape observation, are detected by the columns of steam. It is evident that some of these groups of springs have changed their base of operations within a comparatively recent period; for about midway on the east side of the lower basin there is a large area covered with a thick, apparently modern, deposit of the silica, as white as snow, while standing quite thickly all around are dead pines, which appear to have been destroyed by the excessive overflow of water and the increased deposition. These dry trees have a most desolate look; many of them have fallen down and are incrusted with the silica, while portions that have fallen into the boiling springs have been reduced to pulp. This seems to be one of the conditions of silicification, for when these pulpy masses of wood are permitted to dry by the cessation of the springs, the most perfect specimens of petrified wood are the result. In one instance a green pine-tree had fallen so as to immerse its thick top in a large hot basin, and leaves, twigs, and cones had become completely incrusted with the white silica, and a portion had entered into the cellular structure, so that when removed from the water, and dried in the sun, very fair specimens were obtained. Members of my party obtained specimens of pine cones that were sufficiently silicified to be packed away among the collections." Grasshoppers, and even butterflies, as we have seen, are occasionally subjected to the same treatment, with the same result. By-and-by, when the geyser regions become a popular resort, the preparation of petrifactions to be carried away as mementos, may become quite an item of entertainment if not of industry. To obtain a complete view of the Lower Geyser Basin, Colonel Barlow made a trip to the summit of the Twin Buttes on the west side of the basin. From this point the valley of Firehole River could be overlooked for a distance of twenty miles; but nothing new was discovered except an attractive fall plunging over a precipice a short distance to the south. After much severe climbing over rocky ridges, and scrambling through deep and thickly wooded ravines, he succeeded in reaching the foot of the fall--the loveliest vision he had ever beheld. "Towering above my head," he writes, "was a perpendicular cliff, three hundred feet high, while from a slight depression in its upper edge descended a sparkling stream, dashed into spray as it impinged against projecting angles of the rocky wall. On reaching the bottom the mist is gathered into a shallow basin, forming a pool of clear cold water, delightfully refreshing in this region of steaming geysers and volcanic heat. After resting a moment in this quiet retreat, the water slowly finds its way through the forest, and crossing the geyser valley eventually reaches Firehole River, some two miles distant." From the marshy ground about the fall the pines shoot upward to an astonishing altitude, as though ambitious to overtop the cliff. Colonel Barlow approached the fall through a natural avenue in these pines, and as he caught sight of its dancing water, leaping with life-like action down the face of the overhanging cliff, the thought of fairies was so strongly suggested that he could think of no name so appropriate as the Fall of the Fairies. The extreme north of the Lower Basin is bounded by the East Fork of Madison River, along whose valley, within the basin and above it, are numerous groups of interesting springs, though not materially different from those already described. Near the head of the stream sulphur springs are abundant, with here and there extensive deposits of sulphur. Steam-vents are frequent, their orifices lined with sulphur, and the surrounding crust filled with crystals of a vivid yellow. The channels of the streams are lined with a delicate veil of creamy sulphur. In some of the springs, lower down the stream, iron predominates. Within the basin on the south side of the East Fork are a hundred springs or more, any one of which, if alone, would be worthy of elaborate description. In some the fallen leaves of trees are frosted with silica as white as snow, and the inner surface of the basins are covered with a delicate bead-like embroidery of marvellous beauty. The most beautiful of the group is a Prismatic Spring, like those described in the Upper Basin. "Nothing ever conceived by human art," says Dr. Hayden, "could equal the peculiar vividness and delicacy of coloring of these remarkable prismatic springs." About a mile south of the East Fork, at the head of a little stream that flows into the Firehole, is another of these brilliant springs. A thin, delicately ornamental rim of silica surrounds a basin six feet in diameter, filled to the brim with water of marvellous transparency. When its surface is rippled by a passing breeze, the reflected sunlight is broken as by a million prisms. It is called the Rainbow Spring. CHAPTER XIV. NATURAL HISTORY OF GEYSERS AND OTHER THERMAL SPRINGS. In Icelandic speech the word _geyser_ means simply _rager_, and is applied indiscriminately to all turbulent fountains of water or mud. The most violent and noisy "rager" on the island being the great intermittent spouting spring near Haukadal, it naturally gained for itself the title, The Geyser; and being the earliest known and most remarkable fountain of the kind, its native common name was adopted in other languages as the generic name for all springs of its class. The history of this great, but no longer the greatest geyser, begins in the early part of the fifteenth century, when its eruptions are mentioned in Icelandic records. In the middle of the seventeenth century the Bishop of Skalholt noticed its daily discharges. A hundred years later Olafsen and Povelsen described it as having three or four eruptions a day, some of them attaining the height of 300 feet, including, doubtless, the uprush of vapor. The depth of its tube was then 72 feet; now it is commonly given as 74, though Commander Forbes, R. N., claims that it is not so deep by ten feet. In 1774 Von Troil estimated the height of the ejected column at 92 feet. Seventeen years later, Stanley gave 96 feet as its greatest height. Forty yards west of the Geyser this traveller found a rival, called the Strokr, (in English, the Churn,) playing to the height of 130 feet. The same year, 1789, an earthquake destroyed the mechanism of the Strokr, converting it into a quiet reservoir of boiling water, whereupon its name was transferred to the present Strokr, which then became especially active and noisy. In 1804 the Geyser had regained somewhat of its ancient power, erupting every six hours to the height of 200 feet; and the original Strokr had repaired its tube so that it could lift a column to nearly the same height and sustain it for a much longer period. During the next five years the power of the Geyser fell off a half, and its paroxysms became much less frequent--Hooker estimating its column, in 1809, at 100 feet, and Mackenzie, a year later, at 90 feet, its eruptions taking place every thirty hours. At the same time the Strokr played every ten or twelve hours, sixty feet high, for the space of thirty minutes. In 1815 the periods had changed again, the Geyser erupting every six hours, to an average height of 80 feet,--the jets occasionally reaching 150 feet, while the Strokr had prolonged its quiet intervals to twenty-four hours. Of late years the Geyser's violent eruptions seldom occur oftener than once in thirty hours, and do not exceed 100 feet in altitude, and generally averaging 70 or 80 feet. Between these eruptions are usually two minor spirts, attaining from 30 to 50 feet. The Strokr is exceedingly irregular in its operation, and generally requires a dose of turf to bring on an exhibition. A grand eruption of the Geyser has been admirably described by Commander Forbes. "Twice during the night," he says, "I was aroused by the unearthly complaints of _The_ Geyser; but beyond the vast clouds of vapor which invariably follow each detonation, and a gentle overflowing of the basin, they were false alarms. As morning was breaking it sounded an unmistakable 'reveille,' which would have roused the dead: and I had barely time to take up my position at the brink of the old 'Strokr' before full power was turned on. Jet succeeded jet with fearful rapidity, earth trembled and the very cone itself seemed to stagger under the ordeal. Portions of its sides, rent with the uncontrollable fury it had suddenly generated, were ripped off and flew up in volleys, soaring high above water and steam, whilst the latter rolled away in fleecy clouds before the light north wind, and catching the rays of the morning sun just glistening over the Jökul tops in the East, was lustrous white as the purest snow. Discharge succeeded discharge in rapid succession for upwards of four minutes, when, apparently exhausted and its basin empty, I scrambled up to the margin, intending to have a good look down the tube, which I imagined must also be empty; but the water was still within a few feet of the brink, and boiling furiously. Hastening back to my former position, the basin filled rapidly, and I was just in time to witness the most magnificent explosion of all. Everything seemed to depend on this superhuman effort, and a solid, unbroken column of water twenty-five feet in circumference, was hurled upwards, attaining an altitude very near 100 feet. Here the column paused for a moment before reversing its motion, then fell listless and exhausted through the volumes which followed it into its throbbing cup, again to undergo its fiery ordeal at the threshold of the infernal regions." Grand as this display must have been, it was but a momentary spasm, a feeble effort compared with the terrific force which sustains the Giant's river-volume, with a steady uprush two hundred feet high, for the space of three hours and a half. There are many, perhaps scores, of geysers in the Firehole Basin, which--even in midsummer, when their action is weakest--far surpass the glory of Iceland. But what is the origin of the power that sustains these wonderful eruptions? And what is the cause of its intermittent action? Fortunately these questions are not only answerable, but the answers are susceptible of demonstration, as Professor Tyndall has shown in his admirable lectures on heat considered as a mode of motion, wherein he gives the following lucid description of the mechanism and development of the Great Geyser of Iceland: in principle the description applies equally to the geysers of Firehole Basin, and all other springs of the kind. "It consists of a tube seventy-four feet deep and ten feet in diameter. The tube is surmounted by a basin which measures from north to south fifty-two feet across, and from east to west sixty feet. The interior of the tube and basin is coated with a beautiful smooth silicious plaster, so hard as to resist the blows of a hammer; and the first question is, how was this wonderful tube constructed--how was this perfect plaster laid on? Chemical analysis shows that the water holds silica in solution, and the conjecture might therefore arise that the water had deposited the silica against the sides of the tube and basin. But this is not the case: the water deposits no sediment; no matter how long it may be kept, no solid substance is separated from it. It may be bottled up and preserved for years as clear as crystal, without showing the slightest tendency to form a precipitate. To answer the question in this way would moreover assume that the shaft was formed by some foreign agency, and that the water merely lined it. The geyser basin, however, rests upon the summit of a mound about forty feet high, and it is evident from mere inspection that the mound has been deposited by the geyser. But in building up this mound the spring must have formed the tube which perforates the mound, and hence the conclusion that the geyser is the architect of its own tube. If we place a quantity of geyser water in an evaporating basin the following takes place: in the centre of the basin the liquid deposits nothing, but at the sides where it is drawn up by capillary attraction, and thus subjected to speedy evaporation, we find silica deposited. Round the edge a ring of silica is laid on, and not until the evaporation has continued a considerable time do we find the slightest turbidity in the middle of the water. This experiment is the microscopic representative of what occurs in Iceland. Imagine the case of a simple thermal silicious spring, whose waters trickle down a gentle inclosure; the water thus exposed evaporates speedily, and silica is deposited. This deposit gradually elevates the side over which the water passes until finally the latter has to take another course. The same takes place here, the ground is elevated as before, and the spring has to move forward. Thus it is compelled to travel round and round, discharging its silica and deepening the shaft in which it dwells, until finally, in the course of ages, the simple spring has produced this wonderful apparatus which has so long puzzled and astonished both the traveller and the philosopher." The time required for the construction of the Great Geyser tube has been estimated by Commander Forbes as ten or eleven centuries, on the following grounds: a bunch of grass, placed under a little fall made by the ejected water, receives, in twenty-four hours, a coating of silica the thickness of a thin sheet of paper, or about one five-hundredth part of an inch. At this rate it would take 1036 years to build up the 762 inches, which, according to his measurement, is the depth of the tube. In evidence of the probable truth of this estimate he makes note of the following facts: first, there is no notice of this fountain in the early history of the colonization of the island 986 years ago, at which time the tube would have been only three feet deep, and its eruptions too slight to attract attention; second, 436 years afterwards, when the tube would have been twenty-six feet deep, and the eruptions proportionately important, the Geyser is mentioned; third, accurate records of all occurrences were kept by the early inhabitants, and if so remarkable a phenomenon had existed at the time, it could not have been left unnoticed. The phenomena attending a geyser-eruption--the filling of the basin with water, the agitation of the water, with deafening detonations, the escape of steam, and so on--have been sufficiently described in the preceding chapters. Their causes have been ingeniously explained by Professor Bunsen, who succeeded in determining the temperature of the geyser-tube, throughout its entire length, a few minutes before an eruption. The annexed diagram shows on the left the observed temperatures of the water at different depths, and on the right the temperatures at which water would boil, taking into account the pressure of the atmosphere increased by the presence of the superincumbent column of water. The degrees have been changed from Centigrade to our familiar Fahrenheit standard, disregarding fractions. [Illustration] It will be observed that in no part of the tube does the water reach the boiling point. The nearest approach to it is at A, thirty feet from the bottom; out even here the water is some four degrees below the temperature at which it could boil. How then is an eruption possible? Professor Tyndall's explanation is in substance this: Suppose that by the entrance of steam from the ducts near the bottom of the tube the geyser column is elevated six feet, a height quite within the limits of actual observation; the water at A is thereby transferred to B. Its boiling point at A is 255°, and its actual temperature is 251°; but at B its boiling point is only 249°, hence when transferred from A to B, the heat which it possesses is in excess of that necessary to make it boil. This excess of heat is instantly applied to the generation of steam; the column is thus lifted higher, and the water below is relieved of pressure, and its boiling point lowered. More steam is generated; this lifts the column still higher, and compels the generation of more and more steam, until the whole upper portion of the column bursts into ebullition, and the water, mixed with steam-clouds, is projected into the atmosphere, and we have the geyser eruption in all its grandeur. One confirmation of this theory of Bunsen's is that small stones suspended in the lower part of the geyser-tube are not thrown out during an eruption; and a stronger confirmation lies in the fact that all the peculiarities of geyser action can be imitated. Professor Tyndall uses for this purpose an apparatus consisting of a tube of iron six feet long, surmounted by a basin, and heated by fires underneath. To imitate, as far as possible, the conditions of the geyser, he encircles the tube with a second fire, two feet from the bottom. As the water in the tube becomes heated, the phenomena of geyser eruption are repeated in miniature with beautiful regularity. By stopping the mouth of the tube with a cork, the enforced explosions of the Strokr are reproduced; and by similar simple devices the action of all other eruptive springs may be accurately imitated. All through the Firehole Basin and around Yellowstone Lake are many extinct geysers; sometimes, as in the case of Old Faithful, an active geyser is surrounded by a number of deserted cones, the remains of ancient "roarers." What occasions their decline? Earthquakes may, and no doubt frequently do, derange their mechanism, as observed in the old Strokr. But most of them probably die a natural death, from old age and decrepitude. "A moment's reflection," says Professor Tyndall, "will suggest that there must be a limit to the operations of the geyser. When the tube has reached such an altitude that the water in the depths below, owing to the increased pressure, cannot attain its boiling point, the eruptions of necessity cease. The spring, however, continues to deposit its silica, and often forms a _Laug_, or cistern. Some of these, in Iceland, are forty feet deep. Their beauty, according to Bunsen, is indescribable. Over the surface curls a light vapor; the water is of the purest azure, and tints with its lovely hue the fantastic incrustations on the cistern walls; while at the bottom is often seen the mouth of the once mighty geyser. There are in Iceland vast, but now extinct geyser operations. Mounds are observed whose shafts are filled with rubbish, the water having forced a passage underneath and retired to other scenes of action. We have, in fact, the geyser in its youth, manhood, old age, and death here presented to us. In its youth as a simple thermal spring; in its manhood, as an eruptive column; in its old age, as the tranquil _Laug_; while its death is recorded by the ruined shaft and mound, which testify the fact of its once active existence." All that Professor Tyndall describes so eloquently of Iceland, exists in our Grand National Park in infinitely greater variety, and magnitude, and splendor. And much more: Iceland has no Gardiner's River. To find the nearest approach to the marvels of White Mountain Hot Spring, we must go to the opposite side of the globe--to New Zealand. In the celebrated Lake District of the North Island is a region of hot springs, far exceeding in extent and variety all the others in the world, save those of the Yellowstone. First of all, says Hochstetter, the most marvellous of the Rotomahana marvels is the Te Tarata--the Tattooed Rock--with its terraced marble steps projecting into the lake. The spring lies about eighty feet above the lake, on a fern-clad hill-slope, in a crater-like excavation, with steep reddish sides, from thirty to forty feet high, and open only toward the lake. The basin of the spring is about eighty feet long and sixty wide, filled to the brim with perfectly transparent water, which in its snow-white basin appears of a beautiful blue, like the blue turquoise. Immense clouds of steam curl up from the surface, obstructing the view, but the noise of boiling and seething is always audible. The water is slightly salt, but not unpleasant to the taste, chemically neutral, and possesses petrifying, or rather incrusting qualities, in a high degree. The deposit is silicious, like that of the Iceland springs and the springs around Yellowstone Lake, not calcareous, like those of Gardiner's River; yet the system of terraces built up by the deposit on the hill-slope has the same appearance of a cataract plunging over a series of natural shelves and suddenly turned to stone. The deposits cover an area of about three acres, a mere trifle compared with the square miles of similar formations on Gardiner's River and in the Yellowstone Basin. In the same neighborhood is a system of bubbling mud-pools, miniature copies of those on the Yellowstone above the falls. The principal group, lying in a ravine nearly a quarter of a mile long, is described by Dr. Hochstetter as follows: "The entrance to the ravine is overgrown with a thicket and rather difficult of access; it also requires considerable caution, as suspicious places have to be passed, where the visitor is in danger of being swallowed up in heated mud. Inside, the ravine has the appearance of a volcanic crater. The bare walls, utterly destitute of vegetation, are terribly fissured and torn, and odd-looking rocky serratures, threatening every moment to break loose, loom up like dismal spectres from red, white and blue fumarole-clay--evidently the last remains of decomposed rocks. The bottom of the ravine is of fine mud, scattered with blocks of silicious deposit, like cakes of floating ice after a thaw. Here, a big caldron of mud is simmering; there, lies a deep basin of boiling water; next to this is a terrible hole, emitting hissing jets of steam, and further on are mud-cones from two to five feet high, vomiting hot mud from their craters with dull rumblings, and imitating on a small scale the play of large fire volcanoes." The gay colors of the Yellowstone mud-springs are frequently exhibited in the volcanic lake district of New Zealand, and so indeed are most of the other phenomena we have been studying, though on a far less magnificent scale. For example, the grandest "Firehole basin" on the island occupies the Shallow valley of a little stream the Waikato, for the distance of a mile. It is but a cabinet exhibition comparatively, yet the learned geologist of the _Novara_ expedition grows eloquent in his description of it. "In the morning a dense fog lay upon the Waikato, but it soon vanished, the sun shone brightly into the valley, and now--what a sight! In its swift course, forming rapids after rapids, the Waikato was plunging through the deep valley between steep-rising mountains; its floods whirling and foaming round two small rocky islands in the middle of the river, were dashing with a loud uproar through the defile of the valley. Along its banks white clouds of steam were ascending from hot cascades falling into the river, and from basins full of boiling water shut in by a white mass of stone. Yonder a steaming fountain was rising and falling; now there sprung from another place a second fountain; this also ceased in its turn; then two commenced playing simultaneously, one quite low at the river bank, the other opposite on a terrace; and thus the play continued with endless changes, as though experiments were being made with grand waterworks, to see whether the fountains were all in perfect order, and whether the waterfalls had a sufficient supply. I began to count the places where a boiling waterbasin was visible, or where a cloud of steam indicated the existence of one. I counted seventy-six points, without, however, being able to survey the whole region, and among them were numerous intermittent geyser-like fountains with periodical eruptions of water." [Illustration: THE GREAT CAÑON AND LOWER FALLS OF THE YELLOWSTONE.] The picture is admirably drawn, but could the artist have done so well with the stupendous chasm of the Grand Cañon? or the thousand volcanic vents of Firehole Basin with their deafening detonations, their immeasurable evolutions of water and steam? It is possible, but scarcely probable. The incomprehensible grandeur of the scene would have awed, astounded, bewildered him, and like our Yellowstone explorers, he would have despaired of grouping the myriad marvels into one grand effect, and contented himself with setting down a few details of form and color. In following the exploration of the Yellowstone country and Firehole Basin, the reader has doubtless observed, in the passage from the quiet springs of Gardiner's River to the erupting fountains further on, that there is a complete change in the nature of the deposits. The mounds and terraces built up by the former have for their basis _lime_, those of the latter _silica_. Dr. Hayden attributes the calcareous deposits to the deep bed of limestone underlying the springs, but not all waters have the power of disolving lime so freely, nor could ordinary water take from the trachytic lavas below the silicious springs around Yellowstone Lake and in the Firehole Basin, the silica that appears so abundantly in their deposits. There must be other forces at work. What are they? "Both kinds of springs," says Dr. Hochstetter, in his chapter on New Zealand springs, "owe their origin to the water permeating the surface and sinking through fissures into the bowels of the earth, where it becomes heated by the still existing volcanic fires. High-pressure steam is thus generated, which, accompanied by volcanic gases--such as muriatic acid, sulphurous acid, sulphuretted hydrogen and carbonic acid--rises again toward the colder surface and is there condensed into hot water. The overheated steam and the gases decompose the rock beneath, dissolving certain ingredients which are deposited on the surface. According to Bunsen's ingenious observations, a chronological succession takes place in the coöperation of the gases. The sulphurous acid acts first. It is generated where rising sulphur vapor comes in contact with glowing masses of rock. Wherever vapors of sulphurous acid are constantly formed, there acid-springs or solfataras arise. Incrustations of alum are very common in such places, arising from the action of sulphuric acid on the alumina and alkali of the lavas; another product of the decomposition of the lavas is gypsum, or sulphate of lime, the residuum being a more or less ferruginous fumarole clay, the material of the mud-pools. After the sulphurous acid comes sulphuretted hydrogen, produced by the action of steam on sulphids; and by the mutual decomposition of sulphuretted hydrogen and sulphurous acid sulphur is formed, the characteristic precipitate in all solfataras, while the deposition of silica is either entirely wanting or quite inconsiderable, and the smell of sulphuretted hydrogen is but rarely noticed. These acid springs have no periodical outbursts of water. In course of time the source of sulphurous acid becomes exhausted, and sulphuretted hydrogen alone remains active. The acid reaction of the soil disappears, yielding to an alkaline reaction by the formation of sulphids. At the same time carbonic acid begins to act upon the rocks, and the alkaline bi-carbonates thus produced dissolve the silica, which on the evaporation of the water is deposited in the form of opal or quartz or silicious earth, and thus the shell of the springs is formed, on the structure of which the periodicity of the outburst depends.... The deposition of silica in quantities sufficient for the formation of this spring-apparatus in the course of years, takes place only in the alkaline springs. Their water is either neutral or has a slightly alkaline reaction. Silica, common salt, carbonates and sulphates are the chief ingredients dissolved in it. In the place of sulphurous acid the odor of sulphuretted hydrogen is sometimes observed in these springs.... By the gradual cooling of the volcanic rocks under the surface of the earth the hot springs themselves gradually die out, for they too are but a transient phenomenon in the eternal change of created things." CHAPTER XV. MR. EVERTS'S THIRTY-SEVEN DAYS OF PERIL. On the day that I found myself separated from the company, and for several days previous, our course had been impeded by the dense growth of pine forest, and occasional large tracts of fallen timber frequently rendering our progress almost impossible. Whenever we came to one of these immense windfalls, each man engaged in the pursuit of a passage through it, and it was while thus employed, and with the idea that I had found one, that I strayed out of sight and hearing of my comrades. We had had a toilsome day. It was quite late in the afternoon. As separations like these had frequently occurred, it gave me no alarm, and I rode on, fully confident of soon rejoining the company, or of finding their camp. I came up with the pack-horse, which Mr. Langford afterwards recovered, and tried to drive him along. But failing to do so, and my eyesight being defective, I spurred forward, intending to return with assistance from the party. This incident tended to accelerate my speed. I rode on in the direction which I supposed had been taken, until darkness overtook me in the dense forest. This was disagreeable enough, but caused me no alarm. I had no doubt of being with the party at breakfast the next morning. I selected a spot for comfortable repose, picketed my horse, built a fire, and went to sleep. The next morning I rose at early dawn, saddled and mounted my horse, and took my course in the supposed direction of the camp. Our ride of the previous day had been up a peninsula jutting into the lake, for the shore of which I started, with the expectation of finding my friends camped on the beach. The forest was quite dark, and the trees so thick, that it was only by a slow process I could get through them at all. In searching for the trail I became somewhat confused. The falling foliage of the pines had obliterated every trace of travel. I was obliged frequently to dismount, and examine the ground for the faintest indications. Coming to an opening, from which I could see several vistas, I dismounted for the purpose of selecting one leading in the direction I had chosen, and leaving my horse unhitched, as had always been my custom, walked a few rods into the forest. While surveying the ground my horse took fright, and I turned around in time to see him disappearing at full speed among the trees. That was the last I ever saw of him. It was yet quite dark. My blankets, gun, pistols, fishing-tackle, matches--everything, except the clothing on my person, a couple of knives, and a small opera-glass were attached to the saddle. I did not yet realize the possibility of a permanent separation from the company. Instead of following up the pursuit of their camp, I engaged in an effort to recover my horse. Half a day's search convinced me of its impracticability. I wrote and posted in an open space several notices, which, if my friends should chance to see, would inform them of my condition and the route I had taken, and then struck out into the forest in the supposed direction of their camp. As the day wore on without any discovery, alarm took the place of anxiety at the prospect of another night alone in the wilderness, and this time without food or fire. But even this dismal foreboding was cheered by the hope that I should soon rejoin my companions, who would laugh at my adventure, and incorporate it as a thrilling episode into the journal of our trip. The bright side of a misfortune, as I found by experience, even under the worst possible circumstances, always presents some features of encouragement. When I began to realize that my condition was one of actual peril, I banished from my mind all fear of an unfavorable result. Seating myself on a log, I recalled every foot of the way I had travelled since the separation from my friends, and the most probable opinion I could form of their whereabouts was, that they had, by a course but little different from mine, passed by the spot where I had posted the notices, learned of my disaster, and were waiting for me to rejoin them there, or searching for me in that vicinity. A night must be spent amid the prostrate trunks before my return could be accomplished. At no time during my period of exile did I experience so much mental suffering from the cravings of hunger as when, exhausted with this long day of fruitless search, I resigned myself to a couch of pine foliage in the pitchy darkness of a thicket of small trees. Naturally timid in the night, I fully realized the exposure of my condition. I peered upward through the darkness, but all was blackness and gloom. The wind sighed mournfully through the pines. The forest seemed alive with the screeching of night birds, the angry barking of coyotes, and the prolonged, dismal howl of the gray wolf. These sounds, familiar by their constant occurrence throughout the journey, were now full of terror, and drove slumber from my eye-lids, but above all this, however, was the hope that I should be restored to my comrades the next day. Early the next morning I rose unrefreshed, and pursued my weary way over the prostrate trunks. It was noon when I reached the spot where my notices were posted. No one had been there. My disappointment was almost overwhelming. For the first time, I realized that I was lost. Then came a crushing sense of destitution. No food, no fire; no means to procure either; alone in an unexplored wilderness, one hundred and fifty miles from the nearest human abode, surrounded by wild beasts, and famishing with hunger. It was no time for despondency. A moment afterwards I felt how calamity can elevate the mind, in the formation of the resolution "not to perish in that wilderness." The hope of finding the party still controlled my plans. I thought, by traversing the peninsula centrally, I would be enabled to strike the shore of the lake in advance of their camp, and near the point of departure for the Madison. Acting upon this impression, I rose from a sleepless couch, and pursued my way through the timber-entangled forest. A feeling of weakness took the place of hunger. Conscious of the need of food, I felt no cravings. Occasionally, while scrambling over logs and through thickets, a sense of faintness and exhaustion would come over me, but I would suppress it with the audible expression, "This won't do; I _must_ find my company." Despondency would sometimes strive with resolution for the mastery of my thoughts. I would think of home--of my daughter--and of the possible chance of starvation, or death in some more terrible form; but as often as these gloomy forebodings came, I would strive to banish them with reflections better adapted to my immediate necessities. I recollect at this time discussing the question, whether there was not implanted by Providence in every man a principle of self-preservation equal to any emergency which did not destroy his reason. I decided this question affirmatively a thousand times afterwards in my wanderings, and I record this experience here, that any person who reads it, should he ever find himself in like circumstances, may not despair. There is life in the thought. It will revive hope, allay hunger, renew energy, encourage perseverance, and, as I have proved in my own case, bring a man out of difficulty, when nothing else can avail. It was mid-day when I emerged from the forest into an open space at the foot of the peninsula. A broad lake of beautiful curvature, with magnificent surroundings, lay before me, glittering in the sunbeams. It was full twelve miles in circumference. A wide belt of sand formed the margin which I was approaching, directly opposite to which, rising seemingly from the very depths of the water, towered the loftiest peak of a range of mountains apparently interminable. The ascending vapor from innumerable hot springs, and the sparkling jet of a single geyser added the feature of novelty to one of the grandest landscapes I ever beheld. Nor was the life of the scene less noticeable than its other attractions. Large flocks of swans and other waterfowl were sporting on the quiet surface of the lake; otters in great numbers performed the most amusing aquatic evolutions; mink and beaver swam around unscared, in most grotesque confusion. Deer, elk, and mountain sheep stared at me, manifesting more surprise than fear at my presence among them. The adjacent forest was vocal with the songs of birds, chief of which were the chattering notes of a species of mocking-bird, whose imitative efforts afforded abundant merriment. Seen under favorable circumstances, this assemblage of grandeur, beauty, and novelty would have been transporting; but jaded with travel, famishing with hunger, and distressed with anxiety, I was in no humor for ecstasy. My tastes were subdued and chastened by the perils which environed me. I longed for food, friends, and protection. Associated with my thoughts, however, was the wish that some of my friends of peculiar tastes could enjoy this display of secluded magnificence, now, probably, for the first time beheld by mortal eyes. The lake was at least one thousand feet lower than the highest point of the peninsula, and several hundred feet below the level of Yellowstone Lake. I recognized the mountain which overshadowed it as the landmark which, a few days before, had received from General Washburn the name of Mount Everts; and as it is associated with some of the most agreeable and terrible incidents of my exile, I feel that I have more than a mere discoverer's right to the perpetuity of that christening. The lake is fed by innumerable small streams from the mountains, and the countless hot springs surrounding it. A large river flows from it, through a cañon a thousand feet in height, in a southeasterly direction, to a distant range of mountains, which I conjectured to be Snake River; and with the belief that I had discovered the source of the great southern tributary of the Columbia, I gave it the name of Bessie Lake, after the "Sole daughter of my house and heart." During the first two days, the fear of meeting with Indians gave me considerable anxiety; but, when conscious of being lost, there was nothing I so much desired as to fall in with a lodge of Bannocks or Crows. Having nothing to tempt their cupidity, they would do me no personal harm, and, with the promise of reward, would probably minister to my wants and aid my deliverance. Imagine my delight, while gazing upon the animated expanse of water, at seeing sail out from a distant point a large canoe containing a single oarsman. It was rapidly approaching the shore where I was seated. With hurried steps I paced the beach to meet it, all my energies stimulated by the assurance it gave of food, safety, and restoration to friends. As I drew near to it it turned towards the shore, and oh! bitter disappointment, the object which my eager fancy had transformed into an angel of relief stalked from the water, an enormous pelican, flapped its dragonwings as if in mockery of my sorrow, and flew to a solitary point farther up the lake. This little incident quite unmanned me. The transition from joy to grief brought with it a terrible consciousness of the horrors of my condition. But night was fast approaching, and darkness would come with it. While looking for a spot where I might repose in safety, my attention was attracted to a small green plant of so lively a hue as to form a striking contrast with the deep pine foliage. For closer examination I pulled it up by the root, which was long and tapering, not unlike a radish. It was a thistle. I tasted it; it was palatable and nutritious. My appetite craved it, and the first meal in four days was made on thistle-roots. Eureka! I had found food. No optical illusion deceived me this time; I could subsist until I rejoined my companions. Glorious counterpoise to the wretchedness of the preceding half-hour! Overjoyed at this discovery, with hunger allayed, I stretched myself under a tree, upon the foliage which had partially filled a space between contiguous trunks, and fell asleep. How long I slept I know not; but suddenly I was roused by a loud, shrill scream, like that of a human being in distress, poured, seemingly, into the very portals of my ear. There was no mistaking that fearful voice. I had been deceived by and answered it a dozen times while threading the forest, with the belief that it was a friendly signal. It was the screech of a mountain lion, so alarmingly near as to cause every nerve to thrill with terror. To yell in return, seize with convulsive grasp the limbs of the friendly tree, and swing myself into it, was the work of a moment. Scrambling hurriedly from limb to limb, I was soon as near the top as safety would permit. The savage beast was snuffing and growling below, apparently on the very spot I had just abandoned. I answered every growl with a responsive scream. Terrified at the delay and pawing of the beast, I increased my voice to its utmost volume, broke branches from the limbs, and, in the impotency of fright, madly hurled them at the spot whence the continued howlings proceeded. Failing to alarm the animal, which now began to make the circuit of the tree, as if to select a spot for springing into it, I shook, with a strength increased by terror, the slender trunk until every limb rustled with the motion. All in vain. The terrible creature pursued his walk around the tree, lashing the ground with his tail, and prolonging his howlings almost to a roar. It was too dark to see, but the movements of the lion kept me apprised of its position. Whenever I heard it on one side of the tree I speedily changed to the opposite--an exercise which, in my weakened state, I could only have performed under the impulse of terror. I would alternately sweat and thrill with horror at the thought of being torn to pieces and devoured by this formidable monster. All my attempts to frighten it seemed unavailing. Disheartened at its persistency, and expecting every moment it would take the deadly leap, I tried to collect my thoughts, and prepare for the fatal encounter which I knew must result. Just at this moment it occurred to me that I would try silence. Clasping the trunk of the tree with both arms, I sat perfectly still. The lion, at this time ranging round, occasionally snuffing and pausing, and all the while filling the forest with the echo of his howlings, suddenly imitated my example. This silence was more terrible, if possible, than the clatter and crash of his movements through the brushwood, for now I did not know from what direction to expect his attack. Moments passed with me like hours. After a lapse of time which I cannot estimate, the beast gave a spring into the thicket and ran screaming into the forest. My deliverance was effected. Had strength permitted, I should have retained my perch till daylight, but with the consciousness of escape from the jaws of the ferocious brute came a sense of overpowering weakness which almost palsied me, and made my descent from the tree both difficult and dangerous. Incredible as it may seem, I lay down in my old bed, and was soon lost in a slumber so profound that I did not awake until after daylight. The experience of the night seemed like a terrible dream; but the broken limbs which in the agony of consternation I had thrown from the tree, and the rifts made in the fallen foliage by my visitant in his circumambulations, were too convincing evidences of its reality. I could not dwell upon my exposure and escape without shuddering and reflecting that probably like perils would often occur under less fortunate circumstances, and with a more fatal issue. I wondered what fate was in reserve for me--whether I would ultimately sink from exhaustion and perish of starvation, or become the prey of some of the ferocious animals that roamed these vast fastnesses. My thoughts then turned to the loved ones at home. They could never know my fate, and would indulge a thousand conjectures concerning it, not the least distressing of which would be that I had been captured by a band of hostile Sioux, and tortured to death at the stake. I was roused from this train of reflections by a marked change in the atmosphere. One of those dreary storms of mingled snow and rain, common to these high latitudes, set in. My clothing, which had been much torn, exposed my person to its "pitiless peltings." An easterly wind, rising to a gale, admonished me that it would be furious and of long duration. None of the discouragements I had met with dissipated the hope of rejoicing my friends; but foreseeing the delay, now unavoidable, I knew that my escape from the wilderness must be accomplished, if at all, by my own unaided exertions. This thought was terribly afflicting, and brought before me, in vivid array, all the dreadful realities of my condition. I could see no ray of hope. In this condition of mind I could find no better shelter than the spreading branches of a spruce tree, under which, covered with earth and boughs, I lay during the two succeeding days; the storm, meanwhile, raging with unabated violence. While thus exposed, and suffering from cold and hunger, a little benumbed bird, not larger than a snow-bird, hopped within my reach. I instantly seized and killed it, and, plucking its feathers, ate it raw. It was a delicious meal for a half-starved man. Taking advantage of a lull in the elements, on the morning of the third day I rose early and started in the direction of a large group of hot springs which were steaming under the shadow of Mount Everts. The distance I travelled could not have been less than ten miles. Long before I reached the wonderful cluster of natural caldrons, the storm had recommenced. Chilled through, with my clothing thoroughly saturated, I lay down under a tree upon the heated incrustation until completely warmed. My heels and the sides of my feet were frozen. As soon as warmth had permeated my system, and I had quieted my appetite with a few thistle-roots, I took a survey of my surroundings, and selected a spot between two springs sufficiently asunder to afford heat at my head and feet. On this spot I built a bower of pine branches, spread its incrusted surface with fallen foliage and small boughs, and stowed myself away to await the close of the storm. Thistles were abundant, and I had fed upon them long enough to realize that they would, for a while at least, sustain life. In convenient proximity to my abode was a small, round, boiling spring, which I called my dinner-pot, and in which, from time to time, I cooked my roots. This establishment, the best I could improvise with the means at hand, I occupied seven days--the first three of which were darkened by one of the most furious storms I ever saw. The vapor which supplied me with warmth saturated my clothing with its condensations. I was enveloped in a perpetual steam bath. At first this was barely preferable to the storm, but I soon became accustomed to it, and before I left, though thoroughly parboiled, actually enjoyed it. I had little else to do during my imprisonment but cook, think, and sleep. Of the variety and strangeness of my reflections it is impossible to give the faintest conception. Much of my time was given to devising means for escape. I recollected to have read, at the time of their publication, the narratives of Lieutenant Strain and Doctor Kane, and derived courage and hope from the reflection that they struggled with and survived perils not unlike those which environed me. The chilling thought would then occur, that they were not alone. They had companions in suffering and sympathy. Each could bear his share of the burden of misery which it fell to my lot to bear alone, and make it lighter from the encouragement of mutual counsel and aid in a cause of common suffering. Selfish as the thought may seem, there was nothing I so much desired as a companion in misfortune. How greatly it would alleviate my distress! What a relief it would be to compare my wretchedness with that of a brother sufferer, and with him devise expedients for every exigency as it occurred! I confess to the weakness, if it be one, of having squandered much pity upon myself during the time I had little else to do. Nothing gave me more concern than the want of fire. I recalled everything I had ever read or heard of the means by which fire could be produced; but none of them were within my reach. An escape without it was simply impossible. It was indispensable as a protection against night attacks from wild beasts. Exposure to another storm like the one just over would destroy my life, as this one would have done, but for the warmth derived from the springs. As I lay in my bower anxiously awaiting the disappearance of the snow, which had fallen to the depth of a foot or more, and impressed with the belief that for want of fire I should be obliged to remain among the springs, it occurred to me that I would erect some sort of monument, which might, at some future day, inform a casual visitor of the circumstances under which I had perished. A gleam of sunshine lit up the bosom of the lake, and with it the thought flashed upon my mind that I could, with a lens from my opera-glasses, get fire from Heaven. Oh, happy, life-renewing thought! Instantly subjecting it to the test of experiment, when I saw the smoke curl from the bit of dry wood in my fingers, I felt, if the whole world were offered me for it, I would cast it all aside before parting with that little spark. I was now the happy possessor of food and fire. These would carry me through. All thoughts of failure were instantly abandoned. Though the food was barely adequate to my necessities--a fact too painfully attested by my attenuated body--I had forgotten the cravings of hunger, and had the means of producing fire. I said to myself, "I will not despair." My stay at the springs was prolonged several days by an accident that befell me on the third night after my arrival there. An unlucky movement while asleep broke the crust on which I reposed, and the hot steam, pouring upon my hip, scalded it severely before I could escape. This new affliction, added to my frost-bitten feet, already festering, was the cause of frequent delay and unceasing pain through all my wanderings. After obtaining fire, I set to work making preparations for as early departure as my condition would permit. I had lost both knives since parting from the company, but I now made a convenient substitute by sharpening the tongue of a buckle which I cut from my vest. With this I cut the legs and counters from my boots, making of them a passable pair of slippers, which I fastened to my feet as firmly as I could with strips of bark. With the ravellings of a linen handkerchief, aided by the magic buckle-tongue, I mended my clothing. Of the same material I made a fish-line, which, on finding a piece of red tape in one of my pockets better suited to the purpose, I abandoned as a "bad job." I made of a pin that I found in my coat a fish-hook, and, by sewing up the bottoms of my boot-legs, constructed a very good pair of pouches to carry my food in, fastening them to my belt by the straps. Thus accountered, on the morning of the eighth day after my arrival at the springs I bade them a final farewell, and started on my course directly across that portion of the neck of the peninsula between me and the southeast arm of Yellowstone Lake. It was a beautiful morning. The sun shone bright and warm, and there was a freshness in the atmosphere truly exhilarating. As I wandered musingly along, the consciousness of being alone, and having surrendered all hope of finding my friends, returned upon me with crushing power. I felt, too, that those friends, by the necessities of their condition, had been compelled to abandon all efforts for my recovery. The thought was full of bitterness and sorrow. I tried to realize what their conjectures were concerning my disappearance; but could derive no consolation from the long and dismal train of circumstances they suggested. Weakened by a long fast, and the unsatisfying nature of the only food I could procure, I know that from this time onward to the day of my rescue, my mind, though unimpaired in those perceptions needful to self-preservation, was in a condition to receive impressions akin to insanity. I was constantly travelling in dream-land, and indulging in strange reveries such as I had never before known. I seemed to possess a sort of duality of being, which, while constantly reminding me of the necessities of my condition, fed my imagination with vagaries of the most extravagant character. Nevertheless I was perfectly conscious of the tendency of these morbid influences, and often tried to shake them off, but they would ever return with increased force, and I finally reasoned myself into the belief that their indulgence, as it afforded me pleasure, could work no harm while it did not interfere with my plans for deliverance. Thus I lived in a world of ideal happiness, and in a world of positive suffering at the same time. A change in the wind and an overcast sky, accompanied by cold, brought with them a need of warmth. I drew out my lens and touchwood, but alas! there was no sun. I sat down on a log to await his friendly appearance. Hours passed; he did not come. Night, cold freezing night, set in, and found me exposed to all its terrors. A bleak hill-side sparsely covered with pines afforded poor accommodations for a half-clad, famishing man. I could only keep from freezing by the most active exertion in walking, rubbing, and striking my benumbed feet and hands against the logs. It seemed the longest, most terrible night of my life, and glad was I when the approaching dawn enabled me to commence retracing my steps to Bessie Lake. I arrived there at noon, built my first fire on the beach, and remained by it, recuperating for the succeeding two days. The faint hope that my friends might be delayed by their search for me until I could rejoin them now forsook me altogether. I made my arrangements independent of it. Either of three directions I might take would effect my escape, if life and strength held out. I drew upon the sand of the beach a map of these several courses with reference to my starting-point from the lake, and considered well the difficulties each would present. All were sufficiently defined to avoid mistake. One was to follow Snake River a distance of one hundred miles or more to Eagle Rock bridge; another, to cross the country between the southern shore of Yellowstone Lake and the Madison Mountains, by scaling which I could easily reach the settlements in the Madison Valley; and the other, to retrace my journey over the long and discouraging route by which I had entered the country. Of these routes the last mentioned seemed the least inviting, probably because I had so recently traversed it, and was familiar with its difficulties. I had heard and read so much concerning the desolation and elemental upheavals and violent waters of the upper valley of the Snake, that I dared not attempt to return in that direction. The route by the Madison Range, encumbered by the single obstruction of the mountain barrier, was much the shortest, and so most unwisely, as will hereafter appear, I adopted it. Filling my pouches with thistle-roots, I took a parting survey of the little solitude that had afforded me food and fire the preceding ten days, and with something of that melancholy feeling experienced by one who leaves his home to grapple with untried adventures, started for the nearest point on Yellowstone Lake. All that day I travelled over timber-heaps, amid tree tops, and through thickets. At noon I took the precaution to obtain fire. With a brand which I kept alive by frequent blowing, and constant waving to and fro, at a late hour in the afternoon, faint and exhausted, I kindled a fire for the night on the only vacant spot I could find amid a dense wilderness of pines. The deep gloom of the forest, in the spectral light which revealed on all sides of me a compact and unending growth of trunks and an impervious canopy of sombre foliage; the shrieking of night-birds; the super naturally human scream of the mountain lion, the prolonged howl of the wolf, made me insensible to all other forms of suffering. The burn on my hip was so inflamed that I could only sleep in a sitting posture. Seated with my back against a tree, the smoke from the fire almost enveloping me in its suffocating folds, I vainly tried, amid the din and uproar of this horrible serenade, to woo the drowsy god. My imagination was instinct with terror. At one moment it seemed as if, in the density of a thicket, I could see the blazing eyes of a formidable forest monster fixed upon me, preparatory to a deadly leap; at another I fancied that I heard the swift approach of a pack of yelping wolves through the distant brushwood, which in a few moments would tear me limb from limb. Whenever, by fatigue and weakness, my terrors yielded to drowsiness, the least noise roused me to a sense of the hideousness of my condition. Once, in a fitful slumber, I fell forward into the fire, and inflicted a wretched burn on my hand. Oh! with what agony I longed for day! A bright and glorious morning succeeded the dismal night, and brought with it the conviction that I had been the victim of uncontrollable nervous excitement. I resolved henceforth to banish it altogether, and, in much better spirits than I anticipated, resumed my journey towards the lake. Another day of unceasing toil among the tree-tops and thickets overtook me, near sunset, standing upon a lofty headland jutting into the lake, and commanding a magnificent prospect of the mountains and valley over an immense area. In front of me, at a distance of fifty miles away, in the clear blue of the horizon, rose the arrowy peaks of the Three Tetons. On the right, and apparently in close proximity to the eminence I occupied, rolled the picturesque range of the Madison, scarred with clefts, ravines, gorges, and cañons, each of which glittered in the sunlight or deepened in shadow as the fitful rays of the descending luminary glanced along their varied rocky irregularities. Above where I stood were the lofty domes of Mounts Langford and Doane, marking the limits of that wonderful barrier which had so long defied human power in its efforts to subdue it. Rising seemingly from the promontory which favored my vision was the familiar summit of Mount Everts, at the base of which I had dwelt so long, and which still seemed to hold me within its friendly shadow. All the vast country within this grand enclosure of mountains and lake, scarred and seamed with the grotesque ridges, rocky escarpments, undulating hillocks, and miniature lakes, and steaming with hot springs, produced by the volcanic forces of a former era, lay spread out before me like a vast panorama. I doubt if distress and suffering can ever entirely obliterate all sense of natural grandeur and magnificence. Lost in the wonder and admiration inspired by this vast world of beauties, I nearly forgot to improve the few moments of remaining sunshine to obtain fire. With a lighted brand in my hand, I effected a most difficult and arduous descent of the abrupt and stony headland to the beach of the lake. The sand was soft and yielding. I kindled a fire, and removing the stiffened slippers from my feet, attached them to my belt, and wandered barefoot along the sandy shore to gather wood for the night. The dry, warm sand was most grateful to my lacerated and festering feet, and for a long time after my wood-pile was supplied, I sat with them uncovered. At length, conscious of the need of every possible protection from the freezing night atmosphere, I sought my belt for the slippers, and one was missing. In gathering the wood it had become detached and was lost. Darkness was closing over the landscape, when, sorely disheartened with the thought of passing the night with one foot exposed to a freezing temperature, I commenced a search for the missing slipper. I knew I could not travel a day without it. Fearful that it had dropped into the lake, and been carried by some recurrent wave beyond recovery, my search for an hour among fallen trees and bushes, up the hill-side and along the beach, in darkness and with flaming brands, at one moment crawling on hands and feet into a brush-heap, another peering among logs and bushes and stones, was filled with anxiety and dismay. Success at length rewarded my perseverance, and no language can describe the joy with which I drew the cause of so much distress from beneath the limb that, as I passed, had torn it from my belt. With a feeling of great relief I now sat down in the sand, my back to a log, and listened to the dash and roar of the waves. It was a wild lullaby, but had no terrors for a worn-out man. I never passed a night of more refreshing sleep. When I awoke my fire was extinguished save a few embers, which I soon fanned into a cheerful flame. I ate breakfast with some relish, and started along the beach in pursuit of a camp, believing that if successful I should find directions what to do, and food to sustain me. The search which I was making lay in the direction of my pre-arranged route to the Madison Mountains, which I intended to approach at their lowest point of altitude. Buoyed by the hope of finding food and counsel, and another night of undisturbed repose in the sand, I resumed my journey along the shore, and at noon found the camp last occupied by my friends on the lake. I struck their trail in the sand some time before I came to it. A thorough search for food in the ground and trees revealed nothing, and no notice to apprise me of their movements could be seen. A dinner-fork, which afterwards proved to be of infinite service in digging roots, and a yeast-powder can, which would hold half a pint, and which I converted into a drinking-cup and dinner-pot, were the only evidences that the spot had ever been visited by civilized man. "Oh!" thought I, "why did they forget to leave me food!" It never occurred to me that they might have cached it, as I have since learned they did, in several spots nearer the place of my separation from them. I left the camp in deep dejection, with the purpose of following the trail of the party to the Madison. Carefully inspecting the faint traces left of their course of travel, I became satisfied that from some cause they had made a retrograde movement from this camp, and departed from the lake at a point farther down stream. Taking this as an indication that there were obstructions above, I commenced retracing my steps along the beach. An hour of sunshine in the afternoon enabled me to procure fire, which, in the usual manner, I carried to my camping-place. There I built a fire, and to protect myself from the wind, which was blowing violently, lashing the lake into foam, I made a bower of pine boughs, crept under it, and very soon fell asleep. How long I slept I know not, but I was aroused by the snapping and cracking of the burning foliage, to find my shelter and the adjacent forest in a broad sheet of flame. My left hand was badly burned, and my hair singed closer than a barber would have trimmed it, while making my escape from the semicircle of burning trees. Among the disasters of this fire, there was none I felt more seriously than the loss of my buckle-tongue knife, my pin fish-hook, and tape fish-line. The grandeur of the burning forest surpasses description. An immense sheet of flame, following to their tops the lofty trees of an almost impenetrable pine forest, leaping madly from top to top, and sending thousands of forked tongues a hundred feet or more athwart the midnight darkness, lighting up with lurid gloom and glare the surrounding scenery of lake and mountains, fills the beholder with mingled feelings of awe and astonishment. I never before saw anything so terribly beautiful. It was marvellous to witness the flash-like rapidity with which the flames would mount the loftiest trees. The roaring, cracking, crashing, and snapping of falling limbs and burning foliage was deafening. On, on, on travelled the destructive element, until it seemed as if the whole forest was enveloped in flame. Afar up the wood-crowned hill, the overtopping trees shot forth pinnacles and walls and streamers of arrowy fire. The entire hill-side was an ocean of glowing and surging fiery billows. Favored by the gale, the conflagration spread with lightning swiftness over an illimitable extent of country, filling the atmosphere with driving clouds of suffocating fume, and leaving a broad and blackened trail of spectral trunks shorn of limbs and foliage, smoking and burning, to mark the immense sweep of its devastation. Resolved to search for a trail no longer, when daylight came I selected for a landmark the lowest notch in the Madison Range. Carefully surveying the jagged and broken surface over which I must travel to reach it, I left the lake and pushed into the midst of its intricacies. All the day, until nearly sunset, I struggled over rugged hills, through windfalls, thickets, and matted forests, with the rock-ribbed beacon constantly in view. As I advanced it receded, as if in mockery of my toil. Night overtook me with my journey half accomplished. The precaution of obtaining fire gave me warmth and sleep, and long before daylight I was on my way. The hope of finding an easy pass into the valley of the Madison inspired me with fresh courage and determination; but long before I arrived at the base of the range, I scanned hopelessly its insurmountable difficulties. It presented to my eager vision an endless succession of inaccessible peaks and precipices, rising thousands of feet sheer and bare above the plain. No friendly gorge or gully or cañon invited such an effort as I could make to scale this rocky barrier. Oh for the faith that could remove mountains! How soon should this colossal fabric open at my approach! What a feeling of helpless despair came over me with the conviction that the journey of the last two days had been in vain! I seated myself on a rock upon the summit of a commanding hill, and cast my eyes along the only route which now seemed tenable--down the Yellowstone. How many dreary miles of forest and mountain filled the terrible panorama! I thought that before accepting this discouraging alternative I would spend a day in search for a pass. Twenty miles at most would take me into the Madison Valley, and thirty more restore me to friends who had abundance. Supposing that I should find plenty of thistles, I had left the lake with a small supply, and that was entirely spent. I looked in vain for them where I then was. While I was thus considering whether to remain and search for a passage or return to the Yellowstone, I experienced one of those strange hallucinations which many of my friends have misnamed insanity, but which to me was Providence. An old clerical friend, for whose character and counsel I had always cherished peculiar regard, in some unaccountable manner seemed to be standing before me, charged with advice which would relieve my perplexity. I seemed to hear him say, as if in a voice and with the manner of authority: "Go back immediately, as rapidly as your strength will permit. There is no food here, and the idea of scaling these rocks is madness." "Doctor," I rejoined, "the distance is too great. I cannot live to travel it." "Say not so. Your life depends upon the effort. Return at once. Start now, lest your resolution falter. Travel as fast and as far as possible--it is your only chance." "Doctor, I am rejoiced to meet you in this hour of distress, but doubt the wisdom of your counsel. I am within seventy miles of Virginia. Just over these rocks, a few miles away, I shall find friends. My shoes are nearly worn out, my clothes are in tatters, and my strength is almost overcome. As a last trial, it seems to me I can but attempt to scale this mountain or perish in the effort, if God so wills." "Don't think of it. Your power of endurance will carry you through. I will accompany you. Put your trust in Heaven. Help yourself and God will help you." Overcome by these and other persuasions, and delighted with the idea of having a travelling companion, I plodded my way over the route I had come, intending at a certain point to change it so as to strike the river at the foot of the lake. Stopping after a few miles of travel, I had no difficulty in procuring fire, and passed a comfortable night. When I resumed my journey the next day the sun was just rising. Whenever I was disposed, as was often the case, to question the wisdom of the change of routes, my old friend appeared to be near with words of encouragement, but his reticence on other subjects both surprised and annoyed me. I was impressed at times, during the entire journey, with the belief that my return was a fatal error, and if my deliverance had failed should have perished with that conviction. Early this day I deflected from my old route and took my course for the foot of the lake, with the hope, by constant travel, to reach it the next day. The distance was greater than I anticipated. Nothing is more deceptive than distance in these high latitudes. At the close of each of the two succeeding days, my point of destination was seemingly as far from me as at the moment I took leave of the Madison Range, and when, cold and hungry, on the afternoon of the fourth day, I gathered the first food I had eaten in nearly five days, and lay down by my fire near the debouchure of the river, I had nearly abandoned all hope of escape. At daybreak I was on the trail down the river. The thought I had adopted from the first, "I will cot perish in this wilderness," often revived my sinking spirits, when, from faintness and exhaustion, I felt but little desire for life. Once, while struggling through a field of tangled trunks which seemed interminable, at one of the pauses I found myself seriously considering whether it was not preferable to die there than renew the effort to proceed. I felt that all attempt to escape was but a bitter prolongation of the agony of dissolution. A seeming whisper in the air, "While there is life there is hope; take courage," broke the delusion, and I clambered on. I did not forget to improve the mid-day sun to procure fire. Sparks from the lighted brands had burned my hands and crisped the nails of my fingers, and the smoke from them had tanned my face to the complexion of an Indian. While passing through an opening in the forest I found the tip of a gull's wing; it was fresh. I made a fire upon the spot, mashed the bones with a stone, and consigning them to my camp kettle, the yeast-powder box, made half a pint of delicious broth. The remainder of that day and the night ensuing were given to sleep. I lost all sense of time. Days and nights came and went, and were numbered only by the growing consciousness that I was gradually starving. I felt no hunger, did not eat to appease appetite, but to renew strength. I experienced but little pain. The gaping sores on my feet, the severe burn on my hip, the festering crevices at the joints of my fingers, all terrible in appearance, had ceased to give me the least concern. The roots which supplied my food had suspended the digestive power of the stomach, and their fibres were packed in it in a matted, compact mass. Not so with my hours of slumber. They were visited by the most luxurious dreams. I would apparently visit the most gorgeously decorated restaurants of New York and Washington; sit down to immense tables spread with the most appetizing viands; partake of the richest oyster stews and plumpest pies; engage myself in the labor and preparation of curious dishes, and with them fill range upon range of elegantly furnished tables until they fairly groaned beneath the accumulated dainties prepared by my own hands. Frequently the entire night would seem to have been spent in getting up a sumptuous dinner. I would realize the fatigue of roasting, boiling, baking, and fabricating the choicest dishes known to the modern _cuisine_, and in my disturbed slumbers would enjoy with epicurean relish the food thus furnished even to repletion. Alas! there was more luxury than life in these somnolent vagaries. It was a cold, gloomy day when I arrived in the vicinity of the falls. The sky was overcast and the snow-capped peaks rose chilly and bleak through the biting atmosphere. The moaning of the wind through the pines, mingling with the sullen roar of the falls, was strangely in unison with my own saddened feelings. I had no heart to gaze upon a scene which a few weeks before had inspired me with rapture and awe. One moment of sunshine was of more value to me than all the marvels amid which I was famishing. But the sun had hid his face and denied me all hope of obtaining fire. The only alternative was to seek shelter in a thicket. I penetrated the forest a long distance before finding one that suited me. Breaking and crowding my way into its very midst, I cleared a spot large enough to recline upon, interlaced the surrounding brushwood, gathered the fallen foliage into a bed, and lay down with a prayer for sleep and forgetfulness. Alas! neither came. The coldness increased through the night. Constant friction with my hands and unceasing beating with my legs and feet saved me from freezing. It was the most terrible night of my journey, and when, with the early dawn, I pulled myself into a standing posture, it was to realize that my right arm was partially paralyzed, and my limbs so stiffened with cold as to be almost immovable. Fearing lest paralysis should suddenly seize upon the entire system, I literally dragged myself through the forest to the river. Seated near the verge of the great cañon below the falls, I anxiously awaited the appearance of the sun. That great luminary never looked so beautiful as when, a few moments afterwards, he emerged from the clouds and exposed his glowing beams to the concentrating powers of my lens. I kindled a mighty flame, fed it with every dry stick and broken tree-top I could find, and without motion, and almost without sense, remained beside it several hours. The great falls of the Yellowstone were roaring within three hundred yards, and the awful cañon yawned almost at my feet; but they had lost all charm for me. In fact, I regarded them as enemies which had lured me to destruction, and felt a sullen satisfaction in morbid indifference. My old friend and adviser, whose presence I had felt more than seen the last few days, now forsook me altogether. But I was not alone. By some process which I was too weak to solve, my arms, legs, and stomach were transformed into so many travelling companions. Often for hours I would plod along conversing with these imaginary friends. Each had his peculiar wants which he expected me to supply. The stomach was importunate in his demand for a change of diet--complained incessantly of the roots I fed him, their present effect and more remote consequences. I would try to silence him with promises, beg of him to wait a few days, and when this failed of the quiet I desired, I would seek to intimidate him by declaring, as a sure result of negligence, our inability to reach home alive. All to no purpose--he tormented me with his fretful humors through the entire journey. The others would generally concur with him in these fancied altercations. The legs implored me for rest, and the arms complained that I gave them too much to do. Troublesome as they were, it was a pleasure to realize their presence. I worked for them, too, with right good will, doing many things for their seeming comfort which, had I felt myself alone, would have remained undone. They appeared to be perfectly helpless of themselves; would do nothing for me or for each other. I often wondered, while they ate and slept so much, that they did not aid in gathering wood and kindling fires. As a counterpoise to their own inertia, whenever they discovered languor in me on necessary occasions, they were not wanting in words of encouragement and cheer. I recall as I write, an instance where, by prompt and timely interposition, the representative of the stomach saved me from a death of dreadful agony. One day I came to a small stream issuing from a spring of mild temperature on the hill-side, swarming with minnows. I caught some with my hands, and ate them raw. To my taste they were delicious. But the stomach refused them, accused me of attempting to poison him, and would not be reconciled until I had emptied my pouch of the few fish I had put there for future use. Those that I ate made me very sick. Poisoned by the mineral in the water, had I glutted my appetite with them as I intended, I should doubtless have died in the wilderness, in excruciating torment. [Illustration: IMAGINARY COMPANIONS.] A gradual mental introversion grew upon me as physical weakness increased. The grand and massive scenery which, on the upward journey, had aroused every enthusiastic impulse of my nature, was now tame and spiritless. My thoughts were turned in upon myself--upon the dreadful fate which apparently lay just before me--and the possible happiness of the existence beyond. All doubt of immortality fled in the light of present realities. So vivid were my conceptions of the future that at times I longed for death, not less as the beginning of happiness than as a release from misery. Led on by these reflections, I would recall the varied incidents of my journey--my escape from the lion, from fire, my return from the Madison Range--and in all of them I saw how much I had been indebted to that mysterious protection which comes only from the throne of the Eternal. And yet, starving, foot-sore, half blind, worn to a skeleton, was it surprising that I lacked the faith needful to buoy me above the dark waters of despair, which I now felt were closing around me? In less serious moods, as I struggled along, my thoughts would revert to the single being on whom my holiest affections centred--my daughter. What a tie was that to bind me to life! Oh! could I be restored to her for a single hour, long enough for parting counsel and blessing, it would be joy unspeakable! Long hours of painful travel were relieved of physical suffering by this absorbing agony of the mind, which, when from my present standpoint I contrast it with the personal calamities of my exile, swells into mountains. To return from this digression. At many of the streams on my route I spent hours in endeavoring to catch trout, with a hook fashioned from the rim of my broken spectacles, but in no instance with success. The tackle was defective. The country was full of game in great variety. I saw large herds of deer, elk, antelope, occasionally a bear, and many smaller animals. Numerous flocks of ducks, geese, swans, and pelicans inhabited the lakes and rivers. But with no means of killing them, their presence was a perpetual aggravation. At all the camps of our company I stopped and recalled many pleasant incidents associated with them. One afternoon, when approaching "Tower Falls," I came upon a large hollow tree, which, from the numerous tracks surrounding it, and the matted foliage in the cavity, I recognized as the den of a bear. It was a most inviting couch. Gathering a needful supply of wood and brush, I lighted a circle of piles around the tree, crawled into the nest, and passed a night of unbroken slumber. I rose the next morning to find that during the night the fires had communicated with the adjacent forest, and burned a large space in all directions, doubtless intimidating the rightful proprietor of the nest, and saving me from another midnight adventure. At "Tower Falls" I spent the first half of a day in capturing a grasshopper, and the remainder in a fruitless effort to catch a mess of trout. In the agony of disappointment, I resolved to fish no more. A spirit of rebellion seized me. I determined that thistles should thenceforth be my only sustenance. "Why is it," I asked of myself, "that in the midst of abundance, every hour meeting with objects which would restore strength and vigor and energy, every moment contriving some device to procure the nourishment my wasting frame required, I should meet with these repeated and discouraging failures?" Thoughts of the early teaching of a pious mother suppressed these feelings. Oh! how often have the recollections of a loved New England home, and the memories of a happy childhood, cheered my sinking spirits, and dissipated the gathering gloom of despair! There were thoughts and feelings and mental anguishes without number, that visited me during my period of trial, that never can be known to any but my God and myself. Bitter as was my experience, it was not unrelieved by some of the most precious moments I have ever known. Soon after leaving "Tower Falls," I entered the open country. Pine forests and windfalls were changed for sage brush and desolation, with occasional tracts of stunted verdure, barren hillsides, exhibiting here and there an isolated clamp of dwarf trees, and ravines filled with the rocky _debris_ of adjacent mountains. My first camp on this part of the route, for the convenience of getting wood, was made near the summit of a range of towering foot-hills. Towards morning a storm of wind and snow nearly extinguished my fire. I became very cold; the storm was still raging when I arose, and the ground white with snow. I was perfectly bewildered, and had lost my course of travel. No visible object, seen through the almost blinding storm, reassured me, and there was no alternative but to find the river and take my direction from its current. Fortunately, after a few hours of stumbling and scrambling among rocks and over crests, I came to the precipitous side of the cañon through which it ran, and with much labor, both of hands and feet, descended it to the margin. I drank copiously of its pure waters, and sat beside it for a long time, waiting for the storm to abate, so that I could procure fire. The day wore on, without any prospect of a termination to the storm. Chilled through, my tattered clothing saturated, I saw before me a night of horrors unless I returned to my fire. The scramble up the side of the rocky cañon, in many places nearly perpendicular, was the hardest work of my journey. Often, while clinging to the jutting rocks with hands and feet, to reach a shelving projection, my grasp would unclose and I would slide many feet down the sharp declivity. It was night when, sore from the bruises I had received, I reached my fire; the storm, still raging, had nearly extinguished it. I found a few embers in the ashes, and with much difficulty kindled a flame. Here, on this bleak mountain side, as well as I now remember, I must have passed two nights beside the fire, in the storm. Many times during each night I crawled to the little clump of trees to gather wood, and brush, and the broken limbs of fallen tree-tops. All the sleep I obtained was snatched from the intervals which divided these labors. It was so harassed with frightful dreams as to afford little rest. I remember, before I left this camp, stripping up my sleeves to look at my shrunken arms. Flesh and blood had apparently left them. The skin clung to the bones like wet parchment. A child's hand could have clasped them from wrist to shoulder. "Yet," thought I, "it is death to remain; I cannot perish in this wilderness." Taking counsel of this early formed resolution, I hobbled on my course through the snow, which was rapidly disappearing before the rays of the warm sun. Well knowing that I should find no thistles in the open country, I had filled my pouches with them before leaving the forest. My supply was running low, and there were yet several days of heavy mountain travel between me and Botelers' Ranch. With the most careful economy, it could last but two or three days longer. I saw the necessity of placing myself and imaginary companions upon allowance. The conflict which ensued with the stomach, when I announced this resolution, required great firmness to carry through. I tried wheedling and coaxing and promising; failing in these, I threatened to part company with a comrade so unreasonable, and he made no further complaint. Two or three days before I was found, while ascending a steep hill, I fell from exhaustion into the sage brush, without the power to rise. Unbuckling my belt, as was my custom, I soon fell asleep. I have no idea of the time I slept, but upon awaking I fastened my belt, scrambled to my feet, and pursued my journey. As night drew on I selected a camping-place, gathered wood into a heap, and felt for my lens to procure fire. It was gone. If the earth had yawned to swallow me I would not have been more terrified. The only chance for life was lost. The last hope had fled. I seemed to feel the grim messenger who had been so long pursuing me knocking at the portals of my heart as I lay down by the side of the wood-pile, and covered myself with limbs and sage brush, with the dreadful conviction that my struggle for life was over, and that I should rise no more. The floodgates of misery seemed now to be opened, and it rushed in a living tide upon my soul. With the rapidity of lightning, I ran over every event of my life. Thoughts doubled and trebled upon me, until I saw, as if in vision, the entire past of my existence. It was all before me, as if painted with a sunbeam, and all seemingly faded like the phantoms of a vivid dream. As calmness returned, reason resumed her empire. Fortunately, the weather was comfortable. I summoned all the powers of my memory, thought over every foot of the day's travel, and concluded that the glass must have become detached from my belt while sleeping. Five long miles over the hills must be retraced to regain it. There was no alternative, and before daylight I had staggered over half the distance. I found the lens on the spot where I had slept. No incident of my journey brought with it more of joy and relief. Returning to the camp of the previous night, I lighted the pile I had prepared, and lay down for a night to rest. It was very cold, and towards morning commenced snowing. With difficulty I kept the fire alive. Sleep was impossible. When daylight came, I was impressed with the idea that I must go on despite the storm. A flash--momentary but vivid--came over me, that I should be saved. Snatching a lighted brand, I started through the storm. In the afternoon the storm abated and the sun shone at intervals. Coming to a small clump of trees, I set to work to prepare a camp. I laid the brand down which I had preserved with so much care, to pick up a few dry sticks with which to feed it, until I could collect wood for a camp-fire, and in the few minutes thus employed it expired. I sought to revive it, but every spark was gone. Clouds obscured the sun, now near the horizon, and the prospect of another night of exposure without fire became fearfully imminent. I sat down with my lens and the last remaining piece of touchwood I possessed to catch a gleam of sunshine, feeling that my life depended on it. In a few moments the cloud passed, and with trembling hands I presented the little disk to the face of the glowing luminary. Quivering with excitement lest a sudden cloud should interpose, a moment passed before I could hold the lens steadily enough to concentrate a burning focus. At length it came. The little thread of smoke curled gracefully up wards from the Heaven-lighted spark, which, a few moments afterwards, diffused with warmth and comfort my desolate lodgings. I resumed my journey the next morning, with the belief that I should make no more fires with my lens. I must save a brand, or perish. The day was raw and gusty; an east wind, charged with storm, penetrated my nerves with irritating keenness. After walking a few miles the storm came on, and a coldness unlike any other I had ever felt seized me. It entered all my bones. I attempted to build a fire, but could not make it burn. Seizing a brand, I stumbled blindly on, stopping within the shadow of every rock and clump to renew energy for a final conflict for life. A solemn conviction that death was near, that at each pause I made my limbs would refuse further service, and that I should sink helpless and dying in my path, overwhelmed me with terror. Amid all this tumult of the mind, I felt that I had done all that man could do. I knew that in two or three days more I could effect my deliverance, and I derived no little satisfaction from the thought that, as I was now in the broad trail, my remains would be found, and my friends relieved of doubt as to my fate. Once only the thought flashed across my mind that I should be saved, and I seemed to hear a whispered command to "struggle on." Groping along the side of a hill, I became suddenly sensible of a sharp reflection, as of burnished steel. Looking up, through half-closed eyes, two rough but kindly faces met my gaze. "Are you Mr. Everts?" "Yes. All that is left of him." "We have come for you." "Who sent you?" "Judge Lawrence and other friends." "God bless him, and them, and you! I am saved!" and with these words, powerless of further effort, I fell forward into the arms of my preservers, in a state of unconsciousness. I was saved. On the very brink of the river which divides the known from the unknown, strong arms snatched me from the final plunge, and kind ministrations wooed me back to life. Baronet and Prichette, my two preservers, by the usual appliances, soon restored me to consciousness, made a camp upon the spot, and while one went to Fort Ellis, a distance of seventy miles, to return with remedies to restore digestion and an ambulance to convey me to that post, the other sat by my side, and with all the care, sympathy, and solicitude of a brother, ministered to my frequent necessities. In two days I was sufficiently recovered in strength to be moved twenty miles down the trail to the cabin of some miners who were prospecting in that vicinity. From these men I received every possible attention which their humane and generous natures could devise. A good bed was provided, game was killed to make broth, and the best stores of their larder placed at my command. For four days, at a time when every day's labor was invaluable in their pursuit, they abandoned their work to aid in my restoration. Owing to the protracted inaction of the system, and the long period which must transpire before Prichette's return with remedies, my friends had serious doubts of my recovery. The night after my arrival at the cabin, while suffering the most excruciating agony, and thinking that I had only been saved to die among friends, a loud knock was heard at the cabin door. An old man in mountain costume entered--a hunter, whose life was spent among the mountains. He was on his way to find a brother. He listened to the story of my sufferings, and tears rapidly coursed each other down his rough, weather-beaten face. But when he was told of my present necessity, brightening in a moment, he exclaimed: "Why, Lord bless you, if that is all, I have the very remedy you need. In two hours' time all shall be well with you." He left the cabin, returning in a moment with a sack filled with the fat of a bear which he had killed a few hours before. From this he rendered out a pint measure of oil. I drank the whole of it. It proved to be the needed remedy, and the next day, freed from pain, with appetite and digestion reestablished, I felt that good food and plenty of it were only necessary for an early recovery. In a day or two I took leave of my kind friends, with a feeling of regret at parting, and of gratitude for their kindness as enduring as life. Meeting the carriage on my way, I preceded to Boseman, where I remained among old friends, who gave me every attention until my health was sufficiently restored to allow me to return to my home at Helena. My heartfelt thanks are due to the members of the expedition, all of whom devoted seven, and some of them twelve days to the search for me before they left Yellowstone Lake; and to Judge Lawrence, of Helena, and the friends who co-operated with him in the offer of reward which sent Baronet and Prichette to my rescue. My narrative is finished. In the course of events the time is not far distant when the wonders of the Yellowstone will be made accessible to all lovers of sublimity, grandeur, and novelty in natural scenery, and its majestic waters become the abode of civilization and refinement; and when that arrives, I hope, in happier mood and under more auspicious circumstances, to revisit scenes fraught for me with such thrilling interest; to ramble along the glowing beach of Bessie Lake; to sit down amid the hot springs under the shadow of Mount Everts; to thread unscared the mazy forests, retrace the dreary journey to the Madison Range, and with enraptured fancy gaze upon the mingled glories and terrors of the great falls and marvellous cañon, and to enjoy, in happy contrast with the trials they recall, their power to delight, elevate, and overwhelm the mind with wondrous and majestic beauty. CHAPTER XVI. THE YELLOWSTONE PARK. As soon as Dr. Hayden could make known officially the results of his exploration of the Yellowstone Basin, action was begun to secure the reservation of a portion at least of the marvellous scenes which it embraces, for the undivided benefit, enjoyment and instruction of the country at large. A bill to this effect was introduced into the Senate of the United States, on the 18th of December, 1871, by Hon. S. C. Pomeroy of Kansas. About the same time a similar bill was offered in the House of Representatives by Hon. William H. Claggett, delegate from Montana. The bill was referred to the Committees on Public Lands in both houses, who after due consideration returned with approbation the following report prepared by Dr. Hayden: "The bill now before Congress has for its object the withdrawal from settlement, occupancy, or sale, under the laws of the United States, a tract of land fifty-five by sixty-five miles, about the sources of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers, and dedicates and sets it apart as a great national park or pleasure-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people. The entire area comprises within the limits of the reservation contemplated in this bill is not susceptible of cultivation with any degree of certainty, and the winters would be too severe for stock-raising. Whenever the altitude of the mountain districts exceeds 6,000 feet above tide-water, their settlement becomes problematical unless there are valuable mines to attract people. The entire area within the limits of the proposed reservation is over 6,000 feet in altitude, and the Yellowstone Lake, which occupies an area fifteen by twenty-two miles, or three hundred and thirty square miles, is 7,427 feet. The ranges of mountains that hem the valleys in on every side rise to the height of 10,000 and 12,000 feet and are covered with snow all the year. These mountains are all of volcanic origin, and it is not probable that any mines or minerals of value will ever be found there. During the months of June, July, and August the climate is pure and most invigorating, with scarcely any rain or storms of any kind, but the thermometer frequently sinks as low as 26°. There is frost every month of the year. This whole region was, in comparatively modern geological times, the scene of the most wonderful volcanic activity of any portion of our country. The hot springs and the geysers represent the last stages--the vents or escape-pipes--of these remarkable volcanic manifestations of the internal forces. All these springs are adorned with decorations more beautiful than human art ever conceived, and which have required thousands of years for the cunning hand of nature to form. Persons are now waiting for the spring to open to enter in and take possession of these remarkable curiosities, to make merchandise of these beautiful specimens, to fence in these rare wonders, so as to charge visitors a fee, as is now done at Niagara Falls, for the sight of that which ought to be as free as the air or water. In a few years this region will be a place of resort for all classes of people from all portions of the world. The geysers of Iceland, which have been objects of interest for the scientific men and travellers of the entire world, sink into insignificance in comparison with the hot springs of the Yellowstone and Firehole Basins. As a place of resort for invalids, it will not be excelled by any portion of the world. If this bill fails to become a law this session, the vandals who are now waiting to enter into this wonder-land will, in a single season, despoil, beyond recovery, these remarkable curiosities, which have required all the cunning skill of nature thousands of years to prepare." [Illustration: THE GIANTESS.] "We have already shown that no portion of this tract can ever be made available for agricultural or mining purposes. Even if the altitude and the climate would permit the country to be made available, not over fifty square miles of the entire area could ever be settled. The valleys are all narrow, hemmed in by high volcanic mountains like gigantic walls. The withdrawal of this tract, therefore, from sale or settlement takes nothing from the value of the public domain, and is no pecuniary loss to the Government, but will be regarded by the entire civilized world as a step of progress and an honor to Congress and the nation." In the Senate the bill was ably advocated by Messrs. Pomeroy, Edmunds, Trumbull, Anthony and others. In the House the favorable remarks of Hon. H. L. Dawes were so clear and forcible that the bill was passed without opposition. The text of the Act is as follows: "_Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled_, That the tract of land in the Territories of Montana and Wyoming, lying near the headwaters of the Yellowstone River, and described as follows, to wit, commencing at the junction of Gardiner's River with the Yellowstone River, and running east to the meridian passing ten miles to the eastward of the most eastern point of Yellowstone Lake; thence south along said meridian to the parallel of latitude passing ten miles south of the most southern point of Yellowstone Lake; thence west along said parallel to the meridian passing fifteen miles west of the most western point of Madison Lake; thence north along said meridian to the latitude of the junction of the Yellowstone and Gardiner's River; thence east to the place of beginning, is hereby reserved and withdrawn from settlement, occupancy, or sale under the laws of the United States, and dedicated and set apart as a public park or pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people; and all persons who shall locate or settle upon or occupy the same, or any part thereof, except as hereinafter provided, shall be considered trespassers and removed therefrom. "SEC. 2. That said public park shall be under the exclusive control of the Secretary of the Interior, whose duty it shall be, as soon as practicable, to make and publish such rules and regulations as he may deem necessary or proper for the care and management of the same. Such regulations shall provide for the preservation, from injury or spoliation, of all timber, mineral deposits, natural curiosities or wonders within said park, and their retention in their natural condition. The Secretary may, in his discretion, grant leases for building purposes for terms not exceeding ten years, of small parcels of ground, at such places in said park as shall require the erection of buildings for the accommodation of visitors; all of the proceeds of said leases, and all other revenues that may be derived from any source connected with said park, to be expended under his direction in the management of the same, and the construction of roads and bridlepaths therein. He shall provide against the wanton destruction of the fish and game found within said, park, and against their capture or destruction for the purposes of merchandise or profit. He shall also cause all persons trespassing upon the same after the passage of this act to be removed therefrom, and generally shall be authorized to take all such measures as shall be necessary or proper to fully carry out the objects and purposes of this act." This Act was approved March 1, 1872; and shortly after the Hon. N. P. Langford, whose graphic descriptions of the Wonders of the Yellowstone first called public attention thereto, was appointed Superintendent of the Park. [Illustration: MAP] FOOTNOTE: [1] Mr. Langford appears to have underestimated this fall. The report of the U. S. Geological Survey gives the height as 140 feet. TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: --Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected. 
40587	----	YELLOWSTONE NIGHTS By HERBERT QUICK AUTHOR OF "ALLADIN & CO.," "VIRGINIA OF THE AIR LANES," ETC. GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHER NEW YORK COPYRIGHT 1911 THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY YELLOWSTONE NIGHTS CHAPTER I It was August the third--and the rest of it. Being over Montana, and the Rockies, the skies were just as described by Truthful James. In the little park between the N. P. Station and the entrance to Yellowstone Park a stalwart young fellow and a fluffy, lacy, Paquined girl floated from place to place with their feet seven or eight inches from the earth--or so it seemed. They disappeared behind some shrubbery and sat down on a bench, where the young man hugged the girl ferociously, and she, with that patient endurance which is the wonder and glory of womanhood, suffered it uncomplainingly. In fact she reciprocated it. Note that we said a moment ago that they disappeared. From whose gaze? Not from ours, for we saw them sit and--and what followed. Their disappearance was from the view of a slender man of medium height who was off toward the station, inspecting the salvias, the phloxes, the cannas, the colei, the materials with which the walks were paved, and the earth in the flower-beds. He looked the near things over with a magnifying-glass, and scrutinized the far landscape with field-glasses. When he removed his traveling cap, one saw that he was bald, though not so bald as he seemed--his weak and neutral hair blended so in color with the neutral shades of his face and garb. As he looked at things near and far, from the formal garden of the little park to the towering peak of Electric Mountain, which flew a pennon of cloud off to the west, or Sepulcher Mountain, half lost in an unaccustomed haze to the south, but displaying above the blue its enormous similitude of a grave, with the stone at head and foot, he made notes in his huge pocket-book, and in making notes he approached closer and closer to the big boy and little girl on the bench. In fact, he stopped on the other side of the bush, and as the lovers kissed for the tenth time, at least, he stepped round toward them, peering into the top of the bushes, pencil poised to jot down the cause of the chirping sound which had greeted his ears. "I think I heard young birds in this bush," said he. "You did," responded the young man, blushing. "This park is full of them," said the girl, rather less embarrassed. "Did you note the species?" queried he of the glasses. "I seem quite unable to catch sight of them." "They are turtle-doves," said the girl. "Gulls!" said the man. The girl giggled hysterically. The naturalist was protesting that gulls never nest in such places, and the young man was becoming hopelessly confused, when a fourth figure joined the group. He was clad in garments of the commonest sort--but the girl was at once struck by the fact that he wore a soft roll collar on his flannel shirt, and a huge red silk neckerchief. Moreover, he carried a long whip which he trailed after him in the grass. "Local color at last!" she whispered to her lover. "I know we're going to have a shooting or a cow-boy adventure!" "Well," the new-comer said, "do you go with us, or not, Doc?" "Go with you?" asked the ornithologist. "Go where?" "Tour of the Park?" replied the man with the whip. "I'm having hard work to get a load." "I think," said the person addressed, "that I can finish my inspection of the Park on foot. It is, in fact, surprisingly small, and not at all what I had expected. I have been pacing it off. There are very few acres in it--" "I'll be dog-goned," said the man with the whip, "if he don't think _this_ is the Yellowstone Park! Stranger, look at yon beautiful arch, erected by Uncle Sam out of hexagonal blocks of basalt! That marks the entrance to the Wonderland of the World, a matchless nat'ral park of more'n three thousand square miles, filled with unnat'ral wonders of nature! This is the front yard of the railroad station. It'll take you days and days to do the Park--an' years to do it right." "Oh, in that case," responded the investigator, "of course you may rely upon my joining you!" "I want two more, lady," said the driver. "What say?" "No," said the young man. "We've decided to cut the Park out." "I've changed my mind, I believe," said the girl. "Let's go!" "But I thought--" * * * * * And so the party was made up. It was like one of those strange meetings that take place on shipboard, on the wharves of ports--wherever fate takes men in her hands, shakes them like dice, and throws them on the board--and peeps at them to see what pairs, threes, flushes and other harmonies make up the strength of the cast. There were seven of them. In the rear seat of the surrey sat two young men wearing broad-brimmed Stetsons, and corduroys. Their scarfs were pronouncedly Windsor, and the ends thereof streamed in the breeze as did the pennon of cloud from the top of Electric Peak off there in the west. The one with the long hair and the Dresden-china complexion starting to peel off at the lips, was the Minor Poet who eked out a living by the muck-raker's dreadful trade. He spoke of our malefactors of great wealth as "burglars" and grew soft-eyed and mute as the splendors of the Yellowstone Wonderland grew upon him. With him was a smaller man, shorter of hair, and younger in years--which youth was advertised by its disguise: a dark, silky Vandyke. He was an artist who was known to the readers of _Puck_, _Judge_ and _Life_ for his thick-lipped "coons" and shapeless hoboes, and who was here in the Park with the Poet for the purpose of drawing pictures for a prose poem which should immortalize both. So much for the rear seat. The next seat forward was sacred to love. That is, it was occupied by the Bride and Groom, who called each other by the names of "Billy" and "Dolly," and tried to behave as if very mature and long-married--with what success we have seen. It was in pursuance of this scheme that they deliberately refused to take the rear seat when it was pointedly offered them by the Poet and the Artist. They were very quiet now, the Bride in stout shoes, mountain-climbing skirt and sweater, the Groom in engineer's boots and khaki. In the next seat forward sat the man of note-books, field-glasses, magnifying-glasses and drabs. The driver called him at first "Doc"; but soon adopted the general usage by which he was dubbed "Professor." He was myopic; but proud of his powers of observation. So wide was his reading that he knew nothing. His tour of the Park was made as a step toward that mastery of all knowledge which he had adopted as his goal. At once he saw that the rest of the party were light-minded children, frittering life away; and at once they took his measure. This made for mutual enjoyment. Nothing so conduces to good relations as the proper niching of the members of the party. With him sat Colonel Baggs, of Omaha, who smoked all the time and quoted Blackstone and Kent for his seat-mate's Epictetus and Samuel Smiles. Whenever time hung heavy on the party for sheer lack of power to wonder, Colonel Baggs restored tonicity to their brains by some far-fetched argument to which he provoked Professor Boggs, wherein the Colonel violated all rules and escaped confusion by the most transparent fakir's tricks, solemnly regarding the Professor with one side of his face, and winking and grimacing at those behind with the other. In the driver's seat sat Aconite Driscoll, erstwhile cow-boy, but now driver of a Yellowstone surrey, with four cayuses in hand, and a whip in place of the quirt of former years. When you tour the Yellowstone may he be your guide, driver, protector, entertainer and friend. So they were seven, as I remarked. The Bride counted out as for I-spy, "'One, two, three, four, five, six, seven; All good children go to heaven!'" The Minor Poet said, "'We are seven.'" The Artist quoted, "'Seven men from all the world'"--and looked at the Bride. "'Back to Docks again,'" she continued, knowing her Kipling, "'Rolling down the Ratcliffe Road, drunk and raising Cain.' Thanks for including me as a man." The Artist bowed. "Anyhow," said the Poet, "'We are seven.'" They were all in the surrey and Aconite had the reins in hand, his whip poised, and his lips pursed for the initiatory chirrup, when there put his foot on the hub the Hired Man, who looked the part and presently explained that he worked on farms as a regular thing, and who was to be number eight. "If this seven business is eatin' yeh so bad," said he, "kain't I make a quadrille of it? I never pay fare, nowheres; but I kin cook, 'n drive, 'n rustle firewood, 'n drive tent-pins--an' you seem to have an empty seat. What say?" Aconite looked back into the faces of his load. All looked at the Bride as commander-in-chief--the Bride nodded. "Shore!" said Aconite. "Hop in!" They rolled through the great arch at the entrance, and bowled along the road in breath-taking style as they crossed bridge after bridge, the walls of Gardiner Cañon towering on each side with its left-hand copings crumbling into pinnacles like ruined battlements, on which sat fishing-eagles as sentinels, their eyes scanning the flashing stream below. The wild roses were still in sparse bloom; the cottonwood groves showed splotches of brilliant yellow; the cedars gloomed in steady and dependable green. Autumn leaves and spring flowers, and over all a sky of ultramarine. "See there!" exclaimed the Bride, pointing at the huge stream of hot water where Boiling River bursts from its opening in the rocks, and falls steaming into the Gardiner. "What in the world is it--a geyser?" "That there little spurt," said Aconite, "is where the sink-pipe dreens off from Mammoth Hot Springs. Don't begin bein' surprised at things like them!" The Professor made notes. Colonel Baggs asserted that hot water is hot water, no matter where found or in whatever quantities, and couldn't be considered much of a wonder. The Professor took up the gage of battle, while the carriage wound up the hill, away from the river; but even he forbore discourse, when the view opened, as the afternoon sun fell behind the hills, on the steaming terraces and boiling basins of Mammoth Hot Springs. They scattered to the near-by marvels, and returned to camp where Aconite, assisted by the Hired Man, had prepared camp fare for the party. The Bride and Groom announced their intention to take pot luck with the rest, though the great hotel was ready for their reception. "We are honored, I am sure," said Colonel Baggs. "Would that we had a troupe of performing nightingales to clothe the night with charm fit for so lovely a member of the party." "Oh, thank you ever so much," said the Bride, "but I've just proposed to Billy a plan that will be better than any sort of troupe. We can make this trip a regular Arabian Nights' entertainment. Tell them, Billy!" "We're to make a hat pool," said Billy, "and the loser tells a story." "Good thought!" said the Poet "I don't understand," protested the Professor. "Well, then, here you are!" said Billy. "I write all our names on these slips of paper--Driver, Poet, Artist, Professor--and the rest of us. I mix them in this Stetson. I pass them to the most innocent of the party, and one is drawn--" "Well, let me draw, then!" said the Bride. "Not on your life!" said Billy. "Here, Professor!" Amid half-hidden chuckling, the Professor took a slip from the hat and handed it to the Groom. "On this ballot," said he, "is written 'The Poet.' That gentleman will now favor the audience, ladies and gentlemen, with a story." The moon was climbing through the lodge-pole pines, and the camp was mystic with the flicker of the firelight on the rocks and trees. The Poet looked about as if for an inspiration. His eyes fell on the Bride, so sweet, so cuddleable, so alluring. "I will tell you a story that occurred to me as we drove along," said he. "If you don't like tragedy, don't call on a poet for entertainment in a tragic moment." A TELEPATHIC TRAGEDY BEING THE STORY TOLD BY THE MINOR POET He sat reading a magazine. Chancing upon a picture of the bronze Sappho which, if you have luck, you will find in the museum at Naples, he began gazing at it, first casually, then intently, then almost hypnotically. The grand woman's head with its low masses of hair; the nose so high as to be almost Roman, so perfect in chiseling as to be ultra-Greek; the mouth eloquent of divinest passion; the neck, sloping off to strong shoulders and a bust opulent of charm--it shot through him an unwonted thrill. It may have arisen from memories of Lesbos, Mytilene, and the Leucadian Rock. It may have been the direct influence from her peep-hole on Olympus of Sappho's own Aphrodite. Anyhow, he felt the thrill. Possibly it was some subtle effluence from things nearer and more concrete than either, for as he closed the magazine that he might rarefy and prolong this pulsing wave of poetry by excluding the distracting pages from his sight, his vision, resting for an instant upon the ribbon of grass and flowers flowing back beside the train, swept inboard and was arrested by a modish hat, a pile of ruddy hair, a rosy ear, the creamy back and side of a round neck, and the curve of a cheek. A most interesting phenomenon in wave-interference at once took place. The hypnotic vibrations of the Sapphic thrill were affected by a new series, striking them in like phases. The result was the only possible one. The vibrations went on, in an amplitude increased to the height of their superimposed crests. No wonder things happened: it is a matter of surprise that the very deuce was not to pay. For the hair combined with the hat in a symmetrical and harmonious whole, in an involved and curvilinear complexity difficult to describe; but the effect is easy to imagine--I hope. The red-brown coils wound in and out under a broad brim which drooped on one side and on the other curled jauntily up, as if consciously recurving from the mass of marvelous bloom and foliage under it. Dark-red tones climbed up to a climax of quivering green and crimson in a natural and, indeed, inevitable inflorescence. But, engrossed by sundry attractive details below it, his attention gave him a concept of the millinery vastly more vague and impressionistic than ours. The sunburst of hair was one of the details. It radiated from a core of creamy skin from some mystic center concealed under fluffy laciness. The ear, too, claimed minute attention. It was a marvel of curves and sinuosities, ivory here, pearl-pink there, its lines winding down to a dainty lobe lit by a sunset glow, a tiny flame from the lambent furnace of the heart. Cold science avers that these fairy convolutions are designed for the one utilitarian purpose of concentrating the sound-waves for a more efficient impact upon the auditory nerve; but this is crudely false. They are a Cretan labyrinth for the amazing of the fancy that the heart may be drawn after--and they are not without their Minotaur, either! "Pshaw!" said he to himself. "What nonsense! I'll finish my magazine!" This good resolution was at once acted upon. He turned his eyes back along the trail by which they had so unwarrantably wandered--along the line of coiffure, window, landscape, page, Sappho; describing almost a complete circle--or quite. As he retraced this path so virtuously, the living picture shifted and threw into the problem--for a problem it had now become--certain new factors which seemed to compel a readjustment of plans. These were a fuller view of the cheek, a half profile of the nose, and just the tiniest tips of the lips and chin. He forgot all about Sappho, but the Sapphic vibrations went on increasingly. The profile--the new one--was, so far, Greek, also. It was still so averted that there was no danger in amply verifying this conclusion by a prolonged gaze. No danger? Foolhardy man, more imminent peril never put on so smooth a front! Read history, rash one, and see thrones toppled over, dungeons filled with pale captives, deep accursed tarns sending up bubbling cries for vengeance, fleets in flames, plains ravaged, city walls beaten down, palaces looted, beauty dragged at the heels of lust, all from such gazes as this of thine. And if you object to history, examine the files of the nearest _nisi prius_ court. It all comes to the same thing. Would she turn the deeper seduction of those eyes and lips to view? Seemingly not, for with every sway of the car they retreated farther behind the curve of the cheek. This curve was fair and rounded, and for a while it satisfied the inquiry. What if another cheek be pressed against that tinted snowy fullness! And what if that other were the cheek we wot of! Clearly, said the inward monitor, this will never do! This Sappho-Aphrodite-Sunburst Syndicate must be resisted. At the same time--the half concealed being traditionally the most potent snare of the devil--would it not be in every way safer, as well as more satisfactory, to have a full view of the face? Were there any truth in the theory of telepathy the thing might be accomplished. A strong and continuous exercise of the will acting upon that other will, and the thing is done. You see the extent to which the nefarious operations of the syndicate have been pushed? Unaffected by the malign influence of those waves meeting in like phases, he would have felt himself no more at liberty to do this thing than to put his rude hand under the dimpled chin and ravish a look from the violated eyes. For all that, he found himself fixing his will upon the turning of that head. He fancied he saw a rosier glow in the cheek and ear. Surely this can be no illusion--even the creamy neck glows faintly roseate. And still he sent out, or imagined he sent out, the thought-waves commanding the face to turn. And mingled with it was the sense of battle and the prevision of victory. Slowly, slowly, like a blossom toward the sun, the head turned, the eyes directed upward, the lips a little apart. The mouth, the chin, the Greek nose, the violet eyes, enthralled him for a moment, and swung back out of sight again. He had won, and, winning, had lost. The neck was rosy now. He felt himself tremble as once more she turned her head until the fringed mystery of those upturned eyes lay open to his gaze, though her glance never really met his. He saw, in one intense, lingering look, the blue irises, the lighter border about the pupils, the wondrous rays emanating from those black, mystic flowers; he saw the fine dilated nostrils, the rosy, perfect lips; he saw the evanescent quiver of allurement at the corners of the mouth, the white teeth just glinting from their warm concealment. He saw-- "Oak Grove! All out for Oak Grove! Remember your umbrellas and parcels!" Thus the brakeman raucously rescuing the victims of wave-interference. Thus Terminus baffling Aphrodite. Yet not without a struggle do the sea-born goddess and the sea-doomed poet surrender their unaccomplished task. He rose, stepped into the aisle, and passed her; then he turned, looked gravely for a moment into her eyes, and sadly whispered, "Good-by!" If surprised, she did not show the fact by the slightest start. Soberly she dropped her eyelids, seriously she raised them, and with the manner of one who, breaking intimate converse at the parting-place, bids farewell to a dear companion, she breathed, "Good-by!" Said the lady who drove him from the station, "My dear, is it a guilty conscience or the fate of the race that makes you so--abstracted?" "A guilty conscience," he laughed, laying a hand on hers. He looked after the flying train, and smiled, and sighed. "After all," he added, "I believe it's the fate of the race!" * * * * * "Is that all?" asked the Hired Man. The pipes went on glowing and dying like little volcanoes with ephemeral periods of activity and quiescence. The campers rose one by one and went to their tents. "Wasn't that a curious tale?" asked the Bride when they were alone. "What do you suppose made him think of it as we drove along?" "Dunno," returned the Groom, kissing the back of her neck. "Don't you think we'd better take the rear seat to-morrow?" CHAPTER II "I shall never, never be able to feel anything like astonishment again!" So said the Bride as the party took the road again after two days at Mammoth Hot Springs. Bunsen Mountain had been circumnavigated. Cupid's Cave had charmed. The Devil's Kitchen had stimulated a flagging faith in a Personal Adversary, dealing with material utensils of vengeance. The Stygian Cave, whose deadly vapors had strewed its floor with dead birds, had been pronounced another of his devices and satanically "horrid." The iridescent springs, each of which has built up its own basin, like hanging fountains, were compared to the hanging gardens of Babylon, and pronounced far more worthy of place among the wonders of the world. The lovely Undine Falls had comforted them with prettiness after wildness; and the ogreous Hoodoo Rocks had turned them back to the realm of shivers. The Professor's note-books were overflowing with memoranda; and Colonel Baggs alone went unastounded. "If the place only had a history," said the Minor Poet, "like the Venusberg, or almost any spot in Europe--" "Well," said the Colonel, "it's got some history, anyhow. When I was here before--" "When was that?" asked the Artist, adding a line or two to a surreptitious sketch of the Colonel. "It was thirty-three years ago the latter part of this month," said the Colonel. "I carried a knapsack in the chase after Chief Joseph and the Nez Percès. There were pretty average lively times right in this vicinity with the first tourists, so far as I know, that ever came into the Park. Some fellows had been up in the Mount Everts country, and to the lower falls. The Nez Percès rushed them. A fellow named Stewart found himself looking into the muzzle of the rifle of a Nez Percè, and made the sign of the cross. The red with the gun, being a pretty fair Christian as Christians go--the tribe had been converted for thirty years--as conversions go--refrained from shooting when he saw the sign. Stewart had a horse that was wild and hard to catch--was wounded and had no idea he could get within reach of the steed; but when he called, the horse came to him and stood for him to climb on, for the first and last time in the history of their relations. Stewart got off with his life." "Very remarkable," said the Professor, jotting down a note. "Now, how do you account for that on any known scientific law?" "It simply wasn't Stewart's time," said the Colonel. "Or there's an intelligence that operates on other intelligences--even those of beasts--for our protection. Or we have guardian spirits that can tame horses. Take your choice, Professor. And right here--maybe where we are camped--another bit of history was enacted that in the childhood of the race might ripen into one of those legends the artists deplore the lack of. The campers here had a nigger cook named Stone--Ben Stone--I arrested and confined for giving thanks to the Lord after we picked him up. He was here at Mammoth Hot Springs when a fellow--I forget his name--was shot. The Nez Percès went by one day and saw him here. Next day they came back more peeved than before and shot the man. Ben, the cook, ran, and they after him. He shinned up into one of these trees--maybe that one there. The Indians lost sight of him, and stopped under the tree for a conference. Stone nearly died of fright for fear they would hear his heart beating. He said it sounded like a horse galloping over rocks. They gave him up and went away. The coast being clear, a bear--probably an ancestor of these half-tamed beasts that the Bride photographed last evening--came along and began snuffing about the trees. Ben's heart began galloping again. The bear reared up and stretched as if he meant to climb the tree. Ben's heart stopped. After a while the bear went away. After a day or so the cook came into our camp and went about giving thanks to the Lord continually, and howling hallelujahs until nobody could sleep. So we put him under guard, and I watched him under orders to bust his head if he bothered the throne of grace any more." "The army is an irreverent organization," said the Professor. "It isn't what you'd call devout," assented the Colonel. "Confound this modern world, anyway!" complained the Poet. "Five hundred years ago, we'd have evolved a cycle of legends out of those occurrences!" "The tales are just as astonishing without legends," insisted the Bride, "as anything in the world, no matter how deep in fable." Faring on southward, they passed toward Norris Basin in unastonished quietude. A flock of pelicans on Swan Lake created no sensation. A trio of elk in Willow Park crossed the road ahead of the surrey with no further effect than to arouse the Artist to some remarks on their anatomical perfection, and to bring to the surface the buried note-book of Professor Boggs. They stopped at Apollinaris Spring for refreshment, where the Groom held forth on the commercial possibilities of the waters, if the government would get off the lid, and let the country be developed. "Nix on this conservation game," said he; and nobody argued with him. At Obsidian Cliff, Mr. Driscoll whoaed up his cayuses to call the attention of his fares to the fact that here is the only glass road in the world. "Glass?" queried the Professor, alighting, microscope in hand. "Really?" "Shore," assured Aconite. "They cracked the road out of the cliff by building fires to heat the glass and splashin' cold water to make the chunks pop out--jelluk breakin' a tumbler washin' up the dishes." "Oh, I see," said Professor Boggs. "Merely obsidian." "Merely!" repeated Aconite. "Some folks always reminds me of the folks that branded old Jim Bridger as a liar becuz o' what he told of this here region eighty or ninety years ago. He built Fort Bridger, and Bridger's Peak was named after him, and he discovered Great Salt Lake, and I guess he wouldn't lie. He found this glass cliff and told about it then--and everybody said he was a liar. An' he found lots o' things that ain't on the map. We see a little thread o' country along this road, but the reel wonders of this Park hain't been seen sence Jim Bridger's time--an' not then. W'y, once back in this glass belt, he saw an elk feedin' in plain sight. Blazed away an' missed him. Elk kep' on feedin'. Blazed away ag'in. Elk unmoved. Bridger made a rush at the elk with his knife, and run smack into a mountain of this glass so clear that he couldn't see it, and shaped like a telescope glass that brought things close. That elk was twenty-five miles off." "Giddap!" said Colonel Baggs to the horses. "Time to be on our way." "After all," said the Poet, "we may not have lost the power to create a mythology." "Bridger for my money," said the Artist, with conviction. "Jim Bridger said that," asserted Aconite, "an' I believe him. They found Great Salt Lake where he said it was, all right, an' Bridger's Peak, an' the few things we've run across here. You wouldn't believe a mountain would whistle like a steam engine, would yeh? Well, I'll show you one--Roarin' Mountain--in less'n four miles ahead--in the actual act of tootin'." "I believe all you said, Mr. Driscoll," said the Bride as they sat about the fire that night. "The glass mountain, the elk and all. After those indescribable Twin Lakes, the Roaring Mountain, and the Devil's Frying Pan, stewing, stewing, century after century--that's what makes it so inconceivable--the thought of time and eternity. The mountains are here for ever--that's plain; but these things in action--to think that they were sizzling and spouting just the same when Mr. Bridger was here ninety years ago, and a million years before that, maybe--it flabbergasts me!" "Yes'm," said Aconite. "It shore do." "You're it, Bride!" said the Hired Man, handing her a slip with "Bride" written upon it. "I'm what?" asked the Bride. "They've sawed the story off on you," returned the Hired Man. "I hope you'll give a better one than that there Poet told. I couldn't make head nor tail to that." "It _was_ rotten," said the Poet, looking at the Bride, "wasn't it?" "I'm still living in a glass house," said the Bride. "Don't you know there's only one story a bride can tell?" "Tell it, tell it!" was the cry--from all but the Poet and the Groom. "I think I'll retire," said the Groom. "Off with you into the shadows," said the Poet. "I'll contribute my last cigar--and we'll smoke the calumet on the other side of the tree where we can hear unseen." About them the earth boiled and quivered and spouted. Little wisps of steam floated through the treetops. There were rushings and spoutings in the air--for they were in the Norris Geyser Basin. And here the Bride, sitting in the circle of men, her feet curled under her on a cushion of the surrey laid on the geyser-heated ground, fixed her eyes on the climbing moon and told her story. THE TRIUMPH OF BILLY HELL THE STORY TOLD BY THE BRIDE Now that so many of the girls are writing, the desire to express myself in that way comes upon me awfully strongly, sometimes. She looked at the Poet, who nodded encouragement and understanding. And yet a novel seems so complex and poky in the writing, as compared with a play, which brings one ever so much more exciting success. Louise Amerland says that all literature is autobiographical. If this is so, why can't I use my own romance in making a play? I think I could, if I could once get the scenario to--to discharge, as Billy says. He calls me a million M. F. condenser of dramatic electricity, but says that it's all statical, when it ought to flow. But the scenario must be possible, if I could only get the figures and events juggled about into place. There's Billy for the hero, and Pa, and the Pruntys, and me for the heroine, and comic figures like the butler and Miss Crowley and Atkins, and the crowds in Lincoln Park. I want the statue of Lincoln in it for one scene. "That would be great," said the Artist. After I was "finished" at St. Cecilia's I went into Pa's office as his secretary. He wasn't very enthusiastic, but I insisted on account of the sacredness of labor and its necessity in the plan of woman's life having revealed themselves to me as I read one of Mrs. Stetson's books. Pa fumed, and said I bothered him; but I insisted, and after a while I became proficient as a stenographer, and spelled such terms as "kilowatt," and "microfarad," and "electrolyte," in a way that forced encomiums from even Pa. Upon this experience I based many deductions as to the character of our captains of industry, one of which is that they are the most illogical set in the world, and the more illogical they are the more industry they are likely to captain. Take Pa, for instance. He began with a pair of pliers, a pair of climbers, a lineman's belt, and a vast store of obstinacy; and he has built up the Mid-Continent Electric Company--for we are an electric family, though Billy says magnetic is the term. "Spare me!" prayed the Groom. But how does Pa order his life? He sends me to St. Cecilia's, which has no function but to prepare girls for the social swim, and is so exclusive that he had to lobby shamefully to get me in: and all the time he gloats--simply _gloats_--over the memory of the pliers, the climbers, the lineman's belt, and the obstinacy--no, not over the obstinacy, of course: that is merely what makes him gloat. And he hates Armour Institute graduates and Tech men poisonously, and wants his force made up of electricians who have come up, as he says, by hard knocks, and know the practical side. As if Billy Helmerston--but let me begin at the beginning. I was in the office one day superintending Miss Crowley, the chief stenographer, in getting together the correspondence about an electric light and power installation in Oklahoma, when, just at the door of the private office, I met a disreputable figure which towered above me so far that I could barely make out that it had good anatomical lines and a black patch over one eye. I will here deceive no one: it was Billy. He explained afterward that he possessed better clothes, but had mislaid them somehow, and that the cut over his eye he got in quelling a pay-night insurrection in his line-gang out in Iowa, one of whom struck him with a pair of four-hole connectors. I am sorry to confess that I once felt pride in the fact that Billy knocked the linemen's heads together--and yet Pa talks of hard knocks!--until they subsided, the blood, meanwhile, running all down over his face and clothing and theirs. It was very brutal, in outward seeming, no matter what plea of necessity may be urged for it. I almost fell back into the doorway, he was so near and so big. His way of removing his abominable old hat, and his bow, gave me a queer little mental jolt, it was so graceful and elegant, in spite of the overalls and the faded shirt. "I was referred to this place as Mr. Blunt's office," said he. "Can you direct me to him?" Now Pa is as hard to approach as any Oriental potentate; but I supposed that Billy was one of the men from the factory, and had business, and I was a little fluttered by the wonderful depth and sweetness of his voice; so I just said: "This way, please"--and took him in to where Pa was sawing the air and dictating a blood-curdling letter to a firm of contractors in San Francisco, who had placed themselves outside the pale of humanity by failing to get results from our new Polyphase Generator. (Billy afterward told them what was the matter with it.) I saw that my workman had picked out an exceedingly unpsychological moment, if he expected to make a very powerful appeal to Pa's finer instincts. "Well," roared Pa, turning on him with as much ferocity as if he had been a San Francisco contractor of the deepest dye, "what can I do for you, sir?" "My name is Helmerston," started Billy. "I'm not getting up any directory," shouted Pa. "What do you want?" "I'm just through with a summer's line-work in the West," answered Billy, "and I took the liberty of applying for employment in your factory. I have--" "The blazes you did!" ejaculated Pa, glaring at Billy from under his eyebrows. "How did you get in here?" I was over at the filing-cases, my face just burning, for I was beginning to see what I had done. Billy looked in my direction, and as our eyes met he smiled a little. "I hardly know, Mr. Blunt," said he. "I just asked my way and followed directions. Is it so very difficult to get in?" I saw at once that he was a good deal decenter than he looked. "Well, what can you do?" shouted Pa. "Almost anything, I hope," answered Billy. "I've had no practical experience with inside work; but I have--" "Oh, yes, I know!" said Pa, in that unfeeling way which experience and success seem to impart to the biggest-hearted men--and Pa is surely one of these. "It's the old story. As soon as a dub gets so he can cut over a rural telephone, or put in an extension-bell, or climb a twenty-five without getting seasick, he can do 'almost anything.' What one, definite, concrete thing can you do?" "For one thing," said Billy icily, "I think I could help some by taking a broom to this factory floor out here." "All right," said Pa, after looking at him a moment. "The broom goes! Give this man an order for a broom. Put him on the pay-roll at seven dollars a week. Find out who let him in here, and caution whoever it was against letting it occur again. Call up Mr. Sweet, and tell him I want a word with him on those Winnipeg estimates. Make an engagement with Mr. Bayley of the street-car company to lunch with me at the club at two." And Pa was running in his groove again. "I'm sorry," he whispered, as he passed me going out. "Thank you," I answered. "It's of no consequence--" And then I noticed that he was looking into my eyes in a wistful and pathetic way, as if protesting against going out. I blushed as I showed him to the door: and he wasn't the first whose eyes had protested, either. "You mustn't violate the rules, Dolly," said Pa, as we crossed the bridge in the bubble, going home. "You know perfectly well that I can't say 'no' to these tramps--" "He wasn't a tramp," said I. "A perfect hobo," answered Pa. "I know the type well. I have to let Burns handle them." "He was very graceful," said I. "Any lineman is," replied Pa. "They have the best exercise in the world. If he steals anything, you're responsible, my dear." I supposed the incident to be closed with my statement that he had nice eyes, and Pa's sniff; but, in a few days, Pa, who watches the men like a cat, surprised me by saying that my graceful hobo was all right. "He gathered up and saved three dollars' worth of beeswax the other men were wasting, the first day," said Pa. "Melted and strained and put it in the right place without asking any questions. And then he borrowed a blow-torch and an iron, and began practising soldering connections. He looks good to me." "Me, too," said I. "Blessed be the hobo," said the Colonel, "for he shall reach paradise!" It seems strange, now, to think of my hearing these things unmoved. The dreadful humiliation to which Billy was subjected, the noble fortitude with which he bore it, and the splendid way in which he uplifted the menial tasks to which he was assigned, have always reminded me of Sir Gareth serving as a scullion in Arthur's kitchen. It is not alone in the chronicles of chivalry--but I must hasten this narrative. I must not delay even to inform you of the ways in which it was discovered that Billy could do all sorts of things; that there was no blue-print through which his keen eye could not see, and no engineering error--like that in the Polyphase Generator--that he couldn't detect; or how he was pushed up and up by force of sheer genius, no one knowing who he was until he found himself, like an eagle among buzzards, at the head of a department, and coming into the office to see Pa quite in a legitimate way. "Hooray! Hooray!" came from behind the tree. "Shut up, Poet!" commanded the Artist, "or I'll come back there!" I didn't know these things personally, because I had left the office. I had found out that there seemed to be more soul-nurture in artistic metal work than in typewriting, and had fitted up a shop in the Fine Arts Building, where Louise Amerland and I were doing perfectly enchanting stunts in hammered brass and copper--old Roman lamps and Persian lanterns, after designs we made ourselves. Pa parted with his secretary with a sigh, the nature of which may be a question better left unsettled. This romance really begins with my visit, after months and months of absence, to the restaurant which I had dinged at Pa until he had instituted for the help. I told him that the social side of labor was neglected shamefully, and for the work people to eat at the same table with their superintendents and employers would be just too dear and democratic, and he finally yielded growlingly. He was awfully pleased afterward when the papers began to write the thing up. He said it was the cheapest advertising he ever got, and patted me on the shoulder and asked me if I wasn't ashamed to be so neglectful of my great invention. So one day I got tired of working out Rubáiyát motifs in brass, and I went over to the café for luncheon, incog. And what do you think? Billy came in and sat down very informally right across from me! "Hello!" said he, putting out his hand. "I've been looking for you for eons, to--to thank you, you know. Don't you remember me?" Before I knew it I had blushingly given him my hand for a moment. "Yes," I replied, taking it away, and assuming a more properly dignified air. "I hope you have risen above seven a week and a broom; and I am glad to see that your head has healed up." "Thank you," he replied. "I am running the installation department of the dynamo end of the business. And you? I'm no end glad to see you back. Did you get canned for letting me in? I've had a good many bad half-hours since I found you gone, thinking of you out hunting a job on--on my account. You--pardon me--don't look like a girl who would have the E. M. F. in the nerve-department to go out and compete, you know." I was amazed at the creature's effrontery, at first; and then the whole situation cleared up in my mind. I saw that I had an admirer (_that_ was plain) who didn't know me as Rollin Blunt's heiress at all, but only as a shop-mate in the Mid-Continent Electric Company's factory--a stenographer who had done him a favor. It was more fun than most girls might think. "How did you find out," said I, "that I had been--ah--canned?" "I watched for you," he replied. "Began as soon as my promotion to the switchboard work made it so I could. After a couple of months' accumulation of data I ventured upon the generalization that the old man--" "The who?" "Mr. Blunt, I mean, of course," he amended, "had fired you for letting me in. Out of work long?" "N-no," said I; "hardly a week." "Where are you now?" he asked. "I'm in a shop," I stammered, "in Michigan Avenue." I looked about to see if any of the employees who knew me were present, but could see none except Miss Crowley, who wouldn't meet a man in the same office in a year, and a dynamo-man never, and who is near-sighted, anyhow. So I felt safe in permitting him to deceive himself. It is thus that the centuries of oppression which women have endured impress themselves on our more involuntary actions in little bits of disingenuousness against which we should ever struggle. At the time, though, to sit chatting with him in the informal manner of co-laborers at the noon intermission was great fun. It was then that I began to notice more fully what a really fine figure he had, and how brown and honest and respectful his eyes were, even when he said "Hello" to me; as if I were a telephone, and how thrilling was his voice. "I'd like," said he, "to call on you--if I might." I was as fluttered as the veriest little chit from the country. "I--I can't very well receive you," said I. "My--the people where I--I stop wouldn't like it." "I'm quite a respectable sort of chap," said he. "My name's Helmerston, and my people have been pretty well known for two or three hundred years up in Vermont, where we live--in a teaching, preaching, book-writing, rural sort of way, you know. I'm a Tech man--class of '08--but I haven't anything to boast of on any score, I'm merely telling you these things, because--because there seems to be no one else to tell you, and--and I want you to know that I'm not so bad as I looked that morning." "Oh, this is quite absurd!" cried I. "I really--it doesn't make any difference; but I'm quite ready to believe it! I must go, really!" "May I see you to your car?" said he; and I started to tell him that I was there in the victoria, but pulled up, and took the street-car, after he had extracted from me the information that I lived close to Lincoln Park. But when he asked if I ever walked in the park, I just refused to say any more. One really must save one's dignity from the attacks of such people. I had to telephone Roscoe where to come with the victoria. Soon after, quite by accident, I saw him on two successive evenings in Lincoln Park, both times near the Lincoln statue. I wondered if my mentioning the south entrance had anything to do with this. He never once looked at the motorists, and so failed to see me; but I could see that he took a deep interest in the promenaders--especially slender girls with dainty dresses and blond hair. It appeared almost as if he were looking for some one in particular, and I smiled at the thought of any one being so silly as to search those throngs on the strength of any chance hint any person might have dropped. I was affected by the pathos of it, though. It seemed so much like the Saracen lady going from port to port hunting for Thomas à Becket's father--though, of course, he wasn't any one's father then, but I can't think of his name. The next evening I took Atkins, my maid, and walked down by the Lincoln monument to look at some flowers. It seems to me that we Chicagoans owe it to ourselves to become better acquainted with one another--I mean, of course, better acquainted with our great parks and public places and statues. They are really very beautiful, and something to be proud of, provided as they are for rich and poor alike by a paternal government. Strangely fortuitous chance: we met Billy! "Well, _well_!" exclaimed Aconite. He came striding down the path to meet me--Atkins had fallen behind--his face perfectly radiant with real joy. "At last!" he ejaculated. "I wondered if we were _ever_ to meet again, Miss--Miss--" "Blunt," said I, heroically truthful, and suppressing one of those primordial impulses which urged me to say Wilkinson--now, as a scientific problem, why Wilkinson? But I did not wish to lose Atkins' respect by conversing with a man who did not know my name. "Miss Blunt?" cried he interrogatively. "That's rather odd, you know. It's not a very common name." "Oh, I don't know," said I, uncandid again, as soon as I saw a chance to get through with it--little cat. "It seems awfully common to me. Why do you say that it's odd?" "Because I happen to have a letter of introduction to Miss Blunt, daughter of the old--of Mr. Blunt of the Mid-Continent--" "You have?" I broke in. "From whom?" "From my cousin, Amelia Wyckoff," said he, "who went to school with her at St. Cecilia's." "Well, of all things!" I began; and then, with a lot of presence of mind, I think, I paused. "Why don't you present it?" I asked. "Well, it's this way," said Billy. "You saw how Mr. Blunt sailed into me and put me in the broom-brigade without a hearing? I didn't have the letter then, and when I got it I didn't feel like pulling on the social strings when I was coming on pretty well for a dub lineman and learning the business from the solder on the floor to the cupola, by actual physical contact. And then there's another thing, if you'll let me say it: since that morning I've had no place in my thoughts for any girl's face but one." We were sitting on a bench. Atkins was looking at the baby leopards in the zoo, ever so far away. Billy didn't seem to miss her. He was looking right at me. My heart fluttered so that I knew my voice would quiver if I spoke, and I didn't dare to move my hands for fear he might notice their trembling. The idea of _my_ behaving in that way! I was glad to find out that he was Amelia's cousin; for that insured his social standing. That was what made me feel so sort of agitated. One laborer ought not to feel so of another, for we are all equal; but it _was_ a relief to know that he was Amelia's aunt's son, and not a tramp. "I must be allowed to call on you!" he said with suppressed intensity. "You don't dislike me very much, do you?" "I--I don't like cuts over the eye," said I, evading the question. "I don't have 'em any more," he urged. And then he explained about the émeute in the line-gang, and the four-hole connectors, and confessed to the violent and sanguinary manner in which he had felt called upon to put down the uprising. I could feel my face grow hot and cold by turns, like Desdemona's while Othello was telling the same kind of things; and when I looked for the scar on his forehead he bowed his head, and I put the curls aside and found it. I would have given worlds to--it was so much like a baby coming up to you and crying about thumping its head and asking you to kiss it well. Once I had my lips all puckered up--but I had the self-control to refrain--I was so afraid. It was getting dusk now, and Billy seized my hand and kissed it. I was quite indignant until he explained that his motives were perfectly praise-worthy. Then I led him to talk of the rich Miss Blunt to whom he had a letter of introduction, and advised him to present it, and argued with appalling cogency that one ought to marry in such a way as to better one's prospects, and Billy got perfectly furious at such a view of love and marriage--explaining, when I pretended to think he was mad at me, that he knew I was just teasing. And then he began again about calling on me, and seeing my parents, or guardians, or assigns, or _any one_ that he ought to see. "Because," said he, "you're a perfect baby, with a baby's blue eyes and hair of floss, and tender skin, and trustfulness; and I ought to be horsewhipped for sitting here in the park with you in--in this way, with no one paying any attention but Mr. Lincoln, up there." Then I did feel deeply, darkly crime-stained; and I could have hugged the dear fellow for his simplicity--_me_ helpless, with Atkins, and the knowledge of Amelia Wyckoff's letter; not to mention Mr. Lincoln--bless him!--or a park policeman who had been peeking at us from behind a bunch of cannas! I could have given him the addresses of several gentlemen who might have certified to the fact that I wasn't the only one whose peace of mind might have been considered in danger. I grew portentously serious just before I went home, and told Billy that he must see me on my own terms or not at all, and that he mustn't follow me, or try to find out where I lived, but must walk around the curve to the path and let me mingle with the landscape. "May I not hope," said he, "to see you again soon?" "I may feed the elephant some peanuts," said I, "on Thursday evening--no, I shall play in a mixed foursome, and then dine on Thursday afternoon at the Onwentsia--" "Where?" said he, in a sort of astonished way. "I believe I could make you believe it," said I with more presence of mind, "if I stuck to it. But I can't come on Thursday. Let us say on Friday evening." He insisted that Friday is unlucky, and we compromised on Wednesday. This conversation was on Tuesday. "May I turn for just one look at my little wood nymph," said he, "when I get to the curve?" Of course I said "Yes"--and he turned at the curve, and came striding back with such a light in his eyes that I had to allow him to kiss my hand again, under the pretense that I had got a sliver in my finger. I went back Wednesday, and again and again, and sneaked off once with him to an orchestra concert, and it wasn't long before Billy knew that his little stenographer was willing to allow him to hope. But I refused to let him call it an engagement until he promised me that he would present the letter to the other Miss Blunt. "Why, Dolly? Why, sweetheart?" he asked; for it had got to that stage now. Oh, it progressed with dizzying rapidity! "Because," I replied, "you may like her better than you do me." "Impossible!" he cried with a gesture absolutely tragic in its intensity. "I dislike her very name--'Miss Aurelia Blunt!'" "That's unjust!" I cried, really angry, "Aurelia is a fine name; and she may have a pet name, you know." "Only one Miss Blunt with a pet name for little Willie!" said he. "My little Dolly!" But I tied him down with a promise that before he saw me again he'd call on Aurelia. When I saw him next he looked guilty, and said he had found her out when he called. I scolded him cruelly, and made him promise again. The fact was that when he called I couldn't find it in my heart to sink to the prosaic level of Miss Aurelia Blunt. I had had the sweetest, most delicious courtship that any girl _ever_ had, up to this time, and I was afraid of spoiling it all. I was afraid sort of on general principles, you know, and so was "out." And after he went away I stole down into the park in my electric runabout and talked to Mr. Lincoln about it. He seemed to know. When I went away, I left a little kiss on the monument. Billy was perfectly cringing that next day when he had to confess that he had failed on what he called "this Aurelia proposition." He begged to be let off. "You see," said he, "she may give me a frigid reception, and take offense at my delay in presenting this letter. Amelia may have written her, and she may be furious. There may be some sort of social statute of limitations on letters of introduction, and the thing may have run out, so that I'll be ejected by the servants, dearie. And, anyhow, it will place me in an equivocal position with Mr. Blunt--my coming to him as a tramp, and holding so very lightly the valuable social advantage of an acquaintance with the family. He won't remember that he jumped on me with both feet and gave me six months on bread and water. It--it may queer me in the business." I here drew myself up to my full height, and froze him as I have seldom done. "Mr. Helmerston," said I, "I have indicated to you a fact which I had supposed might have some weight with you as against sordid and merely prudential considerations--I mean my preferences in this matter. It seems, however, that--that you don't care the least little bit what _I_ want, and I just know that you don't--care for me at all as you say you do; and I'm going home at once!" Well, he was so abject, and so sorry to have given me pain, that I wanted to hug him, but I didn't. Oh, I almost neglected to say that all our behavior had been of the most proper and self-contained sort. I would almost be willing to have Miss Featherstonehaugh at St. Cecilia's use a kinetoscope picture of all our meetings in marking me in deportment. Of course, conversations in parks and at concerts do not lend themselves to transports very well, and the kinetoscopes do not reproduce what is said, do they? Or the way one feels when one is grinding into the dust, in that manner, the most splendid fellow in the whole terrestrial and stellar universe. "I'll go, by George!" he vowed. "And I'll sit on Aurelia's doorstep without eating or drinking until she comes home and kicks me down the stairs!" I was wondering as I went home how soon he would come; but I was astonished to learn that Mr. Helmerston was in my reception-room. "Hi informed 'im," said the footman, "that you would 'ardly be 'ome within a reasonable time of waiting; but 'e said 'e would remain until you came, Miss, nevertheless." I went down to him just as I was, in my simple piqué dress, wearing the violets he had given me. "Mr. Helmerston," said I, "I must apologize for the difficulty I have given you in obtaining the very slight boon of meeting me, and say how good you are to come again--and wait. Any friend of dearest Amelia's, not to mention her cousin, is--" He had stood in a state of positive paralysis until now. "Dolly! Dolly! Dearest, dearest Dolly!" he cried, coming up to me and taking--and doing what he hadn't had a chance to do before. "Oh, my darling, are _you_ here?" After quite a while he started up as if he had forgotten something. "What is it?" said I. "There isn't a promenader or a policeman this side of the park, sweetheart!" "No," he answered after another interval--for I hadn't called him anything like that before--"but I was thinking that--that Aurelia--is a long time in coming home." "Why, don't you know _yet_, you goosey," said I. "_I'm_ Aurelia!" * * * * * And this brings me to the point where dalliance must cease--most of the time--while the drama takes on the darker tinge given it by Pa's cruel obstinacy, and the misdeeds of the Pruntys--whom I should have brought on in the first act, somehow, on a darkened stage, conspiring across it over a black bottle, and once in a while getting up to peek up and down the flies, meanwhile uttering the villain's sibilant "Sh!" I don't suppose it is artistic, from the Augustus Thomas viewpoint, but I wanted the honeyed sweets of this courtship of mine without a tang of bitter; and, honestly now, isn't it a lovely little plot for a love-drama? * * * * * "Gee!" exclaimed the Hired Man. "I was afraid you was through!" "I am," said the Bride softly, "for to-night. If you'll excuse me now. Maybe I'll tell the rest of it at the next camp--if you want me to." "I assure you," said the Professor, "that your tale does credit to your teachers in elocution." "We all thank you," said the Artist, "for what we've had--and won't you continue at the next session--Scheherazade?" "I'll see," said she. "Billy! Where are you!" "I have mysteriously disappeared," replied the Groom from behind the tree. "Come hunt me!" CHAPTER III At the behest of Aconite, the party refrained from expressions of more than mild interest at the Norris Basin. Aconite assured them that they ought to save their strong expressions for things farther on. The Poet wrote some verses for the purpose of creating a legend to account for the fact that the Monarch Geyser ceased to spout some ten years ago. But when he came to the Growler, and the Hurricane, and the new Roaring Holes, which are really gigantic steam whistles, he dismounted from his Pegasus and threaded his way through the dead forest--killed by escaping steam--in a trance of wonder. But Aconite's advice to economize language until the Lower Geyser Basin should be reached was followed so far as superlatives were concerned. Night found them scattered, and it was only when they took the road once more that the party was whole again. The Artist stopped the surrey at the Gibbon Paint Pots so that he might use some of their bubbling sediment as a pigment with which to paint a souvenir picture for each of the party. Cañons, boiling springs and waterfalls--rocks, mountains, wild beauty on every hand--all these they were assured were inconsiderable parts of the prelude to the marvels awaiting them at the next halt. But when they came to the crossing of Nez Percè Creek, the Bride expressed a desire to wait, to stop, to rest her eyes and quiet her spirits before anything more striking should be imposed upon her powers of observation. "I fell like Olger the Dane and King Desiderio, when they watched on the tower for Charlemagne; and if we go on, I shall, like Olger, fall 'as one dead at Desiderio's feet!'" The Poet looked in the Bride's eyes, and nodded sympathetically. Mr. Driscoll pondered the mysteries of the Bride's statement for a while, and threw down his lines. "If that's the way the Bride feels," said he, "we'll stop here and grub our systems up a little." "The champion hard-luck story of this or any other age," said the Colonel, as they lighted their pipes after dinner, "was enacted right up this creek in that Nez Percè uprising wherein I fought and bled and died." "More matter for myths," said the Artist. "Let's have it, e'en though it be as dolorous as the tale of the Patient Griselda." "I don't recall more of Griselda's story," said the Colonel, "than that she was given the worst of it by her husband, the king. But this Nez Percè Creek story isn't any tale of the perfidy of our nearest and dearest, but of things just unanimously breaking bad for a man from Radersburg, Mr. Cowan. He and his wife and some friends were camped down here a couple of miles at the Lower Geyser Basin, right close by the Fountain Geyser, just beyond the hotel--only there wasn't any hotel yet for thirty years. Chief Joseph and his Nez Percès came through trying to get away from the United States. They picked up the Cowan party, and brought them right along where we now are, and a few miles up this creek, where Joseph, Looking-Glass, and the other chiefs held a conference and decided to let the Cowan party go, after destroying their transportation system by cutting the spokes out of their buggies. This they did, and the Indians went on. Some of the bucks, feeling that it was careless of the chiefs to overlook a bet like this, came back, and in process of correcting their leaders' mistake shot Mr. Cowan in the thigh--which was bad luck Item one. He slipped from his horse, stunned by the shock, and his wife ran to him and tried to shelter him from further harm. But in spite of her efforts another Indian shot him in the head, holding his rifle so close that the powder burned the flesh. He was not killed, however, though all parties to the affair supposed he was, and Mrs. Cowan was removed from the corpse to which she clung, and carried away by her friends. You see, the Indians were not unanimously for these killings, and allowed most of the whites to go. The Indians threw a cord or so of rocks on Cowan's head and went on with a consciousness of good work well and thoroughly done. "Cowan revived, pulled his head from among the rocks, and drew himself to a standing posture by the limb of a tree. An Indian happening along, shot him with much care in the back, and left him for dead again. "Cowan, however, refused to die, and though without food, and wounded in the thigh, the head, and the back, and with his head hammered to a jelly by the rocks thrown on it, started to crawl back to camp. He met Indians, and hid from them. He crawled day after day--being unable to walk a step. He had a chance--for an uninjured man--to catch a Nez Percè pony which had been abandoned, but could not walk. Hard luck, indeed! He met a body of friendly Bannock scouts who would have taken care of him, but he supposed them to be hostiles and hid from them. Harder luck still! After crawling seven or eight miles, which took several days, he reached his old camp and there was reunited to his faithful dog, which at first snapped at and then welcomed him. "At the camp his first good luck came--he found matches, coffee and some food--not to mention the dog, which I venture to state helped him almost as much as the provisions. Next day he met some scouts sent out to trail the hostiles and incidentally with instructions to bury Cowan--but they praised him instead. They fixed him up as well as they could, and left him by their camp-fire to await the coming of General Howard with the main body of troops. The ground was peaty, and full of dead vegetable matter, and after a nap, Cowan awakened to find that the earth all about him was on fire, and wounded as he was he had to roll out of the fire zone, getting burned scandalously as he rolled." "Here," said the Hired Man. "You tell the rest of this to marines!" "I'm telling you," said the Colonel, "the historic truth. General Howard came along and the surgeons gave Cowan all the care they were able to afford him. They took him up to Bottler's Ranch, north of the Park, and there Mrs. Cowan rejoined the remains and fragments of her still living spouse. They went to Bozeman after a while, carrying Cowan in a wagon. At the top of the hill down which they had to go, the neck-yoke broke and the horses ran away, and spilled Cowan out on the rocks and the generally unyielding surface of Montana. A conveyance was brought from Bozeman, and the much-murdered man was taken to a hotel." "Thank God!" breathed the Poet. "Even a Montana hotel was a sweet boon as bringing the end of these troubles." "Who said it was the end?" inquired the Colonel. "It wasn't. In the hotel at Bozeman his hoodoo haunted him. People flocked to the hotel to see him. If the vaudeville stage had been invented then in its present form, he could have made a fortune. They crowded into his room and sat on his bed. The bed collapsed, and Cowan was hurled to the floor and killed again. The hotel-keeper, seeing that even a cat's supply of lives must be about used up, ordered the crowd out of the place. He said he thought of throwing Cowan out, too, being afraid his hotel would burn up, or be blown away, or something, with such a Jonah aboard. But Cowan succeeded in getting home. They asked him if he didn't often think of his soul's salvation while enduring all these sufferings and passing through all these perils. 'Not by a damned sight!' said the unreconstructed sinner. 'I had more important things to think of!'" "And all that took place right here?" asked the Bride. "Here and hereabouts," answered the Colonel. "I was here about the time, and I know." "If Jim Bridger," said Aconite, "had narrated them adventures, what would folks have said? And yet, the Colonel's correct. The tale are true!" "Here's where you can sleep under a roof, Bride," said the Hired Man, as they made camp at the Lower Geyser Basin. "So you don't want the rest of the story?" she queried. "Ma'am," said the Hired Man. "We should all be darned sorry to lose you from the camp; but--" "But me no buts," said the Bride. "I stay with the--with--the what do you call it, Mr. Driscoll, that I'm staying with?" "The outfit, Miss Bride," said Aconite. "And the outfit's shore honored." And after the tasks of camp had been done, amid the strange and daunting surroundings of the wonderful geyser basin, when the camp reached that lull that precedes slumber, and which over all the world, whether on prairie, in forest, or on desert, is devoted to tobacco, music and tales, the Bride went on with her story. THE TRIUMPH OF BILLY HELL THE SECOND PART OF THE BRIDE'S STORY The Pruntys live near Saint Joe, where they have a town and stockyards and grain-elevators, and thousands and thousands of acres of land all of their own, just like mediæval barons--only instead of having a castle with a donjon-keep with battlements and mysterious oubliettes and drizzly cells and a moat, they live in a great wooden house with verandas all round, and of a sort of composite architecture--Billy says that it is Queen Anne in front and Mary Ann at the rear--and hot and cold water in every room, and with a stone windmill-tower with a wheel on the top that you couldn't possibly put in a picture, it is so round and machiney-looking. Old Mr. Prunty says it cost twenty-seven thousand five hundred and eighty-three dollars and thirty-six cents--says it every chance he gets, without the variation of a cent. The Pruntys are scandalously rich. Their riches bought them a place in this play. When Pa had begun to forge to the front in Peoria, where he began, he had all the knack he ever possessed for getting business, but he didn't have much money. I don't see any reason why we shouldn't confess this here. So he went to old Mr. Prunty, with whom he had become acquainted while he was putting in a town lighting-plant in the Prunty private village, and showed him how remunerative it would be to put money into Pa's business. This Mr. Prunty did, and I once saw the balance-sheet showing the profits he made. They were something frightful to a mind alive to the evils of the concentration of wealth--and the necessity of dividing with other people; but I shouldn't care so much for _that_, I am afraid, if it hadn't brought us into relations with Enos Prunty, Junior, who was brought up to the business of taking over the Mid-Continent Electric Company, and incidentally, me. The very idea! I must not be disingenuous any more, and therefore I will admit that at one time I should have consented to the merger if it hadn't been for Enos' perfectly impossible name. Not that I loved him; not at all. But he wasn't bad looking, and he had overcome a good deal of the Prunty _gaucherie_--I should think he ought to, the schools he had been through--and a girl really does like to think of trousseaux, and establishments and the like. One day, though, I hired a card-writer on the street to write out for me the name, "Mrs. Enos Prunty, Jr.," upon looking at which I fled as from a pestilence, and threw it into the grate, and had a fire kindled, although it was one of those awful days when the coroner never can tell whether it was the heat or the humidity. I had met Billy in the restaurant the day before. But Pa liked Enos, and sort of treated the matter as if it were all arranged; and when Billy came into the spotlight as our social superior--which the Helmerstons would be by any of the old and outworn standards--I began to pet Pa one evening, and ask him how he liked Mr. Helmerston; whereupon Pa exploded with a terrific detonation, and said he wanted the relations of Mr. Helmerston with the Blunt family confined strictly to the field of business; that he hated and despised all the insufferable breed of dubs--I never could get Pa to say "cad"--who crept into employments like spies, under false pretenses, and called an Institute of Technology a "Tech," and looked down on better electricians who had come up by hard knocks. And Pa insisted that a man must have been pretty tough who had acquired in college circles from the Atlantic to the Missouri the _nom de guerre_ of "Billy Hell." Pa is a good business man, and has exceptional facilities for looking up people's records; but it seemed a little sneaky to use them on Billy, and to know so much, when we were so sure he never suspected a thing. I told him so, too, but all he said was "Huh." I was very angry, and when Mr. Prunty, Junior, came to see me next time I repulsed his addresses with such scorn that he went away in a passion. He said he laid no claim to being a human being, but he was, at least, a member of the animal kingdom, and that my way of treating him would have been inhuman had he been a toadstool. I retorted that I'd concede him a place among the mushrooms--fancy _my_ twitting any one of mushroomery! But the old-family attitude of the Helmerstons was getting into my mental system. Pa, in the meantime, was preparing to shunt Billy off to Mexico to superintend the installation of the Guadalanahuato power plant--a two years' job--at a splendid salary. But our Mr. Burns went over to the Universal Electric Company (after we had made him what he was!) and Mr. Aplin proved quite incapable of running the business, although he was _such_ a genius in watts and farads and ohms and the coefficient of self-induction, and Billy was simply forked into the general charge of the main office, against his will, and shockingly against Pa's. I forgot to say that Pa was ill, and confined to his room for a long time. This touches a tender spot in Pa's feelings, but the truth must be told; and you must understand that all his illness came from an ingrowing toe-nail. He had to have an operation, and then he had to stay in the house because it wouldn't heal; and there he was, using language which is really scandalous for a good church-worker like Pa, while Billy attended to the business. I heaped coals of fire on Pa's head by staying with him hours and hours every day, and reading to him, until he asked me for goodness' sake to stop until he got the cross-talk out of his receiver. I said I'd be glad to dispense with all his cross talk, and he said: "There, now, don't cry"--and we had a regular love feast. Pa was a little difficult at this period. However, that day he got more confidential than he ever was before, and told me that serious business troubles were piling up, and worried him. We were likely, he said, to be spared the disgrace of dying rich. This was irony, for Pa despises this new idea that one should apologize for one's success. He went on to tell me that Mr. Prunty had always had the most stock in the Mid-Continent, and that now that Enos had got so conceited about being able to run the business, and not being allowed to, the Pruntys seemed to want the whole thing, and hinted around about withdrawing, or buying Pa out. I have this scene all in my mind for the play, with me sitting in "a dim religious light" and listening to the recital of our ruin and crying over Pa's sore foot. I did cry a good deal about this, truly, for I knew perfectly well that it was the nasty way I had treated Enos that made them so mean; but I still wished from the bottom of my heart that he would come back so I could search my soul for worse things to do to him. I told Billy about this trouble, and explained that Pa couldn't possibly raise money to buy out the Pruntys, and that they could be calculated upon not to pay Pa anything like what his stock was worth. "I see," said Billy, "you are being squeezed by the stronger party." He was looking out of the window in an abstracted sort of way, but he came to when I answered that, personally, I hadn't been conscious of anything of the sort. When the conversation got around to the business again, Billy told me that Goucher--a Missourian that the Pruntys had injected into the business, and who was perfectly slavish in his subserviency to Enos--had been quizzing around Billy, trying to find out what ailed Pa, and if it was anything serious. "I didn't like the little emissary," said Billy, "and so I told him that Mr. Blunt was precariously ill, with a complication of Bright's disease in its tertiary stage, and locomotor ataxia. He wrote down the Bright's disease and asked me how to spell the other. I told him that the Bright's disease would probably terminate fatally before he could master so much orthography; and still he didn't tumble! Goucher went away conscious of having performed well an important piece of work. I can't help thinking now that this incident has more significance than I then supposed." He sat puckering up his brows for a long time, and I let him pucker. At last he said: "Dolly, I shouldn't a bit wonder if they are trying to take some advantage of a dying man. I can see how they work the problem out. 'Here is a sick man,' they say, 'who has been doing the work of half a dozen for twenty years. He is going to pieces physically. If he has some fatal disease, and knows it, we can settle with him, and make him pay a few hundred thousand dollars for the privilege of getting his daughter's inheritance disentangled from a business which she can't run, and in which she will be at the mercy of--of people with whom her relations are a little strained. But first, we'll find out just how sick he is, and whether he's likely to get well soon, or at all.' And so they send Goucher mousing about; and he reports Bright's disease, and something else he can't spell, and they make an appointment with Helmerston for to-morrow morning to find out more about it, Mr. Goucher not being very clear. And your father's rather fierce manner of hiding what his ailment really is makes them all the more suspicious." "You tell them," said I, firing up, "that Pa is still able--" But I saw that Billy had one of those epoch-making ideas which mark the crises of history, and I stopped spellbound. He finally struck himself a fearful blow upon the knee, and said that he had it, and one looking at him could easily believe it. Then he explained to me his plan for discomfiting the Pruntys and hoisting them by their own petard. This is deeply psychological, being based upon an intuitive perception of what a Prunty would do when he believed certain things and had money at stake. "I must take responsibility in this," said Billy, squaring his shoulders, "and bet my job on my success, and put our happiness in jeopardy. But, if we win, Mr. Blunt can never again say that I am an engineer only, with no head for practical business; and I shall have outlived the disgrace of my Tech training--and the nickname. You must handle your father, and keep me informed of any engagement the Pruntys make with him. I must do the rest. And, if I lose, it's back to climbing poles again!" I asked Billy if I couldn't do something in line work, and he said I might carry the pliers. And when I said I meant it, he behaved beautifully, and called me his angel, and--and violated the rules, you know--and went away in a perfect frenzy of determination. I felt a solemn joy in spying on Pa and reporting to Billy. It seemed like a foretaste of a life all bound up and merged with his. And this is what took place: The elder Mr. Prunty called on Billy and said he was appalled at the news Mr. Goucher brought that Mr. Blunt had Bright's disease; and was there any hope that the doctors might be mistaken? Billy told him that the recent progress in bacteriological science, with which Mr. Prunty was no doubt fully conversant, seemed to make the diagnosis a cinch. By this he meant that they were sure about it. "I see," said the driver. "I've heared the word afore." He used a term that Mr. Prunty understood, Billy said, owing to his having done business all his life with reference to it. Mr. Prunty suggested that people live a long time with Bright's disease, sometimes. Billy, who is really a great actor, here grew mysterious, and told Mr. Prunty that, being mixed up with Mr. Blunt in business, it seemed a pity that he, Mr. Prunty, should have the real situation concealed from him, and that, as a matter of fact, Mr. Blunt's most pronounced outward symptom was a very badly ulcerated index toe. This of Billy's own knowledge, and Mr. Prunty might depend upon it. Mr. Prunty studied on this for a long time, and then remarked that he had known several people to recover from sore toes. Billy then pulled a book--a medical work he had borrowed--from under the desk, and showed Mr. Prunty a passage in which it was laid down that people's toes come off sometimes, in a most inconvenient way, in the last stages of Bright's disease. Mr. Prunty read the whole page, including a description of the way that dread disease ruins the complexion, by making it pasty and corpselike, and then laid the book down with conviction in his eyes. "From this," said he, motioning at the book with his glasses, "it would seem to be all off." "If it's Bright's disease," said Billy, "that causes this lesion of the major lower digit, the prognosis is, no doubt, extremely grave. But while there's life, you know--" "Yes," answered Mr. Prunty, "that is a comfort, of course. Does he know what ails him?" "He is fully aware of his condition," said Billy, "but, unfortunately, not yet resigned to it." (I should think not.) "I see you have been studying this thing out," said Mr. Prunty, "as exactly as if it had been an engineering problem; and I want to say, Mr. Helmerston, that I like your style. If we ever control this business the future of such careful and competent and far-sighted men as yourself--in fact, I may say _your_ future--will be bright and assured. Have you any more information for me as to this--this sad affair of Blunt's?" Billy thanked him, and said he hadn't, at present, and Mr. Prunty went away, trying to look sad. Billy went to the bank in Pa's name and arranged for a lot of money to be used in acquiring the Prunty stock, if it should be needed. The stock was worth twice as much, and the bank people knew it, and couldn't have believed, of course, that we would get it for _that_. Then the Pruntys made an engagement with me for Pa over the telephone, for a certain hour of a certain day, and I told Billy. "The time has come," said Billy, when the plot began thickening in this way, "for Little Willie to beard the lion in his den. Smuggle me into the room an hour before the Pruntys are due, darling, and we'll cast the die." I was all pale and quivery when I kissed Billy--in that sort of serious way in which we women kiss people we like, when we tell them to come back with their shields or on them--and pushed him into the room. I heard all they said. It was dark in there, and Pa thought at first that it was a Prunty. Pa was sitting in the Morris chair, with his foot on a rest. "That you, Enos?" said he. "Help yourself to a chair. I'm kind of laid up for repairs." "It's Helmerston," said Billy. "I called to talk to you about this affair with Mr. Prunty. I have some information which may be of value to you." Pa sat as still as an image for perhaps a minute. I could almost hear his thoughts. He was anathematizing Billy mentally for butting in, but he was too good a strategist to throw away any valuable knowledge. "Well," said he at last, "I'm always open to valuable information. Turn it loose!" Then Billy told him all you know, and a good deal more, which I shall not here state, because it is not necessary to the scenario, and I did not understand it, anyhow. There was some awfully vivid conversation at times, though, when Pa went up into the air at what Billy had done, and Billy talked him down. "Do you mean to say, you--you young lunatic," panted Pa, "that you've told Prunty that he's got a living corpse to deal with, when I need all the prestige I've won with him to hold my own?" But Billy explained that he'd taken the liberty of thinking the whole thing out; and, anyhow, had merely refrained from removing a mistaken notion from Prunty's mind. "But," said he, "you can assure him when he gets here that you are really in robust health." "Assure him!" roared Pa. "He'd be dead sure I was trying to put myself in a better light for the dicker. I couldn't make him believe anything at all. I know Prunty." Billy said that the psychology of the situation was plain. Mr. Prunty was convinced that Pa was in such a condition that he never could go back to the office, and could no more take sole ownership of the Mid-Continent than a baby could enter a shot-putting contest. What would they do when it came to making propositions? They would offer something that they were sure a case in the tertiary stage couldn't accept. They would probably offer to give or take a certain price for the stock. Believing that Pa wasn't in position to buy, but was really forced to sell, they would name a frightfully low price, so that when Pa accepted it perforce they would be robbing him out of house and home, almost. This was the way with these shrewd traders always, and to whipsaw a dying man would be nuts for a man like Prunty. (I am here falling into Billy's dialect when he was in deadly earnest.) Then the conversation grew mysterious again with Pa listening, and once admitting that "that would be like old Enos." "But he'll back out," said Pa, "if he's thief enough ever to start in." "Have him make a memorandum in writing, and sign it," answered Billy. "But," rejoined Pa, in a disgusted way, as if to ask why he condescended to argue with this young fool, "you don't know Prunty. Unless he has the cash in hand he'll go to some lawyer and find a way out." "I thought of that, too," said Billy; "and so I took the liberty of going to the bank and getting the cash--for temporary use, you know." "I like your nerve!" moaned Pa angrily. "Do you know, young man, that you've built up a situation that absolutely forces me to adopt your fool plans? Absolutely infernal nonsense! To imagine it possible to get the Prunty stock at any such figures is--" And Pa threw up wild hands of desperation to an unpitying sky. "Is it possible to imagine," said Billy, "such a thing as the Pruntys trying to get your stock at that figure? That's the thing I'm looking for and counting on." And when Pa failed to reply, but only chewed his mustache, Billy went on: "I thought the logic of the situation would appeal to you," said he. "And now let us set the stage. The time is short." And then came the most astounding thing, and the thing that showed Billy's genius. First he took out the electric-light bulbs of the electrolier, and screwed in others made of a sort of greenish glass--just a little green tinge in it. He took some stage appliances and put just a little shade of dark under Pa's eyes, and at the corners of his mouth; and when the green lights were turned on Pa had the most ghastly, ghostly, pasty, ghoulish look any one ever saw. I was actually frightened when I came in: it was as bad as Doctor Jekyll turned to Mr. Hyde. Pa looked rather cheap while Billy was doing this, but the time was getting short, and he was afraid the Pruntys would come bursting in and catch them at it. Billy placed Pa right under the green lights, and shaded them so that the rest of us received only the unadulterated output of the side lamps. Then they arranged their cues, and Billy stepped into the next room. As he went, Pa swore for the first time since he quit running the line-gang, when, he claims, it was necessary. "If this goes wrong, as it will," he hissed through his livid lips, "I'll kick you from here to the city-limits if it blows the plug in the power-house!" "Very well, sir," answered Billy--and the footman announced the Pruntys. I was as pale as a ghost, and my eyes were red, and the look of things was positively sepulchral when they came in, Enos tagging at his father's heels as if he was ashamed. The footman turned on the light, and almost screamed as he looked at poor Pa, with the pasty green in his complexion, and the cavernous shadows under his eyes. Billy had seen to it that the Pruntys had had plenty of literature on the symptoms of Bright's disease, and I could see them start and exchange looks as Pa's state dawned on them. "I'm sorry to see you in this condition," said Mr. Prunty, after Pa had weakly welcomed them and told them to sit down. "What condition?" snapped Pa, the theatricality wearing off. "I'm all right, if it wasn't for this blamed toe!" "Is it very bad?" asked Mr. Prunty. "It won't heal," growled Pa, and the visitors exchanged glances again. "But you didn't come here to discuss sore toes. Let's get down to business." Then Mr. Prunty, in a subdued and sort of ministerial voice, explained to Pa that he was getting along in years, and that Pa wasn't long--that is, that Pa was getting along in years, too--and both parties would, no doubt, be better satisfied if their interests were separated. Therefore he had decided to withdraw his capital from the business, and place it in some other enterprise which would give his son a life work along lines laid out in his education and training. He didn't want to sell his stock to the Universal Electric Company as he had a chance to do (Pa started fiercely here, for he was afraid of the Universal Electric); although the old agreement by which neither party was to sell out to a competitor was probably no longer binding; and so they had come as man to man to talk adjustment. "But," says Pa, "this takes me by surprise. I don't quite see my way clear to taking on such a load as carrying all the stock would be. Mid-Continent stock is valuable." They exchanged glances again, as much as to say that Pa was evidently anxious to sell rather than buy, and was crying the stock up accordingly, so as to get as much money as he could for me before he died. "We may not be so grasping as you think," said Mr. Prunty; and then nothing was said for quite a while. Pa was looking awfully sick, and Mr. Prunty was just exuding love and kindness and magnanimity from every pore. "You had some proposition thought out," interrogated Pa, feeling anxiously for his own pulse, "or you wouldn't have come. What is it, Prunty?" "Well," answered Mr. Prunty, gazing piercingly at Pa, as if to ask if such a cadaverous person _could_ possibly take on the sole control of the Mid-Continent even if he had the money--"well, we had thought of it a little, that's a fact. We thought we'd make you an offer to buy or sell--" "Hurrah for Billy!" my heart shouted. For this was just what he said would happen. But, instead of hurrahing, I came to the front and gave Pa a powder. It was mostly quinine, and was dreadfully bitter. "To buy or sell," went on Mr. Prunty, "at a price to be named by us. If it's a reasonable figure, take our stock and give us our money. If it's too high, why, sell us yours. That's fair, ain't it?" Pa lay back and looked green and groaned. He was doing it nobly. "What is fair in some circumstances," he moaned, "is extortion in others; and I--er--yes, I suppose it would be called fair. What's your give-or-take price, Prunty?" "We are willing," said Mr. Prunty, "to give or take seventy-five for the stock." Pa was so still that I had to rouse him, and Mr. Prunty repeated his offer. "I--I'm getting a little forgetful," said Pa, "and I'd like to have you put it in writing, so I can consider it, and be sure I have it right, you know." The Pruntys consulted again, and again they came forward. Enos wrote down the proposition, and Mr. Prunty signed it. I didn't understand it very well, and the strain was so frightful that I expected to fly all to pieces every instant, but I didn't. When Enos handed the paper to Pa, Pa cleared his throat in a kind of scraping way, and in stepped Billy with a great box under his arm. "Mr. Helmerston," said Pa, as calmly as General Grant at--any place where he was especially placid--"I want you and my daughter to be witnesses to the making of the proposition in this writing, from Mr. Prunty to me." Billy read the paper, and said he understood that it was a give-or-take offer of seventy-five for all the stock of the Mid-Continent. Mr. Prunty said yes, looking rather dazed, and not so sympathetic. "I accept the proposition," snapped Pa, his jaw setting too awfully firm for the tertiary stage. "I'll take your stock at seventy-five. Helmerston, pay 'em the money!" Billy had the cash in ten-thousand-dollar bundles; and I was so fascinated at the sight of so much treasure being passed over like packages of bonbons, that for a while I didn't see how funny Mr. Prunty was acting. When I did look, he was holding his nose in the air and gasping like one of Aunt Maria's little chickens with the pip. He seemed to have a sort of progressive convulsions, beginning low down in wrigglings of the legs, and gradually moving upward in jerks and gurgles and gasps, until it went off into space in twitchings of his mouth and eyes and nose and forehead. Enos had the bundles of money counted, and a receipt written, before he noticed that his father was having these fits, and then _he_ seemed scared. I suppose these people have a sort of affection for each other, after all. "Father," said he--"Father, what's the matter?" "Matter?" roared Mr. Prunty. "Does the fool ask what's the matter? Don't you see we're done brown? Look at the basketful they brought, that we might just as well have had as not, if it hadn't been for--Blast you, Blunt, I'll show you you can't chisel old Enos Prunty out of his good money like this, I will! I'll put the whole kit and boodle of yeh in jail! That stock is worth a hundred and fifty, if it's worth a cent. Ene, if you'll stand by like a stoughton bottle and see your old father hornswoggled out of his eye-teeth by a college dude and this old confidence-man, you'll never see a cent of my money, never! Do you hear, you ass? He's no more sick than I am! That's false pretenses, ain't it? He's got some darned greenery-yallery business on that face of his! Ain't that false? Blunt, if you don't give me the rest in the basket there I'll law you to the Supreme Court!" "Hush, father," said Enos; "Aurelia's here." "When you get everything set," said Pa, with a most exasperating smile, "just crack ahead with your lawsuit. We'll trot you a few heats, anyhow. You'd better take your pa away, Enos, and buy him a drink of something cool." "I want to compliment you, Mr. Helmerston," said Enos, quite like a gentleman, "on the success of your little stage-business, and especially on your careful forecast of the play of human motives. I can see that a man with only ordinary business dishonesty, like myself, need not be surprised at defeat by such a master of finesse as you." He bowed toward me. Billy flushed. "If you mean, sir--" he began. "Oh, I mean nothing offensive," answered Enos. "I will be in the office in the morning, and shall be ready, as secretary, to transfer this stock on the books, previous to resigning. Come, father, we've got our beating; but we can still have the satisfaction of being good losers. Good-by, Miss Blunt; I wish you joy!" Pa came out of the green light as they disappeared, limping on his wrapped-up foot, and shouted that he had always said that Enos was a brick, and now he knew it. I ran up to him and kissed him. Then I threw myself into Billy's arms. "Aurelia!" said Pa, looking as cross as a man _could_ look in such circumstances, "I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself!" I dropped into a chair and covered up my face, while Pa went on addressing Billy, trying to be severe on him for letting me kiss him, and to beam on him at the same time for helping him with the Pruntys. "Young man," said he, "I owe you a great deal. This tomfoolery happened to work. Please to consider yourself a part of the Mid-Continent Electric Company in any capacity you choose." "Yes, sir," said Billy, gathering up the money. "Is that all, sir?" "I should like to have you take Enos' place as secretary," added Pa. "Thank you," said Billy. "I shall be pleased and honored. Is that all? Do I still go to Mexico?" Pa pondered and fidgeted, and acted awfully ill at ease. "Yes," said he at last. "You're the only competent engineer we've got who understands the plans. You'll have to go for a few months--if you don't mind--anyhow." "Pa," said I, "I'm tired of metal work, and I need a vacation in new and pleasant surroundings, and--and associations. Billy is awfully pleasant to associate with, and--and be surrounded by; and I've never, never been in Guadalanawhat-you-may-call-it; and--and--may we Pa?" "Young woman!" glared Pa, "who have you the effrontery to call 'Billy'?"--Pa could never acquire what he calls "the 'whom' habit." Billy stepped manfully forward. "You would recognize the name 'Billy,'" said he, "if it were joined with the rather profane surname with which it is, unfortunately, connected, 'from the Atlantic to the Missouri.' Mr. Blunt, you can not be ignorant of the sweet dream in which I have indulged myself with reference to your daughter. I know I am unworthy of her--" "Oh, cut that short!" said Pa. "Take this grease off my face, and remove these infernal stage lights! There, Dolly--there! Mr. Helmerston, er--Billy--will start for Mexico within a month. If you--if you really want to go with him, why go!" And so we're going, by way of Yellowstone Park. CHAPTER IV "You see," said Mr. Driscoll, when, after three days of independent wonder-gazing in the thirty square miles of the Lower Geyser Basin, his seven fares came together for departure, "as I told yeh, this trip is just gettin' good." "I have seen," said the Poet, "a spring from the bottom of which fires leap in lambent flames, to be quenched by the air when they reach the surface. Let me die, now!" "I have seen," said the Artist, "the Mammoth Paint Pots from which we may dip our colors in that day 'when earth's last picture is painted, and the tubes are twisted and dried.'" "I have seen," said the Bride, "a lake perched upon a marble platform, the slopes of which it drapes with a lace of runnels--like the web that was woven by the Lady of Shalott while she looked in her magic mirror." "In that day when we perfect our mythology," said the Poet, "we shall know of the nymph of this lake, who uses it as a mirror, and will die if she looks away from the image to gaze on the real knight as he passes." "I question that, really," said the Professor. "In an age of pure science--" "Scat!" said the Colonel. "I have seen a pool that goes mad when any passing idiot throws gross material into its pure idealism--and I sympathize with it." "I have seen," went on Professor Boggs, "a natural object--I refer to the Fountain Geyser--which gives us a valuable lesson in steady performance, with no eccentricities. Every four hours it plays for fifteen minutes, shooting its water to a height of sixty feet. Note the mathematical correspondence--the feet correspond to the minutes in the hour--the hours are four--four into sixty goes fifteen times, the number of minutes the geyser plays--I shall work this out in an essay--it seems very significant." "I have seen," said the Groom, "in the Great Fountain Geyser, a natural power installation. It throws its huge volume of water to a height of one hundred feet. It is on a pedestal like an emplacement for a monument, and its crater looks like the hole in which to set the shaft. That makes the matter of utilizing the power a cinch. I figure--" "Billy!" said the Bride. "Aren't you ashamed?" "The Professor and myself," answered the Groom, "represent the spirit of the age. We only are sane." "You, Billy Helmerston," said the Bride, "are a fraud!" * * * * * Nine miles to the Upper Geyser Basin--passing the Midway Basin half-way--and the tourists found their tents already pitched by Aconite who had preceded them with the impedimenta, and returned light for the drive. They took a whole day for the journey, and even so felt as if they were committing an atrocity in negligence. The Jewell Geyser, the Sapphire Pool and the Mystic Falls seemed small by comparison with the gigantic phenomena of the Lower Basin, and smaller still next day compared with the stupendous marvels of the Upper Basin. At the Mystic Falls, the Bride insisted on taking luncheon. "It's like the really normal loveliness of earth," said she. "It goes better with humanity, and luncheon, and flowers and fairies and gentle things. I want to eat a meal in neither Paradise nor the Inferno--and we seem to be in one or the other most of the time." At luncheon, Professor Boggs came forward with an original and practical idea with relation to the Yellowstone Nights' Entertainment, as they had come to call their camp-fire stories. "I hold," said he, "that one is entitled to time for putting his thoughts in order before presuming to deliver an address, even of the narrative sort. I find myself apprehensive of being called upon next, and this interferes with my powers of observation. I suggest that we cast lots for the next tale now, and thus free the minds of all but the narrator, who may retire if he choose, and collate his data." "It's a good thought," said the Groom. "Poet, perform your office!" The Poet passed the hat to the Bride, who closed her eyes and felt about discriminatingly, saying she was trying to find Billy in the hat. The Poet read the ballot and handed it to the Artist. "Groom!" read the Artist, handing the slip of paper to Billy. "You're nominated." "Stung!" ejaculated Billy. THE HEART OF GOLIATH THE STORY TOLD BY THE GROOM "I often think," said the Groom, in beginning his tale that night, "when this adventure recurs to me, what a different world it would be if we could see into one another's minds, and telepathically search one another's hearts. I don't know whether it would be better or not; but that it would be different, this story proves. It is a tale that came to me when I was traveling about in the Missouri Valley, earning the money for my Tech course, and long before my time with the Mid-Continent Electric Company. It shows how a soul that is pitchy darkness to its nearest and dearest, may be illumined by the electric light of self-revelation to the eye of the chance-met stranger." * * * * * I first saw him on the platform just before my train pulled out from Sioux City to Aberdeen. He was a perfect mountain--an Alp, a Himalaya--of man. He must have been well toward seven feet tall; and so vast were his proportions that as he stooped to the window to buy his ticket he reminded me of a mastiff peering into a mouse's hole. From a distance--one could scarcely take in the details at close range--I studied him as a remarkable specimen of the brawny western farmer, whose score in any exhibition would be lowered by one fact only: lofty as his height was, he was getting too heavy for it. I had to go into the smoking-car to find a vacant seat, and there I could see but one. I had but just slipped into it when in came the Gargantuan farmer and sat down all over me, in a seemingly ruthless exercise of his undoubted right to half the seat, and his unquestionable ability to appropriate as much more as his dimensions required. Falstaff with his page reminded himself of a sow that had overwhelmed all her litter save one: I felt like the last of the litter in process of smothering. And he was as ignorant of my existence, apparently, as could possibly be required by the comparison. He wore with bucolic negligence clothes of excellent quality. His hat was broad as a prairie. I have no idea where such hats are bought. I am sure I never saw one of such amplitude of brim on sale anywhere. It was of the finest felt, and had a band of heavy leather pressed into a design in bas-relief. A few dried alfalfa leaves had lodged in the angle between the crown and the brim, and clung there, even when he took the hat off to wipe his brow, thus giving me a view of the plateau of felt, which I should never have obtained otherwise. His face was enormous but not puffy; and the red veinlets on the cheek and nose had acquired their varicosity by weathering rather than by indulgence. His hair was clipped short, as though he had had a complete job done as a measure of economizing time. He had a high beak of a nose, with rugged promontories of bone at the bridge, like the shoulders of a hill; and his mouth was a huge but well-shaped feature, hard and inflexible like the mouth of a cave. His shirt was of blue flannel, clean and fine, and its soft roll collar fell away from his great muscular neck unconfined and undecorated by any sort of cravat. His tun of a torso bulged roundly out in front of me like the sponson of a battleship. Stretched across the immense waistcoat was a round, spirally-fluted horsehair watchguard as big as a rope, with massive golden fastenings; and suspended from it was a golden steer made by some artificer who had followed Cellini afar off, if at all, and which gave the area (one must use geographical terms in describing the man), an auriferous and opulent appearance. His trousers were spotted with the stains of stables; and his huge boots, like barges, had similar discolorations overlaying a brilliant shine. He carried one of those heavy white sticks with which the drovers and dealers at the Sioux City stockyards poke the live stock and take the liberties accorded to prospective purchasers with pigs and bullocks. On the crook of this he rested his great hands, one piled upon the other, and stared, as if fascinated by them, at four soldiers returning from service in the Philippines, who had two seats turned together, and were making a gleeful function of their midday meal, startling the South Dakota atmosphere with the loud use of strange-sounding expressions in Tagalog and Spanish, and, with military brutality, laughing at the dying struggles of a fellow-man being slowly pressed to death under that human landslide. I resented their making light of such a subject. My oppressor stared at them with a grim and unwavering gaze that finally seemed to put them out and set them ill at ease; for they became so quiet that we could hear noises other than theirs. Once in a while, however, they winked at me to show their appreciation of my agonies, and made remarks about the water-cure and the like, meant for my ears. My incubus seemed not to hear a word of this badinage. I wondered if he were not deaf, or a little wrong in his intellect. The train stopped at a little station just as I had become quite desperate, and two men sitting in front of us got off. With the superhuman strength of the last gasp I surged under my tormentor--and he noticed me. I verily believe that until that instant he had not known of my presence; he gave such a deliberate sort of start. "Excuse me!" said he. "Forgot they was any one here--let me fix you!" He had already almost done so; but he meant well. He rose to take the vacated seat; but with a glance at the soldiers he threw the back over, turned his back to them and his face to me, and sat down. His ponderous feet like valises rested on each side of mine, his body filled the seat from arm to arm. For a while, even after discovering me, he stared past me as if I had been quite invisible. I saw a beady perspiration on his brow as if he were under some great stress of feeling. It was getting uncanny. I understood now how the soldiers, now breaking forth into riot again, had been suppressed by that stony regard. When he spoke, however, it was in commonplaces. "They're lots of 'em comin' back," said he. A slow thrust of the bulky thumb over his shoulder indicated that he meant soldiers. I nodded assent. A great many were returning just then. "Jack's come back," said he; "quite a while." His voice was in harmony with his physique--deep, heavy, rough. Raised in rage it might have matched the intonations of Stentor, and terrified a thousand foes; for it was a phenomenal voice. The rumble of the train was a piping treble compared with it. "You don't know Jack, do yeh?" he asked. "I think not," said I. "Course not," he replied. "Fool question! An' yit, he used to know most of you fellers." I wondered just what he might mean by "you fellows," but he was silent again. "You don't live near here," he stated at last. "No," said I. "I am just passing through." "If you lived in these parts," said he, "you'd know him." "I dare say," I replied. "Who is Jack?" I was a little piqued at his rudeness; for he returned no reply. Then I saw that he was gazing into vacancy again so absently that I should have pronounced his case one of mental trouble if his appearance had not been so purely physical. He took from a cigar-case a big, dark, massive cigar, clubhouse shape like himself, gave it to me and lighted the twin of it. I thought myself entitled to reparation for his maltreatment of me, and, seeing that it was a good cigar, I took it. As for any further converse, I had given that up, when there rumbled forth from him a soliloquy rather than a story. He appeared to have very little perception of me as an auditor. I think now that he must have been in great need of some one to whom he might talk, and that his relations to those about him forbade any outpouring of expression. He seemed all the time in the attitude of repelling attack. He did not move, save as he applied the cigar to his lips or took it away; and his great voice rolled forth in subdued thunder. "I've got four sections of ground," said he, "right by the track.... Show you the place when we go through. Of course I've got a lot of other truck scattered around.... Land at the right figger you've got to buy--got to.... But when I hadn't but the four sections--one section overruns so they's a little over twenty-six hundred acres--I thought 'twas about the checker f'r a man with three boys.... One f'r each o' them, you understand, an' the home place f'r mother if anything happened.... Mother done jest as much to help git the start as I did.... Plumb as much--if not more. "Tom an' Wallace is good boys--none better. I'd about as quick trust either of 'em to run the place as to trust myself." There was a candid self-esteem in the word "about" and his emphasis on it. "I sent Wallace," he resumed, "into a yard of feeders in Montana to pick out a trainload o' tops with a brush and paint-pot, an' I couldn't 'a' got a hundred dollars better deal if I'd spotted 'em myself.... That's goin' some f'r a kid not twenty-five. Wallace knows critters ... f'r a boy ... mighty well.... An' Tom's got a way of handlin' land to get the last ten bushel of corn to the acre that beats me with all my experience.... These colleges where they study them things do some good, I s'pose; but it's gumption, an' not schoolin', that makes boys like Tom an' Wallace.... They're all right.... They'd 'a' made good anyhow." I could feel an invidious comparison between Tom and Wallace, of whom he spoke with such laudatory emphasis, and some one else whom I suspected to be the Jack who had come back from the Philippines; and his next utterance proved this instinctive estimate of the situation to be correct. He went on, slower than before, with long pauses in which he seemed lost in thought, and in some of which I gave up, without much regret, I confess, the idea of ever hearing more of Jack or his brothers. "Jack was always mother's boy," said he. "Mother's boy ... you know how it is.... Make beds, an' dust, an' play the pianah, an' look after the flowers!... Wasn't bigger'n nothin', either.... Girl, I always thought, by good rights. I remember ... mother wanted him to be a girl.... She was on the square with the children ... but if any boy got a shade the best of it anywhere along the line, it was Jack.... I don't guess Tom an' Wallace ever noticed; but maybe Jack got a leetle the soft side o' things from mother.... Still, she's al'ays been dumbed square.... "I seen as soon as he got old enough to take holt, an' didn't, that he wasn't wuth a cuss.... Never told mother, an' never let on to the boys; but I could see he was no good, Jack wasn't.... Some never owns up when it's their own folks ... but what's the use lyin'?... Hed to hev a swaller-tail coat, an' joined a 'country club' down to town--an' him a-livin' in the middle of a strip o' country a mile wide an' four long, wuth a hundred dollars an acre ... all ourn ... goin' out in short pants to knock them little balls around that cost six bits apiece. I didn't let myself care much about it; but 'country club!'--Hell!" He had visualized for me the young fellow unfitted to his surroundings, designed on a scale smaller than the sons of Anak about him, deft in little things, finical in dress, fond of the leisure and culture of the club, oppressed with the roughnesses and vastnesses about his father's farms, too tender for the wild winds and burning suns, with nerves attuned to music and art rather than to the crushing of obstacles and the defeat of tasks: and all the while the image of "mother" brooded over him. All this was vividly in the picture--very vividly, considering the unskilful brush with which it had been limned--but just as it began to appeal to me, Anak fell quiescent. "I never thought he was anything wuss than wuthless," he went on, at last, "till he come to me to git some money he'd lost at this here club.... Thirty-seven dollars an' fifty cents.... Gamblin'.... I told him not by a damned sight; an' he cried--cried like a baby.... I'd 'a' seen him jugged 'fore I'd 'a' give him thirty-seven fifty of my good money lost that way.... Not me. "... Wallace give him the money f'r his shotgun.... An' mother--she al'ays knowed when Jack had one o' his girl-cryin' fits--she used to go up after Jack come in them nights, an' when he got asleep so he wouldn't know it she'd go in and kiss him.... Watched and ketched her at it, but never let on.... She run down bad--gittin' up before daylight an' broke of her rest like that.... I started in oncet to tell her he was no good, but I jest couldn't.... Turned it off on a hoss by the name o' Jack we had, an' sold him to make good f'r twenty-five dollars less'n he was wuth, ruther'n tell her what I started to.... She loved that wuthless boy, neighbor--there ain't no use denyin' it, she did love him." He paused a long while, either to ponder on the strange infatuation of "mother" for "Jack" or to allow me to digest his statement. A dog--one of the shaggy brown enthusiasts that chase trains--ran along by the cars until distanced, and then went back wagging his tail as if he had expelled from the neighborhood some noxious trespasser--as he may have conceived himself to have done. Goliath watched him with great apparent interest. "Collie," said he, at last. "Know anything about collies? Funny dogs! Lick one of 'em oncet an' he's never no good any more.... All kind o' shruvle up by lickin', they're that tender-hearted.... Five year ago this fall Tom spiled a fifty-dollar pedigreed collie by jest slappin' his ears an' jawin' him.... Some critters is like that ... Jack ... was!" He faltered here, and then flamed out into pugnacity, squaring his huge jaw as if I had accused him--as I did in my heart, I suspect. "But the dog," he rumbled, "was wuth somethin'--Jack never was.... Cryin' around f'r thirty-seven fifty!... Talkin' o' debts o' honor!... That showed me plain enough he wasn't wuth botherin' with.... Got his mother to come an' ask f'r an allowance o' money--so much a month.... Ever hear of such a thing? An' him not turnin' his hand to a lick of work except around the house helpin' mother.... Tom an' Wallace bed quite a little start in live stock by this time, an' money in bank.... Jack hed the same lay, but he fooled his away--fooled it away.... Broke flat all the time, an' wantin' an allowance.... Mother said the young sprouts at the club had allowances ... an' he read in books that laid around the house about fellers in England an' them places havin' allowances an' debts of honor.... Mother seemed to think one while that we was well enough off so we could let Jack live like the fellers in the books.... He lived more in them books than he did in South Dakoty, an' talked book lingo all the time.... Mother soon seen she was wrong. "She was some hurt b'cause I talked to the neighbors about Jack bein' plumb no good.... I don't know who told her.... I didn't want the neighbors to think I was fooled by him.... I never said nothing to mother, though.... She couldn't f'rgit thet he was her boy, an' she kep' on lovin' him.... Nobody orto blame her much f'r that, no matter what he done.... You know how it is with women. "One time purty soon after the thirty-seven fifty deal a bad check f'r two hundred come into my bundle o' canceled vouchers at the bank, an' I knowed in a minute who'd done it.... Jack had been walkin' the floor nights f'r quite a spell, an' his eyes looked like a heifer's that's lost her calf.... He hed a sweetheart in town.... Gal from the East ... big an' dark an' strong enough to take Jack up an' spank him.... It was her brother Jack had lost the money to. Jack jest wrote my name on a check--never tried to imitate my fist much--an' the bank paid it.... When I come home a-lookin' the way a man does that's been done that way by a boy o' his'n, mother told me Jack was gone, an' handed me a letter he left f'r me.... I never read it.... Went out to the barn so mother wouldn't see me, an' tore it up.... I'd 'a' been damned before I'd 'a' read it!" He gloomed out over my head in an expressionless way that aroused all the curiosity I am capable of feeling as to the actual workings of another's mind. He seemed to be under the impression that he had said a great many things in the pause that ensued; or he regarded my understanding as of small importance; for he recommenced at a point far advanced in his narrative. "--'N' finely," said he very calmly, "we thought she was goin' to die. I asked the doctor what we could do, an' he told me what.... Knowed all the boys since he helped 'em into the world, you know--a friend more'n a doctor--an' he allowed it was Jack she was pinin' f'r. So I goes to her, a-layin' in bed as white as a sheet, an' I says, 'Mother, if they's anything you want, you can hev it, if it's on earth, no matter how no-account I think it is!' ... A feller makes a dumb fool of himself such times, neighbor; but mother was good goods when we was poor an' young--any one of the neighbors can swear to that.... She looks up at me ... an' whispers low ... 'Go an' find him!' ... An' I went. "I knowed purty nigh where to look. I went to Chicago. He'd dropped clean down to the bottom, neighbor.... Playin' a pianah ... f'r his board an' lodgin' an' beer ... in ... in a beer hall." I was quite sure, he paused so long, that he had told all he had to narrate of this history of the boy who could not stand punishment, and was so much like a collie; and I knew from the manner in which he had lapsed into silence, more than from what he had said, what a dark passage it was. "Well," he resumed finally, "I hed my hands spread to strangle him right there.... I could 'a' done it all right--he was that peaked an' little.... He wouldn't 'a' weighed more'n a hundred an' fifty--an' _my_ son!... I could 'a' squushed the life out of him with my hands--an' it was all right if I hed.... You bet it was!... Not that I cared f'r the two hundred dollars. I could spare that all right. I'll lose that much on a fair proposition any time.... But to take that thing back to mother ... from where I picked it up from! "I reckon I was ruther more gentle with Jack goin' home than I ever was before.... I hed to be. They was no way out of it except to be easy with him--'r lam the life out of him an' take him home on a cot ... an' mother needed him in runnin' order. So I got him clothes, an' had him bathed, an' he got shaved as he used to be--he had growed a beard--an' I rode in one car and him in another.... When mother seed him, her an' him cried together f'r I suppose it might have been two hours 'r two and a quarter, off an' on, an' whispered together, an' then she went to sleep holdin' his hand, an' begun to pick up, an' Jack went back to his own ways, an' the rest of us to ourn, an' it was wuss than ever.... An' when he sold a team o' mine and skipped ag'in, I was glad, I tell you, to be shet of him.... An' they could do the mile to the pole in twenty, slick as mice. "Next time mother and Wallace went an' got him.... Mother found out some way that he was dyin' in a horsepittle in Minneapolis.... He claimed he'd been workin f'r a real estate firm; but I had the thing looked up ... an' I couldn't find where any of our name had done nothing.... An' it seemed as ef we'd never git shet of him.... That sounds hard; but he was a kind of a disease by this time--a chronic, awful painful, worryin' disease, like consumption.... An' we couldn't git cured of him, an' we couldn't die.... It was kind o' tough. He moped around, an' mother had some kind o' promise out of him that he wouldn't leave her no more, an' he was pleadin' with her to let him go, an' Tom an' Wallace an' me never sayin' a word to him, when this here Philippine War broke out ... you know what it's about--I never did ... an' Jack wanted to enlist. "'I can't let him go!' says mother. "'Let him go,' says I. 'If he'll go, let him!' "Mother looks at me whiter'n I ever expect to see her again but once, maybe; an' the next morning she an' Jack goes to the county seat an' he enlists. I went down when the rig'ment was all got together. Mother an' me has always had a place where we kep' all the money they was in the house, as much hern as mine, an' she took five twenty-dollar gold pieces out of the pile, an' sewed 'em in a chamois-skin bag all wet with her cryin' ... an' never sayin' a word ... an' she hangs it round his neck, an' hung to him an' kissed him till it sorter bothered the boss of the rig'ment--some kind of colonel--because he wanted the men to march, you know, an' didn't seem to like to make mother fall back.... She seemed to see how it was, finely, an' fell back, an' this colonel made the motion to her with his sword they do to their superiors, an' they marched.... Jack stood straighter than any one in the line, an' he had a new sort of look to him. He everidged up purty good, too, in hithe ... I don't see much to this soldier business.... Maybe that's why he looked the part so well.... I give the captain a hundred f'r him.... Jack sent it back from a place called Sanfrisco, without a word. 'So much saved!' says I. He was wuthless as ever." The immense voice labored, broke, stopped--the man seemed weary and overcome. To afford him an escape from the story that seemed to have mastered him, like the Ancient Mariner's, I called his attention to what the four soldiers were doing. They had dressed as if for inspection, and were evidently going out upon the platform. The noticeable thing in their appearance was the change in their expressions from the hilarity and riotousness of a few moments ago, to a certain solemnity. One of them carried a little box carefully wrapped up, as a devotee might carry an offering to a shrine. The huge farmer glanced casually at them as if with full knowledge of what they were doing, and, ignoring my interruption, seemed to resume his monologue--as might the habitué of a temple pass by the question of a stranger concerning a matter related to the mysteries--something not to be discussed, difficult to be explained, or not worth mention. He pointed out of the window. "Our land," said he; "both sides ... tiptop good ground.... Didn't look much like this when mother an' me homesteaded the first quarter-section.... See that bunch of box-elders? Me an' her camped there as we druv in.... Never cut 'em down.... Spoil an acre of good corn land, too; to say nothin' o' the time wasted cultivatin' 'round 'em.... Well, a man's a fool about some things!" It was a picture of fulsome plenty and riotous fertility. Straight as the stretched cord by which they had been dropped ran the soldierly rows of corn, a mile along, their dark blades outstretched in the unwavering prairie wind, as if pointing us on to something noteworthy or mysterious beyond. Back and forth along the rows plodded the heavy teams of the cultivators, stirring the brown earth to a deeper brownness. High fences of woven wire divided the spacious fields. On a hundred-acre meadow, as square and level as a billiard table, were piled the dark cocks of a second crop of alfalfa. One, two, three farmsteads we passed, each with its white house hidden in trees, its big red barns, its low hog-houses, its feed yards, with their racks polished by the soft necks of feasting steers. And everywhere was the corn--the golden corn of last year in huge cribs like barracks; the emerald hosts of the new crop in its ranks like green-suited lines-of-battle arrested in full career and held as by some spell, leaning onward in act of marching, every quivering sword pointing mysteriously forward. My heart of a farmer swelled within me at the scene, which had something in it akin to its owner, it was so huge, so opulent, so illimitable. Somehow, it seemed to interpret him to me. "Purty good little places," said he; "but the home place skins 'em all. We'll be to it in a minute. Train slows up f'r a piece o' new track work. We'll git a good view of it." Heaving himself up, he went before me down the aisle of the slowing train. There stood the soldiers on the steps and the platform. We took our places back of them. I was absorbed in the study of the splendid farm, redeemed from the lost wilderness by this man who had all at once become worth while to me. Back at the rear of the near-by fields was a row of lofty cottonwoods, waving their high crests in the steady wind. All about the central grove were pastures, meadows, gardens and orchards. A dense coppice of red cedars enclosed on three sides a big feed-yard, in which, stuffing themselves on corn and alfalfa, or lying in the dusty straw, were grouped a hundred bovine aristocrats in stately unconcern of the rotund Poland-Chinas about them. In the pastures were colts as huge as dray-horses, shaking the earth in their clumsy play. There were barns and barns and barns--capacious red structures, with hay-forks rigged under their projecting gables; and, in the midst of all this foison, stood the house--square, roomy, of red brick, with a broad porch on two sides covered with climbing roses and vines. On this veranda was a thing that looked like a Morris chair holding a figure clad in khaki. A stooped, slender, white-haired woman hovered about the chair; and down by the track, as if to view the passing train, stood a young woman who was tall and swarthy and of ample proportions. Her dress was artistically adapted to country wear; she looked well-groomed and finished. She was smiling as the train drew slowly past, but I was sure that her eyes were full of tears. I wondered why she looked with such intentness at the platform--until I saw what the soldiers were doing. They stood at attention, their hands to their service-hats, stiff, erect, military. The girl returned the salute, and pointed to the chair on the veranda, put her handkerchief to her eyes, and shook her head as if in apology for the man in khaki. And while she stood thus the man in khaki leaned forward in the Morris chair, laid hold of the column of the veranda, pulled himself to his feet, staggered forward a step, balanced himself as if with difficulty, and--saluted. The soldiers on the platform swung their hats and cheered, and I joined in the cheer. One of the good fellows wiped his eyes. The big farmer stood partly inside the door, effectually blocking it, and quite out of the girl's sight, looking on, as impassive as a cliff. The pretty young woman picked up a parcel--the offering--which one of the soldiers tossed to her feet, looked after us smiling and waving her handkerchief, and ran back toward the house. The train picked up speed and whisked us out of sight just as the khaki man sank back into the chair, eased down by the woman with the white hair. I seemed to have seen a death. "That was mother," said the man of the broad farms, as we resumed our seats--"mother and Jack ... jest as it always hes been.... Al'ays mother's boy.... The soldiers comin' from the war al'ays stand on the platform as they go by--if they's room enough--with their fingers to their hats in that fool way.... All seem to know where Jack is someway, no matter what rig'ment they belong to.... Humph! "It's something he done in the Philippines ... in the islands.... I don't know where they are.... Off Spain way, I guess.... They's a kind of yellow nigger there, an' Jack seemed to do well fightin' 'em.... They're little fellers something like his size, you know.... Some high officer ordered him to take a nigger king on an island once; an' as I understand it, the niggers was too many f'r his gang o' soldiers. So Jack went alone an' took him right out of his own camp.... I reckon any one could 'a' done the same thing with Uncle Sam backin' him; but the president, 'r congress, 'r the secretary of war thought it was quite a trick.... I s'pose Jack's shootin' a nigger officer right under the king's nose made it a better grand-stand play.... Anyhow, Jack went out a private, an' come back a captain; an' every soldier that rides these cars salutes as he passes the house, whuther Jack's in sight 'r not.... Funny!... All kinds o' folks to make a world!" "Then," said I, for I knew the story, of course, when he mentioned the circumstances, "your son Jack is Captain John Hawes?" He nodded slowly, without looking at me. "And that beautiful, strong girl?" I inquired. "Jack's wife," said he. "All right to look at, ain't she? Lived in New York ... 'r Boston, I f'rgit which.... Folks well fixed.... Met Jack in Sanfrisco and married him when he couldn't lift his hand to his head.... She'd make a good farm woman.... Good stuff in her.... What ails him? Some kind o' poison that was in the knife the nigger soaked him with when he took that there king ... stabbed Jack jest before Jack shot.... Foolish to let him git in so clost; but Jack never hed no decision.... Al'ays whifflin' around.... If he pulls through, though, that girl'll make a man of him if anything kin.... She thinks he's all right now ... proud of him as Chloe of a yaller dress.... Went to Sanfrisco when he was broke an' dyin', they thought, an' all that, an' begged him as an honor to let her bear his name an' nuss him.... And she knew how wuthless he was before the war, an' throwed him over.... Sensible girl ... then ... I--" He was gazing at nothing again, and I thought the story ended, when he began on an entirely new subject, as it seemed to me, until the relation appeared. "Religion," said he, "is something I don't take no stock in, an' never did.... Religious folks don't seem any better than the rest.... But mother al'ays set a heap by religion.... I al'ays paid my dues in the church and called it square.... May be something in it f'r some, but not f'r me. I got to hev something I can git a-holt of.... Al'ays looked a good deal like graft to me ... but I pay as much as any one in the congregation, an' maybe a leetle more--it pleases mother.... An' so does Jack's gittin' religion.... Got it, all right.... Pleases mother, too.... Immense!... But I don't take no stock in it. "The doc says he's bad off." I had not asked the question; but he seemed to feel a necessary inquiry in the tableau I had seen. "He used to come down to the track when he first got back an' perform that fool trick with his hand to his hat when the soldiers went by an' they let him know.... Too weak, now; ... failin'.... Girl's al'ays there, though, when she knows.... Kind o' hope he'll--he'll--he'll ... You know, neighbor, from what she's done f'r him, how mother must love him!" We had come to the end of his journey, now--a little country station--and he left the train without a word to me or a backward look, his huge hat drawn down over his eyes. I felt that I had seen a curious, dark, dramatic, badly-drawn, wildly-conceived and Dantesque painting. He climbed into a carriage which stood by the platform, and to which was harnessed a pair of magnificent coach-bred horses which plunged and reared fearfully as the train swept into the station, and were held, easily and by main strength, like dogs or sheep, by a giant in the conveyance who must have been Tom or Wallace. From time to time, the steeds gathered their feet together, trampled the earth in terror, and then surged on the bits. The giant never deigned even to look at them. He held the lines, stiff as iron straps, in one hand, took his father's bag in the other, threw the big horses to the right by a cruel wrench of the lines to make room for his father to climb in, which he did without a word. As the springs went down under the weight the horses dashed away like the wind, the young man guiding them by that iron right hand with facile horsemanship, and looking, not at the road, but at his father. As they passed out of sight the father of Captain Hawes turned, looked at me, and waved his hand. I thought I had seen him for the last time, and went back to get the story from the soldiers. "It wasn't so much the way he brought the datto into camp," said one of them, "or the way he always worked his way to the last bally front peak of the fighting line. It takes a guy with guts to do them things; but that goes with the game--understand? But he knew more'n anybody in the regiment about keepin' well. He made the boys take care of themselves. When a man is layin' awake scheming to keep the men busy and healthy, there's always a job for him.... And he had a way of making the boys keep their promises.... And he's come home to die, and leave that girl of his--and all the chances he's had in a business way if he wants to leave the army. It don't seem right! The boys say the president has invited him to lunch; and he's got sugar-plantation and minin' jobs open to him till you can't rest.... And to be done by a cussed poison Moro kris! But he got Mr. Moro--played even; an' that's as good as a man can ask, I guess. Hell, how slow this train goes!" As I have said, I never expected to see my big farmer again; but I did. I completed my business; returned the way I came, passed the great farm after dusk, and the next morning was in the city where I first saw him. Looking ahead as I passed along the street I noticed, towering above every form, and moving in the press like a three-horse van among baby carriages, the vast bulk of the captain's father. He turned aside into a marble-cutter's yard, and stood, looking at the memorial monuments which quite filled it until it looked like a cemetery vastly overplanted. I felt disposed to renew our acquaintance, and spoke to him. He offered me his hand, and when I accepted it he stood clinging to mine, standing a little stooped, the eyes bloodshot, the iron mouth pitifully drooped at the corners, the whole man reminding me of a towering cliff shaken by an earthquake, but mighty and imposing still. He held a paper in his free hand, which he examined closely while retaining the handclasp, and in a way I had come to expect of him, he commenced in the midst of his thought and without verbal salutation. "We've buried Jack!" said he. "I'm deeply sorry!" said I. "Well," said he, "maybe it's just as well.... He was ... you know!... But mother takes it hard--hard!... I'm contractin' f'r a tombstun.... He wanted to see me ... at the last.... 'Dad,' says he, jest as he used to when he was ... was a little feller, ... 'I want you to forgive me before I die.... It's a big country where I'm going, ... an' ... you and I may never run into each other--so forgive me! Mother'll find me--wherever I go ... but you, Dad, ... for fear it's our last chance, let's square up now!' ... I ... I ..." He went out among the stones and seemed to be looking the stock over. Presently, he returned and showed me the paper. It was what a printer would call "copy" for an inscription--the name, the dates, the age of Captain John Hawes--severe, laconic. At the bottom were two or three lines scrawled in a heavy, ponderous hand, with the half-inch lead of a lumber pencil. Only one fist could produce that Polyphemus chirography. "_He went out a private_," it read, "_and came back a captain._" And then, as if by afterthought, and in huge capitals, came the line: "_And died a Christian._" "Is that all right?" he asked. "Is the spellin' all right?... I don't care much about this soldier business ... an' the Christian game ... don't interest me ... a little bit, ... but, neighbor, you don't know how that'll please mother! 'Died a Christian!' ... Someway ... mother ... always loved Jack!" At the turning of the street I looked and saw the last scene of the drama--one that will play itself before me from time to time in retrospect for ever. The great, unhewn, mountainous block was still there, standing among his more shapely and polished brother stones, a human monolith, the poor, pitiful paper in his trembling hand. CHAPTER V "I find myself," said the Driver, at the next session of the Scheherazade Society, as Colonel Baggs called their camp-fires, "in a whale of a dilemmer. I have never had nothin' happen to me worth tellin'. I have punched cows till this dry farmin' made it necessary to take to some more humble callin', and there's nothin' to cow-punchin' that is interestin'. "I have showed you here in the Upper Geyser Basin fifteen geysers of the first magnitude, an' a hundred smaller ones; I have showed you Old Faithful, the Giant, the Giantess, the Fan and the Riverside. I have showed you the Grotto Geyser, which is a cross between a geyser and a cave. I have showed you the quiescent spring at its best--the Morning Glory pool with more colors than any rainbow ever had. I've showed you jewels and giants and ogres and sprites, and--" "Here!" shouted the Groom. "Saw off on that professional patter! You're not the driver now, but Aconite Driscoll, the Cow-boy, and telling us the story of your life. We have seen more things here than Münchhausen, Gulliver, Mandeville, Old Jim Bridger and the whole brood of romancers ever could imagine. Give us some North American facts, now." "Well, if I must, I must," said poor Aconite. "But there's nothin' to it. I reckon I'd better narrate to you some of the humble doin's of the J-Up-And-Down Ranch over on Wolf Nose Crick, in the foot-hills of the Black Hills--in the dear, dead past beyond recall--thanks to the Campbell method of dry farmin'." THE TALE OF TEN THOUSAND DOGIES THE TALE TOLD BY THE DRIVER The way I gets into this story is a shame an' disgrace, an' is incompetent, irreverent, an' immaterial, an' not of record in this case. Eh? Adds color to the--which? Narrative! Well, I d'n' know about that. I reely couldn't say as it does. But mentionin' color, the thought of that little affair do make my face as red as a cow-town on pay-day. When I turn that tale loose we'll make a one-night stand of it by the grub-wagon. It comprises a shipper's pass to Sioux City, a sure-thing game in that moral town, which I win out by backin' my judgment with my Colt, an' a police court wherein the bank roll and my pile was rake-off for the court. Charge, gamblin'. All hands plead guilty. All correct says you, an' quite accordin' to the statues made an' pervided; an' so says I, ontil I casually picks up a paper in Belle Fourche, an' sees that it was a phoney police court, not only owned and controlled by the shell men, which wouldn't be surprisin', but privately installed as a sort of accident insurance on their other game. "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," Mr. Elkins remarks to me one day, but all that is goin' to be changed when I ketch up with that police judge. Ridin' the range makes a man talkative with the scenery, an' when I sees that Sioux City paper, I turns loose some remarks in the presence of a gentleman who subsequently turns out to be Mr. Elkins. "Thanks," says he. "When did you acquire any chips in this little solitaire blasphemy game?" says I, mad, as a man allus is if he's ketched solloloquisin' to himself. "A man," says he, "with all the sidetracks filled with cars o' cattle an' more comin', an' no gang, is in, _ex proprio vigore_," says he, whatever that means, "anywhere where cuss-words is trumps." He never smiled except back in his eyes, an' I, likin' his style, hires out to him, an' was third man on the J-Up-And-Down Ranch from the day the dogies begun to be unloaded, till James R. Elkins went to New York, with a roll that would choke a blood-sweatin' hippopotamus. Third man, says I, an' if you think the first was the Old Man, J. R. E., you know, you've got another conjecture comin'. Number One was Mrs. Elkins, an' I reckon some of her New York friends'll enter into conniptions to know that, in lessn' a year, half the boys called her Josie--in their dreams, at least--an' some on 'em to her face; but none to her back, by a damsite! The Old Man--a lot of us called him Jim habitual--was a one-lunger when this dogie enterprise started, all mashed in body in the collapse of the boom at Lattimore; an' them as thinks I refer to any loggin' accident is informed that I mean the town-lot boom in the city of Lattimore, as is more fully set forth elsewhere, the same bein' made by reference a part hereof, marked "Exhibit A," which explains the broken bones aforesaid-- "If there's no objection," said Colonel Baggs, in a high court-room singsong, "'Exhibit A' will be received in evidence. G'long, Aconite!" Financially, he was millions worse than nothing, if you can understand that. Personally, I caint. Zero is the bottom of the spondulix scale fer me, although the thummometer seems to prove it ain't necessarily thus. Anyhow, the Old Man had Josie, an' any man from Sturgis to Dog Den Buttes would have shouldered all Mr. Elkins' shrinkages, especially the below-zero part, to've had her jest once smooth the hair off his beaded brow, let alone take charge of him like a Her'ford heifer does her fust calf. Which is sure the manner Josie took a-holt and managed the Old Man. But this hain't no love story. Quite the reverse. It's the "Tale of Ten Thousand Dogies." I found out that when Mr. E. went into the bulb in a business way, this Wolf Nose Crick Ranch went around bankruptcy, instid of through it, becuz, mostly, nobody thought it wuth a--a thought. An' to them as think strange of ten thousand steers, even dogies, bein' bought by a busted boomer, I'll state that any man with the same range, an' not absolutely a convicted hoss-thief, could've got 'em by givin' the same cutthroat chattel mawgitch. Old Aleck Macdonald did sure sell 'em to Mr. Elkins reasonable, though, because James R. had made him a good deal of money in this boom, an' they was only dogies anyhow. Now, this bein' my evenin' fer tellin' the truth, I'll state that ten thousand dogies is sure a complicated problem on the range. The distinction between them an' reg'lar native range cows lays in the lap o' luxury in which the dogies is dangled in the farmin' regions where they originate. The first little blizzard, they'll hump up an' blat fer home an' mother. They'll gaze fondly at a butte ten mile off, expectin' doors in it to slide open, an' racks full of clover an' timothy to pull out an' be forked out to 'em. They look grieved an' wring their jaws becuz water with the chill took off ain't piped to their stalls, an' they moan 'cause they ain't no stalls. I'd as soon run a Women's an' Babies' Home. You cain't get it into their heads where the water-holes is, an' it's allus an even break whuther they'll stan' an' freeze in their tracks, or chase after some bunch of 2:10 natives ontil their hooves drop off. That's why Macdonald talked as he did about 'em, as I'm informed. "Take 'em," says he, "an' don't flatter yourself I'm donatin' anything. They's no feed fer 'em in their native Iowa at any livin' price, an' on the other hand, fifty per cent. of 'em'll die gettin' over their homesickness on the range. You'll have it in fer me fer stickin' you, when you know more about the cattle business. Fer the Lord's sake take 'em before they eat me out of every dollar I've got left!" Some of this was straight goods, an' some stall; but that first winter was a special providence if they ever was one. So mild and barmy from September to March that the prairie-dogs forgot to hole up, an' Mrs. Elkins served Thanksgivin' dinner in the open air on the pizziazzy at the Ranch. An' she rode the range with Jim consecutively, an' said she'd found her 'finity in this cattle biz. As for him, the main thing the matter was that failure o' his a-millin' through his mental facilities. But this was their honeymoon, we found, an' that, an' no losses on the range, helped his case, an' by spring he begun to shoot the persiflage into the gang, an' set up an' reach for things to beat fours. As for the dogies, none of 'em had the faintest show fer a beller. The grass was like new-mown hay; every little snow was follered by a chinook; the water-holes was brimmin'; an' all went merry as a marriage bell. "The fact is, Aconite," says Mr. Elkins, addressin' me, "I knew when I heard that burst of phonetic lava from your lips at Belle Fourche, that there'd be no fear of low temperatures if you could be induced to stay by the cows, and blow off once in a while." He had the hot air under wonderful control, hisself, an' felt good at the way the stock was comin' on--March, April, May, an' fresh feed, ponds full o' ducks, cute little young wolves about the dens, an' every one o' the ten thousand dogies stretchin' to see hisself grow. But the fall--the fall was sure a bad one fer both feed an' water. The dogies, however, couldn't fairly be called such any longer, havin' recovered from what Jim called their acute nostalgia, an' bein' pret' near's good rustlers as natives. An' well it was fer 'em, fer grass was sca'ce, an' a son-of-a-gun of a while between drinks. After you got away from the crick--an' you jist _had_ to git away f'r grass--it was a good day's ride to water, east, west, north, south, up'r down. On the hay-slews we had to prime the rake with old hay 'fore we could make a windrow. Laff if you want to, but they was whole outfits with less hay than some folks has gover'ment bonds. We had about enough to wad a shotgun, an' was merchant princes in the fodder line. The steers, lookin' like semi-animated hat-racks, as the Old Man said, come through the cold weather in a shrinkin' an' sylph-like way, so thin that you could throw a bull by the tail a dum sight furder'n I'd trust some folks, an' that's no dream! By this time Mr. Elkins was a sure-enough cow-man, president of the Association and the biggest man from Spearfish to Jackson's Hole. He knew some confounded joke on every man in the cow-country, an' not only called 'em all by their fust name, but had one of his own f'r most of 'em. Mrs. Elkins, havin' pulled him through his own dogy stage, dropped out of the cow business, an' devoted herself to kids. I knew that this dogy proposition was a sort of a straw that Jim Elkins grabbed at as he went under, an' it done me an' all the fellers good to see the percentage of loss so small, even if the brutes wasn't puttin' on weight as they orto, an' the price was away down, an' we knew we shouldn't be ready to sell when the mawgitch got ripe. Old Macdonald was Jim's friend, though, an' would sure extend the note when it come of age; an' fur's we could see, these dry seasons was only delayin' the clean-up. So I thought, an' so thought the Elkins family, as peaceful as a Injun summer morn, an' as happy as skunks. But along in June of the third year, just in the last of the round-up, out comes what Elkins called our Nemmysis in the form of a jackleg lawyer with news of Macdonald's death, and papers to prove it, an' him appointed executioner of the estate of A. Macdonald, diseased. He wanted to see the cattle the estate had a mawgitch on. I was app'inted as his chaperon to show him the stock, an' it bein' a hurryin' time o' year, I exhibited to him ten 'r 'leven thousand head of mixed pickles, and called it square. He didn't know a cow-brand from one plucked from the burnin', an' credited us with a township or two of O-Bar-X cow stuff I run him into the first day out. I didn't feel that he was wuth payin' much notice to, if he hadn't had the say about the Old Man's mawgitch. I gathered from him that he was goin' to rearlize on the outfit in the fall. I went so fur as to p'int out what a grave-robbin' scheme this was, an' how this dogy stuff had been kep' in the livin' skelliton department f'r two years by drouth an' a hell-slew of other troubles, an' couldn't possibly do more than pay off the mawgitch, an' leave us holdin' the bag in the wust country f'r snipe outside of the Mojave desert. "They'll pay out," says he, "an' that's all I'm required to look out fer." I swear, I was prospectin' f'r a good hole to plant him in all the rest o' the trip. I goes right to the ranch when we pulled in. The Old Man an' Josie was a-sittin' in the firelight, an' she had the baby, a yearlin' on her lap, and the boy, a long two-year-old, in the crib. Outside of a nest o' young wild ducks, I never seen anything softer and cuter. I reports an' asks instructions as to the best way of disposin' of Mr. Jackleg's remains. "Quicklime," says he ruminatin'ly, "is a good and well-recognized scheme; but we haven't any, Aconite, have we? Or we might incorporate him into that burnin' lignite bed over in the butte. Boxin' him up an' shippin' him to fictitious consignees involves a trip to the railroad, an' creatin', as it does, a bad odor, an' stickin' a strugglin' railroad company for the freight, it never seemed to me quite the Christian thing. Don't you agree with me, Aconite?" "Now, the God's truth is, I was speakin' parabolically about this projected homicide, but no man can bluff _me_, an' when the Old Man seemed to fall in with it in that heart-to-heart way, I made a lightnin' cat-hop, an' told him as sober as a Keeley alumnus that the lignite bed seemed most judicious to me, an' when should we load up the catafalque? Then Mrs. E. breaks in with a sort o' gugglin' laugh. "Jim," says she, "you ought to be ashamed of yourself! Mr. Driscoll," addressin' me by my name, which never was Aconite, reely, "Mr. Driscoll, Mr. Elkins is not serious in his remarks." "Neither'm I," says I. "Of course not," says she. "We fully understand that." "Sure," says the Old Man. "Let the lawyer take its course. Which will be assumin' possession of the ten thousand dogies; and I feel sure he'll want to leave you in charge of 'em. He's stuck on you, Aconite." "See him in Helena fust," says I. "But wait a minute," says Mr. Elkins. "Somebody's got to take charge of this stuff for the mortgagee, if he keeps on thinkin' as he does now. You're our friend. It'll be more agreeable in every way to have you than, say, Bill Skeels, of the O-Bar-X." Of course I gets roped, throwed an' branded at last, an' Mr. Jackleg goes away takin' my receipt f'r ten thousand head, more or less, of steers branded "J" known in the cattle business as "J-Up-And-Down," the same bein' on the ranges at the head-waters of the Cheyenne, Moreau, Little Missouri, an' other streams, an' God knows where else, more definitely described in a certain indenture of mawgitch, and so forth and so on, till death comes to your relief. An' James R. Elkins was reduced to a few hundred white faces he'd put in as a side-line, an' I feelin' like a sheepman unmasked! Mr. Jackleg--his real name turned out to be Witherspoon--give me his instructions from the buckboard as he prepares to pull out, in the presence of the Old Man an' Mrs. E. "I was fetched up on a farm," says he, an' he looked the part, "an' I know a good deal about cattle. Every animal should hev water at least twice a day." "I'll personally see to it," says I, winkin' at the Old Man, "that every steer has a crack at the growler at least semi-daily." "Another thing," says he; "I knew a herd-boy that run a bunch of fifty cows practically dry by holdin' 'em in too close a bunch on the prairie. Let 'em spread out so's to give 'em room to graze." "Well, fer Gawd's sake!" says I, thinkin' of the feller's sanity; an' before I could finish my yawp, off he pelts, leavin' me gaspin'. "Wake up," says Elkins, shakin' me by the shoulder. "If you git 'em all watered by bed-time, you'll have to git busy." He sure is a good loser, thinks I, ontil I figgered that with Josie an' the kids counted in, he hadn't been pried loose from any great percentage of his holdin's after all. Now, the idee was to round up an' ship about the first of December, so the estate could be wound up at the January term o' court. Pretty soon things seemed about as they was before. I went to the Old Man for orders, an' Mr. Jackleg's visit seemed, as Mrs. E. once said, like a badly-drawn dream. Every time I went to J. R. E. he says to me that I'm boss, an' to remember my instructions. "Obey orders," says he, "if it busts owners." Grass an' water was plenty ag'in, and the dogies was fattin' up. Round-up was drawin' on just as prospects f'r profit begins to brighten. It seemed a sort of a hash of midnight assassination, poisonin' water-holes, givin' away a podner, an' keepin' sheep, to ship them ten thousand then. An' all the time the Old Man was a-bearin' down about obeyin' orders, and beggin' me to remember Mr. Jackleg's partin' words, an' repeatin' that sayin' about obeyin' orders if it busted owners. The thing kep' millin' an' millin' in my brain till I got into the habit of settin' around an' sweatin' heinyous, ontil I'd come to with a start, in the middle of a pool of self-evolved moisture filled with wavin' rushes, an' embosomin' acres of floatin' water-lilies! That's the sort of sweater I am when a little worried. Fin'ly I turned on the Old Man like a worm--a reg'lar spiral still-worm. "How in everlastin' fire," says I, not just like that, "am I to see that every dogy gits two swigs a day on these prairies, an' wherein am I to take any notice of that shyster's fool talk about rangin' wide?" "Well," says he, "you know there's pools an' water-holes scattered from here to the Canada line, an' from the Missouri to the Continental Divide. A few head, dropped here an' there, handy to water, would be apt to live more accordin' to the hydropathic ideas of the executor of the will of A. Macdonald, diseased. At the same time you would be conformin' to his remarkable correct hyjeenic notions as to segregation." "Hyjeenic y'r grandmother!" says I, f'r the sitiwation called f'r strong language. "They couldn't be rounded up in a year; an' it's damn nonsense, anyhow, to foller the so-called idees of a--" "Oh, I see," says he, in a sort of significant way. "I see: it would be a slow round-up. Maybe my intrusts blinds me to those of the people you represent. A slow round-up wouldn't hurt me any! But, of course, you stan' f'r the mawgitchee's intrusts, an' are nat'rally hostyle--" I set sort o' numbed f'r a minute. A new thing was a-happenin' to me, to wit, an idee was workin' itself into my self-sealin', air-tight, shot-proof, Harveyized skull. Talk about your floods o' light! I got what Doc calls a Noachian deluge of it right then. "Sir," says I, "'an' Madam, truly'"--quotin' from a pome Mrs. E. had been readin'--"I _think_ I see my duty clear at last! If I fin'ly _hev_ grasped it, my labors requires my absence," says I, "an' I'll see you later." Mr. Elkins laughed a sort of a Van Triloquist's chuckle. Josie Elkins comes up, an' stannin' close to me in that maddenin' way o' hern, sort o's if she's climbin' into your vest pocket, she squose my hand, an' says she, "Mr. Driscoll, we know that you'll be true to any trust reposed in you! An' to your friends!" An' at the word "friends" she sort of made sunbeams from her eyes to mine, an' pressed my hand before breakin' away, as much as to say that, speakin' o' friends, the ones that had reely drunk from the same canteen an' robbed watermelon patches together from earliest infancy was her an' me. Holy Mackinaw! I went out into the wilderness givin' thanks an' singin' an' cussin' myself, at peace with all the world. I flatter myself that the work done upon, or emanatin' from the J-Up-And-Down Ranch from that time, f'r a spell, stands in a class by itself in cow-country annuals. It begins with a sort o' quarterly conference of the punchers. I gives 'em a sermon something as follers: "Fellers," says I, "it's been borne in upon me that these dogies need drivin' where they's fewer cows to the cubic inch o' water. Moreover, they're in too much of a huddle. Here's the hull ten thousand cooped up within twenty to thirty mile of the spot whereon we stand. You cain't swing a bob-cat by the tail," says I, "without scratchin' their eyes out. It vi'lates the crowded tenement laws. It corrupts the poor little innercent calves. It's a Mulberry Street shame. You are therefore ordered an' directed to disseminate these beeves over a wider expanse of the moral heritage. You, Doc, take Ole an' the Greaser, an' goin' south an' west with as many as you can round up, drop off a carload 'r so at every waterin' place an' summer resort up the Belle Fourche an' the North Fork, over onto the Powder, an' as fur as Sheridan. When yeh git short o' cows, come back f'r more. There ain't no real limits to yer efforts short o' the Yellowstone. We must obey Mr. Jackleg's orders about huddlin'. I'll give Absalom an' Pike the Little Missouri, the Cannon Ball and the Grand valleys. Git what help you need; I grant power to each of yeh to send f'r persons an' papers an' administer oaths, if necessary. I'll take my crew an' try to gladden the waste places along the Moreau an' Cheyenne an' White Rivers with dogies. Get your gangs, an' scatter seeds o' kindness an' long four-year-olds from hell to breakfast. For as yeh sow even shall yeh reap. If a critter smothers from crowdin' sev'ral to a township these hot nights, somebody's goin' to be held personally responsible to me. You hear, I s'pose?" "Is this straight goods, Aconite?" says Doc. "Am I a perfessional humorist," says I, "or am I the combined Fresh Air Fund, S. P. C. A., and Jacob A. Riis of these yere hills? Am I the main squeeze of this outfit, an' the head of a responsible gover'ment, or am I not? Hit the grit," says I, "an' begin irradiatin' steers." Obedience is a lovely thing, fellers, an' a man poised in an air-ship a few thousan' feet above a given pi'nt som'eres in the neighborhood o' the Hay Stack Buttes, armed with a good long-range peekeriscope, might have observed a beautiful outbust of it, all that golding autumn, on the part of a class of men presumably onsubordinate--the ungrammatical but warm-hearted cow-boys. They preached a mixed assortment o' fair-to-middlin' steers unto all men. The Ten Thousand was absorbed into the landscape of four great states, like a ship-load o' Swedes into the Republican party. The brethren of the ranches heared gladly the gospel of obeyin' orders, an' wherever a wisp of cows amountin' to more than a double handful congregated together in one place, there was some obejient son of a gun in the midst of 'em, movin' 'em along towards the bubblin' springs, green fields an' pastors new of Mr. Jackleg's orders. It was touchin'. I never felt so good, so sort o' glory-hallelujahish in my life, as I did a-ridin' back to Wolf Nose Crick in the brown October weather, with the dogies off my mind an' the map, thinkin' of how Mrs. E. had squoze my hand, sort o' weepful on moonlight nights, but stronger'n onions in a sense o' juty well performed. You can sort o' dimly ketch onto the shock it was to me, a-drillin' into camp at Wolf Nose Crick in this yere peaceful frame of mind, to find Mr. Jackleg there, madder'n a massasauga, an' perfec'ly shameful in his feelin's towards _me_. "Where's these ten thousand head o'cattle, Driscoll?" he hollers on seein' me. "Here's your receipt for 'em; where's the stock?" "Calm yourself," says I, droppin' my hand to my gun; "the dogies is all right. The dogies is out yan in the most unhuddled state of any outfit on the range, fur from the slums of Wolf Nose Crick an' their corruptin' influences, drinkin' at the pure springs o' four great American commonwealths, layin' on fat like aldermen, an' in a advanced state of segregation. Your orders," says I, tickled to think how I'd remembered langwidge so fur above my station in life, "your orders was to put 'em next to the damp spots, an' keep 'em fur apart, an' has been obeyed regardless." Up to that time I had looked upon him with contempt; but the way he turned in an' damned me showed how sorely I'd misjudged him. As my respect fer him riz, it grew important not to let him go on so, f'r I couldn't let any reel man talk to me that-a-way, an' in less time than it takes to mention it, I had the boys a-holdin' me, and Mr. Jackleg stannin' without hitchin'. "I may hev been hasty in my remarks," says he; "but I've been out with all the men I could git f'r two weeks, an' how many of our herd do you s'pose I have been enabled to collect?" "Not knowin', cain't say," says I. "Just a hundred an' fifty-seven!" says he. "Good!" says I. "You've got no kick comin'. I couldn't have done better myself. But you won't git as many in the next two weeks! Cheer up; the wust is yet to come!" An' at that he flies off the handle ag'in, an' lights out f'r the East, with the estate all unwound, I s'pose. Now, everybody knows the rest of this story. Everybody knows how grass an' water an' winters favored the range-stuff f'r the next two years. Them dogies was as well off 's if they'd been in upholstered sheds eatin' gilded hay. When ol' Dakoty starts out to kill stock, she reg'lar Mountain-Medders-Massacres 'em; but when she turns in to make a feed-yard of herself, she's a cow paradise without snakes. The hist'ry of these dogies illustrates this p'int, an' shows our beautiful system of enforcin' honesty in marketin' range cattle whereby the active robbery is confined to the stockyards folks and the packers, where it won't do no moral harm. As was perfec'ly square an' right, the brand inspectors at Omaha, Sioux City, Chicago an' Kansas City was on the lookout f'r J-Up-And-Down steers in the intrusts of Mr. Jackleg's mawgitch; an' after every round-up, some on 'em would dribble in with the shipments, an' be sold an' proceeds gobbled accordin' to Hoyle. An' when things got good--dogies about the size of Norman hosses, an' as fat as Suffolk pigs--the word goes out from Wolf Nose Crick to every ranch on the range, that the anti-slum crusade was off, an' J-Up-And-Down stuff was to be shipped as rounded up. F'r weeks an' months, I'm told, pret' near every car had some of 'em. Top grassers, they was at last, in weight an' price, an' when the half of 'em was in, the estate of A. Macdonald, diseased, was wound up, tight as a drum, intrust an' principal, an' Jim Elkins had left a little trifle o' five thousand beeves, wuth around a hundred apiece, free an' clear, an' the record of Aconite Driscoll, as a philanthropist, a humannytarian, an' a practical-cow-puncher, was once more as clear as a Christian's eye. An' this is how Jim Elkins got his ante in this New York game he's a-buckin' so successful. An' so it was that my little meet-up with a Sioux City shell-man, which I'm lookin' fer yit, results in a reg'lar Pullman sleeper trip to Chicago, where I'm the guest of honor at a feedin' contest instituted by Mr. James R. Elkins, whereat Mr. Jackleg--Witherspoon, I mean, and dead game after all, if any one should inquire--makes a talk about the pleasure it affords all of us to see our old friend Elkins restored to those financial circulars where he was so well known, an' so much at home; an' alludin' to me as restorer-in-chief by virtoo of my great feet, an' losin' ten thousand dogies so that Pinkerton himself couldn't find 'em ontil the wilderness saw fit to disgorge 'em in its own wild an' woolly way. An' fin'ly I'm called on an' made to git up, locoed at the strange grazin' ground, but game to do my best, an' after millin' awhile, "I'm here," says I, "owin' to my eckstrordinary talent f'r obeyin' orders. I'm told to come hither, an' I at once set out to prove my effectiveness as a come-hitherer. As f'r losin' ten thousand dogies, I cain't see what that has to do with my great feet. An' right here," I says, "I wish to state that I onst lost something else, to wit, my val'able temper at something done 'r said by a gentleman now present, for all of which I begs pardon of Mr. Jackleg--Mr. Witherspoon, I means," says I, an' everybody hollers an' pounds, him most of all, but redder'n a turkey, "an' I wish to state that it does me good to feel that harmony and peace between him an' me is restored. Here in Chicago," says I, "him an' me can git together on the platform of feedin' in bunches, without dehornin'; with the paramount issue to go before the people on, however, that old plank o' his'n declarin' f'r frekent drinks!" After that, I don't remember what eventuated--not quite so clear. * * * * * "I told you," said the Bride, as the party broke up for the night, "that we'd get some local color." "Alas!" replied the Artist. "This is like the local color of Babylon and the Shepherd Kings--a tradition and a whisper borne on the night breeze, of things that were. O, Remington! Remington!" CHAPTER VI Professor Boggs was in a brown study from the time his name emerged from the hat on starting from the Upper Geyser Basin, until the equipage of the Seven Wonderers, as the Poet called the party, reached the Thumb Lunch Station on Yellowstone Lake, nineteen miles to the east--which drive they made between breakfast and luncheon. The Colonel had telephoned ahead for a special banquet for the eight that night, at which Professor Boggs was to tell his story, and civilized life was to be resumed for the nonce--"To prevent," as the Colonel explained, "our running wild so that we'll have to be blindfolded and backed onto the cars when we get back to Gardiner." All up the pleasant Firehole Valley, the Professor worked at a packet of papers which he took from his bag. "I'll bet he gives us an essay on some phase of rural education," challenged the Artist, with no takers. Past the exquisite Kepler Cascade they went, after a stop which filled all except the Hired Man and the Professor with delight. When the party alighted for the walk of half a mile to the Lone Star Geyser, these two remained with the surrey--the Professor busy, the Hired Man lazily smoking. His mental film-pack was exhausted. Spring Creek Cañon proved another of those comforting features which relieve the strain of constant astonishment in the Park--the narrow and winding cañon, with its homelike rocks and cliffs, topped by inky evergreens, shut them in like some comforting shelter against the tempest of the marvelous. Down this wild glen tumbled a clear stream of cold water, bordered with ferns, willows and alders. The Bride scooped up a little of the water in her hand and drank it. "Isn't it funny?" she asked. "Isn't what funny?" asked the Groom. "To find water actually cool and clear, and flowing down a glen of just rocks, with no steam, or rainbow colors, or anything but good earth and stones? I feel like one just out of some sort of inferno." "The first feller to roam these here hollers," said Aconite, "was a guy named John Colter. He came out with the Lewis and Clark expedition, and stopped on the way back to trap. That was about 1807. He got into the Park some way, and when he emerged he told of it. And there was where the fust reppytation for truth an' veracity was blighted by the p'isenous exhalations of this region of wonders." "Was he Jimbridgered?" asked the Artist. "Was he whiched?" "Jimbridgered; Marcopoloed; Münchhausened; Mandevilled; Driscolled; placed in the Ananias Club?" "He shore was," replied Aconite. "W'y this place was called Colter's Hell from Saint Joe to Salt Lake by them as didn't believe in it. 'Whar'd this eventuate?' a puncher'd say to a feller that had seen something. 'In Colter's Hell' another would say, meanin' that it never did occur--an' if he didn't smile when he said it, there'd be gun play. An' hyar was all them marvels that Colter'd seen, and more, all the time!" At Craig Pass, the cayuses were stopped so that all might feast their eyes on the little Isa Lake, frowned on by stern precipices, but smiling up into the blue, its surface flecked with water-lilies. "An' hyar," said Aconite, "we hev a body of water that at one end empties into the Atlantic Ocean's tributaries, an' at the other waters the Pacific slope." "Which is which?" asked the Colonel. "The east end runs into the Pacific, and the west into the Atlantic," replied Aconite, quite truthfully. "What's that!" exclaimed the Hired Man. "Do yeh mean to say we've got over on the coast by drivin' east--toward Ioway?" "You've said 'er," said Aconite. "I tell you," said the Hired Man, as the others began studying their maps to clear up this geographic anomaly, "I tell you that there ain't no way of understandin' the 'tother-end-toness of this place, except by sayin' that the hull thing is a gigantic streak of nature." "The most rational explanation," said the Groom, "that I've heard. Mr. Hired Man sets us all right. Drive on, Aconite!" Down Corkscrew Hill they volplaned, thrilled and somewhat scared by the speed of the cayuses, which flew downward in joyful relief at the cessation of the uphill pull to the pass. At the bottom there was a halt to afford a glimpse of Shoshone Lake, and far off to the south the exquisite Tetons, their summits capped with pearl. The visit to Shoshone Lake with its gorgeous geysers was to be postponed until after they should arrive at the thumb of Yellowstone Lake, and make camp. An hour of steady driving succeeded. They drowsed in their seats, torpid from the early start and the days of strenuous sight-seeing. The road ran through a quiet forest, and there was something not unpleasant in the fact that the curtain of trees shut off the view--until suddenly at a turn in the highway, there burst upon their sight that most marvelous of inland seas, Yellowstone Lake. Straight away extended its waters, for twenty miles, to the dim shores of Elk Point, where the pines carried the wonderful landscape upward, their gloom cutting straight across the view, between the mirror-like sheen of the lake, to timber-line on the azure Absarokas, standing serenely across the eastern sky, their serrated summits picked out with snow against the blue. A huge chalice lay the lake, reared to a height of a mile and a half above the dusty and furrowed earth where folk plow and dig and make their livings, the crown jewel of the continent's diadem, unutterably, indescribably lovely, filled with crystalline dew. The tourists caught their breaths. Aconite said nothing. For a long time they stood, until the horses began to move backward and forward, uneasy at the unwonted stay. The Bride was holding the Groom's hand, her eyes glistening with tears. They passed the lovely little Duck Lake, unmindful of its prettiness, and drew up at the lunch station, where they remained unconscious of their hunger until the memory of the splendors of the lake were first dulled, and then obliterated by the scent of the bacon which Aconite was frying. The Hired Man ate valiantly, lighted his pipe, and sighed. "That was all right," said he. "Thanks," said Aconite. "It cost forty cents a pound, an' orto be good." "I meant," said the Hired Man, "that view o' the lake from back yonder." * * * * * Night brought dinner, and that appetite for it which outdoors gives to healthy folk, at eight thousand feet above the sea. After the eating was well and thoroughly done, the Professor responded to the call for his story. He rose solemnly, bowed to the assemblage, arranged his papers, cleared his throat, and began. A BELATED REBEL INVASION THE PROFESSOR'S STORY Unlike the rest of you, I am no mere seeker after pleasure. I am an outcast from my native Iowa. I have held high and honorable office, and I have been treated as was Coriolanus of old. I am the victim of the ingratitude of republics, as expressed in a direct primary in Stevens County, Iowa. I am on my way to the great new West, where I shall seek to serve newer communities where perfidy may not be so ingrained in the nature of the body politic. And I shall shun relations other than professional ones, with persons of youth, beauty, charm, and feminine gender. For by these I am a sufferer. I have with me my notes, and to you is given the first hearing of my side of a case which may become historic. "The contest is unequal," says Epictetus, "between a charming young girl and a beginner in philosophy." Let this be remembered when I am blamed for the havoc wrought upon my political educational career in Stevens County, Iowa, by Miss Roberta Lee Frayn of Tennessee. Not that I am a beginner in philosophy. The man who, at my age, has been elected county superintendent of schools is no mere tyro in the field wherein Epictetus so distinguished himself. But neither does the word "charming" adequately describe Miss Frayn, unless one trace back the word "charm" to its more diabolically significant root. I expect to write this, my _apologia_, and leave the verdict to posterity. No citizen of Stevens County is likely to be ignorant of the manner in which Miss Frayn was deposited in my mother's farmyard by the wrecking of a railway train, or how her grandfather, Colonel Kenton Yell Frayn, died there in her arms and left the young girl penniless. Judge Worthington, hereafter to be mentioned, was on the train and doubtless assisted in extricating Miss Frayn and her grandfather from the wreckage, but I feel that my own efforts were more effective than was reported. We left the young woman in the care of my mother, and I took the judge with me in my buggy. He was much distraught as we rode along. I tried to say something in the way of furthering my candidacy for the office I now hold; but he repulsed me. "For God's sake, Oscar," I remember him to have said, "don't try to electioneer me until I can get out of my mind the image of that poor young girl and her dying grandfather!" I do not care to criticize the judiciary, but will say that Judge Worthington's early promotion to the bench and his undeniable comeliness of person have in a measure induced in him a certain arrogance. I was triumphantly elected. I went to Boston and won recognition so far as to be placed on the sub-committee for the investigation of Tone-Deafness in the rural schools, in the superintendents' section of the National Teachers' Association. "Gee!" ejaculated the Hired Man. Feeling the growing breadth and fullness of life I returned and assumed my office. Then it was that the Frayn episode may be said to have begun, in a letter from my brother Chester, which I have here, and which runs, using an undignified diminutive: "DEAR OC: "We would like to see you. Mother and all are well, and glad you pulled through, even if you did run behind the ticket so. Am feeding three loads of steers, and they are making a fine gain. Middlekauff's look rough, and all the feeders think he'll lose money on them. He paid four cents for them. This is about all the news. Can't you appoint me your deputy down here to examine Miss Frayn, whose grandfather got killed in that wreck? She wants to teach. She is a Southerner, but an awful nice lady, and just as smart as one of us. She dreads to go to Pacific City to be examined, as she won't let ma get her hardly any clothes. She is very sensitive about money matters, and I had to lie to her about the funds to bury her grandfather with, and tried to slip in $250 more, but she caught me at it and cried. I will be strict and make her write out the examination properly; so send along the questions, and the appointment. "Yours truly, CHET. "P. S.--Judge Worthington's office is so near yours, you might leave the appointment and the questions in there. The judge will bring them down. He comes down quite often now, because he says that the Boggses and the Worthingtons moved into Iowa in the same wagon train in an early day, and he thinks it strange that that accident that killed Colonel Frayn should have brought the families together again. He thinks that Miss Frayn will make a first-rate teacher, so you need not be backward about the appointment and the questions." Not abating one jot or tittle of my official strictness, I informed Chester that Miss Frayn must appear and be examined as did others in the same situation. Chester is an Ames man, and a fine judger and feeder of cattle, but not fitted for responsibility in _belles-lettres_. Professor Dustin, an elderly and myopic educator and the author of a monograph on the Grübe method, had charge of the examination when Miss Frayn appeared. I found Chester smoking a vile pipe in my lodgings when I came home. "Say, Oc," said he, "this four-eyed old trilobite won't do. You've got to get in here and do business yourself." Conjecturing that he meant Professor Dustin, I inferred that Miss Frayn's papers had been rejected. A glance justified the professor. She had given Richmond as the capital of the United States. A question in physiology called for a description of the iris, and Miss Frayn had answered that, further than that, "she" was a naiad, a dryad, or a nymph, and was pursued by Boreas, or Eolus, or Zephyrus until, turned into a flower, she could say nothing about Iris. The handwriting and drawing were beautiful; but the pages of mathematics were mostly blank, save for certain splashy discolorations presumably of lachrymatory origin, denoting lack of self-control and scholastic weakness. "It is absurd," said I, "to think of certifying her. While she has a certain measure of intelligence--" "A certain measure!" shouted Chester. "If you weren't a natural-born saphead, I'd--! Come up to Aunt Judith's!" I went with him, firm in that solid self-control which gives fixity of character to my nature. I saw in its true light the amiable weakness of my relatives which made them slaves to this girl. I felt as stern and austere as a public officer should, and looked it, I believe, for mother was quite in a flutter as she asked me to read a clipping from an eastern Tennessee paper describing the departure from that region of the Frayns. From this I learned that Miss Frayn and the colonel had been the last of the Frayns, the family having been exterminated in the Frayn-Harrod feud. The colonel had been an engineer in Lee's army. He had given public notice on leaving that at noon he would nail to the front door of the court-house, with the revolver of Boone Harrod, the last enemy shot by the colonel, his version of the origin of the feud. He had carried out this parting piece of bravado with no disturbance except an exchange of shots as the train moved away from the station. I was horrified. Was a person in this barbarous state of culture asking me, Oscar Boggs, member of the National Sub-Committee on Tone-Deafness--! "Okky," said my mother, from behind, "this is Miss Frayn!" I looked at her, and was suddenly impressed with the non-existence of the material universe, except as centered in and consisting of eyes of a ruddy brown like those of fine horses, rufous hair surrounding the small head like a nimbus, and a fused mass of impressions made up of the abstract concepts of trimness, fire, elegance, and unconquerability. I have reported the matter to the society for psychical research, but have received no answer as yet. It was clearly abnormal. She placed her arm about my mother's waist and looked most respectfully at me. "You ah the great man," said she, "of the family Ah have so much cause to love." Here she stopped as if to regain self-control. "Ah wish mah po' papahs," she went on, "had--" "There, there!" said my mother, patting her arm. "It'll be all right anyway, dear!" I was considering what to say. Her skin was clear, white, daintily transparent, and of a delicacy our western girls seldom display (owing, I surmise, to climatic influences); she stood there on Aunt Judith's Persian rug, her petite figure with its rounded curves, half-levitated, like Atalanta upon the oat-heads--and there returned upon me the mental vertigo, the lack of cerebral coördination, and the obliteration of the material universe. "Am Ah so igno'ant, really?" said she. "Ah'm fond of children; and Ah _must_ find wohk!" Why did I hate Dustin? Why could I not command my speech? I always rally at the crises, however, and did so in this instance. "As for ignorance," said I, "Sir John Lubbock says: 'Studies are a means, not an end.' And Lord Bacon hath it: 'To spend too much time in studies is sloth.' I see that you have acted on these maxims. Professor Dustin's astigmatism and myopia rendered it impossible for him to see you." I stopped in some returning confusion. "Those dreadful cube roots and quadratics--" said she. "The personality of the teacher," said I, "controls the matter." I heard her laugh, a little delighted laugh, and found myself agreeing to the heresy that, after all, the chief thing is to train the girls to be gentle, and the boys brave! Then I gave her my arm in to dinner. Chester, who had never offered a girl his arm except at a dance or after dark, glared at me. Mother was uneasy at the stirring of the old brotherly antagonisms. I expanded, and told Miss Frayn that if all southern women were like the only one I had met, I didn't wonder at the feuds. Then seeing whither I was drifting, I asked her plans as to the school she would take, when I sent her her certificate. She said that "Mistah Chestah" was going to let her have the home school. "A boy like Chester," said I, "will have little influence with Mr. Middlekauff, the director." "Oh, cut it out, Oc!" burst in Chester. "I've got it all framed up to be elected director!" "My political plans," said I, "will not allow of a breach between my family and Mr. Middlekauff." "Well, mine do," retorted Chester. "You'll take your chances with the Middlekauffs, just as I do!" It was not the occult influence, but a desire to benefit educational conditions, that led me to visit Miss Frayn's school the week Chester's insurgency placed her in it. My memory is hazy as to the matter, but my notes show that her weakness was in the matter of organization. "Oh," said she, when I mentioned this, "do you all prefeh things so regulah and poky? It's so much mo' pleasant foh the little things to be free!" She called most of the little ones "Honey," and allowed much latitude in whispering and moving about. They crowded around her like ants to a lump of sugar. Some of them were beginning to evince a laxity of pronunciation, sounding the personal pronoun "I" like the interjection "Ah." In a few days I went back--Chester sneered at me as I went by--to tell Miss Frayn of the necessity of teaching the effects of stimulants and narcotics according to the Iowa law. She was greatly surprised when I told her of this requirement. "What, _daily_, Mr. Supe'intendent!" she exclaimed. "Daily teaching," said I. "Our law requires it." "It seems _so_ unnecessa'y," she said in perplexity. "The young gentlemen will find out all about it in due time: and is it raght to expe'iment with the littlest ones? And wheiah shall I obtain the liquoh foh the demonstrations?" I felt strangely overcome at this astounding speech, by an indescribable mixture of tender solicitude for her welfare, and horror at her fearful mistake; but I reproved her for jesting at the vice of drinking. "Vice!" said she, with a bubbling laugh. "Why, down home we-all regyahd it as an accomplishment! But Ah reckon you ah jokin' about teachin' it. Youah jokes and use of the lettah 'ah' ah things Ah shall nevah get used to, Ah'm afraid; but Ah'm glad you don't mean that about the drinkin'." Despairing of making her understand, I left her, again conscious of being under occult and abnormal control. I was astonished to see in the school several large boys who must have been greatly needed in the fields. They looked at each other sheepishly as I came in, but most of the time they gazed at the teacher, rather than at their books. Not having the gift of prophecy, I could not see in their presence the cloud that would soon overshadow my official life. I took their attendance as proof of the popularity of the school. I studied the philosophers, and sought calm of spirit. Learning from Epictetus that the earthen pitcher and the rock do not agree, and from Lubbock that love at first sight is thought by great minds actually to occur, I reëxamined my abnormal psychic symptoms in Miss Frayn's presence, and prudently refrained from seeking her society. Poise alone makes possible a consistent career, and this I had in large measure reconquered, when, like a bolt from the blue--or at least with much abruptness--into my quiet office burst a committee from the Teal Lake Township School Board, accompanied by a number of patrons of the Boggs school--all old neighbors of ours--headed by the defeated Mr. Elizur Middlekauff. This could mean but one thing--Miss Frayn! The rebel invasion was at the door. "Mr. Middlekauff," said one, "is the spokesman." "We've got a grievyance," said Mr. Middlekauff, "a whale of a grievyance in our deestrict; and we've come right to the power-house to fix it." "It shall command my most careful consideration," said I. "Please state the case." "That 'ere railroad wreck," said Mr. Middlekauff, who was a very forcible speaker at caucuses, "let loose on our people a scourge in caliker more pestilential than the Huns and Vandals. We come to you as clothed with a little brief authority, an' accessory after the fact to this scourge business." "I fail," said I, "to catch your meaning." "I mean," said he, growing loud, "that peaches-an'-cream invader from the states lately in rebellion that you've give a stiffkit, an' your brother Chet by stratagems an' spiles has got himself elected an' put into our school. That's what I mean!" "I infer," said I, "some implied strictures upon the character or school management or educational qualifications of Miss Roberta Lee Frayn." "W'l you infer surprisin'ly clus to the truth!" replied Mr. Middlekauff offensively. "We're a-complainin' of this schoolma'am with the rebil name; and of her onrivaled facilities f'r spreadin' treason an' emotional insanity! Try to git that through your hair!" Like lightning a course of policy occurred to me. "Are the defendant," said I, looking them over, "and Mr. Boggs, the director, among your numbers?" "No," said Mr. Middlekauff. "This is kinder informal. An' besides, we'd crawl out right where we went in if she was here. I tell you she's a--a--irresistible force." "It is elementary," said I, "that no _ex parte_ investigation can have any validity." "Now, see here, Oc Boggs!" hissed he, "I don't take any high-an'-mighty stand-off from a lunkhead that's stole my melons when he was a kid! You'll hear this complaint, see?" I did not weaken, but I allowed his standing in the community and party to outweigh offensive orthoepy, rhetoric, and manners. Unofficially, I took down the complaint, reserving my ruling. As the horrid tale was told I grew sick at the problem before me. I glean the details of the situation from my notes: Miss Frayn (all these things are set down as _asserted_) had assigned William Middlekauff, whose father was a member of the G. A. R., the Confederate side of a debate on the comparative greatness of Washington and Robert E. Lee, and had said: "She reckoned Mr. William ought to have won, as he had the strong side." Complained of as against public policy, adhering to armed insurrection, and giving aid and comfort to the enemy. _Quoere_ (per O. B.): Is complaint good after forty years of peace, and Reconstruction? All members of the committee said that every boy in the district of more than sixteen years of age was irresistibly attracted to her (exact language, "be-daddled over her," O. B.). Hence, her character must be "wrong" somehow. Two boys, each claiming an exclusive franchise to sweep out for her, had met in Allen's feed-lot to fight a duel, and been discovered in the act of firing and tied to the feed-rack by Allen's hired man, and spanked with the end-gate of his wagon. Clarence Skeen was poorly, and had been found kneeling before a bench calling it his darling Roberta and begging it to be his. Columbus Smith had turned somnambulist, and his father had lost ten tons of timothy which "Clumb" had failed to put up in cock. When sleep-walking Clumb had been heard by Vespucci, his brother (known as "Spootch"), to protest with sighs and groans that his heart was broken and to ask "Roberta" to shed one tear over his grave. Twitted of this by his young sister, Semiramis, Clumb had slapped her and, cursing profanely, had assaulted Spootch, who reproved him, and had fled to the Wiggly Creek woods with no subsistence but a loaf of salt-rising bread, a box of paper collars, and a book of poems. Letter from Mrs. Smith asking that this Jezebel's certificate be revoked before all should be lost. Whipple Cavanaugh had been idle and "lawless" since attending school. Refused nourishment. Pillow wet with tears. Kissed Cavanaugh's mare, "Old Flora," on nose after Miss Frayn had patted her on said spot. Had written a poem to Roberta, and rather than have it read publicly by the hired girl, who had found it under his pillow, had eaten it, paper, ink, and all. Doctor Dilworthy called in; pronounced him in danger of gastritis and love-sickness with grave prognosis. Names of fifteen boys given, known as "Frayn Mooners," who haunted the shrubbery about the home of Mrs. Jane D. Boggs, where the teacher boarded. Six fights were known to have occurred among them. Tension in the neighborhood was unbearable because of the loosing by Chester Boggs, "in violation of his official oath," of a bulldog which had bitten Albert Boyer, and thrown his mother into nervous prostration. This epidemic of "worthlessness and sentimentality" was spreading outside the district, as evidenced by an excerpt found in the dog's possession, from the upper rear elevation of the Sunday trousers of Boliver Fromme, living in District No. 4. Progress in the studies of the boys confined to amatory poetry and pugilism, both unrelated to their life work. _Iowa, My Iowa_, Major Byers' stirring lyric, had been supplanted by _Maryland, My Maryland_, in school singing. Chester Boggs, the director, refused to receive complaints, and was condemned as equally affected with the disease, and probably a "Mooner" himself. There was a certificate of Doctor Dilworthy of Teal Lake as to the existence of many cases of "extreme mental exaltation accompanied by explosive and fulminant cerebral disturbances traceable to mediate or immediate association with one Roberta Lee Frayn, an individual seemingly possessed of an abnormal power in the way of causing obsessions, fixed ideas, aberrant cranio-spinal functionings, and cranial tempests, in those of her associates resembling her in the matter of age, and differing from her in social habits, hereditary constitution, and sex." I sank back in my chair horrified, with a sinking in the region of the epigastric plexus. "We kind o' thought, Oc," said Mr. Middlekauff, "that thet would hold yeh f'r a while." I saw the muddled political relations with which this imbroglio teemed, and clung to delay as my sole hope. "I am inexpressibly shocked," said I, "and as soon as we can meet with the defendant and the director--" "What!" shrieked Mr. Middlekauff. "_Her_ present! Arter what them papers says? And everybody follerin' her, if she jest smiles, like a caff arter salt! Why, dad ding me, if I'd trust _myself_ f'r more'n a smile or two. She'll bamboozle the hull thing if she's there. I b'lieve _you've_ got it, you conceited young sprout! No, sir; decide this thing now!" "I regret the necessity," said I, "of asking time to get the opinion of the county attorney, and to--to--" "Not by a dum sight!" roared Mr. Middlekauff. "We'll see what the court has to say on this. An' when you're up f'r election ag'in, come round, an' we'll consider it f'r a while--an' then you won't know you're runnin'!" I was torn by conflicting emotions when they went away. I knew that Middlekauff was a man of influence. I was not averse to seeing Chester rebuked for his fatuous behavior, and for tempting me to a deviation from strict duty. I felt that in taking my stand with the "Mooners" I might be siding with the heaviest body of voters after all. By these whiffling winds of the mind was I baffled, finding no rest in my works on didactics and pedagogics, wondering what Middlekauff would do--until all doubts were settled by the filing of the case of The School Board of Teal Lake versus Frayn; and in a few days it came on for trial before Judge Worthington. Chester telephoned, asking to see me. He came in looking thinner than I had ever seen him. "Do you know," said he, "that this case old Middlekauff's got plugged up comes off this morning?" "Having been summonsed by writ of subpoena," said I severely, "I am aware that your wilfulness in placing an untried importation in charge of our school, regardless of her unfitness, or of my political well-being, is this morning bearing its legitimate fruit in the hearing which comes _on_--not _off_! And I hope your lack of consideration for the welfare of the school system, so largely wrapped up in my career, will--" That Chester was temporarily insane is clear. He flew at me, seized my trachea in his iron hands, compressed it so as greatly to impede respiration, and knocked my head against the wall, using incoherently certain technical terms he had learned at Ames. "Shut up!" he cried. "You duplex--polyphase--automatic--back-action--compound-wound--multipolar _Ass_! Shut up!" An anatomical chart on the wall preserved my head, and I retained my self-possession. When he let me down I took my station on the other side of a table and looked him in the eye, strongly willing that he quiet down. "Forgive me, Oc," said he humbly, "I promised myself eight years ago not to lick you any more! Pardon me." I forgave him, and we have ever since remained reconciled. He explained that he wanted to consult as to methods of concealing from Miss Frayn the nature of the suit. "Am I to understand," said I, "that she does not know that the relief sought is her expulsion from the school?" "Of course she don't!" replied Chester. "Do you think I'd let her know? She thinks everybody loves her. Nobody ever dared tell her anything else, either here or down where she was raised. The boys down there always were in love with her. She don't see anything strange in it--and there isn't." "A change," said I, "would be wholesome for her." "She wouldn't know what to do," replied Chester. "And if she were to hear these charges--against herself! Why, I don't know what she might not do! She'd be absolutely desperate. She'd think she had no one to defend her--and you know the Frayn way." "I shall not endeavor," said I, after consideration, "to reconcile medieval notions of honor and personal dignity with proceedings under the Iowa Code. Neither do I feel it prudent for me to see this person." For a few minutes Chester sat grinding his teeth and gripping the desk, and then rushed from the office calling me a white-livered dub, and telling me to go plumb to some place the name of which was cut off by the door's slamming. I sat in the office feeling a sense of unrest, until the time for going to court, where I found Judge Worthington on the bench, Chester sitting at the defendant's table, and no Miss Frayn. "Are both sides ready in the next case?" asked the judge, without looking at the calendar. "We wish to put the defendant on the stand for a few questions," said Beasley, Middlekauff's lawyer. "I don't see her in court, your Honor." "Call the witness!" said the judge; and the bailiff shouted three times: "Robert Lefrayne!" "Has this man Lefrayne been subpoenaed?" asked the judge; "as he is defendant, I don't suppose you thought it necessary, Mr. Beasley." We could all see that the mispronunciation of the name had misled the judge as to the identity of the defendant. "To make sure," said Beasley, "we subpoenaed the party. Here is the writ, your Honor, with proof of service." "Mr. Clerk," said the judge, frowning sternly, "issue a bench warrant! Mr. Sheriff, attach this witness, and produce him at two. Some of these tardy witnesses will go to jail for contempt if this is repeated! Call your next!" Chester was pale as a ghost, and accosted the bailiff as he went out with the warrant. Then he came back and listened with flushes of anger and clenched teeth to the reading of the pleadings, to which the judge seemed to pay no attention. At two, after the intermission, the bailiff, Captain Winfield, an old G. A. R. man, appeared with Miss Frayn on his arm. He was blushing and fumbling his bronze button, while she smiled up at him in a charming, daughterly way that brought back dangerous symptoms of relapse in my psychic nature. "Call the witness Lefrayne!" cried the judge. Light, airy, daintily flushed, she floated up to the bench. The fine for contempt died in Forceythe Worthington's breast, as he stared in a sort of delighted embarrassment. "It was raght kahnd of you, Judge Wo'thin'ton," she said, looking up into his face, "to send Captain Winfield to remahnd me of mah engagement hyah. Why, he was at Franklin, and Chickamauga, and knows Tennessee! And now, gentlemen, what can Ah do foh you-all?" The judge stepped down from the bench and handed Miss Frayn to the witness chair like a lord chancellor placing a queen on her throne. Beasley looked at the witness as if fascinated. Middlekauff seized him by the lapel of his coat. "Don't look at her, Beasley, more'n yeh c'n help!" he whispered. "I tell yeh, it's dangerous!" And yet _I_ am selected to bear blame for a momentary weakness of the prevailing sort! "Proceed, gentlemen!" said Judge Worthington. Beasley gathered up his papers. "Are you the defendant?" asked he. "Ah don't quite gathah youah meanin' suh," said she, "but Ah think not, suh." "You're the teacher of the Boggs School, in Teal Lake Township?" "Oh, yes, suh!" said she. "Pahdon me! I thought you inquiahed about something else." Judge Worthington started as if struck by a dart. "Let me see the papers in the case," said he excitedly. Beasley handed them up, and the judge examined them carefully. Then he handed them down, turned his back on Miss Frayn, and spoke in a low tone, like one greatly shocked. "Proceed!" said he. Something in his tone or in the turning of his back seemed to strike upon the senses of Miss Frayn as unpleasant or hostile. The few questions put to her by the lawyer to lay the foundation for some other bit of evidence did not appear to affect her at all; and when she took her seat between Chester and my mother, and was reassured by their whispered communications, she looked serene, save when she noted the judge's averted face. Chester's lawyer spoke insinuatingly of spite, prejudice, and unreasonable provincialism as being at the bottom of the case. "And," he added, "I may add jealousy--jealousy, your Honor, of the defendant's charms of person, which, as a part of the _res gestæ_, are evidence in this case, if your honor only would observe them." The judge started and blushed, but still looked steadily away. Mr. Middlekauff looked relieved. Miss Frayn fretted the linoleum with little taps of her toe, and her delicate nostrils fluttered. There was a mystic tension in the air. "Mr. Chestah," said the girl, in a low voice, "he seems to be alludin' to--what does he mean?" Judge Worthington rapped for silence. Miss Frayn's eyes grew bright, and her cheek showed a spot of crimson which deepened as the reading of the affidavit went on. As the legal verbiage droned through the story of the boys' infatuation, I looked at her, and knew that her indignation was swelling fiercely at she scarcely knew what. I began repeating to myself a passage from Seneca. "Objected to," roared Chester's lawyer, "as incompetent, irrelevant, immaterial, impertinent, and grossly scandalous!" Miss Frayn clenched her hands and held her breath as if at the realization of her worst fears. Then the judge spoke. "The affidavit," said he, "attributes to Miss Frayn a malign and corrupting influence over the whole neighborhood, and--" "Suh!" she gasped. Again did the judge rap for order. "Ruling reserved," said he. "Proceed." Triumphantly Beasley went on with the resolutions. At last Miss Frayn seemed to understand. She rose, stilled Beasley with a gesture, and in frozen dignity addressed the court. "Judge Wo'thin'ton," said she, "Ah'm not quite ce'tain Ah get the full meanin' of this, but Ah feel that Ah cain't pe'mit it to go fu'thah. Ah desiah to say to you as a gentleman and an acquaintance, if not a friend, that these ah things that can not be said of a lady, suh!" "The defendant," said the judge, after two or three ineffectual attempts to speak, "will be heard through her counsel--proceed!" She was hurt and desperate as she sat down, and in a cold and livid fury. With her eyes level and shining like knife-points, she put off, with a look like a blow, Chester's efforts to comfort her. She sat, an alien in an inhospitable land, hedged about by a wall of displeasure at some formless insult, and at friends without chivalry. The judge began stating his decision, giving the argument for the one side and then for the other, as judges do. "The evidence tends to prove," said he, "that Roberta Lee Frayn has a malign fascination over her pupils--the larger boys especially; that she has lured them into personal attendance upon her rather than to study; that she has incited young men to duels, brawls, breaches of the peace, and--" I could see that she thought the phrase "it tends to prove" an expression of his belief in the charges; and as he went on her face flamed red once more, and then went white as snow. She stepped back from the table as if to clear for action, one little hand lifted, the other in the folds of her dress. "Suh!" she cried, in a passion of indignation which was splendid and terrible. "This must stop! If mah false friends lack the chivalry to protect me and mah good name, Ah'll defend mahself, suh!" Chester half rose, as if to throw himself into the hopeless contest. "The defendant does not understand," said the judge. "The defendant will resume her seat! The evidence tends to prove that--" But the decision was never finished; for the girl drew a short, small pistol and aimed at him. We were frozen in horror. Judge Worthington looked unwaveringly into the muzzle. "Roberta!" said he. I then saw a rush by Captain Winfield to strike her arm; the pistol roared out in the court-room like a cannon; and as Miss Frayn sank back into my mother's arms, Judge Worthington stepped down with a rent across his shoulder, from which he withdrew his fingers stained red. From under the table, where irresistible force had thrown me, I saw him take her unresisting hand, and heard him whisper to her. "Darling!" said he. "You don't understand! Let me explain, sweetheart, and then if you want the pistol back I'll give it to you, loaded!" Then he stood up and took command. "The bailiff," said he, "will remove the defendant and Mrs. Boggs to my chambers. I shall investigate this _in camera_. I am not hurt, gentlemen, more than a pin's prick, and am able to go on and take such measures as are necessary to protect the court. Remain here until I resume the trial!" "I tell you," said Middlekauff, "we'll crawl out where we went in. Nobody can stand ag'in her at clus range like that!" Captain Winfield's face bore a puzzled and mysterious smile as he emerged from the chambers. "You can't subdue these Southerners, Oc," said he. "The verdict of history," said I, "is otherwise." "We just reconstructed and absorbed 'em," said he. "I was there, an' I know. The judge thinks we've got to handle this Frayn invasion the same way." "I fail to get your meaning," said I. "The way to absorb this rebel host," said the captain, "is to marry it. It's the only way to ground her wire and demagnetize her. I can't undertake the job, for reasons known to all. You're sort of responsible for her devastatin' course, an' I think it'll cipher itself down to Oscar Boggs as a bridegroom for the good of Teal Lake Township, and the welfare of the Boggs School." My emotions were tumultuous. No such marriage could be forced on me, of course; but duty, duty! Marriage had been to me an asset to be used in my career, some time after my doctor's degree, like casting in chess. I thought of Miss Frayn's untamable nature; and then of her sweetly tender way with the little ones, how they clambered over her while she called them "honey." "On the main point," said the captain, "the court had its mind made up when I came out. This marryin' has got to be did. Who's to do it is what they're figgerin' on!" "Captain Winfield," said I, "if the public interests require it, if my constituents demand it, I will make the sacrifice! Doctor Johnson said that marriages might well be arranged by the Lord Chancellor, and Judge Worthington is now sitting in chancery. I will marry the defendant, _pro bono publico_!" "Oc," said the captain, in a properly serious manner, though some tittered, "you're a livin' marvel! I'll go back and report." Almost immediately, as my heart-beats stifled me, they emerged from the chambers. My mother was in tears. Worthington bore Miss Frayn on his arm, and both looked exaltedly happy. Roberta, as I called her in my thoughts, shrank back bashfully, more beautiful than I had ever seen her. It was a great, a momentous hour for me. I felt that I had settled the case. "I shall ask the plaintiff," said the judge, "to dismiss this case!" "On what grounds?" interrogated Beasley sharply. "Don't tell, Forceythe!" said Roberta, hiding her face on the judge's arm as I approached. "Because the defendant," the judge replied to Beasley, "has resigned. She is about to be married!" "Didn't I tell you, Oc," said Winfield, slapping me on the back--which in the delightful embarrassment of the occasion I did not resent--"that it was up to you?" A boy in the audience--I think it was William Middlekauff--caught the judge's statement, and ungrammatically shouted: "Who to?" "The lucky man?" shouted the crowd. "Name him!" As it seemed proper for me to do under the circumstances, I went forward to take Roberta's hand in anticipation of the announcement. Then all went dark before my eyes. "I am happy," said Judge Worthington, "happy and inexpressibly honored to say that the defendant is to be married to me!" * * * * * The Hired Man was asleep as the Professor concluded his tale, and some of the rest were nodding. They rose to retire. "I suppose," said the Groom, "that the only safe way is to let them entirely alone, Professor?" The Professor, embarrassed by the presence of the Bride, could only bow. "Gad!" said Colonel Baggs, taking his hand. "Your case goes into the hard-luck file with that of the Nez Percè victim, Mr. Cowan of Radersburg." CHAPTER VII "On this lake," declaimed the Colonel, "farther from tide water than any other like body of water on this earth, could float our entire navy." "Safest place in the world for it, too," declared the Groom. "I know some awfully nice navy men," protested the Bride; "so don't be cattish about the navy." They had spent many hours on Yellowstone Lake, and days in its vicinity. Paint pots, geysers, and iridescent springs were no longer recorded in the log-book; but when, at the Fishing Cone, the Hired Man came into camp asking for salt, with a cooked trout on his line, and the Bride learned that he had hooked the fish in cold water, and cooked it in hot without moving from the spot, wonder at the marvel was swallowed up in protest on the Bride's part, against such an atrocity. "Oh, Mr. Snoke, Mr. Snoke!" said she, almost tearful. "How could you! How could you! How would you like to have a thing like that done to you--cooked alive. Oh!" "Well," said Mr. Snoke. "If you put it that way, I wouldn't be very strong for bein' hooked, let alone cooked. After I'd been snaked out of the drink, I wouldn't care, Bride." "Well, I move we don't cook any more of 'em until they have gasped out their lives slowly and in the ordinary mode," said the Artist. "Shore," said Aconite, "no more automobiles de fe for the trout--hear that, Bill? An' speakin' of cookin' fish that-a-way," he went on, creating a conversational diversion. "Old Jim Bridger found a place out here som'eres, where the water was shore deep. At the bottom it was cold, and on the top hot--hot as it is in the Fish Cone over yon. He used to hook trout down in the cold water, and they'd cook to a turn while he was bringin' 'em to the surface an' playin' 'em." "That sounds to me all right," assented the Colonel. "The hot water," observed the Professor, "would naturally be at the surface; but as for the tale itself--" "It would, eh?" queried Aconite. "Well, I've forded the Firehole where the bottom was hot, an' the top cold. An' Old Jim Bridger knowed of a place where the water of a cold spring starts at the top of a mountain, and slides down so fast that the friction heats the water hot--just rubbin' on the rocks comin' down. It's here in these hills som'eres, yet!" The Artist, the Groom and the Colonel fished industriously for one day and then handed in a unanimous verdict that it was a shame to take advantage of the trout's verdancy. So the Hired Man and Aconite foraged for the frying-pan. The change to boat from land carriage was so grateful, now, that they made wondrous voyages, first to the scenes reached by water. They photographed bears near camp and both deer and elk in the meadows and on their shore feeding-grounds. It was no longer a strange or startling thing to see a grizzly bear, and to stalk him with a kodak. The pelicans on the lake were to them as the swans on a private pond. The sense of ownership grew upon them. Here was their own pleasure-ground. It was theirs by virtue of their citizenship. They might not visit it often--though all declared their intention of coming back every summer--but, anyhow, it would be fine to know that here on the summit of the continent was this wonderland, owned by them and each of them. They took saddle horses down the southern approach to Heart Lake, and voted it the loveliest lake in the park. "That is," said the Bride, "it doesn't compare with the big lake up yonder in greatness; but it's just pure joy. Let's camp here for the night. Let's draw another romance from the library right now; and give the victim time to compose his thoughts while we go see that Rustic Geyser, with the stone logs around it." Somehow they seemed farther from the haunts of men here than anywhere else in the Park. The stream of tourists seemed to sweep on past the Thumb Lunch Station, toward the Lake Hotel; and Heart Lake, with Mount Sheridan brooding over it, was theirs alone. And it was here that the Hired Man, with many protests that he wasn't really a member of the party, but only working his way, told his story--like another Ulysses returned from Troy and his wanderings. FROM ALPHA TO OMEGA THE HIRED MAN'S STORY It narrows a man to stick around in one place. You broaden out more pan-handling over one division, than by watching the cars go by for years. I've been everywhere from Alpha, Illinois, to Omega, Oklahoma, and peeked over most of the jumping-off places; and Iowa is not the whole works at all. That's why I'm here now. Good quiet state to moss over in; but no life! Me for the mountains where the stealing is good yet, and a man with genius can be a millionaire! I was in one big deal, once--the Golden Fountain Mine. Pete Peterson and I worked in the Golden Fountain and boarded with Brady, a pit boss. Ever hear of psychic power? A medium told me once that I have it, and that's why folks tell me their secrets. The second day Brady told me the mine was being wrecked. "How do you know?" said I. "They're minin' bird's-eye porphyry," said Brady, "purtendin' they've lost the lode." "Maybe they have," said I. "Not them," replied Brady, who never had had any culture. "I can show you the vein broad's a road an' rich as pudd'n'!" I didn't care a whoop, as long as they paid regular; but Brady worried about the widows and orphans that had stock. I said I had no widows and orphans contracting insomnia for me, and he admitted he hadn't. But he said a man couldn't tell what he might acquire. Soon after, a load of stulls broke loose, knocked Pete Peterson numb, and in the crash Brady accumulated a widow. It was thought quite odd, after what he'd said. The union gave him a funeral, and then we were all rounded up by a lawyer that insisted on being a pall-bearer and riding with the mourners, he and Brady had been such dear friends. The widow never heard of him; but unless he was dear to Brady, why did he cry over the bier, and pass out his cards, and say he'd make the mine sweat for this? It didn't seem reasonable, and the widow signed papers while he held in his grief. Then we found he had awful bad luck losing friends. A lot of them had been killed or hurt, and he was suing companies to beat fours. We were going over our evidence, and another bunch was there with a doctor examining to see how badly they were ruined. "Beautiful injury!" said the lawyer, thumping a husky Hun on the leg. "No patellar reflex! Spine ruined! Beautiful! We'll make 'em sweat for this!" He surely was a specialist in corporate perspiration. I asked what the patellar reflex was, and the doc had Pete sit and cross his legs, and explained. "Mr. Peterson," said he, "has a normal spine. When I concuss the limb here, the foot will kick forward involuntarily. But in case of spinal injury, it will not. Now observe!" He whacked Pete's shin with a rubber hammer, but Pete never kicked. His foot hung loose like, not doing a blamed thing that the doc said it would if his spine was in repair. The doc was plumb dumb-foundered. "Most remarkable case of volitional control--" he began. "Volitional your grandmother!" yells the lawyer. "Mr. Peterson is ruined also! He was stricken prone in the same negligent accident that killed dear Mr. Brady! He is doomed! A few months of progressive induration of the spinal cord, and breaking up of the multipolar cells, and--death, friend, death!" The widow begun to whimper, and the lawyer grabbed Pete's hand and bursted into tears. Pete, being a Swede, never opened his face. "But," said the lawyer, cheering up, "we'll make them sweat for this. Shall we not vindicate the right of the working-man to protection, Mr. Peterson?" "Yu bat!" said Pete. "Ay bane gude Republican!" "And vindicate his right," went on the lawyer, "to safe tools and conditions of employment?" "Ay tank we windicate," said Pete. "Nobly said!" said the lawyer and hopped to it making agreements for contingent fees and other flimflams. It was wonderful how sort of patriotic and unselfish and religious and cagey he always was. We quit the Golden Fountain, and I got some assessment work for Sile Wilson. Pete wouldn't go. He was sort of hanging around the widow, but his brains were so sluggish that I don't believe he knew why. I picked up a man named Lungy to help. Sile's daughter Lucy kept house for Sile in camp, and in two days she was calling Lungy "Mr. Addison," and reproaching me for stringing a stranger that had seen better days and had a bum lung and was used to dressing for dinner. I told her I most always allowed to wear something at that meal myself, and she snapped my head off. He was a nice fellow for a lunger. When I had to go and testify in the Brady and Peterson cases against the Golden Fountain, old Sile was willing. "I'd like to help stick the thieves!" he hissed. "How did you know they were thieves?" asked I. "I located the claim," said he, "and they stole it on a measley little balance for machinery--confound them!" "Well, they're stealing it again," said I; and I explained the lost vein business. "They've pounded the stock away down," said the lunger. "I believe it's a good buy!" "Draw your eighteen-seventy-five from Sile," said I; "and come with me and buy it!" "I think I will go," said he. And he did. He was a nice fellow to travel with. Well, the Golden Fountain was shut down, and had no lawyer against us. It was a funny hook-up. We proved about the stulls, and got a judgment for the widow for ten thousand. Then we corralled another jury and showed that Pete had no patellar reflex, and therefore no spine, and got a shameful great verdict for him. And all the time the Golden Fountain never peeped, and Lungy Addison looked on speechless. Our lawyer was numb, it was so easy. "I don't understand--" said he. "The law department must be connected in series with the mine machinery," said I, "and shuts off with the same switch. Do we get this on a foul?" "Oh, nothing foul!" said he. "Default, you see--" "No showup at ringside," said I; "9 to 0? How about bets?" "Everything is all right," said he, looking as worried. "We'll sell the mine, and make the judgments!" "And get the Golden Fountain," said I, "on an Irish pit boss and a Swede's spine?" "Certainly," said he, "if they don't redeem." "Show me," said I; "I'm from Missouri! It's too easy to be square. She won't pan!" "Dat bane hellufa pile money f'r vidder," said Pete when we were alone. "Ten thousan' f'r Brady, an' twelf f'r spine! Ay git yob vork f'r her in mine!" "You wild Skandihoovian," said I, "that's _your_ spine!" "Mae spine?" he grinned. "Ay gass not! Dat leg-yerkin' bane only effidence. Dat spine bane vidder's!" I couldn't make him see that it was his personal spine, and the locomotor must be attaxing. He smiled his fool smile and brought things to comfort Mrs. Brady's last days. But she knew, and took him to Father Mangan, and Pete commenced studying the catechism against the time of death; but it didn't take. The circuit between the Swedenwegian intellect and the Irish plan of salvation looks like it's grounded and don't do business. "Very well said," commented the Groom. "I couldn't have put it more engenerically myself." One night the lawyer asked me to tell "the Petersons," as he called them, that some New Yorker had stuck an intervention or mandamus into the cylinder and stopped the court's selling machinery. "We may be delayed a year or so," said he. Pete had gone to the widow's with a patent washboard that was easy on the spine, and I singlefooted up, too. And there was that yellow-mustached Norsky holding the widow on his lap, bridging the chasm between races in great shape. He flinched some, and his neck got redder, but she fielded her position in big league form, and held her base. "Bein' as the poor man is not long f'r this wicked world," said she, "an' such a thrue man, swearin' as the l'yer wanted, I thought whoile the crather stays wid us--" "Sure," said I. "Congrats! When's the merger?" "Hey?" says Pete. "The nuptials," said I. "The broom-stick jumping." The widow got up and explained that the espousals were hung up till Pete could pass his exams with Father Mangan. "Marriage," said she, "is a sacrilege, and not lightly recurred. Oh, the thrials of a young widdy, what wid Swedes, and her sowl, an' the childer that may be--Gwan wid ye's, ye divvle ye!" Now there was a plot for a painter: the widow thinking Pete on the blink spinally, and he soothing her last days, all on account of a patellar reflex that an ambulance chaser took advantage of--and the courts full of quo-warrantoes and things to keep the Jackleg from selling a listed mine, with hoisting-works and chlorination-tanks! I got this letter from Pete, or the widow, I don't know which [displaying a worn piece of paper], about the third year after that. Here's what it says: "Ve haf yust hat hell bad time, savin' yer prisence, and Ay skal skip for tjiens of climit to gude pless Ay gnow in Bad Lands. Lawyer faller sell mine fer 10 tousan to vidder, an thin, bad cess to him, sells it agin to Pete fer 12000$ an git 2 stifkit off sheriff an say hae keep dem fer fees, an Ay gnok him in fess an take stifkit. Hae say hae tell mae spine bane O K all tem, an thrittened to jug Pete, an the back of me hand and the sole of me fut to the likes of him, savin' yer prisence, an Fader Mangan call me big towhead chump an kant lern catty kismus an marry me to vidder, an Pete, God bliss him, promised to raise the family in Holy Church, but no faller gnow dem tings Bfour hand, an Ay tank ve hike to dam gude pless in Bad Lands vun yare till stifkit bane ripe an Mine belong vidder an Ay bane Yeneral Manager an yu pit Boss vit gude yob in Yune or Yuly next, yours truely, an may the Blessid Saints purtect ye, PETER PETERSON. "P. S. Vidder Brady mae vife git skar an sine stifkit fer Brady to lawyer faller like dam fool vooman trik an sattle vit him, but Ay tink dat leg-yerkin bane bad all sem an yump to Bad Lands if we dodge inyunction youre frend. PETE." "So they got married," said Aconite. Just the way I figured it. Well, this lunger sleuthed me out when I was prospecting alone next summer. "Hello, Bill," said he, abrupt-like. "Cook a double supply of bacon." "Sure," I said. "Got any eating tobacco, Lungy?" "Bill," said he, after we had fed our respective faces, "did you ever wonder why that Swede received such prompt recognition without controversy for his absent patellar reflex?" "Never wonder about anything else," said I. "Why?" "It was this way," said he. "The crowd that robbed Sile Wilson found they had sold too much stock, and quit mining ore to run it down so they could buy it back. Some big holders hung on, and they had to make the play strong. So they went broke for fair, and let Brady's widow and Pete and a lot of others get judgments, and they bought up the certificates of sale. D'ye see?" "Kind of," said I. "It'll come to me all right." "It was a stock market harvest of death," said Lungy. "The judgments were to wipe out all the stock. This convinces me that the vein is hidden and not lost, as you said." "I thought I mentioned the fact," said I, "that Brady showed me the ore-chute." "That's why I'm here," said he. "I want you to find Pete Peterson for me." "Why?" I said. "Because," answered Addison, "he's got the junior certificate." "Give me the grips and passwords," I demanded; "the secret work of the order may clear it up." "Listen," said he. "Each certificate calls for a deed to the mine the day it's a year old; but the younger can redeem from the older by paying them off--the second from the first, the third from the second, and so on." "Kind of rotation pool," said I, "with Pete's claim as ball fifteen?" "Yes," said he; "only the mine itself has the last chance. But they think they know that Pete won't turn up, and they gamble on stealing the mine with the Brady certificate. Your perspicacity enables you to estimate the importance of Mr. Peterson." "My perspicacity," I said, giving it back to him cold, "informs me that some jackleg lawyer has been and bunked Pete out of the paper long since. And he couldn't pay off what's ahead of him any more'n he could buy the Homestake? Come, there's more than this to the initiation!" "Yes, there is," he admitted. "You remember Lucy, of course? No one could forget her! Well, her father and I are in on a secret pool of his friends, they to find the money, we to get this certificate." "Where does Lucy come in?" said I. "I get her," he replied, coloring up. "And success makes us all rich!" I never said a word. Lungy was leery that I was soft on Lucy--I might have been, easy enough--and sat looking at me for a straight hour. "Can you find him for me?" said he, at last. "Sure!" said I. He smoked another pipeful and knocked out the ashes. "Will you?" said he, kind of wishful. "If you insult me again," I hissed, "I'll knock that other lung out! Turn in, you fool, and be ready for the saddle at sun-up!" We rode two days in the country that looks like the men had gone out when they had the construction work on it half done, when a couple of horsemen came out of a draw into the cañon ahead of us. "The one on the pinto," said I, "is the perspiration specialist." "If he doesn't recognize you," said Lungy, "let the dead past stay dead!" Out there in the sunshine the Jackleg looked the part, so I wondered how we come to be faked by him. We could see that the other fellow was a sheriff, a deputy-sheriff, or a candidate for sheriff--it was in his features. "Howdy, fellows!" said I. "Howdy!" said the sheriff, and closed his face. "Odd place to meet!" gushed the Jackleg, as smily as ever. "Which way?" "We allowed to go right on," I said. "This is our route," said Jackleg, and moseys up the opposite draw, clucking to his bronk, like an old woman. "What do you make of his being here?" asked Lungy. "Hunting Swedes," I said. "And with a case against Pete for robbery and assault. I hope we see him first!" We went on, Lungy ignorantly cheerful, I lost-like to know what was what, and feeling around with my mind's finger for the trigger of the situation. Suddenly I whoaed up, shifted around on my hip, and looked back. "Lost anything, Bill?" asked Lungy. "Temporarily mislaid my brains," said I. "We're going back and pick up the scent of the Jackleg." Lungy looked up inquiringly, as we doubled back on our tracks. "When you kick a covey of men out of this sagebrush," I explained, "they naturally ask about anything they're after. They inquire if you know a Cock-Robin married to a Jenny-Wren, or an Owl to a Pussycat, or whatever marital misdeal they're trailing. They don't mog on like it was Kansas City or Denver." "Both parties kept still," replied Lungy. "What's the answer, Bill?" "Both got the same guilty secret," said I, "and they've got it the worst. They know where Pete is. So will we if we follow their spoor." We pelted on right brisk after them. The draw got to be a cañon, with grassy, sheep-nibbled bottom, and we knew we were close to somewhere. At last, rolling to us around a bend, came a tide of remarks, rising and swelling to the point of rough-house and riot. "The widow!" said I. "She knows me. You go in, Lungy, and put up a stall to keep 'em from seeing Pete alone first!" I crept up close. The widow was calling the Jackleg everything that a perfect lady as she was, you know, could lay her tongue to, and he trying to blast a crack in the oratory to slip a word into. "I dislike," said Lungy, "to disturb privacy; but we want your man to show us the way." "Who the devil are you?" said the sheriff. "My name--" began Lungy. "Whativer it is, sorr," said the widow, "it's a betther name nor his you shpake to--the black far-down, afther taking me man and lavin' me shtarve wid me babbies he robbed iv what the coort give! But as long as I've a tongue in me hid to hould, ye'll not know where he's hid!" And just then down behind me comes Pete on a fair-sized cayuse branded with a double X. "Dat bane you, Bill?" said he casual-like. "You most skar me!" I flagged him back a piece and told him the Jackleg was there. He ran, and I had to rope him. "You're nervous, Pete," said I, helping him up. "What's the matter?" "Dis blame getaway biz," he said, "bane purty tough on fallar. Ay listen an' yump all tem nights!" "How about going back for the mine?" I asked. "Dat bane gude yoke!" he grinned. "Ay got gude flock an' planty range hare, an' Ay stay, Ay tank. Yu kill lawyer fallar, Bill, an' take half whole shooting-match!" "Got that certificate?" I asked. It was all worn raw at the folds, but he had it. The Jackleg had an assignment all ready on the back, and I wrote Addison's name in, and made Pete sign it. "Now," said I. "We'll take care of Mr. Jackleg, and you'll get something for this, but I don't know what. Don't ever come belly-aching around saying we've bunked you after Lungy has put up his good money and copped the mine. These men want this paper, not you. Probably they've got no warrant. Brace up and stand pat!" So we walked around bold as brass. The widow was dangling a Skandy-looking kid over her shoulder by one foot, and analyzing the parentage of Jackleg. Lungy was grinning, but the sheriff's face was shut down. "Ah, Mr. Peterson!" said the lawyer. "And our old and dear friend William Snoke, too! I thought I recognized you this morning! And now, please excuse our old and dear friend Mr. Peterson for a moment's consultation." "Dis bane gude pless," said Pete. "Crack ahead!" "This is a private matter, gentlemen," said Jackleg. "Shall we withdraw?" asks Lungy. "No!" yells Pete. "You stay--be vitness!" "I wish to remind you, dear Mr. Peterson," said he as we sort of settled in our places, "that your criminal assault and robbery of me has subjected you to a long term in prison. And I suffered great damage by interruption of business, and bodily and mental anguish from the wounds, contusions and lesions inflicted, and especially from the compound fracture of the inferior maxillary bone--" "Dat bane lie!" said Pete. "Ay yust broke your yaw!" "He admits the _corpus delicti_!" yelled the lawyer. "Gentlemen, bear witness!" "I didn't hear any such thing," said Lungy. "Neither did I," I said. "I figure my damages," he went on, "at twelve thousand dollars." Pete picked a thorn out of his finger. "Now, Mr. Peterson," went on the lawyer, "I don't suppose you have the cash. But when I have stood up and fought for a man for pure friendship and a mere contingent fee, I learn to love him. I would fain save you from prison, if you would so act as to enable me to acquit you of felonious intent. A prison is a fearful place, Mr. Peterson!" "Ay tank," said Pete, "Ay brace up an' stand pat!" "If you would do anything," pleaded the Jackleg, "to show good intention, turn over to me any papers you may have, no matter how worthless--notes, or--or certificates!" Pete pulled out his wallet. Lungy turned pale. "Take dis," said Pete. "Dis bane order fer six dollar Yohn Yohnson's wages. Ay bane gude fallar!" "Thanks!" said the Jackleg, pious-like. "And _is_ that long document the certificate of sale in Peterson _vs._ Golden Fountain, etc.?" "Dat bane marryin' papers," said Pete. "Dat spine paper bane N. G. Mae spine all tem O. K. Dat leg-yerkin' bane yust effidence. Ay take spine paper to start camp-fire!" It was as good as a play. Lungy turned pale and trembled. The lawyer went up in the air and told the sheriff to arrest Pete, and appealed to the widow to give up the certificate, and she got sore at Pete, and called him a Norwegian fool for burning it, and cuffed the bigger kid, which was more Irish-looking. Pete dug his toe into the ground and looked ashamed and mumbled something about it not being his spine. The sheriff told Pete to come along, and I asked him to show his warrant. He made a bluff at looking in his clothes for it, and rode away with his countenance tight-closed. Lungy and I rode off the other way. That night Lungy smiled weakly as I started the fire with paper. "Bill," said he, "I shall never burn paper without thinking how near I came to paradise and dropped plump--" "Oh, I forgot," said I. "Here's that certificate." Lungy took it, looked it over, read the assignment, and broke down and cried. * * * * * "How did it come out?" asked the Bride. "Oh," said the Hired Man, "Lungy waited till the last minute, flashed the paper and the money, and swiped the mine. The company wanted to give a check and redeem, but the clerk stood out for currency, and it was too late to get it. He got the mine, and Lucy, and is the big Mr. Addison, now. No, me for where you can carry off things that are too big for the grand larceny statutes. This business of farming is too much like chicken-feed for me!" CHAPTER VIII "I came on this trip," said Colonel Baggs, "to rest my vocal organs, and not to talk. In this ambition I have been greatly aided by the willingness of Professor Boggs to assume the conversational burden in our seat. However, now that my name has been drawn from the hat, I shall have the pleasure, and honor, lady and gentlemen, to entertain you for a very few minutes--after which, thanking you for your very kind attention and liberal patronage, the hay--the hay, my friends, for me!" At the Lake Hotel, to which they had come by boat, they found their tents pitched and their dinner awaiting them--for which they were indebted to the efficiency of Aconite and the Hired Man, who had come overland; and the latter of whom assured them that they had missed the greatest curiosity of the Park in failing to see the Natural Bridge. "On your way, Bill!" said the Groom. "You didn't see the petrified sea serpent swimming off Gull Point, did you?" "Dumb it all, no!" exclaimed Bill. "I never am around when anything good is pulled off!" THE LAW AND AMELIA WHINNERY THE TALE OF COLONEL BAGGS OF OMAHA I was much interested (said the Colonel, beginning his story), in the tale told by my learned brother, Mr. Snoke. The story of the way Mr. Lungy Addison committed grand larceny in getting away with the Mortal Cinch mine is one that, falling from the mouth, as it does, of a person not learned in the law and its beauties, must be true. Nobody but a lawyer could have invented it--and I assure you that lawyers are too busy with the strange phases of truth to monkey--if I may use a term not yet laundered by the philologists--with fiction. The law is the perfection of human wisdom. Our courts are the God-ordained instruments by which these perfections are made manifest to the eyes of mere human beings. To be sure the courts are composed of men who were but even now lawyers--but that's neither here, there, nor yonder--when the anointment of their judicial consecration runs down their beard, as did the oil down that of Aaron, human imperfections are at end with them, and it's all off with frailty. And this brings me to the brief story which is my contribution to the Yellowstone Nights' Entertainment. I sing, my beloved, the saga of The Law and Amelia Whinnery. I just got a decision over in Nebraska in the case of Whinnery _vs._ The C. & S. W. It shows that Providence is still looking out for the righteous man and his seed. Never heard of Whinnery _vs._ the Railway Company? Well, it may put you wise to a legal principle or two, and I'll tell you about it. I was ag'in' the corporations over there, as associate counsel for the plaintiff. Bob Fink, that studied in my office, was the fellow the case belonged to, and he being a little afraid of Absalom Scales, the railroad's local attorney, sent over a Macedonian wail to me, and said we'd cut up a fifty per cent, contingent fee if we won. I went. Amelia Whinnery was the plaintiff. She was a school-teacher who had got hold of the physical culture graft, and was teaching it to teachers' institutes, making forty dollars a minute the year around. "How much?" asked the Hired Man. "I'm telling you what the record showed as I remember it," said the Colonel. "We proved that she was doing right well financially when the railroad put her out of business by failing to ring a bell or toot a whistle at the crossing coming into Tovala, and catching Bill Williams' bus asleep at the switch. Miss Whinnery was in the bus. When it was all over, she was in pretty fair shape--" "Naturally," interpolated the Artist. "Excepting that her nerves had got some kind of a shock and she was robbed permanently of the power of speech." "How terrible!" exclaimed the Bride. On the trial she sat in the court-room in a close-fitting dress, wearing a picture hat, and would give a dumb sort of gurgle when Scales would pitch into her case, as if to protest at being so cruelly assaulted while defenseless. It was pathetic. Bob Fink shed tears, while he pictured to the jury in his opening, the agony of this beautiful girl set off from her kind for life, as the preponderance, the clear preponderance of the evidence showed she would be, by dumbness--"an affliction, gentlemen of the jury, which seals her lips forever as to the real facts, and stops the reply she could otherwise make to the dastardly attack of my honorable and learned friend, the attorney for this public-service corporation, which has been clothed with the power to take away your land, gentlemen of the jury, or mine, whether we want to sell it or not, and to rob us of our produce by its extortionate freight rates, and to run its trains into and through our cities, and over our busses, and to maim and injure our ladies, and bring them before juries of their peers, who, unless I mistake, will administer a stinging rebuke to this corporation without a soul to save or a body to kick, in the only way in which it can be made to feel a rebuke--in damages, out of that surplus of tainted dollars which its evil and illegal practices have wrung from the hard hands of toil as represented by the farmers and laborers who so largely compose this highly-intelligent jury." "Good spiel," commented the Groom. Bob was good until the other side had the reporter begin to take his speech down, so as to show appeals to passion and prejudice--and then he hugged the record close. The plaintiff sobbed convulsively. Bob stopped and swallowed, knowing that the reporter couldn't get the sobs and swallows into the record. The jurors blew their noses and glared at Scales and the claim-agent. I went over to the plaintiff and gave her a drink of water, and would have liked to take her in my arms and comfort her, but didn't. "Too bad!" remarked the Poet. Well, the jury found for us in about three hours for the full amount, ten thousand dollars and costs. They would have agreed earlier, only they waited so the state would have to pay for their suppers. A judgment was rendered on the verdict, and the railroad appealed. All this time Bob was getting more and more tender toward the plaintiff. I didn't think much about it until cards came for their wedding. I sent Bob an assignment of my share in the verdict for a wedding present--if we ever got it. Amelia promised to love, honor and cherish by nodding her head, and walked away from the altar with her most graceful physical culture gait, while the boys outside with their shivaree instruments ready for the evening, sang in unison, "Here comes the bride! Get on to her stride!" It was a _recherché_ affair--but excessively quiet nuptials on the bride's side. That evening Absalom Scales got in the finest piece of work that was ever pulled off in any lawsuit in Nebraska. The bridal party went away over the C. & S. W.Omaha Limited, and Amelia and Bob were there looking as fine as fiddles--Amelia a picture, they said, in her going-away gown. Scales had fixed up for a crowd of hoodlums to shivaree them as they went. "Mighty mean trick, I should say," said the Hired Man, "for any one but a corporation lawyer." "Wait, Brother Snoke," protested the Colonel, "until you are so far advised in the premises as to be able to judge whether the end didn't justify the means." In addition to the horse-fiddles and bells and horns, Absalom had arranged some private theatricals. He had plugged up a deal by which Bill Williams, the bus man--who'd sold out and was going to Oregon anyway--came bursting into the waiting-room while they were waiting for the train--which was held at the water-tank by Scales' procurement and covin--and presented a bill for the damages to his bus by the accident which had hurt Amelia's oratorical powers. You see, he'd never been settled with, being clearly negligent. They tried to get off in Amelia's case on the doctrine of imputed negligence, but it wouldn't stick. Well, Bill comes in with his claim against Amelia and Bob for two or three hundred dollars for his bus. They disdainfully gave him the ha-ha. "Then," says Bill Williams, "I will tell all, woman!" Amelia flushed, and looked inquiringly at Bob. Bob walked up to Bill and hissed: "What do you mean, you hound, by insulting my wife in this way!" "She knows what I mean," yelled Bill, turning on Amelia. "Ask your wife what she an' I was talkin' about when we was a-crossing the track that time. Ask her if she didn't say to me that I was the perfec'ly perportioned physical man, an' whether I didn't think that men an' women of sech perportions should mate; an' if she didn't make goo-goo eyes at me, ontil I stuck back my head to kiss her, an' whether she wasn't a-kissin' me when that freight come a pirootin' down an' run over her talkin' apparatus! Ask her if she didn't say she could die a-kissin' me, an' if she didn't come danged near doin' it!" "How perfectly horrid!" gasped the Bride. Well, Bob Fink was, from all accounts, perfectly flabbergasted. There stood Bill Williams in his old dogskin coat and a cap that reeked of the stables, and there stood the fair plaintiff, turning redder and redder and panting louder and louder as the enormity of the thing grew upon her. And then she turned loose. Amelia Whinnery Fink, defendant in error, and permanently dumb, turned loose. She began doubling up her fists and stamping her feet, and finally she burst forth into oratory of the most impassioned character. "Robert Fink!" she said, as quoted in the motion for a reopening of the case that Scales filed--"Robert Fink, will you stand by like a coward and see me insulted? That miserable tramp--a perfect--If you don't kill him, I will. _I_ kiss him? _I_ ask him such a thing? Bob Fink, do you expect me to go with you and leave such an insult unavenged? No, no, no, no--" "I don't blame her!" interjected the Bride. I guess she'd have gone on stringing negatives together as long as the depot would have held 'em, if Bob hadn't noticed Ike Witherspoon, the shorthand reporter, diligently taking down her speech and the names of those present. Then he twigged, and, hastily knocking Bill down, he boarded the train with Amelia. He wired me from Fremont that it was all off with the judgment, as they'd tormented Mrs. Fink into making a public speech. I answered, collect, bidding him be as happy as he could in view of the new-found liberty of speech and of the press, and I'd look after the judgment and the appeal. "Well," said the Groom, "of course you got licked in the Supreme Court. It was clear proof that she'd been shamming." "You're about as near right on that as might be expected of a layman," retorted the Colonel. "Just about. The law is the perfection of human reason. The jury had found that Amelia Whinnery couldn't speak, and never would be able to. A jury had rendered a verdict to that effect, and judgment for ten thousand dollars had been entered upon it. I merely pointed out to the Supreme Court that they could consider errors in the record only, and that it was the grossest sort of pettifogging and ignorance of the law for Absalom Scales to come in and introduce such an impertinence as evidence--after the evidence was closed--that the fair plaintiff had been shamming and was, in fact, a very free-spoken lady. The bench saw the overpowering logic of this, and read my authorities, and Bob and Amelia will henceforth live in the best house in their town, built out of the C. & S .W. surplus--and Amelia talking sixteen hours a day. It's locally regarded as a good joke on the railroad." "But was it honest?" queried the Bride. "Honest, me lady!" repeated the Colonel, _a la_ Othello. "My dear young lady, the courts are not to be criticized--ever remember that!" * * * * * "That makes me think," said the Hired Man, "of the darndest thing--" "In that case," said the Poet, "your name will be considered drawn for the next number. Save this darndest thing for its own occasion--which will be at our next camp. Oneiros beckons, and I go." "In that case," said Aconite, "I'd go, you bet!" CHAPTER IX Coming in from the right as they took the open trail again, the Cody Road beckoned them eastward, as a side road always beckons to the true wanderer. "What does it run to?" asked the Groom. "Wyoming," responded Aconite. "It's nothing but scenery and curiosities." "Let's follow it a little way," suggested the Bride, "and see how we like it" Three miles or so on the way, the surrey halted at a beautiful little lake, which lay like a fragment broken off Yellowstone Lake, the shore of which lay only a stone's throw to the right. They walked over to the big lake to bid it farewell. A score of miles to the south lay Frank Island, and still farther away, shut off by the fringe of rain from a thunder shower, the South Arm seemed to run in behind Chicken Ridge and take to the woods. To the southwest stood Mount Sheridan, and peeping over his shoulder the towering Tetons solemnly refused even to glimmer a good-by. "For all that," said the Bride, "_au revoir_! We'll come back one of these days, won't we, Billy?" "Sure!" said Billy. "I'm coming up to put in a power plant in the Grand Cañon, one of these days. This scenery lacks the refining touch of the spillway and the penstock!" Fifteen minutes' driving brought them to the second halt, a big basin of water, from which steam issued in a myriad of vents. Aconite suggested that they stroll down to the beach and take a look at the water. They found it in a slow turmoil, the mud rising from the bottom in little fountains of turbidity, the whole effect being that which might be expected if some mud-eating giant were watching his evening porridge, expecting it momentarily to boil. "I don't care much for this," said the Bride. "I'm not crazy about it myself," assented the Artist. "What's the next marvel?" asked the Colonel. "Wedded trees," said Aconite. "Getting sated with 'em," said the Poet. "Apollinaris Springs, Sylvan Lake, fine views of Yellowstone Lake and the mountains, bully rocks and things clear to Cody." "And on the other hand," said the Professor, "what are the features on the regular road from which we have diverged?" "Everything you come to see," responded Aconite. "Mud Volcano, with a clear spring in the grotto right by it; Mud Geyser, off watch for a year or more; Trout Creek, doubled around into the N.P. trade-mark; Sulphur Mountain--we can camp right near there, and see it in the morning, when we ought to see it--and on beyond, the Grand Cañon and everything. Besides--unless we go that-a-way, we'll never git back unless we come by the Burlington around by Toluca and Billings. Of course, it's all the same to me--I don't keer if we never go back or git anywhere. I'm havin' a good time." "Turn the plugs around," said the Colonel. In half an hour or so they were back on the great north road again. The horses seemed to feel the pull of the stable--still days ahead, for they trotted briskly along, while the tourists gazed with sated eyes on the beautiful Yellowstone River on the right hand, its pools splashing with the plunges of the great trout; and on their left the charming mountain scenery. Even the grotesque Mud Volcano, with its suggestions of the horrible and uncouth, failed to elicit the screams from the Bride, or the ejaculations of amazement from the men which characterized their deliverances earlier in the journey. Entering Hayden Valley, they were delighted at the sight in the middle distance of a dozen or more buffaloes, which held up their heads for a long look, and disappeared into the bushes. Not ten minutes later, fifty or sixty elk walked down to the Yellowstone to drink, crossing the road within a minute of the tourists' passage. Aconite pulled up in the shadow of Sulphur Mountain, the Hired Man, with the assistance of the party, soon had a fine fire blazing, and presently a pan of trout, hooked by the Bride, the Groom, the Artist and the Poet, and dressed by the skilful Aconite, were doing to a turn on the skillet. The Hired Man, realizing that he was under obligation to tell his version of the "darndest thing" in his experience, was solemn, as befits a public performer. When the psychological moment was proclaimed by the falling down into a roseate pile of coals of the last log for the night, he discharged his duty and told this unimportant tale: HENRY PETERS'S SIGNATURE THE HIRED MAN'S SECOND TALE The Colonel's story of how the law and the courts work, reminded me of what happened to old Hen Peters and his forty-second nephew, Hank. It all arose from a debate at the literary at the Bollinger school-house back in Iowa. You see, old Hen's girl Fanny come home from the State Normal at Cedar Falls as full of social uplift as a yeast-cake, and framed up this literary. It was a lulu of a society, and nights when the sledding was good, the teams just surrounded the lot, and the bells jingled as uplifting as you could ask. The night of the scrap Hank brought Fanny. The debate was on which was the most terrible scourge, fire or water. Hank was on the negative, and Fanny's father on the affirmative. Old Hen spoke of the way prairie fires devastated things in an early day, and read history, and gave a beautiful tribute to the Chicago fire and the O'Leary cow. Hank coughed with the dust kicked up when Hen sat down, but he got back with a rhapsody on the Hoang-Ho floods, and the wet season in Noah's time. He said that his honorable opponent ought to take a moment or two from time to time to ascertain the properties of water as a scourge, as an inward remedy, and as a lotion. Now besides having an appetite for red-eye, old Hen was whiskery and woolly-necked, and handling lots of tame hay, he looked sort of unwashed. So the crowd yelled shameful and laughed; and when Hen got up to answer, he was so mad his whiskers stood out like a rooster's hackle, his words came out in a string like, all lapped on one another, and blurred, and linked together so you couldn't tell one from the other; and finally they reversed on the bobbin, and gigged back into his system, and rumbled and reverberated around in him like a flock of wild cattle loose in an empty barn; and the crowd got one of those giggly fits when every one makes the other laugh till they are sore and sick. Asa Wagstaff fell backward out of a window on to a hitching-post, and made Brad Phelps' team break loose. Old Hen stood shaking his fist at them and turning so red in the face that he got blue, and sat down without saying a syllable that any one could understand. You could hear folks hollering and screaming in fits of that laughing disease going home, and getting out and rolling in the snow because they were in agony, and nothing but rolling would touch the spot. But old Hen Peters seemed to be immune. Now, in a debate, no man is supposed to have friends or relations, and he floors his man with anything that comes handy, and Hank never dreamed that Hen would hold hardness when he got over his mad fit. Hank and Fanny had things all fixed up, and had been pricing things at the Banner Store, and sitting up as late as two o'clock; but the next Sunday night she met him at the door and told him maybe he'd better not come into the sitting-room till her pa cooled off. Hank was knocked off his feet, and they stood out in the hall talking sort of tragic until old Hen yelled "Fanny!" from the sitting-room, and they pretty near jumped out of their skins, and stood farther apart, and Fanny went in. In the spring there was a row over the line fence, ending in a devil's lane. Fanny looked pretty blue, only when she was fighting with her pa. Hen would lecture about the two Peters brothers that came across in 1720, and how all Peterses that were not descended from them were Nimshies and impostors. "I despise and hate," says he, "a Nimshi and an impostor." Then Fanny would shoot back a remark about the Iowa _Herald's_ college, and when was her pa going to paint the Peters coat-of-arms on the hay-rake and the hog-house, using sarcasm that no man could understand after being out of school as long as her father had been. Sometimes the old man would forget the spurious registry of the Hank family in the Peters herd-book, and would argue that relations, even the most remote and back-fence kind, ought to be prosecuted if they even dreamed of marrying; and then Fanny would say that it is such a pleasure to know that folks are not always related when they claim to be. Hen would then cuss me for not taking care of my horses' shoulders or something, and things would get no better rapidly. Young folks need to meet once in a while in order to keep right with each other, and Jim Miller and I often spoke of the way old Hen was splitting Hank and Fanny apart. Then an Illinois man come out and bought Hank out at a hundred an acre, and Hank wadded his money into his pocket, and bid good-by to the neighborhood for good and all. He never crossed the township line again. Fanny flirted like sixty, and cried when she was alone; but old Hen was as tickled as a colt. It seemed like a judgment on Hen for driving as good a man as Hank to Dakota to have Fillmore Smythe begin yelping on his trail. His first yelp was a letter, asking Hen to call and pay a three-hundred-dollar note Fillmore had for collection. And here's where the law begins to seep into the story. Hen had Fanny type-write a scorching answer, saying that Hen Peters had discounted his bills since before Fillmore Smythe was unfortunately born, and didn't owe no man a cent; and Hen was so mad that he kicked a fifty-dollar collie pup, and hurt its feelings so it never would work, but went to killing young pigs and sheep the way a collie will if you ever sour their nature by licking them. Funny about collies. One day old Hen come in from the silo, and saw Fillmore Smythe's team tied at the gate, and Fillmore sitting with Fanny on the stoop, reading _Lucile_. "I hope I see you well, Mr. Peters," said the lawyer, kind of smooth-like. "None the better for seein' you, sir," said Hen, jamming his mouth shut when he got through so his mustache and whiskers were all inserted into each other. Now this was no way to treat a person from town, and Fanny began saying how wonderful the sunset was last night, and asking did he ever see the moon-vine flowers pop out in bloom in the gloaming, and to curb her neck and step high the way they do when they're bitted in college. "Any partic'lar business here?" asked old Hen. "Ah, yes!" said Smythe. "In addition to the pleasure of seeing you and your accomplished family, I desired a conference as to the curious way in which that little note--" "Well, now that you've seen my accomplished family as much as I want you to," growled Hen, "you can git. I told you all I'm goin' to about what you call my note." "But," said Fillmore, sort of like he was currying a kicking mule, "if you'd consent to look at it, I'm sure it would all return to your mind!" Hen fired him off the place, though, and he sued Hen. The old man was affected a good deal like the collie pup, and mulled it over, and got sour on the world, especially lawyers that blackmailed and forged. He said he knew well enough that Smythe either did it or knew who did, and that every lawyer ought to be hung. I argued for imprisonment for the first offense for a no-account lawyer like Smythe, with a life sentence if it was proved that he knew any law, and the death penalty for good lawyers like Judge McKenzie; and Hen was so mad at me for what I said that he wouldn't let me have the top buggy the next Sunday night when I needed it the worst way. The big doings come off when the case came up to be tried. I quit hauling ensilage corn, and went with Fanny and the old folks up to the county seat to give testimony that Hen never signed that note. Fanny stayed with Phoebe Relyea; but the rest of us stopped at the Accidental Hotel, where most of the jurors and others tangled up in court stayed too. The lawyer in the case ahead of us was a new-comer, and strung it out day after day to advertise himself, and yelled so you could hear him over in the band-stand, to show his ability. Hen, all the time, was getting more and more morbid, and forgot his temperance vows, and tried to talk about the case to everybody. About half the time it would be a juryman he would try to confide in, and this made trouble on account of their thinking he was trying to influence them. One night Hen was owly as sin, drinking with Walker Swayne from Pleasant Valley Township; and when he cried into his beer because Fillmore Smythe was trying to swindle him and blast his good name, Walker slapped him for approaching him on a case he might be called to sit on. I put Hen to bed at the Revere House, and told Mrs. Peters he'd been called home. She 'phoned out to have him count the young turkeys, and the Swede second man had no more sense than to say he had not been there, instead of placing him where they had no telephone, as an honest hired man with any sprawl would have done. You couldn't trust this Swede as far as you could throw a thesaurus by the tail. I am not saying that he was corrupt; but he was just thumb-hand-sided and lummoxy, and blurted, "Hae ain't bane hare" into the transmitter with never a thought of the danger of telling the truth. Mrs. Peters didn't know what to be distressed about, and just because I'm paid the princely salary I get for saying nothing about such things, she jumped on me like a duck on a June-bug. When Hen and I went to McKenzie's office the night before our case came up, the lawyer was worried. He asked us if we knew who was going to testify against us. "No," snapped Hen; "an' I don't care. Nobody ever saw me sign that note, and it don't make any matter." Then he went on to tell what great friends he and Judge Brockway used to be, when the judge used to shoot prairie-chickens in Hen's stubble, and Mrs. Peters cooked the chickens for the judge. "Brockway thinks as much of me as a brother," said Hen. "He told me as much when he was running for judge. He won't see me stuck." This didn't seem to impress Judge McKenzie much. He still looked worried, and said the other side had got every banker in town on their side as handwriting experts. "I don't like the looks of things," said he. Hen flew mad at the idea of his lawyer's hinting that any man could get stuck in such a case. The judge tried to explain, and Hen asked him how much the other side was paying him, and the judge threw up his job. Pretty soon, though, Hen got him to take a new retainer of fifteen dollars, and he opened a new account in his books. This made Hen feel good, for the judge was great with juries when he was sober. He was good and sober now, for he had just taken the drinking cure for the third time. We had lots of faith in Providence and McKenzie, but were scary as three-year-olds that night at any strange noise in the brush. You know how it is when you feel that way. Things went wrong the next morning. So many of the jurors said that Hen had talked to them that Judge Brockway just glared at Hen, and said that the court was not favorably impressed by tactics of that sort. Walker Swayne told how he had slapped Hen's chops to drive off his improper advances, and Judge Brockway said that he could not condone breaches of the peace; but a juror, like a woman, was justified if any one; and when old Hen asked Mac for the Lord's sake, were there any women sitting on this case, Brockway wilted Hen again with a look. I asked Hen at recess if he thought Brockway would ask him as a friend and brother to sit up on the bench, and he flared up and said Brock was all right, but was disguising his feelings as a judge. "He's got a disguise that's a bird," said I, and Hen said I might consider myself discharged; but wrote me a note after court took up, hiring me back. The next juror up related another case of Hen's vile tactics, and the judge threatened to send him to jail if anything more bobbed up. Hen fell back into his chair limpsy, like dropping a wet string,--all spiral like,--and everybody looked at us in horror for our pollyfoxing with the jury. As a matter of fact, in his state of beer and overconfidingness, Hen would have wept on the breast of a wooden Indian that would have held still while he told of the octopus and its forgeries. In all the time I worked for him, he never tried once to destroy the jury system or his country's liberty. Finally they found twelve men that didn't know anything about the case or anything, and had no opinions or prejudices for or against anything, and the lawyers told the jury what they expected to prove. "The sacred system of trial by jury," said Fillmore Smythe, "has been saved from the attacks of the defendant by an incorruptible court. Placed on trial before this intelligent jury, what the defendant may do I can not even guess; but we have here in court his note, signed in his own proper person." "'T ain't so!" busted out Hen, in his own improper person. "You hain't got no such note!" "One more interruption of this sort," said the judge, peeking down at Hen, "and the example that I'll make of _you_ won't soon be forgotten. Proceed, Mr. Smythe!" "Concealing his love!" whispers I to Hen; and he put the leg of his chair on my foot and ground it around till I almost yelled. When they had marked the note "Exhibit A" the way they do, Smythe said "Plaintiff rests," though they didn't seem near as tired as our side was, and the court let out for noon. They let McKenzie take the note with him to look at. There it was on one of those blanks that it cost me a good claim in Kansas once to practise writing on, and I never got to be much of a penman either; it was signed "Henry Peters" as natural as life. "Well," questioned Mac, as Hen turned it over, "what do you say to it, Henry?" I could feel that all the time McKenzie had had a hunch that Hen had really signed the note, and Hen felt it, too, and he threw to the winds the remains of his last conversion, and his fear that Mac would strike again, and talked as bad as if he was learning a calf to drink. "Why, you scoundrelly Keeley graduate," he yelled, "what did I tell you! That's a forgery, as any one but a half-witted pettifogger could see by lookin' at it!" "I sever my connection with this case right now," said Mac, away down in his chest, and as dignified as a ring-master. "No inebriated litigant can refer to the struggle and expense I have incurred in lifting myself to a nobler plane of self-control, and then call for my skill and erudition in extricating him from the quagmire of the law in which his imprudences have immeshed him. Go, sir, to some practitioner so far lost to manhood as to be able to resist the temptation to brain you with his notary-public's seal. Leave me to my books!" Mac went into the next room and shut the door, but did not lock it. "I can see," said Colonel Baggs, "the wisdom of leaving it on the latch." I took and apologized for Hen; but Mac stuck his nose in a book and waved me away. If Hen had been a little drunker he would have cried; and I went back to woo McKenzie some more. Finally, he agreed to come into the case again, on payment of another retainer fee of twenty dollars. Hen was game, and skinned a double-X off his roll without a flinch. Mac opened up a new account in his books, and Hen, for my successful diplomacy, raised my wages two dollars a month. It was a great lesson to me. Of course I could see that it was not Hen's signature; for his way of writing was Spencerian, modified by handling a fork, shucking corn, and by the ink drying up while he was thinking. The name on the note was kind of backhand. Mac asked about other Henry Peterses, and Hen told him that there was a man that passed by that name in the county a year or so back, but that he never had credit for three hundred cents, never bought any such machinery, and had escaped to Dakota. When old Hen testified, he had one of his spluttery spells of reverse English caused by his language getting wound on the shafting, and his denying the signature didn't seem to make much impression on any one. Smythe made him admit that he had bought the tools, and had no check-stub of the payment; and when he said he paid Bloxham in cash, Smythe laid back and grinned, and McKenzie moved that the grin be took down by the reporter, so he could move to strike it out. Everybody just seemed to despise us but Mac; and I was as ashamed as a dog. This Bloxham, the machine agent, was dead, and most everybody there had been to his funeral; but it took half an hour to prove his demise. Two jurors went to sleep on this, and one of them hollered "Whay! whay!" in his sleep, like he was driving stock, and Brockway pounded and glared at _us_ for it. I wished I was back with Ole running the silage cutter. All this time we kind of lost sight of Mrs. Peters and Fanny. Fanny sent some word over to the Accidental the second evening, and her mother went over to Relyea's, and came back kind of fluttery. I was sent to Fanny with a suit-case of dresses her mother had there, and Fanny was in the awfullest taking with blushing and her breath fluttering like a fanning-mill with palpitation of the heart that I couldn't think what was the matter with her. She had never blushed at seeing me before. I began to see what a pretty girl she was; but I couldn't think of tying myself down, even if she did. She came up close to me, shook hands with me, and bid me good-by when I came away. This was a sign she wanted to hold some one's hand or was going away; and I knew she wasn't expected to go away. It set me to thinking. Mac said he wouldn't want her testimony until the surrey-butter part, if then. I made up my mind I'd go up and talk with her once in a while, instead of sticking around down-town. But this trial absorbed my attention when the experts came on. Smythe had had a magnification made of the name on the note, and the one on old Hen's letter, and every banker in town went on and swore about these names. John Smythe, Fillmore's half-brother, knew Hen's signature; and had had to study handwriting so hard in the bank that he had got to be an expert. He was always thought a kind of a ninny, but here's where he sure did loom up with the knowledge. He acted just as smart as those Chicago experts we read about, and living right here in the county all the time, and never out of the bank a day! A good deal of my ability comes from dropping into some big city like Fort Dodge or Ottumwa, or maybe Sioux City, or Des Moines every winter, and getting on to the new wrinkles and broadening out; but John Smythe was always behind that brass railing, like a cow in stanchions. And yet he was able to see that those two signatures just had to be made by the same man. This spiel was cutting ice with the jury, and Mac roared and pointed out where they were different; but Smythe hinted that it only seemed so because Mac was ignorant. He could just see the same man a-making them--the way the stem of the "P" was made, and the finish of the "y" like a pollywog's tail made it a cinch. Hen swore under his powerful breath that it was a dad-burned lie; but it looked awful plausible to me. "You notice," said Fillmore, "that the name on the letter is more scrawly and uneven?" "Yes," said John, "but that merely means that he used a different pen or was nervous. I think I see in the last the characteristic tremor of anger." This looked bad to me, for if ever a man had a right to the characteristic tremor of anger, it was old Hen when he signed that letter. It showed Smythe knew what he was at. Mac showed them a lot of Hen's real signatures, but the experts said they only made it clearer. Every one had a little curlicue or funny business that put Hen deeper in the hole; and he finally chucked the bunch, all the reporter didn't have, in the stove. Fillmore Smythe inflated himself and blew up at this; but Brockway, still concealing his love, said that while it looked bad, and the jury might consider this destruction of evidence as one of the facts, the papers belonged to defendant and the court didn't see fit to do anything. Our case looked as bad as it could, and I didn't see why Smythe hollered so about it. The jury looked on us as horse-thieves and crooks, and every time old Hen stepped, he balled things up worse. Whitten, of the First National, was stronger than John Smythe. He said it was physically impossible for any man but the one that signed the letter to have made that note; and he was an expert from away back. He pointed out the anger tremor, too. Mac showed him how the check-signatures all looked like that on the letter, and not like the one on the note; but Whitten said a man was always calm when he made a note, and mad as a hatter when he drew a check. Knowing Hen, this looked plausible to me, and made a hit with the jury. The man that hollered "Whay!" wrote it down on his cuff. Ole Pete Hungerford, the note-shaver, snorted disdainfully that there was no doubt that the note was genuine. He swore that a bogus check I made was genuine, too; and got redder than a turkey when he found I had made it, and said it was the work of a skilful forger. The man that hollered "Whay!" looked at me in horror, and wrote some more on his cuff. I felt considerable cheap. Every expert said the same thing. I believe that there was one while when Hen would have admitted he signed the note if they had called him and raw-hided him enough. Hen had some hopes when Zenas Whitcher of the Farmers' Bank had some doubts about one signature; but he flattened out again when he found it was the one on the letter that had old Zenas guessing, and that he was dead sure the one on the note was a sure-enough genuine sig, only it looked as if he was trying to disguise his hand. Fillmore seemed to think pretty well of this, and had them all go back and swear about this disguise business. They could all see wiggly spots now and places gone over twice where Hen had doubled on his trail to throw pursuers off the track and disguise his hand. It begun to look to me like Hen was up to some skulduggery,--all these smooth guys swearing like that,--but Hen was paying me my wages and needed friends, and I stuck. He looked down his nose like an egg-sucking pup. When I came on to swear that it was not Hen's signature on the note, my mind was so full of curlicues and polly-wogs' tails, and anger tremors, and disguises, and the gall of my swearing against these big men that had money to burn, that I went into buck fever, and was all shot to rags by Smythe's cross-examination,--any of you fellows would be,--so that I finally admitted that the note looked pretty good to me, and that I'd have probably taken it for Hen's note if I'd been a banker and had it offered to me. Mac threw up his hands, said that was all our evidence, then went at the jury hammer and tongs, and I looked at poor old Hen all collapsed down into his chair like a rubber snake, and I went and hid. In the morning I crawled out, supposing that it would all be over, and wondering where I'd find Hen; but I heard Judge McKenzie's closing argument rolling out of the court-house windows like thunder. I didn't care for eloquence the way I was feeling, and was just sneaking away, when who should I run on to but Fanny walking with a fellow down under the maples. I was shocked, for she was hanging to his arm the way no nice girl ought to do unless it's dark. I trailed along behind to see who it was, when the fellow turned his head quick, and I saw it was Hank. They come up to me, Fanny still shamelessly hanging to his arm, looking excited and foolish, like they had just experienced religion or got engaged. "Doc," said Hank, "we've just found out about it!" "I've knowed it a long time," said I coldly. "What is it?" "This lawsuit," said Hank--"is it over, or still running?" "It's still running," I said. "Listen at the machinery rumble up there. It's all over but the shouting, and we've got a man hired to do that. Why?" They never said a word, but scooted up the stairs. I strolled in and found Mac's machinery throwed out of gear by Hank's interruption. Hen was still collapsed, and didn't see Hank. Mac turned grandly to the judge, and told him that a witness he had been laboring to secure the attendance of from outside the jurisdiction had blowed in, and he wanted the case reopened. Smythe rose buoyantly into the air and hooted, but Brockway coldly reopened the case, and Hank was sworn. The juror that wrote on his cuff looked disgusted, but he wrote Hank's name and age with the rest of his notes. "Where do you live?" asked Mac. "South Dakota," answered Hank. "Examine 'Exhibit A,'" said Mac proudly, handing Hank the note, "and tell the jury when if ever you have seen it before!" "When it was signed," said Hank. Old Hen kind of straightened up. Fanny sat down by him, and put her arm about him. She sure did look pretty. "Who signed that note?" asked Mac, with his voice swelling like a double B-flat bass tuba. "I did," answered Hank. "I object," yelled Smythe, trembling like a leaf. "Overruled," said Brockway in a kind of tired way. "Do you owe this note?" asked Mac. "You bet I do," answered Hank, "and got the money to pay it. I went to Dakota and forgot about the darned note. Bloxham shipped the machinery out there to me. It's my note all right; Hen Peters never saw it till Smythe got it." The room was full of wilted experts. This did not appeal to them at all. McKenzie laughed fiendishly, as if he'd had this thing arranged all the time. The jury looked foolish, all but the one that hollered "Whay!" and he looked mad. I could see Hen reviving, and throwing off his grouch at Hank. Fillmore Smythe said he had a question or two in cross-examination. "What kin are you to the defendant?" he asked. "That's a disputed point," replied Hank. "I dunno's I'm any by blood." "Are you not related to him in any way?" asked Fillmore, prying into things the way they do. "You bet I am," spoke up Hank, looking over at Fanny, and getting red in the face. "He don't know about it; but since night before last I've been his son-in-law." CHAPTER X It was in camp at Sulphur Mountain that the Artist's fate overtook him. The gods pulled his name from the hat by the hard hand of the Hired Man. This mystic event overshadowed the visit to Sulphur Spring--though that was in every respect a success. It was timed so as to give them the last of the dawn--the splendid flood of rare light which precedes the first cast of his noose by the Hunter of the East--and both eye and camera caught beautifully the myriads of steam spirals ascending from the hill, each from its own vent. The spring itself, the Poet compared to the daily press, in that it made a mighty and unceasing pother and dribbled out a mighty small amount of run-off--and that the output stained everything with which it came in contact a bright yellow. "No matter what it splashes," said he, "stick or stone, church, family or court, it yellows it." "Speaking of courts," said the Artist, "and the law--I think our friends the Colonel and Bill have dealt altogether too flippantly with them. I shall give you another view to-night." * * * * * "Do you notice," said the Bride, "how peaceful and sort of comforting the river is? It is as placid as a lake--or some deep river--like the Thames--made for pleasure boats and freighters." "See the trout leap!" shouted the Colonel. "Well," said Aconite, "you jest watch that river, an' it'll surprise yeh. It ain't reformed yit, if it hez sobered up. An' right here--Whoa!" They were at the crossing of Alum Creek, and Aconite halted to point out matters of interest. "Right hyar," said he, "or in this vicinity, took place one of the most curious things that ever happened to Old Jim Bridger. This crick is all alum, 'specially up at the head. Over yon"--pointing to the eastern bank of the Yellowstone with his whip--"is a stream named Sour Crick comin' in from the east. It's one or the other of these cricks, 'r one of the same kind, that Old Jim Bridger was obliged to go up f'r three days on his bronk, one time. It was a long trip. But on the way back he noticed that the crick had flooded the country, an' gone down ag'in, an' it seemed to him that he was makin' better time than goin' up. The hills that was low an' rounded when he went up, looked to him steeper, and higher, an' more clustered than they was. He didn't believe this could be, an' wondered how folks' minds acted when they was goin' crazy. Finely, he found his first camp, after he had been on the back track only half a day. He couldn't understand how he could've made the distance in four hours that it took two days to cover comin' up, and begun to get the Willies. He come to a bottom that had scattered trees on comin' up, and it was timbered so thick now that he couldn't go through it--but it wa'n't furder through than a hedge fence. Then he noticed that his bronk was hobblin', and observed that his hooves was drawed down to mere points, but good-shaped hoss's hooves all the same--they was just little, like the hooves of a toy hoss. At last he come to a place whar there had been two great boulders that had been forty rods apart when he went up--he knowed 'em by marks he had made on 'em in his explorin' around--an' danged if they wasn't jammed up agin' each other so's they touched both stirrups when he rode through between 'em. An' there he was back whar he started from in a little more'n half a day. He got to studyin' it over, an' found that this crick of alum water had over-flowed and jest puckered the scenery up, so that the distances to anywhere along its valley was shrunk up to most nothin'!" The Hired Man looked away off to the east, and mentioned that the fish-hawks were thick this morning. The Bride giggled a very slight giggle--but the others were impassive. They seemed to be absorbing some of the taciturnity of the Indian. In the meantime the river did begin to surprise them. After miles of deep quiet, its valley walls began to crowd together. "Somebody has been sprinkling alum on this scenery," suggested the Colonel--"eh, Aconite?" Aconite clucked solemnly to the team. The road was forced to the very edge of the bank. The river became mildly excited, as if in protest at the constriction. The road grew wilder and the landscape more rugged; and suddenly, the river, tortured by the pressure of the narrow trench provided for it, began raging and foaming, and sending up a hoarse roar, which grew upon them like an approaching tempest. The road trod first a narrow shelf above the terrific rapids, and then a bridge hung like a stretched rope over an awesome abyss. For half a mile the tumult below grew, until it seemed as if water could bear no more--when suddenly the river, just now ravening through a mere fifty-foot crack in the rocks, was gone. It turned abruptly away from the road, and fell away into space. They had passed the Upper Falls, where the Yellowstone, in a great spouting curve drops a sheer hundred and twelve feet in a curtain of white water, and sends up from the bottom of the cañon its hymn to liberty, in a cloud of mist. They were no longer the tired sight-seers, with jaded senses; for this was new. They felt the thrill of power. And as they passed on, promising themselves a return when camp should be made, they cried out in delight as the Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone displayed the stupendous sluiceway into which the river had fallen. At their feet the lovely Crystal Falls of Cascade Creek played exquisitely, almost unnoted. The roar of the falls followed them to the Cañon Hotel near which they camped, and leaving the pitching of the tents to the men, they walked to the brink of the cañon, and gazed upon the most perfect scene, perhaps, that water, in its flow to the sea, has anywhere sculptured and painted to delight the eye of man. The Yosemite has greater heights; the Colorado offers huger dimensions, the Niagara or the Victoria possess mightier cataracts; but nowhere else is there such a riot of color, such dizzy heights, such glooming verdure, and such mad waters, united in one surpassingly splendid scenic whole. They saw it all--that day, and subsequent days. They lingered as though unable to leave at all. They revisited the Upper Falls before seeing the lower, so as to view them in fairness and with no injustice to what seemed unsurpassable beauty. "And now," said the Bride, "take me to the greater falls." It was as if she had seen all but the Holy of Holies, and felt the exaltation suitable for higher things. They were amazed at the tremendous plunge of more than three hundred feet which their river (as they now called it) made at the Lower Falls--even to the foot of which they descended. They looked from Inspiration Point, from Artist's Point, from Lookout Point. They watched the stream dwarfed by distance to a trickle, and strangely silent, as it wandered at the bottom of the gorge. And at last the time came to leave. Early in the morning they were to start; and the last camp-fire was smoldering to ashes on that last night when the Artist found his audience collected, the demand for payment of his obligation presented; and without preface, save the statement that his was the story of a young fool, told his tale. THE RETURN OF JOHN SMITH THE STORY NARRATED BY THE ARTIST His name was John Smith, but he was not otherwise unworthy of notice. Out of her vast, tempestuous experience Blanche Slattery admitted this as she swept into the offices and looked down at the boy, noting the curl in his hair which speaks of the hidden vein of vanity, the wide blue eyes which told of a stratum of mysticism, the unsubdued brawn of hand and wrist which reminded her more of harvests than of field-meets, the mouth closely shut in purposeful attention to one Mr. Thompson's _Commentaries on the Law of Corporations_. He thought her the stenographer and kept his eyes on the page. She laid a card on his desk--a card at which he looked with some attention before rising to meet her eyes with his own, which dilated in a sort of horror, as she thought. Her cheek actually burned, though it grew no redder, as she turned aside with the crisp statement of her business. "I want to see Judge Thornton," she said. Without a word John Smith pushed a button and listened at a telephone. The judge took his time as usual, and John gazed at the Slattery person with the receiver pressed against his ear. She was powdered and painted; the full corsage of her dress glittered with passementerie; in her form the latest fad was exaggerated into a reminiscence of medieval torturing-devices. Through the enamel of her skin dark crescents showed under her great black eyes, the whites of which were mottled here and there with specks of red. The once sweet lips had lost their softness of curve with their vermeil tincture and had fallen into hard repose. John knew her profession and how she dominated her world of saddest hilarity--a world which through all mutations of time and institutions persists as on that day when Samson went to Gaza. He felt that there emanated from her a sort of authority, like a sinister manifestation of the atmosphere surrounding men of power and sway--as though by dark and devious ways this soul, too, had carved out a realm in which it darkly reigned. She wondered, when he spoke, whether the softness in his voice were for her or whether it were merely a thing of habit. "Judge Thornton is sorry that he can not see you this morning," he said. "Between ten and eleven to-morrow if it is convenient for you--" "All right," she said. "I'll be here at half-past ten. Good morning!" The perfume of her presence, the rustling of her departure, the husky depth of her voice haunting his memory, the vast vistas through which the mind of the country boy fared forth venturesomely, impelled by the new contacts of this town in which he had undertaken to scale the citadel of professional success--all these militated against the sober enticements of the law of corporations; and when Judge Thornton entered unheard, John Smith started as though detected in some offense. "The law," said the judge, launching the hoary quotation, "is a jealous mistress." John Smith blushed, but saw no lodgment for a denial where there was no accusation. He had been allowing his thoughts to go wool-gathering; but now he began questioning the judge on the doctrine of the rights of minority stock-holders. The judge condescended to a five-minute lecture which would have been costly had it been given for a client before the court. In the midst of the talk there bustled in a young man--a boy, in fact, who accosted the lawyer familiarly. "Just a minute, Judge. About that mass-meeting Tuesday--I'm Johnson of the _News_, you know. Will you speak?" "I don't think the readers of the _News_ are lying awake about it," answered the judge, looking at the boy amusedly. "But my present intentions go no further than to attend the meeting." "What about the movement for cheaper gas?" asked the reporter. "Will the meeting start anything?" "The meeting," said the judge, "will be a law unto itself." "Sure," replied Johnson of the _News_. "But a word from you as to the extortions of the gas company--" "Will be addressed to the meeting--if I have any," said the judge. "I--" "Oh, all right!" interrupted the boy. "That's what I wanted! Good-by!" John Smith's amazement at the boy's self-possession and ready, impudent effrontery, passed away in a visualization of Judge Thornton's big, strong figure at the meeting, fulminating against oppression--the oppression of to-day--as did Patrick Henry and James Otis against the wrongs of their times. Now, as of old, thought John Smith, the lawyer is a public officer, charged with public duties, alert to do battle with any tyrant or robber. He flushed with pleasure at this conception of the greatness of the profession. "As a science," said the judge, as though in answer to John's thought, "it's the greatest field of the intellect. It's the practice that's laborious and full of compromises." "Yes," said John Smith, lamenting the interrupted lecture on the rights of minority stock-holders. Judge Thornton had donned his coat and his hat. "I'm off for the day. Good day to you--oh, I almost forgot. Do you want to hear a paper on _King Lear_ to-night? Nellie thought you might. Poor paper--but you'll meet people, and that's a part of the game." "Oh, yes!" cried John. "I'd be glad to!" "Come to the house about eight," said the judge, "and go with Nellie and me." Ah, this was living! Why, at home he knew scarcely a person who had read more of Shakespeare than the quarrel scene in the Fifth Reader. Surely it was good fortune that had made his father and Judge Thornton playmates in boyhood. And to go with Nellie Thornton, too! "Paint out that sign!" he heard some one say. "And what goes in the place of it, sir?" asked the painter. "'Thornton & Smith,'" replied the judge's voice. "My son-in-law, Mr. Smith, has been taken into the firm." The stenographer saw exaltation in his face as he closed the safe, bade her good night and went home. As he sat beside Nellie that evening, he remembered the fancied colloquy between her father and the imaginary painter, and shuddered as he contemplated the possibility of thought-transference and of its ruinous potentialities. As a protection against telepathy he gave his whole attention to Judge Thornton's paper on _Lear_. The indescribable agony of the old king's frenzy, the whirling tempest of the tragedy in which he wandered to his doom clutched at the boy's heart. The wolfish Goneril and Regan, the sweet Cordelia, the bared gray head, the storm, the night--By some occult warning John Smith knew that Nellie was not pleased with his absorption, and that the discussion had begun. "This treatment is _so_ original," said the lady president. "Everybody must be full of questions. Now let us have a perfectly free discussion--don't wait to be called upon, please!" To John Smith the lady president seemed enthusiasm personified; yet only a few people rose, and these merely said how much they had enjoyed the paper. John Smith could see himself on his feet pouring forth comment and exposition, but he sat close, hoping that no adverse fate might direct the lady president's attention to him. The discussion was dragging; one could tell that from the increasing bubbliness of the lady president's enthusiasm as she strove conscientiously to fulfil her task of imposing culture upon society. "I'm sure there must be something more," she said. "Perhaps the most precious pearl of thought of the evening awaits just one more dive. Mrs. Brunson, can you not--" "I always feel presumptuous," said Mrs. Brunson, hoarsening her voice to the pitch she always adopted in public speaking, "when I differ from other commentators. But I also feel that the true critic must put himself in the place of the character under examination. Isn't there a good deal of justification for Goneril and Regan? I do not see, personally, how Lear could be supposed to need all those hundred knights, with their drinking and roistering and dogs and--and all that. I believe Lear's fate was of his own making, and--" John Smith, the unsophisticated, was startled. The unutterable fate of "the old, kind king"--could this Olympian circle hold such treason? "No, you unnatural hags, I will have such revenges on you both, That all the world shall--I will do such things-- What they are, yet I know not; but they shall be The terrors of the earth. You think I'll weep; No, I'll not weep: I have full cause of weeping; but this heart Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws, Or ere I'll weep. O, fool, I shall go mad!" The fiery denunciation rang in the boy's ears in answer to the words of this modern woman with her silks and plumes, standing here in a church and, in spite of the softening things of her heritage, sympathizing with these fierce sisters! Others rose and agreed with her. One read the words of Regan: "O, sir, you are old; Nature in you stands on the very verge Of her confine: you should be ruled and led By some discretion that discerns your state Better than you yourself." These, was the comment, were the really sane words regarding Lear. "Oh, well!" said Judge Thornton as John broke his fast and the abstinence of a lifetime in the parlor, upon the cakes and wine served by Nellie. "It didn't surprise me a bit. Mrs. Brunson thinks she'd do as Goneril and Regan did with their father--and she would. She'd avoid the little peccadilloes with Edmund and so remain technically virtuous--the best people are the worst, in some things, John, never forget that. It will be useful to remember it. And the worst are nearly as good as the best--come into the office when that Slattery person comes in the morning, and you'll see what I mean. I'll give you some papers to draw for her." * * * * * The Slattery person swept into the private office with a rustle of stiffest silks, reminding the youth of the corn-husks at home in shucking-time, leaving behind her a whiff of all the Orient. John Smith walked into her presence, palpitating as at the approach to something terrible and daunting and mystically fateful to such as himself--as a sailor might draw warily near the black magnetic rocks, which, approached too closely, would draw the very nails from his ship and dissolve his craft in the billows. When Judge Thornton remarked by way of left-handed introduction that Mr. Smith would draw the papers, the woman paid John no attention other than to bow and look straight before her. The youth felt conscious of the same shuddering admiration for her that he might have felt for some gaudy, bright-eyed serpent. "It's a simple matter, I guess," she said. "I want to make over some property so Abner Gibbs of Bloomington will get fifty dollars sure every month as long as he lives." "Not so very simple," said the judge, "but quite possible. But why don't you remit it to him yourself?" "I want to cinch it while I've the money. You see, it's this way. In--in my--business"--she looked into John Smith's girlish eyes and hesitated--"everything is uncertain. It's a feast or a famine. A wave of reform may strike the town to-morrow, and the lid goes on. The protection you pay for may be taken from you next week. You've no rights. You ain't human. So I fix the fifty a month for the old man while I can, see?" "Gibbs--Gibbs!" said the judge. "Relation of yours?" "In a way. Does it make any difference?" "It goes to the consideration," said the lawyer. "Love and affection, you know." "Well," said the Slattery person, "his son was my solid man--my side-partner--my husband. The last thing he said when he got his was, 'Blanche, old girl, take care of dad. You know his weakness. Don't let him starve!' And I ain't going to!" "His weakness?" queried the judge. "What did he mean?" "Drink," said the Slattery person. "It's in the blood. But he can't last long--and he's Jim's father!" She looked out of the window and dabbed with a lace handkerchief at her bright eyes, which she dared not wipe for fear of ruin to the appliqué complexion. Suddenly she had, to the mind of the susceptible John Smith, become a woman, with a woman's weakness and yearning over the departed Jim--of the blackness of whose life John had no means of taking the measure. He felt all at once that this person had shown feelings so like those he would have expected from his mother that it startled him. "Oh, we're all alike!" said the judge when she had gone. "These things are worth the lawyer's study. Human nature--human nature! We must get above it and study it! Just ponder on the contradictions in the bases of life involved in this Slattery person and Mrs. Brunson's feeling toward Lear. Here's a woman, that no one at the circle last night would touch with anything shorter than a ten-foot pole or lighter than a club, who is actually carrying out toward a drunkard in Bloomington a policy of love and humanity that would be beyond Mrs. Brunson. She'd say: 'Let him behave the way I say, and I'll take him in!' Any of us moral folks would do the same, too. No knights and roistering for us! Quite a study--eh, John?" John sat silent, far afloat from his moorings. The judge was too deep, too ethically acute for him. Perhaps by long association he, John Smith, might grow in moral height and mental grasp, so as to-- "I don't know," said Judge Thornton, "which is the worse--sale of the body, or barter of the soul. I don't mean that the body can be sold without the soul going with it, though Epictetus seems a case in point in favor of the separable-transaction theory; but if it can, sale of the soul would seem the more ruinous. I--" Judge Thornton was interrupted by the opening of the office door and the entrance of a brisk, capable-looking, Vandyke-bearded man who carried a cane and bore himself with an ease that seemed somehow at war with something of restraint--the ease on the surface, the embarrassment underneath, like a dead swell coming in against the breeze. There was a triumphant gleam in Judge Thornton's eyes, filmed at once with self-possession and inscrutable calm. "Come in, Mr. Avery," he said. "Just a word with you," said Mr. Avery, "in--" "Certainly!" said the judge. "Right in here, Mr. Avery." Mr. Avery passed into the private office. Judge Thornton remained for a word with John Smith. "This is the vice-president of the gas company," he said. "Don't mention his call and don't allow me to be disturbed." John Smith was triumphant. The very might of Thornton's ability and power had brought the gas company to its knees! This crucial stage of the gas fight thrust entirely out of his mind the deep moral and ethical consideration of the relations of the Slattery person to the discussion of Lear. The law, as of old, was a great profession. Would any of the Boone County folk be able to believe that he, John Smith, was so near the heart of big things as to sit here while Judge Thornton won this great bloodless victory for the people? Mr. Avery came out, cordially smiling upon Judge Thornton, who looked triumphant, pleased, uplifted. For a man who had just been throttled, Mr. Avery looked in rather good form. "I'll send all the papers over to you, Judge," he said. "And I'm mighty glad we've got together. It ought to have been done before; but you know how it is when you leave things to subordinates." "Oh, well," said the judge. "Of course I'm very glad; but the subordinates may have done the right thing. Maxwell and Wilson are good men, but local conditions may--" They went out into the anteroom, and John Smith heard them go away together. He felt disquieted. The appearances were so different from what he had expected. Not that it was in the least degree his affair, but-- The newsboy threw in the evening paper. John Smith looked at once for the account of the gas fight. "The anti-ordinance forces make no secret of their regret that Judge Thornton has seen fit to withdraw his promise to address the mass-meeting on Tuesday. Late this afternoon he told a _News_ representative that he would not attend, and that in his opinion a study of the gas question will convince any business man that the illuminant can not be delivered at the meter at anything short of the rate now paid here. This is regarded by some as a reversal of Judge Thornton's position; but, as a matter of fact, in all his public utterances the judge has suspended judgment on the merits of the question. The outlook for a successful movement can not be regarded as bright to-day." John Smith was looking at the paper as though it were some published blasphemy, some unspeakable profanation of all things good and holy, when Judge Thornton returned, whistling like a man at peace with the world and himself. The judge went into his private office and came out with a thin slip of paper folded in the palm of one smooth, strong hand. "Too bad you're not a full-fledged lawyer, John, instead of a beginner. I could use you a good deal. My practice is getting more extensive. I've just been retained as the general counsel of the gas company. Oh, all you have to do is to wait and make yourself indispensable! _You'll_ be getting plums like that one of these days. It's a great game! Good night." Good night, indeed! There was no thunder and lightning like that on the heath when Lear went mad; but, to a boy whose world had suddenly tumbled into pieces, the snow which drove softly against his cheek and slithered hissingly along the asphalt was a natural feature to dwell in his memory for ever. He wandered out through the area of high buildings, past the residences, to where the snow rattled on the corn-husks that reminded him of the Slattery person's silks. He had confused visions of Mrs. Brunson, dressed in Judge Thornton's decent high hat, flaunting gaudy garments and painting her face for indescribable drinking-bouts. He came back past the Thornton home, where he paused in the gray dawn and looked at one lace-curtained window to murmur "Good-by." At the door of the office-building where his days had been spent since his coming to town, he went in from force of habit and pushed the button for the elevator. No sound rewarded the effort, and he pushed again impatiently. Then he laughed as he noted the elevator-cages about him, all shut down, all empty, like cells from which the lunatic occupants had escaped. A woman who had begun scrubbing the marble steps looked at him curiously as his mirthless laugh sounded through the empty building. John Smith climbed flight after flight, opened the door which would never have "Thornton & Smith" on it, sat down at his desk and wrote: "DEAR FATHER: I am quite well. Everything looks favorable for my studies. Judge Thornton says he wants to do all he can for me, and I think he does; but I guess I am not cut out for a lawyer. It isn't quite what I thought it was. If you are still willing to send me to the state college and give me that agricultural course, I believe I'll go. There's something about the farm that's always there; and you know it's there. I'll be home as soon as I can pack up. "Your loving son, "JOHN SMITH." The party sat for a few moments motionless, as the Artist's voice became silent. Then the Colonel arose, bade them good night, and took the Artist's hand. "As a legal Slattery person," said he, "I thank you for the tale of the young fool. Good night!" CHAPTER XI The traveler who is wise, going from Grand Cañon Hotel to Tower Falls, will pass over Mount Washburn--and he starts early. He starts early that he may take with him the memory of the Upper and Lower Falls wrapped in the mist which they and night have wrought together, and which the nocturnal calm has perhaps left hanging wraith-like over the tremendous slot so filled with the roar of many waters. And he starts early, too, that he may make the ten-mile climb to Washburn's summit before the day-wind rises and sweeps the mountain's head with that gale which so tears the trees and twists them into a permanent declination, like vegetable dipping needles. The Seven Wonderers pursued the way of wisdom, and so they startled deer and elk from their night beds along the road to Cascade Creek; and began the climb of Washburn before sunrise. The tops of Dunraven and Hedges Peaks were rosy with morning when the rested cayuses pulled over the first rugged spurs of these peaks, and it was morning with the perfect trees, that stood like spires about them, morning with the columbine and the larkspur, the forget-me-nots and the asters, the flea-bane and the paint-brush--and all the wild flowers that enameled the wayside. For many days they had been in the heart of the Rockies, and yet the scenery had not seemed like real mountain scenery. Here for the first time, it became alpine. They threaded Dunraven Pass in the early forenoon, and took the high road straight over the summit. The team leaned hard into the squeaking collars, and frequent stops that the horses might breathe made the tourists glad. Every stop and every turn brought the eye new delights. The great lake came into view again, like a distant splash of silver; and as if for another good-by, away off to the south stood Mount Sheridan, with the three Tetons to the right of it, solemnly overlooking the Park of which they are a part to the eye only. "Oh! Oh!" said the Bride, gasping. "There's the Grand Cañon, like a crack in the floor!" "And," said the Poet, "there's the ghost of wasted power, mistily brooding over the falls, just as when we left." "Ghost of wasted power!" repeated the Groom. "That's not half bad, Poet." Another turn, and the Absarakas notched the eastern horizon; and the whole huge valley, with titanic slopes as its farther wall, and the zigzag trench of the cañon as its central drain, lay at their feet. The air was cooler, now, and the breath came short, as lungs labored for more of the rare atmosphere. At their feet lay green meadows and open parks, on which they might have expected to see grazing herds of shaggy black Highland cattle. Again a few starts and stops, and as if turned into view by machinery, came the northwest quarter of the Park, with all the country they had traversed--Electric Peak, in whose shadow they had entered upon their journey, Sepulcher Mountain, with its grave and the monuments at head and foot no longer to be made out, the valley of Carnelian Creek at their feet, and beyond it the jagged range, of which Prospect, Folsom and Storm Peaks are the culminations. "That's something you don't always see," said Aconite, pointing to something away off to the northwest. "That thing is the Devil's Slide." "And we saw his Inkstand yesterday," said the Hired Man. "He seems to've preëmpted a lot of this here region." "Well," remarked the Colonel sardonically, "isn't the Park dedicated to the enjoyment, as well as the benefit of the people?" "It started as 'Colter's Hell,'" suggested the Groom. "In Old Jim Bridger's time," said Aconite, "it rained fire up here in these hills one year." "I don't doubt it," assented the Artist. "And we've either seen or are promised a view of Hell Roaring Creek, Hell Broth Springs, Hell's Half Acre, Satan's Arbor, and a lot of other infernal real estate." "It's heavenly up _here_!" said the Bride. Once at the summit the Park lay under their eyes like a map--all these and a thousand other features to be taken in by merely turning about. The land was sown with every variety of all that is wild and beautiful and strange; the sky was filled with peaks. Here they had mountains to spare. They looked, and looked, and grew tired of looking--and then gazed again. The wind blew up and whipped their faces; and the sun was far past the meridian, passing south through the silvery splotch of Yellowstone Lake, when Aconite literally loaded them into the surrey, and drove down the mighty flanks of Washburn, northwardly, until he found a place where a fire could be builded and luncheon prepared. "You folks mustn't fergit," said he, "that scenery ain't so fillin' f'r them as looks it every little while, as it is f'r the tenderfoot." * * * * * The Professor was evidently pleased when his name came from the Stetson for the second time. He seemed to have something on his mind. Fully a mile short of Tower Falls, which they planned to visit in the early morning, they camped in dense forest, with a party of sight-seers just so far away as to seem neighborly without intrenching on privacy. "This is the best camp we've had," said the Bride, hooking her hands over her knee, and gazing into the fire. "Sure," said Billy. "Every camp is the best in life, for me, honey! Listen to the Professor, now--nobody heard!" THE FEDERAL IMP COMPANY THE PROFESSOR'S SECOND TALE I can not bring myself to think lightly of devils and imps. Neither can I believe that the consensus of the opinions of so many millions of mankind associating eternal punishment with fire can be neglected by the student of ethnology or theology. These are filled with haunts of devils--if the opinions of those who named them are worth anything. In addition to those localities which have been mentioned, I have in my notes the following: The Devil's Frying Pan, The Devil's Slide, The Devil's Kitchen, The Devil's Punch Bowl, The Devil's Broiler, The Devil's Bath Tub, The Devil's Den, The Devil's Workshop, The Devil's Stairway, The Devil's Caldron, The Devil's Well, The Devil's Elbow, The Devil's Thumb, and I know not how many of the members of His Satanic Majesty--all in this Park! And yet we say there is no devil, no brood of imps set upon the capture of human souls? I shall tell you a story that seems worth considering as evidence on the other side. It is the story of something that occurred when I was journeying by a branch railway to take the main line to Washington, after a visit to the Boggses' ancestral farm in Pennsylvania. I had been at Boston as an attendant upon the sessions of the National Teachers' Association; with what recognition of my own small ability as an educator I have already mentioned. I boarded an old-fashioned, branch-line sleeping-car, and there met the being whose utterances and actions have so impressed me that I shall never forget them, never. I feel that this creature, so casually met, may be one of the actors in a series of events of the most appalling character, and cosmic scope. When the porter came snooping about as if desiring to make up my berth, I went into the smoking compartment. I do not smoke; but it was the only place to go. I found there a person of striking appearance who told me the most remarkable story I ever heard in my life, and one which I feel it my duty to make public. He had before him a bottle of ready-mixed cocktails, a glass, and a newspaper. With his bags and the little card table on which he rested his elbows, he was occupying most of the compartment. I sidled in hesitatingly, in that unobtrusive way which I believe to be the unfailing mark of the retiring and scholastic mind, and for want of a place to sit down, I leaned upon the lavatory. He was gazing fixedly at the half-empty bottle, his sweeping black mustaches curling back past his ears, his huge grizzled eyebrows shot through with the gleam of his eyes. He looked so formidable that I confess I was daunted, and should have escaped to the vestibule; but he saw me, rose, and with extreme politeness began tossing aside baggage to make room. "I trust, Sir," said he with a capital S, "that you will pardon my occupancy of so much of a room in which your right is equal to mine! Be seated, I beg of you, Sir!" I sat down; partly because, when not aroused, I am of a submissive temperament; and partly because he had thrown the table and grips across the door. "Don't mention it," said I. "Thank you." "Permit me, Sir," said he, "to offer you a drink." "I hope you will excuse me," I replied, now slightly roused, for I abhor alcohol and its use. "I never drink!" "It is creditable to any man, Sir," said he, "to carry around with him a correct estimate of his weaknesses." This really aroused in me that indignation which sometimes renders me almost terrible; but his fixed and glittering gaze seemed to hold me back from making the protest which rose to my lips. "Permit me, Sir," said he, "to offer you a cigar." It was a strong-looking weed; but although I am not a smoker, I took and lighted it. He resumed his attention to his bottle and paper. "Will you be so kind," said he, breaking silence, "as to read that item as it appears to you?" "'Federal Improvement Company,'" I read. "'Organized under the laws of New Jersey, on January 4th, with a capital of $1,000,000. Charter powers very broad, taking in almost every field of business. The incorporators are understood to be New York men.'" "'Imp,'" said he, "isn't it? not 'Improvement.'" "I take it, sir," said I, "that the omission of the period is a printer's error, and that i-m-p means Improvement.'" He leaned forward, grasped my wrist and peered like a hypnotist into my face. "Just as badly mistaken," said he, "as if you had lost--as could be! It means 'Imp' just as it says 'Imp.' Have another drink!" This time I really did not feel free to refuse him. He seemed greatly pleased at my tasting. "Sit still," said he, "and I'll tell you the condemdest story you ever heard. That corporation means that we are now entering a governmental and sociological area of low pressure that will make the French Revolution look like a cipher with the rim rubbed out. In the end you'll be apt to have clearer views as to whether or not 'i-m-p' spells improvement'!" This he seemed to consider a very clever play upon words, and he sat for some time, laughing in the manner adopted by the stage villain in his moments of solitude. His Mephistophelean behavior, or something, made me giddy. His manner was quite calm, however, and after a while we lapsed back into the commonplace. "Ever read a story," said he, "named _The Bottle Imp_?" "Stevenson's _Bottle Imp_?" I exclaimed, glad to find a topic of common interest, and feeling that it could not be a dangerous thing to be shut into the same smoking compartment with any man who loved such things, no matter how Captain-Kiddish he might appear. "Why, yes, I have often read it. I am a teacher of literature and an admirer of Stevenson. He possesses--" "Who? Adlai?" he said. "Did he ever have it?" "I mean Robert Louis," said I. "He wrote it, you know." "Oh!" said my companion meditatively, "he did, did he? Wrote it, eh? It's as likely as not he did--I know _Adlai_. Met him once, when I was putting a bill through down at Springfield: nice man! Well about this Bottle Imp. You know the story tells how he was shut up in a bottle--the Imp was--and whoever owned it could have anything he ordered, just like the fellow with the lamp--" "Except long life!" said I, venturing to interrupt. "Of course, not that!" replied my strange traveling companion. "If the thing had been used to prolong life, where would the Imp come in? His side of the deal was to get a soul to torture. He couldn't be asked to give 'em length of days, you understand. It couldn't be expected." I had to admit that, from the Imp's standpoint, there was much force in this remark. "And that other clause in the contract that the owner could sell it," he went on. "That had to be in, or the Imp never could have found a man sucker enough to take the Bottle in the first place." The cases of Faust, and the man who had the Wild Ass's Skin seemed to me authorities against this statement; but I allowed the error to pass uncorrected. "On the other hand," he went on, "it was nothing more than fair to have that other clause in, providing that every seller must take less for it than he gave. Otherwise they'd have kept transferring it just before the owner croaked, and the Imp would never have got his victim. But with that rule in force the price just had to get down so low sometime that it couldn't get any lower, and the Imp would get his _quid pro quo_." "You speak," said I indignantly, for it horrified me to hear the loss of a soul spoken of in this light manner; "you speak like a veritable devil's advocate!" "When I've finished telling you of this Federal Imp Company that's just been chartered," said he, "you'll have to admit that there's at least one devil that's in need of the best advocate that money'll hire!" Here he gave one of his sardonic chuckles, long-continued and rumbling, and peered into the bottle of cocktails, as if the prospective client of the advocate referred to had been confined there. "When it doesn't cost anything," he added, "there's no harm in being fair, even with an Imp." I failed to come to the defense of my position, and he went on. "Well," said he, "do you remember the Bottle Imp's history that this man Stevenson gives us? Cæsar had it once, and wished himself clear up to the head of the Roman Empire. Charlemagne, Napoleon, and a good many of the fellows who had everything coming their way, owed their successes to the Bottle Imp, and their failures to selling out too soon: got scared when they got a headache, or on the eve of battle, or something like that. It was owned in South Africa, and Barney Barnato and Cecil Rhodes both had it. That accounts for the way _they_ got up in the world. Then the Bottle and Imp went to the Nob Hill millionaire who bought it for eighty dollars and sold it to Keawe the Kanaka for fifty. The price was getting dangerously low, now, and Keawe was mighty glad when he had wished himself into a fortune and got rid of the thing. Then, just as he was about to get married, he discovered that he had leprosy, hunted up the Bottle, which he found in the possession of a fellow who had all colors of money and insomnia, both of which he had acquired by purchasing the Bottle Imp for two cents, you remember, and was out looking for a transferee, and about on the verge of nervous prostration because he couldn't find one,--not at that price! Keawe became so desperate from the danger of going to the leper colony and the loss of his sweetheart, that he bought the Bottle for a cent, in the face of the fact that, so far as he knew, a cent was the smallest coin in the world, and the bargain, accordingly, cinched him as the Imp's peculiar property, for all eternity. I'll be--hanged--if I know whether to despise him for his foolishness or to admire him for his sand!" "You recall," said I, "that his wife directed his attention to the _centime_--" "Yes," said he, "she put him on. And they threw away one transfer by placing it on the market at four _centimes_. They might just as well have started it at five." "I don't see that," said I. "Because you haven't figured on it," said he. "You haven't been circulating in Imp circles lately, as I have, where these things are discussed. Listen! A _centime_ is the hundredth part of a franc, and a franc is about nineteen cents. A cent, therefore, is a fraction more than five _centimes_. But they started it at four, the chocolate-colored idiots, after getting rid of their leprosy! When I think how that Bottle Imp has been mismanaged, I am driven--" He illustrated that to which he was driven, by a gesture with the bottle on the table. He coughed, and took up his _résumé_ of the story. "Let that pass. They put it up at four _centimes_, and without Keawe's knowledge that she had anything to do with it, Keawe's wife got an old man to buy it, and she took it off his hands at three. The Kanaka soon found out that he was now carrying his eternal damnation in his wife's name, and he procured an old skipper or mate, or some such fellow in a state of intoxication, to buy it of her for two, on the agreement that he would take it again for one. Here they were, frittering away untold fortunes, each trying to go to perdition to save the other--it makes me tired! But the old bos'n or whatever he was, said he was going, you know where, anyhow, and figured that the Bottle was a good thing to take with him, and kept it. And there's where the Kanakas got out of a mighty tight place--" "And the Bottle disappeared and passed into history!" I broke in. I was really absorbed in the conversation, in spite of a slight vertigo, now that we had got into the field of literature where I felt at home. "Passed into--nothing!" he snorted. "Passed into the state of being the Whole Thing! Became It! Went on the road to the possession of the Federal Imp Company as the sole asset of the corporation. Folks'll see now pretty quick, whether it passed into history or not! Yes, I should say so!" "Who's got it now?" I whispered. I was so excited that I found myself sitting across the table, and us mingling our breaths like true conspirators. He had a good working majority in the breaths, however. "Who's the Charlemagne, the J. Cæsar, the Napoleon of the present day?" he whispered in reply, after looking furtively over his shoulder. "It don't need a Sherlock Holmes to tell that, does it?" "Not," said I, "not J. P.--" "No," said he, "It's John D.--" But before he finished the name he crept to the door and peered down the aisle, and then whispered it in my ear so sibilantly that I felt for a minute as I used to do when I got water in my ear when swimming. But I noticed it very little in my astonishment at the fact he had imparted to me. I felt that I was pale. He rose again and prowled about as if for eavesdroppers. I felt myself a Guy Fawkes, an Aaron Burr, an--well, anything covert and dangerous. "He bought this Bottle Imp," my companion went on, resuming his seat, "of the old sailing-master, or whatever he was--the man with the downward tendency and the jag. What J. D. wanted was power, just as Cæsar and Napoleon wanted it in their times. But the same kind of power wouldn't do. Armies were the tools of nations then; now they are the playthings. Now nations are the tools of money, and wealth runs the machine. This emperor of ours chose between having the colors dip as he went by, and owning the fellows that made 'em dip. He gave the grand-stand the go-by, and took the job of being the one to pull the string that turned on the current that moved the ruling force that controlled the power back of the power behind the throne. D'ye understand?" "It's a little complex," said I, "the way you state it, but--" "It'll all be clear in the morning," he said. "Anyway, that's what he chose. And what is he? The Emperor of Coin. He was a modest business man a few years ago. Suddenly the wealth of a continent began flowing into his control. It rolled in and rolled in, every coin making him stronger and stronger, until now the business of the world takes out insurance policies on his life and scans the reports of his health as if the very basis of society were John D. You-Know-Who. Emperors court his favor, and the financial world shakes when he walks. You don't think for a minute that this could be done by any natural means, do you?" "But the price of the bottle was one _centime_!" said I, my altruism coming uppermost once more. "One _centime_: and he is no longer young!" "Exactly," he answered, "and he's got to sell it, or go to--Well, he's just about got to sell it!" "But how?" I queried. "What coin is there smaller than a _centime_--what he paid?" "All been figured out," said he airily. "Who solved the puzzle I don't know; but I guess it was Senator Depew. Know what a mill is?" "A mill? Yes," said I. "A factory? A pugilistic encounter? A money of account?" "Yes," said he, "a 'money of account.' Never coined. One-tenth of a cent. _One-half a centime!_ Have you heard of Senator Aldrich's currency bill, S. F. 41144? It's got a clause in it providing for the coinage of the mill. And there's where I come in. I'm an unelected legislator--third house, you know. Let the constructive statesman bring in their little bills. I'm satisfied to put 'em through! S. F. 41144 is going to be put through, and old J. D.'ll sell his Bottle, Imp and all. Price, one mill. When this grip epidemic started in, he got a touch of it, and I'll state that a sick man feels a little nervous with that Imp in stock. So they wired for me. It's going to be a fight all right!" "Why, who will oppose the bill?" said I. "No one will know its object." "Lots of folks will oppose it," said he. "Every association of clergymen in the country is liable to turn up fighting it tooth and nail. There are too many small coins now for the interests of the people who depend on contribution boxes. The Sunday-schools will all be against it. And the street-car companies won't want the cent subdivided. Then it'll be hard to convince Joe Cannon; he's always looking for a nigger in the fence, and there _is_ one here, you understand. But the mill's going to be coined, all the same!" "But," said I, "who will buy the diabolical thing for a mill? If Keawe and his wife had such trouble selling it for a _centime_, it will be impossible to dispose of it for a mill, absolutely impossible! It's the irreducible minimum!" "I take it, Sir," said he, with a recurrence of the capital S, "that you are not engaged in what Senator Lodge in our conference last night called 'hot finance'?" "No," I admitted, for in spite of the orthoëpic error, I understood him. "No, I am not--exactly." "I inferred as much from your remark," said he. "When there's anything to be done, too large for individual power, or dangerous in its nature, or, let us say, repugnant to some back-number criminal law, or, as in this case, dangerous to the individual's soul's salvation, what do you do? Why you organize a corporation, if you know your business, and turn the whole thing over to it--and there you are. The Federal Imp Company will take over the Bottle Imp at the price of one mill. Mr. R. won't own it any more. His stock will be non-assessable, and all paid up by the transfer of the Imp, and there can't be any liability on it. He can retain control of it if he wants to--and you notice he generally wants to, and can laugh in the Imp's face. We've got all kinds of legal opinions on _that_. And whoever controls that company will rule the world. That Imp is the greatest corporate asset that ever existed. All that's needed is for the president of the corporation to wish for anything, or the board of directors to pass a resolution, and the thing asked for comes a-running. The railways, steamships, banks, factories, lands--everything worth having--are just as good as taken over. "Why it's the Universal Merger, the Trust of Trusts! The stock-holders of the Federal Imp Company will be the ruling class of the world, a perpetual aristocracy; and the man with fifty-one per cent. of the stock, or proxies for it, will be Emperor, Czar, Kaiser, Everything!" "But this is stupendous!" I exclaimed: for, being a student of political economy--"economics," they call it now--I at once perceived the significance of his statements. "This is terrible! It is revolution! It is the end of democracy! Can't it be stopped?" "M'h'm," said he quietly, evidently assenting to my rather excited statement; and then in reply to my question, he added with another chuckle, "Stop nothing! Federal injunction won't do it: presidential veto won't do it: nor calling out the militia: nor anything else. For the Imp controls the courts, the president, _and_ the army; and J. D. R. runs the Imp--fifty-one per cent. of the Imp stock! The socialists will go out campaigning in favor of the government's taking over the Federal Imp Company, but the Imp controls the government--and the socialists, too, when you come down to brass nails. Oh, it's a cinch, a timelock, leadpipe cinch! The stuff's off with everybody else, if we can get this bill through!" I was shocked into something like a cataleptic state, and sat dazed for a while. Either this or the strong cigar, or something, so affected me that, as he passed the flask to me for the fourth time, the smoking compartment seemed to swim about me as the train rolled thunderously onward through the night. To steady myself I gazed fixedly at my extraordinary fellow traveler as he sat, his now well-nigh empty bottle before him, peering into it from time to time as if for some potent servant of his own. Suddenly he leaned back and laughed more diabolically than ever. "Ha, ha, ha!" he roared. "You ought to have been with us last night in his library! Aldrich and Depew and some of the others were there, and we were checking over our list of sure votes in the House. The old man had the grip, as I said a while ago, and privately, I'll state I think he's scared stiff; for every fifteen minutes we got a bulletin from his doctors and messages from him to rush S. F. 41144 to its passage, regardless, or he'd accept a bid he'd got for the Bottle Imp from Sir Thomas Lipton, who wants it for some crazy scheme regarding lifting the Cup. All the while, there stood the Bottle with the Imp in it. When the grip news was coming in there was nothing doing with his Impship. But whenever we began discussing his transfer to the Company, the way business picked up in that bottle was a caution! Why, you could hear him stabbing the stopper with his tail, and grinding his horns against the sides of the bottle, and fighting like a weasel in a trap, in such a rage that the Bottle glowed like a red-hot iron. It was shameful! One of the lawyers took the horrors, and had to be taken home in a carriage--threw a conniption fit every block! Ha, ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha! Oh! it was great stuff!" "I don't see--" I began. "No? Don't you?" he queried, between the satanic chuckles. "Well, by George, the Imp saw, all right! He saw that modern financial ingenuity has found a way to flimflam the devil himself. He saw, Sir (here his voice assumed an oratorical orotund, and the capital S came in again), that our corporation lawyers have found a spoon long enough so that we can safely sup with Satan! Why, let me ask you once, what did the Imp go into the Bottle deal for in the first place? To get the aforesaid soul. You can see how he'd feel, now that the price is down to the last notch but one, to have it sold to a corporation, with no more soul than a rabbit! If--that--don't beat the--the devil, what does?" It all dawned upon me now. The reasonableness of the entire story appealed to me. I reached for the paper. There it was: "Federal Imp Company: Charter powers very broad, taking in almost the entire field of business." I looked at the lobbyist. He had dropped asleep with his head on the table beside the empty cocktail bottle. Again things seemed to swim, and I lapsed into a state of something like coma, from which I was aroused by some one shaking me by the shoulder. "Berth's ready, suh," said the porter, and passed to my companion. "Hyah's Devil's Gulch Sidin', suh," said he, rousing the slumbering lobbyist. "You get off, hyah, suh!" He passed out of the door with a Chesterfieldian bow and good night. I passed a sleepless and anxious night. The shock, or something, made me quite ill. I have not yet recovered my peace of mind. An effort which I made to place the matter before Doctor Byproduct, the president of the university of which I am an alumnus, led to such a stern reproof that I was forced to subside. The doctor said that the story was a libel upon a great and good man who had partially promised the university an endowment of ten millions of dollars. I am ready, however, to appear before any congressional committee which may be appointed to investigate the matter, or before the Interstate Commerce Commission, and to testify to the facts as above written, if it costs me my career. * * * * * "By gad, sir!" shouted the Colonel, breaking a long silence. "That infernal scheme would work!" The party went one by one to their tents. Soon no one but the Colonel and the Hired Man were left. "It sounds to me," remarked the Hired Man oracularly. CHAPTER XII "If these lovely little waterfalls," asserted the Bride, as she gazed upon the graceful Tower Falls, "could only have a fair chance, they would win fame--but they are overshadowed here--and they don't seem to care." Undine Falls, the Virginia Cascade, Mystic Falls, Kepler Cascade and Crystal Falls were in the mind of the Bride; but she might have mentioned many more, which in their incursion into the Park they had not seen. "This," said the Artist, "is no place to look at, and leave--it is a region for the artist to live in, to study, to make a part of his life, and finally, to understand." "I reckon," said the Hired Man, "that he'd git homesick f'r the corn country after a winter or so." Some competent judges think Tower Falls the most beautiful cascade on earth. Perhaps it is. Certainly no fault has ever been found with it as a picture. The Seven Wonderers spent a day near their pretty camp, resting, exploring, and renewing their acquaintance with the gorge of the Yellowstone, and forming that of the Needle, slender as a campanile, and three hundred feet high, marking the end of the Grand Cañon. Junction Butte, which they crossed the New Bridge to see, standing where many roads and rivers meet, seemed to the Bride another monument placed there by the gods with manifest intention. Why otherwise, she queried, could not the Needle be anywhere else, just as well as at the lower end of the Grand Cañon, or Junction Butte, in any other place as easily as in this cross-roads of highways and waters? "Why, indeed?" assented the Groom. "When you find a stone stuck on end at the corner of a parcel of land, you know that the stone was placed there to mark the corner, don't you?" "Reminds me of the providential way that rivers always run past cities, just where they are needed," carped the Colonel. "It isn't the same thing," said the Bride hotly. "You're getting mean, Colonel!" "Honing for the wrangle of the courts, Bride," said he. "I apologize." "Well," said Aconite, "there's a lot of bigger mysteries than them in these regions. Here's the Petrified Trees, over here in a ravine just off the road. If we don't see the petrified forest up Amethyst Crick way, maybe you'd like to look at these an' tell me how trees ever turned to stone that-a-way." There they stood, splintered by the elements, indubitably the stubs of trees, and unquestionably stone. The Professor began an explanation of the phenomenon of petrifaction, but nobody paid him any attention. "Old Jim Bridger," said Aconite, "discovered the Petrified Forest, up in the Lamar Valley; an' back in the mountains som'eres he found a place where the grass, birds an' everything else was petrified. Even a waterfall was petrified, an' stan's thar luk glass." "And the roar of it is petrified, and the songs of the birds, and the sunlight, and the birds singing their petrified songs in the petrified air, in which they are suspended for ever, by reason of the petrifaction of the force of gravity, which otherwise would bring them down!" Thus the Poet. Aconite looked at him in surprise. "Either you've been here before," said he, "or you've knowed some one that has been!" Time refused to serve for an exploration of the regions northeast of the New Bridge, though the road invited, and the Artist strongly argued for the trip. He wanted to see the Fossil Forest, and Amethyst Falls, Amethyst Creek, Amethyst Mountain and Specimen Ridge. But they turned their backs on these, on Soda Butte and its wonderful cañon, and that of the Lamar, on the piscatorial delights of Trout Lake, the mystery of Death Gulch, and the weirdnesses of the Hoodoo Region. The Bride and Groom were due to take train from Gardiner, and on to San Francisco. At Yancey's the Bride invited them to a parting dinner when they should reach Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, and when Aconite and the Hired Man failed to recognize themselves as included, the Bride assured them that the occasion would be ruined if they did not attend--and they promised. They reached Yancey's early in the afternoon, but the Bride was so enraptured by its beauties as a camping place that they made camp for the night, and drawing from the hat the name of Aconite as the entertainer for the evening, and the Poet for the dinner at the Hotel, each found himself feeling like one who has sent his luggage to the station, and awaits the carriage to bear him from home; or like sailors who have their dunnage ready for the dock at the end of the voyage. Their relationship had grown to something very like intimacy in something more than half a month. And they were about to go their several ways, like ships that pass in the night. It was their great good fortune to have so met and acted that every member of the party felt the companionship a tolerable thing to contemplate as a permanency--that should they be in any mysterious--though scarcely improbable--interposition of glass barrier, or fiery lake, or gulf filled with deadly vapor, shut into this marvelous region, they could be good friends and good fellows. And they listened respectfully as Aconite, under the trees at Yancey's, spun the yarn of his love affair with an Oberlin College girl, his connection with a Rosebud beef issue fraud, and the tragedy that resulted from the mixture thereof. THE JILTING OF MR. DRISCOLL ACONITE'S SECOND TALE This here doctrine of Mr. Witherspoon's about lettin' cattle range wide, has some arguments of a humane nature back of it. But his openin' of it up in the instructions f'r runnin' the ten thousand dogies, was the same kind of a miscue the Pawnees made when they laid fer an' roped the U.P. flyer--which Mr. Elkins described as a misapplication of sound theory to new an' unwonted conditions; as the rattler said when he swallered the lawn hose. Principles has their local habitats the same as live things; an' nothin' is worse f'r 'em than to turn 'em loose where they don't know the water-holes an' wind-breaks. Principles that'll lay on fat an' top the market in Boston, 'll queer the hull game in a country where playin' it is tangled up with Injuns, gold mines, 'r range-stuff. In the short-grass country, dogy principles are sure a source of loss, until they get hardened up so's to git out and rustle with the push. Now, this Humane-Society-Injun-Relief-Corps form of doin' good--harmless, you'd say, as we set here by the grub-wagon; but I swear to Godfrey's Gulch, the worst throw-down I ever got in a social way growed out of a combination of them two highly proper idees with a Oberlin College gal I met up to Chamberlain. This was the way of it: The "O. M." Mr. Elkins, I mean, of the J-Up-An'-Down Ranch, was called to Sioux Falls as a witness in a case of selling conversation-water to the Injuns, an' casually landed a juicy contract with Uncle Sam f'r supplyin' beef-issue cattle over on the Rosebud. The Pierre firm of politicians he outbid, havin' things framed up pretty good, as they thought, on the delivery, at once hops to him with a proposition to pay him I d'know how much money an' take it off his hands. Havin' a pongshong f'r doin' business on velvet, the O. M. snaps 'em up instantaneous, an' comes home to Wolf Nose Crick smilin' like he'd swallered the canary, an' sends me to Chamberlain to see that the contract is carried out as fer as proper. "Go up, Aconite," he says, "an' remember that while the J-Up-An'-Down outfit don't feel bound to demand any reforms, its interests must be protected. Any sort of cattle the Pierre crowd can make look like prime steers to the inspector, goes with us. But," he goes on, "our names and not theirs are on the contract. These inspectors," says he, "bein' picked out on their merits at Washington, to look after the interests of the gover'ment an' the noble red, it would be unpatriotic if not _Lee's Majesty_ to cavil at their judgment on steers, especially if it coincides with that of Senator Whaley's men at Pierre. Therefore, far be it from us to knock. But be leery that we don't get stuck for non-performance: which we can't afford. See?" It was purty plain to a man who'd matrickelated as night-wrangler, an' graduated as _it_ on the J-Up-An'-Down, an' I went heart-free an' conscience clear, seein' my duty perfectly plain. Now at Chamberlain was this Oberlin College lady, who had some kind of an inflamed conscience on the Injun question, an' was dead stuck on dumb animals an' their rights. She was one of the kind you don't see out here--blue eyes, you know, yellow hair, the kind of complexion that don't outlive many hot winds; an' she had lots of pitchers around her, of young folks in her classes, an' people with mortar-board hats an' black nighties, 'r striped sweaters. She was irrupting into the Injun question _via_ Chamberlain. Her thought was that the Injuns was really livin' correct's fur as they had a chance, an' that we orto copy their ways, instid of makin' them tag along after our'n. "Maybe that's so," says I, "but I've took the Keeley cure twice now, an' please excuse me!" She looked kinder dazed f'r a minute, an' then laffed, an' said somethin' about the sardonic humor of the frontier. I had been asked to give a exhibition of broncho bustin' at the ranch where she was stayin' an' she was agitatin' herself about the bronks' feelin's. I told her that it was just friendly rivalry between the puncher an' the bronk, an' how, out on the ranch, the gentle critters 'd come up an' hang around by the hour, a-nickerin' f'r some o' the gang to go out an' bust 'em. "It reminds me," she says, "of my brother's pointers begging to go hunting." "Same principle," says I. It seemed to ease her mind, an' feelin' as I did toward her, I wouldn't have her worry f'r anything. Then she found out that I was a graduate of the high school of Higgsville, Kansas, an' used to know what quadratics was, an' that my way of emitting the English language was just an acquired mannerism, like the hock-action of a string-halted hoss, an' she warmed up to me right smart, both then an' after, never askin' to see my diploma, an' begun interrogatin' me about the beef-issue, an' discussin' the Injun question like a lifelong friend. Whereat, I jumped the game. But, for all that, about this time I become subject to attacts of blue eyes an' yellow hair, accompanied by vertigo, blind-staggers, bots, ringin' in the ears--like low, confabulatin' talk, kinder interspersed with little bubbles of lafture--an' a sense o' guilt whenever I done anything under the canopy of heaven that I was used to doin'. Can yeh explain that, now? Why this Oberlin proposition should make me feel like a criminal jest because the pony grunted at the cinchin' o' the saddle, 'r because I lammed him f'r bitin' a piece out o' my thigh at the same time, goes too deep into mind science f'r Aconite Driscoll. O' course, a man under them succumstances is supposed to let up on cussin' an' not to listen to all kinds o' stories; but you understand, here I was, conscience-struck in a general an' hazy sort of way, mournin' over a dark an' bloody past, an' thinkin' joyfully of death. It was the condemnedest case I ever contracted, an' nothin' saved me to be a comfort to my friends but the distraction of the queer actions of that inspector. I never had given him a thought. Senator Whaley an' his grafters was supposed to arrange matters with him--an' I'm no corruptionist, anyway. Of course, the cattle wasn't quite up to export shippin' quality. The senator's gang had got together a collection of skips an' culls an' canners that was sure a fraud on the Injuns, who mostly uses the cattle issued to 'em the way some high-up civilized folks does hand-raised foxes--as a means of revortin' to predatory savagery, as Miss Ainsley says. Ainsley was her name--Gladys Ainsley--an' she lived som'eres around Toledo. The p'int is, that they chase 'em, with wild whoops an' yips over the undulatin' reservation until they can shoot 'em, an' I s'pose, sort of imagine, if Injuns have imaginations, that time has turned back'ard in her flight, an' the buffalo season is on ag'in. Whereas, these scandalous runts of steers an' old cow stuff was mostly too weak or too old to put up any sort of a bluff at speed. But, under my instructions, if they looked good to the inspector, they looked good to me; an' bein' sort of absent-minded with gal-stroke, I rested easy, as the feller said when the cyclone left him on top o' the church tower. The inspector was a new man, an' his queer actions consisted mostly of his showin' up ten days too soon, an' then drivin' 'r ridin' around the country lookin' at the stock before delivery. This looked suspicious; fer we s'posed it was all off but runnin' 'em through the gap once, twice 'r three times to be counted. Whaley's man comes to me one day, an' ast me what I thought of it. "I'm paid a princely salary," says I, "fer keepin' my thoughts to myself. This here's no case," I continued, "callin' f'r cerebration on my part. If thinkin's the game, it's your move. What's Senator Whaley in politics fer," says I, "if a obscure forty-a-month-an'-found puncher is to be called on to think on the doin's of a U.S. inspector? What's he in this fer at all, if we've got to think at this end of the lariat?" "He was talkin' about cavvs," said the feller, whose name was Reddy--a most ungrammatical cuss. "He was a-pokin' round with the contrack, a-speakin' about cavvs. Wun't you go an' talk to him?" "Not me!" says I, f'r the hull business disgusted me, an' my guilt come back over me shameful, with the eyes an' hair an' things plenteous. Whaley's man rode off, shakin' his head. Next day the inspector hunted me up. "Mr. Driscoll?" says he, f'r I'd been keepin' out of his way. "Correct," says I. "You represent the Elkins' interests in the matter of supplying for the issue, do you not?" says he. "In a kind of a sort of a way," says I, f'r I didn't care to admit too much till I see what he was up to. "In a kind of a sort of a way, mebbe I do. Why?" "Did you have anything to do," says he, unfoldin' a stiff piece of paper, "with procuring the cattle now in readiness for delivery?" "Hell, no!" I yells, an' then seein' my mistake, I jumped an' added: "You see, the top stuff f'r the Injun market is perduced up around Pierre. So we sub-contracted with this Pierre outfit to supply it. It's their funeral, not ours. It's good stock, ain't it?" "I am assured by Senator Whaley's private secretary," says he, "who is a classmate of mine, that there would be great dissatisfaction among the Indians, owing to certain tribal traditions and racial peculiarities--" "You bet!" says I, f'r he seemed to be gettin' wound up an' cast in it, "that's the exact situation!" "Would be dissatisfaction," he went on, "if cattle of the type which in the great markets is considered best, were furnished here. And I have great confidence in his judgment." "So've I," I says. "He's one of the judgmentiousest fellers you ever see." "So let that phase of the question pass," says he, "for the present. But there's a clause in this contract--" "Don't let that worry you," says I. "There's claws in all of 'em if you look close." He never cracked a smile, but unfolded it, and went on. "Here's a clause," says he, "calling for a hundred and fifty cows with calves at foot, for the dairy herd, I presume." "Cavvs at what?" says I. "At foot," says he, p'intin' at a spot along toward the bottom. "Right there!" "It's impossible!" says I. "They don't wear 'em that way." He studied over it quite a while, at that, an' I begun to think I'd won out, but at last he says: "That's the way it reads, an' while I shall not insist upon any particular relation of juxtaposition in offspring and dam-" "Whope!" says I, "back up an' come ag'in pardner." "It seems to be my duty to insist upon the one hundred and fifty cows and calves. Now the point is, I don't find any such description of creatures among the--the bunches in seeming readiness for delivery." "O!" says I, "that's what's eating yeh, is it? W'l don't worry any more. The cow kindergarten's furder up the river. We didn't want to put the tender little devils where they'd be tramped on by them monstrous big oxen you noticed around the corrals. This caff business is all right, trust us!" Whaley's man was waitin' fer me down at the saloon, an' when I told him about the cavvs, he shrunk into himself like a collapsed foot-ball, an' wilted. "Hain't yeh got 'em?" says I. "Huh!" says he, comin' out of it. "Don't be a dum fool, Aconite. This is the first I understood of it, an' whoever heared of an inspector readin' a contrack? And there ain't them many cavvs to be got by that time in all Dakoty. Le's hit the wires f'r instructions!" The telegrams runs something like this: To Senator Patrick Whaley, Washington, D. C.: Contract calls for a hundred and fifty cows with calves at foot. What shall I do? REDDY. * * * * * To Reddy Withers, Chamberlain, S. D.: Wire received. Calves at what? Explain, collect. WHALEY. * * * * * Hundred and fifty cows and calves. What do you advise? REDDY. * * * * * See inspector. WHALEY. * * * * * Won't do. Inspector wrong. REDDY. * * * * * Fix inspector or get calves. WHALEY. I'd got about the same kind of a telegram to Mr. Elkins, addin' that the Whaley crowd was up in the air. I sent it by Western Union to Sturgis, and then up Wolf Nose Crick by the Belle Fourche and Elsewhere Telephone Line. The O. M., as usual, cuts the melon with a word. His wire was as follows. Take first train Chicago. Call for letter Smith & Jones Commission merchants Union Stock Yards. ELKINS. This was sure an affliction on me, f'r I had fixed up a deal to go with Miss Ainsley an' her friends on a campin' trip, lastin' up to the day of the issue. She'd been readin' one of Hamlin Garland's books about a puncher who'd scooted through the British aristocracy, hittin' only the high places in a social way, on the strength of a gold prospect an' the diamond hitch to a mule-pack. She wanted to see the diamond hitch of all things. There orto be a law ag'inst novel-writin'. I got Reddy to learn me the diamond hitch so I could make good with Gladys, an' here was this mysterious caff expedition to the last place in the world, Chicago, a-yankin' me off by the night train. I went over to tell her about it. First, I thought I'd put on the clo'es I expected to wear to Chicago, a dandy fifteen dollar suit I got in town. An' then I saw how foolish this would be, an' brushed up my range clo'es, tied a new silk scarf in my soft roll collar, an' went. Here's my diagram of the hook-up: Any o' them mortar-board-hat, black-nightie fellers she had pitchers of, could probably afford fifteen dollar clay-worsteds; but it was a good gamblin' proposition that none of 'em could come in at the gate like a personally-conducted cyclone, bring up a-stannin' from a dead run to a dead stop's if they'd struck a stone wall, go clear from the bronk as he fetched up an' light like a centaur before her, with their sombrero in their hand. Don't light, you say? Wal, I mean as a centaur would light if he took a notion. You'd better take a hike down to see how the steed's gettin' along, Bill, 'r else subside about this Greek myth biz. It helps on with this story--not! The p'int is, that gals and fellers both like variety. To me, the "y" in her name, the floss in her hair, the kind of quivery lowness in her voice, the rustle of her dresses as she walked, the way she looked like the pitchers in the magazines an' talked like the stories in 'em, all corroborated to throw the hooks into me. An' I s'pose the nater's-nobleman gag went likewise with her. Subsekent happenin's--but I must hold that back. We sot in the hammock that night--the only time Aconite Driscoll ever was right up against the real thing in ladies' goods--an' she read me a piece about a Count Gibson a-shooting his lady-love's slanderers so full o' holes at a turnament that they wouldn't hold hazel-brush. They was one verse she hesitated over, an' skipped. I ast her if she thought she--as a supposed case--could live out in this dried-up-an'-blowed-away country; an' she said the matter had really never been placed before her in any such a way as to call for a decision on her part. Purty smooth, that! Then she read another piece that wound up with "Love is best!" from the same book, an' forgot to take her hand away when I sneaked up on it, an'--Gosh! talk about happiness: we never git anything o' quite that kind out here! I never knowed how I got to the train, 'r anything else ontil we was a-crossin' the Mississippi at North McGregor. Here the caff question ag'in unveiled its heejus front, to be mulled over till I reached the cowman's harbor in Chicago, the Exchange Building at the Yards, an' found Jim Elkins' instructions awaitin' me. They read: "DEAR ACONITE: "The Chicago stockyards are the nation's doorstep for bovine foundlings. New-born calves are a drug on the market there, owing to abuses in the shipping business which we won't just now take time to discuss, to say nothing about curing 'em. What is done with 'em is a mystery which may be solved some day; but that they perish in some miserable way is certain. Two carloads of them must perish on the Rosebud instead of in Packingtown--in the Sioux soup kettles, instead of the rendering tanks, if you can keep them alive to reach Chamberlain--and I have great confidence in your ability to perform this task imposed upon you by the carelessness of Senator Whaley's men either at Washington or at the range. I have heard that one or two raw eggs per day per calf will preserve them, and it looks reasonable. Smith and Jones will have them ready loaded for you for the next fast freight west. I hope you'll enjoy your trip!" Well, you may have listened to the plaintive beller of a single caff at weanin' time, 'r perhaps to the symferny that emanates from the pen of three 'r four. Furder'n this the experience of most don't go. Hence, I don't hope to give yeh any idee of the sound that eckered over northern Illinois from them two cars o' motherless waifs. The cry of the orphan smote the air in a kind of endless chain o' noise that at two blocks off sounded like a chorus of steam calliopes practicin' holts at about middle C. Nothin' like it had ever been heared of or done in Chicago, an' stockmen, an' reporters, an' sight-seers swarmed around wantin' to know what I was a-goin' to do with the foundlin's--an' I wa'nt in any position to be interviewed, with the Chicago papers due in Chamberlain before I was. I'd 'ave had a dozen scraps if it hadn't been f'r the fear of bein' arrested. But with the beef issue comin' on a-pacin', I had to pass up luxuries involvin' delay. I sot in the caboose, an object of the prurient curiosity of the train-crew ontil we got to Elgin 'r som'eres out there, where I contracted eight cases of eggs an' one of nervous prostration. Here it was I begun ministering to the wants of my travelin' orphan asylum. They was from four hours to as many days old when the accident of birth put 'em under my fosterin' care. I knowed that it was all poppy-cock givin' dairy 'r breedin' herds to them Injuns, an' that these would do as well f'r their uses, 'sif they had real mothers instid o' one as false as I felt. But to look upon 'em as they appeared in the cars, would 'ave give that consciencious but onsophisticated inspector the jimjams. Part of 'em was layin' down, an' the rest trampin' over 'em, an' every one swellin' the chorus o' blats that told o' hunger an' unhappiness. I took a basket of eggs an' went in among 'em, feelin' like a animal trainer in a circus parade as the Reubens gethered around the train, an' business houses closed f'r the show. I waited till the train pulled out, an' begun my career as nurse-maid-in-gineral. "How cruel!" said the Bride. "Thanks," said Aconite. "It shore was!" Ever try to feed a young caff? Ever notice how they faint with hunger before you begin, an' all at once develop the strength of a hoss when you stand over 'em an' try to hold their fool noses in the pail? Ever see a caff that couldn't stand alone, run gaily off with a two-hundred-an'-fifty-pound farmer, poisin' a drippin' pail on his nose, an' his countenance a geyser of milk? Well, then you can form some faint idee of the practical difficulty of inducin' a caff, all innercent o' the world an' its way o' takin' sustenance, to suck a raw egg. But nothin' but actual experience can impart any remote approach to a notion o' what it means to incorporate the fruit o' the nest with the bossy while bumpin' over the track of a northern Iowa railroad in a freight car, movin' at twenty-five miles an hour. I used up two cases of eggs before I was sure of havin' alleviated one pang of hunger, such was the scorn my kindly offers was rejected with. The result was astoundin'. Them cars swept through the country, their decks slippery with yaller gore, an' their lee scuppers runnin' bank-full, as the sailors say, with Tom-an'-Jerry an' egg shampoo. An' all the time went on that symferny of blats, risin' an' fallin' on the prairie breeze as we rolled from town to town, a thing to be gazed at an' listened to an' never forgot; to be side-tracked outside city limits f'r fear of the Board of Health and the S. P. C. A., an' me ostrichized by the very brakey in the caboose as bein' unfit f'r publication, an' forced to buy a mackintosh to wrap myself in before they'd let me lay down on their old seats to sleep. An' when my visions revorted back to the Oberlin people, I couldn't dream o' that yaller hair even, without its seemin' to float out, an' out, an' out into a sea of soft-boiled, in which her an' me was strugglin', to the howlin' of a tearin' tempest of blats. "And next when Aconite he rides," remarked the Poet, "may I be there to see!" * * * * * At last we arrived at Chamberlain. An' here's where the head-end collision of principles comes in, that I mentioned a while ago. Here's where Aconite Driscoll, who for days had been givin' a mother's care to two hundred cavvs, was condemned f'r cruelty; an' when he'd been strainin' every nerve an' disturbin' the egg market to keep from bustin' a set of concealed claws in a gover'ment contract, he was banished as an eggcessory to the crime of bilkin' poor Lo. This tradegy happens out west o' the river at the Issue House. Reddy had a string of wagons with hog-racks onto 'em waitin' in the switch-yards when we whistled in, an' the way we yanked them infants off the cars and trundled 'em over the pontoon bridge, an' hit the trail f'r the Issue House, was a high-class piece o' teamin'. We powdered across the country like the first batch of sooners at a reservation openin'. Out on the prairie was Reddy an' his punchers, slowly dribblin' the last of his steers into the delivery, too anxious f'r me an' the cavvs to be ashamed of their emaciation. Out behind a butte, he had concealed a bunch of cow-stuff he'd deppytized as mothers _pro tem_ to my waifs. The right way t've done, o' course, would've been to incorporated the two bunches in a unassumin' way at a remoter place, an' drove 'em gently in as much like cattle o' the same family circles as yeh could make 'em look. But they wan't time. The end-gates was jerked out, an' the wagons ongently emptied like upsettin' a sleigh comin' home from spellin' school. Most all the orphans could an' did walk, an' I was so tickled at this testimonial to the egg-cure f'r youthful weakness, that we had 'em half way to the place where the knives o' their owners-elect was a waitin' 'em when I looked around an' seen Miss Ainsley, an' the Chamberlain lady she was a-stayin' with, standin' where they must 'a' seen the way we mussed the cavvs hair up in gettin' of 'em on the ground. Gladys' eyes was a-blazin', an' they was a red spot in each cheek. She seemed sort o' pressin' forwards, like she wanted to mix it up, an' her lady friend was tryin' to head her off. I saw she didn't recognize me, an' I didn't thirst f'r recognition. I knew that love ain't so blind as she's been advertised, an' that I wouldn't never, no, never, be a nater's nobleman no more if she ever tumbled to the fact that the human omelette runnin' this caff business was A. Driscoll. It was only a case of sweet-gal-graduate palpitation o' the heart anyhow, an' needed the bronzed cheek, the droopin' mustache, the range clo'es, the deadly gun, the diamond hitch, and the centaur biz to keep it up to its wonted palp. An' what was it that was offered to the gaze o' this romantic piece o' calicker? Try to rearlize the truth in all its heejusness. Here was the aforementioned Driscoll arrayed in what was once an A1 fifteen-dollar suit of clay-worsteds, a good biled shirt, an' a new celluloid collar. But how changed from what had been but three short days ago the cinnersure of the eye of every sure-thing or conman on South Halsted Street? Seventy-five per cent. of eight cases of eggs had went billerin' over him. The shells of the same clung like barnacles to his apparel. His curlin' locks was matted an' mucilaged like he'd made a premature getaway from some liberal-minded shampooer; an' from under his beetlin' brows that looked like birds' nests from which broods had just hatched, glared eyes with vi'lence an' crime in every glance. Verily, Aconite was a beaut! An' here, a-comin' down upon him like the angel o' the Lord on the Assyrian host, come a starchy, lacey, filmy, ribbiny gal, that had onst let him hold her hand, by gum! her eyes burnin' with vengeance, an' that kinder corn-shucky rustlin' that emanated mysterious from her dress as she walked, a drawin' nearder an' nearder every breath. "Gladys! Gladys!" says her lady friend. An' as Gladys slowed up, she says, lower: "I wouldn't interfere in this if I were you, dear!" "I must!" says Gladys. "It's my duty! I can't permit dumb animals to be treated so without a protest. It is civic cowardice not to do disagreeable things for principle. I wish to speak to the man in charge, please!" I kep' minglin' with the herd, not carin' to have disagreeable things done to me for principle, but she cuts me out, an' says, says she, "Do you know that there's a law against cruelty to dumb animals?" "They ain't dumb," says I, trying to change my voice, an' officin' up to Reddy to shove 'em along to their fate while I held the foe in play. "When you've associated with these cute little cusses as long an' intermately as I have, ma'am, you'll know that they have a language an' an ellerquence all their own, that takes 'em out of the pervisions o' that law you speak of, an'--" Here's where I overplays my hand, an' lets her get onto the genuyne tones of my voice. I ortn't to done this, f'r she'd heared it at close range. An' to make a dead cinch out of a good gamblin' proposition, I looked her in the eyes. It was all off in a breath. She give a sort of gasp as if somethin' cold had hit her, an' went petrified, sort o' slow like. "Oh!" says she, turnin' her head to her friend. "I understand now what it was your husband was laughing about, and his odious jokes about fooling the inspector; and the bearing of the article he showed us in the Chicago paper! O, Mr. Driscoll, you to be so cruel; and to impose these poor motherless creatures upon those ignorant Indians, who are depending upon their living and becoming the nucleus of their pastoral industry; and the first step to a higher civilization! I don't wonder that you look guilty, or try--" "I don't!" says I, f'r I didn't, as fer as the stock was concerned. "It's these here eight cases of eggs that make me look so. It's a matter o' clo's. An' the reds'll never raise cattle," says I, "or anything but trouble, in God's world. An' if these cavvs had as many mothers as a Mormon kid," I went on, "they'd be no better f'r stew!" "Mr. Driscoll," says she, "don't ever speak to me again. I shall expose this matter to the inspector!" I tried to lift my hat, but it was stuck to my hair; an' the sight of me pullin' desperately at my own head had some effect on her, f'r she flees to her friend, actin' queer, but whuther laffin' 'r cryin' I couldn't say, an' I don't s'pose she could. It's immaterial anyway, the main p'int bein' that her friend's husband, a friend of the senator's, persuaded her from havin' us all pinched, when she found that Reddy'd beat her to it with the cavvs, the last one of which was expirin' under the squaws' hatchets as she hove in sight of the issue, an' the soup-kittles was all a-steamin. It reely was too late to do anything, I guess. That night I slep' in Oacoma jail. You naturally gravitate that way when fate has ground you about so fine, an' you begin to drift with the blizzard. I could 'a' stood the throw-down, but to be throwed down in a heap with eggs an' dirty clo'es, was too much. I took that suit an' made a bundle of it, an' out on the pontoon bridge I poked it into the Missouri with a pole. They're usin' the water to settle coffee with, I'm told, as fur down as Saint Joe, to this day--'s good as the whites of eggs, the cooks say. Then, havin' wired my resignation to Elkins, feelin' that the world held no vocation f'r me but the whoop-er-up business, I returned to the west side of the river as the only place suited to my talons, an' went forth to expel the eggs an' tender memories from my system with wetness. I broke jail in the mornin' but in a week I come to myself ag'in on the same ol' cot in the same prehistoric calaboose, an' Mr. Elkins was keepin' the flies off me with one o' them brushes made of a fringed newspaper tacked to a stick. "I've come," says he, "to take you home, Aconite." "All right," says I, "but can you fix it up with the authorities?" "I'm just going over to get your discharge," replies he. "They seem quite willing to part with you, now that they discover that none of your victims have anything deeper than flesh wounds. I've give bonds not to let you have your guns this side of the Stanley County line. I'll be back in half-an-hour with the horses." An' here's where I had a narrow escape. I wouldn't have faced her, the girl, you know, f'r no money; but as Jim went away, right at the door I seen through a little winder a shimmerin' of white and blue. It was her, herself! She must have met Jim before, f'r I heared her speak his name an' mine. He seemed to be perlitely arguin' with her; an' then she went away with him. I breathed easier to see her go; an' then set down an' cried like a baby. A feller'll do that easy, when he's been on a tear, you know. Jim an' I rode all that day sayin' never a word. But when we'd turned in that night I mentioned the matter. "Mr. Elkins," says I, "she sure has got it in f'r me pretty strong, to foller me to jail to jump on me!" "Aconite," says he, "I'll not deceive you. She has. Forget it!" * * * * * "Good night, Aconite," said the Bride. "I forgive you--and I think I know just how that girl felt toward you!" CHAPTER XIII The Bride's luggage came down from Gardiner, that she might be arrayed in her purple and fine linen--and silks, satins, ribbons, laces and fallals--for the dinner. And then her heart failed her; and she took counsel of the Groom. "Wear 'em!" said he. And she did. She floated into their banquet room in a costume that would have been the envy of every woman in the room if the function had been at one of the mansions along the Sheridan Road or the Lake Shore Drive, instead of at the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel. Aconite gasped, wrenched for a moment at his new silk neckerchief of the sort whose local color had won for him the Bride and Groom as fares, and bowed as he backed into a corner, where the Hired Man joined him. But after the Groom, the Artist and the Poet had made their appearance in their outing suits, and the Colonel in nothing more formal than a black frock, they gradually recovered, and were soon in the group which hung about the Bride paying homage to those twin gods of all our adoration, Beauty and Millinery. From soup to nuts they discussed their adventures, and re-trod their marvelous road. As the Bride rose to withdraw when the coffee and cigars were served, there was a loud adverse vivâ voce vote. The Bride must stay; she had stayed at the camp-fire, and she should not leave them in the banquet hall. So it was an unbroken circle that listened to the last of the Yellowstone Nights' tales, as it fell from the Poet's lips. The story was suggested, as most of its predecessors had been, by the events of the day. They had seen antelope and elk and deer as they drove in from Yancey's, and had talked of hunting adventures and accidents. The Poet began by speaking of the way in which men are sometimes the hunters, sometimes the hunted--quoting the lines from Hiawatha, "The fiery eyes of Pauguk, Glare upon him in the darkness." "Pauguk," said he, "is Death. And I will tell you the true story of how a man stalked Pauguk through the Minnesota woods." THE STALKING OF PAUGUK THE POET'S SECOND STORY This story has been told elsewhere, and has been blamed for its lack of a moral. People seem to expect one so to put to the rack the facts in the case that they will shriek out some well-tried message. Some have behaved as if they thought the moral here, but faulty. Colonel Loree of the Solar Selling Company, however, thinks the affair rich in the _hic-fabula-docet_ element. So does Williamson, soliciting-agent for the Mid-Continent Life; and so--emphatically so--does the Mid-Continent itself. Trudeau, the "breed" guide, has had so few years in which to turn it over in his slow-moving mind as he has lain rolled in his blankets while the snow sifted through the moaning pines, that he has not made up his mind. As for Foster Van Dorn and Gwendolyn, their opinions--but the story itself is not long. Williamson says that when he left Van Dorn's office with the application, he was as near walking on air as insurance men ever are. People had been so slow in writing their autographs on the dotted line--and here was a six-figure application, with a check. These, accompanied by the wide-eyed Williamson, exploded into the mid-December calm of the agency headquarters like the news of a Tonopah strike in the poker-playing ennui of a Poverty Flat. "What's that, Williamson?" ejaculated the cashier. "Five hundred--you don't mean _thousand_?" "Why, confound you," sneered Williamson, "look at that application!" "Let me see it!" panted the manager, bursting in. "'Foster G. Van Dorn;' half a million! Holy cat, Williamson; but this will put you and the agency in the lead, for--Is he good for it, Williamson?" "Why don't you see that _check_?" inquired the lofty solicitor. "I tell you, fellows, there's always a way to land any man. Why, for a year, I've--by George! I'm forgetting to send Doctor Watson over to make the examination. Van Dorn's going on a hunting trip, and we've got to hustle, and get him nailed before he goes!" The manager stood by Williamson during the telephoning. "Who is Mr. Van Dorn?" he asked, as the agent hung up the receiver. "President of the Kosmos Chemical Company," replied Williamson. "Son-in-law and enemy of Colonel Loree of the Solar Selling Company, you know," said the cashier. "Oh-h-h-h!" replied the manager, as if recalling something. "I remember the 'romance' in the newspapers; but I thought the young fellow was poor. Fixed it up with the colonel, I suppose--the usual thing." "Not on your life!" replied Williamson. "Loree would kill him if he dared--old aristocrat, you know; but Van Dorn's too smart for him. You remember he was an engineer for Loree's company, and met the daughter on some inspection trip. Love at first sight--moonlight on the mountains--runaway and wedding on the sly--father's curse--turned out to starve, and all that." "I remember that," answered the manager; "but it doesn't seem to lead logically up to this application." "Well," went on Williamson, "Van Dorn turns up with a company formed to work a deposit of the sal-ammoniac, or asphaltum, or whatever the stuff the Solar Company had cornered may be, and began trust-busting. The colonel swore the new deposit really belonged to his company because Van Dorn found it while in his employ, and called him all sorts of a scoundrel. But the young man's gone on, all the same, floating his company, and flying high." "I heard that Loree was sure to ruin him," interposed the cashier. "Ruin nothing!" said Williamson. "It was a case of the whale and the swordfish. Van Dorn's got him licked--why, don't you see that check!" "That does look like success," replied the manager. "I hope his strenuous life hasn't hurt his health--Watson is fussy about hearts and lungs." "That's the least of my troubles," replied Williamson. "Van Dorn's an athlete, and a first-class risk. There's nothing the matter with Van Dorn!" * * * * * And yet, Trudeau the guide, far up in the Minnesota woods, looked at the young man and wondered if there wasn't something the matter with Van Dorn. They had come by the old "tote-road" to the deserted lumber-camp armed and equipped to hunt deer. Most young men in Van Dorn's situation were keen-eyed, eager for the trail and the chase--at least until tamed by weariness. But Van Dorn was like a somnambulist. Once Trudeau had left him behind on the road, and on retracing his steps to find him, had discovered him standing by the path, gazing at nothing, his lips slowly moving as if repeating something under his breath--and he had started as if in fright at Trudeau's hail. He had been careful to give Trudeau his card, and admonished him to keep it; but he seemed careless of all opportunities of following up the acquaintance. Most of these city hunters were anxious to talk; but what troubled Trudeau, was the manner in which Van Dorn sat by the fire, wrote in a book from time to time, and gazed into the flames. Now that they had reached the old camp, Trudeau hoped that actual hunting would bring to his man's eyes the fire of interest in the thing he had come so far to enjoy. "I'll fix up camp," said he. "If you like, you hunt. Big par_tie_ Chicageau men ove' by lake--keep othe' way." "How far to their camp?" asked the fire-gazer. "'Bout two mile," answered Trudeau. "Chicago men?" queried Van Dorn. "How many?" "Mebbe ten," answered Trudeau; "mebbe six. She have car on track down at depot. Big man--come ev'ry wintaire. Jacques Lacroix guide heem, Colonel Lorie--big man!" "Colonel Loree! From Chicago?" cried Van Dorn. "_Oui_, yes!" replied Trudeau. "You know heem?" "No," said Van Dorn. The man who did not know Loree went to his knapsack and took out a jacket made of deerskin tanned with the hair on. It was lined with red flannel. He held it up and looked at it fixedly. Trudeau started as it met his gaze, and he came up to Van Dorn and pointed to the garment. "You wear zat?" asked he. "Yes," said the other. "It is a good warm jacket." "A man w'at wear deerskin zhaquette," said Trudeau, "in zese wood', in shoo_ting_ sea_sone_, sartaine go home in wooden ove'coat--sure's hell!" "Oh, I guess there's no danger!" said Van Dorn, his lips parting with a mirthless smile. "_Non?_" queried Trudeau. "You ben in zese wood' before?" "Oh, yes!" replied Van Dorn. "Lots of times!" "Zen you know!" asserted Trudeau. "Zen you are zho_king_ wiz me. Zese huntaire sink brown cloth coat, gray coat, black coat, anysing zat move--she sink zem every time a deer. Las' wintaire lots men killed for deer. Pete St. Cyr's boy kill deer, hang heem in tree, and nex' morning take heem on back an' tote. A city huntaire see deer-hide wiz hair on mov_ing_, an him! sof'-nose bullet go thoo deer, thoo Pete St. Cyr's boy's head! Zat zhaquette damn-fool thing!" "It goes either side out," said the hunter. "I can turn it, you know." "_I_ turn heem! _I_ turn heem!" said Trudeau, suiting the action to the word. "Red is bettaire, by gosh--in zese wood'." Trudeau watched his companion as he made his laborious way through the cut-over chaos until he disappeared; but he did not see him pause when out of sight of camp, and turn toward the lake. "I would rather it were any one else," said Van Dorn, as if to something that walked by his side; "but what difference does it make? Why not let him finish his work?" The sheer difficulty of the country brought back to Van Dorn something like the forester's alertness. The lust for lumber had ravaged the spiry forest, and left, inextricably tangled, the wrecks of the noble trees--forest maidens whose beauty had been their destruction; only the crooked and ugly having escaped. So deep and complex was the wreckage that it seemed like the spilikins of a giants' game of jack-straws--gnarled logs, limbs like _chevaux-de-frise_, saplings and underbrush growing up through chaos. And spread over and sifted through all was the snow, as light as down. Van Dorn must have told the truth as to his former visits; for he went on like one used to this terrible maze. Nowhere could he take three steps straight forward: it was always climbing up, or leaping down, or going around, or crawling under. Here thick leaves upheld the snow, and in the dry pine straw on the ground he could hear the forest mice rustle and scurry. There a field was smoothed over by the snow, as a trap is hidden by sand, covering débris just high enough to imperil the limbs of the pedestrian. Yonder was a tamarack swamp too thick to be pierced: and everywhere it was over and under and up and down, and desperately hard, for miles and miles, with no place for repose. He gazed away over the strange abomination of desolation, blindly reflecting upon man's way of coming, doing his worst, and passing on with sated appetite, leaving ruin--as he had done here. He wondered why that tall tract of virgin pine over at the right had been allowed to escape, standing against the sky like a black wall, spiked with tall rampikes. He stared fixedly at the snow, the blue shadows, the black pines, somnambulistic again. To the something that seemed to walk by his side, he spoke of these things, as if it had been visible. Strange actions, strange thoughts for the president of the Kosmos Chemical Company, the great antagonist of Loree of the Solar Selling Company, the David to Loree's Goliath, the swordfish to the colonel's whale! Think, however, of David, with all the stones spent against the giant's buckler, and cowering within the lethal reach of that spear like a weaver's beam; or of the swordfish, with broken weapon, hunted to the uttermost black depths by the oncoming silent yawning destruction. And in Van Dorn's case, the enemy was an avenger as well as a natural foe. Poor little Kosmos Chemical Company with its big name, its great deposits of "a prime commercial necessity"--see prospectus--its dependence on railways with which Loree was on terms of which Van Dorn never dreamed, its old and wily foe, skilled to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, raging for the loss of his ewe lamb, whom, notwithstanding his giantship, he had loved for twenty years to Van Dorn's two, and had dreamed dreams and committed crimes for! Not very strange after all, perhaps, that the man went on muttering somnambulistically. They say that one gripped in the lion's mouth is numb and filled with delusions. Suddenly, putting life into the dead scene, a bounding form came into view past a thicket--a noble buck with many-pointed antlers, moving with great deliberate leaps among the giants' spilikins. The delicate, glassy hoofs, the slender, brittle limbs and horns, fragile as china, seemed courting destruction in those terrific entanglements. Yet the beautiful animal, as if by some magic levitation, rose lightly from a perilous crevice between two logs, turned smoothly in mid-leap, struck the four pipe-stem limbs into the only safe landing-place, shot thence with arrowy spring between two bayonet-like branches to another foothold, and so on and on, every rod of progress a miracle. He stopped, snuffing the air. Instinctively the hunter leveled his rifle; and then came into view the buck's retinue, two does, one large and matronly, the other a last summer's fawn. The sleep-walker's eyes softened, the rifle swung downward from the point-blank aim, snapping a twig in its descent, and with swift, mighty bounds, the deer vanished, putting a clump of bushes between themselves and the foe with unerring strategy. "Toward the lake," said the hunter. "I'll follow!" There came the report of a distant rifle from the direction of the deer's flight, then another and another. Some one was working a repeater rapidly. The hunter stopped, took off his deerskin jacket, turned it hair side out, and like a soldier making for the firing-line, pressed forward after the deer. Trudeau saw his man halt on the edge of the firelight that evening, turn his jacket, and come weariedly into camp. Trudeau sat and thought that night, while the other slept heavily. Next morning there was a raging storm, and the guide was puzzled that the hunter refused to brave its dangers. It was not sure then that monsieur desired the wooden overcoat? He told Van Dorn many stories of death in these storms, and watched for the effect. "W'en man is lost in bliz_zaird_," said Trudeau, "ze vidow mus' wait an' wait, an' mebbe nevaire know if he is vidow or not." "It would be better," said the other reflectively, "to have the proof ample--ample!" Trudeau, pondering over this, watched his charge putting names in a book opposite amounts in figures; but he did not know that here was the lost fortune of an old aunt, there the savings of a college chum. Van Dorn looked them over calmly as if it had been a bills-payable sheet to be paid in the morning. Then the strange pleasure-hunter began writing a letter to a sweetheart to whom he seemed to be able to say only that he loved her better than life, that she must try to love his memory, and to train up the baby to respect his name, that the right thing is not always easy to discern, that sometimes one has only a choice of evils, that when a man has made a mess of it which he can straighten out by stepping off the stage, he might as well do it--and that he had had his share of happiness since she had been with him anyhow, and was far ahead of the game! Trudeau could not know what a foolish, silly, tragic letter it was, this product of insane commercialism. He thought life and the woods enough, and wondered at the shaking of the man's shoulders, and was amazed to see the tears dropping through his fingers as he bowed his head upon his hands--a man with a fifty-dollar sleeping-bag! Over at the Loree headquarters there were roaring fires, fresh venison, a skilful chef, jolly companions, and the perfection of camp-life. The storm cleared. That strong old hunter, Loree, declaring that his business was to stalk deer, marched off in the solitary quest which is the only thing that brings the haunch to the spit in the Minnesota cut-over forest. He was bristly bearded, keen of eye and vigorous, handled his gun cannily, and craftily negotiated the fallen and tangled timbers, his glance sweeping every open vista for game. There was no time to think of anything but the making of his way, and of the chase. Troubles and triumphs retired to the outer verge of consciousness. Primeval problems claimed his thoughts, and the primeval man rose to meet them. It was in this ancient and effective wise that he had sharpened his weapons, set his snares, and hunted down Foster Van Dorn--and left him in the money-jungle, apparently unhurt, but really smitten to the heart and staggering to his fall. It was the Loree way. As an old hunter, he knew just where his shaft had struck, and how long the quarry could endure the hemorrhage. Had he not said that the fellow should be made to rue the Loree displeasure? Like a flash these half-thoughts became no thoughts, as a dark blotch caught his eye, far off on the snow, beyond a little thicket. "What is that?" he said to himself. It is a little hard to say, but the matter is worth looking into. Just the color of a deer! Just where a deer would rest! We must work up the wind a little closer, for some men are so foolish as to wear those duns and browns; but that!--that is a deer's coat. It won't do to jump him and trust a shot as he goes--those firs will hide him at the first leap. A long shot at a standing target--there! He moved! There's not a second to lose! A long shot, truly; but that graceful rifle thinks nothing of half a mile. There are many intervening bushes and saplings; but the steel-jacketed bullet would kill on the farther side of the thickest pine, and even a soft-nosed one will cut cleanly to this mark. The colonel's practised left hand immovably supported the barrel; the colonel's keen eye through the carefully adjusted sights saw plainly the blotch of deerskin down the little glade; and the colonel's steady forefinger confidently pressed the lightly-set trigger. Spat! The colonel felt the rifleman's delicious certitude that his bullet had found its mark, threw in another shell, and stood tensely ready to try the bisecting of the smitten deer's first agonized bound--but the blur of fur just stirred a little, and slipped down out of sight. Panting in the killer's frenzy, Loree struggled over the débris to reach his game. How oddly the deer had fallen! Heart, or brain, likely; as it went down like a log. Here was the thicket, and on the other side--yes, a patch of reddened snow, and the body of--no, not a deer, but a man, dead, it seemed, clad in a deerskin jacket, a rifle by his side and in his hand a note-book full of figures, its pages all stained and crumpled! There was a shout in the far distance, but Loree heard it not. He knew his solitude, and never looked for aid. The white strangeness of the face of the man he had shot overcame the sense of something familiar in it; and the colonel, after a moment's scrutiny of it, addressed himself frantically to the stanching of the blood. A deep groan seemed to warrant hope; and stooping beneath the body Loree took it up and began bearing it toward the camp. He had an overwhelming consciousness of the terrible task before him; but the realization of the human life dashed out, some home blasted, some infinity of woe, and the bare chance of rescue rolled sickeningly over him, and he set his teeth and attacked the task like an incarnate will. Logs and boughs and dead-wood held him back; countless obstacles exhausted him. He felt like crying out in agony as he realized that his age was telling against him. He felt strangely tender at this meeting with death in its simple and more merciful form. He clenched his teeth hard, felt his heart swell as if to burst, his lungs labor in agonized heavings--and when Trudeau the guide overtook him, he found him a frenzied man, covered with dark streaks and splashes of blood, unconquerably hurling upon his impossible task his last reserves of strength, with all that iron resolution with which he had beaten down resistance in his long battle with a relentless world. "For God's sake," he panted hoarsely, "help me get him to camp! We've got a doctor there!" * * * * * "How's the colonel?" said the doctor, when he had done all he could for the colonel's victim. "Knocked all to pieces," answered a young man. "Wants to know if we've found out who the man is." Colonel Loree was interrogating Trudeau; surprised that he did not know the name of the wounded man. "_Non_," answered Trudeau, "she tell me his name, and give me _carte_, but I lose heem an' forget firs' day. Remember wood', remember trail, remember face ver' well--but name; she I forget. She write lettaire an' cry, an' all time put fig' in book. Zis is heem; mebbe _she_ tell name!" The smutched names were strange to the colonel; but on another page there were some inexplicable references to Kosmos Chemical affairs; and on the cover were dim initials that looked like "F. V. D." "I know something is wrong," went on Trudeau; "for I tell her it ben _très dangéreuse_ to wear deerskin zhaquette in zese wood' in shoo_ting_ sea_sone_. I turn zhaquette red out. She go toward your camp. I watch. I see her turn heem hair out. I tell you, messieurs, zat man want to go home in wooden ove'coat. She have hungaire to die." "Here's a letter we found in his pocket," said the young man. "Look at it, Colonel." The colonel looked, saw his daughter's name, remembered the familiar look in the white, agonized, pitiful face; and saw the whole situation as by some baleful flash-light. "Good God! Good God!" he cried. "It's Van Dorn! Get things ready to carry him in his bed to the car--quick, Johnson! And get to the wire as soon as you can. Have Tibbals bring Gwennie--Mrs. Van Dorn--to Duluth. Wire the hospital there! You know what's needed--look after things right, Johnson, for I think--I think--I'm going mad, old man!" * * * * * Mrs. Van Dorn ran into her father's arms in the hospital anteroom. Through mazes of frenzied anxiety she felt an epoch open in her life with that embrace from the father who had put her out of his life for ever, as they thought. "Dear, dear papa!" she whispered, "let me go to Foster, quick!" "Not just now, Gwennie, little girl," said he, patting her shoulder. "He's asleep. Did you bring the--the baby?" "No, no! I thought--but Foster?" cried Gwendolyn. "Will he--will he--" "He'll live, by Heaven!" cried the colonel. "I fired one fool for hinting that he wouldn't; and now they're all sure he'll pull through. Why, he's got to live, Gwennie!" The colonel reached for his handkerchief, much hampered by Gwendolyn's arms. "And when he's well," said he, "I want your help--in a business way. I'm too old to fight a man like Foster. He's got me down, Gwennie--beaten me to earth. If he won't come in with me, it's all up with the Solar. He's a fine fellow, Gwen--I--like him, you know--but he don't know how hard he hits. You'll help your old dad, won't you, Gwennie?" To this point had the appeal of concrete, piteous need brought Colonel Loree, the ferocious, whose heart had never once softened while he did so much more cruel things than the mere shooting of Van Dorn. It broke Gwendolyn's heart afresh. "Oh, don't papa!" she cried. "I can't sta-stand it! He sha'n't use his strength against you! I'll be on your side. He's generous, papa--he wanted to name baby Loree--and, oh, I must go to him, papa! I can't wait!" * * * * * The cigars had burned out, and the coffee cups and their saucers were messy with ashes. The Hired Man nodded in his chair. Aconite was slowly formulating some comment on the Poet's story--when the Bride rose. "You've all been awfully nice to me," said she, "and I feel almost weepy when I think of never seeing you again. So I am not going to think of it. I shall hope to meet you," said she to Aconite, "in the stories which my friends bring back from the Park--for I'm going to tell them all to come, and to ride with you, and learn about Old Jim Bridger. And you, Mr. Bill, I shall see when I pass through the corn country sometime--I feel sure of it. You will be plowing corn, and I shall wave my hand from the car window as you look up at the speeding train. I shall always see a friend in every plowman now. And you, sir, I shall watch for in the Poet's Corner of the Hall of Fame; and you in the Artist's alcove. And, Colonel, I know I shall see you sometime, for every one passes through Omaha sooner or later. Good-by, and God bless you, every one! We have made a continued story of our trip--for that, thanks to all, and now let us close the book, after writing THE END 
40710	----	[Illustration: Carter H. Harrison] A SUMMER'S OUTING AND THE OLD MAN'S STORY BY CARTER H. HARRISON. CHICAGO: DIBBLE PUBLISHING CO. 1891. COPYRIGHTED BY DIBBLE PUBLISHING CO 1891 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED G. M. D. LIBBY PRINTER AND ELECTROTYPER CHICAGO Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Dialect spellings, contractions and discrepancies have been retained. The cover of this book was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain. PREFACE. "A Summer's Outing" comprises letters hastily written while the writer was on the wing. Being printed in the CHICAGO TRIBUNE they were favorably received by many friends, who have urged their being published in book form, as a thing now needed by would-be tourists to the Yellowstone National Park and to Alaska. To this end they were revised and somewhat enlarged. If the little book be of little value, the apology is offered that it will be, too, of little cost. "The Old Man's Story" is thrown in as filling between two covers, and need not be read except by those who find an idle hour hard to dispose of. CARTER H. HARRISON. 231 Ashland Boulevard, Chicago, May 6th, 1891. TABLE OF CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. The Writer Indulges in Fancies 9 LETTER I. A Run Through Pretty Wisconsin and Minnesota--Beautiful St. Paul --Jealousy Between Twin Cities--An Indignant St. Paul Democrat and a Careless Seattle Man--Dakota and the Dirty Missouri River --A Dissertation on Waste of Land and Destruction of Trees--The Bad Lands--The Yellowstone River--Gateway to National Park and its Guardian Eagle 15 LETTER II. The National Park, "The Wonderland of the Globe"--The Home of the Evil One--Steam Vents--Geysers--The Grotto--The Giant--The Bee-Hive--The Castle and Old Faithful in the Upper Geyser Basin 27 LETTER III. Mammoth Hot Springs--A Wonderful Formation--The White Elephant --A Theory Accounting for the Hot Springs and Geysers--Mud Geysers--Marvelous Colorings of Some Pools 45 LETTER IV. How to do the Park--Hotels and Vehicles--My Innocents--Charming Scenery--Natural Meadows--Wild Animals--Beautiful Flowers--Debts to the Devil--Camp Life and Fishing--Wonderful Canyon--Painted Rocks--Glorious Waterfalls--Nature Grotesque and Beautiful 59 LETTER V. We Leave the Park Satisfied--Helena--Its Gold Bearing Foundations--Broadwater--A Magnificent Natatorium--A Wild Ride Through Town--Crossing the Rockies--Spokane--A Busy Town --Midnight Picnic--Fine Agricultural Country--Sage Bush a Blessing--Picturesque Run Over the Cascades--Acres of Malt Liquors--Tacoma--A Startling Vision of Mt. Renier (Tacoma) --Washington, a Great State 82 LETTER VI. Thriving and Picturesque Seattle--Two Curious Meetings-- Victoria and its Flowers--Esquimault and the Warspite--Two Broken Hearted Girls--Charming Sail on the Island Sea-- Picturesque Mountains--Growth of Alaska--Whales and their Sports--Native Alaskans--Their Homes, Habits, Food, Feasts and Wild Music--Baskets and Blankets--Salmon Fisheries--Mines and Dogs 102 LETTER VII. Steaming up the Ice-Packed Fiords and Channels of the Arctic Country owned by Uncle Sam--Salmon Canneries--Canoe Building by Natives--Ascent of the "Muir" Glacier, an Ice Cliff 300 Feet High--Fantastic Ice Formations at Takou--Summer and Winter Climates--Impudent Crows and Oratorical Ravens 134 LETTER VIII. Vancouver--A Picturesque, Growing City--A Run over the Canadian Pacific--Magnificent Scenery met with from the Start--A Glorious Ride--Fraser River Glutted with Salmon--A Never-Tiring View from Glacier House, Four Thousand Feet above the Sea--Rugged, Precipitous Grandeur of the Selkirks and Rockies--Natural Beauties of Banff--Reflections at the "Soo." 162 CHAPTER IX. The St. Mary's River--Charming Scenery--The Locality for Summer Homes--An Episode--Mackinaw--Grand Rapids, a Beautiful City 196 PART II. "THE OLD MAN'S STORY." The Secret of the Big Rock 203 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. CARTER H. HARRISON, (Frontispiece.) TERRACE, MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS Page 16 THE GIANT, UPPER GEYSER BASIN " 32 JUPITER TERRACE, MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS " 48 MAP ILLUSTRATING GEYSER ACTIONS " 54 THE GROTTO, UPPER GEYSER BASIN " 64 THE BISCUIT BOWL, UPPER BASIN " 80 OLD FAITHFUL " 90 GRAND CANYON " 112 INTRODUCTION. THE WRITER INDULGES IN FANCIES. The summer outing is a fad--a necessity of fashion. Reigning beauty bares its brow on ocean waves and climbs mountain heights, courting sun-kisses. Jaunty sailor hats and narrow visored caps are donned, that the amber burning of the summer's excursion may be displayed at early assemblies of heraldic Four Hundred. Anglo-mania has taught at least one good lesson--that the russet cheek of romping health is more kiss-tempting than the rose-in-cream of beauty lolling on downy cushions. Elite closes its massive doors and draws down front window shades; Paterfamilias sweats in his struggle to force a balance to the credit side, and mothers and daughters sit at back windows in glare of sunlight, wooing sun-beams, while notices of "Out of town" are already placarded on front stoops. The summer outing is urged by honest doctors, with the admission that change of air and scene is oftentimes worth more than all the nostrums doled out over apothecaries' counters. Motion is nature's first inexorable law. A tiny drop of water is pressed between two plates of glass, apparently rendering the slightest motion impossible. The microscope fills it with scores or hundreds of beings full of life and energy, disporting in pleasure or waging deadly battle. Around us and about us nothing is still. The grasses grow in refreshing green and spring beneath the feet, but ere the wane of day, wither and crackle under the tread. Flowers bloom in beauty and within the hour fade in ugliness. The rock ribs of earth expand and contract under tidal commands of sun and moon, and continents lift from, or are sinking beneath briny oceans. The gleaming sun, so rounded in glowing calmness as he gently circles across the vaulted sky, is a raging mass of countless millions boiling, dashing, burning jets, in any one of which fiery Vesuvius would be lost as a dim spark. Myriads of starry spheres flecking the midnight sky, are mighty suns tortured by inconceivable convulsions. Far off beyond them the telescopic lens dips up from limitless space countless suns, all boiling, roaring and raging in unending, monstrous motion. Motion evolves change. Change goes on everywhere, declares science! Change, cries orthodoxy, is universal save in One--the everlasting, unchangeable maker of all things! Orthodoxy tells us that man--man the soul--, was made in God's image and was by him pronounced good. The "good" in God's eye must be perfect. We know that man--the soul man--grows--the perfect therefore grows and perfection becomes more perfect. A Paradox! So is that mathematical truth that two parallel lines drawn towards infinity, meet. The deathless soul emanates from God. Is the question irreverent? May not the Eternal who started then and keeps all things moving and growing--may not He grow in perfection? May not the Omnipotent become more potent, the Omniscient wiser? Being given to digression, I give this in advance to save the reader one later on. In obedience to fashion's and nature's law, I would put myself in motion and would seek change. I will take an "outing" in this summer of A.D. 1890. My daughter, a school girl, will go with me. The old and those growing old, should attach to themselves the young. Old tree trunks in tropical climes wrap themselves in thrifty growing vines. The green mantle wards off the sun's hot rays, and prevents to some extent too rapid evaporation. Gray-haired grandfathers oftentimes delight to promenade with toddling grandchildren. This is good for momentary divertissement, but for steady regimen it is a mistake. Callow childhood furnishes not to the old, proper companionship. The unfledged but intense vitality of the one may sap the slow-running current of the other, and reduce it to the lower level--to second childhood. Age should tie to itself ripening youth. Then heart and springtide is absorbed by the older, and ripe experience given to the younger in exchange. We resolve to _do_ the Yellowstone National Park, by way of the Northern Pacific Railroad, thence onward to Puget Sound and Alaska to return by the Canadian Pacific. We hope for health, pleasure and brain food. I shall write of our goings and comings, that my friends at home may through our eyes feel that they are voyaging with us. A beautiful or grand scene is doubly enjoyed when one feels he may through a letter have hundreds see what he sees and as he sees. They become his companions and hold sweet communion with him, though thousands of miles may lie between them. This is sympathy, and sympathy makes the joy of life. The tete-a-tete between lovers "beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale," is delicious. But not more sweet than the communion between the orator and the mighty audience which he sways and bends at will. He holds a tete-a-tete with each of his listeners. Byron swore he "loved not the world, nor the world him." The bard was self-deceived. He wrote that he might win the sympathy of millions. Bayard Taylor told the writer once that he wrote from an irresistible impulse. His warm, generous nature yearned for the sympathy of a reading world. I shall write that a few hundred may see through my eyes--may feel when my heart beats, and for a few brief hours may be in sympathy with me. Some one possibly may sneer "Cacoethes Scribendi." Catch the retort, "Honi soit qui Mal-y-pense." LETTER I. A RUN THROUGH PRETTY WISCONSIN AND MINNESOTA. BEAUTIFUL ST. PAUL. JEALOUSY BETWEEN TWIN CITIES. AN INDIGNANT ST. PAUL DEMOCRAT AND A CARELESS SEATTLE MAN. DAKOTA AND THE DIRTY MISSOURI RIVER. A DISSERTATION ON WASTE OF LAND AND DESTRUCTION OF TREES. THE BAD LANDS. THE YELLOWSTONE RIVER. GATEWAY TO NATIONAL PARK AND ITS GUARDIAN EAGLE. MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS, July 17, 1890. We left Chicago by the Wisconsin Central Railroad for St. Paul. From the beginning the run was interesting, especially to one who remembers what the country was thirty-five years ago--an almost flat prairie of tangled grass, in which the water was held as in a morass, promising but little to the ambitious earth-tiller. I recall a remark of Senator Douglas when the future of our flat prairies was being discussed in my presence thirty-five years ago: "People do not realize that the drainage problem is being now daily solved. The leader of a herd of cattle browsing the prairies, is an engineer, and his followers faithful laborers in making ditches. When going to and from their grazing grounds, they march in line and tread down paths which make no mean drains. The cattle of Illinois are annually lifting millions of acres out of the swamp into good arable lands." As soon as the Des Plaines was crossed, good farms began, and comfortable farm houses were always in sight; oats bent and waved in light green, and corn stood sturdy in emerald, where a third of a century ago, even in July, a pedestrian was compelled to step from ant-hill to ant-hill to keep his ankles dry. Copses of young wood relieved the monotony of too much flatness, and in a few hours after our start, pretty lakes shimmered in the sinking sun light, and sweetly homelike villas were ever in view. We crossed the Wisconsin line, and hill and vale or gentle undulations with wooded heights and flowing streams, and villages and saw mills enlivened the journey. [Illustration: TERRACES AT MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS. (SEE PAGE 16.)] In the distant future when population shall become abundant, and tasteful homesteads shall replace somewhat speculative shanties, few countries of the world will be more pleasingly rural than southern and middle Wisconsin. Books should be carried by the tourist in his trunk, and newspapers should be religiously discarded throughout the run to St. Paul. The country traversed opens many a pleasing page during the summer months, and glowing pictures are spread before him on nature's living canvass. He unfortunately loses much when the curtain of night is drawn over God's own impartial book: the book which never misleads if carefully read and studiously digested. At St. Paul we had some hours to ride about the pretty town, before boarding the Northern Pacific railroad for our long journey to Puget's Sound. This great road has the singular characteristic of having double termini at each end, and between each of the twins there exists a feud rarely found except between cities engaged in actual war with each other. Athens and Sparta hated each other not as do St. Paul and Minneapolis. Just now, owing to the taking of the census, there is blood in the eye of every St. Paulite. An elderly gentleman introduced himself to me the other day at the station. After a while he said: "It is a ---- shame the way the United States is treating St. Paul. I am a Democrat, sir, and can stand a little stuffing of the ballot-box, but I draw the line there. I can't stand the stuffing of the census. We are willing to concede to Minneapolis 10,000 more population than we have, but Harrison ought to be turned out of office for running it up to 40,000. It is a fraud, sir--a miserable Republican fraud. We will be revenged, sir, and will show our teeth next fall and don't you forget it." I sympathized with him and felt like marching to Washington at once to send my cousin Ben back to Hoosierdom. In the National Park I saw at four different hotels the names of Mr. ---- Mrs. ---- and two little blanks. There was a bracket after the names, but the writer had evidently forgotten to write in the address. The name preceding his on the first book was from Boston. At the next place the preceding person was from New York, and again from some other city. The fourth day at dinner I was introduced to the head of the family. He was from Seattle. I asked him why it was he had not put in his address, declaring I would tell it on him at Tacoma. "Good Heavens!" he exclaimed, "have I done that?" He rushed back to the register and wrote "Seattle" as big as a John Hancock. The next time we met in a crowd, I twitted him about the thing. He then declared he must have left out the address instinctively from a natural aversion to being known to come from any spot so close to Tacoma. Considerable jealousy of St. Paul on the part of her twin city is natural, for it is a beautiful town. Its residences on the hills are very fine, and their locations lovely beyond those of all but few cities. The entire town was very clean, and in the hill portion bright and cheerful. The residences are generally surrounded by considerable grounds, filled with trees and shrubbery, in much variety and in luxuriant growth. The young girl with me fell so completely in love with the clean, pretty place, that she declared, if she ever got married it would be to a St. Paul man. The run through Minnesota is as if through a great park. Everything is green and bright. Copse, meadow and field are as fresh as a May morning. The natural location of frequent wooded clumps, of prairie openings and of lakes, could hardly be improved by a landscape engineer. We passed the great wheat fields of Dakota at night, but I thought there was far less of barren plain and alkali patches as we approached the Missouri river, than I saw there seven years ago. How different the feelings with which we approached the Missouri from those experienced as we drew near the Mississippi! One cannot get up a feeling of respect for the tortuous, treacherous, muddy, long and snake-like ditch. One takes off his hat to the Father of Waters, but feels like kicking, if he had a place to kick, this lengthy, nasty thing. No one can see any real use for it, except as a tributary to and feeder of the Mississippi. It has not and never had a placid infancy. Several of its upper feeders are beautiful, clear, rapid, purling streams. But some of them apparently without rhyme or reason suddenly become flowing mud. One dashes on a train along one and wishes he could alight to cast a fly for a speckled beauty. The road takes a turn around a mountain spur, and lo! the crystal stream has become liquid mud, to prepare itself, I suppose, for the mucky thing it will soon join. Possibly and probably, these transformations are owing to a miner's camp and a placer washing on the other side of the spur. North Dakota has not become settled along the railroad, after quitting the great wheat belt, as I expected. Farms are very scattered, and when seen are small and wear an air of neglect. Yet the native plains are cheerful looking and roll off in green undulations. The Forest Commissioners, if there be any, must find some more hardy species of trees than those now used to enable them to grow brakes for warding off the winds and blizzards. The railroad people have planted many trees, but they do not thrive. They seem alive about the roots, but dead after reaching one or two feet. Possibly a blanket of snow lies about the roots in winter and protects them; but the alternation of cold and hot winds apparently kills the sap as it rises higher up. Government should inaugurate a thorough system of arboriculture, inviting and encouraging a real science. The Socialists say the Nation should own the land. To a certain degree the Socialists are right. The fountain of land ownership is in the Government. It should maintain such ownership to a certain extent throughout all time. "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof." Government is and should be the lord of the domain, and should never part with such control as may prevent private owners from destroying the land which is to be the heritage of the people to the latest generation. It should forbid and prevent a waste of land. To this end it should force the husbanding of all resources for the improvement of that which is to support the people for all time. No private owner should be allowed to destroy wantonly that which comes from mother earth. What comes from the bosom of the land, and is not essential to feed and maintain the cultivator, should be given back to it. A man should be fined who burns manure. Man should not cut timber to such an extent as to reduce a necessary rainfall. Commissioners should determine from scientific data, how much of forest is necessary in fixed districts of the country, and when so determined no one should be permitted to cut a tree without replacing it by a young one. In the Old World millions of acres are now worthless which once supported teeming populations; all because they have been denuded of trees. Nearly all European countries as well as India are now, and have been for some years, earnestly endeavoring to check this evil. Commissioners of Forestry, earnest and educated men, have been appointed. Schools of Forestry are fostered by the state. The betterment has been so marked, that the ordinary pleasure seeking traveler sees a wonderful change between visits separated by twenty or thirty years. America has countless millions of acres scarcely capable of supporting a human being, which could be made to wave in cereals or grow fat in edible roots, if only trees were grown to induce a somewhat regular rainfall. The arid plains of the Great West have the richest of known soils, if a little human sweat mixed with water in sufficient quantity could be kneaded into it. Government as the lord paramount of its domain, should force the growing of trees and should prevent the destruction of timber wherever the same is necessary to keep up or improve the land. It has parted with the title to the soil, but still retains the power to use it for its own support. It levies and collects taxes from lands as the paramount owner. The same power exists to prevent the waste of that from which its taxes spring or through which its people may live. "No one is a man," says the Arab maxim, "until he has planted a tree, dug a well, and grown a boy." The nation is an aggregation of men and should follow the maxim. The statesman who devises a good system of taxation is entitled to the praises of all men, but he is but a pigmy to the man who turns sterile deserts into places of plenty, or who make many blades of grass grow where now only one springs up. I am ready to bow down before the man who will maintain and improve the soil of our Eastern States, or will shower over the West a copious rainfall. Bismark was disappointing. It has not improved as could have been expected since we helped to lay the corner-stone of its Capitol seven years ago. BAD LANDS OR "MAUVAISES TERRES." The "bad lands" are as God-forsaken in appearance as they were years since. There the very earth has been burned and the Evil One seems to have set his foot-print on every rod. Men do live in them, but more blessed is he who dies in genial surroundings! What a hold upon us has the love of life! So short and such a bauble! How worthless when robbed, as it must be in this bleak tract, of every concomitant of the joyful! Only the All-powerful can reclaim the soil of the "bad lands," and not until a cataclysm has carried it 1,000 fathoms beneath the sea, will it be fitted for sunlight and ready to support life. It has been burned up with the coals and lignites which underlaid the surface. After striking the Yellowstone Valley the ride westward becomes pretty. The mountains are bold, with fine outlines, often lifting in picturesque precipices from the water's edge. Great strata of coal are frequently seen stretching in level parallel lines for considerable distances. Snow appears in seams and gorges on the loftiest heights. While not offering as grand displays as are seen in one or two points of other across-the-continent roads, the Northern Pacific presents more varied scenery, and far more that is pleasing and restful to the eye, than any other except the Canadian Pacific. To most travelers much of the scenery of the Northern Pacific until Helena is reached is monotonous. But to one disposed to be a student of nature and a lover of its varied forms, many instructive lessons can be conned from the car window, and many pleasing pictures hastily enjoyed. The Yellowstone, along whose banks the road runs for three hundred and fifty miles, is a cheerful stream. When first reached it is muddy, but after the mouths of one or two large affluents have been passed it becomes clear and limpid. Its flow is almost constantly rapid and turbulent. But few still reaches are seen, and these are rarely over a mile or so in length. On one or the other bank considerable mountains lift from the water's edge, in lofty, clear-cut precipices. The upper slopes have but few trees and rarely any clumps or masses, but offer much variety in earth coloring. Light brown, sometimes deepening into chocolate, is the dominant tone. There are frequent stretches of yellow, here and there flecked with patches or bands of venetian red. This latter sometimes takes a tint so bright as to merit being called vermilion. At Livingston, a thousand and odd miles from St. Paul, we left the Northern Pacific, and by a narrow-gauge road continued up the Yellowstone, fifty-one miles to Cinnabar; thence by Park coaches, wagonettes and surreys, eight miles along the wildly rushing Gardner river, and through a narrow defile hemmed in by lofty precipices beneath frowning crags--the gateway to the park--to the "Mammoth Hot Springs." Near the gateway on a lofty pinnacled rock, so slender as at first to be mistaken for the trunk of a huge tree, sat an eagle upon its eyrie, keeping watch and ward over the entrance to the people's pleasure ground. The bird's nest is built of loose sticks laid upon the rocky point, which is not broader than a good-sized tree stump. How it withstands the dash of storms, which often rage through the narrow pass, is a marvel. Yet it has been there for many years, and each year sends forth its young brood. I regret to say this eagle is not the genuine American screamer, which so grandly spreads its wings upon the daddy's dollar, but is the great white-headed fish-hawk. He is easily mistaken for the bald eagle, but is smaller and a somewhat sociable bird, building his home near by those of others of his species. The true eagle is sullen and solitary, and chooses his eyrie many miles removed from his fellows. Indeed he spurns all fellowship with his kind. All tourists delight to look at the "Devils Slide" in the Gardner canyon. It is from five to six hundred feet high, a few feet broad, between thin slate dykes, and as smooth as a toboggan way. As there is no record that the father of lies was acquainted with sand paper, there is a peculiar pleasure in imagining the grinding away of the seat of his trousers, while he was polishing down his coaching slide. In spite of what the preachers say, there is no doubt that man, woman and child hate the devil, and are delighted by any evidence of annoyance to him. LETTER II. THE NATIONAL PARK, "THE WONDERLAND OF THE GLOBE." THE HOME OF THE EVIL ONE. STEAM VENTS. GEYSERS. THE GROTTO. THE GIANT. THE BEE HIVE. THE CASTLE AND OLD FAITHFUL IN THE UPPER GEYSER BASIN. GRAND CANYON, YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, July 22. American dudes of both sexes wandering about the world have been sorely perplexed because Uncle Sam has had no huge ships of war with which to display his grandeur in foreign ports, and no embassadorial residences in which Yankee heels may air themselves to advantage. When foreigners have made allusion to our poverty in this regard, and their own wealth of splendor, we have been forced to fall back upon the Yankee's retort, "Yes; but you hain't got no Niagary." Luckily but few of those who taunted us were aware that Niagara was simply located _in_ the United States but did not belong to it. But now we can throw back at the effete denizens of other lands "the wonderland of the globe,"--The Yellowstone National Park--in which there is more of the marvelous sports of nature than exists in the entire outer world besides. We can tell them of these wonders, and can then say that these marvels are the Nation's, and that this park of over 3,500 square miles is maintained by the Nation for the people, for their amusement and recreation. It is to be regretted that more of the surplus which has been lying idle in the treasury vaults has not been expended to enable the people to better enjoy their wealth of wonders. The people may read of their treasures; they may see folios of illustrations, but no one can comprehend them without seeing them; no pen pictures can bring them before the eye of one who has not been here; no photograph can display their forms and then dye them in their wondrous colors; no painter can spread them upon canvas, for he would at once be put down as an artistic liar. The simple truth is an exaggeration, and a precise copy is a distortion of nature's molds. THE EVIL SPIRIT'S ABODE. No wonder the Indians have given this section of the country a wide berth, for well might they believe it the home of the evil spirit. One of them straying here might wander for days and never mount an elevated point without being able to count scores of columns of white steam lifting above the trees from different points of the forest, telling him of the wigwams of the evil one. If he stole along the valleys, he would come upon pools of water of crystal clearness tempting in appearance to the thirsty; some of them not larger than the blanket which covered his shoulders, others so large that the tepees of half his tribe would not cover their area; some mere jagged holes in the rock, others with rims a foot or so in height, and as regular as his pipe of peace. Here are some a few inches or a few feet in depth, with bottoms and sides painted in rainbow tints; there are others with deep sunken walls embossed and tufted, and dyed with the colors of the setting sun, and with dark throats so deep that they seem to be yawning from fathomless depths. Here they are as placid as the eye of the papoose hanging at the squaw mother's back. Our Indian pauses at the painted brink of one, dips his hand into the tempting fluid--jerks it back quickly, but perhaps not before it is scalded. There they boil up one, two, three or more feet and appear as though they would pour out a flood from below, but not a drop passes over the rim of the pool. The boiling motion is from volumes of steam working its way through the waters from the bowels of the earth and spreading upon the breeze. Boiling water elsewhere wastes itself away, but these pools boil and boil from year to year, and scarcely vary perceptibly in height. Our untutored tourist turns his eye upon the mountain bordering the valley, whose sides are so encrusted with geyserite deposit that it appears to have been formed of this material, and to have been erected by boiling springs; along its whitened side and far up on its crest are springs or vents, from which arise columns of lifting steam and the mountain seems to roar; startled, he hears close to his feet, a gurgling sound such as comes from an animal whose throat is newly cut. His eye seeks the spot whence comes this sound of death. He sees an orifice in the ground not large enough to take in his body, but from it comes the death rattle a hundred times louder than the largest buffalo could make when pierced about its heart. The Evil Spirit is slaying an animal so huge that if he were on the ground its tread would shake the earth. A WONDERFUL PLATEAU. He climbs over a mountain spur and sees spread before him a white plateau of several hundred acres. Jets of steam are pouring from a thousand points of its surface, some rising only a few feet, others lifting 500 feet into the air; here from fountains boiling merely, or spouting up to one, two, or more feet; there from simple vent holes in the nearly level surface of the plain. Some pour from fantastic forms--great stumps of trees with one side torn away; from piles of downy cushions; from great platters of biscuit, a part as white as dough, others crisp and brown; from ruined castles; from orifices bordered by mighty, parted, Ethiopian lips of whitish gray tone or painted red and brown. One is fashioned like an old time conical straw bee-hive. So well is the model copied, that no great stretch of imagination would be required to enable one to hear the buzz of busy honey makers swarming about it. Another is a rude cabin chimney with steam lifting from its top, in lieu of smoke curling from a woodman's fire. He approaches one which might once have been a grotto, with stalagmites and stalactites forming its ribs and roof, but the superincumbent earth having been removed, the stony skeleton is laid bare, partly a dozen or more feet above the ground and partly sunken below. From its hollow pit comes a roaring sound not unlike the growl of a lion when feeding, only of a king of beasts many fold enlarged. He hears close by it a noise he takes to be the call of a familiar bird. There is no bird in sight, but near his feet in the rocky platform is a small vent he could close with his thumb; it is breathing, but its breath is high heated steam; its inspiration is a gentle gurgle, its expiration is the blue jay's call. Its breath comes from deep below, from the lungs of the monster whose stertorous breathing is an indication that he is turning over in his hidden lair; and as he turns he belches forth a mouthful of steam and water through the grotto. He has evidently eaten something disagreeable and is sick in the regions of the maw, for up comes another and a larger mouthful; and then another and more, until he pours out his very insides in tons of boiling water. Through every opening of the grotto's frame, water and steam rush forth in mighty volume. Thousands of gallons to the minute lift in jets ten to thirty feet through each opening, and run in great streams to the crystal river a little way below. The monster bellows, the vents about the grotto's base whistle, the water splashes, and the steam rushes, scalding hot. After a while--perhaps in twenty or thirty minutes--all flowing ceases, and a column of steam pours out for perhaps an hour and lifts several hundred feet into the air. "THE GIANT" IN ACTION. While this strange action is being seen, close by, a rumbling noise is heard in the depths of "The Giant," 200 or 300 yards away. The noise increases, not unlike that of an approaching railroad train, and is soon accompanied by a discharge of water three or more feet in diameter at the geyser nozzle, lifted in an almost vertical column 150 to 200 feet high, all enveloped in a veil of steam. This pours through the top of a geyserite formation some ten feet high, and a dozen or fifteen from out to out--a monster stump, broken and jagged as if a monarch of the forest had been snapped off by a mighty storm blast. [Illustration: THE GIANT, AT UPPER GEYSER BASIN. (SEE PAGE 33.)] The flood drops all about in spray, veiling the lifted column, and is of such quantity that the river nearly seventy-five feet wide, is doubled in depth when the monster is in action. Our accidental red tourist has lost his Indian stoicism, and wishes to see something more of the Devil's doings. The "Giant" having become silent, he steals along the white formation a few hundred yards, when, from a small hole in the ground, without any warning, up shoots a beautiful little geyser about twenty feet high, a perfect spreading jet d'eau, accompanied by no steam and lasting only perhaps a quarter of a minute. The action of this little jet over, every drop of its lifted water flows back into its mouth and disappears down its throat; but not for long, for it again shoots up in four minutes, and is so regular in its action, that it has been christened "Young Faithful." The plateau here spoken of--"The upper geyser basin"--is two or more miles long and of irregular width, probably averaging a third of a mile. It is all white with encrusted geyserite deposit often giving out a hollow sound to the tread. This deposit varies in thickness from a few inches to several feet. It is grayish white, resembling tarnished frozen snow. THE SPLENDID--200 FEET HIGH. But see that noble column spouting 200 feet high in a somewhat slanting stream not far from a quarter of a mile away. Close by a smaller jet shoots obliquely, mingling its spray with the larger one. The tourist is too far removed to see the brilliant rainbow formed in the mingling spray. But let him wait some hours and he may visit it again to witness another active eruption from the "Splendid Geyser," which pours four times a day from a simple hole in the rock, and has as yet builded himself no geyserite nozzle. A short walk brings one to the "Devil's Punch Bowl," where the old Fiend takes his nocturnal nip, from a basin a few feet in diameter, inclosed by an embossed rim a foot high and as regular as the raised edge of a Dresden punch bowl, and always boiling and seething to keep the tipple hot and ready. In this plateau are hundreds of pools of exquisite colorings, and scores of geysers lifting more or less regularly and at shorter or longer intervals; some of the intervals being of hours, others of days and others still measured only by minutes. The geysers are all named in accordance with a supposed resemblance of their formation to some known thing, or to the character, size or quality of their eruptions; "The Queen," "The King," "The Bee-hive," "The Castle," "The Princess," "Old Faithful," "The Excelsior," "The Splendid" and so on. The pools take their names generally from the colorings of their rims or sides, or of the water held in them, as "The Emerald," "The Amethyst," "The Sunset," "The Rainbow" and "The Morning Glory." Some of the pools are named from the nature of their boilings, others from the rock formation in their throats and about their sides; "The Biscuit Bowl," "The Snow-ball," "The Spouter." Many of the names are by no means far fetched. The "Biscuit Bowl," for example, resembles a mass of well formed monster breakfast rolls, some in whitened dough, others in all stages of brown from the half done to the well baked. The tourist approaches a flattened cone, with a base 600 or 800 feet in circumference, and fifty feet high, surmounted by the ruins of an old castle. The owner of the "Castle" has been growling all day and emitting an unusual amount of steam. He is evidently preparing to erupt, which he does at intervals of several days. His terrific growlings increase as the day wears on, and angry spurts of boiling water accompanied by steam show he is getting his temper up to white heat. He has been quiet for an unusual time of late and when aroused, like Othello, he will be fearfully moved. He makes a few angry premonitory belches and bellows. The noise is accompanied by a trembling of the earth for hundreds of yards. A mass of water is then ejected from 50 to 100 feet up, mixed with steam in dense mass. The flow of water is of short duration; but is of thousands of tons, and is followed by an emission of steam large enough to run an ocean steamer. This steam escape can be heard for a mile or more, and sounds like the roar made by a Long Island Sound steamer blowing salt from its boilers. The noise is continuous for an hour; it gradually lessens, however, until it ceases entirely. Steam is then lazily emitted continuously, and a loud gurgling noise is constant deep down in the Geyser throat. This is more or less the case with nearly all of the geysers. A few, however, become so quiet, that very close attention is necessary to catch any boiling noise. The "Castle" geyser blows off for hours before his steam generators are cleaned. IT SCARES THE WHITE MAN. Our red cheeked tourist has stoicism, but he cannot stay over this Devil's kitchen long enough to see half of the mighty vents in action. One, which but rarely plays, shakes the very earth. A good white man, who flatters himself that he is a child of God and believes in sovereign reigning grace, is struck by it with awe akin to terror. But there is one geyser which becomes familiar to the civilized tourist and seems to win from him a sort of affection, because of his conscientious behavior. His very regularity, however, would strike the more terror into the heart of the untutored red man. He has built his home under a mound 300 yards in circumference and twenty or so feet high at its apex, upon which he has cast a geyserite chimney ten to fifteen feet high and six or eight in diameter. This chimney he has ornamented within and without with huge tufted beads, and painted those within with rose and white, orange and brown, red and grey. These adjuncts, however, do not compare to those of many others, for some of them seem to have wrapped their throats in great pillows, hard as gypsum, but looking as soft and tufty as if made of swans down, while others have painted their inside linings with all the tints of the rainbow; and their crystal clear water seems to have caught the cerulean blue from the heavens and are holding it in solution. But to return to this geyser; for nearly an hour he has been as quiet as a lamb, just enough of steam arising from his throat to show he is gently breathing. The steam breath gradually grows and is exhaled with more vigor. Presently he belches up a barrel or so of water which falls back into his throat. Then in a minute come two or three such little spasms, when up lifts a rounded column two or three feet in diameter, rising higher and higher in exact perpendicularity 150 feet high. The jet breaks more or less as it rises into pointed sprays, which, when there is no wind blowing, fall with almost precise regularity about the up going column. WATCHES ARE SET BY IT. In about five minutes the jet of water ceases, but is followed by considerable steam emissions for a quarter of an hour, when one can look down into his throat and see the crystal water ten to fifteen feet below the apex, and all quiet and still. So regular is the action of this geyser that one could, by watching it, almost dispense with a watch. He never plays in less than sixty-three minutes, and never delays action longer than seventy. Indeed, some of his most constant admirers declare these variations are the fault of watches, not of "Old Faithful." Thus he is named, and as such is known far and near. There are several of these geyser-basins scattered over the park from ten to twenty-five miles apart, the principal ones being the "Norris," the "Lower Geyser Basin" and the "Upper Geyser Basin." These are reached in succession on the tourist road from "Mammoth Hot Springs." The regular tourist, starting from Mammoth Hotel, dines at the "Norris" and sleeps at the "Lower Basin." The next day, if he prefers to go on with his coach, he passes the "Excelsior," which is the hugest of all the geysers, and has been for two or three years nearly quiet, but this year is in tolerable eruption. It is a vast pool, possibly over two hundred feet in diameter. When quiet, water about twenty feet below the pool rim boils, seethes and tosses in horrible motion. It erupted just as our party reached it, but not in one of its grand actions. A mass of water possibly many feet in diameter was lifted fifty or more feet in the air. It is said that when in full eruption the height of the column is from two to three hundred feet. This I doubt. The mass of steam enveloping the jet is so great that the water column is entirely hidden, and has given rise to exaggeration on the part of those who have seen it at its best. The basin of the Excelsior is called "Hell's half acre," and it is by no means a misnomer, for the earth trembles, and the roar when the geyser is in action is that of an earthquake, while great stones are scattered about for several hundred feet. Close by it are the "Prismatic Springs" and the "Turquoise." The first is two or more hundred feet in diameter and is a placid mass of scalding water. It has various depths; in the center where very deep, it is of an indigo blue which shades off into a bluish green; then where very shallow, it runs off into yellow, orange, red and brown, while some circles are white. It is a marvel of beauty. The color of the Turquoise is precisely described by its name. The whole park plateau is filled with hot springs, which are building up elevations with their deposit and mounting them as they build. The water is all clear as crystal, but holds in solution lime, iron, sulphur and other minerals, which it deposits sufficiently fast to encrust a key, horseshoe, or other piece of metal in three or four days with a solid enamel--say the sixteenth of an inch in thickness--and of the appearance of second-class white sugar. The geysers eject, when in action, large quantities of water, but the springs, though boiling and spouting, and appearing to be lifting much water, flow over their rims in very small streams. As they flow they build up their margins, which are thus made almost exactly level. This gentle flow runs off in wavy ripples generally; not in little rivulets, but in thin sheets, depositing the solid matter they have held in solution while below, which is freed by the action of the atmosphere. In this way the springs lift themselves, and build lofty hills. The deposit when fresh is hard, but when dry becomes generally friable, though there are cases where it maintains great hardness. These deposits often times wear beautiful colors, and nearly always do so when being made or while under water. Some of the quiet pools are over 100 feet in diameter. The outer edges when shallow are of a deep brown, followed by a lighter brown or red, then blending into a yellow and followed by a yellow olive, and deepening as they sink into dark olive, while in the deep throats they are almost black. The water before it makes the deepest point, in some is of emerald greenness, in others of exquisite blue; along the steep sloping walls assuming a rich amethyst or tinted in exquisite sapphire. All deposits take either a wavy or a tufted form, whether on gentle slopes or on perpendicular walls. Some steep walls are not unlike slightly tufted fleeces of wool. The tufts are of all sizes, from that of an orange up to others as large as a bushel basket. One can scarcely realize that these tufts are hard. They appear beneath the water to be as light and soft as newly fallen snow upon an evergreen bush. Some of them are creamy white, others yellow, orange and all shades of brown. In one of the Geyser basins is a large pool actually used by the hotel people as a laundry tub. If you will promise not to mention it I will confess two evidences on my part of weakness. I always shed tears at the theatres, and I washed some handkerchiefs in this boiling pool and they came out nicely white. NATURE'S PAINT-POTS. To many, the paint-pots at the "Lower Basin" are the most curious things seen in the park. Imagine somewhat rounded pits of all sizes from those a few inches in diameter to others of forty and even sixty feet across, filled with fine white mud or mortar, such as plasterers call putty, and used by them for hard finish. This is boiling and plopping (I coin this word) like mush in huge pots, or thick soap in mighty caldrons. In boiling, the big bubbles lazily lift several inches high, and more lazily burst with a muffled noise, and sputter dabs of thick paste several feet into the air. Falling upon the rim of the pool, these erect a wall--now smooth as a plastered wall--and then in rough grotesque finish. No mortar made up for a first-class plaster finish was ever tempered as is this natural paste. When dry and pulverized it is an almost impalpable powder. The paste is sometimes white, but more often is of a pale scotch gray. One large pool is half white or whitish grey, the other half of a delicate peach blow. In one pot the putty was a pretty pink salmon. Putting these three colors on a cardboard to dry, I found that much of the coloring disappeared after exposure to the atmosphere. At one basin between the Yellowstone canyon and the great Yellowstone Lake, the mortar is of dark mud, pure and simple, and is lifted many feet in the air, and falling, is sucked back into a monster throat with horrible gurgling sound. Go to a slaughter house to see a stuck pig breathing his last. Multiply his agonizing throes several hundred fold and a good idea can be had of the struggle of these hidden monsters. One of the mud geysers is said at times to be so violent in its action, that the earth trembles for a very considerable distance, when the monster is in full eruption. Curiously there will sometimes be found a pool of crystal pure water boiling or spouting not many feet away, and in one instance, close to a mud boiling pool is a large spring of pure cold water. One is tempted to wish to turn one of these into the mouth of the mud geyser to wash down its throat and ease its agony. Neither the mud nor the white mortar in these craters overflow, but bubble, sputter, and plop year after year. The particles are as impalpable as the fine ground paint upon an artist's easel. All kinds of pools, geysers and paint-pots are heated more or less highly, all of them nearly up to, and some much above boiling point. The heating is not from the visible water being near to any fire or heated surface, but from super-heated steam, generated far below, being forced through the surface water. Sometimes only steam escapes through the surface orifices. These are called vents. The steam coming from some of these is so hot that the skin would be taken from the hand by a single instantaneous application. They seem to be a sort of safety valves from the great steam generators in the bowels of the earth. No wonder the Indian gives this country a clear berth, or that a good schoolmarm tourist constantly had on her lips Hades! Hades!! Hades!!! To be candid, I think she used the old fashioned word. LETTER III. MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS. A WONDERFUL FORMATION. THE WHITE ELEPHANT. A THEORY ACCOUNTING FOR THE HOT SPRINGS AND GEYSERS. MUD GEYSERS. MARVELOUS COLORINGS OF SOME POOLS. The tourist entering the National Park by way of Livingston through the Gardner Canyon, and rocky Gateway, at about sixty miles reaches the "Mammoth Hot Springs". Here he sees a surprising formation. Before him rises in terraces each from twenty to thirty feet high, a great white cataract looking mass, several hundred feet high, bulging out into the valley. The center projects with rounded contour far beyond the wings, which recede on either side, and to be seen must be skirted. The entire bent crest is not far from three miles in length. When first approached, it strikes the eye as a succession of water falls tumbling from terrace to terrace. To a second glance it appears a system of falls one above the other hardened into dirty ice. To one who has visited lofty snow clad mountains, an act of deliberation is required to prevent him believing that the terraces are a part of a glacier of more or less purity. The crests of the different terraces are almost level--some of them apparently exactly so. They are built by water, and, water here levels as it builds, for if there be a depression it seeks it, and depositing the solid matter held in solution, levels it up with the rest. From the crest of the upper terrace runs back a plateau of silicious incrustation covering 300 to 400 acres. Scattered over this, are shallow pools of hot water of a bluish white tinge. About their shallow sides these pools have concentric, tinted borders, some a few inches wide, others of one or two feet. These are bent to conform to the irregular shape of the pools, one within the other, and are several deep. The borders differ from each other in color, being red, orange, yellow and brown and of intermediate shades. Near the front bulge of the upper terrace, lifts the principal spring or pool on its individual terrace, high above the main plateau. It looks like a turret when seen from below. Flowing in thin sheets over the margin, sometimes a simple ooze, the water from each pool makes a deposit as it spreads over the surrounding surface. At the foot and in front of the great precipice, stand two isolated slender pillars of geyserite, one of them about forty feet high. They are hollow and are the cones or nozzles of extinct geysers. One is called the "Liberty Cap" the other the "Devil's Thumb." They lift sheer up from the level in front of the great formation, and are a sort of sentinels keeping watch and ward over the wonderful picture. A large part of the precipitous projection of each terrace is moist from slowly trickling water. At the rear of the great plateau half hidden among scattered trees, is a long fissure in the solid rock foundation of the mountain slope. Through this has poured up hot water from below, building, as it flowed, a huge white formation two to three hundred feet long, ten to fifteen feet high, and about as broad, rounded and smooth on its crest. This is supposed to resemble an elephant in recumbent position and has been aptly named "The White Elephant." If one pauses to listen, he will hear a gurgling of running water down in the leviathan's inside, not unlike that made when its living namesake pours a draught of water from his trunk down into his throat. Here, as everywhere else in active spring formations, the sound of running water can be heard beneath the surface incrustation. In some instances the ear must be bent down to catch a gentle rippling; in others it deepens into a hoarse gurgle. The silicious crest of all of the plateaux on which a person walks, gives out so hollow a sound, that one is apt to feel somewhat anxious lest it break beneath his weight. I suspect, however, if it should do so, the bottom would be found generally at only a few inches, and a crimped shoe would be the most injurious result. Occasionally, however, the crest may cover a deep pool, but not often. When a pool is very still a film of solid matter spreads over its margin as grease does over cool water. This attaches itself to the edge and spreads towards the center. Gentle ripples then overflow this but do not break it down, but thicken it by further deposits. Sometimes one sees these edges projecting well over a deep pool, and strong enough to bear up the weight of several men; some of these may at some time be the cause of very scalding accidents. The principal danger, however, to a moderately prudent tourist is to his shoe leather. One frequently steps into a little puddle after a geyser ceases to act, or walks into a thin sheet to see more closely the coloring of a pool. Either of such imprudences may cost a pair of good shoes. The safest course is to wear old ones for a ramble and to keep a good dry pair at the hotel. THEORIES ABOUT THE FORMATIONS. It may not be amiss to suggest some solution of the problems under which the silicious incrustations are produced and the active geysers act. [Illustration: JUPITER TERRACE, MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS. (SEE PAGE 48.)] The entire Yellowstone Park is an elevated plateau thrown up by volcanic eruption, or more probably was left when the plains sank beneath the ocean, leaving the crumpled back bone of the continent pushed far above. The rocky ribs of earth were pitched here into a more or less vertical position, leaving seams and fissures running deep down into the bowels of the earth in the neighborhood of intense internal fires. Volcanic forces have left their marks throughout the Park. The hot springs and geysers are their feeble remnants. On the mountain heights, melting snows and rains fill great lakes and copious flowing rivers. These send veins more or less large, or percolate down into the earth crust, supplying the intensely heated rocks with moisture for a vast volume of super-heated steam. The steam seeks an outlet through fissures made in the plutonic rocks by volcanic forces and through seams in the upper crumpled and pitched stratified formations. Passing through these latter this intensively heated steam erodes the softer rocks into throats, recesses and pockets, and taking up minerals in chemicals solution bears them upward, meeting the cooler crust and mingling with percolations from melting snows and rains, it becomes more or less condensed and pours out in small springs. These as they flow, deposit the silicious and other mineral matter held in solution, building up the lower side of the spring, until the rim is level. Thus the spring becomes a more or less rounded pool. The over flow now becomes very gentle and even over the entire rim. The atmosphere reaches the whole of the overflow as it spreads over the surface of the ground and causes rapid precipitation. The constant outpour causes a constant lifting of the pool and of the incrustations about it. This spreading crust is in laminae or thin sheets. As the pool rim lifts, the weight of the column of water forces some of it between the sheets and carries it hot and rich in mineral and earthy solid matter to the outer edges of the formation, where it escapes to spread the incrustation wider and wider. The streams beneath the crust gradually wear away their channels leaving open spaces above them, which give out a hollow sound when one walks over them, and in them the rippling or gurgling of flowing water is to be heard more or less, beneath the crust. When such underflowing streams cut a large enough channel, they frequently build up new small pools more or less removed from the parent spring. In other words one vein of hot water coming from below may be the source of several pools. Yet there are many only a few yards apart, which have sources far removed from each other, or at least the steam which supplies them with their heat and solid matter in solution, has passed through widely different and distant rock formations. This is shown by the different and distinct minerals which color the water and the formations deposited by them. The water in one pool will be comparatively pure, while close by, is that of another strongly impregnated with sulphur, depositing great tufts in yellow and brown, and still another with red borders and olive throat full of oxide of iron. Here will be a pool beautifully green, with exquisitely tinted formations, proving that copper or arsenic are held in solution; and then within a half stone's throw is still another of intense cerulean blue and a third of most delicate sapphire. In one of the paint pots, in the "Lower basin" not over forty feet in diameter, about half of the putty is pearl gray, while the other half is a rich peach blow. I said that the overflow of the pools was generally small. I recall several small ones and a few fully thirty or more feet in diameter, from which the overflow in a calm day was almost uniform from the entire veins, and nowhere thicker than a very thin sheet of glass. And in some instances the out put was so thin as to be a simple ooze. And yet in many of such pools the boiling action in the centre was great enough to lift bubbles and turbulations many inches high. In one pool called the "Spouter" there are constant large jets lifting from a few inches up to three or more feet, a wild fearful boiling and still only a small stream ran from it. And still others which boiled furiously but had no outflow at all. It is not improbable that from these latter there are water exists below the crusts, which have been lifted up as rims or pool margins. The bubbles and turbulations are not strictly speaking from boiling hot water, but from steam rushing up and striving to escape. MARVELOUS COLORINGS. No ordinary stretch of imagination will enable one who has not seen them to realize the variety and exquisiteness of the tints and colorings of many of the pools. The caves of Capri near Naples, furnish not a more wondrous blue, and the grottoes of tropical seas do not afford such variety. The tints are partly derived from the minerals held in solution by the water, but are probably owing more to the reflected tones of the geyserite formation surrounding the throats, walls and margins. One can easily understand the solution of the problem resulting in the formation and actions of the pools, and of the building of the encrustations of the plateaux, which extend over hundreds of acres. But the actions of geysers are so weird and strange that science has probably not fully explained them. I confess myself too much of a tyro to fully comprehend the more scientific elucidation, which explains the action on chemical principles. I can, however, comprehend the more practical but possibly less scientific theory, which is sufficient for me and will probably also be so for the majority of my readers. The pools and hot springs are formed at all elevations in the valleys and on mountain slopes. THEORIES AS TO GEYSER ACTION. The Geysers are always in the valleys and generally contiguous to the lowest points. When lifted up they are probably so raised by their own energies as builders. On the following page is a cut showing a section of the earth crust, running across a valley and up the mountain side. Along its lowest point flows rapidly a stream of cold clear water fed by melting snows and dews on mountains towering above and more or less distant. [Illustration: Map] "_G_" is a geyser cone. Below is the geyser throat or well sinking down to "_W_". "_S_" is a shaft more or less vertical opening into the geyser well and running far down into the softer rocks to "_C_" a somewhat horizontal continuation leading into "_R_" a recess or pocket in the softer upper rocks of sufficient capacity in some cases to hold hundreds or thousands of tons of water. "_P_" is another recess opening into "_R_" near its apex. These recesses or pockets have been scooped out by superheated steam pouring up from far below through plutonic rocks contiguous to living central fires. Such steam is generated from veins and percolations of water always sinking from the earth's surface and from moisture believed to exist in or about all rocks. "_D_" "_D_" and "_D_" are reservoirs on the surface of the earth or beneath it high up on the mountains, perennially supplied by rains and melting snows. "_V_" "_V_" "_V_" are veins through which water flows from reservoirs "_D_" "_D_" "_D_" into recess "_R_" at "_X_". These veins are also fed by percolations throughout the formations through which they run. "_F_" "_F_" are fissures or seams in the upper rocks running into and extending deep down in the primative or igneous rocks below, along which highly heated steam generated near the internal fires underlying earth's solid crust, rushes upward into recess or pocket "_P_". We will assume that there are no veins conveying cold water into this latter recess or pocket. Now we assume also that at a given moment recesses "_R_" and "_P_" and shaft "_S_" and its continuation "_C_" are free or nearly free of water. Steam, however, is rushing from them and out of geyser "_G_" in hot, roaring volume. In recess "_R_" it is encountering cold water flowing in at "_X_" and rapidly loses its high temperature and is being condensed. As such condensation goes on, the horizontal continuation "_C_" is being filled. As it fills the escape of steam at "_G_" lessens rapidly, until continuation "_C_" becoming full of water, it ceases entirely or only a small amount lifts lazily up from the hot shaft "_S_". The inflow at "_X_" and condensation fills recess "_R_" with water more or less cool. The steam coming up through "_F_", "_F_" no longer having an escape, heats the water in "_R_" until it reaches a line "_L_" in recess "_R_," where it becomes so hot as no longer to condense steam or does it to a very small extent. The pressure of the high heated steam now stops a further inflow at "_X_" and forces the water upward into shaft "_S_" and is capable of sustaining the column at the geyser throat "_W_" and the column in veins "_V_" at a like height. Condensation having ceased the steam in "_R_" above "_L_" and in "_P_" becomes superheated and acquires enormous expansive power. Finally its energy is so vast that a sudden expansion or explosion takes place. The water at "_L_" is pressed enormously downward and the contents of recess "_R_" are forced upward through shaft "_S_" into the geyser well and then through the contracted nozzle at "_G_" in a mighty jet high into the open air. The action of suddenly expanded or exploded steam is spasmodic and immediate. All of the water in recess "_R_" is therefore rapidly thrown out at "_G_". The water gone, fearfully hot steam follows it through "_G_" until its spasmodic energy ceases almost if not quite as suddenly as it was at first aroused. Immediately the steam, now coming from recess "_R_" begins to go through the cooling process before described, until again the shaft is closed at "_C_" and again a repetition of the eruption is brought about. This series of actions is more or less regular in all geysers. In old "Faithful" the round is completed in about sixty-three minutes. The recesses or pockets are of various sizes in different geysers requiring different periods of time to be filled. The time taken to empty them, and in some measure the height of the jets depend probably very largely upon the size of the throat and of the nozzle of the geysers. "Old Faithful" has a comparatively small nozzle. His jet continues for several minutes and mounts to a great height. The same is true of the "Splendid." "The Castle" spurts up a very much larger volume of water; but not nearly so high, from a huge throat and in very much less time. The "Excelsior" has a throat many feet in diameter, and ejects a column proportionately large. Its actions are not regular and indeed it is rather a water volcano than a geyser, throwing up large stones and gravel. "Young Faithful" emits no steam. It is probably only a sort of adjunct of some of the violently boiling pools near by. Steam, which in some of these cause violent turbulations at regular intervals, forces water through lateral shafts up through this little gem. Its throat is very small. A considerable body of water passing from behind with only a moderate force, yet finding only the small throat, makes a jet of considerable height. Jets resembling it are frequently seen on low rocky cliffs on the sea shore, caused by the ocean swell passing into grottoes and caverns and forcing water up along small fissures through the overhanging rock, called "puffing holes". The foregoing theory of geyser action may not bear the test of close criticism, but it is probable that such criticism may be answered by hypotheses not here alluded to. At all events it may be sufficiently satisfactory for the ordinary mind. LETTER IV. HOW TO DO THE PARK. HOTELS AND VEHICLES. MY INNOCENTS. CHARMING SCENERY. NATURAL MEADOWS. WILD ANIMALS. BEAUTIFUL FLOWERS. DEBTS TO THE DEVIL. CAMP LIFE AND FISHING. WONDERFUL CANYON. PAINTED ROCKS. GLORIOUS WATERFALLS. NATURE GROTESQUE AND BEAUTIFUL. GRAND CANYON, YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, July 24, 1890. I will say at the beginning of this letter, a few words as to how the Park's wonders can be seen. There are associations under leases from the Government and supposed to be under its control, which regulate the movements of regular tourists, in and through the park; one for transportation alone, and the other for feeding and housing. The latter has five hotels, two of them completed--two others sufficiently so to house their guests. The completed houses are, one at "Mammoth Hot Springs," the other at "Grand Canyon." These are fairly appointed hotels and each is capable of nicely accommodating several hundred guests. Aside from these there are two where a tourist can live in comfort, provided he be not over fastidious. The largest and best hotel is at "Mammoth Hot Springs," at an elevation of 6,200 feet. The next best and next largest one is at "Grand Canyon," 7,500 feet up. Several other hotels are partially finished. The transportation company has some seventy-five vehicles, two-thirds, if not three-fourths of them Concord stages and wagonettes carrying six to seven passengers, but capable of carrying three or four more by placing three on a seat; the other vehicles are four-passenger surreys. The coaches and wagonettes each have four horses, the surreys two. The tourist purchases tickets for the round trip. Forty dollars carries one from Livingston on the railroad to Mammoth Hot Springs and then around the park, occupying five and a quarter days. This includes hotel expenses. One thus sees everything in the grand tour, but somewhat hurriedly. However, quite a number stop over at the "Upper Geyser Basin" and at "Grand Canyon;" the stop-overs thus making room for those who had halted the day before. There are at this time tourists enough to start out each day from Mammoth Hot Springs about five coaches and several surreys all leaving at a fixed hour and reaching points of interests or other hotels close together, each vehicle maintaining its position in the line throughout the tour. Thus racing is prevented. A great mistake is made in keeping the vehicles in line too close together. For at times the dust on some of the roads is very deep, causing passengers in some of the vehicles to be choked and rendered very uncomfortable. It rains frequently throughout the park; but for this the tour would be almost unbearable. Our party was in this respect very fortunate. The management very foolishly discourages individual stop-overs, but suggests a stage or surrey party to hold over the vehicle. This is expensive and parties are not always of one mind. I stopped and now stop over, taking my chances for a vacancy in a coach. This should be encouraged by the management, for a person can spend several days of pleasure and instruction at two, three or more points. "Grand Canyon" from which this letter is started, would make a charming resort for parties for days, or even weeks, and two or three days should be taken to study the "Upper Geyser Basin." But the entire management is yet in an embryo state, and too great an endeavor is made to make both ends meet, with a profitable balance at the end of the season. Some travelers complain bitterly of the accommodations furnished at the hotels. They are, however, I suspect, of those who expect the comforts of home, or the luxuries of first-class city hotels where ever they go. Those who are prepared to make the most of life, and to pick up pleasure wherever to be found, can spend several weeks in the Park, without loss of flesh and with instruction regarding the sports and freaks of nature to be found no where else. The wonders are unique and the marvels unequaled elsewhere in the world. Some tourists are so unfortunate as to arrive at the park when very large excursion parties from the East make their entry. Then the hotels become necessarily crowded. No prudent provision can make preparation for an extra hundred pouring in on top of the regular travel. At such times one is compelled to take a bed in a room with several others and may even be forced to crowd two in a bed. That happened once to our party. But none of the travelers had the small pox or itch, so no great harm resulted. By hugging the outer rail of a bed, instead of the bed fellow, the necessity of tumbling two in a bed is not altogether a catastrophe. Besides those who make the regular tours, there are many who hire carriages and wagons at Cinnabar for a leisurely excursion, which may be longer or shorter to suit disposable time and the fullness of purses. Parties too, besides hiring carriages and horses, frequently take tents and enjoy a regular roughing life. We encountered many of these. Some were of a man and his family, others of two or three young men, and still others of men and ladies by the dozen or two, and in one instance thirty or forty were in the party. The large parties have a number of attendants who generally go ahead to prepare the camps for the night, while the tourists loiter along the way to inspect the marvels or to botanize. The small parties we saw, pitched their tents when practicable, near a trout stream, several of which furnished fine sport. Throughout the Park we noticed that at and about localities usually chosen for camping ground, warnings were nailed upon the trees, "Put out the fires." Destructive forest fires have resulted from carelessness of campers. Soldiers in pairs ride along several of the roads daily to see that these regulations are observed, and to prevent injurious results from non-observance. Twice we saw blue coats extinguishing smouldering fires left by reckless people. My personal stage party up to this point, has been my daughter and some intelligent schoolmarms from New York, one of them, however, resenting the appellation of "schoolmarm." She is a _principal_. Woman-like, they seemed glad when I assumed command of the party. Queer, how even the brightest and most independent woman takes to a sort of master. Show me one who will not submit to the yoke, and ten to one she is one few men desire to boss. I call my party, "my Innocents," and all move with alacrity when I cry out, "Come girls!" Between us, it has been several years since the youngest of them wore short dresses. I mean this in good part, for girls just getting into long skirts are very like the rinsing fluid into which the wash-woman dips her clean laundry, and called "blue water"--rather thin! [Illustration: THE GROTTO, UPPER GEYSER BASIN.(SEE PAGE 31.)] All my Innocents are good, but can stand a straight shot in sensible English. One quotes with a sigh the remark of a friend, who when in the park, had but one word--the word translated "sheol" in the revised version. Quotation marks are convenient when one wishes to say something a little naughty. The Rev. Thomas Beecher, who is one of our daily party, but not in our coach, and who by the way is something of a wag, and is not averse to having a learned theological discussion with one who, like himself, was intended for an Evangelist, speaking of the huge amount of solid matter brought here above ground, declares he must look up Bob Ingersoll to tell him the Devil is making some mighty big holes down below. For my part if the Devil is doing all this, I shall begin to cultivate high respect for him as an artist, and would only ask him not to let the bottom drop out until my friends to the third and fourth generation may come and see. After them it matters not. Let the deluge come. It is evident from the names given to many points about the park that the Devil's friends have done much of the christening in this region. Now, having to some extent touched upon the marvelous antics of Nature in Uncle Sam's domain, I will say something of those things nearly as interesting, and which make this tour charming as a simple road excursion. The park is full of beauties. The drives are often through delightful pine forests. The trees are small, but straight as arrows, tall and lading the air with delicious perfumes. Many hundred, or rather hundreds of thousands of acres are dead: Some from forest fires, but in many cases apparently from a species of blight, possibly from a failure of nourishment in the thin soil on the mountain slopes for the trees after they have attained any size. Tracks of fierce mountain storms are frequently seen; miles upon miles of forests are thrown down, the trees all lying in one direction, showing that the devastation was done by straight running winds, and not by tornadoes. There are noble mountains constantly towering above us, although we are ourselves sometimes nearly nine thousand feet above the sea, and never after leaving Mammoth Hot Springs, under 7000. Many of the mountains have bands of snow stretching far below their pinnacles, and some of them are properly entitled, snow-capped. The mountains and slopes are fairly well treed; and the small plains or plateaux show beautiful downs bordered with forest and cut by copses. These downs are green and so smooth in the distance that it is difficult to realize that man has had nothing to do with laying them out. Several level valleys are very pretty and when seen from eminences remind one of valleys over which people go into ecstasies in foreign lands. If there were here a church spire, and there a mill and a sprinkling of hamlets, they would be as happy valleys as the vaunted ones abroad. The utter absence of habitations on the long drives is a striking peculiarity. The roads being tolerably good and entirely artificial, makes one expect to see hamlets, and he involuntarily finds himself looking for a farm house, when the coach emerges from a forest, and comes upon a broad stretch of clean looking well grassed native meadow land. A turn of a mountain spur along a crystal stream, which has deepened into a pool, suggests a mill pond, and that a water wheel will soon come into view. A grassy plain all sun-lighted causes one to look for a herd of cattle lazily lying in a wooded copse on its margin. But no habitation other than the regular hotels, are to be found within the wonder land. The park is comparatively a free and safe home for many varieties of wild animals. Guns and pistols are forbidden, except to the soldiers and to the _scouts_ who are a sort of a police corps, whose duty is to see that trespassers do not enter upon the Government preserve. Elk, deer, mountain sheep, bear black and cinnamon, buffalo and other animals indigenous to the Rocky mountains, range freely over the hills without molestation; and beaver build their dams close by the hotels. How many buffalo are yet denizens of the park, I could not definitely learn, but was told that there are from fifty to a hundred. Squirrels and chipmunks are very numerous in several varieties, and very gentle. The bear are becoming too numerous for the safety of such animals as they prey upon. On this account the scouts are destroying many of them. I said there are no domestic animals, except a few about the hotels. The result is, the grasses are fine and the flowers in great profusion and very beautiful--patches of larkspur as blue as indigo, acres of lupin of various tints, generally blue and lilac with eyes of white; gentians so rich and purple that one feels that they have been dipped in Tyrian dyes; sunflowers and buttercups, making acres look as if they had been sprinkled with gold; and many other beautiful flowers, whose names I know not. But one thistle I must not forget to mention. It is short and heavy from the ground, not unlike the edible thistle of Japan, with leaves and stalks of flesh colored pink, bleached into a sort of mixture of white, green and rose, with clustered flowers in compact head of exquisite rose and pink. It is a rarely beautiful flower. One flower of delicate lavender, thickly strewn along branching spikes, was wholly unknown to all of our party and is acknowledged of great beauty. Its leaf and small flowers lead me to think it a wild hollyhock. STUPENDOUS SOUNDS OF FALLING FLOODS. As I sit at my window the roar of the glorious Yellowstone falls filling my ear, I look out across the deep river canyon, to an upper plateau of several thousands of acres of beautiful meadow, some miles away, with here and there a copse of young pines, and all fringed by rich forest, and feel I should see a herd of fallow deer wandering over some ancient, lordly park. It is true that my glass shows that much of the velvety softness of the down is from green sagebush, which is so softened down by the distance that from here it resembles well cut grass. It is very beautiful. Guide books tell us not to drink the water. I think their writers were in collusion with the hotel management to force guests to buy lager and apollinaris at 50 cents a bottle. By the way, there is on the first days drive an apollinaris spring. It seems to me the simon pure thing. We drank freely of it at the spring and afterwards from bottles carried for several hours. One of the bottles was tightly corked, and, when opened, popped as if well charged. At another spring--a little thing immediately on the edge of the road on the Beaver river and in the cool and beautiful Beaver canyon, we had soda water flavoured with lime juice. At least, it reminded me very distinctly of soda water with which the juice of the lime had been mingled in Ceylon. The bar-tenders in the "Flowery Isle" call it "lemon squoze." It was our favorite beverage in hot Colombo. Both of these springs are small, but from them could be bottled many cases a day. A gentleman in the party who has drank only Apollinaris since he came into the Park, tasted from my bottle and declared it quite equal to the pure stuff. Feeling the need of an alterative, I twice drank several glasses from a hot spring with decided benefits; and have partaken freely throughout the tour of the springs (except those whose brilliant green showed them largely impregnated with arsenic or copper,) and with no perceptible injurious effects. The hotel people are inclined to disparage the waters of the springs generally, and discourage their use, thereby and possibly for that purpose, largely increasing the consumption of lager and bottled waters, which sell at fifty cents a bottle. The enormous number of empty bottles along the road sides and at the hotels testify to the thirst and timidity of the traveling public. The coach drivers call the empty bottles along the road "dead soldiers." The "peg" _i.e._ whisky soda is the bane of the European in India. The disposition to make "dead soldiers" in the National Park very probably does more harm to the tourist than the native waters would if judiciously used. When the government does its duty--makes abundant roads and bridges about its marvelous domain here, and analyzes thoroughly its hot springs--I doubt not there will be found many of them of great hygienic value, and sanitariums will be established to make the park a blessing to the afflicted of the country. One good housewife whom I met frequently at the different halting-places, sighed deeply at the enormous waste of hot water, declaring there was enough here to laundry all America, and to wash the poor of all our big cities. The good people tell us everything was made for man. I doubt it. He is not worth the good things lavished upon him. He is a part of the mighty plan and will be followed after the next cataclysm by beings as much above him as he is above the chimpanzee. But if the good people be correct, Congress ought to take immediate steps to enable the people more fully to utilize the mighty Hygea located within the bounds of this park. Surrounded by bare and bleak mountains and hot and arid plains, here at this elevation rains are abundant, and dews are sufficient; trees clothe mountain top and slope; grass is green and fattening, and flowers deck the open downs and shade the forest land. And yet the air is dry and beneficial to all except those whose lungs require an atmosphere less light. We have seen several consumptives who have come here for their health. The rarified atmosphere makes their breathing very laborious and painful. Possibly in the early stages of the disease, benefits may be derived from a sojourn here, but in its later stages, the poor victims suffer fearfully. The majority of those whom we have seen here for health, are camping out and seem to be having a good time. They have their horses, and spend their time fishing and riding. On the road from the lower Geyser basin to Grand Canyon we halted at a little rivulet to water our stock. The stream cut its way deep down in a grassy plain, and was so narrow that one could easily jump over it. A small camping party had just pitched its tents close by. While the tent lines were being stretched, the gentleman of the party came to the rivulet near us to angle for his supper. He cast his fly a few times, when there was a "rise" to it not twenty feet from our coach, and a two pound beauty, speckled and plump was landed. I envied the camper. In some localities in the Yellowstone, and especially in and about the great lake, parasites so infest the fish as to unfit them for the table. The infected fish, however, are easily known and may be discarded, while the good are retained. A gentleman who has fished throughout the park informed me, that as a rule, the fish were good. Like the trout in all the Rocky mountains and Pacific regions, the fish caught here lack the delicate flavour of the brook trout taken in the Adirondacks and throughout the New England States. We regret we could not visit the Great Yellowstone Lake. The hotels there being unfinished, the regular stage route does not yet take it in. It is at an altitude of 7700 feet, and is over twenty miles long from the North-west to the South-east and fifteen from North-east to South-west, covering an area of 150 or more square miles. It is very irregular in its form and said to be a beautiful sheet. Excepting the lake in the Andes it is much the largest lake in the world at so great elevation. A large hotel is being erected on its margin. When finished it will make a very attractive addition to the Park tour, and will furnish a stop over for days or weeks to those who have time at their command. One is surprised to find how quickly he becomes fatigued by a short climb, until his lungs become accustomed to the rare medium he is taking in. One old man, I need not name, stepped jauntily by the side of a pretty schoolmarm and swore he was 32, but the climb of a mile made him, with blushes which tinged the cuticle of his bald head, acknowledge he was past 65. He was somewhat relieved, when he saw how the sweet innocent was panting at his side. There is here what I am told exists nowhere else in the world--a mountain of glass--volcanic obsidian--monster masses resembling the molten opaque blocks left by the Chicago great fire in the ruins of a glass warehouse. We drove along a road of shivered glass. The engineers built fires over great obsidian bowlders, and then threw cold water from the stream close by over the heated mass, breaking it into glass gravel. Chipmunks of several varieties, gray pine squirrels, hop about barking within a few feet of one; robins are almost as gentle as sparrows, and bears come down near to one of the hotels nightly to be fed for the amusement of the tourists. Beavers have their dams close by our hotel and can at dusk be seen swimming about and feeding. A small herd of buffalos, since we have been here, rushed across the road just in front of an excursion party, giving the stage horses a fright and nearly creating a panic. No gun is allowed in the park, except to the military and scouts, and no one can kill an animal, except when driven to it for want of necessary food. Two companies of soldiers patrol the regular routes to enforce the regulations and to serve as voluntary guides for the ladies of the daily parties. They forbid the smallest specimen to be carried off. I had even to hide the little dabs of mud I took from a paint-pot. Uncle Sam is cultivating good nature among men and beasts within this, his unique domain. Even the devil may grow good-natured, and may cut up his didos and antics after a while only for the people's amusement. THE CLIMAX OF GRANDEUR AND BEAUTY. Having told you of the freaks and sports of nature which make the more striking marvels of this wonderland; and having spoken of the softer and sweeter characteristics of the Park, I now come to what the majority of the travelers consider its gem. A Soudanese wise man is said to have swallowed the tale of Jonah and the whale without making a wry face, but grew fighting mad when asked to believe the story of snow and ice in northern lands. The genii might easily send a man through a whale's belly, but Allah himself could not make water hard and dry. So it is easy to tell of the monstrosities of the park, and hope for credence. They are simply monstrosities--the work of demoniac power, and are credible. But who can make another believe that huge precipices, one and two thousand feet high, have been painted with all the colors of the setting sun; that the rainbow has settled upon miles of rocks and left its sweet tints upon their rugged sides? And yet this and these are true of the Yellowstone canyon. We approached it from the South on a road running near the river. On a pretty grassy bank we rode along the stream, here over a hundred yards wide, rolling swiftly yet smoothly along in green depths, preparing to make its two plunges into the chasm below. Swift and swifter it hurried onward in quickened dignity. Presently the rock walls on either side grew contracted to a hundred or so feet, and then the green stream rushed in smooth slope to a gateway of eighty feet in width, through which, with parabolic swoop, it leaps 112 feet with such depth on its brink, that the deep-emerald green is not lost till it strikes a ledge at the bottom, where a large part of the falling sheet is shot off at an angle into the air, half as high up as the fall itself. The two sides of the river at the brink of the fall rush against precipitous walls and are bent and curled upwards into a veil six or eight feet high over the green center--a veil of countless millions of crystal drops--over the main stream of emerald more than half hidden in a mighty shower of diamonds. Standing immediately on the edge, one can imagine how Niagara's Horseshoe would look if one could get within a few feet of it. This fall is not very lofty nor wide, but is one of the most beautiful in the world. The river after the first fall rushes in foamy swirl a half mile further, between cliffs which on either side lift 1,500 feet high, and growing higher and higher, and then with one wild leap plunges 300 feet into the rocky gorge below. As it drops the emerald and the diamond struggle for supremacy, but the brighter crystal gains the ascendency before all is lost in the lace-like mist which envelopes the depths. The whole when seen from a little distance looks as light as a gem-decked veil of lace, but so vast is the body of the water which makes the leap, and so great the fall, that to one standing a mile away, with a point of land intervening between him and the fall, shutting off the noise of the splashing water, there comes a deep and mellow bass, richer than any I ever heard before made by a water fall. It is not an angry tone like Niagara's roar, but is as deep and mellow as distant rolling thunder when heard in a mountain gorge. These falls are beautiful in the extreme, but the beholder soon forgets them in wonder of the canyon which bends between the towering cliffs for four miles. Far under him, at least 1500 feet down, the river leaps and tears, now in green, and then in snowy foam, between precipices at whose feet no human foot ever did or can safely tread. The rocks lift on either side in mighty buttresses like giant cathedral walls. Standing out before the walls are towers and pointed spires of most artistic form, all painted in exquisite tints. The upper walls are of yellow and orange hue, with here and there towers and bulwarks of chalky white or of black lava over which is a film of venetian red. The upper yellow walls, sink and contract between the lifting buttresses, which at their base are of lava black, running first into dark umber, and then into chocolate bordered with black and stained with red, often so bright as to be vermillion. In some places the main walls are broken down, where some long-ago slide has carried their steepness into the river below, but with slopes far too steep for human tread. Some of these slopes are orange and yellow as if coated with sulphur; others are painted in vertical bands of brown and red, with between them narrow stripes of pearl gray and yellow, and of orange stretching for hundreds of feet, and at one point for a half mile in extent; one of these slopes look as if a banner with these several colors, had been spread over it, and then being removed, the colors of the drapery had been left upon the soft velvety rock. The buttresses and spires lift now fifteen to a hundred feet apart, and then they are spread so that the golden wall between shows 150 to 200 feet. All of the colors except the yellow seem to be in and of the rock. The yellow looks as if made by blowing thousands of tons of flowers of sulphur upon the walls, the flowers having clung when the wall had some incline, but having dropped off from the vertical rock. These painted rocks extend along the canyon for about four miles; then the gorge grows more somber and dark, and so continues some twenty miles. This lower part seems to be of a harder rock. It was cut through myriads of ages ago and has grown darkly gray, while the painted part is of a much later period and is of soft rocks--so soft that they seem to be composed of somewhat indurated volcanic ash, sulphur being the predominating mass. The red coloring is from oxide of iron. These blending together make other tints. Burnt Umber, often deepened into a rich chocolate is the dominating one. The buttresses are of a harder yet still a rather soft lava, of a yellowish brown tint near the summits, red and brown below, and finally towards their bases almost black. Sometimes there are slopes of white lime and several towers, nearly 2,000 feet high sheer up from the river, are so white that one could think them chalk. Half way down the heights are great points, like the sharpened spires of a cathedral, colored as if a mighty pot of venetian red had been emptied over them and had run in streaks down the rocky sides. Had an artist tried to sell me a picture of these cliffs, before I had seen them, in no way exaggerated in coloring, I would have called him a fraud, and would have thought he had taken me for a fool. I have seen now and then pictures which I considered daubs, which I now know did not in the least overdo Nature in its freak of rock-painting. I quit the park glad that I came, but feel that the rush and labor of going through it would hardly repay a second hasty visit, at least for several years. Yet I can recall no excursion of the same length in any part of the world half so full of surprises. Could we have made it leisurely, our enjoyment would have been greatly enhanced. We have met some tourists who think the labor and annoyance of the thing over-balance the profit and pleasure. Burns says "Man was made to mourn." In my weary round, I have frequently been convinced that about half of the travelers of the world were made to growl, or at least half think they fail to show their "raisin" unless they do growl. Equanimity of temper is the most valuable of all human characteristics for happiness. It is absolutely necessary to the traveler, who desires to learn much, and to enjoy what he sees. A plain traveling suit on one's back, a resolution to make the most of every thing in one's mind, and the least possible luggage to carry, are the three indispensables for a good traveler. The park people may not do all they should for the public; indeed, I fear they have many short-comings, but I for one, am very glad they are here, and that they do as much as they do. [Illustration: THE BISCUIT BOWL POOL, AT UPPER GEYSER BASIN. (SEE PAGE 35.)] The hotels at Mammoth Hot Springs and at Yellowstone canyon are large, each capable of housing two or three hundred guests. The beds are clean and soft, the table fair and the attendance quite good. I have only one complaint to make. At the first named hotel they will insist on a brass band's tooting a good part of the time. The noise it made was execrable. There is no such thing as bad music, it is either music or it is noise. At Norris, the hotel is poor and the managers impolite. At the Lower and at the Upper Geyser Basin, the houses are unfinished, and the rooms not sufficient in number, but the people do their best to please. This endeavor should cover a multitude of sins. LETTER V. WE LEAVE THE PARK SATISFIED. HELENA. ITS GOLD BEARING FOUNDATIONS. BROADWATER. A MAGNIFICENT NATATORIUM. A WILD RIDE THROUGH TOWN. CROSSING THE ROCKIES. SPOKANE. A BUSY TOWN. MIDNIGHT PICNIC. FINE AGRICULTURAL COUNTRY. SAGE BUSH A BLESSING. PICTURESQUE RUN OVER THE CASCADES. ACRES OF MALT LIQUORS. TACOMA. A STARTLING VISION OF MT. RENIER (TACOMA). WASHINGTON, A GREAT STATE. TACOMA, WASHINGTON, July 31, 1890. Familiarity is said to breed contempt; certainly it robs strange things of much that at first seems marvelous. On our return from the excursion around the Park, the formation at Mammoth Hot Springs had lost much of that which on our first visit struck us as so wonderful and charming. We had seen other things greatly more wonderful with which to compare them. The encrustations seemed not so white and the colorings of the water had lost some of their prismatic variety and perfection. The impressions made upon the mind by Niagara grow on succeeding visits. A storm at sea arouses no less awe because several have been before passed through. Niagara and the ocean are in eternal motion. Motion irresistably suggests change, and change precludes monotony. One does not lose his feeling of awe, after looking for many times upon the towering heights of the Yungfrau or of Kinchinjinga. Their inaccessible peaks and eternal snows repel every disposition to close communion. I doubt not, however, if a safe railroad could be run up to mighty Everest's loftiest pinnacle, that tourists would snap their fingers at the world's monarch when standing in warm furs 29,000 feet above the sea. The still and apparently unchangeable incrustations at Mammoth Hot Springs, were looked upon on our final visit without awe or surprise. A large party of us left the hotel for Cinnabar closely packed in the coaches and surreys on a bright sunny afternoon, glad we had seen the wonderland, but quite satisfied to leave our labors behind us. As we dashed down the defile near the park line, we doffed our hats and bade adieu to the eagle sitting on its eyrie as we had seen him on our entrance. The downward ride was quite rapid, and some of us who had been drawn into somewhat close communion during the past week were almost sorry when we so soon reached Livingston--some to go eastward and others westward, all to part most probably forever. From Livingston to Helena the run was made at night. We found the latter a bustling place and well worth a visit. There is an air about a mining camp which can be seen in no old country, and Helena though now full of city airs yet has many of the characteristics of the camp. Its foundations rest upon gold bearing earth, and even now in digging cellars, quite in the town, pay dirt is found. Nearly the entire site of the city has been dug over by the miner. It was in one of its gulches, now a street, that a prospector wearied out by unsuccessful tramps and reduced to his last dollar, stuck in his pick to try for a "last chance." He had no expectation of reward, but dug down in sheer desperation before going off a pauper. The result was "The last chance mine," one of the richest ever discovered. We stopped at the Helena hotel and found it quite equal to any in large eastern cities. The Broadwater Hotel, however, some three to four miles out of town, is now the lion of the place. It is a cottage-built house, with 200 fine rooms, all finished in hardwoods and elegantly furnished. Its bathrooms, with huge porcelain tubs and large dressing-rooms attached to each, are especially fine and the baths are said to be medicinally good. THE SWIMMING BATH OF THE WORLD. But these dwindle when compared with its huge swimming bath. The natatorium building is about 350 feet long by 150, with a roof 100 feet high, supported by light arches in single spans. The tank is 300 feet by 100; at one end about four feet deep, and running to ten or more at the other. Natural hot and cold waters pour over a precipice of cyclopean masses of granite at one end, about fifty feet wide and forty high. This precipice is pierced by three large openings over which the water pours in great sheets, and so artistically that one would easily believe it a series of natural falls. The flow is so large that the tank is replenished several times a day. The temperature was to me rather high--about 80 degrees. A swim in its deep waters, however, was very fine. The whole is lighted by day through windows high up, of cathedral glass in different tints, terra cotta predominating. The hotel, with its 200 rooms, and the tank-house and grounds are illuminated at night by incandescent lights. We saw it only by day, but could easily imagine how beautiful it must look and how gay a scene it must offer when 300 or 400 people are in at night--men and gay ladies. Very decorous bathing suits are furnished to bathers, and those bringing their own, are compelled to have them of conventional modesty. I was told that 300 bathers of an evening is not an unusual number, and that it is largely frequented during nine months of the year and by the very best people of the city. The charge is fifty cents for an entrance, so as to keep out the riff-raff. Col. Broadwater has expended half a million on the house and grounds, bringing his hot water from a mineral hot spring some four miles up a gorge, and a large supply of cold pure water also from the hills. The hotel was full. We took lunch with the Colonel and some friends, and found it like everything else, first class. A steam and an electric motor road leads from the city to the hotel. By the way, why do the street car people not put in electrical motors in Chicago? At St. Paul, Helena and Spokane we have ridden upon them and were delighted. A car looks as if it were out fishing with a fishing rod springing from its top, bent just as if it were playing a gamy fish. The hospitalities of the Broadwater very nearly cost us our connection at the railroad. We gave ourselves but little time, expecting to find a carriage ordered to be in waiting at the electric road city terminus. It was not there and we walked to our hotel to find we had but eleven minutes to get our luggage on a carriage and to reach the railroad station a mile and a half away. The porter said it was impossible to reach it in time. We ordered our traps brought down and rushed to our rooms for our small pieces. At the office were a crowd of newly arrived travelers. I called to the clerk saying I had no time to pay hotel bills. He smiled. Taking advantage of his good humor we mounted the carriage telling the driver to make the train or die. He said he would land us on the train or in--naming a rather hot place. He tore through the town at a full gallop. People in shop doors looked at us and smiled. Possibly they suspected an old gray beard was getting away with a young girl. The jehu and his horses were plucky. The station house as we drove up hid the train from us, and hid us from it. We turned the building, the train was well in motion, the engineer checked up but the train continued to move. We jumped down; the driver threw our trunk into the baggage car; I landed my valise on the platform of the next car; my daughter got her satchel on the next and she climbed up on the third. I caught on and climbed the fourth and threw the fare to the driver. Quite a crowd of people about the station admired our pluck, and when our driver yelled out "Hurrah for Chicago" a generous response went up from a score or more of throats. Success is admired everywhere, but out west it is the cure all. Every man at that station would at that moment have voted for me for--pound master. Shortly after leaving Helena the climb is commenced in scaling the real Rocky Mountains. The road bends and winds over many magnificent curves and loops, rapidly climbing upward. Now we look far above us, at a locomotive slowly creeping along the mountain side, and we look down upon the road we had a few moments before puffed along, but already hundreds of feet immediately under us. The mountains towered above us, covered by great black precipices, and mighty detached rocks standing alone or in groups. This is the true backbone of the continent, and the black scattered rocks might be vertebrae pushing through the worn cuticle. We could understand here why these are called the _rocky_ mountains. Rough towers and jagged turrets black with the weather wear of ages are the salient features of the heights and slopes. Here they are in great groups, there isolated. Now they are compacted into massive precipices, frowning and repellent, and then scattered as if dropped by icebergs. They are, however, not mighty loose boulders, but are moored to and are a part of the mountain's foundation rocks. We crossed some lofty trestle bridges and looked down upon a stream thick with mud from a gold washing camp near by. At length we reached the summit. Our extra locomotive was side tracked and we breathed an atmosphere perceptibly different from that we had left on the eastern side of the range. We were now upon the Pacific slope. We halted for a few minutes at Missoula. The fine valley was bathed in the glowing red of sunset. We lost at night much beautiful wooded scenery which I once before enjoyed so much. To one simply going to Puget Sound it is worth while to stop over at Missoula and then to run down Clark's Fork by day. But we wished to have a full day at our next stopping place. Of all the cities we have seen, the busiest was Spokane--pronounced as if there were no "e" at the end and the "a" quite broad. Seven years ago I was there. Then it had but 800 dwellers. Now there are in the neighborhood of 25,000. There are several streets with elegant business blocks, finished or being completed, of four, five, and six stories in height, comparing favorably with those of any Eastern city in architectural design and finish. The heart of the city reminds one of Chicago the spring after the great fire, and the people seem to have the same pluck, and energy, and confidence that so marked our people at that time. Some of the private houses on the steep, hugely-bowldered slope of a high hill on one side of the city are models of elegance. We visited two which were real chefs d'oeuvres of architectural design--one a Swiss chalet, the other Mooresque in design. Everything was after the original models, even to much of the furniture. I have never seen except in some model houses abroad such complete specimens. The outside of several others which we did not visit are quite as fine. Mrs. Cutter, the proud mother of the architect, exhibited her house with great hospitality, and Mrs. Moore seemed to feel that she had no right to hide her gem of a residence. At evening we were invited to a fete champetre on a fine lake some forty miles north of the city and 800 feet elevated above it. About 300 of the elite of the town went out by rail, danced, and had supper, returning to town by 1 o'clock in the morning. The young girl with me enjoyed it greatly. A severe cold just caught forbade my appreciating anything but the sweet, sincere hospitality shown us. Judge Kinnaird, the son of one of the friends of my early Kentucky boyhood, got us the entree of Spokane's "four hundred." This is destined to continue a thriving city, but lots at $1,000, four miles from the heart of the city, will burn badly some real estate speculators. It is said a mining trade of nearly $50,000 a day naturally belongs to the town. I fear, however, there will be a bursting of a bubble when the burnt district shall be restored. A large trade will be necessary to support the great number of mechanics and laborers now lifting the town from its ashes. Hotel Spokane is a very large and good house. [Illustration: OLD FAITHFUL, AT UPPER GEYSER BASIN. (SEE PAGE 36.)] Very fine crops are grown in the Spokane Valley. The crops of oats and wheat sown for hay was being harvested and proved a very heavy yield. Washington claims she will harvest over 20,000,000 bushels of wheat this year. I was surprised to see fine fields of grain on the rolling plains in the great bend of the Columbia river. I remember speaking of the richness of this soil in the "Race with the Sun," but thought artificial irrigation would be necessary to make it yield. This year there are fine crops where only nature's watering can ever be availed of. One of the stations, quite removed from any water course, has grown into a thriving town, showing that the country around is prosperous. I suspect that a fair rainfall cannot be relied upon from year to year. It will, however, become more and more reliable, for it has been the rule throughout the world and probably through all ages, that rains follow cultivation, and man's presence and industry calls down Heaven's aid. The answer of Hercules to the cartman would be the reply of Ceres as well to the prayers of her votaries. The ash colored sage bush was thought by the early men of the great plains to be poison to the land. It however was one of God's bounties to man. It prevented the soil from being blown away and where it grew the most lavishly, is now found to be the best of soils. Sage bush not only keeps the winds away, but when dead and rotten fills up sand pockets with material rich for all of the small grains. The people of the Yakima valley on the eastern slope of the Cascade mountains, boast that theirs is the garden spot of the Pacific country. They certainly do produce fine fruits, melons and garden vegetables, but I have not been struck favorably with the outlook of the locality in either of my trips through the land. The run from Ellensburg over the Cascades is a magnificent ride. The enormous mass of forest, prevents many extended views, but those seen are very fine. Every break in the forests would reveal lofty mountains' slopes clothed in forests of marvelous richness, and now and then snowy heights would tower aloft. Once a fine view of Renier is caught, the monarch of the grand range. Robed in his snowy ermine he stands out a sceptered hermit wrapped in his isolation. Seen from the sound he is one of the most picturesque peaked mountains of the world, and from all inland points of view he is a grand towering mass of ever living snow and ice. ARKANSAS HOT SPRINGS, RIVALED. Having done considerable hard work on the trip so far, we resolved to take a rest at the hot springs, three and-a-half hours from Tacoma, on Green River. Three years ago my boys and I fished here pleasantly for several days. The place is unpretentious, but the waters possess apparently the same properties as those of the Arkansas hot springs. The place is some fourteen hundred and fifty feet above Tacoma. During our present three days stop, an overcoat has been comfortable in the evenings, and we sleep under three blankets. A cold batch of air drops down the valley from Mount Reniers (Tacoma calls him Mount Tacoma; Renier is his name), 14,400 feet of snowy peak, driving away all summer sultriness. A bath in the medicinal waters of seven minutes and then a pack causes the perspiration to flow from one quite as heavily as the same course would do in Arkansas. Before leaving home I had a large and painful carbuncle on the back of my neck. The sign of the cross was cut deeply into it, and as it healed it proved a nest-egg for several smaller jewels near by. These I cauterized with pure carbolic in the park, but still they annoyed me much. Four baths here have at least temporarily dried them up. Men who came here three or four weeks ago on crutches from rheumatism, are walking about freely and feel themselves able to buckle down to work. A WONDERFUL GROWTH OF TIMBER. A sight of the magnificent cedar and fir forests here would amply repay an Easterner for a day's stop-over. I have been among them before several times, yet at each visit they surprise me as they did at first. Fifty thousand shingles are made from a single cedar. I counted twenty-one firs on a space considerably less than a quarter of an acre. The owner, a sawyer, assured me they would cut over five thousand feet of board each. He owns a quarter of a section about his mill and expects to market 15,000,000 feet of lumber from his land. He said the railroad company had cut 30,000,000 feet from its right of way of 400 feet by ten miles in this locality. I saw on a quarter of an acre a cluster of twenty odd trees from four and-a-half feet to over six in diameter and 300 high. They ran up about 150 feet before reaching a limb. Mighty logs lie upon the ground so thickly that even a good woodsman can walk but little over a mile an hour. Cedar logs, moss-covered and sodden, stretch 100 feet in the tangled undergrowth, and have lain there so long that one often sees a fir tree, growing with its roots straddled over them 50 to 100 years old. We were pleased to find among the guests of the springs one of Chicago's fairest daughters, now living at Tacoma, whose pulled-candy tresses three years ago out-glistened the fiber of her bridal veil, and whose eyes are bluer than the turquoise in her talismanic ring. I like little unpretentious Green River, Hot Springs, even if its table is not of the Delmonico order. MALT LIQUORS IN THE ORIGINAL PACKAGE. A pretty drop of fourteen hundred and odd feet through wild rocky gorges and thickly treed glades, along the rapid green waters of the river, in which trout abound, between lofty heights, brought us to the world-famous hop yards of the Puyallup Valley. What masses of green lift upon the closely-set hop-poles! I involuntarily cried "Prosit und Gesundheit" as we whizzed through them. Twenty-three or four years ago, the first hop root was planted in the soil of this marvelous valley. Now in this valley and others in this locality, two hundred and fifty thousand acres are giving forth each year crops unknown in any other hop land. Two thousand pounds to the acre are not unusual, and some yields have been nearly if not quite double that. Thousands of barrels of malt liquors were green about us in original packages. When we alighted at Tacoma, from which I date this letter, I was most agreeably surprised to find that Mr. Winston and his two fair daughters were on the same train. They had intended going with us into the Yellowstone Park, but were unavoidably detained. They have _done_ the Park more rapidly than we did and here overtook us. To-morrow we will be fellow-passengers for Uncle Sam's ice-bound Eldorado, Alaska. Tacoma has been and is growing with great rapidity. A great suburb covers a wide slope on the upper end of the town, which at night, when I was here three years ago, had the appearance of a Titanic camp-fire. Fires gleamed along great logs; fires burnt on sides and tops of lofty stumps, and fires belched forth from burning trees fifty and more feet from the ground. Diagonal auger holes had been bored near the root into the heart of a tree. Two holes meet at the heart thus causing a draught. Fire was put in, igniting the inflammable pitch, always richest near the ground. It then bored its way up the heart to break out as from a flue, often a hundred feet from the roots. Tacoma was a cluster of shanties with a small population, barely among the thousands, seven years ago. It was a dusty, scattered, ungainly big village of 12,000 three years ago. Now the census gives it about 40,000 population. The Northern Pacific company is filling the five-mile flat marsh along the Puyallup River which empties into the bay, in front of the town. A large part of this belongs to the Indian Reservation, and is covered by several feet of water during the high tides, which come up the Sound. The filling is being done by a powerful pumping dredge, which pours each day a vast quantity of sand and silt from the deeper part of the river upon the flats to be filled. My friends Christy and Wise of the Illinois Club, Chicago, are part owners of the powerful dredge, and I suspect are making a big thing of it. The reclaimed land will, when high and dry, be worth millions, and will be the seat of the best business portion of the future city. The _generous_ way in which this great railroad company has taken possession of and is appropriating the fat of this place reminds one forcibly of what is or may be going on in a city between this and the Atlantic. Columbian World's Fair Commissioners, Directors, and City Councils may possibly be sometimes just a little too generous, as Congresses are and have been. The people may sometimes permit their patriotic fervor to make them somewhat unobservant of the wide reach and tenacious grasp of monopoly. Corporations are said to have no souls. Railroad corporations are as voracious as their iron horses and have consciences as cold as their iron rails. The big hotel here is now crowded with travelers, the most of them just returned from or about to sail for Alaska. Cots are doubled up in many rooms. The wide veranda, overlooking the sound, last night was full of gay promenaders from many quarters of the Union; they enjoyed very fair music from the house band, while they watched with delight the unique spectacle of what appeared to be a new moon arising in the east with its crescent bent downward instead of upward. Fair Luna arose to us immediately over the sharp rounded pinnacle of lofty Mount Tacoma. She presented a narrow silver crescent--a mere thread at first, but waxing by a rapid crescendo movement, she showed her first, her second, and her third quarter, and then her full rounded self in all of her cold glory many degrees up in the sky. The proud mountain having played his short role of eclipsing a planet at once sank into gray nothingness. It seemed a pity the moon's movement was so rapid. She is a cold, fickle jade and is said to be from rim to core hard in eternal frost. It was but fitting she should rest awhile on yonder pinnacled home of eternal ice and snow. During the afternoon of yesterday after our arrival, all of the mountain's lower mass, more than two-thirds of its height, was absolutely invisible, veiled in translucent, unclouded haze. No one could have guessed a mountain was there, but high up some four to five thousand feet of his ice-locked lofty summit hung like a gigantic balloon, thinly silvered and delicately burnished, floating on airy nothingness some ten degrees above the horizon. To those who have never seen this effect of a snow-clad mountain, the picture was startling and to all was weird in the extreme. Few mountain chiefs in the world are seen to such advantage as Tacoma from this point on a clear day. The beholder standing on a level of the sea sees the whole of the cone in all of the majesty of fourteen thousand four hundred and odd feet, over 6,000 feet of this being clothed in eternal snow. We were lucky in seeing the floating summit yesterday, for a change of wind has since then brought the smoke from forest fires down into the valley to-day, and a compass is necessary to fix the great mountain's exact location. He may keep himself impenetrably veiled for several weeks. If I be not mistaken, I was told he was invisible last year for nearly if not quite three months. Mr. Clint Snowden, the Secretary of the Board of Trade, has been our cicerone, as the board was our host, in showing us about the city to-day. Its growth one could scarcely comprehend from the information as the increase of population. Seeing has shown the naked truth. The great kindness to me in the past of friends in Seattle has made me rather a Seattler. But I tremble lest it may not be able to keep pace with its pushing rival. Will the country be able to support two big cities? I have great faith in the country. Three years ago I said there would be a mighty empire along the Pacific slope--that is, a mighty part of the great Nation of the continent. Each visit here more and more impresses me that my prophecy will be fulfilled. I recalled the fact that we once thought it an outrage that "the Father of his country" should have his state-namesake off in an out of the way corner of the country, and that corner a mountainous mass of worthless land; but now one can realize that Washington will be the most picturesque state in the Union, and when America becomes densely populated, it will be one of the richest. The yield of all kinds; lumber, coal, hops, wheat and oats, fish and fruits will this year equal that of many of the eastern states. The state will ere many years have gone by, prove a magnificent namesake of the Father of his country. Dust is one of the most serious impedimenta of the Pacific slope; for three months of the year it makes one's throat and lungs a sort of mortar bed, but the soil which so easily turns to impalable powder and in such quantities as to be almost solid along some of the roads, is of marvelous richness. The trees are nearly as imposing monarchs as are the mountains; the flowers are as beautiful as the rivers are clear and pearly; the fruits are glorious and the climate is delicious. Though the noon-day sun is so hot as to make a broad-brimmed hat or an umbrella a necessity, yet the nights are so cold that one gets chilled under less than three blankets. Speaking of fruits, we must say that excepting in the Caucasus the world has no equal for the cherries of this locality--so pulpy and so big. A peddler selling some, captured his purchaser when he cried out: "But, then, sir; them's cherries, not apples." While writing this the sun marches deeply into the West. We must soon board the steamer which sails before day to-morrow. LETTER VI. THRIVING AND PICTURESQUE SEATTLE. TWO CURIOUS MEETINGS. VICTORIA AND ITS FLOWERS. ESQUIMAULT AND THE WARSPITE. TWO BROKEN HEARTED GIRLS. CHARMING SAIL ON THE INLAND SEA. PICTURESQUE MOUNTAINS. GROWTH OF ALASKA. WHALES AND THEIR SPORTS. NATIVE ALASKANS. THEIR HOMES, HABITS, FOOD, FEASTS AND WILD MUSIC. BASKETS AND BLANKETS. SALMON FISHERIES. MINES AND DOGS. STEAMER QUEEN, Aug. 10, 1890. I wrote voluminously from the Yellowstone National Park, quite at large on the run on the Northern Pacific railroad, and expected to make a big letter on the Alaskan excursion. But I am discouraged. If all the pencils seen making copious notes and extracting from route and other books on this steamer were preparing letters, and if a like proportion on the other regular steamers do the same, then the thing will be written into the ground during this season alone. I will, however, commence a short letter; the humor of my pen may make it a long one. We boarded the "Queen" at Tacoma the night of the 31st of July. Before morning we cleared the port, and at six landed at Seattle for a two hours stop. It was too early for us to see any of our friends, but giving us time to mark the wonderful growth of the last three years. In my last, the possibility of Tacoma taking the lead of Seattle was expressed. When one sees the elegant houses going up or gone up here since the fire of a year ago; looks over the hills which were three years since clothed with forests but now are covered with beautiful residences; drives over paved streets where he so short a time since was choked by dust; and glides in cable and electric cars smoothly up grades which make a walk laborious and caused the horses in his carriage to pant and blow--when one sees all these things and recalls the pluck of these people when they let the world know they wanted no help from outside when their city lay in ashes, then he feels Tacoma will have a mighty struggle even with the Northern Pacific's help to catch and lead Seattle. The Tacoma people claim that the United States census gives them the larger population. This the Seattleite denies, and I suspect with justice. He claims his city will have over 43,000 population, all within the compact boundaries of the town, and several thousands in the suburbs. Many may be there helping to build the place up out of its ashes. The greater proportion of them will probably remain permanently, for Seattle has a great trade. Before the fire a year ago it was rather over crowded. The large warehouses and hotels now gone up, are not in advance of the demand. I was, the day before while driving about Tacoma, almost a Tacoma man. But as our ship bent out of her rival's harbor, I was again a Seattler. The view of the city perched upon its terraced hills is very imposing from the bay, and recalls a long ago prospect from the sea at Genoa. While the Queen was steaming out of the bay into the open sound, I mounted to the hurricane deck for a parting view of the picturesque place. At the foot of the upper gang way I paused to let a gentleman and lady pass me on their descent from above. The gentleman held out his hand saying "Mr. Harrison, I think; we never met but once before. We were vis-a-vis at the dinner table in Colombo, Ceylon. My wife and I had just landed from the "Rome" on our way from Australia. You were about to embark on her for Suez." Indeed if I be not mistaken I got the state room he had vacated. Mr. Sargent and his wife, had a few days ago arrived at San Francisco from Japan and were then on their way to Alaska before going to their home in New Haven, from which they had been absent for several years. This meeting made a singular co-incidence with another of the day before at Tacoma. As I was crossing the rotunda of the Tacoma hotel, a stranger accosted me, and at the same time held out his hand, saying "This is Mr. Harrison of Chicago, is it not?" I replied "Yes". "We never met but once Mr. Harrison, and that was at the supper table at Agra, India. We sat side by side and talked of the Taj." This gentleman was from New York and was too, on his way to Alaska. He had just come from the East and had expected to sail on the Queen, but not being able to secure a berth, was about to go aboard the George W. Elder, which had been crippled on a rock the week before, and sailed from Tacoma the evening of the 31st. It was pleasant thus to meet these people--utter strangers to each other, whom I had encountered on the other side of the world. It is remarkable how often such chance meetings come to voyagers in distant regions. It shows how the love of travel grows upon one. Seeing begets a desire for seeing. A large number of our fellow passengers on this excursion have been world wanderers. We tied to the pier at Port Townsend for a couple of hours. We had time for a hasty run over the town and to measure the march of its improvement during the past three years. It has grown very considerably and improved much. Its people make huge calculations as to its future, but have no expectation of their town being a rival of the other two cities. It has been the port of entry for the Sound, which has given it considerable advantages. This exclusive privilege it will hereafter have to share with one or both of the others. Back of it lies the unexplored Olympian mountains, in which many think rich gold mines will be found. If this should be the case, then Port Townsend will forge ahead. Our far northern excursion is now coming to a close. We have done Alaska and are again sailing through British waters. Vancouver Isle stretches to our right. We can easily imagine that a turn of a headland may reveal the Warspite, with her guns, throwing 300-pound shot, ready to knock us into pi should our Yankee inclinations tempt us to give a too short twist on the lion's tail. By the way, the ironclad bearer of the Admiral's broad pennant, is a ferocious looking monster. Having three hours at our command before dark on our arrival at Victoria the first of the month, we drove about the staid and orderly town, drinking in air laden with the breath of honeysuckle embowering lattice and cottage; exclaiming in delight at sight of roses hanging in mighty clusters and festooning porches and verandas, or lifting their faces six inches from out to out on strong stems in the gardens; and having our eyes refreshed by parterres of dahlias, nasturtiums, feverfews, and many delicate flowers in white or of every tint. This town was evidently settled directly from England. The love evinced for cottage adornment would have been lost in a passage through the Canuck settlements of the East. The sweet embowered cottage is an English institution, as thoroughly as is "magna charta." Wherever either exists we know it to be a heritage from the seagirt isle. THE FAIRY-LIKE HARBOR OF THE BRITISH FLEET. Our drive brought us about six o'clock to Esquimault, the fairy-like harbor of the British fleet of the North Pacific. What a little gem it is! A rounded patch of sea, a few hundred yards in diameter, lifted up and dropped thirty fathoms deep among well-wooded, sloping hills and connected by a short, deep channel less than a hundred feet wide, with the mighty ocean. This channel is in fact a gateway with smooth granite buttresses, of bowlder-like surface, lifting a few feet above high tide. These buttresses were built by no human hand, but were born of the molten mass poured up from the earth's fiery center. The very globe shook and reeled in volcanic spasms at their birth. Here, in this quiet little harbor, thoroughly protected from the outer sea, lay the fearful man of war Warspite, a sleeping Titan, surrounded by several others less formidable, but yet of ugly dimensions. Close by the entrance of the harbor is a great dry dock, in which American vessels have been courteously repaired. Near this is a little hamlet where one can get a fair meal and can take rowing boat to visit the great ships. The drive from town to the harbor is very charming; through pretty woods, on good roads, overlooking green arms of the sea which run back into the hills, in crystal clearness. One can well say these sea-creeks run back into the hills, for the incoming tides send currents up them of great strength. Pretty villas are built along the well kept roads, and acres of wild roses scent the air, while the red barked Arbutis leans over the cool streams with knarled bronze like arms and branches. The excursion steamers all anchor at Victoria long enough to permit tourists to take this and other drives. When we reached the neighborhood of the man-of-war, it was so late that we had no expectation of going aboard, but our hackman desirous of putting in as much time as possible, and a boatsman in want of a job assured us we would be received aboard the Warspite. A large number of her 600 complement were leaning over the bulwarks, and gold lace and brass buttons shone upon the eyes of our two young girls. Their little hearts fluttered as no glacier of the Arctic zone could have made them do. Ah! what a wondrous spell the glitter on the shoulders of soldier or sailor works upon the female heart! Even the married woman of our party had a heightened color as we approached the gangway of the mighty ship. Fancy the two broken hearts of the girls and the composed, sad face of the matron when a sailor came down the gangway to inform us the hour for visitors was past, that no one was received after five o'clock. One of the men of our party told him the next time we came we would board his ship from the deck of the "Chicago." He laughed. There is no taint of a quarrel between the brave tars of an English and an American man-of-war. We rowed slowly away. The music from the band poured down upon us from the decks and was caught in sweet echo by the hills around. How I pitied the girls! They are just on the edge of society, and what tales they could have told their schoolmates! Chicago's late representative at the Court of the Shah of Persia smiled as only one who had been at a court could smile. But the girls uttered sighs which smote the writer's too sympathetic soul. WHEN WE GOBBLE UP CANADA. The Warspite lies at Esquimault (up here called Squimal) ready to shake the icebergs of Behring Sea. A word to President Harrison and Secretary Blaine: Don't tell England that our blood is up to fighting heat, until we are ready to gobble down Canada and the Canadian Pacific railway at a mouthful. It can be done and not at the expense of a very wry face. Then let England roam about the oceans to her hearts content, while we Yankees will play base-ball with a continent for our grounds, with basemen and shortstops between the two oceans, and out-fielders on the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic seas. SAILING THROUGH THE ISLES OF THE PACIFIC. We are now on our tenth day from Tacoma. The ship will reach her home Tuesday, the twelfth day, having sailed over 2,100 miles; some ten hours of this was in the open Pacific, from Glacier Bay to Sitka, and then from that port south to Clarence Strait. The remainder of the distance was in the interior channels, and across perhaps a half-dozen short openings into the sea. The several channels have fixed names and are of various breadths, from 200 or 300 yards to four or five miles. Sometimes we were next the broad continent, but often small islands lay between the straits and the mainland, with large islands or smaller ones several deep, towards the sea. The sailing along the watery road was plain and easy except in two narrow straits, where the ship had to slow up frequently, while she bent in and out to avoid rocks. These are taken partly as cut-offs and partly for the beauty of the scenery. The islands are all mountains lifted from the water; all are more or less tree-clad, with peaks on the tallest, rocky, jagged, and oftentimes with streamers of snow stretching downward in their upper gorges. Vancouver Island is 300 miles long, covered by a broad, lofty range of mountains in pile behind pile, broken and in some instances with heads wrapped in perpetual snow. North of this along the way are four irregularly shaped long islands, around each of which a good steamer would require nearly a day to sail. These, too, are a mass of rugged, jagged, sharply pointed and peaked mountains in very confused mass, with no valleys, but with narrow gorges and small flats, along many of which pour pellucid streams from snowy heights. Seen from the south, the mountains are green up to a height of two or more thousand feet, with rocky summits flecked with snow or banded in the long downward gorges. Viewed from the north, the snow often lies in broad fields and always is in greater profusion then when seen from other points of the compass. The smaller island mountains are not so lofty, but are beyond the dignity of hills, being from 1,500 to 2,000 and some of them 3,000 feet high. AWE-INSPIRING MOUNTAINS. To the eastward the mainland presents one continuous mass of mountains; never in even ranges, but all broken, toothed and needled, with foothills next the water green and rounded. The loftier masses behind shoot their rocky height into the blue sky from 3,000 to nearly 5,000 feet above the sea. Flecks and bands of snow are never absent from these, and often the smooth upper heights are wrapped in pure mantles of white. [Illustration: GRAND CANYON FROM THE BRINK. YELLOWSTONE CANYON. (SEE PAGE 77.)] Into the mainland enter many crooked, deep inlets antlered in form, the counterparts of the fiords of Norway with this difference, those of Norway have generally lofty precipices lifting directly from the water; here there are fewer precipices. The mountains, however, lift up very steep, with wooded slopes, but permitting their pinnacles to be seen. Some prospectors abroad told us that the scenery on these fiords was majestic in the extreme. And well it may be, for nearly all of the inlets are flanked by notched and peaked mountains, shooting into the sky with shoulders and necks wrapped in eternal frosts. When our great Republic shall have its boundary lines marked only by oceans and seas, then these bold highlands should be set apart as a continental park for the free people of the Western hemisphere. The mountains of both mainland and islands are thoroughly picturesque, with rugged upper members topped out in sharp points and rocky pinnacles, such as are seen nowhere in the old states of our country and but rarely in the new ones or in any of the old Territories. There are no deciduous or hardwood trees, and but few hardwood shrubs. Firs, balsams, and hemlocks cover the mountain sides, and cedars sometimes are seen in the small flats next the sea or up the gullies. The forests on mountains slopes are of small trees, and no track of the fire fiend is ever seen. The air is so humid along the entire outer sea coast from the mouth of the Columbia to Behring Strait that one cannot avail himself of forest fires to help clear the land. Should the trees be deadened and fall, they would lie sodden and wet until destroyed by sluggish rot, while tangled undergrowth and young forests would spring up in almost impenetrable maze. On many mountain slopes more than half of the trees are dead but still standing, while often are seen great belts of bare, dead trunks, with not a single live one, but a green carpet of fresh after-growth spreading over the ground. The soil is so thin upon the rocky mass of the mountain that sustenance is not afforded for any but young and vigorous forests. After a few years' growth the living die to make a soil for larger ones to come. Thus ever do the young feed upon the old. A man works, accumulates and dies, for his children to feed upon his hoarded fat, perhaps to squander it in riotous living. One frequently sees here the footprints of avalanches which have swept the accumulations of long years, trees and soil, into the sea or gorges, leaving the rock bare as it was in its primal upheaval. So, too, misfortunes and unavoidable shocks sweep away the heritage of worthy sons from worthy sires. THE RUINS OF MIGHTY FORESTS. On the more gentle slopes and in the small valleys of Alaska, fallen timber builds up a rich soil. The trees, however, lie for many years piled one upon another, the newer upon the older, and all heavily covered with moss and yielding to slow decay. When decayed, they make a soil so uneven in surface that a walk over it is an arduous task. When a tree falls it lies and moulders for long years; heavy, rich moss wraps it as in thick blankets. In this way the ground becomes covered by hummocks several feet high. These hummocks are as thick as graves in an old cemetery. We saw an upturned tree back of Sitka ten to twelve feet in diameter some distance from its roots. Saplings ten inches in diameter were growing among its upturned roots fifteen feet from the ground. Moss six inches thick lay like a winding sheet about the trunk. Half of the lower trunk had been slabbed off, I suspect by natives for material for their carved wood work, for it was perfectly sound. Another large tree lay prone at great length. A fir over three feet in diameter was sitting astride it, sending its roots down to the ground on either side. A trail running across it made it necessary to cut down into the old trunk. The wood left at the bottom was perfectly sound. Again I saw a large tree perched some feet up upon an old stump, its roots having found the ground down in the hollow. The majority of the large trees on the flats have grotesque trunks for several feet from the ground, showing that they had been distorted by old trunks, in whose moss-covered sides the seed from which they sprang had germinated. The air is so full of moisture that moss soon covers a fallen tree and furnishes the best bed for sprouting the delicate seed of coniferae. The expense of clearing such land as might be fitted for cultivation will retard for a long time any agricultural pursuits in Alaska. A well-posted man assured me it would cost $600 per acre. Live stock would thrive here if lands could be opened. Grasses are rich and luxuriant, and the few horses and cows seen were sleek and fat. But I do not think from what we saw and heard that either as an agricultural or as a grazing country Alaska ever will or can be a success. Cauliflowers, lettuce, potatoes, and several other garden vegetables looked well at Sitka and Fort Wrangel but in small patches. A few beds of poppies and daisies were very fine, and several other flowers were brightly yellow in the little gardens. "THERE SHE BLOWS!" We have had charming weather--the Captain says the best trip of the season. Several of our passengers give your correspondent credit for being the mascot of the party--a compliment very complacently accepted. The good, sunny days have not only enabled us to enjoy hugely the beautiful and often sublime scenery, but have given us many opportunities for studying some of the mannerisms of the leviathans of the deep. We have seen many whales, several times ten to twenty at once, and at close range. They rolled themselves in grand dignity up out of the water a few hundred yards from us, and, slowly bending, threw their flukes several feet into the air. Then they would spurt great geysers ten or more feet high, making a noise not unlike that made by elephants when blowing dust over themselves, but far louder. Indeed, when some blew a hundred yards away from us, it sounded like a somewhat continuous emission from a steam stack. To-day several fine fellows were very near us, and one apparently young one threw himself several feet entirely into the air. He seemed from twelve to eighteen feet long. The passengers thought it a baby whale sporting for the amusement of its dam. But a glass happening to catch him on the fly it was discovered he had a decided snout. Some of us then decided it to be a Greenland shark, which has an underjaw provided with very sharp, rather protruding teeth, with which it scoops out of a whale great chunks of blubber. Close by where it leaped a large whale lifted its fluke almost perpendicularly out of the water and thrashed it into foam. This was kept up for several hundred yards till we got too far away to see it well. This we are told is sometimes done in a kind of wanton sport, but I suspect in this instance the monster was trying to defend itself from one of its inveterate enemies. At any rate our passengers were afforded a very unusual sight. THE NATIVE ALASKANS. Of the animated nature, however, exhibited for our amusement and study, the native Alaskans were the most interesting part. They are very improperly called Indians, being of a distinct race from the American red men. I went into several shacks or native houses. They are built by the natives, and under no outside advice or architectural interference. I saw the manner of arrangement of their little stock of furniture. I saw them preparing their food and eating their meals; heard them talk, and watched the play of their features when trading and when having some sport. I thought I saw cropping out everywhere decided Japanese characteristics. It is difficult to name or enumerate the points of resemblance. But they exist, and are to me far more marked than any resemblance between the Japanese and the Chinese, who are supposed by most ethnologists to be of cognate families. These people are to me degraded descendants of the land of the rising sun who entered America through the Aleutian Isles. The Alaskan shacks are generally located near the water, in somewhat orderly rows, one behind the other. They usually, as far as I could see, consist of a single room occupying the entire house. At or near the center of the building is a square, covered with dirt when the house is raised up, or if the house be low down, then on the ground, whereon the fire burns. Around this square is a somewhat raised platform, as in a Japanese house; on this, the different members of the family, or the several families have their separate locations, with their boxes, beds and other individual property. Frequently the room is thirty to forty feet square, and houses ten, twenty, and often forty or more people. These are members of a large family or of a sub-tribe. By the way a woman is frequently chief of a tribe, and one reads over the door in large letters the name of "Blank (a woman) chief." The Indians seem to evince a sort of boastfulness in the numberings on their houses, which at Sitka run from 3,000 or 4,000 up to five and six. It is barely possible this may be a part of a system of enumeration running through several colonies or tribes, and throughout the land wherever such tribes live. But a white man living in the territory told us it arose from the native desire to look big and to appear as one of a great multitude. The individual possessions of the different members of a family, are kept in boxes and piled upon them. I looked into several of these boxes. Every thing was thrown in pell-mell--shoes, skins, scarfs, tools, pails and even iron pots and axes. The packing of a box looked as if it had been done in a hurry. The women and children when indoors were found, except at meal time, squatted about the several platforms. When at meals they were huddled on their haunches on the earthen square about the open fire. There are no chimneys to the houses. The fire being built in the center of the squares, the smoke goes out as in Japan through openings in the center of the roof, and to a considerable extent through the doors. About and above the openings in the roof are a sort of screen which may be shifted according to the direction of the wind. In several small shacks at Juneau, old fashioned iron stoves were seen, with stove pipes leading above the roof. The inside of a shack is an omnium gatherum, not only of people of both sexes and of all ages, but of fishing nets, axes and saws, boat paddles, and blocks on which wooden work was being done. Dried fish and pelts stretched are on the walls and hanging from the roof poles. The natives are very dark and swarthy, and have rather a yellow tinge in their complexions than red; have large heads and huge, broad, flat, stolid faces, long bodies, short, ill-shaped legs, and ungainly gaits. The habit of squatting when at rest, and when propelling their canoes and fishing, has developed unduly the upper body at the great expense of the lower limbs. They obtain their livelihood from the sea, and spend much more than half of their waking hours in their dugouts. They have no thwarts in their canoes to sit upon, but squat down upon the bottom, or bend on their knees. This causes the legs to dwindle when young and to become decidedly crooked. This, too, is the cause of their decidedly shambling gait when walking. They do not look bright, but are skilled in all things they understand, and learn with great rapidity, not by imitation as the Chinese do, but from inborn aptitude like that of the Japanese. Their blankets, made of the wool of the mountain goat, are marvels of closely woven fabrics, and their baskets of a kind of tough grass are as close as the finest Panama hats and very harmoniously colored. They carve fairly in wood, their totems and small ware being quite artistic. In silver ornamentation they excel. Blankets are the medium of exchange; not the native ornamental blankets, but those introduced by the Hudson Bay people. The old traders bought furs, and pelts, paying for them in woolen blankets. A pile of furs was worth so many blankets. From what I can learn the skill of a native trader has always been in his ability to demand a large number of blankets for his goods, and then to maintain as long as possible the stolidity of his countenance, during the higgling necessary to meet the views of the shrewd Hudson Bay fellow. About the places we visited only silver coin is taken in trade, and a native man or woman rarely drops a peg from the price first demanded. THE HOME AT SITKA. At a school, "The Home," in Sitka, under the control of a church organization in the States, are a large number of girls and boys of all sizes. They are neat, intelligent in feature, recite fluently and feelingly simple speeches and verses, and sing sweetly and as if they felt not only the sense but the harmony of their hymns. A band of twenty youths plays brass instruments well and with great precision in time. They have all pleasant low voices and the girls exceedingly sweet ones. I noticed the same characteristics among some wholely uneducated and semi-savage women when singing to a wild uncouth dance of the men. A party of about sixty of a certain family returned in canoes from berrying while we were in Sitka. They went through uncouth motions while in the boats and then danced in savage grotesqueness on the shore, where they were received by the men and women of other families in wild glee. It was a berry "potlach" or feast. The women's voices could be heard singing in low, weird but sweet monotone. After dancing and distributing pieces of calico among certain of the berrying people, a party of over a hundred entered a large shack, closing the door to us white outsiders. There they went through some long ceremonies. I managed to get inside and for a few minutes was not disturbed. All were squatted around the great room, in the center of which was a fire, the smoke going out of an aperature in the roof. When I entered all were singing in so low a tone that it could almost be termed crooning. The whole thing was weird and wild, but the singing was not lacking in untutored melody. Some other tourists seeing me get in also entered, opening the door so widely that the wind drove the smoke back into the room. A sort of head man who was next the fire leading the song, got angry--gave the word, when all got up hurriedly, and each taking a large basket or bowl full of berries went off to their respective homes. From what I could learn, a whole sub-tribe takes boats and visits some locality possibly a day or more's sail away, where the berry crop is known to be good. They remain until their canoes are well filled. When they return some of the men stand up in the canoes arrayed in showy colored calico or other bright stuff--and shout and sing and wildly gesticulate. By this, those in the village at once understand whether or not the excursion has been successful. In accordance therewith the returning party is met on the landing. If unsuccessful with dirges and lamentations. If successful with a "potlatch," a species of joyous fete. The party we saw were in high feather. Bedizened fellows stood in the prows of the boats, going through gesticulations and contortions which, had they been white men, would have overturned the treacherous dugouts. They shouted and chanted in wild glee. Their songs were returned from the shore. There were forty to sixty in the returning party. As soon as their keels touched the strand, they poured out, a few in uncouth antics, but the bulk of them in solemn decorousness. When landed one two or more sang in wild weird tones, the women joining in the chorus. After going through certain formalities, presents were given to members of the returning party, of coin, and of strips or pieces one or more yards long of calico in red or other bright colors. Then the singing was continued, and the berries were removed from the canoes and carried into a large shack where other ceremonies were gone through. No white people were allowed to enter. A couple of natives stood guard at the door, and grufly if not angrily turned off all who attempted to gain ingress. The ceremonies were continued within for two or three hours. It was at the later end of this that I gained admission, as above stated, while the attention of the guards was removed. The whole thing seemed very ridiculous, especially when one remembered that at best only a few bushels of huckleberries were the occasion of the rejoicing. Our Grecco-maniacs, however, should not deem the thing small. For according to Homer, the immediate success of the demigods of Greece--the heroes who gyrated in that wonderful tempest-in-a-tea-pot, the Trojan war, did quite as silly things over just as pitiful successes. After all, too, it is not the size of a thing which makes it valuable, but the size the possessor thinks it possesses. A bushel of huckleberries to an Alaskan is quite as large, as a schooner load of wheat would be to old Hutch, or a dozen car load of pigs would be to P.D.A. THE DELICACIES OF THE TABLE. I went into a house at Juneau; a woman and several children with one man were squatted around the fire taking their dinners. This consisted of a large dried salmon. A woman held it in her hand before the hot fire, screening her hand by a fold of the fish. When it was cooked on one side enough to burn her hand, she turned another fold and when satisfied with her culinary art, tore it apart in a large wooden bowl. The fish was in fact scarcely at all cooked, but was simply made very hot. This, however, seemed satisfactory to the feasters. Each member of the family tore a piece off with fingers or teeth. The hands of the young girls were soaked with the oil exuding from the hot and fat salmon. They wiped them clean several times during the meal upon their luxuriant tresses, which hung down their backs in massive braids. I think I must have a good-natured face, for I have never in any land offended when making such domiciliary visits. In this instance the woman wished me to join them in their feast, assuring me it was good. At least I so took the words with the expressions of face used. They had no bread of any sort. After they had sufficiently filled themselves, each took a long draught of water, from a native wooden pail. Salmon is the staple article of food, and hangs drying by the scores and hundreds on racks in front of each shack or house and upon the walls within. The fish on the racks seemed small, possibly such are reserved for home consumption, while the larger ones had been sold to the canneries. The Alaskan salmon, however, is not a large one. It must be fattening food, for men and women are generally plump and the children as rounded as well-fed pigs. The little ones are as frisky and happy as in Japan, which I thought the paradise of babies. I was struck by the full rounded paunches of the little ones. This, too, is remarkable among their little cousins in the land of the rising sun; possibly a result of fish diet. During the summer season the Indians consume large quantities of berries--blue or huckleberries and salmon berries. The English call the latter, cloud berry in Norway. I saw a basket full of a white clustered root in front of a shack; a sort of bunch of small seed like bulbs compacted into a single bulb, very white, not unlike a mass of snow-drops glued together into a ball walnut-sized. I asked a woman who was washing them if they were good. She grinned and put a handful into her mouth as answer, at the same time handing me some. They tasted like a starchy paste made from impalpable flour. I asked the name. She replied "Chinook (Indian) lice." They cannot pronounce the "r," but Chinese-like substitute "l" for it. Another delicacy is a kind of very small fish egg, deposited by a sort of herring on fine twigs of hemlock placed by the natives in certain places in the sea for the purpose. The eggs are clustered on the twigs until they are as big as one's thumb, thousands upon thousands, upon a small branched limb. The branches are hung up to dry. When used they are soaked in fresh water and the eggs stripped off by the hand. The eggs when soaked swell till they seem perfectly fresh. I asked the woman I saw soaking them if they were good. A smile from ear to ear illumined her face; she offered me some and then opened her capacious mouth into which she threw a handful which she crushed with evident delight. Though of an enquiring mind, I abstained heroically from accepting the proffered hospitality. Had the eggs been fried I doubt not they would have made a good dish. The dry ones were shriveled and as dead looking as the roe in a smoked herring, yet when soaked they seemed as plump and fresh as if just taken from the mother fish. GUM-CHEWING AMONG THE NATIVES. When selling berries to the ship passengers the women are either all the while eating of their goods or are chewing some kind of gum, generally the latter. Why should not Alaska's 400 chew gum as well as our own. One of their fashions is very grotesque. We saw several women with their faces, necks, arms and hands stained almost black. Whether this was done for ornamentation, or as a sort of mourning badge, I could not definitely learn. Both solutions were given us by people residing among them. If the latter, it furnished another evidence of Japanese origin. A Japanese married woman blackens her teeth, and plucks her eye brows and lashes to make herself unattractive, as a proof of her love for her lord. These women carry out the same idea when in sorrow. Their grief is certainly much more economical than in politer lands where, robes de deul are both nobby and costly. At each town visited by us lines of women with some men were crouched down on their haunches, with their wares for sale; dressed skins, carved wood, spoons, totems, and uncouth images of animals; baskets beautifully woven of a kind of grass, very close, very strong, and decorated in bold, natural colors. They have what so many untutored but somewhat self-cultured half savage people have, a thorough conception of harmony of color. At first, to our cultivated estheticism, the coloring used by them is too glaring, but when toned down by time, or when seen at a little distance, no civilized people can surpass them. The baskets made by the people of a sort of strong grass probably mixed with some kind of bark, are very strong and so closely woven, that they will hold water. They can be folded tightly without breaking the fiber. I had considerable difficulty in getting a native to part with an old one. It would seem they recognize the softness lent by age. I offered several women two or three times as much for old ones, which they had in use, as they asked for new ones. The one I succeeded in getting was from a woman who had no new ones for sale. It probably had held rather unsavory messes, but its coloring is exquisitely soft and mellow. A passenger asked what I wanted with the dirty thing. Its soft tone being pointed out, she spent over an hour going from shack to shack fruitlessly endeavoring to obtain one. The same difference is observable between old and new Turkish rugs. Their beauty is not in the texture or weight but in the harmony of color, which no European has yet been able to surpass, if equal. The high art of France has not yet learned to create in large ungraceful figures the result found in rugs laboriously made by the half civilized people of Eastern Turkey and of the Caucasus. The French attain it only by grouping small figures of graceful design. The Thlinkets are the most numerous of the native tribes, and are the ones which so resemble the Japanese. A Thlinket when playing merchant to the tourist visitors offers his wares with an utter indifference and apparently never drops a tittle from his first price. If you purchase he or she seems pleased; if you decline his air is of one utterly indifferent. We saw a large number at work about the Treadwell mines in different capacities, and in drilling and quarrying the quartz. They seem to work as well as the average white man. By the way, the Treadwell mine is an extraordinary thing. Gold-bearing quartz is quarried like common stone. The vein, if it can be so termed, is 500 feet wide, open upon the surface and extending to an unknown depth. It is of low grade ore, yielding only from four to eight dollars per ton, but is so easily reached and worked with such cheapness that many think it the most valuable mine in the world. The mine runs 240 stamps, being the largest number in existence under one roof. It is controlled by so close a corporation that the yield is never divulged and its value is a secret. It is said, however, that an offer of $15,000,000 to $20,000,000 has been refused. Its machinery is almost if not entirely run by water power furnished by a mountain stream tumbling from a lofty height immediately behind and over the mine. It is on Douglas Island, which is separated from the main land at Juneau by a channel about a mile in width. Other paying mines are being worked about Juneau, and promising claims have been located in many parts of the Territory. The seal produce of the land is too well known to need any comment, but it will probably surprise the majority of our people when they learn that the salmon crop of last year was of about 750,000 cases. Each case I believe, holds two dozen cans. When one considers the fact that the waste of fish at the great packing canneries is enormous, not more than half of an eight pound sock-eye salmon--the best of all--being used, and then considers the number caught by the natives for themselves and for their dogs, we can easily marvel at the vast schools which frequent these Northern waters. The waste spoken of is not because more cannot be saved, but because the middle part of the fish cans best and is saved with a minimum of labor. The back with its fin is removed by one stroke of the knife, then the same is done with the belly. The head and tail is then cut so deep into the body that only four pounds of an eight-pounder is left. This is divided into four equal parts. One part is then rolled and pressed by the hand into a can. The cans are closed and placed in great vats, where they are boiled. When about done they are taken out and pricked to let the air out, and again soldered. They go again into vats to be boiled an hour and a half. This long cooking in air-tight cans causes the bones to be absorbed without wasting the juices and flavor of the fish. When this is done, each can is again examined and any one at all puffed up is again pricked to let all air escape and is again boiled. They are then cooled for boxing. Some canneries on the Pacific pack from forty all the way up to a hundred thousand fish a day. I spoke of dogs. There are a great many in the Indian villages. They are all more or less mixed of Esquimaux breed. They exceed the number of children, are all wolf-like, and are on the best of terms with the people. It is amusing to set one of them to barking, especially if the bark be of the howl kind, for immediately it is caught up by his nearest neighbor and carried on until every dog in the camp is squatting on his haunches and lifting his voice to its highest pitch. The medley of sounds, from the pup's quaver through the whole gamut of different ages to the sober howls of the grandfather, is very droll, especially when the hearer sees the performers in their dead earnestness. They lift their heads and look so solemn, and howl in so lugubrious a key, that one feels that in this dogish art at least they are unequaled by the canines of any other part of the world. LETTER VII. STEAMING UP THE ICE-PACKED FIORDS AND CHANNELS OF THE ARCTIC COUNTRY OWNED BY UNCLE SAM. SALMON CANNERIES. CANOE BUILDING BY NATIVES. ASCENT OF THE "MUIR" GLACIER, 300 FEET ABOVE WATER. FANTASTIC ICE FORMATIONS AT TAKOU. SUMMER AND WINTER CLIMATES. IMPUDENT CROWS AND ORATORICAL RAVENS. STEAMER QUEEN, GULF OF GEORGIA, Aug. 10. The salmon canneries of Alaska are not all in the neighborhood of the towns at which the excursion steamer calls, but are at or near every considerable stream which flows into the straits, channels and inlets. The instinct of the fish send them at regular seasons into fresh water, where and near which, they are caught in vast numbers. Other steamers, some of them carrying passengers and requiring a week longer to make the trip, call at stated times at several places, to which the Queen does not go, to take on and unload freight. The natives are the principal fishermen using, both nets and hooks from their trim canoes. These are dug out from a single log, some barely holding a man, others carrying with safety fifty or more. A log of two feet diameter will make a canoe nearly twice as large at its waist. When dug out to a thin shell almost as light as birch bark, the frame is filled with water, into which hot stones are thrown until the wooden walls are thoroughly steamed, hot and pliable. Sticks of different lengths, the longest at the canoe waist, are then set into the frame, which is spread out into a fine, cutter-shaped keel. A high prow and somewhat raised stern are cut out of the log or set into it. Some of the crafts present finely modeled keels. The shell of a canoe holding over sixty people, is often less than a half inch thick, and so light that two people can easily pull it high on dry land. The native squats in the bottom of his canoe and paddles it with great speed. We saw a boat not twenty feet long, the whole filled to the top with light firewood. On this were perched two men, three women, a dog, a small tent, and the cooking utensils of the family. They were sailing from Juneau to another village several miles away. A native gets into his canoe as lightly and carefully as if he were treading on eggs. In this instance, the boat sank until its upper line was not four inches out of water. We expected to see it swamped, for there was a light wind and a few white caps. We watched it with our glasses until safely landed at a village several miles away. The natives, of villages quite distant from the towns at which the steamers call, bring their wives, dogs, and household utensils, together with what they may have to sell in the curio line to these places on the day the steamers are due. They pitch their tents on the shore not far from the steamboat pier, draw their canoes upon the strand above high water mark, and seem as much at home as if regularly domiciled. They remain as long as they see a chance for trade and then fold their tents and silently steal away. They require only a few minutes to get themselves and their worldly possessions aboard their little dugouts. At Juneau there were several of these temporary inhabitants. They all embarked after sundown, and with the long twilight were able to reach their permanent abodes before well-set dark. The people catch fish at or near their respective villages. The canneries each have a small steambarge, which is sent to several villages daily to pick up the catch. In this way the salmon are landed at the packing-places when perfectly fresh. The Alaskan salmon is as a rule small, averaging only about six pounds, while "sock eye" of the Frazer River run evenly at eight pounds, and the Columbia River furnishes an average of nearly twenty pounds. Large fish, however, were brought to our steward, also magnificent halibut, which the passengers enjoyed greatly. One soon becomes satiated with salmon on the Pacific Coast. It is as thoroughly an every day food, as is the hog and hominy on a southern plantation. Except to the Indian, it does not seem to be as good for a steady diet as the southerner's homely fare. Several other varieties of salt water fish furnish a less surfeiting every day food than this famous beauty. We hailed with pleasure, the change to halibut given us by our steward when we reached Alaska. No where is this solid denizen of the sea, found in better kelter than up here. A PICTURE OF SITKA. Our ship on the excursion stops at Seattle and Port-Townsend, in Washington; Victoria and Nanaimo, on Vancouver's Island; and at Fort Wrangle, Juneau, and Sitka, in Alaska; at each long enough to afford passengers full time to satisfy themselves. Juneau is the largest place owing to the rich mines in the vicinity. All have large canneries near by, which employ natives, many of whom have acquired considerable property. A native woman, widow to a white trader, and her daughter were passengers from Juneau to Chilkat. She is a sort of Merchant, continuing the business of her defunct husband. She bore herself most decorously in her half mourning, and seemed quite able to steer her own bark through the remaining voyage of life. She is reputed to be worth several thousand dollars, and manages her affairs shrewdly. Her eligibility was suggested to the late friend of Persia's shah. His eyes rested more fondly upon her plump daughter, who displayed much agility and a trim ankle when she descended the gangway in a high sea out side of Chilkat. Sitka has one of the prettiest sites and harbors in the world, and its climate just now is simply delicious. It is built on slightly rising ground on a bay running some miles from the sea, with beautiful little islands, clustered in large number in front of the town. These lift with rounded rocky foundations naked and water-washed at low tide, but are clothed in rich green shrubbery above high water mark. They would make an exquisite water park for a large city. Over one edge of this park lifts a few miles away, Mount Edgecumbe, a perfect volcanic cone about 3,000 feet high. Its lower two thirds are clothed in green. Its upper third, beneath its broad extinct crater, is of rich red rock. Long points of the red run down into the green, while points of the green run up into the red. It reminds one much of famous Fuji-yama in Japan. The god-mountain of Japan is over four times as high, but Edgecumbe is seen so close that the contrast does not entirely belittle it. Around and behind Sitka are lofty foot hills clothed in forests, making a perfect amphitheater, while behind them rear pointed, rocky mountains more or less snow flecked. The town is on the great island of Baranoff, which is a mass of pinnacled mountains, the northern slopes of which are always white with sheets of snow. When we sailed, a few days before, northward through Prince Frederick Sound, these mountains formed a wonderfully beautiful background. Prince Frederick Sound is about twenty by thirty odd miles. All around it lie grand mountains of exceeding ruggedness on their highest peaks, but green below, with stripes, bands and patches of white. Through a break to the south the sound stretches some miles further, backed by the Baranoff range, rising in innumerable sharply pointed pinnacles, and about their shoulders as purely white as loftiest Alpine heights. All the mountains are comparatively uncovered when seen on their southern, western, and eastern exposures, while those seen from the north although not more lofty, are clothed in blankets of white, as if to protect them from the northern blasts. The entire Alaskan trip presents a constant succession of gorgeous scenery, and if the weather be fine, it is worth the time taken and the cost in money to one who loves the picturesque and enjoys the rugged grandeur of nature, even if they were no grand glaciers. The time is not far distant, when commodious hotels will be maintained in these northern possessions as summer resorts. Many people will then spend weeks in them, and with the aid of small excursion barges will find health and delights. An intelligent man who has resided for several years in Sitka, assured me he much preferred its winter climate to that of southern Ohio, where he had grown up to mature manhood. The average winter climate is rather milder than that of Washington, but with no extreme of cold. The frequent rainy days during the summer are a great draw back to the pleasure of excursion tourists. The chances are decidedly that he will find everything wet when he arrives. Our party was one of the lucky ones. The air was clear and balmy. The sun made a parasol agreeable to the ladies. I lolled for an hour on the stoop of a deserted house, with my head in shade, but my body and lower limbs warmed by a delicious sun bath, while my eyes feasted upon the glorious picture spread before me of mountain peak and green slopes, and gently rippling water as the tide slowly crept up the soft beach of the little bay behind the town. Except when sailing across four entrances or broad straits running out to the open sea, the entire voyage to and from Alaska, usually is and always may be through straits, canals, and fiords so thoroughly protected from the ocean's angry waters that the smallest steamer can hardly feel a toss. On this excursion of ours, the briny depths below us were often as smooth as glass, reflecting the mountains, as from a mirror. As the swell from our steamer would roll off in smooth, rounded and diverging lines, they would weave fantastic forms, upon their mirror like surface, of green forest, rugged rocks, or snow caps. Towards the land beyond the effect of the swell, the mountains would often be so perfectly delineated upon the mirror, that a photograph of them would show them as distinctly below as above. The picture could be turned upside down with but little detriment to the view. Near the steamer the rounded crest of the swell would reflect long weird lines of forest, which would spread out behind us as the swell sank to a lower level. At night millions of small fish, probably herrings, would be disturbed in their schools, and fluttering and hurrying from the ship's prow would make the water blaze in brilliant phosphorescence. Now and then a large fish would dart through these schools, leaving behind him a bright wake of flame. As he dashed through them, the herrings would scatter their flame work into myriads of sparkling diamonds. When our ship would push into the school, the alarm seemed to be given to quite a distance in the mass. The dense pack of little fellows forward the ship's bow, would break the sea into chaotic burning mass, as they sped in haste before the great monster chasing them. The line to the right and left then bent aft, weaving the sea into a waving network of fire. Farther off the brightness was toned down to a glistening shimmer, and then was lost in the distance. The schools we saw were moving in great lines in the direction we were sailing. They were composed of millions of little finny flutterers. PANORAMA ON LAND AND WATER. Frequently as we sailed over the placid sea, little diving ducks would flap the waters in a race from the ship's hull, and when a hundred feet off would dive for a score or more feet, perfectly satisfied that by their dive they had hidden their tracks from the mighty monster. Droves of porpoise rolled about us, and now and then one would race with us for a mile or so and seem really to understand and enjoy the contest. Asiatic crows cawed around us when we were ashore most familiarly, and with the cute impudence, so characteristic of his brethren in Eastern Asia. When we landed at Muir Glacier, a young school marm and I wandered along the shore then bare from the receding tide, up to the icy precipice. A couple of crows espied us and flew about us cawing, and finally perched on a rock close by. I told the fair one that these birds instinctively saw that we were to be caught by the incoming tide or under an ice fall, and were awaiting a feast. Their cawing was so constant, that she become superstitious, and declared she could not stand it. I had to shy a pebble at them to allay her timidity. The crow is a familiar bird up here, but the raven is an Alaskan institution. If I be not mistaken he is held by the natives in a sort of veneration. He is twice or more as large as our crow; has a huge roman nosed beak, which occasionally snaps with a report nearly as loud as the snaps of a pelican's bill. His coat is of shiny, burnished bottle green black, and his eye has an expression queerly mixed of vacuous imbecility, and cunning impudent rascality. He is a genuine stump speaker, and as fond of his own orations as a famous eastern after dinner talker is of his pretty speeches. When we strolled in the deep shade of the dense forest behind Sitka, some of these impudent fellows settled in adjoining trees and held dialogues and debates, possibly upon our human characteristics. They would harange and then seem to crack coarse jokes, when one of them would almost laugh in low gutturals, not unlike the gurgling of water running from a two gallon jug. A wag among us declared they were making ward stump-speeches, and was willing to wager that if ravens language could be understood, we should find that some of the jokes were utterly unfit for polite ears. Those we saw were rather jolly good fellows, and were not of the family of which one appeared to Edgar Poe in his hashish dreams. I said that the simple, beautiful scenery presented by the Alaskan excursion, well repays the loss of time and money expended upon it. Many of the mountain-flanked channels are wonderfully beautiful. The Linn or Chilkat Canal is surpassed by nothing of the sort we have ever seen. It is about four miles wide and probably 30 long. On either side tower mountains, say 3,000 feet high, rising from the water like great receding buttresses, clothed thickly in forest below, with scattered copses toward the upper slopes, and flecked with openings of low shrubbery in pale green, artistically contrasting with the dark tone of firs and spruce. All are topped by rocks, those near us gray, and the most distant ones of an undertone of purple, while in the far distance, the mountains on either shore become first blue-gray, and then blend off into sweet opalescent tints. Over and above all, towered at no great distance mighty snow fields and glaciered heights. Crillon, Fairweather, and La Peronse to the west cut the clear blue sky with their points 15,000 and nearly 16,000 feet above us; mantels of clouds here and there fell about their titanic shoulders, and light veils of mist wound and unwound about them just under their snowy pinnacles. Into this glorious fiord we steamed to its head at Chilkat, and then back to enter Glacier Bay, the acme of Alaska's wonderful exhibitions. Fully nine Alaskan tourists out of ten go for its glaciers, which are seen in a magnitude and grandeur inducing one to pass as scarcely worthy of notice, the best of any other country which is possible of approach. They are seen in icy hardness on distant summits shortly after passing the boundary of British Columbia. They increase in frequency as one goes further north, until on a clear and cloudless day one is scarcely ever out of sight. The first visited by us was that at the head of Takou inlet south of Juneau. It is comparatively small, less than a mile wide at its foot, but running back several miles. Its foot presents a perpendicular wall of ice 150 to 200 feet high, rising out of water several hundred feet deep. Its face is irregular; here supported by icy buttresses, and there sinking back into icy recesses; now with irregular pilasters and projections of soft snowy appearance and then with broken columns, recesses, and caves of every tint of blue from the flitting opalescent to transparent ultra-marine and deep indigo. FANTASTIC GRANDEUR OF THE GLACIERS. Now is seen a mass of closely welded crystals of diamond whiteness glistening under the kiss of the sun, like monster piles of precious gems; then a huge broken and fissured wall compactly studded with turquoise and amethysts and gems so green as to be almost emeralds forming the icy cliffs. Loud reports as of rifle guns would fill the ear, coming from the cracking behind of the solid moving mass as it pushed onward in its descent. Hark! A rattle of musketry! You look and see a mere hat full of snowy ice tumbling from the upper edge. As it falls it becomes a cart full, a house full, and then with a report as loud as that of a heavy cannon, a section of the wall's face separates from the mass behind and tumbles into the deep water with a splash which scatters spray one or two hundred feet around, and the air is filled as with the bellowing of thunder echoed from projecting ice walls and from the lofty mountains hemming in the narrow inlet. The fallen mass disappears below the surface. But look! See that monster lifting from the water a half hundred feet away from where the tumbling ice fell! It is a dome-like pinnacle of ice. Up it rises slowly, revealing the most exquisite tints as its shoulders broaden; ten feet, twenty, fifty, aye, nearly a hundred feet! For a moment it poses a solidified mass of ultramarine. Sparkling waters pour in cascades from its uplifted dome. But see! It leans a little; it leans a little more; and tumbles with a mighty noise and sends geysers up to the brink of the icy precipice and wide around for several hundred feet. As its upper member or crest topples over, a huge section many times more bulky than the part we had seen above water, lifts, and then lies stretched three or more hundred feet, and exposed above the surface nearly thirty feet. The huge mass of possibly a hundred thousand tons weight came only to a small extent from the icy wall standing before and above us; but the fissure above extended--three or more hundred feet down into the glacier below water, and rested on the ground. For one end was covered with mud and for many feet was deeply stained. An officer of the ship declared this was the finest exhibition of the sort he had ever seen, and that the iceberg thus made and now slowly floated out by the receding tide weighed far more than a hundred thousand tons. Our ship was lying with its bow toward the glacier not a thousand feet away. The vessel rocked and reeled from stem to stern as the great waves made by the glacier avalanche rolled under her. We lay there two hours listening to constant reports and seeing a succession of ice slides. While so resting for the enjoyment of passengers, the captain was laying in ice enough for his next round trip. Icebergs of all sizes, from those weighing only a ton up to others half as big as the steamer, were floating all about us. Some of crystal whiteness and as clear as the lens of a telescope. Others were of every tone of blue, deepening sometimes into translucent olive. The most of the bergs were of delicious purity, but a few were full of mud brought from the bed hundreds of feet under water. In some were seen good sized cobble stones; in one a boulder weighing probably a quarter of a ton. Sailors in a boat picked from these masses chunks of perfect clearness, passed grappling ropes under them, and then hoisted them by the steam derrick upon the main deck. Sometimes the piece seen above water was not larger than a barrel, but when lifted into full view it weighed one, two or more tons. For every foot of ice seen in an iceberg above water eight lie below. Thus when a berg floated close to us showing thirty feet above water, it had, if of even form, 240 feet below. CLIMBING THE FAMOUS "MUIR." Some of the passengers felt uneasy, fearing another mighty tumble might occur immediately in front of us, and that the mass might shoot outward below water, and might come up beneath, or uncomfortably close to us. The captain, however, stood upon the bridge ready to send his ship rapidly backward should anything look untoward. The engines were kept in gentle motion holding our bow steadily toward the glacier precipice. The captain, by the way, thinks the Takou the most interesting of the approachable glaciers. The ice gathered was of great solidity. It did not break under an ice pick in straight cleavage, but irregularly, showing its peculiar characteristic of being formed, not from water simply freezing, but from snow compacted under irresistible pressure. Two chunks of perhaps each two tons weight lay between decks supplying the entire ship's wants for four or five days. It may have been imagination, but I thought this ice more agreeable for eating than that made by ordinary process. It was more friable and broke and crumbled in the mouth in shorter pieces and not in long spiculae as ordinary ice does. We passed on our run close to several other huge glaciers, some of them running quite down to the water; among them the "Stephens" which though very large, reaches the sea in a slope and not with a perpendicular precipice. We, however, stopped only at the celebrated "Muir." We lay in front of it from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m.--a half hour in rather dangerous proximity, and then anchored a mile off for passengers to land and climb its banks. The Muir presents a precipice to the head of the inlet nearly 300 feet high and over a mile long. Two years ago it bent outward with a very decided convex front; last year it was nearly straight. Now it is a very open horseshoe. We took soundings when the Queen lay a thousand feet from the front and found under us 720 feet. It possibly shallows considerably close to the wall, say to 400 feet. The glacier is certainly over 200 feet high; this makes, with what is under water, 600 feet. But give it the low estimate of an average across the inlet of 400 feet. It moves steadily downward forty feet a day, and gradually recedes. Thus it will be found that it tumbles into the sea a mass of ice, 40 x 5280 x 400 feet, or of at least 84,000,000 cubic feet a day. After wandering for several hours over the surface of the glacier, along a sort of granite road way varying in depth from a few inches up to very many feet thick lying upon it; among blocks of granite weighing tons brought down upon the solid frozen river; across narrow crevices, into whose depths we could look a hundred feet down, into pure ice of all tints of blue from the pearl blue of a southern sky to ultramarine and indigo--tints so beautiful that one involuntarily groaned in pleased admiration; along chasms where our iron-pointed alpenstocks were necessary to prevent a slip, which would have sent us down into glacial graves; looking over pinnacles, domes and valleys of ice in confused profusion; over grotesque forms, over which no one person could safely go, but a dozen attached to each other by ropes, with shoes iron-nailed, might with hazard venture. Then up and before us spread the mighty glacier, 25 miles by 30, fed by many smaller ones. Morains of rock lifted above the surface in long even lines running back for miles, showing the edge of each of the frozen rivers, which have united to make the mighty single one. The theory explaining the medial moraines of glaciers, is that two or more glaciers come down the gorges and upper valleys of the mountain. Each of these gather up broken rock and mountain debris on their two sides. When two such glaciers meet and run into and form one, then the inner lateral moraines unite and are borne along by the enlarged glacier. As it flows these two morains, now become "medial," are apparently pressed upward to and upon the surface. This, however, is probably only apparent, for the ice melting under the summer sun's heat, simply leaves the rock debris on the surface. The Muir is the result of several upper feeding glaciers. Each two uniting formed from their inner lateral moraines, one medial. Several medial ones are observable on the surface of the great glacier, some of them uniting lower down, when the bed of the icy stream becomes contracted--where the valley becomes narrow. Several medial moraines retain their individual line until the great precipice is reached. The mass of the debris forming a moraine is of comparatively small broken granite; not broken and rounded by glacial action, but simply irregular pieces thrown off from granite precipices high in the mountains by frost forces. Now and then a few rounded pebbles, and small boulders are seen, worn on the under surface of upper glacier streams. Quite a number of very large masses of granite are being borne down by the Muir moraines. One I estimated to weigh several tons. Its cleavage sides and edges were fresh and sharp as if it were just broken from its parent rock. The medial morains on some of the glaciers seen at a distance, have a singular effect. They can be seen in long apparently parallel lines and seemingly close enough together, to be the walls of a long smooth road. A wag declared that one of them was the road from an Indian village to the little red school house in an upper valley. After exploring the surface of the glacier, we found that the tide having reached its ebb, we could approach the foot of the ice-precipice. Three of us had approached it somewhat nearly before when the tide was but half out. We walked up the shingly shore through stranded icebergs of all sizes, and hundreds in number. Some were not larger than a barrel, others larger than a railroad car, and of all intermediate sizes. Now we threaded our way through a cordon of huge blocks as clear as crystal, from which we chipped with the spikes of our alpenstocks, chunks delicious to eat. Then we were among others of various tints, colored by the earthy matter caught by them when flowing near to or upon the valley bed. One mass weighing probably a thousand tons was resting upon a point so small as to be a mere pivot. I cut from it a smooth rounded cobble stone for a paper weight, and was glad when my task was finished, for I was somewhat uneasy lest the slight hammering might topple over the bulky mass. We reached the foot of the glacier. Here the picture was wonderfully fine. The ice-precipice from which so many newly broken bergs had tumbled, was far more beautiful than when seen from several hundred yards away. We looked into grottoes many yards recessed into the frozen cliff. Here in one was every shade of blue; all tints of green were resplendent in another; and then the sun would discolor these shades, and weave them into the sweet tones which paint an opal's cheek. Now an upper member of a newly broken recess under the sun rays sparkled as a million diamonds, and then another looked like a mass of crystalized olive tints. From out of a deep grotto at the base of the cliff flowed a strong river, which had been pent within its icy house, and now reaching the free air bounded and rushed to join the mighty sea. Since our arrival in the morning the tide had fallen fully twenty feet, taking away considerable support from the hanging mass, so that the fall of icebergs was almost continuous. The thunder while so close to a tumbling mass was terrific and sublime. The inlet was full of bergs, so that the ship in turning out had to pick its way carefully. How exquisitely beautiful they were as they glistened in the sun's rays, displaying their iridescent crystals! As we steamed out of the inlet among a scattered ice floe we thought we had seen all that a grand glacier could present. Imagine our surprise when we had gone about ten miles to find ourselves at the entrance to another inlet which was packed almost solidly with icebergs. With our glasses we could see the huge "Pacific glacier," about thirty miles away, with a precipice of ice 600 to 800 feet high and five miles long. Although it was quite three times as far from us as the "Muir", yet its icy front showed to us higher out of water. The inlet running up to it was literally packed with ice, into which no steamer, unless armored for Arctic seas, would dare to venture. A passenger lately taken on, who had spent a season prospecting in this immediate neighborhood, assured us that the fall of ice from this glacier was absolutely continuous, and that masses would tumble a half mile long. He had seen one floating three miles long. He admitted he had no means of measuring it, and gave us the result of a rather hasty guess. He said it stranded at each low tide, but would be lifted at each flood and was by degrees broken up sufficiently to get out of the inlet. "Why," said this passenger, "the Muir is a baby by the side of the Pacific. For every iceberg coming from the one five hundred come from the other." The statement was credible, for while just above this inlet the strait had only scattered bergs, below it was almost a pack of ice. The majority of the icebergs, which had fallen from the Muir, were melted away before reaching the mouth of the Pacific inlet. Looking up this, the icebergs seemed almost in solid mass; of all sizes from a few feet broad, to others covering a quarter of an acre; and from a few feet in height up to twenty, thirty and forty. Out side of the inlet and below its mouth, monster masses were all about us, some of them hundreds of feet across and several fully fifty feet above water. The George W. Elder, which sailed from Tacoma the night we did, reached the Muir while we were there and sailed out with us. We thus had a genuine Arctic picture. The two ships picked their way slowly, less than a mile apart. The Elder was frequently hidden from us entirely by mighty icebergs. For miles we stole our way through the floe, delighted with the novel scene. Two fine ships in this icy sea gave us a realization of the pictures we had seen of the Thetis and her comrade in the frozen pack beyond the Arctic circle. Mighty Crillon, Fairweather, and La Perouse the sources of the great fields of frozen snow around us here pour their icy floods into the sea. The last is 14,000 feet high; the others respectively 15,900 and 15,500. They present the same amount of white above the snow line as does Mount Everest. That is about 12,000 feet on its southern slope. In Alaska the snow line toward the south is reached at 3,000 feet, while in the Himalayas the tree line mounts to 17,000 feet. When I looked upon these great icebergs which had tumbled from the huge ice-cliffs we had lately seen, and then recalled the fact that they were but snow balls when compared to some which have been sighted in far northern and in southern seas--some which were from two to three miles square and seven to eight hundred feet high above water, and nearly if not quite a mile deep below the water line--when I recalled these facts I was lost in trying to speculate upon the vastness of the glaciers existing in Greenland and in Antarctic continents. Judging from what we know of those about us, we have to suppose there are glaciers in the world two or three aye six or seven miles high above water, sinking miles below the surface, and stretching in awful grandeur their frozen cliffs for many miles along the sea. The Pacific glacier is from six to eight hundred feet high at its brink, and five miles long, yet among the bergs we saw--and the captain said he had never seen a finer display in the locality--there were none which were a half acre in size and none over sixty feet high. Icebergs are said to have been seen covering an area of from 2,500 to 4,000 acres, and twelve times as high as the highest about us. The glacier from which such monsters fell, was to the "Muir" as Niagara is to a mill dam. Are the mighty snow and ice mountains of the far south growing, or are they melting and breaking away from their moorings? If growing, when will they tumble through the crust of the earth, and send a raging sea over the habitable part of the globe? A guaranteed ticket for a berth in the coming Noah's ark may be a handy thing to have about the house. With one, the possessor could be quite content to let the other fellow do the swimming. What a grand mind picture is presented to us, when we realize that glaciers once covered the northern half of this continent--glaciers whose sources were about Baffins Bay and within the Arctic circle, and whose feet stretched from the Alleghanies to the Rocky mountains--from Pennsylvania to Colorado! glaciers so vast that they built up moraines over a thousand feet deep! It is these thoughts which show us man's littleness and his vanity in boasting himself fashioned in God's image. A good clergyman we met in the National Park, in all seriousness expressed a fear that the enormous sky scrapers our people are erecting in Chicago might destroy the equilibrium of the earth, and cause it to oscillate eccentrically upon its axis. A conscientious Chicagoan informed his reverence, that we were building our city of such weight that it would counterbalance the undue growth of ice mountains about the southern pole. CLIMATE OF THE FROZEN REGION. We have a pleasant company aboard--several being from Chicago. There is less of stiffness than is generally found on ocean steamers. There is an amusing party of over twenty from the city of brotherly love. They are all nice--very nice, and evidently have made a vow to hold themselves aloof from all others. They sit on deck in rows four deep, and follow the lead of one lady as a sort of bell-wether. When she smiles all laugh; when she feels a cold in her head all sneeze. Perhaps I should say something further about the climate of our frozen territory. Few things are less understood. The Sitka winters are not unlike those of Norfolk, Va., rarely getting much below freezing. The nights there are very long, as the days are in summer. The sun was hot while we were there, but the shades were delicious. Three blankets were quite comfortable at night. In the straits and inlets the weather is not quite so mild as on the open seashore, but nowhere are there severe winters until the coast mountain range is crossed. There the sun in the summer days is piercing hot and mosquitoes are so thick that they are almost unbearable. There the long winters lock everything up in thick ribbed ice. We know that nothing can be more delightful than what we found for summer. However, we have been fortunate. The rainfall is great and rains and fogs frequent. We have escaped both. Warm clothing, umbrellas, waterproofs, and water-tight shoes are recommended by those who advise how to go to Alaska. We have needed neither except the shoes when climbing the glacier. We have worn overcoats aboard ship when the wind was against us, for a slight breeze and the wind made by the speed of the ship causes a decided chilliness when on deck. When the ship is lying still we have required no extra clothing. We expect to reach Nanaimo early to-morrow morning where the ship will coal. I hope we will be in early enough for myself and daughter to catch the little steamer running to Vancouver. Before closing, however, permit me to give one of the most valuable points in the art of traveling. When you leave home drop its cares entirely and trustfully. Let your friends write nothing about your business unless it be such as they know should hurry you back and for that intended. Look on the bright side of everything before you, and do not complain because you have not the comforts of your home. Profitable travel is often laborious, and like all well applied labor, pays. As a young man I spent two years abroad and heard not a word as to my affairs. Since then I have made three trips to Europe and a long one around the world. Not a word on either of them did I hear of my business. Once a month during a Globe Circuit we received a cablegram telling us of the health of the loved ones at home. To this policy I have ascribed the happiness and much of the benefits received. People we met in various quarters of the world looked regularly for and got advices on their affairs and were often uneasy and miserable, but were powerless to correct anything going wrong. Passengers on this ship are fretting about letters they expect to get at Victoria. I have heard nothing for a month and expect nothing until I wire home. If one keeps himself hopeful he can adopt as his traveling motto, "No news is good news." Try this and you will confess you owe me a good fee for sound advice. LETTER VIII. VANCOUVER. A PICTURESQUE, GROWING CITY. A RUN OVER THE CANADIAN PACIFIC. MAGNIFICENT SCENERY MET WITH FROM THE START. A GLORIOUS RIDE. FRASER RIVER GLUTTED WITH SALMON. A NEVER-TIRING VIEW FROM GLACIER HOUSE, FOUR THOUSAND FEET ABOVE THE SEA. RUGGED, PRECIPITOUS GRANDEUR OF THE SELKIRKS AND ROCKIES. NATURAL BEAUTIES OF BANFF. REFLECTIONS AT THE "SOO." CANADIAN PACIFIC STEAMER ALBERTA, AT SAULT STE. MARIE, Aug. 23, '90. Three years ago I wrote quite largely on a trip over the Canadian Pacific Railway, running from east to west. Perhaps by now writing of it beginning at the western terminus, an appearance of plagiarism upon myself may be avoided. It is so grand a road, however, and the magnificence and variety of scenery offered by it to the traveler are so great, that considerable repetition may be permissible, especially as the probabilities are that only a few ever read or now remembers what I said before. My Alaskan letter was ended at Nanaimo. A sail of three hours on a little steamer owned in New Zealand and lately brought from Bombay brought us to Vancouver. It seemed somewhat singular that we should be voyaging on a short local run in North-west America on a small steamer owned and lately doing service in a land so far away, and that land, too, one which we are prone to regard as our ultima thule, whose inhabitants are but one degree removed from the ragged edge of savagery. The world has so rapidly progressed since many of us studied geography, that we have scarcely been able to keep pace with its strides. We have to pause and think to be able to realize that New Zealand is no longer the land of savages, but is populated by a highly cultivated and energetic people, and abounds in splendid cities. Before reaching Vancouver we saw high on the rocks the hull of the old steamer "Beaver". It was the first steamer to cross the broad Pacific brought here long ago by the Hudson Bay company from Bombay. It was wrecked only last year, but is already in this humid climate green with moss and ocean weed. Vancouver has grown marvelously. Five years since its site was covered by a forest of enormous cedars and firs. Three years ago when I visited there, it had only seven or eight hundred population. Now it boasts having about 15,000. It has well graded streets, a few of them paved and several well planked; fine water brought in from a distance; blocks of handsome stone houses and office buildings; commodious and elegant hotels, and many handsome residences. If I be not mistaken I suggested it three years ago as a good place for safe speculation. Had it not been for the long voyage then before me I should have dropped a thousand or two into its lots, and would have been considerably richer by the venture. High mountains of picturesque contours almost surround the city. It is a sad fact that at this season of the year a dense shroud of smoke usually envelopes the bulk of the uplands. Fortunately a copious rain cleared up the atmosphere just before our arrival. We passed through the town three years ago twice, and afterwards lay at its pier three days, while our ship was getting ready to sail for Japan; and all the while supposed the place was a great forest plain, until the morning of our departure, when a rain washed down the smoke and revealed magnificent mountain scenery close about us. To one taking the train at Vancouver for the East, fine scenery faces him as he emerges from the station and then continues to greet the eye, varying and growing for the next 600 miles, never once tame, often beautiful or grand and sublime, and frequently terrible. It changes rapidly and as unexpectedly as the pictures presented by a revolving kaleidoscope. Lofty mountains, lifted up in rounded forms of granite, gneiss and other igneous rocks, massive and grand, like mighty boulders welded together, with monster trees in the valley below, and tall and straight ones high above wherever a ledge or a fissure affords their hardy roots chance to take hold, flank the road for the first ninety miles. On the north side of the Frazer River, whose broad white stream is soon reached, and which for the first 90 miles runs from East to West, these mountains arise immediately from the road. Across the river to the south more or less removed, from one to several miles, they show themselves in all their solid grandeur. Rounded boulder shaped mountains of granite or igneous rocks are to me far more impressive than much taller ones of other formations. One feels that they are solid, and are welded to the central foundations of earth; that they were the offsprings of primal overpowering heat, while the others are made up of tiny particles of disintegrated igneous stone, loosely thrown together by glacial moraines or dropped at ocean's bottom, and after eons of time compressed into hardness. Their walls were uplifted by the pressure from below of belching granite, or were crumbled together by the cramped earth, and their points, pinnacles, and needles were fashioned by rains and slow chemical processes. They are the offspring of other than their own power and are shaped by puny causes acting through untold ages. The rounded granite mountains, however, lifted themselves and rushed forth from the seat of earth's central fires, moved by their own inherent forces. One feels that mountains of secondary rocks are a mass of tiny things thrown aloft as the creation of other than their own powers. They may tower far above the snow line, and may pierce the vaulted sky with their sharp needles and tooth like pinnacles in the silent regions of eternal ice; but we know that their loftiest horns once lay beneath the ocean's wave, and after being hoisted as an impotent mass, have been cut and fashioned into sharpness by the gnawing tooth of frost. We know that they were borne up upon the breast of boiling, seething primitive rocks, and that they now rest upon the shoulders of granite titans. We know that they are crumbling day by day, and are being borne away upon pigmy streams into ocean depths. They are perishable and are perishing. But yonder rounded form whose smooth head barely reaches the clouds, has its foundations welded by inconceivably fierce fires; fires kindled when this earth was rounded by the will of God from a formless void--welded to the very base and heart of the globe. It rose upon the crest of a molten sea, rending and tearing away everything its way, and now in adamantine coldness, seems the fit emblem of eternal duration. One may be terrified by the pinnacled monster, but I am awed by the rounded giant. The Canadian Pacific road furnishes observation cars through its grand mountain scenery, from a point some sixty miles from Vancouver to and into the plains east of the Rockies or for six hundred miles. This thoughtful provision should be imitated by all railroads traversing fine scenery. A GRAND CANYON. About ninety miles from Vancouver the milky Fraser rushes from the canyon which has held it in a close embrace for a hundred miles; from a chasm where the mountains have been split asunder, and now tower two or more thousand feet high, their feet washed in the turbulent stream, their heads cutting the sky in picturesque lines. The mountains along the canyon are all of metamorphic rock, splintered and shivered by too rapid cooling. In the course of some millions of years they have been washed down, so that what were once perpendicular walls have become precipitous heights, with every ledge and projection and all slopes which can hold soil, covered by dark green conifirae, and now and then by light green patches of deciduous shrubbery and small hardwood trees. Down toward the water the rocks are harder, and through it the river cuts its way between walls from fifty to one or more hundred feet high. These walls have defied the flood, and the river bends and winds through narrow fissures fifty to eighty feet wide, along which the white fluid rushes, almost with cascade force. Many of the projecting points and buttresses are grotesque and picturesque in the extreme. For many miles along the canyon an old government stage road hangs on escarped walls or dips down to the waters. At one point, at a height of a thousand feet, it almost hangs over the gorge, serving now but one purpose, to make lady tourists exclaim upon the cruelty of making even gold seekers so risk themselves as did the passengers of stage coaches a score or so years ago. I said the old road almost hangs over the gorge. In fact it does frequently entirely hang. For it was timbered out so that while one wheel might be over solid rock, the other would be upon wooden sills from which a pebble could be dropped a hundred feet or more below. The stage road cost a vast sum, and is now among the many exhibitions of the destructiveness of capital as it works out new improvements. Every valuable creation of capital wrecks all others whose place it takes. The older ones have performed their tasks, and now become comparatively useless. A RIVER BLACK WITH FISH. We had remarkably visible evidences of the strange and irresistible instinct of the salmon to climb steep waters from the sea. For many miles the Fraser runs or rather rushes with great speed. Below every projecting rock there is an eddy more or less large. In these eddies salmon were congregated by the thousands, showing their black backs and fins an inch or two above the surface. These little swirling pools are generally many feet deep, and the finny voyagers must have been piled several deep one on the other. Over one crystal stream running into the river the road passes on a short bridge. In a pool in this creek, say twenty by fifty feet, the fish were so thickly packed that a man could almost have walked dry shod across the stream on salmon backs. In the ascent of the fish they fail often to overcome the rapid current and stop to rest in the eddies. I do not think I exaggerate in saying we saw hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, in a part of our run not exceeding thirty or forty miles. The fish looked small to us, for only a few inches of their backs could be seen. A fellow passenger, however, assured us that such as we saw ran from six to nine pounds. They were the sock-eye salmon, the fattest and best variety for canning. We saw no Indians fishing as there were three years ago. Their stock is already laid in and stored away in caches built upon high posts or up among the branches of spreading trees. A hundred and eighty thousand fish averaging about eight pounds weight were caught in one day last week at New Westminster. A gentleman of the locality told us that now was but the beginning of the running season, and in three weeks there would be a hundred thousand where there was one now. A scientist was probably not mistaken when he asserted that the water of the world could produce more food for man, acre for acre, than the land. I fear the canneries are causing too many to be killed now. An uninitiated person would have thought that great sport could be had just now on the Fraser with rod and line. In this, had he made the experiment, he would have been grievously mistaken. The salmon when on the run never rise to the fly or takes any food. They start from the ocean very fat and live on their fat until the spawning season is over, by which time they become so lean as to be scarcely edible. Indeed, the great bulk of them die of injuries suffered on their upward run or of starvation. Thousands are seen floating later in the season down the upper streams, bruised, torn and emaciated. The people out here have the impression that a salmon never feeds again after leaving the sea in its spawning journey, and that none of the vast millions which commence the voyage ever return. They spawn and die. This fish will spawn in a few weeks in the clear brooks and streams high up among the mountains. The eggs lie dormant until the warmth of next years' sun hatches them out. The small fry has then the clear water to commence its life in. It feeds, grows and runs down to the sea thereafter to do and die as its progenitors have been doing since the race began. Nature's ways are very queer, and it seems to permit more inconceivable things to be done by its creatures beneath the water than upon the land. A fish disporting itself in a limpid stream or gently propelling itself deep down in the transparent sea, appears to be absolutely enjoying existence--to be reveling in his "dolce far niente," and yet it would seem that the whole finny family is spawned to bear the whips and spurs of most cruel fate. From the instant a little fellow emerges from the egg up to his fullest growth, he is always on the ragged edge of some bigger fish's maw. He climbs with intensest labor the rushing stream from the instinct of procreation, and then begins to die from slow inanition--the cruelest of deaths. Experiment has shown that the fish learns nothing by study--everything is from instinct; that he has no sense whatever. Lucky fish: for surely to him ignorance _is_ bliss. TWO HUNDRED MILES ON A COWCATCHER. Three years ago I rode along a part of Thompson Canyon and down the whole of Fraser into Vancouver, some 200 miles, on the cowcatcher. It is the most delightful of all railroad running. We are ahead of the train. We seem not to be on wheels, but simply to be gliding along the iron way, propelled by an invisible impulse. There is no jar, no dust nor cinders. Over trestles a hundred feet high of frail and creaking timbers we rush without the least uneasiness or anxiety, for the machine and train being behind us and unseen we do not realize that hundreds of tons are being whirled over the frail bridge-work, and forget that there is anything heavier upon them than our own weight; onward we slide; a turn brings us face to face with a mighty precipice; we are rushing headlong against the rocky barrier when a sudden bend around a jutting point, reveals before us a hole in the rocky mass; into it we are shot--into the dark; a roar is heard behind us as if a thousand demons are after us in full chase; a glimmer of light steals along the iron ribbons before us, and then we burst into the broad day with a new and beautiful scene pictured for our delight; down below us rushes the river through deep fissures between the rocky walls; high above us lift mountains cutting the sky with bands of snow along the upper heights; past Indian hamlets, near which sits a squaw or two and lounges a lazy buck, while their children look at us as we fly along in indolent carelessness. Tunnel after tunnel, about thirty in all, swallow and then throw us forth. Once on the Thompson, the iron ribbons ahead rest one on the ground, the other on timbers projecting over a precipice. Over it we glide. Fifteen hundred feet below runs the silvery stream, so nearly under us that we think we could pitch a penny into it. But so lightly do we skim along that we feel no tremor. Ah! mine was a beautiful ride. It was three years ago, but as I looked at the same road as we passed along it a few days ago, the whole picture came back to me, and I feel sure the memory of it will live with me while I live. Up the Thompson we came now, and saw some beautiful valley farms early at daybreak, with bright wheat fields, cozy homes, and sleek-looking stock. The mountains above were mighty uplifted long mounds, not rocky, broken nor peaked. Pines were scattered over them as if they were planted in upland parks--isolated trees, just enough to make parks bright, while over the ground was spread a carpet of velvet of a brownish drab. This effect was from the low bunch grass, now dried into hay. This grass is short, but sustains all winter through cattle in oily fat. The Thompson finally came up to a level with us, and was a clear and dignified river, making the meadows green. After a while it broadened into a great lake--the "Shuswap"--along whose pebbly shore, under great sloping mountains, we ran for over a third of a hundred miles. The Shuswap is an irregular sheet with long arms. No where is it much if any over a mile wide. High mountains lift from the water and mount upward in gentle slopes, well wooded. In a few places there are tiny plains at their feet. On these are the wig-wams of the Shuswap tribe of Indians. Leaving this beautiful sheet we entered a range of mountains lofty and grand, with now and then a shoulder mantled with snow. Three years ago this range was all green with noble trees; now, as far as we could see, the fire fiend has done its work, leaving forests of tall trunks in gray, with a fresh undergrowth beginning to spring. Even yet, however, the Gold Mountains are a noble range. It would seem we had seen enough of the grand. But wait. We reach a broad flowing river coming from the north. It is white with detritus ground from the eternal ribs of earth by the irresistible march of glaciers. It is our own Columbia, which has been paying her Majesty's American land a short visit before it sweeps with majesty towards the Pacific. We cross this and enter upon a wealth of mountain scenery, which belittles what we have passed through, though we thought it so fine. High to the right lifts a monarch capped with snow. High to our left is a huge pair of twins, the double head of a monster. Our iron horse pants along a rushing river cutting with foaming torrent through chasms so narrow that the father of our land could have leaped across them in the spring-tide of his manhood. Up, up we climb, twenty-eight hundred feet in less than fifty miles. The river along which we climb is always lashing itself into creamy foam; now in rushing rapids, then in a succession of leaps one after the other, as if in mad frolic; now almost throwing its spray into our faces; then two or three hundred feet down in rocky canyons, and at one place through a notched and jagged cleft in the rock, over two hundred feet deep, and only twenty-five feet wide at the top. This is the Albert Canyon. Mountains tower over us, pile upon pile, thickly tree clad below, but to a larger extent gray with lofty trunks all dead and bare from forest fires. I do not know but these fires have been a friend to the tourist. For his vision is widened. When I was there three years since, there had been in the Selkirks but few destructive fires. The forests were so dense that we often lost fine bits of view, which are now free to us. We look aloft and see great snow-fields, glimmering through openings between the mountains nearest us. We put our glasses up and catch the green tints in furrowed snow masses which tell us we are looking at glaciers. Up! up! The mountains become higher and the precipices bolder and the torrent at our feet more fierce and foaming. We halt for a moment at Illecillewact, said to be a rich mining camp. Far over us thousands of feet, on the side of the mountain, so steep that it seems to us a sheer precipice, we see what looks like a mere burrow for a wild animal. Men are delving through it in quest of silver ore. After a while we see what appears to be another railroad coming down the mountain side parallel to ours, and a couple of hundred feet above us. A wise one smiles and tells us it is our own road which here makes a letter "S"--a loop almost doubling upon itself, and a large part of it on winding trestles. The trestles creak and groan beneath us, but we bend around and back upon them, and soon our whistle screams. A quick turn around a spur reveals a frozen stream bending over a lofty mountain brow, like a curtain of white with irregular streaks of pale green, and sending its foot almost down to our level. But bend your head back. Far up over us is Sir Donald piercing the sky; a sharp pointed three-faced rock lifting over 11,500 feet, under whose shadow we will halt at Glacier House, over 4,000 feet above the sea, while the pointed peak above us, all rock, stands about a mile and a half higher and so close that one would think a man on its pinnacle could almost throw a stone to the platform on which stands the pretty hotel. We stop a day here. I spent three or four days there three years ago and would never pass it without a few hours' pause. Few spots on earth afford a sublimer picture than is seen from Glacier House in the Selkirks. It is a vast auditorium; stage and audience-hall, not a half mile wide, with lofty mountains stretching along either side six or seven miles--all covered by noble trees below and snow sheeted above. Sir Donald cold and rocky, is on one side, glaciered heights on the other. HEMMED IN BY ROCKY HEIGHTS. A mighty glacier hangs down like a snowy drop curtain over the rear of the auditorium, while a straight line of mountain heights encloses the stage. This line is jagged and toothed on its crest, with lofty glaciers glistening under the pinnacles. Sitting on the platform in front of the pretty station hotel just before sunset, watching the sunlight climb the rocky heights eastward, while those to the west were sinking into grayness, and then a little later as the daylight dodges into twilight and all becomes first a mellow gray, cold and repellent, except over the snow, which seems to emit a light all its own--sitting thus one sees a picture equaled in few spots of the world. The entire scene is enclosed by mountains, as in a great oblong pit with corners rounded off, no outlet being apparent. The mountains seem to close in upon the glorious picture. It should be seen just before and after sunset and until the lessening twilight is swallowed up, and then in the morning, when the grayness high above seems crystallized. The very light encircling the peaks seem frozen until a sun ray kisses Sir Donald's peak. The cold rocks then catch a yellow glow and the snows below ere long are tinted with pink. Three years ago I looked at it morning and evening for three or four days, and on this trip one morning and evening. A short run brings the Eastward bound traveler to Rogers pass, one of the ruggedest ever traversed by railroad. Lofty rocky mountains are all around with cold glaciers hanging near their crests. The drop down to the eastward from the summit of the Selkirk Mountains to the western edge of the Rockies is all the way grand. We again cross the Columbia, which runs north skirting the Selkirk range, and flows again southward past the point crossed by us two days before and seventy miles back but a hundred and twenty five around. Then for some miles we look upon these two mighty ranges, one on our right and the other on our left. Both are lofty, broken, and pinnacled, and snow clothes many summits of each, yet they are strangely unlike each other--as much so as if belonging to widely distant regions. As we ran up the Columbia the day grew hot, until at Golden it was absolutely sweltering. We had felt nothing like it for nearly a month. We were glad to quit the Columbia and enter a mighty gorge cooled by the sprays from the Kicking Horse, a wildly rushing river coming down from the summit of the Rockies. Up this foaming torrent, between lofty mountains, along gorges barely wide enough to permit the river to leap between, the road cuts its way in galleries of rocks; through tunnels now on one side of the river, then on the other, and enters and winds high up a broad valley between great mountains stretching north and south. It would seem the climb was ended, but not so. We have to take some fifteen or more miles among the loftiest mountains of the great backbone of the continent, looking up ever at gray rocks piercing the sky 6,000 to 8,000 feet almost sheer over us; looking down into narrow valleys or rather gorges 1,000 and 2,000 feet below us. Almost overwhelmed by nature's grandeur, we climb, while a great engine puffs and groans before us, and another pants and wheezes pushing behind. Even with these two great iron horses, tugging behind and before, we make not much more speed than a rapid pedestrian could walk were he on the level. We are climbing a grade of about 200 feet in the mile. SILVER LADEN MT. STEPHEN. But see that line of timbering hugging the face of Mt. Stephen. A prospector from across the mighty gorge saw with his glass a quartz vein on Stephen. By perilous climbing along ledges he visited it, to find a rich ledge of silver ore. Yonder long gallery carved out of the rock's face is for miners to go to the vein to bore into the mountain's heart or wherever the vein leads them. They would tunnel through the fiery walls of Hades if pure free silver were floating on the top of the Devil's soup boiler. I wonder if those fellows up in yonder gallery ever pause to take in the grandeur of the scenery thrown about them. The mighty Giver of Good heaped up those piles of grandeur and beauty. The preachers intimate that the imp of darkness tempts us poor mortals with gold and silver. Believing as they do in the existence of a personal devil outside of man's nature, they should bow down and beg him to be good natured until their race be safe. They are powerless to hurt him. Luther's bible hit empty air; to abuse the devil only makes one's throat sore, and some people really grow savage in their denunciation of Old Nick. I once met a really good, pious woman who hated bad words, but did not disdain to utter real cuss words when denouncing his Satanic Majesty. The Arab tribe call Satan the nameless one. Some preachers should follow suit. Abusing the devil has been done for countless ages, and to all appearances the old knave has as much power as when he poured sweet poison into Mother Eve's too willing ears. Poor thing! She was not used to apples, and a golden pippin was tempting. In these latter days it takes apples of real gold to win a woman, at least among the "four hundred." But my eye! a shower of such fruit can twine her plump arms about the devil's neck even when blue blazes are pouring from his benzine distilling lungs. But, pshaw! What a disposition a pious man has to preach. I must quit it. It is hard to determine which affords the grandest scenery, the Selkirks or the Rockies. On a first run on this road probably nine out of ten would say the former, but the second or the third trip would put the latter fully up. They are of as different types as if separated by a continent. Both are broken, notched and peaked, yet they affect the beholder differently. The Selkirks are grand and terrible, the Rockies majestic and gloomy. The Illiclliwact (Indian for rapid water) and the Kicking Horse, the two rivers which rush from the two ranges westward--the former into the Columbia at Revelstoke, the other into the same river a hundred and odd miles above at Golden--are somewhat different types of torrent rivers. The Kicking Horse on the summit at Hector, springs from a deep, dark, but calm lake a mile above the sea. A mile or so eastward, and a half a dozen feet higher at the actual summit, is a shallow little lake, or rather a system of short, deep morasses. A mild wind from the west would take their waters into the Bow River, which flows into the Saskatchewan, then through Lake Winnipeg and on to Hudson Bay, while a breeze from the East carries a part of their currents into the grand Columbia and then into the mighty Pacific. How like the fate of men! A shower or a cloud of dust sent a mighty one to pine on a bleak isle in a far-off sea, and made another moderate man the idol of a nation and its chosen Nestor. An invisible line with a name separated the birthplaces of two men, and this simple separation made one of them the leader of a lost cause but the idol of millions, and the other the victorious hero whom history may call the savior of a nation. In our every-day life in modest places, we see the most trivial circumstances, mere straws, turning the fortunes of nearly all whom we have known intimately. It would probably amaze most people to find how small the thing was which sent them to high fortune, or led their feet into paths of mediocrity or on the road to adversity. A run from nine to ten hours from Glacier, always through grand and majestic scenery and often among terrible and gloomy heights and gorges, brought us to Banff, near the western slope of the Rockies. Shortly after leaving Vancouver, we had mounted the observation car, and continued on one of them except at night, until well into the great plains east of the mountains. This system adds greatly to the pleasure of passing through fine scenery. PANORAMIC BEAUTIES OF BANFF. Banff is by many considered the gem of this great road, because of its beautiful location and also because of its warm and hot mineral springs. The Canadian Pacific company has erected here the most elegant and best appointed hotel which can be found in a wild mountainous region probably in the world. Indeed it will compare favorably with the best hostelries in the neighborhood of large cities. Here in a wild basin of the mighty backbone of the continent, 2,300 miles from Montreal, nearly 1,000 from Winnipeg, and 600 from Vancouver, with no populous or productive lands contiguous, but surrounded by nature's boldest and roughest works, in which are the haunts of wild beasts--here one finds all the elegances and comforts of a city's suburbs; all of the delicacies and luxuries of a city hotel, coupled with the hygiene of a sanitarium, the ozone and bracing atmosphere of a lofty altitude, and the glorious scenery of a mountain fastness. The house is architecturally very fine and all its appointments are first class. It has a French Chef presiding over the kitchen, who sends to the table dishes to satisfy an epicure. The house and grounds are lighted by electricity which adds greatly to the beauty of the place at night. In the drawing rooms, surrounded by costly furniture, one can listen to music from a superb piano, and in the dining saloon can satisfy the most voracious or the most epicurean taste. One can loiter lazily around the broad piazzas girdling the great hotel, and let vision lose itself among lofty, rocky, grotesque mountains, or sit in graceful Kiosk observatories overlooking a bold river tumbling near by in a furious cascade. One can watch the limpid, green waters of a large mountain stream meeting and unwillingly mingling with those of a milk-white, glacier-fed river, just below the vortex under the cascade. One can wander in pretty pine woods on gentle slopes; can drive or ride along well-graveled roads through the National Park, now along limpid streams, then on winding curves or mounting by zig-zag bold rocky heights; can bathe in porcelain tubs filled by hot mineral waters just from plutonic laboratories far below the mountain's foundations, and then sweat in soft blankets almost as white as snow, or can by a tunnel through lava rocks reach a grotto or cave scooped out by agencies of hot water--a veritable gothic room in the rock, lighted dimly from a small aperture in the apex. Here in this gem of a natatorium one can swim in water above blood heat, five feet deep and twenty-five from rim to rim. When satiated with his warm bath in this glorious pool, he can mount a great stalagmite on one side--a stalagmite resembling a huge mushroom--and a shower of cool water from a natural spring tumbles from above upon him, or he can stand waist deep in the warm embrace of the fluid while the cool sprays fall upon his head and shoulders. If one prefers an outdoor swim he can splash in a sulphur spring forty feet across, of Nature's fashioning, while bubbling through sands at his feet water heated to 95 degrees rises and lures him to swimming depth. If he prefer a real genuine swim he finds it near the back door of the hotel in a tank a hundred feet long, in fresh cold water with the air barely taken off. In his room he has a soft bed to sleep upon, surrounded by tasty furniture, and eats in a large dining room attended by silent waiters, and provided with fruits, wines and viands fit to satisfy the most fastidious. Close under the hotel an angler now and then catches a trout of over a pound weight, and in a lake a few miles off in the park is rewarded with speckled fellows of fine size, and with lake trout not infrequently running up to forty pounds. I met at Glacier Mr. E. S. P., of Chicago, with his family going west. He caught a fine lot of fish in Devil's Lake near Banff, one a lake trout weighing thirty-six pounds. There are few mountain resorts offering so many natural attractions as this Rocky Mountain hot spring. The mountains around are nearly all built of horizontal stratified rocks. Some of them present curious resemblances. One is a mighty palace of several stories--each upper one receding back from the one below. It reminds me much of old oriental palaces visited when we were making our race with the sun. This palace-like appearance is, however, lost upon the majority of tourists, because one end of the mountain presents the likeness of a huge templar warrior reclining in miles of stature. This picture is so grotesque, that the other passes unobserved. I cannot recall anywhere else in the world, a group of mountains, whose rocks are so distinctly horizontal in their beds, as those in this part of the Rockies. They look as if there had once been a vast upland plateau, which had been partly abraded and washed away, leaving lofty mountains more or less snow covered throughout the year, and many of them always clothed in mantles of white. The wear of countless eons of rains and frosts have made deep valleys and gorges and the beds of beautiful rivers, and rushing torrents, leaving the slopes of the mountains generally not too steep to afford footing for thick forests or for bands and copses of firs and pines. Now and then the mountains are so broken down as to present mighty precipices--clean cut cleavages, as if a single mountain had been split and sundered in two. NORTHWESTERN PLAINS FRUITFUL. My friend, the late visitor from Chicago to the Shah of Persia, whom we left, with his daughters, aboard ship at Nanaimo, overtook us at Banff, where we spent two days. He rarely enthuses over scenery and has little love of Nature or its beauties. Switzerland is to him worth one visit, but no more, and Tyrol is a bore. He loves travel, but to travel among the haunts of men and women, not of Nature. Berlin and London are pleasant places, but Paris is his paradise. He had been filled with ennui on the whole Alaskan journey, and had uttered but once an exclamation of pleasure, and that was when we sailed out of Glacier Bay. He then cried out, "Thank heaven our ship is turned homeward." Even he is really somewhat enthusiastic over the beauties of the Canadian road and is charmed by Banff. I suspect, however, all because of getting through quickly. He could enjoy the rush through towering mountains, because he was getting where he could revel in rising stocks. The plains east of the mountains on this road are beautiful. Great sweeps of land in more or less lifting benches stretch north and south as far as the eye can reach; not bleak or parched or covered with the dead ash color of sage brush, as the same plains are south of our boundary, but fairly green and restful to the eye. We tried to go back in fancy to long ago years, when countless thousands buffalo marched in single file along the trails which they cut down into the hard soil, and which are yet seen crossing our road nearly north and south. We tried to count the deep buffalo wallows, bored by horns and scooped out by hoofs, where the shaggy bulls tossed the dust and sent up clouds which made the air thick for many a mile around. We saw in fancy the heavy maned bulls and heard their bellowings, which won the gaze and admiration of the mild eyed cows. We recalled how these thousands of wallows would be filled by the next rains, and how succeeding herds would bathe in the mud, and then march onward a moving mass of _thick mortar_. Thousands of these wallows are seen, and for several hundred miles the furrowed trails are rarely out of sight for many miles. They generally run in nearly parallel lines from north to south; now and then deflected to get around an Alkali lake or pool: or where old leaders had scented pure water ahead and bent their way toward it, and all of the mighty hosts following the lead. What countless thousands there must have been! The Indians killed them, but killed them for food or for raiment. The white man came; he who was fashioned in the image of his God; he who claims to be a follower of Him who taught charity to all things and gentleness of spirit--he came in his boasted civilization--born of families whose pedigrees run back a thousand years--and killed and slew in the mere love of killing--killed and slew simply because he could kill and slay. One of the cruelest wars ever waged, was the insane crusade against the bison of the plains. Now these plains will know no more forever their old tenants. Occasionally troops of horses and herds of cattle are seen, but for nearly a day's ride there are only scattered farms, and they are as yet not prosperous; but in Eastern Assiniboia and in Manitoba farms became more frequent and crops looked well, until finally in the latter province broad fields of fine wheat and oats and farmhouses covered the prairie as far as we could see. The improvement in the prairie land, running some 200 miles on our line, has wonderfully grown since I was there three years ago. The breadth of grain standing or being harvested is great. I am told there will be a yield this year of twenty million bushels. These people boast that their hard-shell wheat is decidedly superior to that of Dakota and Minnesota. It is now very cold and frosts are feared. The wheat is largely out of danger, but oats need some two or more weeks of good weather yet. Root crops seem good on the plains where wheat is not yet a success. The plains are in Assiniboia, the prairies in Manitoba. At Winnipeg my friends went south. I continued on the rail to Port Arthur. There is not much worth seeing east of Winnipeg. Thin pine land of small trees are seen, generally flat, with rounded rising ground back from the road; all more or less covered with bowlders of granite, many of great size. Lakes and lakelets abound. My daughter remarked that in Yellowstone Park there was a fearful waste of hot water, in Alaska of ice, and here of gray granite. The country back of Port Arthur is said to be rich in mines. I can believe it. Nothing is made in vain, and this county is evidently fit for nothing else except mines. The public rooms of the hotels seem to be frequented by only two classes of men--miners and fishers. Here a knot talked of minerals and claims, there of three or four and six pounders. The Nipigon, near by, is said to be the finest of trout streams. Mr. Higinbotham, of Chicago, and sons left the day before our arrival after having made fine catches. The people seemed much amused at their anxiety to save a pailful. They chartered a steamer to take them and their fry, quickly to Duluth. PORT ARTHUR AND LAKE SUPERIOR. Port Arthur has a beautiful site on a gentle slope, with an elevated bench behind for residences. If it were in the States it would be boomed. It is Canada's only port on Lake Superior, and in Thunder Bay has a grand harbor. The weather is so cool, throughout the summer, that evening fires are rarely dispensed with. This should be considered a terminus for the C.P.R.R., at least for all heavy freights and grain. The road has now two or three 1,200,000 bushel capacity elevators, and I am informed intends immediately to build several more. These will enable it to move the grain from Manitoba, and hold it during the winter and until the opening of navigation. We had intended continuing by rail to Sudbury, north of Lake Huron, but finding that we should pass all the interesting country by night we halted a day and then boarded the Alberta, the Canadian Pacific railroad steamer, a Clyde-built vessel of some 2,000 tonnage, with clean and comfortable rooms, polite officers and servants, and in every way first-class. The break on the great run from ocean to ocean on this longest of the world's trunk lines, by taking steamer between Owen Sound on Georgian Bay and Port Arthur, is a most agreeable one. It is charming to sail on a good ship on this the mightiest of fresh-water seas, and to lose sight of land while skimming over its dark green depths. We have had a smooth sea and delicious bracing air, and find nothing to complain of and much to commend. Before closing I wish to say something of the remarkable civility of the officers and employes of this great road. The managers evidently know the value of politeness on the part of those who cater to the traveling community, the hardest and most difficult to satisfy of all others. Four out of five of them pack their trunks for a trip and expect to find the comforts of their home while on the go, and find fault at every turn. This Van Horne seems to know, and has so drilled his people, from the highest to the lowest, that courtesy, the cheapest of valuable commodities, is never lacking. I am finishing this letter while our ship lies in the great lock at the "Soo." We are again under the protection of the Stars and Stripes. The rush of waters of the great "Sault" fills the air with its roar. This was a few moments since deadened by the greater turmoil from some twenty dynamite blasts in the hard rock through which Uncle Sam is cutting for the huge lock, which is to aid the present one in passing to and fro the mighty traffic of our great system of fresh-water seas. The present lock is wholly inadequate, and steamers often wait for five hours for their turn, and that, too, although it admits several vessels at a time. Over beyond the cascade the Dominion is erecting a vast system of locks on its own ground. The near future will need them all. A PLEA FOR RECIPROCITY. We look across the foamy river and see a beautiful little town, the "Canadian Soo." Behind it lifts a gently rising land, all clothed in sweet verdure and making an exquisite picture. There, for thousands of miles east and west and extending several hundreds of miles to the north, are a people in every way our kinsmen. We wander among them and feel that we are among friends of our own clan, and yet I cannot take my satchel ashore without submitting it to the inspection of our custom-house officers. How long will this thing last? Why should two people so closely united by every bond except that of so called nationality, submit to this hampering of their kindly relations? When will the bars be thrown down so that the Canuck and the Yankee can trade as brothers and friends? I may not be a statesman, but what little of statecraft I possess, tells me there should be absolute reciprocity between Americans from the Gulf of Mexico to the frozen seas; reciprocity at least for all productions of the respective countries. I look out of my window; the ship is sinking down between the massive walls of the lock. In a few moments we will be on a level with Lake Huron, and just below the lock we will land in Michigan. So now we bid adieu to the hospitalities of President Van Horne, and will commend his iron highway to all who love nature and its grand works, and who delight in its sublimest displays. CHAPTER IX. THE ST. MARY'S RIVER. CHARMING SCENERY. THE LOCALITY FOR SUMMER HOMES. AN EPISODE. MACKINAW. GRAND RAPIDS, A BEAUTIFUL CITY. At Sault Ste. Marie, we took steamer for Mackinaw. The steamer was comfortable, and the trip a charming one. The run down the Ste. Marie into Lake Huron, has few equals in sweet, gentle, and at times picturesque scenery. Low lying hills lie on both banks of the river, some of them lifting from the water. Now and then, a promentory or an island point lifts the general quiet tone into something of boldness. These are washed and laved by waters of pallucid purity. The hills, both however, generally lie back from the river on banks with pretty plains under them; here, wide enough for a small field, or garden; there, giving space for a pretty farm. The uplands rise from the small bottoms in easy flowing slopes, green in fresh growth. There are on both slopes occasional farms and small hamlets, affording life and movement to the pretty picture. When this continent shall become a single nation--one grand Republic; the frozen arms of an Arctic ice-floe enfolding its northern boundary; the warm breath of the Gulf of Mexico reddening the cheek of the orange and covering Magnolia groves with snowy bloom along its southern shores; the mighty Pacific pouring its sonorous swell on its western confines from Behring's sea to the Tropic of Cancer, and the storm breeding Atlantic roaring along its shores, from Lincoln Sea to Key West; when brothers shall clasp hands across the deep waters of the lakes without the espionage of a custom collector, then these low-lying hills and sweet plains at their feet--these pretty islands and rugged promentories, will become the summer homes of the rich of the mighty land, and the green waters will reflect the villas and cottages of the wealthy and the well to do, along the entire river; and the world will know no more beautiful and sweetly rural locality. I was leaning on the taffrail of our boat, enjoying the sweet prospect--the long reach of Georgian Bay, lying to the east--and some bold points lifting about us, when I heard a gentleman call the attention of a lad by his side, to a rock they could see in the distance through their glasses.[1] [1] The reader may take all reference to this gentleman as fact or fiction, as his own fancy suggests. "At the foot of that rock, I caught twenty black bass in an hour," said the gentleman. A deep groan close by my side caught my ear. I turned to find a gray headed old man, also leaning on the rail, whose glass was turned in the same direction as those of the gentleman and lad. The man of the groan, was evidently seventy odd years old, with a gentle face, but now in deep and painful thought; tears were coursing down his cheeks, and when he lowered his glasses, showed eyes red with weeping. His face looked so wan that I feared he was sick. I spoke to him gently. He answered me kindly, and then said: "I was watching through my glass a spot in the distance beyond the rock adverted to by the gentleman to that boy, and when he spoke of catching fish at its base, a long ago past was weighing on my mind. His words brought up the groan you heard and not any illness of my own--a past connected with a big rock near the spot I was looking at, and of a tragedy which deeply distressed me, and changed the course of my life." I very naturally asked: "Are the matters you refer to, such that you cannot speak of them?" I handed him, at the same time, my card. He looked up saying "Ah, yes! I know of you. A few days since I read some letters of yours in the Chicago _Tribune_, from the National Park. They made me half resolve to go there next year." He asked me if I intended publishing them in book form; that he thought such a book, just now, would be acceptable; that he had preserved my letters for use, should he make the excursion. A man who has published any thing, is as easily captured by a kindly word for his bantling, as ever mother was by praise for her first baby. I told him that my letters, even if enlarged as I might see fit, would hardly make a book of fit size for publication. The elderly gentlemen landed at Mackinaw with us. After wandering over this pretty old island, visiting its places of interest which well repay a visit--after listening to a few dozen prominent lawyers, judges, merchants and physicians talking through their noses--all of them victims of hay-fever--I was lazily resting on the hotel piazza, awaiting the hour for taking the ferry boat to reach the train for home, when my new made friend of the boat came to me and said: "Mr. Harrison, you say your letters are not enough to make a book of publishing size. I spoke to you of a tragedy, which changed the course of my life. I have at home, but will send it to you, a manuscript, touching that sad affair, which would not be inappropriate in a letter touching a trip from the Soo to Chicago. The manuscript is a plain and faithful story of the events narrated; you can, however, supply fictitious names, and alter certain immaterial points and touch up the whole. I thanked him, and assured him I would probably gladly use his material." He afterward sent to me "The Secret of the Big Rock," which will be found following this letter. A night's run brought us to Grand Rapids. Its people ought to be proud of it. It is not only a thriving, busy town, growing with great rapidity, but is one of the prettiest cities in America. Its business quarters are fine and wear a metropolitan air, but its residence portion is very pretty. The streets are lined with trees, which grow with such luxuriance park commissioners might envy. We spent a half day in the charming place and in a few hours reached home, having enjoyed a glorious "outing," which I freely recommend every one who can, to make, and as early as possible. If I had to choose between a trip to Europe of two or three months, and the excursion we have just made, and were compelled to forego one or the other, I would forego the European one. PART II. THE OLD MAN'S STORY. CHAPTER I. THE SECRET OF THE BIG ROCK. In the spring of 185-- I was head bookkeeper and confidential clerk of a Cincinnati firm, having a large trade with the Cotton States. I had an adored wife, and two fine children, who were our pride and our delight. Not ambitious for wealth, I was perfectly satisfied if my endeavors conduced to the prosperity of my employers. My salary was sufficient for our wants. None of us had ever been sick and the family physician was rather a friend than an adviser. The firm was prosperous; my employers, always kind and considerate; my modest home was cheerful, and I believed myself the happiest of men. Cholera was that year prevalent, and toward the first of June, threatened to become epidemic in our city. My employers hurried with their families to the country, leaving me in full charge of the house. Continuous immunity from sickness, made my wife and myself so confident, that had we been able to strike the sign of the passover on our door posts, we would scarcely have thought the precaution necessary. Even the dread scourge, cholera, had few terrors for us. Going home one Saturday afternoon, I read on the Bulletin Board of a newspaper office, that the physicians believed Cincinnati had passed the crisis; that no epidemic need be feared. I had a habit, when walking alone, of whistling softly. Near my house a neighbor smiled, as he said, "he was glad to see my mouth in so fine a pucker, for it spoke well of the day." My wife met me at the door, as usual, but told me she felt quite sick; seeing my face become clouded, she assured me it was not much, and laughingly repeated a witty speech of our little girl. Hardly had she finished, when she almost screamed with pain. In twenty-four hours, she was a corpse; and Monday, at noon, I was wifeless and childless. I did not pray to die, believing that God knew and did what was best for his children; but I would have greeted with a smile the grim monster, had he reached out his hand for me. In two days I was at my desk, for there were important matters to be attended to. The necessity for work, kept me from falling by the wayside. My mother had taught me, "that man's highest duty is, to do his duty." This saying had been adopted as my motto. The next week, my employers returned to town, and ordered me to Fort Mackinaw for a couple of months' vacation, presenting me with a thousand dollar check, to cover my expenses. Two months between the Island and the Soo were passed in fishing, with such benefits resulting, that the excursion has been renewed whenever an absolute necessity for a change has been felt. My employers on my return, seeing the good effects upon me, of the water and the rod, presented me with a nice skiff, telling me to take every Thursday afternoon for a holiday, and to keep them supplied with fish for Friday; at the same time, kindly informing me, that a plate would always be at one or the other of their tables for me to help enjoy my catch. Being a man of almost machine like habits of regularity, my boat was always seen on the proper afternoon, rain or shine, during the fishing seasons for several years. It was in '58 that I accidentally threw my line in a deep pool or hole, in the Licking river, a mile or two from the Ohio, and almost immediately struck a fine gaspergou perch, or as the people in Kentucky called it, a "New Light." This fish was first seen in the state, when the forerunners of the present Cambellite, or Christian church, the "New Lights," were creating much enthusiasm in the Kentucky religious world. The catch was followed by several others, when a terrible splashing was made close to my hook by an out-rigger rowed by a stalwart negro. The Ethiopian scowled upon me as he shot by. In a few moments he returned and caught a _crab_, letting an oar back water about the same place on his run down stream. The disturbance drove all the fish from the locality; at least I had no more bites. The two following Thursdays, I tried the same pool, but my darkey was again rowing about the ground, and no fish were to be had. About a month later, there was a press of business at the store. At the request of our senior to forego my usual holiday, I worked all Thursday afternoon, with the understanding I was to take the next day and bring in my fish for Friday's supper. I started early and rowed some distance up the Licking, to what were considered good fishing grounds. In passing the spot where my sport had been twice disturbed, I saw the outrigger handled by the sable oarsman, while a handsome young man in the stern drew up a fine black bass. The negro again scowled at me. I reached my ground, and was having but indifferent success, when almost without a ripple the outrigger drew up close to my side. "What luck?" demanded the gentleman, in a clear, sweetly modulated voice, which made me for a minute forget the colored man's evident ill will. "Rather poor; nothing to what I was enjoying four weeks ago, before your boat drove all the fish away from the hole where I saw you an hour ago. I have a notion your man had a method in his madness." The gentleman laughed a laugh so breezy and cheery, that it drew me at once to him. "Yes, Jim told me of his exploit, and we have come up to invite you back to "_our hole_" as he calls it." I could not refuse an offer so cordially extended. The gentleman as we gently floated down the stream informed me, that Jim had selected "our hole" as one little likely to attract Cincinnati Waltons, and regularly every Friday left in it a fine feed for fish; that Jim was almost amphibious and seemed to know how to draw the finny denizens of the river to whatever spot he selected and at fixed times; that he was surprised to learn I had found fish in the place on Thursday, when there should have been none until Friday; that the sable conjuror was not so much put out, because I had found the spot, as because the fish had lost their reckoning and were a day ahead of time. "I am supposed to be Jim's boss," he smilingly went on, "but in fact, on the water, am governed by Jim; his rod is one of iron." At "our hole" we lay to, and in an hour had a fine mess of bass and new lights--as many as we needed. Felden was the name my new acquaintance gave me as his--"Jack Felden" he said, "and this coon is Jim Madison." Jim grinned and was the very personification of the free and easy, yet servile southern "body servant." Mr. Felden said, "I make it a rule, Mr. Jamison, never to kill a single fish I can not consume either myself or through a few friends, to whom I now and then send a mess. The poor things have a right to their pursuit of life, health and happiness, and should not be killed in wanton love of killing. As one of the dominant animals of this earth, I claim the right to take fish for my uses. I enjoy the sport of angling; but when enough are caught the sport ends, and I reel in my line, and silently steal away." "You are a sportsman of my own kidney," I rejoined, "we have enough." Jim then emptied a pail of fish feed into the river, saying: "Dey'll guzzle all dat afore dark, and termorrer dey'll come here and find nuthin', and dey'll go away, but shuah as death and 'ligeon dey'll be back here nex' Friday. Dis niggah skeert em de las' fo' weeks, a Thursdays." Jim grinned in my face as he said this, and I was forced to commend his prudence, though it had been at my cost. The following Thursday, I tried the hole, but Jim was right; no fish took my bait; he was seen, however, scudding along in Felden's outrigger. He grinned at me and asked, "how is _de hole_?" The following week, to my gratification, I found Mr. Felden on the river. We fished at "our hole" with some success: Jim then fed the fish, while his master informed me that he had concluded to go shares with me. Hereafter, he would meet me on Thursday, so as to enable me to gratify the Catholic appetites of my employers. Thus he would have the pleasure of bettering our acquaintance. He paid me the compliment of saying that he had circled the globe, associating with men in all lands, and felt we ought to be friends. Our friendship grew into intimacy, before the season was over. He invited me to _his den_. It was a plain cottage, externally; but within sumptuous; skins of lions, tigers, leopards of every variety of spots, and of other animals covering the floors of hard wood at that time rarely seen. Several of the pelts, he said, were the trophies of his own skill with the rifle. The walls were tapestried with rare draperies, and rugs, all of them valuable souvenirs of Eastern lands. One room was given up to cabinets, in which curios and objects de vertu sparkled in oriental beauty. All was arranged with rare taste. I hinted to my host, that his house was a temptation to the burglar. He went to the door and whistled gently. In rushed two fine dogs; noble specimens of monster mastiffs. "These are my guardians. Woe to the thief that gets into this house; if he escapes Jim and me, these fellows would tear him into fish bait. Wouldn't you my Mogul?" One of the huge mastiffs sprang up with a growl that startled me. "Now Akbar! you and Queen salute this gentleman. He is my friend and must be yours." The two dogs came up to me, smelt all about me, then one of them laid a great paw in my lap, while the other put both feet on my shoulders, yawning mightily in my face showed fangs long enough and strong enough to give the king of the forest no mean battle. I spent a charming evening with my new friend, and found him one I could gladly call such. During the following winter, I dined with Jack--I had accepted his request to address him thus familiarly--at least one day in each week. His dinners were at the then unusual hour of seven, a habit acquired as he informed me in India. Jim was butler, and Dinah, his wife was cook. She was an artist of a kind to be found nowhere in the world, outside of old southern plantation halls. The table service was of pure china and cut glass. The menu was never extensive, thereby not conducing to over-indulgence, but everything was perfect of its kind, and cooked absolutely to a "T". A single bottle of wine was always served for us two, either of Rhine or one of the best clarets. My host and I never emptied more than two glasses each. At the end of each meal, Dinah and Jim came in as the table was being cleared off, and drank to our healths in glasses of the same set, and from the same wine used by the master. Mr. Felden never smoked cigars at table, but we each had a jasmine Turkish pipe and puffed delicious Ladikiyah, received by him from Beyrout in hermetically sealed cans. One evening when we were lolling back on softest chairs and enjoying to our full the fragrant weed, Jack said to me, "Paul," (this was the first and almost the only time, he thus called me,) "you have told me the sad, sweet story of your life. I propose, if you wish, to give you mine." "I am very glad of it, and have been hoping you would." For some minutes he was silent, and his noble face was lighted with what seemed an illumination from within, wholly different from that laid upon it by the mellow glow from the candelabra. "I am thirty years old; have light auburn and very curly hair." I started, for his hair and beard were dark brown, almost black, and without even a wave. Without noticing my surprise, he continued, "My complexion is florid and my face without a scar." "My goodness, Jack, you are making sport of me," I cried, for the man before me had a complexion of richest olive, and a terrible scar had been cut across his cheek, as he once laughingly intimated, by a tiger's claw. "No, I am telling you simple facts. I am the son of a rich planter in ----," he did not name the state; "my father and my uncle owned adjoining estates of great value, and were as proud as they were rich. I was an only child. My uncle had but one, and that a daughter. Our parents inherited their fortunes from my grandfather, and at an early date they determined to unite the family wealth again by a marriage between my cousin Belle and myself. She was a pure blonde, one year my senior, very stately, very cold, and intensely proud. We grew up to consider ourselves as indissolubly betrothed. Belle treated it as calmly as if we had been married for years. This she did as soon as she was out of the school room. She never seemed to doubt the propriety of our engagement. She loved 'Clifton' and 'Brandon'--I will thus call the two plantations--she loved the two estates next to her father. Him she worshipped. These two loves filled her soul, and left no room for any other genuine affection. Yes; she loved herself, our name, our lineage, and her pride." For awhile he was silent, and his soul seemed to be working in his face; then, with a sigh of pain, he continued: "I graduated from one of the best colleges in the land at twenty, and at once with a learned tutor, was sent abroad. We traveled in continental Europe for a few months and I was intensely happy. Before the first year had half ran out, we were summoned home. My father was ill, and would probably not live to see me. This was my first great pain, for my mother had died at my birth. We hurried to New York by the first steamer, then by rail and coach we flew southward without having heard a word from home. We were too late; my poor father had been dead nearly a fortnight. I had loved him with intense devotion. My uncle having died three years before, Belle had been living since then with my father at Clifton. She met me at the door, enveloped in black, and looking the very embodiment of decorous grief. She kissed me on the forehead, and when within told me in a voice as calm as ice of my poor father's last illness, of his death, and of the immensely attended funeral. She opened her writing desk, read letter after letter of condolence, and with a fitting sigh spoke of the gratification we should feel, 'that dear uncle had so many admirers among the best people of the south.' Her well-poised calmness nearly stifled me. Yearning for love and sympathy, all I received from the only relative I had on earth, at least of near degree, were congratulations that my father had found in death the cold esteem of friends. As soon as I could decently leave the house, I hurried to the negro quarters to see my foster mother, Dinah, and her husband, Jim. There I found loving hearts, and for many minutes was clasped in the arms of her who had nursed me on her bosom through my babyhood. I lay upon a settee, given Dinah by myself as a Christmas present years before, and with my head on the old negress' lap, let her comb the hair over my aching brow. Soothed and rested by the kind, homely sympathy, I lay with closed eyes, when the cabin became redolent of that peculiar odor given out by genuine crepe, and Belle walked in. In calm, cold words she said she was sorry John could not find some one at the house to brush his head. The next day my cousin handed me a letter, 'the last,' she said 'Uncle had ever written.' It told me where I would find his will; that everything he possessed was left to me, and asked, as a dying request, that I should marry my cousin the day I became twenty-one. He told me how all the love he had borne my mother had been centered upon me; gave me a few words of advice, but said he felt advice unnecessary, as he knew how good his only son was. When I had finished reading I handed the letter to Belle, saying there was something in it concerning her. I watched her through my fingers and saw that her reading was simply perfunctory; she had evidently read it before. She sighed, came to my seat, put her arms about my neck--called me her dear John, and kissed me on the lips. I felt like one fettered and powerless. My heart was filled with a sort of numbness--despair. Two facts were as clear to me as daylight: that I did not love my cousin, that she did not love me; she was incapable of real passion. I turned to her and said: 'Belle you have read my father's letter, what do you suggest?' 'Why, of course, John, we will be married on the 20th day of February. We have a month to get ready, besides we need not much preparation, for we will at once go to Europe for a year, until the sad events of the past few weeks shall have been obliterated from our minds.' Good God! she could speculate on the death of grief. I hated her. But I would as soon have thought of exhuming my father's body and scattering it to the four winds of heaven, as to think of not obeying his wishes. Well, we were married, and at once went abroad. I tried to and did respect my wife. She attracted great attention, for she was superbly beautiful--queenly. But there was never a moment when I felt like pressing her stately form to my breast; never had the slightest inclination to kiss her lips; never once felt I could look into her great blue eyes, and breathe out my life on her bosom. A marble statue would as quickly have aroused a feeling of passion in my heart. She was cold and did not seem to realize that I was not a model husband, for I was her attentive and watchful companion. She seemed thoroughly satisfied, while my heart was hardening into stone. In July we visited a flower show in Regent's Park, accompanied by two English ladies, both married, romantic and full of sentiment. In our rounds, we met a lady in company with a gentleman and a little boy. She was about eighteen years old, with dark melting eyes under a perfectly arched brow, and a broad low forehead, over which her black hair was banded in massive silken waves. Her complexion was so deeply brunette as to be almost olive. The blood was rich and flowing in her cheeks, and her lips were two full ripe riven cherries, when she spoke parting over large pearly teeth. Her head was exquisitely poised on shoulders of superb mould, and her form and gait queenly. We were on the opposite side of a wonderful erica admiring its masses of pink flowers. Our eyes met. I stood as if spell bound. I had never before seen a perfect beauty and all of my own chosen type. She was exactly my opposite, I, high florid; she intensely brunette. The color came into her cheek and mounted to her very hair when she caught my fixed gaze. One of our English friends noticed this. Afterwards in our walks, we met again and again the lady in the brown shawl--for so our friends called her. Whenever we met, my eyes instinctively sought those of the unknown, and always caught her glance in return, and at every such encounter her face crimsoned. This was remarked by our two lady friends and caused them to banter me. They told my wife to be on her guard; that if I were not already married, they would say I had certainly met my fate. Ah! little did they dream they were speaking truth--that this girl was my fate for weal or for woe! I heard the unknown's voice several times without catching her words. It sank into my very soul. I became absent minded throughout the remainder of the day. Belle joined the ladies in declaring that the "brown shawl" had bewitched me. Mr. Jamison, I have a very decided theory of true marriage. The Bible is a mass of oriental rubbish! Forgive me, I do not mean to offend. I reverence the bible, but not every word of it. It is made up of ingots of gold covered and almost hidden within masses of sand--grains of truth and Godly wisdom, in bulks of chaff. It is made up of God's wisdom and oriental fable legend and poetry. You reverence the gold, the grains--the sands and the chaff. I wash out the sand, and pick out the gold; winnow away the chaff, and gather up the rich grains. Nothing to me in the book of Genesis, reveals more deep knowledge of human nature, than the account of the creation of Adam; he was made from the dust of the ground, and his soul was breathed into him by the breath of God. When a man dies, his body returns to the dust, his soul goes back to its maker. God created man! male and female, created he _them_! They were then good. He afterward separated the female from the male. Each thus became imperfect--each became a part and not a whole. There is a constant yearning in them for reunion. When the true Eve unites with her Adam, they become one, and their union is bliss. When so united, no man shall put them asunder. The union is founded directly on natural and, not on moral or religious laws. The natural laws speak within, and draw irresistibly two hearts to be mated. Whoever obeys the impulse find a Heaven on earth. Others, falsely-mated, may not find absolute misery, but, it is equally certain, true happiness is never theirs. Men and women are made for each other; not one man for one certain woman, but in classes. A man finds his physical mate in one of a certain class. If her moral qualities be not fitted by education, he should wait with a well grounded hope of finding another in the same class, whose bringing up will have better fitted her for him. Now, the woman in the _brown shawl_ was my mate, that is one of the proper class. I could not get her out of my mind, and my wife's coldness, constantly made me yearn for her. Travel was distasteful to Belle, so that before the fall had set in, we were again at home. I did not love my wife, she did not love me. She was fully satisfied to live with me in the proud dignity given us by our vast estates. Besides his plantation, negroes and stock, my father had left me largely over a hundred thousand dollars in money and convertible bonds and mortgages. I resolved to turn all of these into cash, and to abandon wife and country. I got all in readiness; executed and left with my lawyers papers conveying every thing else to Belle; went to New York on some pretended business and sailed for Europe, writing home that I would never return. I sought the American colonies and hotels in every country, in a sort of vague hope that I could find the woman in the brown shawl. She was my fate. I was mad with the one idea. I was no libertine, Mr. Jamison. I simply yearned for her, not asking what the result would be should she be found. I drifted into the East and wandered through Russia, Turkey, Greece, Palestine and Egypt. I did not meet her; and could get no tidings of her. CHAPTER II. I resolved to lose myself in the far East. I went to India; hunted in the jungles, reckless of life and danger. I was successful in overcoming the monsters of the wilds; and escaped dreadful fevers because I seemed to bear a charmed life. It was worthless to me, and a bad penny could not be lost. In India I met with a cunning native, who changed my locks from light to their present color, curly to straight; my complexion from florid to its olive hue. He taught me how to put a scar on my cheek that would deceive the eyes of a surgeon, but from which I could at any time free myself in a single night, and renew at will. So perfectly was my disguise, that my Indian servant, who had been with me for a year, failed to recognize me. He never knew me again. With my skin I changed my name. I was a stranger even when in my most frequented haunts, and as you see, am still disguised. I visited Siam, Burmah, China and Borneo. I wandered five years in the far East, and returned to America by the Pacific and Panama, and thence to New Orleans. In that city, I went to a Mardi-Gras ball. On entering the brilliant assembly room, I was almost stunned by the sight of my wife, standing close by my side. She looked at me without recognition. She was the same cold, queenly woman. I was presented and talked to her of her husband, whom I had met in the far East. She seemed considerably interested in me, but did not evince the slightest emotion when I spoke of her husband and told her I had heard of his death in India. She said in chilling tones she felt sure it was a false rumor. Had she shown any feeling, I think I would have tried to get her into my heart. I went to my old home, and pretending to be shooting and belated, went to Jim Madison's cabin about sun-down and talked to him and Dinah. Neither of them recognized me, but when her back was to me I spoke; she started, for my voice reached her memory. They were both true to Mars John, whom I told them I had known at college. Dinah shed bitter tears, because she could never see him again, and Jim would be like Simeon of old, if his eyes could rest upon him once more. They were to be trusted. I went to the cabin door and finding there was no one in the neighborhood, I drew my hat over my face and said in my natural voice: "Jim, Dinah, don't you know me?" They sprang to me at once, with a cry, "Oh bress de Lord, it's him,--it's him--it's Mars John" and for minutes I was pressed in their arms, while they shed tears and gave thanks to the good God. The two lowly hearts were true as steel to me, and would be willing to follow me to the ends of the earth. Jim was a teamster and had to draw a load of cotton to the nearest steam boat landing on the following day. In my boyhood his aquatic qualities won my admiration and were the wonder of the negroes for many miles around. To my inquiry as to his ability in that line now, he proudly stated that "he was a duck a-top the water, an' a musrat under it." I then told him to be on the lookout, when on the wharf boat the next day; that I would be there; would manage to tumble into the river; he was to rescue me, and out of gratitude I would purchase him and Dinah, and take them north to freedom. We performed our comedy admirably. Water could scarcely drown me, for from childhood, I had been a water-dog, and when Jim made his wonderful dive, and brought me from the bottom, to which I had conveniently sunken the third time, I acted the drowned man so well, that the negroes around nearly killed me by rolling me on a barrel to get the water out of my stomach. I managed to be properly resuscitated, and in three days Jim and Dinah, paid for, were on their way north. They had no children, and left no ties behind. Jim says, "he is a bigger slave than ever, for I am always on his mind." We reached Cincinnati last spring, and I feel certain my identity can never be discovered. I have my two oldest earthly friends with me, and now my newest, and almost only other one. I am trying to recover a part of my fortune, for I had but little left when I reached this city. I came here because, the only words I ever distinctly caught from my brown shawled mate and her companions were, when the boy said, "but Cincinnati, you know"--that was all. I am here making a little money speculating in grain; using Jim's rheumatism to inform me as to weather probabilities and if prices will go up or down--and keeping my eyes always open for the only woman I have ever seen whom I can love. And now fill up your chilbouque and let us have a glass of beer." He rang a bell and told Jim to open a couple of bottles of ale. I was deeply impressed by the story--more so, than I cared my friend to see. To open up a light vein of conversation I asked: "What was that you said about Jim's rheumatism?" "I spoke in earnest;" answered Jack, "last summer and fall I used Jim's ankles to tell me if the weather would be favorable for crops. He believes implicitly in his rheumatic prognostications. To humor him I follow his advice, and so far have never failed to make a good deal by so doing." I thanked Felden for his story, and went home pondering upon his notions and pluck. It was strange to see a man who evidently so enjoyed lavish luxury, living as he did, when a beautiful wife, a vast fortune and high position were waiting for him, whenever he should acknowledge his proud name. Toward the end of the winter, a messenger brought me, from Mr. Felden a request for the address of a first class physician, and telling me Dinah was much indisposed. The next evening I dropped in at his house, but he begged to be excused. The message brought to the door by Jim, made me feel my visits were not desired for the time being. Ten days elapsed without any news from him, when I met Dr. J. and inquired as to the condition of his dusky patient. "Oh! ho! Then I owe to you this new patient!" I stated the circumstances. "Well, Mr. Jamison, I thank you, for I have had a revelation at that bedside, for which I would not take a thousand dollars." I expressed gratification and some surprise. "You know," the genial doctor continued, "you know that I am an old time abolitionist, and one of the straightest kind." I replied, I had often regretted the fact. Scarcely noticing my remark he went on: "I have received a revelation, Mr. Jamison, and one that God willing! will make me a more charitable--a braver, perhaps a better man. Think of it sir: I went to see this black woman, expecting to find her in charge of some other ignorant woman of her color. But instead of that, there was an elegant gentleman sitting at her bed side; his hand was upon her hot forehead, and every now and then he whispered, "Don't be afraid Mammy, little John is by you, and he will take care of you." The poor creature was delirious. She thought herself on a southern plantation, and that some one was trying to do her bodily harm. "When I stepped forward, he motioned me to be still. I am generally an autocrat in a sick room, but that man's look and gesture made me a regular sucking babe." I laughed at the thought. "You needn't laugh, sir. I am telling God's truth. Well! when he had quieted her, he took me into an adjoining room, and gave me his diagnosis of the case. It was the opinion of a man of science, absolutely correct. I left my prescription, promising to be on hand as early as possible the next morning. Would you believe it, sir, I was there before day-light? I wanted to see that man. I found him seated as he had been the night before, and learned he had been there ever since I left. She was still out of her head. Something she said caused the gentleman to say, "She must be saved. She and her husband are all that are left to me of a great plantation and five hundred negroes." "Instead of feeling disgust for the owner of five hundred human beings, I felt they had lost a friend when they lost their master. For a whole week, that man never took off his clothes, and as far as I could see, never left that lowly bed side. I never saw such devotion. It pulled her through; my drugs were a humbug, sir. That Christian gentleman saved her life." The doctor took off his hat and mopped his brow. It was wet from the energy of his speech. "It was a revelation to me, sir. Think of it! A man can own human beings, and still be a Christian. If our Saviour has a true follower on this earth, that born slave owner is of his chosen ones." I told this to Felden a few days later. He smiled and said, "I thank the good doctor. Don't tell him I am a worshipper of the one unknown, and unknowable God. I reverence Jesus of Nazareth--I reverence Sidartha, the Buddh--I reverence Zoroaster. They were the greatest of men, whom long meditation sublimated and lifted above their kind. But there is only one God. No one of woman born, ever could, or can conceive his form. The best and purest Christian I ever met was a Hindoo, not only in race, but in religion. Yet, he was a Christian in the true sense of the word. He lived and acted the life inculcated by Jesus. The next best was a Parsee worshipper of the sun. He did unto his kind as he would they should do unto him. He clothed the naked, fed the hungry and healed the sick; yet he gave the body of his beautiful and idolized daughter to be devoured by vultures on the Tower of Silence. One of the genuine Christians I have met, was a Chinaman, who worshipped Joss, and daily knelt at a shrine erected to him in the back of his shop. He washed the wounds of a stranger, and nursed him for weeks, though his house was shunned as the home of pestilence. "Forgive them Father, they know not what they do," might be offered up in behalf of fully one half of the good people of this Christian land. They wrap themselves up in their egotism and their bigotry. They follow the blind lead of narrow minded preachers and make the pulpit their fetich. Bah! how I hate cant and hypocricy! Poor Dinah is as black as the ace of spades, but under her dusky breast is as white a soul as ever came from the breath of God; and I am supposed to be a good man, simply because I did not leave her to die like a crippled dog." "No, Mr. Jamison, I am no better than I ought to be. Dinah nursed me on her breast and fed me from her life's blood, when I was helpless. I was only a man when I nursed her through this illness. I came to tell you she is nearly well again, and Jim wishes you to eat a dinner of his cooking to-morrow evening. Good day." And with that he showed me his straight back and massive shoulders as he walked with swinging strides from the store. We commenced fishing in March and spent many a pleasant hour together, on the water by day, and in his den at evening. Early in May, I went as per agreement to dine with him. Jim handed me a note. It read, "Dear Jamison, go in and make the most of the dinner. I am off for how long, I know not. I met to-day, my fate of the brown shawl. I follow wherever it may lead me, never to stop until my doom be found. Yours, in the height of folly, JACK." Jim informed me his master had come in a half hour before; after hurriedly filling a valise and satchel, he had jumped into the carriage, which brought him home, saying "Goodbye old folks, take care of the dogs, and expect me home, when you see me." Jim added, "He's all right up here sah," touching his head, "but his heart's sort'er crazy." I could scarcely taste the food, for I felt that there was over Jack, and thus over me, an impending disaster. I had become deeply attached to him. One knowing the intense nature of the man could not but fear he was following an ignis fatuus to his doom. Here was a married man, who had schooled his heart and reason to the belief he was not wedded--that his marriage was a fiction of the law, and not binding on his conscience. I was a religious man, and shuddered lest my friend with his marvelous fascinations, and goaded by a mad passion, might do some act abhorrent to my notions of right. Days and weeks of uneasiness on my own part, and apparently of distress on the part of the two colored servants passed by, without a word from the absent one. At first I went to his house repeatedly to rest and to think of him, but finally satisfied myself with inquiries at the door. About two months after his disappearance, it became necessary for me to make a journey to a distant state in the interest of our house. I was absent over a fortnight. Immediately upon my return, I visited the den (I had learned to call it thus). A white woman met me at the door with the information that she was the present tenant. She knew nothing of the late occupants, but referred me to a real estate firm as her landlords. I went to them. They knew nothing of the late tenants of the cottage, farther than, that Mr. Jack Felden had sent them the keys, and the rent to the end of the term. They found the premises in fine condition, but nothing to indicate where the people had gone. It was evident that Felden had what he considered good reasons for not communicating with me. I was sure he sincerely liked me, and would not thus act, unless he desired to cover his tracks. I respected his wishes and did not afterwards refer to him. Desiring to work off my anxiety I went to the river for a hard trial at rowing. The man in charge of my boat handed me a note written he said, by himself at Jim's dictation. It simply said, "Mars Jack axes you to take his canoe for yersef. He won't want it no more. Good bye, sah, may de Lord be good to you, for Mars Jack loved you. his Jim X Madison mark" I soon learned to scull the outrigger called by Jim, canoe, and used it for years, but its late owner was seen by me no more in Cincinnati. By degrees I ceased to expect him again. I often thought of him, and a prayer for his happiness became a part of my nightly supplication, before the throne of grace. CHAPTER III. Nearly a year after Felden's disappearance, I was surprised by the following letter from him: "Dear old Jamison: I know you thought and think me a scape grace, but when you read what I shall write, you will forgive me as a simple madcap. To get you into a proper state of mind, I will at once proceed a tale to unfold. The day of my departure from Cincinnati, I went to the Burnett to discuss a business venture with a guest of the house. He was in the dining-room at 5 o'clock dinner. I sat by his side discussing our business, when I was startled by the tones of a voice near by. I sought it. There just opposite to me the "brown shawl" was being seated. An elderly lady accompanied her. My vis-a-vis was a young girl, not over eighteen, but in every respect the woman I met in '50, at the flower-show in Regent's Park. There was one difference it is true--in her coiffure; as I took it, the result of change of fashion. So vividly was the photograph of years ago impressed on my memory, and so exactly was it copied, that the incongruity of time and added years never crossed my brain. I was dazed by the sudden apparition of my dream. No thought entered my mind that it was contrary to the laws of nature, that a woman of 18 in '50 was still only 18 now; nor did the idea occur to me that I was laboring under an hallucination, or was the victim of mistaken identity. The woman I had worshipped for long years was there before me, in every feature the same as memory pictured her. She was no older, and was altered only as change of fashion had altered her. I did not reason on the subject. I overheard that the two ladies were on their way to Boston; and were to leave on the 7:30 train, going East. They examined a time table, and speculated as to their stops for meals before reaching their destination. The elder was addressed as "Auntie," the younger one as "Rita." In an hour I was at the station with my luggage. I saw them enter the cars, and knew whenever they left it at eating stations. At Boston I made my cab driver follow their carriage and took the number of the dwelling and the name of the street. The next day I watched the house. At noon Rita with a lady, both in calling costume took a carriage at the door, and Rita, for so I already called her in my thoughts threw a kiss to a child who had followed them from the house. I determined this was her home, and felt no longer any necessity for constant watching. Towards sundown I was walking in the Common, where she and I met face to face. She looked at me, but as one to her an indifferent stranger. A girl, probably of five years was her companion. While the latter sailed a toy boat on the pond, the young lady sat on a seat not far away. The little girl dropped her hat in the water, and called out, "Oh, Aunt Rita! I've lost my hat." They tried to reach it with her parasol. I ran to a man raking grass, took his rake and rescued the hat. When I put it on the child's head, the aunt thanked me, with a smile that was a ray of sunshine. Her voice, modulated to express thanks, was simply music. Resolved to take advantage of any and every opportunity to make her acquaintance, I took off my hat saying, "Pardon me, but we have met before. It was in London, in 1850." She replied, with a smile, "Your memory must be wonderful, for at that time, I was--let me see--" and she counted the years on her fingers, "I was then nine years old, and very small for my age." I was dumbfounded, for as yet I had not thought of the anachronism I had been guilty of. I said, "it is strange"--my voice sounded hollow to myself--"but a young lady, your very image, I met a dozen times, and what is stranger still, she wore the self same brown shawl which covered your shoulders at the Burnett house, a few days since." She did not notice my allusion to the Burnett house but burst out in a hearty laugh and clapped her hands so loudly, that the little girl ran to her. "I see it all," she cried; "Minnie, my sister, was in London that year, and wore that shawl. Her picture was taken in it about the same time, and when I grew up I was so wonderfully like her, that she gave it to me; when I fix my hair as hers was, and put on that wrap, every one declares the picture to be the very image of myself." I had broken the ice rather unconventionally, and was determined not to recede. I said "But she was with her father and a little boy." I felt I was treading on thin ice, but if it were not her father, I would manage in some way to get out of my mistake. "Yes!" she replied. "Yes! my poor dear father and dear little Ralph were with her. I was at school at home. Poor papa--poor Ralph." Her eyes became suffused. "Papa and Minnie went abroad for brother Ralph's health. Poor boy, he did not live to get home, and papa died the next year." It was not right, but I could not resist it. I knew that grief admits a friend more readily than gaiety, so I said: "Yes! Ralph looked very frail, but your father was the picture of health. I was abroad after that for several years and lost sight of them." She paused a while, and then continued, "dear papa was never sick, but his troubles broke his heart and killed him. You know it was a terrible thing to be cheated of all he possessed by the man he thought his best friend." I saw she had an idea, I had known her father and of his affairs. I was villain enough not to undeceive her. What is more, I felt I had a right to be free with this girl. I had worshipped her sister for years, and in every land. She and her sister were now become as one, and that one was designed by nature for me. The child ran up and pulled her hand. "Lets go home, aunt Rita, I am hungry." She arose, and nodding me a polite good evening, said: "I suppose you will come to see Minnie. Her house is No. ----. My aunt and I are visiting her." I promised to do so, and passed a sleepless night, racking my brain to discover some way of getting into No. ---- without taking advantage of this sweet girl's unconventional innocence. Could I tell a lie? Would it be a lie to excuse myself on the plea of having a slight acquaintance with the dead father? I lived a lie; was indeed a living lie, but I had as yet to my recollection never uttered a direct one. On the next day I called, asking for the ladies. I sent in a card with an assumed name and wrote under it, "An acquaintance of years ago." Rita and Mrs. Wilton, her sister, came in together. I stood for several minutes speechless. There were the two sisters. Apparently there was ten years difference in their ages, and the disparity was patent. Yet I looked from one to the other, and for a while was hardly able to determine that it was the elder I had previously met. I hid my confusion. They seemed never to question my having been a friend of their father. Neither evinced the slightest emotion when our eyes met. I had while abroad, the entre of many noble houses. I used this fact as a sort of credential and succeeded so well that Mr. Wilton called at my hotel and invited me to dine with his family. The visit was repeated; and I was well received. I honored the wife--but loved the young sister. It seemed to me it was she I had been carrying all of these years in my heart; and I did not stop to think what all this might lead to. When I changed my skin in India I became the man I pretended to be. I was the homeless Jack Felden. I was madly infatuated, and what may seem strange, while I trembled when I looked at or touched the younger sister, I felt not a single tremor, when the elder walked to a concert at night with her hand on my arm; not an emotion, when she looked me in the face. I loved her years ago, I loved her sister now because she and her sister had become one, and that one was the younger. I watched Rita and could not find that I aroused one single feeling of reciprocation in her breast. I grew mad at the thought, and at night cried aloud in agony. Was it true--could it be true, that after all, I was nothing to this woman who, I believed, was made for me? I spoke one day of the episode at the flower show, intimating nothing which could connect them with it. Minnie told how she, too, once had fallen in love the same way; suddenly she started and fixed her eyes on my black hair and olive hue. The look seemed to recall her; she had no suspicion. I pondered on the thing. Years ago my glance sent the blood crimson to her brow. The sister now affected me as she had formerly done, but I seemed to be nothing to her. I spent sleepless nights trying to account for this. I reached the conclusion at last that love--passionate love, was a physical as well as a spiritual emotion; that I was wearing a mask covering my true self, and to win Rita I must unmask. I have told you I could remove and replace my scar in a day, but to change the color of my hair or complexion requires from four to six months. I learned that Rita, with her aunt, whom I did not meet, would return to their home in Tennessee within a month, and she would then be a village fixture for perhaps a year. I grew madly jealous lest some one should love and win her before I could appear properly before her. I swore to have her, and when won, I felt sure she would never change, but would wait and wait until she could be mine. I bade the sisters goodbye with a heavy heart--all the heavier, because on their part leave-taking was only kindly. I hurried to Cincinnati; avoided places where I could meet you; gathered together my guns and fishing-tackle, my cosmetics and wardrobe sufficient for several months absence; arranged my bank account and went to Chicago, where I thought the Ethiopian might change his skin without observation. Jim being able to read my writing when in plain characters, was directed to pack up all my valuables and to hold himself in readiness to come to me at once on receipt of a letter. He and his wife finally joined me. I sent him to Tennessee to learn the lay of the land in the town in which Rita's aunt resided. To escape any difficulties a Northern negro might encounter in a small Southern town, he went as a boat hand on a steamer running from St. Louis; managed to get sick when ---- was reached, and was necessarily put ashore. In a month he returned full of the information I desired. I learned that the father of the two sisters, Mr. Dixon, had been a wealthy merchant in one of the large southern cities. He was an Englishman by birth and had lost his wife, a high-born Spanish lady, when Rita was a small child. They had no relations in America, except the aunt, under whose care the youngest daughter was living and upon whom she was dependent. When the family was in England for Ralph's health in '50, the partner of Mr. Dixon contrived to raise a very large sum of money and decamped. Mr. Dixon reached home to find himself an absolute pauper. The blow prostrated him, and in a few months he was laid beside his wife. Rita had only a village education, but was a great reader and a good musician. Her aunt, Mrs. Allen, had been governess in a nobleman's house in England, was literary and decidedly uppish and withal intensely avaricious. Mr. Wilton was the Boston correspondent of the ruined firm, and in the course of settling with it met and won Minnie. Rita's aunt, or rather, aunt-in-law, the widow of her father's only brother, took charge of her and made her home an unhappy one, not by direct unkindness, but by her querulous, carping and sarcastic disposition and manner. She would long since have gone to her sister but for a dislike of Wilton, who, though most kind to his wife, was a selfish man, and had given his young sister-in-law some great offense for which the Spanish blood, so hot in her veins, forbade forgiveness. I do not remember ever to have told you that Jim Madison, the obedient servant and devoted slave of his once master, is a man of great native intellect. When a boy, I taught him to read a little and in Cincinnati spent much time trying to educate him. He was wonderfully apt and occasionally with strangers uses good English, but with me and my intimates prefers to be the negro servant and to use plantation language. He is intensely loving, absolutely honest, and at times startles me by an almost savage dignity inherited through a short line from his African forefathers. Reared among a thousand negroes, for Clifton and Brandon people mingled almost as if of one plantation--jolly and light in his heart, he courted popularity among his kind and became one of the most astute diplomats. I love him as my servant and honor him as a true and honest man; respect, and if he were not my friend, would almost fear him as a shrewd, self poised, ever alert diplomatist. I had known his qualities before, yet the thoroughness of his information brought me from ---- amazed me. He managed to get a job of sawing a load of fire-wood and packing it in the aunt's yard, and from that he became domiciled in a room over the kitchen. With his open but shrewd honesty, he became almost a confident of Miss Rita. You who have never lived in the South cannot understand how closely drawn together are kind masters and mistresses and humble but faithful servants. The cunning Hindoo who gave me my raven locks and olive complexion, gave me also ingredients to restore my original appearance more rapidly than nature, unassisted, would do, and at the same time, cosmetics, which would enable me to conceal the change while going on. The effects of the cosmetics were entirely temporary, and easily removable. When Jim returned, I was ready to reassume my skin. When emerging from my bath one morning, I was no longer Jack Felden, but John ---- of Clifton, ----. Jim and Dinah shed tears of joy, crying together "Bress de Lord! oh bress de Lord--its Mars John--its hisself shuah"; and they hugged me again and again. Dinah sat down in a rocking chair and said, "Come to Mammy, honey; jes let Mammy nuss her baby boy one more time, and I'se ready to go to glory." I lay my head on the loving creature's lap, while she combed out my hair and tried to curl it around her fingers. The curls of my youth, however, were gone forever. When I looked into the glass, and saw my changed appearance, a sudden revulsion of feeling came over me. I was John ----: I was the unhappy husband of my cold cousin. A gulf arose between Rita and myself. How dare I think of winning the love of that pure girl! I, who was bound by the law of man to another, even though my reason and my heart told me, I was free. So thoroughly had I identified myself with the character of Jack Felden, while wearing his hair and complexion, that the recollection of my real name and position was blurred. It is true, my unfortunate marriage was never entirely forgotten, but I felt myself a new man, with new lights and different possibilities. The husband of Belle had become an unreal shadow--the figment of a disordered imagination. The life I had been living for years began in the Bengalee village, when the cunning Hindoo made me a stranger to my servant--all before that was a dream. Now having laid aside my mask, I was the dead man come back to life, with all his memories and his hated ties. I took long walks at night out into the open country. I fought the demon of memory; I fought the commands of conscience. But conscience would not down. The blood spot would not out. Despair filled me. Aided by my temporary cosmetics, I again became Jack Felden, but the change was only partial. My glass told me I was he, my conscience whispered, I was John ----. Mine was a dual being. The hopes of the masquerader were depressed by the fears of the real man. I decided to send Jim to Clifton to learn something of Belle, resolved if she were still clinging to her pride, to speculate boldly--to win a fortune and give it to Rita as a restitution coming from her father's swindler. You know something of my success in Cincinnati. Jim had been my lucky stone; his rheumatic limbs were my barometer, telling me what the season would be from week to week, and though I did not believe in it, I had speculated on what his joints foretold and was now the possessor of a fair competency--I would risk my all, court fortune's smile to make or break. If fortune should favor me, all would be Rita's; I would avoid her forever; if the fickle jade failed me, Jim and I could gain a livelihood in new endeavors. While shedding my skin, I had made several small successful ventures in corn and wheat. Jim and I put our heads together (or rather, I put my head to his shins) and we arrived at conclusions, which should lead to wealth, or to poverty. I put aside a couple of thousands for Jim and Dinah, staking all the rest of my fortune in margins. I won from the first. I pushed my luck with reckless daring, turning my profits into margins and new ventures. At the end of two weeks, my means were doubled. I was eating my dinner--one of the best Dinah ever prepared--when Akbor and Queen watching me close by my chair, suddenly sprang up, and rushed to the door whining and uttering low barks. Jim entered, to be overthrown by the delighted animals. Gathering himself up quickly, he held out his hand to me, an unusual familiarity, for Jim is my friend, yet my slavish servant, and rarely loses the demeanor of the servant. "Bress de Lord, Mars Jack; shout glory hallelujer Dineh, you black niggar! We'se free! and created equal as shuah as Tom Jeffersom printed de declaratium!" I made him sit down and tell his story. He told me all he thought of interest regarding the dear home of my childhood. I tried to get him to the point on which I most desired information, but he could not be induced to alter the thread of his narration in the least detail. Finally I learned that Belle, who had gone abroad twelve months before, was to be married in a month to an Italian Lord. "Jess think of it Dineh--git it through yo' wool, ole gal.--over dah dey calls men lords. I don't wonnah dat Sodum and Gomorrah was guv up to fire and brimstone. I specks dar was lords in dem days. The reel Lord will make Miss Belle a piller of salt--shuah! stick dat in yo' craw, Dineh--dar is one Lord, and he tells us in de book, dat he am a jellus God." Jim then spread before me a newspaper printed in ----. It announced, as a most important event--"That the beautiful and queenly Mrs. Belle ---- whose husband, Mr. John ---- had mysteriously disappeared in 185--, supposed to have died of cholera in India, had become a Catholic and was about to be married to the Marquis of ---- in Rome. Mrs. ---- had with hopeful love for her husband, for all these years refused to credit the report of his death; even now, she was unwilling to act on information she had gained at great expense, from India; information which every one else thought thoroughly reliable. She had therefore applied to the Pope for a dispensation; that as soon as the formalities necessary at the Vatican were completed, she would at once become the Marchionness of ----. The marriage was to occur on the ---- day ----, just one month from the day of the publication of this paper." Oh Jamison, old fellow, that was a happy hour for me. I had that day closed very successful deals. I was almost rich and could win and wear Rita. I did not for a moment doubt she would be mine, for I honestly believed her my mate. All impatience to fly to her, I made an arrangement to travel south for a Chicago firm, to be paid out of commission alone. Jim informed me that Rita's aunt sometimes rented her front parlor and a bed-room attached, to traveling men with samples; that it was a source of much mortification to the niece, for the elderly lady was rich and had no children, renting the room out of pure avarice. I resolved to lease it, for it would bring me close to Rita and would arouse her animosity, out of which I would snatch victory. I washed every vestige of Jack Felden from my hair and skin, but put a scar on my cheek, which with a full beard and straight hair, I thought would insure me against all recognition, should chance bring me in contact with some one I had known in early manhood. On reaching ----, leaving my luggage and sample boxes at the wharf, I went at once to the home of the aunt; secured the rooms and agreed to pay a large price for my breakfast and supper in the house. Thus the best of treatment was secured, for the avaricious old lady would try to keep me as long as possible. My first meal in the house, was supper. When Rita came to the table, she scarcely deigned to notice me. She disliked me for taking the parlor. Mrs. Allen, the aunt, was a screw, but she was an epicure. Her old cook was an artist. Like all genuine gourmets, the old lady was a table talker, and a good one. I resolved to return Miss Rita's disdain, by ignoring her presence, and if possible to arouse her interest in me, against her will. When the aunt served me with tea, she said: "Mr. Felden, there is a cup which I am sure you cannot equal in Chicago. New made people can soon become good judges of coffee, but a connoisseur in tea must have blue blood in his veins." "I do not boast a long line of ancestry," I rejoined, "but my palate must be the heritage of good blood, for I enjoy the Chinese drink greatly, and am very particular as to the brand. There is only one country in the world where good tea is almost universal. A bad cup in Russia, I found the exception." "Ah," she said, "but it is in England, that it is always above the average." "Yes," I acknowledged, "as a food, not as a beverage. English tea is good to eat--that is to mix with, and wash down your muffins. In Russia tea is a drink, and is even jealous of a thing so coarse as sugar. I learned there to put into my cup only a soupçon of sweet." "You have been in the land of the Czar then, have you?" "I spent some time within his dominions," I replied. "You have been a traveler, then I suppose. What other countries have you visited? Pardon my seeming impertinence, but I have found it a good beginning to an acquaintance, to learn where each has been. I have myself, wandered considerably, but only in Europe." "I have visited nearly every European land;" I said, for I was determined to please her and at the same time to win the attention of the niece, who so far, had only noticed me by casual glances, "have hunted the tiger in Indian jungles and laved my limbs in holy Ganges among its devotees." "Oh, how charming!" the good lady exclaimed. "I thought I was getting only a liberal lodger and I find I may be entertaining a savant." "To get myself on the best footing, dear Madam," I rejoined, "I will say I have straddled the equator, and have used the Arctic Circle for a trapeze." She clapped her hands, saying, "That's capital, is it not, Rita? What else, and where else, Mr. Traveler?" "In Burmah I have ogled beauties with huge cigars piercing the lobes of their ears, and have worshipped Soudanise ladies closely veiled on the upper Nile, awakening from my dream of adoration to find the Yashmac of my divinities covering ebony coloured features." "Go on, dear sir, go on, I am wrapt in profound attention," and the old wizened eyes sparkled with pleasure. "I have been in ----," I glanced at Rita, she was listening with intense interest; I grew ashamed of the game and paused. But knowing how a woman's nature clothes the mysterious man in brightest garments, and is ready to find the prince in beggar's raiment, I resolved to show her a despised drummer, who had been in all lands, and even an actor in wild and dangerous adventures. "I have crossed the dark teak forests of Siam, where jungle fever kills its victims in a single day, and escaped its venom by swallowing quinine by the handful and by sleeping in the houdah on my elephant's back. A single night on the ground would have been death." Rita changed her seat to become my vis-a-vis and from then never removed her eyes from my face. I continued: "In Cambodia I lived a week in a grand palace, surrounded by huge temples of fine architectural beauty; temples and palaces covering a mile square; and excepting my servants, I was the only tenant of a magnificent lost city. Trees were rooting on the friezes of noble porticos and splitting their marble members asunder. "I was once caged in a small cave near old Golconda, and my guard of honor was a huge tiger, who lay across the entrance to the den, and strove to tear down the barricade I had erected to keep him out. His fierce growls as he wildly scratched against the granite wall, curdled the blood in my veins and his breath came hot upon my face, the winding crevices in the barricade permitting this, while not allowing me to shoot through them. I sat rifle in hand, expecting every minute that my protection would give way, and then barely hoping that I might send a bullet into the monster's brain. Finally the wall toppled--he crouched for the fatal spring, when a shell from my faithful gun pierced his heart, and I sank in a swoon from long excitement, and physical exhaustion." A sweet voice of intense emotion came across the table. "And--and--please tell me how long did you lie in the swoon?" Ah, how I did long to press to my bosom that dear, sympathetic heart! I replied, "I do not know, but when I came to, I felt I was dying from thirst. I crept through the opening and with the tiger's blood not yet cold, moistened my parching tongue. I lapped it in a sort of revenge." "That was grand! Oh, why am I not a man?" she exclaimed. I leaned towards her, my heart spoke in tones she did not mistake. "Thank God! thank God! you are not." She started, her eyes met mine, every drop of blood seemed to leave her cheek, she was so pale; our eyes looked into our eyes. Her face crimsoned, and she rushed out of the room. Mrs. Allen apolegetically--"do not mind that child, Mr. Felden, she's an idiot," and then, her face became nearly malignant, "Yes, she's an idiot, a plague and a nuisance." How I hated her! How I gloated over the idea, that I would take the plague from her, resolved never to ask her consent. For several days the young lady's manner was constrained but not haughty. I was differential but reserved. Indeed I felt a sort of timidity when she was present. I avoided every appearance of throwing myself into her company. I spent some time in the business quarter of town and soon secured some capital orders for my employers. This gave me real pleasure. You, old Jamison, who are so true to your firm, understand this feeling. I made excursions to other towns where I was somewhat successful. The fourth Sunday was a glorious sunny day, just the one for a long ramble in the country. At breakfast I asked Rita to join me in a constitutional. The aunt spoke up, "Of course she will, I would go myself, but my lame foot forbids it." I proposed going to the hotel to get a lunch. "No! No!" the old lady said. "No! I will put you up a nice basket. In a few days you will take me out for a long promenade a voiture." I consented by a nod. With basket in hand, we left the house early. My companion wore a charming but plain walking habit; a boy's straw hat sat jauntily on her head. I was sure I had never seen anything half so beautiful, as was this dark, yet fair young girl. Rita was a glorious walker. Hers was not the gliding swimming motion which in America and especially in the South, has been regarded as the ne plus ultra of female grace; but the light springing movement, with which fair Eve tripped over Eden's bloom bespangled glens, when she gathered flowers of every sweet odor and of every native tint to deck her bridal bed; when she tripped over nature's parterres and scarcely brushed away the dews sparkling on their wealth of fragrant bloom. We walked and gaily chatted. She lost all the reserve, which since I became an inmate of her auntie's home had more or less marked her demeanor. She was the young village maiden, who had in artless innocence, at Boston's old frog pond, laughingly talked with the respectful stranger. But when our eyes met, her soul spoke unconsciously through them, telling me that she read my heart and was full of sympathy. We reached a high tree-clad bluff, which overlooked a wide river bend. The sun was warm, but sent upon us no burning rays; rather shimmering his light through the leafy shade. Across the stream, a broad bottom lay, waving in grass and grain, and bright here and there with opening cotton bloom. We sat side by side on a fallen tree, and drank in the beauty of a picture painted from colors worked upon nature's pallette. We descended toward the river bank to a pretty little spring which Rita had before oftentimes visited. We partook of the lunch Mrs. Allen had put up for us, or as Rita said, "for her gold paying lodger, who was a traveled savant." She made the welkin ring with her merry laugh, as she took the wrapping paper from a dusty bottle of claret. "Oh! my generous aunty! see, here is genuine Chateau Lafitte! I knew she had it, but I have seen a bottle of it but once on her table, and that was when President Polk dined with us, a good while ago. Poor aunty! You have surely bewitched her, Mr. Felden." The lunch was delicious, and we did it ample justice. "See, Mr. Felden, here is real spring chicken broiled to a "T." Poor aunt; strangely inconsistent aunty. A lavish miser! a generous lover of self! A born epicure." We wandered among little gorges: she was happy, for she was a joyous young girl, set free in nature's haunts. I was happy because by my side was my own--my Heaven given mate, the rib taken from my long ago progenitor, and now given back to me. Grown somewhat tired, we sat upon the grass covered root of an upturned tree. I said something, I remember not what, my companion started; I noticed and adverted to it. "Mr. Felden, do you know you frequently startle me. I seem to hear in your voice a tone I have heard before, or have listened to in my dreams." I felt the hour had come. "Miss Rita. I owe to you a confession. I am not what I am." I spoke with all the pathos practice among wild and dangerous people had made me master of. "Listen to me, Rita, pardon my familiarity: but you will forgive me when I have finished." I rapidly gave her the story of my life, and dwelt upon the meeting with her sister at the flower show, and the hold it took upon me. Again she started, and was about to speak, when with a motion, I stilled her tongue. I spoke of my long wanderings, and then of my seeing her at the Burnett and thinking her the lady of the flower show. I told her of my visit to Boston. The color left her face, and she faltered out--"I knew it--I see it now, you are Mr. Ford," and crimsoned from neck to the roots of her glossy hair. "Yes, Rita, I am John ----. I am Jack Ford; and now Jack Felden tells you that he loves you--he worships you and would make you his wife and would be happy,--would make you his wife, his Queen--and would, too, make you happy." I paused and grasped her hand--she did not withdraw it. For a moment she was silent, and then raising her dark confiding eyes to mine, she said in low tones: "Thank God, Jack, I have not dreamed and prayed in vain. I will be your wife--I will cling to you through life, and will rest by your side in death." I drew her unresisting form to my heart, I kissed her lips in one long kiss, and saw, within the gates ajar, the paradise awaiting me. We arose, and hand in hand, silent, but with heart speaking to heart, walked slowly homeward. We scarcely spoke. Speech was unnecessary. There was a silent communion of souls, still, yet eloquent. We were one. We were as Adam, when first created, male and female; our simple reunion was bliss. We are to start together next week for Boston, to be married in the presence of Minnie. Mrs. Allen is glad to be freed from the expense of Rita's outfit. She regrets that "a great traveler, who ought to be wiser, can tie himself down to a chit of a girl." I go to Chicago to-morrow to close up my affairs, and to bring Jim and his wife here. This climate will suit them better than that of Chicago. We will halt in Cincinnati long enough to see you, old fellow, and when married we will go abroad for a year. Congratulate me, dear Jamison, for I am the happiest of men. Yours, never again to perpetuate a folly. JACK." I, too, was happy, for I loved Felden as I had loved no one since my wife and little ones went to Heaven. Imagine my astonishment, my terror, when some weeks later, I received a short letter mailed at St. Louis. "Dear Jamison, my true and honest friend: Forget me forever! Do not try to look me up; never inquire for me; never again mention my name. Henceforth I am dead to the world. Your friend, JACK." I did not try to understand these terrible lines. I honored my friend and felt sure he had good reasons for his request. I complied with his demands, except one, I could not forget. CHAPTER V. Years passed by, but brought no tidings from Jack Felden. I made no inquiries for him; his last request came to me as from the grave and was sacred. Had we met on the street, I would have passed him unheeded, unless the first advance had come from him. I said no tidings came from him; that is, no direct or positive tidings. On the first of May following his letter, a case of Chateau Lafitte, a jasmine turkish pipe and six sealed cans of _Ladikiyeh_ tobacco came to my room. Tacked to the box was an envelope containing this message: "On the first day of May and November of every year, drink to the health of a lost friend who loved you. May the cares of life lift from your heart as lightly as the smoke curls from your chibouque." Regularly after that, on November 1st and May 1st, a case of finest claret and a half dozen cans of Turkish tobacco sent from a great wine house in New York, was placed in my room by an express messenger, and never after that did I fail to drink in silence to my friend. Whoever sent the wine and tobacco evidently kept note of my life, for my residence was changed three times, once to a distant city; the messenger found me wherever I was domiciled. Not long after Felden's disappearance, the troubles which had been brewing between the North and the South broke out into open war. Our house was among the first to close its business as it was wholly dependent on Southern trade. We paid up every dollar we owed and both heads of the firm retired to the country. Service was offered me under another firm, but as I had become a part of the machinery of the old house, I felt such a change would prove uncongenial. I volunteered in answer to Mr. Lincoln's first call for troops and was sent into camp in Kentucky. In a month I was sick and ordered discharged by the surgeon. A complaint, hitherto unknown to me, forbade active and hard work, but the consolation was offered me that with light, healthful exercise, generous food and abstinence from any nervous strain, I might live to old age. I was given a clerkship in the commissary department, and in '62 was transferred to Washington city. When the war was over I was retained in my position. Close confinement affected my health. One of my pleasantest memories was of a summer spent in fishing and boating in the neighborhood of Mackinaw. Something impelled me to renew my old friendship with the well-remembered scenes. After a brief stay on the island I became a denizen of a lumber camp located a few miles from the rock which brought me to your acquaintance. Alone in a light row-boat which I had purchased at Buffalo on my way up the lakes, a large part of each day was spent on the water. One bright day I anchored my boat near the "Rock" I mentioned to you, on the boat coming from the Soo, and wandered in the woods stretching behind it. The forest was of small trees, with here and there an old timer spared by the loggers. Every thing about me was wild, and excepting stumps and upper members of trees from which saw-logs had been removed, there was nothing to indicate fellowship with men. Emerging from a small ravine I came upon an opening in the wood on the edge of which was a cluster of three tents, one apparently for the occupancy of a luxurious owner; a plainer one for servant or servants and a third for a kitchen with a stove pipe projecting through its apex. In front of the principal tent was a sort of porch or shed covered with light boards to keep out the rain, and over-topped with boughs giving it a sylvan character. I walked toward the tent when a huge old mastiff, fat and unwieldily, sprang toward me with a bark and growl which brought me to a sudden halt. The beast rushed toward me angrily, but all at once paused and smelt about me with his bristles erect. These, however soon smoothed down and the dog whined as if I was not unknown to him. A gentleman and lady stepped from the large tent. Imagine my intense surprise when I recognized before me the stately form of Jack Felden. I repressed all evidences of recognition and with a bow and low apology was about to turn away, when Jack in his old cheery tone, cried out: "Don't go, Paul, chance has brought you to me; why old Akbar recognized you and wishes you to stop; come back!" His words were kindly and his tone almost loving. I ran to him and for a moment our arms were about each others shoulders and our eyes were moistened by tears. The lady came forward, saying: "It is Mr. Jamison, Jack, is it not? But I need not ask, for no man, but you Mr. Jamison, would be thus met by my husband." We were soon seated before that tent in that sweet intercourse which arises only between genuine friends. It was difficult to realize that years had elapsed since I had last seen Jack. He was the same open hearted, genial and dignified man. Shortly afterward, the dog got up lazily, and trotting toward the little ravine, met a gray bearded negro--the Jim Madison who so disturbed me on the Licking river. His pleasure at seeing me seated with Felden and his wife, seemed unbounded. When I repeated to him what I had told his master of my location in the logging camp, he said, in a tone that showed the thing was a matter of course: "Well! Mars Jack, I'll jes' take de boat an' go to de camp an' fotch Mr. Jamison's things over." Jack laughed, "Yes, Jim, your hospitality has only run ahead of mine. Jamison must come and make his home with us in 'Big Rock Camp.'" Before night I was in possession of Jim's tent and he had fixed his cot in a corner of the kitchen. We spent the next few days fishing, walking and talking. The late afternoons and evenings were delightful. Jack sang gloriously to the guitar, and his wife could discourse charming music from that most inharmonious of instruments, the banjo. She had a rich contralto voice and sang with what is higher than all art--exquisite tenderness and deep feeling. Jack was usually as gay as I had ever known him, but occasionally his face had a tinge of intense sadness, which he evidently struggled to suppress. This expression was never shown in his wife's sight. With her he was a rolicking, joyous man, and every act and word showed him a loving, an idolatrous husband. But when her back was turned he occasionally regarded her with a look of such pain that my heart went out toward him and ached for him. About a week after my arrival Jack and I were fishing at some distance from the camp, our low conversation had flagged, when he suddenly said: "Mr. Jamison, you must have thought me a brute all of these years." I quickly responded, "No, Jack! I never doubted you had good reasons for your silence, and nothing would have tempted me here had I dreamed I would meet you." "I am so glad you came! I have wanted to see you more than you can think." His voice was exquisitely modulated while saying this. "I wish now to tell you every thing. Rita wishes me to do so. Your great discretion will teach you how far you must hereafter be reticent in her presence. The one great object of my life is to save her pain--to make her happy." "When I wrote you my long letter I was about to be married and was to call to see you on our way to Boston; am I not right?" I nodded. "Well, in a week Rita received a letter from her sister saying she was not well, and suggesting that it would be better we should be married in Tennessee. This letter altered our plans. A few days later a dispatch came from Wilton, telling us, that poor Minnie had died suddenly, she and her baby at the same time. Mrs. Allen was a great stickler for what she called the proprieties of life, and though she had not in her heart a spark of affection for her nieces, she insisted our marriage should be postponed for at least three months. Rita had been in her care since childhood; it is true the care was of no gentle kind, but she was grateful and did not wish to displease her Aunt. I went to Chicago to get my affairs into shape. Before the time I was to have returned, my darling wrote me that her shrewd worldly-wise Aunt had become suddenly alarmed by the shape political matters were rapidly taking; had determined to convert all she owned into money and to go to her relatives in England for the remainder of her days. The dear girl begged me to come to her as soon as possible. Her wish was my law. I started the next day; for I had acquired the habit of being always ready for a change of base. Reaching ---- I found the shrewish old woman up to her eyes in affairs. I lent her all the assistance possible, and in one month she was ready for her departure. With her and another for witnesses, Rita and I were made one. She dowered her niece with five thousand dollars, kissing her most decorously on the forehead. In a half hour after the ceremony she started north, and we west. Her last words were, "Adieu! Don't write to me. If I ever care to hear from you I will write." She thus passed out of our lives and we know not whether she be alive or dead. My bride and I went to Memphis and thence to St. Louis. We were absolutely happy. The world was bright and rosy to us both. My wife was, as fully as I, imbued with the belief that we were mated, dovetailed together; were as thoroughly one as Adam or Shiva were one, before Eve or Parvati were taken from them. Possessed as we were of perfect health, physically we might have been models to an artist for robust, untainted manhood and womanhood. Not a cloud flecked our sky--not a shadow, we thought, could possibly lurk beneath the horizon. At St. Louis, the day after our arrival, we had been out for a walk and on returning I went to the hotel reading room, while Rita gaily tripped up stairs toward our room, kissing her hand to me from the upper landing. I picked up a paper, chance-dropped by some traveller, published in the town near my home; the same which Jim had brought me with the announcement of Belle's marriage. Almost the first thing I saw was an editorial statement that "the marriage between the beautiful Mrs. Belle ---- and the Marquis of ---- in Rome had been positively and permanently abandoned." My eyes were riveted to the horrible column. It continued: "The proud uncrowned Queen of ---- discovered before it was too late, the titled groom desired the gems and gold in the bride's strong box, far more than the jewels and pure metal so effulgently shining in her form and rich in her character, etc., etc." I was stunned--my blood stood still in my heart. I leaned over upon a table and was blind from intense agony. I thought of my own misery, but Great God! what would become of my poor wife! My limbs seemed powerless; I did not move until a light hand rested upon my head. My wife had come down to find me. "Oh, darling, what is it, what is it?" I took her hand and slowly staggered to our room. I knelt at her feet. I prayed her to forgive me. I hid my face in her lap and sobbed as a broken hearted child. She smoothed my hair and for some minutes with sweetest of all sympathy let my grief flow. Then she lifted my head. "Tell me what it is, my husband." I looked into her dear pale face and cried, "I cannot--I cannot break your heart, my poor wife." "Break my heart, darling! It can never break while it has yours to dwell in." "But," I gasped, "we must part." "Part! part! Oh, God! Jack! what is it you say? part! no, no! Never, never!" She was as colorless as the lace about her neck. I then told her all. When I had finished, she laid her arm around my neck, drew my cheek to hers, and said in a firm, brave voice, "No, Jack, my darling, we will not part. I am your wife, wedded in Heaven. God was witness to our betrothal under the open sky. God was sponsor to our marriage. We are man and wife and no man or woman can ever separate us. I am your Eve darling and with you would live in Eden, but if driven out, I will be by your side and wherever we go, there will be my paradise. You have not offended the law. You thought yourself free and no one can blame you." I pressed her to my heart and cried, "My Rita, my noble Rita!" "No, no! Jack, I am your Rita, but not your noble Rita. I am simply a woman; I am your wife and do no more or no less than any loving woman should do." We resolved to go to Chicago, to live in seclusion while I should do all I could to increase my fortune, and then we would go off to some far off land, where there could be no possibility of having scandal's finger pointed at us. I then wrote you to forget me. I again became Jack Felden, and my wife learned to like my olive hue and my dark hair better than my natural complexion. Chicago became our home. I courted fortune on change. For a while I was but indifferently successful. One year on almost the last day of August, Jim hurriedly entered my office saying: "Mars Jack, your time is come. My ole ankles tells me thar will be a killing frost dis night; the corn will be cotched. I knows what I tells you. I run all way down town to tell you. Go out now, dis very minit, an' buy all de corn you can carry; put your las' dollar up and make a fortune. You'll win, Mars Jack; if you fails, you kin sell me for a ole grinnin possum." The honest face of my old friend was ashy from excitement. With one word--"Jim I'll do it," I went on the board and before night nearly every dollar I owned on earth was up in margins on corn. That night there was a frost, corn went up several cents; this gave me additional margins, and I risked all. One month later I had cleared a handsome fortune. The next year Rita and I went abroad to remain for two years. A boy was born to us in Egypt. We wanted Jim and Dinah to see him. For though they were our servants, we loved them as our best friends. I knew how Dinah would yearn to hold little Jack on her bosom; to live over in her deep loving fancy the days when her baby John drew his life from her breast. She had prayed that Miss Rita would let her nuss Mars John's Baby. She never saw him. In London he was exhaled as a dew drop. It was a sad blow; but my wife did not grieve as I feared she would. She said "it is best Jack. He would have been nameless in the eyes of the law. We will live for each other." It would have been better had she shed more tears; for there are times when her very fortitude alarms me. We returned to Chicago. Rita was quietly happy in her little secluded home. I am always happy, when her face is unclouded. My disguise as Jack Felden precludes any ambition either social or otherwise. Our little family lives for each other, and is perfectly satisfied to know only a few necessary acquaintances. We go to theatres and concerts and keep ourselves abreast of progress and of life. We are school teachers, Jim being our pupil. His life is inwoven with ours. We are both fond of books. People we often meet at places of amusement and on our drives look at us inquiringly, and occasionally some have tried to break into our seclusion. We have met the kindly advances courteously, but continue to live within ourselves. Our city being made up of people new to each other, makes this easy. Once in New York at the opera I saw Belle; she was the admired occupant of a box. Her opera glass was bent upon us several times. I think she recognized her acquaintance of the New Orleans ball-room. She was still queenly, cold, and I could see selfishness had laid its mark upon more than one of her perfectly modeled features. She was still the proud rich widow. Rita looked at her through her glass, and said to me "Jack dear, look at that magnificent blonde; she is perfect in form, and her features are faultless, but she could never be a follower of the Buddha; she could tread the life out of living beings, and care not if she only did not soil her skirts." With that she turned so as not to see her again. I kept my counsels. Belle was not again referred to. Last spring Rita lost a little girl at its birth; she did not recuperate. The Doctor advised a tent life for the summer. Dinah was not well enough to accompany us. If Rita be not fully recovered by the middle of autumn, we will go to the upper Nile. I have an idea its climate must prove beneficial to her. As I said, we keep to ourselves; at first, feeling it necessary because we were over a social volcano, but lately from choice. I cannot help thinking that Belle will some day grow weary of her widowed life and will make me free; she can get a decree of divorce, I cannot. I would not commit a fraud to win one, and she would not permit me to obtain it otherwise. Now Jamison, you know why I have so long neglected you." "Yes, Jack, I not only know, but fully appreciate your feelings, and though I try to be a religious man, I cannot blame you for your course." With that he pressed my hand in warm and grateful affection. Felden seemed to have told all he wished to tell at that time. That there was something still untold, I suspected. CHAPTER VI. That night, never to be forgotten by me, we were kept entirely within doors, by a deluging rain. The winds shrieked through the groaning trees. The thunder rolled in constant and awe inspiring reverberations. The lightning kept the tent in a continuous blaze. Thoroughly protected, we were silenced by the awful voice of the tempest. A storm is never so grand as to the occupants of a tent in a wild forest, one seems then so close to Him who rides the winds and speaks in the roar of the thunder. Just as nature seemed wearied of the intense exertion, the old mastiff sprang up with a growl and rushed toward the tightly closed tent door. The curtain was drawn aside, when he sprang out into the night, and was soon in pursuit of some wild animal, evidently of considerable size, for we heard its flying tread in the darkness. When the storm abated, Jim reported that a fine mess of bass we had caught just before dark had been stolen. Mrs. Felden expressed regret, for several of the fish had been taken by her. Jack laughingly offered to go down to the Rock at day break, and bring back a mess in time for breakfast at seven. When I awoke, the next morning the sun was quite high in the heavens. Mrs. Felden and Jim were already out, and evinced some impatience, because Jack had not returned with the promised breakfast. When seven o'clock came, the wife sent the old man to call her husband home, fish or no fish. "Tell him," said she, "that the storm has made us ravenous." When Jim also failed to return in due time, Mrs. Felden became alarmed and asked me to follow him. I set out, and although the ground was sopping wet, she joined me, in spite of my gentle remonstrances. We soon met Jim hurrying towards us. His face was of an ashen hue. "Where is Jack, Jim--Oh where is my husband?" shrieked the mistress, as she rushed past the negro toward the water. The man caught her arm, "Stop Miss Rita, stop Miss Rita, fer de Lord sake stop. I'll tell you, Miss Rita, please stop." She tried to tear herself from his grasp. "Oh my God, he's dead--my husband is dead. Tell me--Jim, where is my husband?" The negro forced her down on a boulder, and catching her hand covered it with tears and kisses. "Miss Rita, my dear Misses, be good an' I'll tell you all." She attempted in vain to arise, for a powerful arm held her firmly, but gently back. I sat by her side, and lay my hand soothingly on her shoulder, saying--"Tell her, Jim, she is a brave woman and can bear the Lord's will. Tell her all." The negro's face showed only too plainly that her worst fears were true. "Miss Rita--I'll tell you all. Be a good chile Miss Rita; jess be Mars Jack's wife, Miss Rita, an' I'll keep nothin' back." "I will Jim--tell me the worst;" she uttered between choking sobs. In a voice of intense grief and solemnity, Jim then said, "Be a good chile, Miss Rita; be de wife of de grandes' man what ever lived; Jim Madison never tole his marster an' mistis a lie. God is good, Miss Rita; his ways is unscrubable; he knows whats bes', for his chilluns. He wanted Mars Jack hisself; he done took him to his side. Mars Jack's drownded." A wild shriek rang through the woods--a shriek of agony which caused the blood to run cold in my veins. The bereaved woman stared into vacancy, as though seeking her husband's form. She arose from her seat almost rigid, and without a word, fell in a dead swoon at our feet. So still did she lie and so long, that I feared she had passed away. After a quarter of an hour, as it seemed to us, Mrs. Felden recovered a semi-consciousness--staring first at one of us and then at the other with piteously questioning eyes. When the horrible reality again dawned upon her awakening mind, the forest was filled with heart rending cries, silence only coming when she once more fainted away. I chafed her hands while Jim ran to the tents for camphor and brandy. We bathed her face and neck; fanned her; poured brandy between her parted lips--did all that suggested itself to our terrified minds. The swoon lasted so long that we had almost abandoned hope, when she breathed and opened her eyes--they were vacant. She wept no more, but in low sweet tones murmured "Jack darling, don't be lonesome; I will come to you! Yes, Jack, I'll come." These were repeated again and again, as we bore her to the tents and laid her on her bed. She immediately fell into a sleep lasting for hours, and only interrupted by sobs and moans. I watched by her bedside while Jim went off saying he had work on hand which must be done at once. When the poor lady awoke and looked into my face, I thanked the Giver of all, that she was herself again in mind, though her strength seemed quite broken. Upon Jim's return she said in tones so calm, so gentle and so full of deep suffering, that they pained me almost as much as had her more active grief: "Sit down Jim and tell me all about it. You said you would tell me all. You see I am calm. You see I can bear anything--everything bravely." He replied in his simple caressing manner, "not ter day, my chile, you jes eat an' sleep an' git strong; ter morrer I'll tell you everything. You'se weak now, Miss Rita,--wait till ter morrer." "I will Jim." She hardly spoke again during the day or following night. When he brought her supper, she tried like an obedient child to eat all he urged upon her, saying in answer to his words of encouragement, "Yes, Jim; I must eat and be strong. I need all my strength." When at dark, she seemed to sink into sleep, the negro and I sat outside the tent so that we could watch within, but far enough off we thought, to prevent our conversation reaching her ears. He then told me that on going to the rock in the morning he saw that a large part of it weighing a ton or more, had fallen since the day before into the deep water at the precipice's base; there had been a thin crevice or fissure running through the rock, in which a few vines and small bushes had taken root. Into this crack the heavy rain of the night had swept, eating away the last puny tie which held the two parts together. Jack's weight in the morning was too much for it. Jim found his rod floating at the base, the hook having caught on a small bush growing nigh. About half way down a part of his coat sleeve was hanging to a rough corner of the jagged rock. As the falling man went down on the broken mass, he had evidently clutched at the projection; had wrapped his arm about it, but had in some way been caught and forced downward tearing the sleeve from the arm. Jim, who was a keen observer, understood at once that his master was down below among the ruins of the fallen mass. He threw off his clothes and dived to the bottom. In the second dive he discovered what he sought. He found his master's body lying on its back, held and pinioned by a massive stone weighing tons. After making this discovery, he had returned to meet us. But while his mistress slept in the afternoon, leaving me to watch by her side, he had again visited the Rock. He wore heavy flannels to protect himself as much as possible from the chilly water. He found the body above the knees was free. He tried to draw it out, only to learn to his sorrow, that it could not be removed except by rending it from the lower limbs. The bottom was of gravel so compacted as to be nearly as hard as stone. The dead man had been caught below the knees in a recess or depression in the falling rock. Jim expressed great joy that this depression while holding his master's limbs as in a vise, had protected them from being crushed. "We'll cut up de wings of de kitchen tent an' sew 'em tergedder three or fo' thick wid twine, and spread 'em over Mar's Jack an' den I'll put rocks on de canvas, an' down thar under de clean water it'll stay till de blessed Jesus calls his chilluns home." I expressed great gratification that he had thought of this, and suggested that he could send for some loggers to give us aid. He quickly stopped me. "No! No! Mr. Jamison! Mars Jack's been wearin' masks all dese long years. He's been hidin' from men. No man must' know his las' restin' place. No man but you an' me." I honored this tender solicitude for his master's secret and at once acquiesced, telling him that, when Mrs. Felden's condition would admit of our both leaving her, I would aid him in his pious endeavors. "Dat's right Mr. Jamison, me an' you must nuss dat darlin' chile--you an' me an' her an' Dinah knows his secrut. You an' me an' her an' Dinah mus' keep his secrut to our graves. If eny body helps us here, de officers and de newspapers'll be sticking dar oar in. I'd ruther see you an' Miss Rita down dar along side 'er Mars Jack, dan anybody should meddle in his matters." He said this in subdued tones, but there was on his face a gleam of almost savage determination. The next day Mrs. Felden was perfectly calm; her mind apparently clear, but there was a far away expression in her eyes that gave me uneasiness. When Jim had removed the little breakfast table from her bedside, she said, "I am strong to-day, Jim; see how calm I am. I can hear and bear everything, as my husband's wife should do." He told her all he had discovered, to the minutest detail. He controlled his voice and manner so as not to show the deep emotion with which his loving heart was almost breaking. His voice was low, sweet, and sympathetic. Having finished his account, he said, "Now chile, be a brave good woman. 'Member what a great big man Mars Jack was, an' how he loved his wife mor'n hisself. He's up thar, Miss Rita; his eyes is clar, for Jesus is by his side and makes him see everything; he sees you dis minit, an' knows you'll soon be beside 'im. Don't let him see you miserble." Mrs. Felden's calmness astonished me. She listened in silence; tears rolled down her cheeks; her breast heaved with low deep sighs, but there was a strange light in her eyes, which looked afar off, and seemed to see her husband as the man described him. When the faithful negro had finished, he had her hand in his. For long minutes she uttered not a word. Her spirit was in that far off land beyond the skies or more probably at the foot of the rock. We watched her in silence. At last she said, "Jim is right, Mr. Jamison. If my husband could speak to us now, he would bid us keep his secret." Her keenly atuned ears had evidently overheard Jim when he so urgently insisted that no one should help us. "No one must know what has happened--no one but ourselves; we must do all. I will help for I am strong now. A few loggers have passed our camp, if they come again and make any inquiries, they must be made to believe my husband has gone away, and that he is coming back. No human being must ever know our grave," she quickly added, "where he sleeps." She paused, her face brightened with unnatural light, and with a voice of exquisite sweetness, she whispered, "sleep well Jack! sleep well my husband, your wife will soon be with you." Jim at once proceeded to his task. He asked me to row to the nearest store, for some sea-grass cord, and all the chains I could buy, without arousing suspicion. I found no difficulty in completing my share of the preparations. Jim, in the meanwhile, made two sheets eight to nine feet square, and of four thicknesses of strong canvas, cutting up the wings of the tents for the purpose. We carried in the large boat, several hundred weight of boulders, as heavy as we could handle, to the shore near where poor Felden lay. These were to anchor down, for all time his last winding sheet. Two log chains were fastened securely around the edges of the canvas sheets; a mass of strong boughs were made ready for anchoring over and around the watery grave, so that accretions of sand and gravel collected and held by them, would guard Jack's body securely and well. CHAPTER VII. We determined that as soon as these last services to the dead should be concluded, we would at once strike the camp and return to Chicago. When the labors required the strength of both Jim and myself, Mrs. Felden accompanied us. I was unwilling to leave her alone. Her calmness rather alarmed than assured me. It was the calmness, not of resignation, but of despair. When all was as I thought, in readiness, Jim asked me to get several bags of shot; I remembered afterwards, he did not state for what purpose they were needed. On my return before night, I noticed him and his mistress talking apart from me more than usual. She had, too, strangely altered. Instead of the look of agonized calmness worn by her face for the past few days, her appearance was almost cheerful. I could not help wondering, if after all this woman, apparently so passionate and intense, was of the shallow ones of her sex. She seemed to enjoy her dinner which was late, and ate more heartily than I had known her ever to eat before. She retired early. Jim and I sat up rather late; he seemed loth for me to go to bed. When he retired, I lay awake for hours pondering over the change in Mrs. Felden. Wearied at last, a profound slumber overcame me. I awoke in the morning to see the sun already several hours high. Jim was engaged in setting breakfast. I took a short walk. He soon blew the whistle--it was the call to meals. Mrs. Felden did not come out of her tent. There was only one plate on the table. To my enquiries, if she were not coming, he simply answered that I would eat alone. I had slept so well during the night that my appetite was good, and I did full justice to the meal. In answer to my question whether Mrs. Felden would not like something, the negro seated himself before me, the first time I had ever known him to do so of his own volition, and said, "Mr. Jamison, Miss Rita 'll eat no more. She lies by Mars Jack in the deep water. Her soul is wid his at de foot of de Throne of Grace; de blessed Jesus I believe has brushed away her las' sin, if it wur a sin--de las' and almos' only one she ever done." The truth flashed across my mind at once. I sprang to my feet, and in angry horrified tones demanded--"Jim, has Mrs. Felden drowned herself, and you have done nothing to prevent her mad act?" "Yes, Mr. Jamison, Miss Rita my mistress, who I loved nex' to my maister, is gone ter God, an' I seen her go, an' ain't lifted a finger or said a word fer ter stop 'er an' more'n that I helpt her." "Jim Madison, you are a murderer!" I cried in anger. The negro arose. His eyes dilated and his form seemed to expand. His demeanor lost every vestige of the servant. He stood before me a man, black, but of over-powering dignity. His face was stern, but not angry. From his six feet, he seemed to look down upon me; he spoke to me ungrammatically, but in words almost free from negroism, save in the intonation of his voice. He was my equal, and seemed to feel himself my superior. The servant had departed, and in his place was a man,--a man whose every look and gesture bespoke virile power and self-confidence. "Mr. Jamison, your words an' indignation ain't uncalled for. In your eyes I am a aider in murder. In my eyes what I done wus right. You try to be a christian gentleman, Mr. Jamison, an' I ain't ever seen a single act to make me doubt your goodness. I've professed Christ, and I want to walk in the paths He laid for me, an' as far as a sinful man can, to be a follower of Jesus. If the Saviour'll forgive my old sins, I ain't got no fear he will hole me to account for what I done, an' seen done to-day. "Mr. Felden told me the day before he died, that you knowed everything about him but one fact. If the Lord could 'er spared him he'd 'er told you all. "The las' day he lived he couldn't help feelin' that some great misfortune was comin'. He told me that if anythin' happened to him to get you to be a frien' to his wife; if anything happened to 'em both, that you an' me was to be friens in all things. He didn't tell you he feared his wife's mind hung on a hinge, an' it might be easy broken; that fear made him so keerful of her. He's been afeared ever since little Jack died in Lunnun, les' some sudden shock might drive her out her head. He said if he los' her he had some duties to perform for the colored race which gave him his two trues' friens, an' if him an' Miss Rita both died I was to do it. If it wasn't that I knowed I ought to carry out his plans, I'd wish I was by his side at the bottom of the lake. "When Miss Rita found whar her husban' laid, she wanted to go to his side. You 'member how calm she got. It was 'cause she made up her min' and was at peace. She tole me what she wanted. I knowed she'd carry it out. To her mine it wus right. Her mind you'll say wusn't balanced. But who can prove it? I'd er killed any man who tried to steal her liberty, and to lock her up." His eyes gleamed as if the blood of his savage African ancestors was surging in his heart. "She asked me to help 'er; what could I do? If I refused, she'd go alone. If we used force here to prevent her, she'd come back, an' then she couldn't reach him to clasp him in her arms in death, as she promised she'd do when he told her their marriage wasn't legal. I says to myself, I can't prevent her, ain't it best for me to help her? It was self-destruction, but my conscience didn't make a single objection. When you went fur the shot, I helped her make a canvas gown, which covered all her body 'cept her arms. The shot you brought I run in pockets all about the dress, I rowed her to the rock in the canoe. I held the boat to the right place. "Just before she dropt out, she cried, 'I'm comin' my husban', I'm comin'!' After she sunk, I jumped in an' follered her. She laid by her husban's side, with her breas' on his, an' her cheek close 'gainst his face. One arm was on his shoulder. I bent it roun' his neck. I told her I would. I expect she held her breath an' kep' her will till she was ready, an' then she died. She was Mars Jack's brave wife. I helpt her before she went down, and I helpt her down thar. I had to dive down five times afore I got it all right. The water was cold, but I didn't feel it." He paused a few minutes and then continued: "Mr. Jamison, the man who could 'er resisted Miss Rita's pleadin' when she begged me to help her, would 'er been hard hearteder than me. I done it, an' I thank God I done it good. "Mars John when he was a school boy tole me an Dineh about a good man before Christ come to save us sinners. That man took some sort 'er tea"--"Was it hemlock?" I interjected. "Yes, that wus it; he took hemlock tea, kaze the city ordered it. Mars John said that nobody ever 'cused that good man of suicide. He told us of a great many good men a long while ago who killed thar selves an' nobody called it suicide. He tole us of one great man running on a sword held out by his servant an' nobody ain't 'cused that servant of murder. Miss Rita done what the good man done a long while ago. She didn't drown herself; she went to her husband kaze she heard him callin' her. I didn't commit murder. I held the sword as 'er faithful servant oughter do." "Now Mr. Jamison, is it better she'd be alive, the widow of a unmarried-bed; married in Heaven, but her marriage not by the law; the widow of no lawful husban'; to be pinted at by the finger of scorn? Would it be better fur her to be here, with madness peraps in her mine--maybe in a lunatic sylum, or by her husban's side, down thar in the bottom of the lake?" "Men will be judged, Jim, I believe according to their lights," I answered. With a sigh he returned, "I'm willin' to be judged! Now, sir, we must finish our task." We labored four days. Jim dived down and anchored long poles to guide our work. By means of these and by diving he spread the canvas sheets over the bodies. He anchored them safely with the chains and boulders. We let the heavy stones down by cords gently to prevent them from falling upon the bodies. The Big Rock arises in a small land-locked cove, thoroughly protected from outer-waves, and almost hidden from view lake-ward. But for this we could not have performed our task. We strewed the boughs over the canvas, securing them in turn so as to catch the sands and gravels over the last resting place of our loved ones. Chilled though he was to the very bones, the determined negro would not desist from his labours, until thoroughly satisfied. When all was finished, with uncovered head the negro threw a handful of dirt into the water, saying, his voice broken with sobs: "Dust to dust! Dust to dust!" We sang a hymn while tears streamed down our faces, and left the dear dead to Him who created them, and to Him who died that man might be redeemed. It was dusk on Saturday, the fourth day, when our work was ended. When we reached the camp old Akbar who had been sick since the night of the rain, lay dead before the tent. We buried him that night near the rock. Never was Sabbath rest more needed, than by us the next day. For days we had labored under intense excitement. The strain removed, we were limp and nerveless. Jim advised hot drinks, very warm clothing and wraps and absolute rest. He covered himself head and all, sleeping heavily for nearly twenty-four hours. Monday morning found him rested but "stiff in der jints." When we were about to abandon the camp, I intimated that it was necessary for me to go to Chicago, to see to winding up my friend's estate. The negro said with great dignity, "No! Mr. Jamison it is not necessary, but I want you to go. Mr. Felden lef' a paper that makes everything mine. Thar wur three copies of it. One is in the safe in Chicago. Miss Rita had one in a belt on her waist and the other is in a rubber bag here." He pointed to his waist. "Ef Miss Rita had er lived every thing would er been hers, excep a good livin for Dineh and me. But now I must take every thing to make good poor colored people happy. The paper tells me how to do it. We don't have to go to the court. Mr. Felden didn't want nobody to know that his wife did not have his lawful name, and fixed it so I can take every thing." For a few moments he was silent and then continued, "Mr. Felden the day before he died told me a honester man never lived than Mr. Paul Jamison, and ef any thing happened to him he wanted you to be a friend to his wife. Now Mr. Jamison I am rich, but I am a steward an' must use every dollar jis like my marster said I must. Ef you will help me, I will give you a good salary and you kin carry out a noble purpose." I reflected a few moments and said, "Jim, I accept your proposition, and will devote all of my energies to the cause Mr. Felden had at heart. It is a noble one; one which at this juncture is as worthy as any other on earth. I will, however, take of the salary you offer only what I need for a comfortable life." He seemed greatly pleased, saying: "I need you Mr. Jamison. In Cincinnati an' in Chicago my master began to educate me. I studied hard, and it was hard work, but I've liked best when I was a servant, to be a humble negro. But now I must be a man, with grave sponserbilities, and must forgit what I was, in what I am. When I ac' the part of a negro servant, I talk like a servant. It comes natral to me an' I likes it. But now I am a servant no more, an' I spose I can change my speech onbeknownst jess like Mars Jack. When he wus rosy and light haired he was John ----, when he wus dark an' black headed, he was Jack Felden. My granfather was brung from Africy a boy. He allers claimed he wus a great chief--a king. My young master John used to call me "King Jim." He said the Africin heathen cropped out 'er me. I've studied, but I'm ignorant. I know nothing of the world but what he learned me. I learned to read, so I could read his letters. I learned how to talk to fit me to do business for Mr. Felden. My learnin' ain't much, an' that's what I want you for, to help me do my work." We reached Chicago in due time. Dinah was almost inconsolable when her husband told of the double tragedy. She began to droop and pine away. We rapidly arranged our affairs, finding no difficulty in doing so, for nearly everything was in good stocks and bonds. The bank settled with Madison as per written orders from Mr. Felden, found in his safe; making no inquiries except kindly ones as to his health. These Madison evaded adroitly. When all was finished, we took Dinah to a warmer climate. Madison needed the change almost as much as she. His natural predisposition to rheumatism had been greatly aggravated by his exposure to the chilly water at the foot of the Rock. Indeed he suffered for many years greatly from that cause. Change of climate did him good, but poor Dinah's complaint, no human agency or climatic influence could reach. One evening about four months after the sad event at the camp, she went out as a burning candle--a flicker, and all was over. Her husband said "She didn't die, she jess went to Jesus an' to her foster-chile." We earnestly set to work to carry out Mr. Felden's wishes, greatly, I think to the benefits of a down trodden race. We kept only enough to support ourselves economically through the remainder of life. The old negro never permitted anyone to know whence benefits sprang, or who gave out charities. He said, "Mr. John ---- died long ago in India; Mr. Jack Felden an' his wife sleep in their unknown grave; no one but us knows who he wus, nor what he did, in fact, you don't know his real name; no body except me knows that; and no body but us mus know what he is doing now he's dead. If he looks down on us an' sees what we are doin' with what he lef', his spirit rejoices that we don't ask no thanks for him, but are doin' our best to make some sufferin' black folks happy." A short while before I met you, Madison and I went from Mackinaw to pay what would most probably be our last visit to the scenes hallowed by so many sad, yet endearing memories. We stopped at ---- and rowed to the Big Rock a few miles away. It lifted from the water dark and frowning as it appeared to us a score of years before. Lichens and moss partially covered the space from which the mass fell when Felden was carried to his death. The fresher cleavage was to us a tablet memorial of the sad event. With a long pole to which he had attached an iron hook, Jim probed the secrets of the deep. His gratification was unbounded when he discovered that not only were the boulders holding down the canvas winding sheets entirely under sand and gravel, but the accumulations nearly covered the boughs and brush placed over the grave. Madison's aged head whitened by eighty-two winters was lifted erect upon his broad shoulders; and a mild August breeze coming in from the lake and gently circling around the little cove, bore upon its wings his sweetly modulated thanks 'to the Almighty God for his many mercies.' For a while we sat silent in deep thought, and then he said, "Let's go now, Mr. Jamison. I feels secure that Mr. Jack Felden and his wife down thar under the sand and water, will sleep undisturbed." I rowed out of the cove, the old negro keeping his sad eyes riveted upon the fatal rock. We turned the point which hid it from the lake; he seized an oar and working manfully, uttered not a word until we drew up under the village. The mental and bodily strain, however, had been too much for the old man. I was compelled to call for aid to support his tottering steps to our room. He staggered and fell upon his bed; his massive form gave way, like a glass shattered by a blow. His mind and speech remained unimpaired. He positively refused to have a physician called, declaring if it was the Lord's will he should go, he would obey the will of the Lord. He lay for several days without a murmur or a complaint. One night I was awakened by a deep groan; hurrying to his bedside, a single glance told me his end was nearly come. For several hours he lay in a dull stupor, his labored breathing alone showing that life was still in his breast. His breathing grew fainter and fainter, until just as the rising sun poured through the window, it seemed to die away. I hastened to his side to close the tired faithful eyes in their last long sleep, when the wan lips opened to whisper, "Good-bye Mr. Jamison, good-bye"! and then as if by mere will power he sat erect on his bed and cried in a loud voice "Bress de Lord! I see Mars John! Diner! Jim's gwine home;" and then he died. Two Finns, fresh immigrants in the land, rowed me with the body to the cove. There on the shore in a spot shadowed at evening by the Big Rock we buried him. The sun hovering above the whispering maples lighted the last sad rites to the end. The waves from the lake stealing into the cove in mild ripples, sang with mysterious cadence a sweet, loving requiem. The dying day, the whispering breeze, the sighing wavelets and the solitude seemed to my over-wrought senses to promise a fulfillment of the negro's prophecy; that the sleepers below would rest undisturbed until summoned on the last and final call; that until then "The Big Rock would keep its sad secret." 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46798	----	[Transcriber's Note: Bold text is surrounded by =equal signs= and italic text is surrounded by _underscores_.] THE PIONEER BOYS OF THE YELLOWSTONE [Illustration] OR: LOST IN THE LAND OF WONDERS THE YOUNG PIONEER SERIES BY HARRISON ADAMS ILLUSTRATED [Illustration] THE PIONEER BOYS OF THE OHIO, Or: Clearing the Wilderness $1.25 THE PIONEER BOYS ON THE GREAT LAKES, Or: On the Trail of the Iroquois 1.25 THE PIONEER BOYS OF THE MISSISSIPPI, Or: The Homestead in the Wilderness 1.25 THE PIONEER BOYS OF THE MISSOURI, Or: In the Country of the Sioux 1.25 THE PIONEER BOYS OF THE YELLOWSTONE, Or: Lost in the Land of Wonders 1.25 _Other Volumes in Preparation_ [Illustration] THE PAGE COMPANY 53 Beacon Street Boston, Mass. [Illustration: "SOME OF THE BRAVES STARTED TO FASTEN THE PRISONERS TO TWO TREES" (_See page 219_)] The Young Pioneer Series THE PIONEER BOYS OF THE YELLOWSTONE OR: LOST IN THE LAND OF WONDERS By HARRISON ADAMS Author of "The Pioneer Boys of the Ohio," "The Pioneer Boys on the Great Lakes," "The Pioneer Boys of the Mississippi," "The Pioneer Boys of the Missouri," etc. [Illustration] Illustrated by WALTER S. ROGERS THE PAGE COMPANY BOSTON [Illustration] MDCCCCXV [Illustration] _Copyright, 1915, by_ THE PAGE COMPANY _All rights reserved_ First Impression, June, 1915 PRINTED BY THE COLONIAL PRESS C. H. SIMONDS CO., BOSTON, U. S. A. PREFACE DEAR BOYS:-- In my last story, the title of which was "The Pioneer Boys of Missouri," I half-promised that later on I might continue the recital of Dick and Roger Armstrong's fortunes, and carry them further along their pathway toward the far-distant Pacific. The opportunity to redeem that promise having been given to me, I gladly meet you once more in these pages; and I trust this story will afford you quite as much pleasure in the reading as I have taken in the writing. It will be remembered that we left the two pioneer lads in the winter camp of the Lewis and Clark exploring party. This company had been sent out, chiefly through the personal influence of the President at Washington, to find a way across the newly-acquired country, and blaze a path to the Pacific. They had gone into camp close to the quaint Mandan Indian village, far up on the Yellowstone River, which stream they had been following since leaving the Missouri. Apparently their troubles and difficulties had all been smoothed away, and there seemed to be clear sailing ahead for Dick and his cousin. They anticipated spending the long winter months in various ways--studying Indian character and habits, doing more or less hunting and trapping, and possibly learning if there could be any real truth in the strange stories they had heard from numerous sources concerning a Land of Enchantment that existed near the "Big Water" at the source of the river of the yellow rocks and the troubled current. Unexpected developments, it chanced, caused the boys to venture into this unknown and mysterious region, where they met with many adventures which I have endeavored to narrate in this volume. It will be seen that, although the various tribes of Indians inhabiting the Great Northwest country at that time undoubtedly knew of the marvels embraced in what is now Yellowstone Park, a superstitious feeling of awe for the Evil Spirit's workings made their visits to that region few and far between, though their love for the chase did take them there at times. I trust that if any of you ever get a chance to visit this National Reservation you will do so. And if you read the history of Yellowstone Park you will find that perhaps the first authentic account of its astonishing wonders was given to the world by a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition. HARRISON ADAMS. _April 1, 1915._ [Illustration] [Illustration] [Illustration] CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE PREFACE v I THE YOUNG EXPLORERS 1 II SAVED BY A JACK-RABBIT 11 III THE TERROR OF THE MOUNTAINS 22 IV BAD NEWS 32 V READY FOR A FRESH START 43 VI ON THE TRAIL TO THE BAD LANDS 54 VII THE STRANGE AWAKENING 65 VIII THE VALLEY OF ENCHANTMENT 76 IX SURROUNDED BY MYSTERIES 86 X ATTACKED BY HOSTILE BLACKFEET 97 XI ON THE BANK OF THE YELLOWSTONE 107 XII UNEXPECTED HELP 117 XIII DEEPER INTO THE WONDERLAND 127 XIV THE LANDSLIDE 138 XV SHELTER FROM THE BITING NORTH WIND 148 XVI THE BATTLE IN THE CAVE 159 XVII THANKS TO THE WOLF PACK 170 XVIII THE GIANT PAINT POT 180 XIX A SUDDEN PERIL 190 XX PRISONERS OF THE BLACKFEET 201 XXI BINDING UP AN ENEMY'S WOUNDS 211 XXII IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT 223 XXIII THE ESCAPE 231 XXIV AN INDIAN'S GRATITUDE 241 XXV THE SNOW AVALANCHE 253 XXVI TRACKING A BUFFALO 261 XXVII FIRE FANCIES 271 XXVIII WITH HOPEFUL HEARTS 282 XXIX THE HUNTERS' FEAST 293 XXX ALLIES WITH COPPER-COLORED SKINS 303 XXXI THE CAMP ON THE BIG WATER 314 XXXII A WELL WON VICTORY--CONCLUSION 325 NOTES 335 [Illustration] [Illustration] LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE "SOME OF THE BRAVES STARTED TO FASTEN THE PRISONERS TO TWO TREES" (_See page 219_) _Frontispiece_ "HIS TREMBLING FINGER SUDDENLY PRESSED THE TRIGGER" 23 "MEAGER THOUGH THAT SUPPER MAY HAVE BEEN, THERE WAS NOT A WORD OF COMPLAINT" 68 "BEFORE THEM THEY SAW A MIGHTY COLUMN OF STEAMING WATER" 126 "TURNING AROUND FROM TIME TO TIME AS THOUGH HALF INCLINED TO COME BACK" 175 "THE BUFFALO WAS JUST IN THE ACT OF TURNING WHEN THE FRONTIERSMAN FIRED" 294 [Illustration] The Pioneer Boys of the Yellowstone CHAPTER I THE YOUNG EXPLORERS "I THINK we have gone far enough from the camp, Roger." "Just as you say, Dick. I never seem to know when to stop, once I get started." "And it's easy to start you, too. That was why the boys, back at the settlement of St. Louis, came to call you 'Headstrong Roger.'" "Well, Dick, I hope to outgrow that fault in time. You know my father was the same way, when he and Uncle Bob used to hunt and trap and fish on the Ohio River, and later along the Mississippi." "It seems hard to believe, Roger, that we are so far from our homes. Sometimes I shut my eyes and can picture all the dear ones again--father, mother, and my younger brother, Sam." "Yes, but here we are, hundreds and hundreds of miles from them, and in the heart of the Western wilderness," said the boy who had been called Roger; "and planning to spend the coming winter with our good friends Captain Lewis and Captain Clark." "Sometimes," remarked his companion, "I am sorry we determined to stay here and winter near the Mandan Indian village. We might have turned back and gone home, along with the messengers who were dispatched with documents for the President at Washington." "And who also carried the precious paper that Jasper Williams signed, which will save our parents' homes from being taken away from them by that scheming French trader, Lascelles." "And yet," observed Dick, thoughtfully, "when I think of the wonderful things we have seen, and what a glorious chance we have of setting eyes on the great Pacific Ocean next summer, I am glad we decided to stay up here on this strange river of the wilderness that in the Indian tongue means Yellowstone." "It is a different stream from the 'Big Muddy' or the Missouri, and as full of rapids as it can be. Before long the expedition will have to abandon all boats, and trust to the horses to carry the camp outfit over the mountains to the west." "Listen, Roger, what was that sound?" "I thought it was the whinny of a horse," replied the impetuous one of the pair, as they dropped behind some brush that grew on the brow of a gradual slope leading to a lower level. "And it came from below us, too. What could a horse be doing here? Do you think any of our men are out after fresh meat to-day?" "There are a few horses among some of the Indian tribes around here, and it might be--there, look, something is coming yonder, Dick!" "Don't move again, Roger; it is an Indian brave, and there follows another, treading in his trail." "They are not of our friends, the Mandans, Dick, and they don't look like the Sioux we met a while ago. There come three more, and now I can see the horse!" "H'sh! Not a whisper now, and lie as still as a rock. They have sharp eyes, even if they are not on the warpath." Roger knew why his cousin made this last remark, for the horse was dragging two poles after him, the ends of which trailed on the ground. Upon this primitive wagon rested quite a pile of stuff, evidently the skin teepee of the family and other articles, as well as a buxom squaw and a small papoose. Back of the first horse came a second, similarly equipped, and then another tall, half-naked brave, armed with bow and arrows. Dick knew that the little procession was a portion of some Indian community moving their camp to a place where the game would be more abundant, for this was the season when they laid in their winter store of jerked venison or "pemmican." "Don't move yet, Roger," whispered Dick, after the last figure had gone some little distance along the trail; "I believe there is another party coming. Yes, I can already see them a little way back there. Just crouch down and watch." While the two boys are lying hidden, and waiting for the passage of the hostile Indians, belonging to some tribe with which they hitherto had had no dealings, we might take advantage of the opportunity to ascertain just who Dick and Roger Armstrong are, and what they could be doing in this unknown region, far back in 1804, when the headwaters of the Missouri had never been fully explored by any white man. Many years previous to this time their grandfather, David Armstrong, had emigrated from Virginia to the banks of the Ohio, being tempted to take this step because of wonderful stories concerning that country told to him by his good friend, the famous pioneer, Daniel Boone. His family consisted of three children, a girl and two boys, Bob and Sandy. The brothers grew up versed in woods lore, as did all border boys. They knew all about the secrets of the great forest and the mighty waters. And, indeed, in those days, with peril constantly hovering over their heads, it was essential that boys should learn how to handle a rifle as soon as they could lift one of the long-barreled weapons to their shoulder.[1] Later, the pioneer was tempted to continue still further into the Golden West, always with the rainbow of promise luring him onward toward the setting sun. With other families, the Armstrongs drifted down the beautiful Ohio, and finally settled on the Missouri, above the trading post of St. Louis. Here the two sturdy lads grew to manhood, married, and built cabins of their own, near that of old David and his wife. To Bob came two boys, Dick and Sam; while his brother had a son, Roger, and a sweet girl named Mary, after her grandmother. These two cousins, Dick and Roger, hunted in company, and were as fond of one another as their fathers had been. Dick was a little the older, and acted as a sort of safety valve upon the more impulsive Roger; but both learned the lessons of Nature, day by day, until, at the time we make their acquaintance in this volume, they were capable of meeting the craftiness of the Indian, or the fury of the forest wild beast, with equal cunning. On the previous spring there had fallen a bombshell into the happy homes of the Armstrongs near the thriving settlement named after the French king. When David, on his arrival years before, had purchased a large section of land that was bound to grow very valuable for his heirs in later years, he had believed his title to be clear and unquestioned. Later, it turned out that a certain signature was lacking to make the title valid, and unless this could be obtained within a certain time from an heir of the original owners, the entire tract would be taken from them. An unscrupulous French trader, named François Lascelles, had secured the opposing claim, and threatened to evict the Armstrongs in the coming spring, unless they could produce that valuable signature. This impending family trouble affected Dick and Roger greatly. They began to make investigations and learned that the man whose signature was wanted, Jasper Williams by name, a hunter and trapper, was then far away in the unknown regions of the West. They also learned that this forest ranger expected to join an exploring party headed by two men who had recently been in St. Louis, and whom they had met in company with their grandfather, David Armstrong. These were Captain Lewis and Captain Clark, sent out by the President of the United States to learn what lay far beyond the Mississippi Valley, and possibly to proceed all the way to the Pacific Ocean, which was known to lie hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles west of the Mississippi Valley. (Note 1.)[2] So, determined to do everything in their power to get that paper signed by the one man whose name would save their homes, Dick and Roger had finally gained the consent of their parents to their making the perilous trip. Many weary weeks the boys followed after the expedition, which had had quite a start ahead of them. They met with strange vicissitudes and wonderful adventures by the way, yet through it all their courage and grim determination carried them safely, so that in the end they finally reached the little company of bold spirits forging ahead through this unknown land.[3] They were received with kindness by the two captains, who admired the spirit that had brought these lads through so many difficulties. In the end the valuable signature was attached to the paper, which was placed in charge of a special messenger whom Captain Lewis was sending, with two other men, to carry reports of the progress of the expedition to the President, who had great faith in the enterprise. This messenger had instructions to proceed straight to St. Louis, first of all, and deliver the document to David Armstrong before heading for Washington. The boys had yielded to the invitation of their new friends to remain with the expedition in camp through the approaching winter, and continue on in the spring to the great ocean that all believed lay beyond the mountain barrier. Such a chance would never come to them again in all their lives. The document would reach the hands of the home folks in due time, and also the letters they had dispatched with it. And so it is that we find Dick and Roger off on a little exploring trip on a day when the chill winds told of the winter that was soon to wrap all the land in an icy mantle. They huddled there in security behind the thick brush, and, by peeping through little openings, could watch all that went on below them. The moving Indians interested them greatly, because they apparently belonged to a tribe with which the boys, until then, had had no intercourse; although Dick guessed, from the style of head-dress of the warriors, that in all probability they were Blackfeet, and not Crows. At any rate, he did not like their looks, and felt that it would be a serious thing for himself and his companion if by any accident they attracted the attention of the passing party. Even if they were not just then on the warpath, they possessed arms, and might consider a white intruder on their hunting grounds as a bitter enemy, who should be exterminated at any cost. The second detachment had now come along and was passing by. It consisted of several braves, and another horse dragging the poles upon which a squaw and three dark-faced Indian papooses sat amidst the camp equipage. Suddenly Roger, in his eagerness to see a little better, when something especially attracted his attention, chanced to make a hasty move, with the result that he dislodged quite a good-sized stone, which started down the slope, gathering speed as it went. FOOTNOTES: [1] See "The Pioneer Boys of the Ohio." [2] The notes will be found at the end of the book. [3] See "The Pioneer Boys of the Missouri." CHAPTER II SAVED BY A JACK-RABBIT AT first, the stone seemed satisfied to merely slide downward, so that Dick hoped it would lodge in some crevice and not be noticed by any of the passing Indians. This hope was short-lived, however, for, gaining momentum as the slope grew steeper, the stone began to skip and jump, until, bursting through a little patch of dead grass, it attracted the attention of the nearest brave. Dick heard him utter a guttural exclamation, and, at the same time saw him hastily reach for his bow, which was slung over his shoulder. The others, too, manifested immediate interest in the bounding stone, for such things do not roll down a slope without some cause and there were red enemies of their tribe who often lay in hiding to attack them. Roger gave a gasp of dismay. That was not the first time he had been guilty of bringing some sort of trouble upon the heads of himself and his cousin. Dick laid his hand on the arm of the impetuous one, and his low-whispered "Be still" doubtless prevented Roger from making matters worse by showing himself above the bush that sheltered them. It would seem as though some good cherub aloft must have interposed to save the two lads from the peril which confronted them. Even as they lay there and stared, they saw one of the Indians point at something a little further along the slope, and then, strange to say, the procession again resumed its forward movement, as though all suspicion had been allayed. Roger was almost bursting with curiosity to know what had intervened. He had not been able to see, because Dick chanced to be on that side of him and, much as he wanted to stretch his neck and look, he dared not attempt it after what had happened. Accordingly they lay perfectly still until the last of the Indians had disappeared in the distance. Even then Dick would not start to leave their hiding place until absolutely sure no others were coming along the trail. Unable to longer restrain the overpowering curiosity that gripped him, Roger presently put the question that was burning on his tongue. "What was it happened to make them pass by, and not start up here to see how that stone started to roll down?" he asked. "Then you didn't see the jack-rabbit, Roger?" "A rabbit, you say, Dick?" "Yes. It was the most fortunate thing that could have happened for us, and we ought to be thankful to the little beast that he took it in his head to skip out when that stone jumped through the patch of dead grass where he was hiding." "Oh! was that what happened?" exclaimed the other boy, chuckling now because of the lucky event. "And, of course, when the Indians saw the rabbit running off, they believed it had started the stone to falling. It sometimes seems to me as if we were guarded by some invisible power, we have so many wonderful escapes!" "It may be that we are, Roger, because we know that not a day passes but that our mothers, far away down the Missouri, are praying that we may be spared to come back to them. But, now that the coast is clear, let us head once more for Fort Mandan, as we call our camp." Of course both these wide-awake lads knew how to find their way through the densest woods, or over unknown ground, by using their knowledge of woodcraft to tell them the cardinal points of the compass. When the sky was clear, they could find the north by means of the sun, moon, or some of the stars. If clouds obscured their vision, they knew how to discover the same fact through the moss on the trees, or even the thickness of the bark. Besides the methods mentioned, there were others that experience and association with other rovers of the woods had taught them. Consequently, although they might be traversing country that neither of them had ever set eyes on before, they always knew just which way to head in order to reach camp. Dick was constantly taking mental notes as he went along. These included not only the prospects for game, but the lay of the land, for Captain Lewis wished to know all that was possible about such things before once more starting out in the spring to complete his great trip to the Western Sea. At the same time, Dick was also on the alert for every sign of danger, from whatever source. His keen vision took in all that went on around him. Not a leaf rustled to the ground, as some passing breeze loosened its hold on the branch above, but he saw it eddying through the air; never a little ground squirrel frisked behind some lichen-covered rock, or tree root, that Dick did not instantly note. They presently found themselves traversing what seemed to be a rough belt of rocky land, where the trees were not very plentiful. It was even difficult at times to advance, and they had to be careful where they placed their feet, since a fall might result in serious bruises. Just as they passed around a huge bowlder, that had at some time fallen from the face of the cliff towering above them, the two boys heard a queer, sniffing sound. Before either had time to draw back, there came shuffling into view, not more than fifty feet beyond them, a terrifying figure such as they had never up to that moment set eyes upon. It was a huge bear, far larger than any they had met with in all their hunting trips along the Missouri. From some of the hunters connected with the exploring party they had heard the wildest stories concerning a monster species of brown, or grizzly bear that was said to have its home amidst the rocky dens of the mountains and foothills lying to the west. The Indians always spoke of this animal as though it were to be dreaded more than any creature of the wilds. The brave who could produce the long claws of a grizzly bear was immediately honored with the head feathers of a chief. Dick knew, therefore, that they were now facing one of these terrible animals. He could well understand the awe with which they were viewed by the red men, and the half-breed trappers, for the appearance of this monster was certainly alarming. Perhaps, if left to his own device, the more cautious Dick might have considered it best for them to decline a combat and, if the bear did not attack them, they could withdraw and seek a safer trail across the rocky ridge. In figuring on this course, however, he failed to count on the impetuous nature of his companion. The hunter-instinct was well developed in Roger. He looked upon nearly everything that walked on four feet and carried a coat of fur as his legitimate prize, if only he could succeed in placing a bullet where it would do the most good. So it came about that, as Dick started to put out his hand with the intention of drawing his comrade back, he was startled to hear the crash of a gun close to his ear. Roger had instinctively thrown his weapon to his shoulder, and, with quick aim, pulled the trigger. Under ordinary conditions Roger was a very clever marksman. There were times, however, when he failed to exercise the proper care, and then he was apt to make a poor shot. That may have happened in the present instance; or else, it must be true, as the Indians said, that the grizzly bear could carry off more lead, or survive more arrows, than any other living creature. Dick was shocked to see that, instead of falling over as the shot rang out, the great bear started toward them, roaring, and acting as though rendered furious by the wound he had received. There was nothing for it but that Dick should try to complete the tragedy. He aimed as best he could, considering the fact that the animal was now moving swiftly, if clumsily, in their direction, and pulled the trigger. His rifle was always kept well primed and the powder did not simply flash in the pan; but he realized at once that he had not given the monster his death wound, for the bear still advanced, displaying all the symptoms of rage. "We must get out of this, Roger!" cried Dick, for, as it would be utterly impossible for either of them to reload in time to meet the oncoming beast, they must either escape, or else engage in a terrible fight with their knives at close quarters. The remembrance of the long, sharp claws he had seen around the neck of the Sioux chief, Running Elk, caused Dick to decide on the former course. As he turned to run, he dragged Roger with him. He remembered hearing that these terrible denizens of the Western mountains could not climb a tree like their black cousins. To this fact many a man owed his life, when attacked by a grizzly bear. As he ran, Dick strained his eyes to discover a convenient tree into which he and Roger might climb to safety. Glancing back over his shoulder when a chance occurred, he saw, to his dismay, that the wounded animal was coming after them with a rush, and evidently had no idea of giving over the pursuit simply because his two-legged enemies were retreating. "What can we do, Dick?" gasped Roger, now beginning to realize the foolishness of taking that haphazard shot at such a terrible beast, against which he had been warned by others who knew something of its ferocity. "We must climb a tree, it is our only hope!" replied the other, between his set teeth. "There's one just ahead of us, Dick!" cried Roger, hopefully. "We could never get up before the bear caught us, for there are no limbs low enough to be easily reached," Dick answered. "A little further on I think I can see the one we must gain. Try to run faster; he is gaining on us, I'm afraid!" Both lads were soon breathing heavily, for they found the uneven nature of the rock-strewn ground to be very much against them. But, fortunately, neither chanced to fall, and thus delay their flight and, while the oncoming grizzly was yet some little distance in their wake, they managed to reach the hospitable tree that offered them hope of a refuge. "Up as fast as you can, Roger!" urged Dick. Roger would not have stirred an inch, only he saw that his cousin was already clambering as fast as he could go. Impulsive, headstrong and even careless Roger might be at times, but he was no coward, and he would not climb to safety, leaving his chum to face any peril from which he was freed. They managed to get fairly well lodged in the bare branches of the mountain oak before the pursuing animal arrived. The bear stood up on his hind legs and tried to reach their dangling moccasin-covered feet, meanwhile snarling savagely, and manifesting the most determined desire to avenge his injuries. "At any rate," said Roger, "we both hit him, Dick, for you can see he is bleeding from two wounds. Oh! why did I let my gun fall when I stumbled that time? If I had it here with me now I could soon fix that fellow!" "Then you must leave that to me this time, Roger," remarked the other, who had managed to slip the strap of his gun over his shoulder as he drew near the tree, so as to have both hands free for climbing--and he had certainly needed them, too. Dick now began to load his gun, meanwhile watching the actions of the furious bear. The grizzly was trying to gain lodgment among the lower limbs of the tree that had offered the fugitives an asylum; but he did not seem to know how to go about it, or to utilize those long, sharp claws that had been given to him by Nature more as a means of offense than for climbing purposes. Several times he fell back heavily, only to give vent to his ferocity in sullen roars. Finally Dick, having sent the patched bullet home with his ramrod, began to prime the pan of his long gun, so as to be ready to make use of the weapon. CHAPTER III THE TERROR OF THE MOUNTAINS "MAKE sure work of him, Dick!" Roger said, in trembling tones, as he saw the other draw back the flint-capped hammer of his gun, showing that it was ready for business. The grizzly was still displaying all the signs of furious anger, and there seemed some danger that he might manage to gain lodgment among the lower limbs of the tree. "No hurry, Roger! And, another thing, I've concluded that, since you brought this trouble on our heads by that unlucky shot, you should be the one to finish our enemy, not me!" "Oh, Dick, do you really mean it?" cried Roger, filled with delight. "I've been saying over and over again that some day I hoped to be able to kill one of these monsters that the Indians fear so much. Do you intend to lend me your gun, and let me finish him?" "If you'll promise to keep cool, and watch for your chance to make the bullet tell. We haven't so many of them along with us that we can afford to waste even a single one." [Illustration: "HIS TREMBLING FINGER SUDDENLY PRESSED THE TRIGGER"] "I give that promise willingly," said the other, as he stretched out his hand for the gun. Having it in his possession, Roger's first move was to lower himself a little. He meant to further excite the beast, and cause him to remain upright until the gun, being brought to bear on his head, within a foot or so of the small, gleaming eyes, could be fired with full effect. "Careful not to go too far, Roger; he is waiting to make another try for you!" warned the watchful Dick. So the young marksman paused, and, settling himself firmly in a crotch of the tree, bent forward. The gun was held at an acute angle, and the tiny sight near the terminus of the long, shining barrel could be seen against the dark fur of the bear. When the beast opened his mouth to give utterance to another roar, Roger knew his time had come. His trembling finger suddenly pressed the trigger, there was a loud report, a still louder roar, and then a scuffling sound. "He's down!" yelled Roger, in anticipated triumph. "Give me the gun, so that I may reload it!" the other boy called, meanwhile observing the significant actions of the grizzly with mingled curiosity and satisfaction. The animal had fallen over, and seemed to be struggling desperately to get up again on all fours. But that last leaden missile must have reached a vital part, for, as the seconds passed, these efforts became more and more feeble until, just as Dick primed his weapon again, there was a last spasmodic movement. Then the huge animal remained motionless. Roger sprang down from his perch, in his usual reckless fashion; but there was no longer any danger, for the bear was dead. The boy placed his right foot on the huge bulk, and waved his hat in triumph; for, after all is said and done, he was but a lad, and this marked the highest point in his career as a hunter of big game. "They'll never believe it, Dick," he exclaimed, "unless we carry back something to prove our story. And that means we've got to slice off these claws to show. After this we can have necklaces made of them, and the Indians will look on us as mighty hunters." "Just as you say, Roger, and, if you start with that one, I'll attend to the other fore paw. They are enough to give you a cold shiver. How our mothers would turn pale if they saw them, and knew what a narrow escape we had." "Yes, but our fathers would pat us on the back, Dick, and say that we were 'chips of the old block,' because they many times took their lives in their hands the same way, when founding their homes on the frontier, and know what it is to face the perils of the hunting trail." Dick kept on the alert while engaged in his task of severing the claws of the dead bear. After having seen those strange Indians passing, not so very long ago, he realized that there was always more or less danger of others being in the neighborhood. And those three loud reports, as the guns were fired, would carry a long distance, telling the natives that white men were around. Nothing occurred, however, to give them further alarm, and presently, the claws having been obtained, the two boys continued on their way toward the distant camp. It was at least two hours later that they sighted the Mandan village, near which the camp of the exploring expedition had been pitched. Knowing that, any day now, winter, while somewhat delayed, might break upon them, Captains Lewis and Clark were preparing for a long stay here, and their hunters were laying in a supply of fresh venison to be made into pemmican. (Note 2.) When the two boys reached the camp, bearing the terrible claws of a grizzly, their arrival caused a great sensation. Roger did not spare himself in relating the story, for he knew his own failings; but, since it had come out well, he received nothing but congratulations. The old forest ranger, Jasper Williams, lingered after the others had gone, and Dick saw that he had some sort of communication to make. The boys had managed to save Jasper's life when they were all prisoners of the warlike Sioux, and, ever since, the trapper had felt a great interest in the cousins.[4] "I'm going off with two companions on a short trip," he now told the boys. "We may be gone a week, or even two, for we wish to investigate the truth concerning some stories that have come to us concerning a wonderful valley among the mountains, where all sorts of strange animals abound, even to goats that leap off the loftiest crags, and striking on their curved horns, rebound safely. It is even possible that, if we find the stories true, we may spend most of the winter there trapping and hunting." The boys were sorry to learn this, for they were fond of Jasper and had hoped to see much of him during the long winter. "We start in an hour, so as to get to a certain point by sundown," the ranger told them further. "You see, the winter has been holding back so long now that it is apt to start in any time with a furious storm, and the sooner we get to where we are going the better. The snow falls very deep in the mountains, and there are avalanches that bury everything under them forty feet deep." It was in the heart of Roger to hint that they would be delighted to accompany the ranger; but a look from Dick caused him to bite his tongue and refrain. Afterwards, when they had seen the three men start forth, and cheered them on their way, Dick consented to explain his reasons for motioning to his cousin to say nothing about going along. "We can't expect to be in everything, you see, Roger," he said. "After all, we are only boys, and some of the men here still look on us as inferior to them in ability to accomplish things, because they are so much stouter and stronger. We can find plenty to occupy our minds and hands while they are gone. Perhaps, who knows? should they come back, one of the men may not want to return with Jasper, and that would be our chance to try for an invitation." "I suppose you're right, Dick," grumbled Roger. "You nearly always hit the nail on the head. But it would have been a fine trip for us. And, now that I've met with and killed one of these terrible grizzly bears we've heard such tales about, I'm burning with eagerness to shoot one of the strange mountain goats Jasper was telling about, that have such immense, curved horns." "Plenty of time for all that, Roger," the other told him. "The whole winter is before us, and when spring comes, as we head further into the West we will have to cross many mountain chains before we see the ocean. Among them we will surely come across numbers of these queer goats, as well as elk, buffalo and antelope." So Roger finally became reconciled to what could not be changed. There was really no occasion for his feeling that way long, because Dick busied himself in mapping out new ventures every night, as they sat before the campfire, with hands twined about their knees, and talked of home, and what wonderful sights they had looked upon since leaving the settlement of St. Louis. Two days thus passed, and the boys were looking forward to doing further roaming, if the weather permitted, on the following morning. The afternoon was drawing to a close, and in the west the sun sank toward his bed among the far distant mountain peaks, while the heavens began to take on a glorious hue. The camp of the explorers was a bustling scene at such an hour, for preparations were under way for the evening meal, the fires burned cheerily, and it was almost time for the guard to be changed. Being under strict military rule, the members of the expedition day and night pursued their vocations with the same care as though they really anticipated an attack from some unseen enemy. Guards were posted at night, and no one was allowed to enter or leave the camp without giving the countersign. This was done partly because Captain Lewis and Captain Clark believed in discipline, one of them having been brought up in the little army of the new republic. There was also another reason for keeping a constant watch. There had been a number of French half-breeds in this region before their arrival, and these men, who had been reaping a rich reward trading with the various tribes of Indians, viewed the coming of the Americans with great disfavor, believing it might bring their harvest to an untimely end. Rumors had reached the ears of the commanders of the little force that some of these men were trying to excite the Sioux to take up the buried hatchet, and proceed in force against the Mandans and their new white allies. On this account, then, it was necessary that the camp be guarded against a sudden surprise. At least, if trouble came the explorers did not mean to be caught napping by the cunning redmen. "You don't think it feels much like snow, do you, Dick?" Roger asked, as they stood looking around them, with the sun commencing to drop down behind the horizon. "The signs do not show it," the other told him; "but you know they sometimes tell us wrong. The season is so late, now, that we're liable to get a heavy storm any day and, as it's growing colder all the time, it will come as snow and not rain. Once it falls, the Indians say we will not see the bare ground soon again. But what are the men running to the other side of the camp for, do you suppose?" "Listen, one of them just shouted that a man was coming, mounted on a horse," said Roger. "That sounds as though it might be a white man," added Dick, as they hastened through the camp toward the other side where they might see for themselves what all the commotion meant. "Horses are not common in this country. We are running short ourselves, since we've had some stolen by prowling Indians, two died, and the three men who started down the river took as many more with them." By this time they had arrived at a point where they could look toward the southeast, for it was to that quarter the attention of the members of the expedition seemed to be directed. Dick uttered an exclamation that was echoed by his cousin. Their faces expressed the utmost dismay and alarm and there was good reason for this, as the cry that broke from Roger's lips indicated. "Oh! Dick, what can it mean? There is the messenger who carried away our precious paper, coming back to camp on a worn-out horse. Something terrible must have happened!" FOOTNOTE: [4] See "The Pioneer Boys of the Missouri." CHAPTER IV BAD NEWS "I'M afraid you are right, Roger," Dick replied, as the two pioneer boys hastened to be among the first to meet the rider when he came jogging into camp. That something had, indeed, happened was easy to see from the dejected manner of the messenger. His face bore a deeply chagrined look, as though there was some reason for his feeling ashamed. He had evidently pushed his horse hard all day, for the animal was worn out, and reeking with sweat, despite the fact that there was a decided chill in the air. The man dropped wearily from his hard saddle. He came very near falling, for, after sitting in that constrained attitude for many hours, his lower limbs were benumbed, so that for a brief time he did not have the full use of them. By this time Captain Lewis had heard the clamor, and come out of his tent to ascertain what had happened. Possibly he may have supposed that it was only a visit from some of the Mandans on an errand connected with their now friendly association with the whites. Then again, the commander may have wondered whether one of the hunting parties had arrived with some unusual species of game, such as none of the explorers had ever seen before. When, after striding forward to join the crowd, he saw the dusty messenger, a frown came upon his ordinarily pleasant face. Captain Lewis knew that something must have gone amiss, or the man who, with two companions, had started over the back trail several days before would not have returned to camp in this way. "What does this mean, Mayhew?" he demanded, as he came up, the others parting to allow a free passage, though naturally the two boys stuck to their posts, because they had an especial interest in whatever story the returned messenger might be about to relate. "Something has happened, Captain Lewis, I'm sorry to tell you, and not at all to my credit," replied the man, trying to calm himself, though it was evident that he was laboring under great stress of emotion. "Were you attacked on the way?" asked the President's private secretary, who had been entrusted with most of the responsibility of the excursion, and therefore felt more keenly than any one else the possibility of failure. He had taken great pains to keep a daily account of the trip up to that point, and this diary he had sent to the head of the Government in the care of the three men, one of whom now stood before him with dejected mien. "We believed we had taken all ordinary precautions, Captain," the messenger continued, making a brave effort to confess his fault as became a man; "but, in the darkness of the night, they crept upon us without any one being the wiser. My horse gave the alarm with a whinny, and, as I awoke, it was to find that the camp had been invaded by several enemies." "Could you not see whether they were Indians or otherwise?" asked the commander, as though a sudden suspicion had flashed through his brain. "It was very dark, and our eyes were not of much use, sir," the messenger told him in reply. "We purposely refrained from building anything but a small cooking fire, and that was in a hole so its light might not betray us to any wandering Indians. But they were not red men who attacked us; of that I am assured." "Why are you so certain of that?" inquired Captain Lewis. "We were all struggling with the intruders, who had evidently thrown themselves upon us just as my horse gave the warning whinny," the messenger explained. "I am positive that my hands did not clutch the greased body of a redskin, when I tried to throw him. Clothes he certainly wore, such as all frontiersmen do. I could feel the deerskin tunic, with its fringed edges. Besides, I tore a handful of his beard out in my struggles." "No more proof is needed!" declared Captain Lewis. "They must have been some of the French half-breeds. But go on, Mayhew, have you other distressing news for us? What of your two companions; I hope they did not meet their fate there in the darkness?" At that the man's face lighted up a trifle. He had told the worst, and the rest would come easier now. "Oh, no, indeed, sir, none of us were badly injured, strange as it might appear," he hurriedly explained. "Bruised we certainly were, and greatly puzzled at both the attack and its sudden ending, that left us still alive; but we were at least thankful it had been no worse!" "And then what did you do?" continued the leader of the expedition. "We stood guard with our guns ready the remainder of the night, sir, but we were not again disturbed. It was toward morning that I made a sudden discovery, which is what has brought me back to the camp to report, while my two companions kept on with your documents intended for the President." Captain Lewis drew a deep sigh of relief. That was the first intimation he had received that his precious communications had been saved. "Then explain why you have returned, if the papers were saved!" he demanded, as though puzzled. "You forget, sir, that I was entrusted with another paper, which you ordered me to personally hand to the grandfather of the two boys who joined us." When Mayhew said this, Dick and Roger knew that a new trouble had descended upon their heads. He must have lost the paper in some manner and yet neither of the lads was able to understand how it could have happened. "Do you mean to say the paper they set such store on is missing?" Captain Lewis demanded. "I had it securely hidden in a pocket inside my tunic, Captain," replied the humbled messenger; "but, when I came to look for it, it could not be found. When morning came we spent a full hour scouring the vicinity, but it was useless. And there had not been a breath of wind to carry a paper away. It must have been taken from me while I was struggling with that unknown man." "This is indeed a strange story you bring back with you, Mayhew," continued the leader of the expedition, looking keenly at the other, who met his inquiring glance as bravely as he could. "Stop and consider, did you hear anything said that might give the slightest clue concerning the identity of the thieves?" "But one word, sir, and that was a name," came the ready answer. "The man with whom I was grappling, as we rolled over and over on the ground, suddenly let out a loud cry. I plainly heard him say the one word 'Alexis!' And then he suddenly threw me aside, for he was very powerful." "And did the fighting cease immediately?" asked Captain Lewis, quickly. "Yes, sir, the others seemed to take that word as a signal, for the next thing I knew my companions were calling out to ascertain whether I had been seriously hurt. I found that they also had been bruised, and one had a knife wound in the arm, but not of a serious nature." The captain turned toward Dick and Roger. "You have heard what Mayhew says, my boys," he remarked. "Does it afford you any sort of clue as to the meaning of this mysterious attack in the dark, and the seizure of the paper you were sending home?" "I am afraid it does, Captain," Dick replied. "You recognize the name, then, do you?" "It is that of the grown son of François Lascelles," replied Dick; "the rascally French trader who has bought up the claim against our parents' holdings down near the settlement of St. Louis." "Then it is possible that they followed you all the way up here, and, having obtained the assistance of some equally desperate border characters, laid a cunning plot whereby they meant to win by foul means, where fair could not succeed! What puzzles me most of all is how they could know that Mayhew carried the paper. I should dislike very much to believe we had a traitor in our little camp!" The captain looked around at the assembled men with a serious expression on his face, which caused some uneasiness among the soldiers, frontiersmen and voyageurs who made up the expedition. They had always shown themselves loyal to their commanders and, when the finger of suspicion pointed their way, all felt the disgrace keenly. Mayhew it was who came to their relief. "I could never believe, sir, that any one here could be so treacherous," he hastened to say, as though anxious to take the entire burden of responsibility on his own broad shoulders, in which he proved himself to be at least a man. "I have been seriously thinking it over as I rode all day long, and believe I can see how it may have been known that I carried the boys' packet." "Then explain it, Mayhew; for I must confess that the whole thing is a great puzzle to me," Captain Lewis told him. "When they saw us depart they knew, of course, that you would be sending a report of the progress of the expedition to the Government at Washington, sir. They must have also surmised that the boys would have influenced Jasper Williams to sign the paper that would free their homes, and that one of us must be carrying it to St. Louis. Do you not think that is reasonable, Captain?" "Yes, but tell me how they could have picked _you_ out as the one bearing it?" asked the other, impatiently. "The only explanation I can give is that they must have been in hiding near us at the time we camped," continued Mayhew. "I remember taking the packet out, so as to fasten it in my pocket anew, since it was not as secure as I desired. I believe some one was watching from the bushes near by, and saw me do it. Then, while we struggled there on the ground, he managed to tear open my tunic, and, while half-choking me, snatched the paper away." "And giving a prearranged signal at the same time to tell of his success," remarked the captain, this time nodding his head in the affirmative, as though he had come around to the same way of thinking as Mayhew. "The fighting ceased as if by magic," declared the messenger. "One minute all of us were struggling as for our lives; then that cry rang out, and immediately we found ourselves deserted. We heard retreating footsteps, a harsh laugh, and shortly afterwards the distant hoofstrokes of horses being ridden rapidly away." "And you slept no more, but stood on guard, not knowing but that the unseen and mysterious foes might return to finish their work?" suggested Captain Lewis. "It was well on toward morning at the time, sir, for we had slept. I think they took a lesson from the redskins, who always make it a point to attack a camp just before the coming of dawn. They believe that men sleep heavier then than earlier in the night." "You talked it over with the other men after the paper was missed, did you," continued the commander, "and decided that, while they continued on their long journey, it was your duty to return and report your loss?" "I was broken-hearted over it, sir; but it was my duty. If I have been neglectful, I must stand the consequences. But we saw nothing suspicious, and did not dream of danger until it burst so suddenly upon us." "I shall say nothing about that until I have consulted with Captain Clark, who, you know, is the military leader of the expedition. Have your horse rubbed down, and secure food and refreshment for yourself, Mayhew. I must talk with these boys now." CHAPTER V READY FOR A FRESH START TURNING to Dick and Roger, Captain Lewis told them to follow him to the shack where he and Captain Clark transacted whatever business they found necessary for the conduct of the expedition. It had been built so that the severe cold of winter might not interfere with their comfort and such was the success of the experiment that other cabins were even then in process of construction for the remaining members of the party. Here they found the military head, busy with his charts. The leaders knew so little of the mysterious country which they were bent on exploring in the coming spring that notes were carefully kept of every scrap of information obtainable. Often this consisted of fragmentary tales related by some wandering Indian concerning the strange things he had encountered far away toward the land of the setting sun. Allowances were made for the superstition of the natives when a record was kept of these tales; but often there seemed a shred of truth behind it all which could be made to serve the purposes of the daring explorers. So deeply interested was Captain Clark in some work on which he was engaged, and which seemed to be in the nature of making a new map of the country through which they had already passed, that he had actually paid no attention to all the shouting outside. When his colleague came in, accompanied by the two boys, Captain Clark realized for the first time that something out of the ordinary must have happened. He listened intently as the story of Mayhew's strange loss was unfolded, asked a number of questions that put him in possession of all the known facts, and then gave his conclusion. "I am of the same opinion as the rest of you!" he declared. "It must have been the work of the men who would profit should that paper fail to reach the Armstrongs by spring; this French trader, François Lascelles, and his equally unscrupulous son, Alexis." "But to think of them following us all the way to this point! It seems almost impossible," urged the other captain. "Why should it be considered so?" asked the soldier, who appeared to grasp the salient points much easier than the President's private secretary had done. "We have encountered no difficulties that a party of hardy voyageurs and trappers might not have overcome. Besides, it is quite possible that this same trader may have been in this country before now. The French were in possession of the great Mississippi Valley all the way down to the Gulf many years before it came into the hands of the United States Government. They must have had trading posts far to the west, and their half-breed trappers have taken beaver and all other fur-bearing animals from the streams of the Far Northwest." "You are right, Captain Clark," said the other, warmly "and, after hearing your reasonable explanation, I can well believe that these men are no strangers to the region of the headwaters of the Missouri." "I also agree with Mayhew regarding the camp having been watched," continued the soldier, gravely. "They suspected we would be sending back a report of our progress, and surmised also that these brave boys would either themselves carry their paper to their homes or else give it into the keeping of our messengers. Just how they knew that Mayhew was carrying their document, and not either of the other messengers, I cannot say, but it seems that they managed to do so." He turned to Dick and his cousin to say: "I am sorry indeed that this new trouble has befallen you, my lads, but throughout your long journey you have shown such fortitude, and such determination to succeed, that I feel sure you will not be downhearted now." "Thank you, sir," replied Dick, for Roger could not say a word, since a lump in his throat seemed to be choking him. "We have been brought up by fathers who never knew what it was to despair. I was just wondering whether François Lascelles would immediately destroy that document, and then go on his way, resting under the belief that he had ruined all our work of months. He may have forgotten one thing, which is that Jasper Williams still lives, and can duplicate his signature, with both of you for witnesses." "Just what I was about to say," declared the soldier, with a smile of satisfaction, "and it pleases me to know that you have hit upon the same idea. Yes, while this Lascelles may think he has won his fight, the battle is never over until the last trump has sounded. When you again secure the signature you require, we will see to it that another messenger is dispatched to your home bearing it." Roger managed to find his voice then. "But how are we going to reach Jasper Williams," he asked, anxiously, "when he has gone off to find that wonderful valley where the game is so plentiful, but which the Indians are afraid to visit on account of the spirits that guard it?" The two captains exchanged glances. They realized that difficulties indeed lay in the way of accomplishing the plan they had so cheerfully laid out. "He may come back in a week or two, he told me," Dick explained, "and then again it is possible, if his companions agree, and the place suits them, that they may not return until late in the winter." "And it would be too late then to get the paper to our people at home," sighed Roger, looking exceedingly downcast. "I think I voice your sentiments as well as my own, Captain Clark," said the private secretary to the President, "when I make this suggestion. We can place one of our trusty hunters in charge of these lads, and send them off to try to find Jasper Williams and his party, whose general direction we already know." "I am of the same opinion, Captain," added the soldier, promptly, showing that he must have been thinking along similar lines. "Indeed, if an immediate start were made, they might even overtake the others on the way, for I do not fancy they will be in any great hurry, since they have orders to make notes of all they see by the way." At hearing this Roger brightened up considerably. As usual, a way out began to appear when things had become almost as gloomy as seemed possible. As for Dick, he eagerly seized upon the chance to be doing something. Like most pioneer boys, these Armstrong lads had been brought up to strive to the utmost when there was anything worth while to be attained. "Oh, thank you, Captain Clark, and you, too, Captain Lewis!" he hastened to say, "that is the kindest thing you could do for us. We will get ready to start in the morning and, if our old luck only holds out, we shall expect to come up with Jasper Williams inside of a few days." "You will need a good trailer to assist you," remarked the soldier, "and among all our men I do not know of any who is the equal of Mayhew if only you would not have any ill feeling toward him on account of what his carelessness has already cost you." "Why, it was hardly his fault, that I can see, sir," declared Dick, "and I have always liked Benjamin Mayhew very much. If he cares to go with us, tell him we will be only too glad of his company." "Yes," added Captain Lewis, who knew his men as few commanders might, "and this I am sure of--Mayhew will strive with might and main to retrieve himself. You will find that he has really taken his bad luck to heart. He will want to prove to us that he is capable. He will do wonders for you, lads, and I believe you show the part of wisdom in wishing him to accompany you." "Then consider that settled," said the soldier. "I will have Mayhew in here presently, and talk with him. You can make your preparations for an early start in the morning." "And both of us trust success will crown your gallant efforts to serve your loved ones at home," said Captain Lewis. "I well remember your fine old grandfather, David Armstrong. His name is familiar to all who know the history of the early settlements along the Ohio, where such valiant pioneers as Daniel Boone, Simon Kenton and Colonel Harrod led the way into the wilderness, and lighted the torch of civilization." It was very pleasant for the boys to know they had such strong friends in the leaders of the expedition making a track across the newly acquired possession of the young republic. When they left the shack they somehow seemed to feel anything but downhearted. Indeed, with the buoyancy of youth they now faced the future hopefully, almost certain that they would quickly find Jasper Williams again, and bring him back to the camp, where he would make out and sign a new document, to be witnessed by both the captains, whose names were sure to carry weight in any court of law. "It might be a great deal worse," admitted Roger, as he accompanied his cousin to their quarters in order to make what simple preparations they thought necessary for the early morning start. "Many times so," Dick assured him. "Why, after all, this may turn out to be one of those blessings in disguise our mothers have so often told us about." "You will have to explain that to me, Dick," admitted the other boy, "for I own up that it is too much for my poor brain to understand." "Listen, then," continued the other. "What if that scheming François Lascelles had delayed his attack on the messengers for days and even weeks, until they were almost at St. Louis, and then secured our paper? We would never have known about its loss, and could not send another!" "That is so," assented Roger, nodding his head as he managed to grasp the point his companion was making. "Then again," continued Dick, who could follow up an argument with the skill of a born lawyer, "suppose the three messengers had been killed in that night attack, we should not have known a thing about it. Our paper, as well as the valuable reports sent to the President, would have been lost." "Yes, and, Dick, we would have gone on enjoying ourselves all through the winter, never knowing that we had failed to save our homes." "As it is," continued the other, "Lascelles, believing he has cut our claws, may take himself out of this section of country, so that another messenger would have nothing to fear from him or his band." "You are making me ready to believe that, after all, this may have been the best thing that could have happened," laughed Roger, as he began to examine his bullet-pouch to ascertain just how many leaden missiles it contained, and then pay the same attention to his powder-horn. For it was of the utmost consequence that in starting forth on this quest, that might consume not only days but weeks, they should be amply prepared for any difficulties that might arise to confront them. That was destined to be a busy evening for the two lads. They molded bullets, replenished their stock of powder from the stores of the expedition, talked over matters with Mayhew, who seemed greatly pleased at the confidence they expressed in him, and even managed to lay out something of a chart for their guidance. This map was made up of suggestions from Captain Clark, who had talked with Jasper Williams before the latter and his two companions left camp, and knew in a general way what direction they expected to take. Before Dick and Roger allowed themselves to think of sleep, they had everything arranged for the start in the morning. It was a great undertaking for two boys to think of venturing upon, but certainly not any more so than when they left their homes near St. Louis, and headed into the trackless West with the intention of overtaking the Lewis and Clark exploring expedition. And both of them had faith to believe the same kind power that had watched over their destinies thus far would still continue to lead them by the hand. CHAPTER VI ON THE TRAIL TO THE BAD LANDS WITH the first peep of dawn both lads were astir. Their hearts and thoughts were so wrapped up in the desire to once more find Jasper Williams and obtain his signature to a duplicate document, that, to tell the truth, neither had slept at all soundly. As all preparations had been completed, there was little for them to do except get their breakfast, shoulder their packs, say good-by to the two leaders of the expedition, as well as the men, and start boldly forth. Before the sun was half an hour above the horizon the little party of three had left the camp and the nearby Mandan village behind them, and were on their way. It was known just where Williams and his companions expected to spend their first night, having started at noon, so none of them felt any necessity for trying to follow the trail until that point had been reached. All through the morning they moved on, and as noon approached drew near the place where the camp had been mapped out. "That much is settled, Dick, you see!" ventured Roger, as he pointed to where the dead ashes of a fire were visible, there having been no high wind to blow them broadcast. "Yes, they spent the first night here," admitted the other, "and so they must have just two and a half days the jump of us." "That's a long start," grumbled Roger. "Well, we expect to keep on the move each day longer than they will," explained the other. "Then again, they may find some place so much to their liking they would conclude to spend a couple of days there hunting or trapping. Jasper is always one to say a 'bird in the hand is worth two in the bush'; and those stories about the wonderful valley that is haunted by the spirits may turn out to be fairy tales after all." "And now the real work begins, when we have to follow this trail," added Roger, who acted as though he did not want to lose a single minute. "That is not going to be such a hard problem, I should think," Dick told him. "In the first place, they will not try to hide their trail very much, because they do not expect hostile Indians to follow them; though at night, of course, they will take every precaution against a surprise. And then again, Roger, we know something about trailing, while Mayhew, here, has not his equal in our camp, so Captain Clark told me." Mayhew did not hear this, for he was busy looking around the camp, examining the cold ashes, and in various ways picking up little details that an ordinary person would never have been able to discover. "Unless--well, I might as well own up, Dick," said Roger. "I've been wondering whether after all that tricky Lascelles would be satisfied to go away from here after destroying our paper. He might know about Jasper Williams's trip to the Wonderland the Indians tell about, and try to capture him, so as to keep him from signing another paper for us." Dick shook his head as though he did not believe such a thing could be possible. "It _might_ happen that way, Roger, but I feel pretty sure we're well rid of that rascal. Let us keep the one thing before us to find Jasper, and fetch him back to camp again in time to start afresh." "There, Benjamin is beckoning to us, Dick; he is ready to start off," and Roger eagerly obeyed the finger of the guide, for he was anxious to be on the move. They did not even stop to make a fire and cook anything at noon, but munched some food that had been brought along with them. Roger begrudged even a ten-minute stop, when it was not absolutely necessary. "We ought to keep on the move as long as daylight lasts," he declared. "After it gets dark there'll be plenty of time to rest, and do a little cooking. By then we might possibly be lucky enough to reach their second camping place." Time passed on, and constantly the little party pressed ahead. Just as had been hoped, Williams and his companions did not seem to care to hide their trail; though, when the chance offered, they always took a course that gave them an opportunity to walk on hard ground, or even rocks, which actions sprang from the natural caution of frontiersmen. Slowly the sun sank toward the golden West. The boys surveyed a low-lying bank of somber gray clouds and wondered if the long delayed opening snow-storm of winter might spring from that source. Roger as usual found cause for new anxiety in that possibility. "If it does come down on us, you see, Dick," he said, complainingly, "the first thing we'd lose the trail we're following, and then we'd be in a nice pickle. What could we do if that happened?" "Just as we did when following the explorers along the Missouri," he was told. "Use our heads to figure things out and take chances. It has worked with us lots of times, and will again." "You mean we've got a general idea where that valley they are heading for lies, and might get there even without following their trail; is that it?" "Yes, and to reach it we will have to pass through the country the Indians fear so much, so that, before we are through with this trip, we may know whether there is any truth in those strange tales or not." "They tell of a large and beautiful lake in which the river with the yellow stones along its bank has its source," Roger went on, recalling all he had heard. "Then there are marvelous fountains that have spirit breath, the red men say, and spring up from holes in the ground, to try to reach the skies. They tell of many colored stones, and mud as blue as the heavens; they say it is the home of the Evil Spirit, and that no one's life is safe who wanders that way, and passes a single night there." "But you do not believe such silly stories, I hope?" "Whether they are true or not, I am not prepared to say," replied the other, after a little pause; "but you ought to know me too well to think so ill of me as to believe that a hundred evil spirits would keep me from exploring that country of the big lake and the flowing fountains, and all the other strange things!" So they talked as they moved along. Much of the labor of following the trail fell upon the shoulders of the frontiersman, Mayhew, who seemed only too glad to assume the responsibility. Not once did he lose the track. When it crossed a stony section he seemed to be able to decide just the point for which the others must have been making, and in all cases he quickly pointed out the tracks again where the soil became soft enough to allow of impressions. They had seen considerable game while on the way, though not stopping to obtain any fresh meat. All that could keep until they had overtaken those who were ahead. So, although Roger was greatly tempted when he discovered a trio of big elk feeding in a glade not a quarter of a mile to windward, he shut his teeth hard and told himself that on another day his chance would come. Here were jack-rabbits in plenty, gophers whistled in the little open stretches, antelopes were seen feeding on the prairies that lay between the uplifts, while ducks and wild geese swam on the waters of small ponds, and might easily have been bagged had the boys cared to take the time. Some of the rapid little streams they crossed looked as though they might be well stocked with splendid trout; indeed, they often saw fine gamy fellows dart out of sight beneath some overhanging bank. They loved to fish as well as any boys who ever lived; but just then felt it necessary to put the temptation behind them. Once they even discovered a herd of buffalo not a great distance away. "How I would like to creep up on them, and pick out a nice young bull to drop," said Roger. Then he shook his head and heaved a sigh, for there came before his mental vision the happy home so far away, over which such a dark shadow rested, and which could only be dissipated through the efforts of himself and his cousin. "One thing we ought to remember with thankfulness," remarked Dick, "and that is that so far we have seen not a single sign of Indians. The Mandans do not come this way very often, you know, and the Sioux are even more timid about venturing into the region of the Bad Lands; but there are other tribes who are not so fearful." "You mean the Blackfeet and the Crows," Roger added; "both of them fierce fighters, and hating the whites like poison. I'm afraid we will see more or less of them before we get back to camp." "We have always been able to take care of ourselves in the past, remember, Roger, and can again. Here are three of us, well armed and determined. If the Indians try to do us injury they will find two can play at that game. Our fathers had to fight just the same kind of enemies away back there on the Ohio, and if we're 'chips of the old block,' as they tell us, why shouldn't we do as well? There, Benjamin has discovered something, and wants to show us." Mayhew showed the boys where Jasper and his two companions had dropped down behind some bushes, and crawled along for quite a distance. "Here is where they stopped to raise their heads," explained the guide. "I think they must have discovered some enemies over in that direction, for they always kept peering out that way. See, here is where they even plucked some of the dead leaves from this bush to glue their eyes to the opening. It is an old hunter's trick for a moving branch might betray the one in hiding." A short time afterwards Mayhew seemed pleased, for he announced another radical change in the trail he was following so carefully. "The danger was passed successfully, you can see," he told the boys, "for here they arose to their feet again, and hurried on, perhaps bending low, because they were careful to keep behind these rocks. After this we may not find it so easy to follow the trail, for they have scented danger." It turned out just as he said, and from that time on it required the exercise of considerable woodcraft on the part of the frontiersman to enable him to detect the tracks of the three whom they were pursuing. Now Jasper and his two friends had followed an outcropping stone ledge as far as they could, and swung across a patch of soft ground by means of a dangling wild grave-vine. Another time they had stepped upon an overturned tree, proceeded some distance along the trunk, and then made a great leap for some spot where soft-soled moccasins would leave but scant evidence of their passing. But Mayhew was acquainted with all these methods of concealing a trail. He had spent much of his life in the wilderness, and knew Indian ways as well as any man Dick and Roger had ever met. Gradually that long afternoon gave place to the coming of night. Shadows began to steal out from among the trees and stalk boldly. More and more difficult did it become for the trailer to see the faint tracks of those he was pursuing. Finally he came to a full stop. "It is no use trying further, lads," Mayhew told them, "for there would be constant danger of losing the trail entirely. Unless we choose to risk lighting torches, and keeping on, we must make camp here, cook something to eat, and then get what rest we may, looking to a new day and an early start." Although Roger hated to give up, he knew there was nothing else to be done. CHAPTER VII THE STRANGE AWAKENING THERE was little that the two lads did not know about making a camp, for they had been accustomed to spending nights in the woods ever since they first learned to handle a gun, and bring down the game so necessary for daily food. The spot chosen by their guide for passing the night was as suitable as could be found at that late hour. Around them lay the woods, the trees tall and not of any generous girth, for the slopes of the hills bordering the Yellowstone are covered with a growth of pine that is not noted for its size. When Mayhew tossed his pack aside the boys followed suit. They had made a long day of it, and were tired, though ready enough to keep moving could it be to their advantage. The woodranger started to make his little cooking fire, while Dick and Roger arranged their blankets and made other preparations for the night. If they noticed the actions of the guide at all it was with slight interest, for both were fully acquainted with the methods which he used in his work. Like many other things copied from the Indians, this idea of a small blaze that could not betray their presence had become a part of every woodsman's education. The way in which it was done was very simple. First a hole was scooped out of a place where there was something of a depression, and in this a small quantity of inflammable tinder was placed. Flint and steel, upon being brought violently together, produced the necessary spark, and the handful of fine wood took fire. It was carefully guarded on all sides so that not a ray might escape to attract attention; and, when sufficient red coals had accumulated, what cooking was necessary could be carried on over them. When properly done, this sort of fire might remain undetected twenty paces away by the possessor of the keenest vision. Only the presence of suspicious odors, such as of burning wood, or food cooking, might betray the fact that there was a fire in the vicinity. All Mayhew wanted was to heat some water, and make a pot of tea, of which he was very fond, although it was a great luxury of that early day. The supper itself would have to be eaten just as it was. They had a fair amount of bread, such as was baked by the camp cook; plenty of pemmican, and that was about all. If the food supply ran short they must depend wholly on what game they could bring down with their rifles. Most boys of to-day would view such a limited bill of fare with alarm, and think starvation was staring them in the face. These lads of the frontier, however, were accustomed to privations. They faced empty larders every time stormy weather prevented hunting. And early in life they learned that it does no good to borrow trouble. The night closed in around them. Dick and his cousin lay in their blankets and conversed in whispers, while Mayhew continued to busy himself over his tiny fire. Around them lay the wilderness that was almost unknown to the foot of white man, yet it did not seem to awe these adventurous souls, simply because they had been brought up in the school of experience, and were familiar with nearly all the ordinary features of a vast solitude. [Illustration: "MEAGER THOUGH THAT SUPPER MAY HAVE BEEN, THERE WAS NOT A WORD OF COMPLAINT"] When the guide had his pannikin of tea ready he told the boys to fall to, and, being sharp pressed by hunger, they did not wait for a second invitation. Meager though that supper may have been, there was not a word of complaint, even from Roger. The pemmican tasted good to him, the dry bread was just what he craved, and the bitter decoction which Mayhew had brewed seemed almost like nectar. Having accomplished its mission, the tiny fire was allowed to die out. Mayhew managed to light his pipe, which appeared to afford him much solace, and all three lay there, taking things as comfortably as possible, while they discussed in low tones the prospects ahead of them. Each one offered an opinion with regard to what sort of weather they might expect in the near future. In doing this they consulted the stars, together with the prevailing winds, and whether this last seemed to carry any moisture in its breath since that would indicate approaching rain or snow. It was the general belief that the prospect could be set down as uncertain. It might storm, or another fair day might speed them on their way; matters had not as yet developed far enough to settle this question. The silence that had accompanied the coming of the night no longer held sway. From time to time various sounds drifted to their ears to announce that the pine forest bordering the banks of the mysterious Yellowstone River were the haunts of many wild animals that left their dens, after the setting of the sun, for the purpose of roaming the wilderness in search of prey. Far in the distance they could occasionally hear, when the wind favored, the mad yelping of a pack of gray mountain wolves, undoubtedly on the track of a stag which they meant to have for their midnight supper, if pertinacity and savage pursuit could accomplish it. Closer at hand there came other sounds. Once the boys stopped speaking, and bent their heads to catch a repetition of a peculiar cry that would have sent a cold chill through any one unaccustomed to woods life. "That sounded like a painter to me, Dick!" ventured Roger, handling his gun, so as to make sure the weapon was within reach of his hand. Of course a "painter" meant a panther, for it was so called by nearly all back-woodsmen and pioneers of that day. And these two lads knew well what a fierce antagonist one of those great gray cats became when wounded, or ferociously hungry. "Yes, that was just what I thought," replied Dick; "but there isn't much chance he'll bother to pay us a visit to-night. The woods are big enough to give him all the hunting he wants, without trying to invade our camp." "There seems to be plenty of life in this valley of the Yellowstone River," the second boy continued, "and, even if Jasper Williams fails to find the Happy Hunting Grounds he is looking for, he might do lots worse than stay around here." "Yes, I am sure there must be lots of fur to be picked up, and we saw plenty of elk, you remember, Roger, as well as other food animals. From what we have learned, the Indians never come in this direction unless they are compelled to by a scarcity of game in other places." "All on account of their believing an Evil Spirit haunts the land," commented Roger. "As for myself, I think all those stories must be made up in the brains of foolish people. I would never believe one of them unless I saw the things with my own eyes." "We may know more about them before we finish this journey," Dick remarked complacently. "When you last examined the tracks left by Jasper Williams and his party, Benjamin, how old did you make them out to be?" inquired Roger of the guide. "We are one day's journey behind them," came the assured reply. "And if they should choose to linger on the trail we may overtake them by to-morrow night," added Dick, in order to comfort his cousin. "Then all I can say," continued Roger, "is that I hope they'll run short of fresh meat, and conclude to loiter on the road. If Jasper only discovers a big colony of beaver in a stream, I think he would be tempted to camp near by and start trapping." "Yes," Mayhew remarked, reflectively, between puffs, "he is always talking about beaver pelts, and I have heard him say many times that he never could resist taking the broadtails if given a fair opportunity." "Well, we have seen signs of the houses of the little animals several times as we came upon streams that flowed into the river," said Roger, "so there may be a chance of our coming upon him before another sun goes down." The thought appeared to give him satisfaction, and from that time on Dick noticed a difference in Roger's manner. Only one thing kept cropping up to make him sigh occasionally, and this was the possibility of snow catching them, and in a short time obliterating the trail of the party ahead. The last thing Roger did, before wrapping himself in his blanket, was to step over to where he could look up at the heavens. The stars were shining peacefully. They did not look unusually bright, which would have been a bad outlook, according to the woodsman's reckoning of the weather signs. The bank of low-hanging clouds must have remained close along the horizon, or else passed away by some other route, for he now saw no trace of them. "I really believe it will be all right, Dick," was his cheerful announcement as he settled down for a good night's sleep. Dick did not reply; but, knowing how capricious the weather could prove, he had already made up his mind to be surprised at nothing. Even if he awoke in the morning to find three inches of snow covering the ground, coming so silently they had not known of its fall, he was prepared to take it philosophically. Perhaps, like a wise general, he had already mapped out in his mind just what course they must pursue under such conditions, for Dick Armstrong had always been prone to foresee difficulties, and prepare to meet them as they came. Roger soon fell asleep. Even his thoughts of the faraway home were of a pleasant nature, and not calculated to keep him awake. Besides, that long day's tramp over so much rough ground had wearied his muscles, and a languor came upon him shortly after he wrapped his blanket about him. A root served as a pillow. These hardy sons of the frontier needed no down under their heads as they slept. Privations they had been accustomed to from infancy, and a small amount of comfort usually satisfied them. Doubtless their slumber was all the more sound on that account. Roger had no means of telling whether one hour or five had crept by, when he was aroused by something that gave him a fierce tug. Instantly he was awake, and, although at first he imagined he must have been dreaming, he changed his mind when he heard a low, snarling sound close to his ears, and felt another of those queer tugs. It was cold, for, in rolling about as he slept, he must have displaced his blanket. That jerk at his right leg gave Roger a thrill. He realized that something had taken hold of his fringed deerskin trousers, and was endeavoring to drag him aside. Even as this startling conviction flashed through his mind, for a third time he heard that low growl. It was like that of a dog, when some one approaches while he is gnawing a bone. Roger slightly raised his head and saw two gleaming yellow spots that seemed to glow like coals of fire. He knew they were the eyes of some sort of forest beast that was crouching close alongside him; though why it had seized upon his trouser leg and kept up this spasmodic tugging Roger could not comprehend. Where was his rifle? He put out a hand, groping for the weapon, which action was the signal for more growls, and a spitting sound such as a cat might make. Then he heard a low whispering voice saying: "Keep still, Roger; don't move! I've got my gun, and can fix him! Steady, now!" Then came a mighty crash that awoke the echoes of the forest. CHAPTER VIII THE VALLEY OF ENCHANTMENT ROGER knew what was expected of him under such conditions. A regard for his own safety induced him to roll aside. If the wounded animal endeavored to fasten upon his body in its death throes, he preferred to be in some other and safer locality. There was confusion for a minute or so. Roger, after escaping from the claws of the unseen beast, scrambled first to his knees and then to his feet. He could not think of going back to search for his gun, because something was struggling on the very spot, and he could imagine what that writhing object must be. So he drew his hunting knife and waited. Then the sounds began to grow fainter, which the boy knew was a promising sign. Finally all became still again. "Dick!" he whispered. "Yes, I'm here, Roger," he heard his cousin say. "Is he dead, do you think?" asked the other. "I have just poked about with the barrel of my gun, and touched him," Dick replied. "There's no movement to the body, so I feel sure I finished him. Come this way; I felt your gun with my foot just now." They had no means of seeing the motionless form of Dick's quarry, unless they chose to go to great trouble with flint and steel and tinder. There was really no need of this, because all of them were familiar with the denizens of the forest; so that, using their hands, they readily ascertained the nature of the invader of the camp. "Why, it's only a wildcat, after all, Dick!" exclaimed Roger, a note of disappointment in his tones, as he came upon the abbreviated tail. "I was so sure it was the painter we heard crying earlier in the night." "I thought the same way, Roger," confessed the other, "until I came to feel the fur, when something told me it was different. But we never yet killed such a wildcat as this, in all our tramping." "It does seem to be a monster," admitted the other. "It is not only the size I meant, Roger, but feel of the ears." "Why, how very strange, Dick; for all the world like a tassel at the end! What kind of a beast have we run across? We never saw wildcats like this along the Missouri, you know." "I have heard old voyageurs tell about a species they meet with further north in the cold country of the Chippewas and the Crees. They call it a lynx in Canada. It is a very fierce beast, all accounts agree." "But, Dick, think of his coming right into our camp, and trying to carry me off! I never would have believed it if any one had told the story. He tugged at my leg again and again. It was that woke me up, I expect. If that's the kind of wildcats they have in this country, I am not surprised at the Indians keeping away from this region." "There must be some reason for the beast acting as it did. I think we will find that in rolling about you must have managed to get over the spot where Benjamin laid our stock of pemmican, and that was what the beast was after." "Oh! do you think so?" remarked Roger, heaving a sigh of relief. "Well, I shall be glad to believe he was not trying to carry me off. But all the same, Dick, you never before heard of a wildcat being so bold." "I never did, and that is a fact," admitted Dick. They settled down once more, though this time Roger changed his position so as to make sure he would not invite a repetition of the attack. Mayhew, too, had taken warning from the adventure; he proceeded to fasten their stock of dried venison to the limb of a tree in such a way that it would be safe from the depredations of any hungry animal. That one alarm was not repeated. Throughout the balance of the night prowling wild beasts might roam the forest and seek their prey, but they gave the camp of the little party a wide berth. Perhaps they scented trouble in the blood of their kind that had already been spilled. With the coming of dawn the boys were up and doing. Roger examined the stiffened form of the lynx with much curiosity. He seemed to be of the opinion that, since the ice had now been broken, they were apt to run across many other strange creatures, the like of which they had never before set eyes on. Indeed, before they had been an hour on the way that morning, they began to notice that a remarkable change was taking place in the character of their surroundings. The sun's rays, falling on the face of a hill, filled them with awe, for it seemed to reveal almost every hue of the rainbow. Here a waterfall burst upon their vision, the stream dropping fully a hundred feet, and looking like a bridal wreath as the light breeze carried the fine spray to leeward, through several rainbows. "The Enchanted Land, of a truth, Dick!" was Roger's comment, as they came to a full stop, to gaze upon these remarkable sights. "Already it begins to look to me as though there might be some truth in the weird stories the Indians have been telling about this country up here," the other boy confessed. As for Mayhew, the guide, he could not find words to describe the mingled feelings of admiration and wonder that filled his soul. None of them dreamed of turning back, although they were beginning to encounter sights such as the eyes of white men had possibly never before beheld. "Jasper was not dismayed by all this," said Dick, "for we can see that he and his party kept on, following the course of this river of the cataracts and the rapids. So we, too, must march on." "I feel thirsty," remarked Roger, shortly after this, "and as here runs a nice looking little stream I think I will take a drink." Dick was about to follow suit when he saw Roger suddenly start up from his kneeling position, with a look of the most intense astonishment on his face. "Why, Dick, it burns me!" he cried. "The water is hot!" Dick immediately tested it with his hand. "Just as you say, Roger, it seems as though it might be over a fire. Do you know, I noticed something like a trace of steam, but I thought it only such vapor as we often see rising from ice-cold water." "But who ever before met with boiling water in the open?" asked Roger. "Why, there must be fires under the earth here, such as leap out of volcanoes in other countries." He even rested his hand on the rock close by, but found it cold. Vegetation grew all around the hot stream and pool, showing that it never overflowed its banks at any time. "There's one good thing about it," remarked Dick, turning to the frontiersman; "after this, if these hot springs are common here, you will never need to build a fire in order to make a pannikin of tea." "I can believe almost anything after this," muttered Roger, as he dabbled his hand in the pool, and quickly snatched it out again, for the water seemed to almost scald his flesh. "Of course nothing can live in such a stream. I wonder what next we will run across. Cats with tassels on their ears, rocks and mud looking like they had been painted every color going, waterfalls that drop from the clouds, and where rainbows play hide and seek in the sunlight, and now a boiling spring, and a hot pool. What if one of us had fallen in here, and could not get out?" "We'll soon begin to believe in those stories the red men tell of the Evil Spirits that live in this enchanted valley," laughed Dick, who seemed determined not to allow himself to be dismayed by anything wonderful they might encounter in their wanderings. "I'm getting that way even now, Dick. I tell you, it wouldn't surprise me very much if we ran upon one of those monsters they say used to live in America centuries and centuries ago, much larger than an elephant. I only hope my rifle speaks true, if ever I have to face anything like that!" Leaving the hot spring behind them, they pushed on along the trail made by Jasper Williams's party. Doubtless those three men were also filled with wonder at what they saw. Roger more than once expressed doubt as to whether they would have the courage to continue their explorations much further, surrounded as they found themselves by such marvelous freaks of nature. "It wouldn't surprise me if we met them hurrying back out of here," he told his companions. "Jasper himself is a bold spirit, but I have a poor opinion of the two other men with him. I believe they are inclined to be superstitious, like the Indians, and these things are enough to make the flesh creep." Here and there, as openings occurred, they could catch glimpses of distant peaks that looked like cathedral spires in the gilding rays of the sun. Dick was drinking in these pictures with eagerness, for the boy had something of the artist in his nature. He could appreciate such glorious works wrought by the deft hand of nature more fully than Roger, who saw rather the practical side of the picture. Once, during that morning tramp, Roger did receive a fright. It did not come from any threatened attack on the part of a ferocious wild beast, nor yet through his narrow escape from falling into some pit where strange, gurgling, mysterious sounds oozed forth. On the contrary it was just because it started to snow furiously, so that the whole landscape was blotted out. "That settles it, Dick," he exclaimed, in sheer disgust, "we're done for now. The only thing left us is to head as best we may for the place we believe the Valley of Wonders lies, and which we must be close to, right now." "You are in too big a hurry, Roger," his cousin told him. "Just because a few flakes chance to come down is no proof that we are in for a storm. Look up and you will see the blue sky over yonder. It is only a passing squall, and soon over with, so cheer up." His prophecy proved true, because in another minute the snow ceased to fall, and out came the welcome sun again, to once more paint the hillsides with his wondrous brush, and stripe them with rainbow tints. "You must own up that most of our troubles come and go like that," commented Dick. "At first they seem to be dark and heavy, but all at once the sun breaks out, and we forget the gloomy past. It ought to be a lesson to you." "I know it, Dick, but my nature is different from yours. I am either bubbling over with joy or else weighed down with foreboding. But we can see some distance ahead at this point, and I must confess that there is no sign of a human being, so Jasper and his comrades cannot be returning along the trail." "The wind is shifting for one thing," observed Dick, "which may bring about a change in the weather before very long." "Listen, what do you suppose that sound can be? If the weather were not so cold, and the season summer instead of early winter, I would surely say it was distant thunder!" All three stood still to listen intently. Presently the far-away rumbling sound was again borne to their ears; and, just as Roger had declared, it was like distant thunder coming from beyond the range of forest-clad hills. It was not strange that the two boys and the frontiersman turned uneasy looks upon each other, surrounded as they were by such strange freaks of nature. CHAPTER IX SURROUNDED BY MYSTERIES "WHAT about the swivel gun in the camp; could it be heard as far away as this, do you think, Dick?" asked Roger, as though a new idea had flashed into his mind. The other shook his head in the negative. "Hardly," he replied, "and, even if it were possible, you forget that it is only when the wind picks up from this new quarter that we hear the sound." "And that is from the northwest, while our camp lies back yonder, more in the northeast," admitted Roger. "I admit that, when I spoke, I was picturing a horde of half-naked Indians trying to carry the camp by storm, and Captain Clark rallying his defenders behind the breastworks we built out of pine logs and earth." "It is nothing of that sort, I am sure," said Dick, "though, when you ask me to explain the origin of that sound, I am as much in the dark as you." "Well, as our way lies toward the northwest," remarked Roger, "there's some satisfaction in knowing we will be getting closer to the mystery all the time." "I am glad to see that you are not afraid, Roger." "There can be no telling what state I may be in before we get out of this strange country," admitted Roger, laughingly. But Dick knew him too well to think he could show any sign of fear. Mayhew said little, for he was naturally a man of few words. He could not be reckoned as above the average of his class; and possibly there was a well-defined streak of superstition in his nature, even as it was to be found in other bordermen of the day. Left to his own devices, perhaps Mayhew would have much preferred not to advance any further into this unknown and terrifying land. He had no particular desire to learn whether the stories told were true or false; and the camp that had been left behind held many alluring claims to his regard. But his honor as a reliable borderman was in the balance. He could not forget that, chiefly through his carelessness, there had been lost a paper entrusted to his charge, which was of the utmost value to these lads. Hence he was firmly resolved to stand by them, no matter what happened, for the object of their venture was to duplicate the document he had allowed to slip out of his hands. "There is the river over yonder; I can see the sun shining on the tumbling water of one of the numerous cataracts," Dick commented, as he pointed in the direction indicated. "The Indians have a story to the effect that it springs from a great fresh water inland sea lying over the ridges somewhere," Roger remarked, as he stood looking at the foaming surface of the stream. "Do you believe there is any truth in that account, Dick; or can it be set down as a fable, like this Evil Spirit of the land?" "Oh! it seems that others have looked upon the great lake at a distance, French traders and voyageurs, and they say it is surely there," the other affirmed. "Who knows but that, before we see our good friend Captain Lewis again, we, too, may be able to boast of having set eyes on the mirror lake." "Captain Lewis told me he would give much for the privilege of accompanying us; but duty would not permit," Roger observed. "Yes, he cannot forget that the President committed the fate of this exploration into his hands, and looks to him to supply all the information possible," said Dick. "So Captain Lewis, like an honorable and conscientious gentleman, will not take any unnecessary risk in order to gratify his curiosity. His place is there in the camp." Feeling hungry as noon arrived they munched some of the hard pemmican while keeping on the move. That suited the impetuous Roger, for it was virtually "killing two birds with one stone"; they satisfied their hunger, and yet found no reason to delay their progress in order to do so. Mayhew still found a way to discern the trail of those who had gone over this same ground ahead of them. Indeed, it would have to be a faint track that his practiced eyes failed to discover. All this while there had been a perceptible change in the character of the country. It kept getting more rocky, and wilder the further they advanced. Roger was constantly looking on all sides as though expecting to discover some new and remarkable thing at any minute. Indeed, Dick was also considerably worked up over the strange conditions surrounding them, and made up his mind not to be surprised at anything that might happen. It was when they were in this receptive frame of mind that something occurred out of the common, to alarm them. Roger was the first to hear a sound, though Dick, seeing him come to a sudden halt, and stand in an attitude of listening, also began to catch it. "Hold on, Benjamin," said Dick, in a low tone, "there's something queer going on around us that we must look into before proceeding further." "Of all the strange things, did you ever hear such a terrible groaning before, Dick?" asked Roger. "I wonder if it has anything to do with the noise we caught before, that was so like thunder." "Hardly, for that was surely far away, while this is close by," replied the other boy, with a puzzled look on his sun-browned face. Roger even took off his foxskin cap, as though he imagined that the dangling flaps which he used to keep his ears warm in bitter weather might interfere with his sense of hearing. Again those strange groanings made themselves heard. This time both boys managed to locate the sound as coming from the right. That was at least one point gained, and it was toward that quarter they now turned their attention. If they had been trying to pick out the most difficult spot in all the wild vicinity, they would have selected that toward which their attention was now directed. The rocks seemed to be piled on one another in hap-hazard fashion. Here and there they formed deep chasms, the sides of which were so precipitous as to be incapable of being scaled by any creature short of a monkey. "It comes welling up out of the ground itself, Dick," ventured Roger, presently, with awe in his manner, as though, after all, he might be wondering whether there could be any truth in the tales told of the Evil Spirit that haunted these weird ridges, speaking in thunder tones at one minute, and with dreadful groanings the next. Dick believed in taking the bull by the horns in a case like this. "We must look into it, Roger; it would never do for us to say we had been driven away through hearing some mysterious sound that we did not understand." "There it comes again, Dick, and louder than before. What can it be?" "The hot spring seemed to tell of some sort of fires away under the surface of the ground," the other said, reflectively, "and it might be that this is more of the hot vapor pressing up through holes in the rocks." "But how like human groans the sounds are!" marveled Roger. "I agree with you," his companion returned, "but have you forgotten the time we heard those terrifying noises coming from the old mill that stood a mile away from our homes, and how some of our companions fled, but we had the hardihood to go inside and look around?" "Yes," interjected Roger, quickly, "and we found the wind forced a way through a crack between two logs, and made the doleful noise! It may be something like that here." "We will soon know, because I mean to make my way over there and take a good look around," announced Dick. "If you go I will keep you company!" declared Roger, just as stoutly, as he gave a glance down, in order to make sure that the powder in the pan of his flint-lock rifle had not been disturbed, and that the weapon was ready for instant use. Together they advanced, with Mayhew keeping them company. All were constantly on the alert for signs of treachery and danger. Those who dealt with the tricky red sons of the forest in the pioneer days learned to be always on the watch. Now the sounds ceased, and the boys exchanged looks, as if asking each other whether this could have anything to do with their arrival. Were hostile eyes watching them from some rocky covert; and would a signal be given to launch an attack? Dick, examining what lay just beyond, came to a conclusion. "There is a gaping hole yonder, you see, Roger?" he noted. "Where the rocks seem to drop straight down, you mean?" replied the other. "Yes, and it is out of that hole the sounds came. Let us stand here, and wait to see if we can hear them again." They had not long to wait. Even as they stood listening intently, there came once more a long-drawn moan, which was followed by others. Then succeeded a rattling sound as though some heavy body were endeavoring to creep up the slanting rock, only to slip back again. They even heard the thud that seemed to announce the end of the vain attempt. Still it was all unintelligible to both Dick and Roger. While the groans continued to well up out of the basin, they again started to creep forward. The brink was within plain sight, and in another minute they would be in position to peer over the edge. What new and terrifying wonder they might discover there they could not even guess, yet it was with a thrill that the lads kept on, covering the intervening rock foot by foot. They reached the brink together, and both immediately thrust out their heads to take the first look. Only for a brief space of time did they stare downward, and then, just as a cautious tortoise might draw back his head within his shell, Dick and his companion retreated. "Oh!" gasped Roger, as he turned his face, filled with perplexity, toward the other, "did you see what it was, Dick?" "After all, nothing so strange as we thought," replied the other. "Instead of a supernatural happening, it was real human groans we heard. There are men trapped in that hole, and they have tried again and again to climb up, always to slip back again. They must he battered, and nearly starved, which would be enough to make them groan, I think." "But, Dick, I saw one of them plainly, and I knew him, too!" urged Roger, bluntly. "Then you saw more than I did," the other told him. "From the fact that they are dressed in buckskin I knew they must be hunters or trappers, but supposed it would turn out that they were French voyageurs, such as have roamed throughout the Northwest country since the time of Pontiac. Who was the man you saw, Roger?" "It was surely Thomas Hardy, one of the men who accompanied Jasper Williams," said Roger, showing much concern. "And I believe the other to be Mordaunt, the second frontiersman and trapper. But there is no third in the party. What can have become of Williams? If he is dead there is an end to all our hopes. Oh, Dick, I am afraid!" Dick's face had also lost much of its customary color, for a spasm of alarm had attacked his bold heart when his companion thus voiced his fears. CHAPTER X ATTACKED BY HOSTILE BLACKFEET "CHEER up, Roger!" said Dick, making an effort to look as though he himself had no fear of disaster. "I've often heard my father say it is foolish to cross a bridge before you reach it. The first thing for us to do is to let these poor fellows in the trap know we are here." When there was a prospect for action Roger could rouse himself wonderfully. "And we must get them out of that deep hole by hook or by crook, Dick!" he exclaimed. The two pushed forward until they could look down toward the place where they had discovered the forlorn figures of the prisoners. "Hello! Hardy--Mordaunt!" called Dick, just loud enough to make his voice carry to the men. He did not know what danger might be near, and on this account believed it the part of wisdom to be careful. Immediately the pair below looked up. When they discovered the boys they manifested the greatest delight, even to shaking hands with each other. Evidently they had been close to the point of despair. "We're going to get you out of that hole first of all!" called Dick, "and then you can tell us what happened." "Where is Jasper Williams?" demanded Roger, unable to restrain his impatience longer. "We do not know," came the discouraging answer. "Then he isn't down there with you?" pursued Roger. "No. The last we saw of Jasper he was still alive, although hotly pursued." Naturally these last words excited Roger's curiosity more than ever. He could easily guess that the party must have met with a stirring adventure of some sort, and if Williams had fled it must have been hostile Indians who pursued him. But Dick would not hear of any further delay in starting work. "Come, Roger, I shall need your assistance," he told the other. "Bottle up your curiosity until we can get those poor fellows up out of the pit. They seem to be injured more or less, for Hardy has a bandage around his arm that looks bloody." Roger was only too willing to render what aid he could, though the fact struck him that they were not likely to find it plain sailing. "If they couldn't climb up out of that hole on account of the smooth face of the rock, how shall we go down to help them, Dick?" he demanded. "That would be foolish," was the reply. "We must plan to draw them up here." "But, Dick, where is the rope to come from? We brought nothing of the sort from the camp?" "Then we must find a substitute. Look back at some of our experiences, and tell me if we have not done that more than once when in the forest?" "Why, yes, a wild grape-vine can often be made to serve the purpose of a rope, because it is tough and long and pliable. But where can we get such a thing now?" "As it happens, I noticed some vines growing not far back, and I am leading you to the place now. Look over yonder at that little swale, where the trees grow so densely; there are vines hanging from the branches, for I saw them swaying in the breeze." "Yes, I do believe you are right," admitted Roger, who possessed splendid eyesight. "I only hope we find one long enough." "Oh! as to that," responded Dick, calmly, "we could easily splice a pair of them. There's nearly always a way to do things if only you make up your mind to do them." They soon arrived at the patch of swampy ground where the undergrowth grew so densely. It was an ideal place for wild grape-vines, and small wonder that they grew to such a length, some twisting in spirals around the trunks of the trees, others hanging from limbs that were fully twenty feet overhead. Roger gave expression to his satisfaction the minute he set eyes on this network of vines. "No trouble getting what we want here, I should say, Dick. Look at that monster vine; though this one seems better fitted for our purposes, because it is like a stout rope, if only it proves tough enough to hold a weight." "No trouble about that, I'm thinking," said Dick. "You could hang half a ton on that vine and it would hold. You are a better climber than I ever claimed to be, so get up the tree and cut it loose above." Nothing suited Roger better than this. Laying his gun down, together with his powder-horn, which might be in the way, he started up the tree indicated. Arriving at the limb to which the vine they had selected seemed to be fastened he first examined it carefully, and then with his knife soon cut it free. "Take care while I drop it, Dick!" he called, and shortly afterwards descended to the ground. The vine was quickly trimmed so as to free it from useless growth, and, dragging it after them, the lads once more went to the brink of the pit that had proved a trap for the members of the exploring party. When this substitute for a rope was lowered it was found to be quite long enough for their purpose. One of the men immediately started to climb, and what before had seemed an insurmountable task now became easy. Ten minutes later both had been rescued from their predicament. They were shivering from exposure and fright, and the first thing the boys did was to make a small fire in a depression amidst the rocks, over which some water was heated, and a pannikin of tea brewed. When the men had eaten something, and washed it down with liberal portions of the hot tea, Roger could hold back no longer. He wanted to learn what had happened, and how they had become separated from Jasper Williams. The men had evidently been through a rough experience, and seemed to have lost all inclination to proceed any further into the unknown country of mysteries. Indeed, from certain words that they had dropped, it was plain nothing could induce them to return. They meant to head directly toward the camp near the Mandan village. This being the case, Dick was anxious to learn all he could before the separation came about, and so he did not attempt to chide Roger on account of the other's impatience when he burst out with: "Now please tell us what it was all about, and who pursued Jasper Williams at the time you saw him last?" Hardy seemed to be the best talker, for it was he who answered. "The Indians came down on us when we were not expecting an attack," he explained, looking somewhat humiliated, for a frontiersman was apt to feel a blush of shame when compelled to admit that for once his vigilance had relaxed. "Were you in camp at the time?" asked Roger. "Yes, close to the river," Hardy continued. "We had been seeing some wonderful things, and Jasper seemed to believe there were others even more amazing beyond. Then, like a bolt out of the clear sky, they dropped down on us. Some sprang from the bushes, while others appeared on the river in canoes made from dugout logs." He drew a long breath, as though the recollection of that sudden attack would give him a bad feeling for a long time to come. "But you must have snatched up your guns and fought them?" pursued Roger, who could not picture Jasper Williams doing anything less, since he had the reputation of being an unusually valiant borderman. "That was what we did," replied Hardy. "After shooting and wounding some of our enemies we clubbed our guns and strove to beat our way clear of the howling pack. In some fashion Jasper became separated from us. We managed to burst through the Indians, and fled for the thickest of the neighboring woods. Somehow we did not seem to be pursued, and, wondering at that, I looked over my shoulder, hearing the yells of the savages growing fainter." "Yes, and what did you see?" Roger demanded. "Jasper had managed to leap into one of their canoes, and was paddling like mad up the rough water of the Yellowstone, with the other boats in hot pursuit. They vanished from our sight around a bend in the stream, but for a long time we could hear the sound of distant yells when the wind turned that way." "You do not know certainly, then, that Jasper was captured or killed?" Dick asked. "We cannot say," replied Hardy. "All we thought about then was to get away from that region, and start back to the camp. We have seen enough of this wild country to satisfy us. By accident we managed in the darkness of the night to fall into that hole, and we have been held prisoners there ever since, suffering all the tortures of cold, hunger and despair. When we heard you call out it seemed to us the finest sound we had ever listened to." The men had finished their meal by now, and seemed anxious to make a start over the back trail. Dick did not attempt to influence them to change their decision, for he knew it would be futile. As they had both lost their powder-horns in the fight, and their long-barreled guns were useless without ammunition, he managed to spare a small amount of the precious stuff, enough to give them several charges apiece. "You can shoot game, and live in that way until you reach camp," he told them as he watched both men eagerly load their guns. "But what of these Indians who attacked your party--they were not of the Sioux or the Mandan tribes, I take it?" "No--Blackfeet, and hard fighters," the man replied. "I do not believe they would have allowed us to escape, only that they seemed most anxious to get Jasper Williams, for all of them pursued him, some in boats and the rest on land." This struck Dick as peculiar. Why should Jasper Williams count any more with the hostile Blackfeet than the other two explorers? His hair would make a no better looking scalp than theirs! Dick was still pondering over this as he shook the two men by the hand and expressed the hope that they would meet with no further troubles until they gained the camp and gave his message to Captain Lewis. "Have you arrived at any conclusion, Hardy," he observed, "as to why the Indians should want to capture Jasper Williams so badly that they would neglect you two, and even let you escape?" "We talked that over, Mordaunt and myself, while we were in the pit," came the answer, "and both of us decided that the men who were with the Blackfeet must have hated our companion, and had promised a reward to the redskins if he was captured. That only would explain the mystery, we thought." "Why, were there white men with the Indians?" cried Dick, beginning to see a gleam of light. "Were they English, or frontiersmen, or French?" "They must have been French, because we heard them calling out, and it was in that language. They seemed wild with anger because Jasper had not fallen into their hands. In the boats they kept shouting to the paddlers, and urging them to greater exertion. Yes, the Frenchmen must hate our companion, and I fear he will never live to come back to us again." As the two men walked away, heading toward the northeast, Dick and Roger exchanged significant looks, for they now knew the worst. CHAPTER XI ON THE BANK OF THE YELLOWSTONE "BAD news for us, Dick," muttered Roger, shaking his head despondently. "I am sorry it had to happen," the other remarked; "but while there's life there's hope. Jasper is no novice in woodcraft. Those Frenchmen and their red allies will find it no easy task to capture him. And even if they should we are bound to try to bring about his release." "It must have been that François Lascelles and his rascally son, Alexis, surely," ventured Roger. "Yes, I am sure of it," Dick admitted, frowning. "They were not satisfied with destroying the paper we had sent home, but came back to keep us from getting Jasper to sign another. Oh! they are determined to steal our homes away from us! They will stop at nothing to take them!" "All is not lost yet. Remember that we have always managed to pull through in times past. We shall again; something seems to tell me so." When Dick said this he looked so determined and resolute that, as usual, Roger found his own spirits wonderfully revived. "I complain a lot, I know," he remarked, as though ashamed of his actions, "but all the same I give up hard. Deep down there's a never-say-die feeling in my heart. When you say we will keep everlastingly at it you express what I feel." Both felt better after that. They knew that it was useless to pay any further attention to the faint trail of Jasper Williams and his two companions. They must trust partly to luck in order to once more run across the man they so urgently desired to see. "One thing we must remember," said Dick, as they again set forth on their way. "What is that?" asked Roger. "We have come to know Jasper fairly well since joining the exploring company, and helping him to escape from Running Elk's Sioux. We even know some of his signals, and if we have any reason to believe he is around we can make use of them to communicate with him." "That is a good idea," agreed Roger. "Even if he is a prisoner we could let him know friends were near by using the secret call. But we seem to be making for the bank of the river; tell me what plan you have in mind now." "You heard me ask Hardy about the exact place they were set upon by the Blackfeet? That is where we must go first of all. Trail we have none, for the last seen of Jasper he was on the water, which leaves no track. But, starting from that point we will follow up the river until we find something." "We could not do better, I am sure," acknowledged the other, and Mayhew nodded his head as though he also concurred in the plan. "If the Frenchmen are Lascelles and his son," continued Dick, as they trudged along, "they would not care if Jasper were killed, so long as he could not interfere again in their scheme to defraud our parents out of their property." "Yes," added Roger, impulsively, "and, should our friend be captured, they would influence the Blackfeet to carry him far away to their village in the Northwest country, where he would be made to adopt their ways and become an Indian warrior. Either that, or else he would be burned at the stake, after their usual custom with prisoners of war." "We are close to the river," Dick announced. The Yellowstone is a very turbulent stream, especially far up toward where it has its source in the great lake of the same name. It rushes down over its rocky bed with numerous cataracts, making navigation impossible to any but canoes managed by the most experienced paddlers. The fretting of its current was plainly audible long before the little party arrived on the bank. Above and below, it wound in and out, seldom keeping a direct course for half a mile, such was the roughness of the country through which it found a passage. Without wasting any time in admiring the wonderful picture that was now spread out before them, the three scouts turned up-stream, and continued to advance. They were anxious to reach the scene of the fight between Jasper Williams's little band and the Blackfeet, set upon them by the unscrupulous French traders. Having now been made aware of the fact that hostile Indians were roaming the vicinity, they exercised more caution than up to this time had marked their pilgrimage into the unknown land. An hour--two of them--passed, and thus far nothing had occurred to disturb their peace of mind. All this time they had continued pushing forward. Occasionally they would make a little roundabout passage so as to clear an open glade where the danger of discovery was imminent. No discordant yells from savage throats arose to thrill them. "It seems to be a long way off, Dick," ventured Roger, who evidently had not taken into consideration the fact that at the time of the attack Williams and his companions were something like half a day's journey along. "We must be getting close to the place now," he was assured. "I was just deciding that the next bend in the river would turn out to be where they made their camp. Hardy told us, you remember, that they had hardly settled down there last evening when they were attacked." "Yes, it was an hour before sunset," he said. "They were feeling tired, and the chance for a fine camp tempted them to stop long before dark came on. Hardy tried to describe the place to us, and I suppose you think you can recognize it from the way the trees hang out over the water?" "That is what I settled in my mind; but we'll soon know. Given half an hour and we should be there." The time dragged with the always impetuous Roger; but finally they arrived at the bend of the river indicated. All immediately began to look for signs to prove that the men had camped there. A joyous exclamation from keen-eyed Roger announced that he had found the dead ashes of a fire in a little depression among the rocks. Then the others discovered footprints of moccasined feet, many of them in the softer places where the earth was not yet frozen. "Here are the tracks of Indians, for they all toe in," Dick observed, stating a fact that was well known to every pioneer boy of the day. "Toeing-in" was invariably the sign of an Indian, though of course some bordermen had also taken to that method of walking, which is supposed, to be the natural way. "And these others were made by whites, either our friends or the Frenchmen," added Roger, quick to pick out those that differed from the first type. "I am looking for the track of Jasper," Dick told him, as he continued to move this way and that, his eyes searching the ground as he neared the bank of the river. "But tell me how you would know his trail from any other? Most moccasins make pretty much the same kind of a mark, I've always believed." "Well, Williams's do not, it happens," the other explained. "I thought you must have noticed it as we came along. He bought the pair he is wearing from a Mandan squaw. They have a queer seam across the middle. I never saw one like it before, and I think that is the track now." He pointed to the ground, and Roger, looking, gave a cry of satisfaction. "It certainly is as you say, and here must be where Jasper jumped when he made for the water, and sprang into one of the dugouts. See, in many places his footprints are partly covered by those of the pursuing Blackfeet." "And this must be where he found the canoe into which he jumped," continued Dick, as he showed his companion a slight depression in the sand. Both stood and looked up the turbulent river. The water tumbled over the rocks that thrust their heads above the surface in many places; it even leaped high in the air and sent out clouds of spray where a cataract could be seen over toward the other shore. But whatever secret it held it gripped tightly, and neither of the boys could lift the veil. "I wish we knew what happened up there, and if Jasper did get away, or was taken by those plotting French traders and their red allies," mused Roger. "Well, it will do no good for us to stop here and wish," his companion told him. "There is work to be done, and the sooner we start the quicker we can reach the end. One thing is sure, if Jasper is alive, whether free or a prisoner, we will find him!" There was no need of lingering any longer, since they had learned all that could be ascertained. It fitted in with the story told by the two men who had been Jasper Williams's companions. "It seems to me our next best course would be to keep along the border of the river," remarked Dick. "If those who were in the canoes came ashore it would likely be on this side of the stream, because it seems to be a better channel than on the other side. "Besides, if we watch out we can see the marks left by those of the Blackfeet who ran along the shore expecting to head Jasper off; though I don't think they could do that, because in many places they would have to pass around deep coves that lead many rods inland." For some time they followed the river. Now and then they managed to discover some tracks of the Indians, but at the end these seemed to be missing, and it was concluded that the band must have left the stream to pass further back in the country. Unable to find any trace of them, the boys were placed in the position of not knowing whether Jasper had been taken or not. The going became so difficult, and the hope of reward so slight, that in the end they determined it would be best to also leave the river, and take to the higher ground. Here they could wander about, constantly on the watch for some sign that would indicate a temporary camping place of those whom they sought. If a wisp of trailing smoke caught their attention it would do much to locate the resting place of the Indians. They must eat, and particularly the Frenchmen would desire a warm meal, so that in this way those who sought them might be rewarded for their vigilance. Hope was struggling with despair in Roger's heart. Look as he might, he could not see any silver lining to the dark cloud. Still, the energy and resolution that his companion continued to show buoyed up his own sinking spirits to a considerable extent. They had now left the river far behind, and had entered upon a new phase of their journey. Several times at stated intervals they had heard that singular deep throated rumble, and felt the ground tremble under their feet. Whatever it could be that caused this strange sound, they were evidently approaching the scene of its mysterious operations, and might come upon it at any time. It was about the middle of the afternoon when Mayhew uttered the low hiss which they had settled on as a warning of danger. At that instant Roger and Dick also caught glimpses of flitting figures amidst the forest trees, which they knew must be Indians. CHAPTER XII UNEXPECTED HELP THE three dropped to the ground, where they flattened themselves out so as to be as inconspicuous as possible. Of course the prospect of approaching trouble caused the hearts of the boys to beat doubly fast, but they managed to control themselves. "Do you think they saw us?" whispered Roger, finding his head close to that of his comrade. "We will soon know," replied the other, in the same cautious manner. "They have not given a single yelp as yet. But Mayhew is beckoning to us. He wants us to crawl along after him, where these bushes will shield us." They kept as close to the ground as possible while making progress. Now and then one of them would carefully raise his head to take an observation. When this chanced to be Dick, his cousin invariably whispered an inquiry in his ear, which the other answered with a movement of the head. They could hardly believe that the keen-eyed Indians had failed to notice their presence, though it did seem strange that they should have refrained from announcing their delight at the discovery in fierce yelps, as was their custom. Mayhew undoubtedly had some sort of plan in mind when he beckoned the others to follow. He was an experienced scout, and knew as much about the tricky ways of the red men as any borderer of his time. It was on this account that Captain Clark had suggested that he accompany the boys on this trip, as well as to allow Mayhew a chance to repair the damage his blunder had done to their cause. Three times he abruptly changed his course. Evidently he had a reason for this, and Dick suspected that the guide must have discovered the enemy to be lying in wait for them ahead. It was thrilling, but tiresome. Roger found himself wishing heartily that something would happen to break the silence. It seemed to be oppressive, to be weighing him down as with a heavy load. Indeed, to the impulsive lad almost anything would be preferable to this terrible stillness. It was while Roger was allowing himself to give way to this feeling, and wondering whether, after all, it might not do better if they sprang to their feet and ran for it, that something did occur, and of a nature to surprise him. Crouching at the foot of a tree, and just about to slowly get to his knees in order to take an observation, Roger suddenly felt himself pulled down. Dick had seized his hunting tunic, and given it a quick, strong tug. At the same instant Roger heard an odd, whistling sound that seemed to come from a point very close to his ear; this in turn was succeeded by a little thud, such as one might make when striking his hunting knife against the bark of a tree. As the boy twisted his head around, his wondering eyes fell upon something that caused him to draw in a long quavering breath. It was the feathered shaft of a Blackfoot arrow that had its flint head buried deep in the yielding wood of the tree. In order to have reached that spot it must have passed only a few inches above Roger's body. Then the Indians _did_ know of their presence; the fact of this shaft having been sent in their direction told the story. Roger somehow found himself wondering if those stories he had heard about the Blackfoot warriors poisoning the tips of their war arrows could have any foundation in truth. It was not a pleasant thought when they found themselves at bay, surrounded by an unknown number of the savage tribesmen. But Mayhew was once more creeping on; if he did not wish to be left behind he must follow in the wake of the guide. Dick brought up the rear. It may have been accident that brought this about, and, then again, perhaps the boy had some design in taking his place at the end of the line. He knew the impulsive ways of his cousin, and that there was always a chance that Roger might get himself into trouble through lack of caution. Possibly the guide had knowledge of some locality that lay a short distance beyond, where they could defend themselves better than in the open. The face of the country was rough, and in many places rocks cropped out that could be made to serve those who were surrounded by perils. Once again was the whistle of a feathered shaft heard, though this time it simply cut through the bushes over their heads, and found no lodgment in the trunk of a tree. This was the second narrow escape they had had. It was not to be expected that such good fortune would continue. Other arrows were bound to be fired, and at any minute one better aimed than the rest might find lodgment in a human body. Roger gritted his teeth savagely as he crept on. How he wished Mayhew would come to a pause, thus signifying he had done all he could to further their escape, and was now at the end of his rope! Then they could rise up, and use their guns upon the crafty enemy, following with the pistols they also carried, and which at short range would count for just as much as the rifles. Was the ground actually trembling underneath, or did his own shaky condition deceive him? Roger could not decide this question off hand. It seemed to him that, when he placed a hand on the rocks, it felt a warmth that was unmistakable. At any other time he would have wanted to stop to discover why this should be so; but the conditions by which they were surrounded just then would hardly permit such a waste of precious seconds. In imagination Roger could see the Indians creeping up, bows and arrows in hand, waiting until a certain point had been reached, when they would give a concerted whoop, and rush to the attack. He wondered if they had ever heard a gun fired at close quarters and, if not, whether the sound would alarm them. It had proved to be the case in other instances he had heard old trappers mention, where they were saved through the fear shown by the savages at hearing the crash, and seeing the flash, when guns had been discharged. Ah! that was a third arrow he heard hurtling past, and it must have shivered into splinters against that rock when it struck. Either the marksmen were sending their missiles at random, or else they had some design in thus driving the three crouching whites forward. Was there some sort of a trap beyond, into which they might fall? Roger was of half a mind to turn on Dick, and demand that they change their method of retreat into one of open defiance. There was no need of his taking this step, because circumstances decided for him. Even as he was hesitating, and more than half inclined to force the issue, there broke out such ear-piercing yells as neither of the two boys had ever heard before. To Roger's mind that settled it, once and for all. Further flight was useless--at least, flight of the slow and hesitating type they had been trying to carry out. If they chose to try to escape without a fight, then they must take to their heels, dodging to the right and the left so as to avoid the rain of arrows that was sure to follow them. To scramble to their feet was the work of an instant. All held their weapons ready for immediate use, because they believed they would have need of them, with the enemy charging from several points at once. When Roger looked around he found it hard to decide where to send the bullet his gun carried. Here and there he could catch glimpses of flashing forms as they darted from rock to rock; but all these movements were executed with such surprising quickness that, although he several times started to raise his rifle, before he could obtain any sort of aim the object of his attention had vanished. Perhaps the quivering tip of a colored feather worn in the hair of an agile brave would be seen above the crown of the sheltering rock, but it would be folly to waste ammunition on such a will-o'-the-wisp target. The worst of the matter was that all this time the dodging foes were gradually drawing their ring closer and closer around the three whites. Every time a flitting copper-colored figure flashed across a little opening, to disappear again behind other shelter, it was shortening by just so much the distance separating the two hostile parties. Arrows were beginning to hurtle past their heads, too, as some of the red men found opportunities to use their bows. That none of the palefaces had thus far been struck was more a matter of good luck than anything else. Mayhew did not mean to stand there and wait for the coming of all those skulking warriors. He knew that there must be a score of them, all told, and, should it come to a hand-to-hand combat he and his young companions would have but a sorry chance to hold their own, much less be victors in the encounter. In one direction, alone, could he seem to discover an opening, where for some reason the Indians had failed to cover the ground. "Follow me, lads, and duck as you run!" he shouted at the top of his voice, at the same time starting off at a furious pace. Then began a curious race, with the three fugitives jumping from side to side as they ran, hoping in this way to escape being hit by any arrows that might be sent after them. Some of the Indians halted to make use of their bows, but the main body kept after the three fugitives. If the worst came, of course the whites could suddenly whirl about, and do some execution with their firearms, though Mayhew knew that it would never do to let the pursuers approach so close as to be able to hurl their stone-headed tomahawks, with which they could split a willow wand, if placed against a tree, at twenty paces. Mayhew figured that they would be able to reach the spot he had picked out for a stand, if nothing happened to upset his plans. Once there, if they poured a deadly volley in among their pursuers, and followed that up with a second from their small arms, the Indians might become demoralized. It might have worked as he hoped, but the chances were that the Indians would have immediately dodged, and in this way escaped the full effect of the bombardment. Then, when the firearms were empty, they would push their advantage, and numbers must surely tell. The yells were still rising discordantly behind them, when Dick began to notice a decided change to their intonation. What had before seemed only an outbreak of savage rage now had turned to wonder, and even deadly fear. [Illustration: "BEFORE THEM THEY SAW A MIGHTY COLUMN OF STEAMING WATER"] There was also something else that caused the boy to turn his head, in order to cast a backward look. No sooner had he done this than Dick came to a full stop, his loud shouts attracting the attention of his two companions, and causing them to copy his example. No longer were the eager Indian braves chasing madly after their intended quarry; on the contrary, each and every warrior seemed bent on running like mad in the opposite direction, as though pursued by a legion of evil spirits. To the whites there was no mystery in regard to the fright of the ignorant and superstitious Blackfoot braves, for before them they saw a mighty column of steaming water gushing fully a hundred feet up into the air, to descend in an imposing flood. As if an unseen hand had directed it, the giant geyser had spouted just in time to come between the hostile Indians and their intended victims! CHAPTER XIII DEEPER INTO THE WONDERLAND "OH! it must all be true, Dick!" These words burst from Roger's lips as he stood gazing at the wonderful sight. Of course he referred to the strange tales which they had heard from some of the Mandans, and which also passed current among the frontiersmen connected with the expedition. Dick was hardly less staggered than his cousin, and, as for Mayhew, he had the look of one who believed himself face to face with the spirit world. As they shrank back and watched the amazing fountain pour its flood toward the sky, and heard the thunder of the falling water, strange thoughts flitted through their minds. "Look, Dick, it's slackening now!" cried Roger, presently, though he had to exercise his vocal cords considerably in order to make himself heard above the tumult of the gushing geyser. "Yes, I believe it is about to stop!" echoed the other boy, not without perceptible relief in his tones. All at once they realized that the flow of steaming water had ended as abruptly as it had begun. The pool was still agitated at the spot where the base of the pillar of water had been located, but the terrible geyser had ceased to flow. (Note 3.) By degrees the two boys began to recover from the stagnation of mind and body into which they had been thrown. "Come, the danger seems to be past,--for the present, at least," remarked Dick; "let us look into this thing while we have the chance." "Just as you say," replied Roger, eagerly. "After this, when any one speaks of these unbelievable things, we can tell what we have seen with our own eyes; and how we were saved from the Indian attack by that fountain of hot water." With considerable uneasiness, however, the two approached the spot where the base of the water-spout had been. As for Mayhew, nothing could tempt him to advance a single step. Indeed, he shook his head several times in a doubtful fashion, as though he believed it the height of folly for the others to take their lives in their hands in such a reckless way. "Why, there's a hole in the solid rock, Dick, and it all came out of that!" Roger exclaimed, after they had drawn close enough to be able to see. "It had to come from some sort of cavity, of course," remarked Dick, "and that hole is the place. I think it must ascend once in so often, for here is a regular runway where the water passes off. And to think that this same thing may have been going on for years!" They listened to ascertain whether they could detect any sign of a great disturbance down in the aperture, but without very much success. Now that it was all over, the boys began to regain their courage, which had in fact been greatly shaken by the gushing of the mighty geyser. "The Indians have all fled, which is one comfort," observed Roger, presently. "Yes, it was too much for them," added his companion. "They believe these things are caused by the Evil Spirit that dwells inside the earth, and that he must have been angry at them because they tried to capture or kill us." "As usual, we have been lucky; when even the water-spouts stand back of us, what have we to fear?" "But now that all is quiet, the Indians may pluck up courage enough to return," Dick suggested. "We must not take too many chances by staying here. Another time the water might not come in time to save us." "I would like to stay long enough to watch it rise again," Roger objected; "but then you are right, and it would be folly. There may be others like this in this Wonderland. If half the Indians tell is true, we have many more things to see that will make us open our eyes. I am ready to believe almost anything after this." "Watch Mayhew, Roger, and you will see that we cannot get away from here any too soon to suit him." "No, he keeps standing first on one foot and then on the other, while he looks to the right and left. I really think he has already picked out which way he will run if it should break loose again." "And neither of us can blame him," added Dick, "for you know that most of his life he has associated only with Indians, and such rough men of the border as ignorant fur-takers and half-breeds. He thinks about the same as they do about all things hard to understand, and that spirits can come back after death. Our mothers taught us differently, but we should not condemn those who do not know any better." "He is a brave man, and he means to stand with us to the end," said Roger. "Only for that he would have run away as swiftly as the Indians did. But, Dick, do you believe this was the cause of that heavy rumbling we heard some time back?" "I couldn't say. It may have been, for you remember that the noise seemed to come and go, at intervals." "And the trembling of the rocks under our feet, too! That must have been caused by something like this. The hot spring where we said we could have cooked an egg, or made our tea, that may have been the overflow from here, or another fountain like it." "All we know is that those stories told by the Indians had a foundation in fact. And yet, most people will believe we have simply imagined these things when we tell them what we have seen and heard." "Yes," sighed Roger, "I only wish there was some way to show them. Seeing is believing, mother always says." But unfortunately this all happened early in the nineteenth century, and the camera, by which those amazing geysers might have been caught in action, and displayed to people at the other side of the world, had not even taken form in the brain of the most advanced inventor. Slowly the lads walked back to where the guide awaited their coming. Mayhew looked relieved when they rejoined him. Apparently he had been dubious as to whether they would be allowed to return; he may even have suspected that the angry gods who sent that gushing fountain soaring two hundred feet into the air might stretch out their arms and drag the lads into the yawning crater, to be served as a sacrifice. Which way to head now was rather a difficult question to answer. If it were left entirely to the discretion of Mayhew, Dick feared the guide might take it into his head to veer around and start back toward the camp, believing that in so doing he would be serving the interests of the boys best by possibly saving their lives. Consequently Dick meant to keep his hand on the helm, and do most of the directing. Captain Clark had instructed the guide to put himself entirely at the disposal of the boys, so that in reality it was Dick's place to do the ordering. Looking around them, it was hard to tell which way they had better go. Everything was so strange that although, of course, they knew the points of the compass, and in a general way could understand that they must have come in from the east, still who could say whether the beckoning west was their wisest goal, or some other direction? "We had better try to keep on, and find that valley toward which Jasper Williams was headed," urged Dick, after they had consulted. "He is a stubborn man in his way, and, even though deserted by both his companions, I believe he would push straight on, so that he might boast of having reached the place he started for." "And if the Blackfeet have failed to capture or kill him," ventured Roger, "we may find him there--of course granting that we reach that Happy Valley ourselves." That point having been decided, they started. It was not long, however, before they began to realize that amidst those remarkable cones and thickets and rocky defiles it was a most difficult thing to keep their bearings. "It seems as though we had come over this part of the ground before," admitted Dick, "for familiar objects turn up on every hand; and yet how can that be when we have kept going straight into the northwest for nearly an hour now?" "There is something wrong about it all, I'm afraid, boys," declared the guide, with a distrustful shrug of his broad shoulders. "I'm thinking we will meet with some queer experiences before we see another sunrise. As for myself, I am wondering whether any of us will get through it alive." It was not the hostile Indians that caused Mayhew to say this, nor yet the fact that all sorts of wild beasts doubtless roamed these wild places by night. He was accustomed to taking his chances with such ordinary perils, and scorned them as a true-hearted borderer must. But, deep down in his honest heart, Mayhew feared the supernatural. What he could not understand stood for something dreadful, that sent the cold chill of apprehension up and down his backbone. "Listen, there is the spouting water at it again!" exclaimed Roger. True enough, they could catch a deep-throated rumbling sound that seemed to make the very atmosphere vibrate. But Dick immediately made a discovery which he voiced in excited words: "If that be so," he told them, "what miracle is this; for we surely hear that sound ahead of us, and all this while we have been in the belief that the great water-spout lay back yonder toward the east!" That afforded Mayhew another opportunity to look worried. "It's black magic, that's what I believe. The east has become the west! We have all been turned around, and right now I cannot say which way I am looking, although I can see the sun hanging up there above that glittering peak." "Dick, what can it mean?" demanded Roger, uneasily. "I can think of but one explanation!" declared the other, steadily. "That is not the same spouting water we heard just now! You remember that we decided there might be others of the same kind in this country of wonders." It almost seemed as though nature took delight in proving the accuracy of Dick Armstrong's surmise; for, hardly had he said this, than they heard once again the remarkable throb of rushing waters pouring forth from a fissure in the crust of the earth and, what was more, it came from some point toward the rear! Roger smiled faintly, while even Mayhew condescended to let some of the worried look pass away from his face. "I should not like to roam about this terrible country after nightfall," said Roger, shuddering; "for there is too much danger of stepping into some bottomless pit, or having a deluge of boiling water thrown over your head. It's a question up here in the winter-time whether you are going to be frozen to death in a bitter storm, or roasted by the fires that are under the earth. I think we must be getting pretty close to where the Evil One lives, Dick. His workshop may be around these hills, for all we know." Dick, however, shook his head. He was proof against all belief in the supernatural. Such wonders as had been encountered on the trip he felt sure were after all but the products of an eccentric nature. Though they might strike one as bewildering at first, familiarity would dull this feeling of amazement, though it could never breed contempt. "We have a short time still before the sun sinks," remarked Dick; "shall we go on further or spend the night here?" "I'd rather find a better place if it's the same to you," Roger started to say, when to his astonishment Dick suddenly clutched him by the arm, and started to drag him away. At the same moment Roger became aware of a peculiar and alarming sound, as though loose rocks and shale were slipping down an abrupt slope. CHAPTER XIV THE LANDSLIDE ROGER tripped over some obstacle, so that both he and Dick fell flat on their faces, though neither had the misfortune to be injured other than to receive minor bruises. "Why, what happened then?" gasped Roger, as he sat up and commenced to rub one of his elbows. Mayhew had evidently also leaped hurriedly back, for he was crouching near the two boys, staring fixedly at some point just beyond, and looking not only puzzled but deeply concerned. "There was some sort of slip in the rock at the edge of that hole," explained Dick, breathing hard after his sudden exertion. "I was afraid the whole platform might be about to fall into the abyss, and that was why I dragged you back. It was better to be on the safe side, you know." "What will cross our path next, I wonder?" grumbled Roger. "We seem to be jumping from the frying pan into the fire. First it is Indians who are about to wipe us out; then we come near being boiled in a pyramid of steaming water, and, as if that were not enough, here we have a narrow escape from being dropped into a bottomless pit." "It's nip and tuck which sort of end will get us sooner or later," remarked Mayhew soberly; almost as though he had made up his mind that there was no use of resisting his manifest destiny. "Let's get away from this horrible place as soon as we can, Dick," urged Roger. "As to spending the night here, you will have to excuse me! We had better shoulder our packs and--oh! where are they, Dick? I am sure I laid mine down at the time we stopped to take a look around." Dick looked deeply worried. "Yes, the three of us did the same thing. As you say, they have disappeared, and I fear we have lost our blankets and provisions and extra ammunition." His words created a panic in the breast of his comrade, for Roger scrambled to his feet from his knees, clutching the sleeve of Dick's deerskin hunting tunic, and crying out: "Oh! can it be possible that they were carried down with that avalanche when the slip occurred? And do you think we can recover them again?" "I hope so," replied the other lad, soberly, "for it will be a serious thing for us if we lose all we had in those packs. But we must be careful how we approach the edge, if it crumbles so easily. We would not care to be carried after our blankets, riding an avalanche!" Cautiously picking their way, they finally managed to creep to where they could look down into the yawning abyss. It filled them with awe and despair. So far as they could see the walls were almost perpendicular, and extended far beyond their limited range of vision. "We could never get down there alive," Roger confessed, as he looked shudderingly into the chasm that had swallowed up their valued possessions. "And I am afraid we have seen the last of those blankets." "Of course," said the other, consolingly, "once we return to the camp we can obtain warm furs from the Indians, that will take their place for sleeping purposes." "But what are we to do now," reasoned Roger, "far away from the Mandan village, and so situated that we dare not build a camp fire at night, no matter how bitter cold it turns?" "That is a hard question for me to answer," Dick admitted, candidly. "If it comes to the worst, of course we can turn back, and give over our hunt for Jasper Williams. If he should change his mind and return to the camp all would be well. On the other hand, if he stayed out the main part of the winter, or the Indians were holding him a prisoner, we would stand to lose all we had won." "And our dear parents must see their homes taken away from them by that rascally Lascelles," groaned Roger, grinding his teeth in his distress. "Dick, sooner than allow that, I would try to stay out here all winter, taking my chances with the wolves, the Indians, and these terrible things that surround us on every side." "Remember our old motto, Roger, that carried us through so many troubles in the past--never despair, no matter how black the skies look. We will come out on top yet,--we _must_!" "Do you think that awful hole can have any bottom, Dick?" For answer the other dropped a large bit of rock, being careful to cast it far out from the wall underneath them. It seemed a long time before they believed they caught the faintest kind of sound away down in the black depths. "Why, it must be nearly half a mile deep!" cried the astonished Roger. "We can never hope to see our things again, for a fact." "I'm afraid that's the truth," admitted Dick. "It is a great misfortune, but we must face it bravely. 'There are more ways than one to skin a cat,' you know Jasper used to say; and, while things look dark for us just now, we can find a way out, never fear." They backed away carefully, not wishing to start another slide that might carry them down to keep company with the lost outfit. At least they had their guns, and a fair stock of ammunition to fall back on. Besides this they were warmly dressed, and able to resist to some extent the attack of the wintry winds. Dick brought this to the attention of his companions as they trudged onward. He was always finding some reason for plucking up hope; conditions, according to Dick's healthy mind, were never so had but that they might be worse. Some time later they drew up, Mayhew suggesting that they could hardly find a better place to spend the night than where they were. A small stream ran past, and it was cold water, too, as they soon discovered. "Trout in it!" Mayhew announced, as though he had something on his mind, "and if you say the word, I think I can get a few of them. The season is late; but, since winter is still holding off, they may bite at a bait." "It would be a good idea," returned Dick, "since we have lost all our supplies we will have to get food by all sorts of means. Our guns should bring us in game, if only we dare fire them. Yes, try the fishing, Mayhew, and good luck to you." The guide had some hooks with him, for he always went prepared to provide himself with a tasty meal from a convenient stream, being very fond of fish. He also found some fragments of meat with which to bait his hooks. While the others were making ready to start a small flame in a depression, where it could not betray them to lurking enemies, Mayhew began his angling. Fortunately for the little party the trout were both hungry and guileless. They had never had any acquaintance with such a thing as a fish-hook. Perhaps, once in a long time, some passing Indian brave may have used his primitive fish spear in order to secure a meal, but this had failed to educate them in the wiles of the human race. And so it came about that presently Mayhew proudly exhibited a beautiful trout that, being freshly caught, seemed to glow with all the colors of the rainbow. "Two more like it would make us all a fine meal," said Dick, as he surveyed the prize. "I can get them, never fear, unless my cunning has deserted me," the guide told him, confidently. It proved that his boast was good, since a second fish was soon taken, although they had to wait until almost dark before a third came to hook. Meanwhile Roger had prepared the two already captured, and they were all soon being held over the red coals lying in the hole that served as a fireplace. Such experienced woodsmen as the adventurers were knew how to cook meat and fish without any necessity for a frying-pan. Nor would they miss salt with which to season it. A sharp appetite takes the place of these things in the woods. Perhaps all of them could have eaten more had they been given a chance; for, although the trout had been of unusual size, they seemed to disappear most miraculously, once the hungry campers started in to make their supper. This duty done, they faced another dilemma. How were they to keep warm as they slept? Accustomed to snuggling down inside their blankets when the wind whistled, it was not the nicest outlook to face a night in the open, with no protection from the chilly air. The worst of it was that they could not build a roaring fire to warm them. Had that been possible, no one could have found any reason for complaint; but it would be next door to madness, in the estimation of the borderman, to have attempted it, with those hostiles not far away, and ready to creep upon them as they slept. Dick noted the rising wind with uneasiness. It was gradually swinging around so as to come out of the northwest, too, and that was the point where the wintry storms came from. When a gale blew from that quarter, with a sting in its breath, wise people kept to their cabins, and declined to venture forth until the worst had passed. What would become of them should they be caught in this open camp, without any fire, and destitute of robes or blankets? Dick expected to hear Roger make some remark bearing on this matter, at any moment now; for he knew the other must be beginning to shiver as he sat in uncomfortable silence, evidently brooding over the many troubles by which they were confronted, and trying to see a way out. Mayhew was prowling about close by. It was not pitch dark, though one must possess good eyes in order to see with any degree of accuracy. "He's looking to see if we can better our condition," thought Dick, when he had watched the guide examining a pile of rocks in the immediate vicinity that may have been heaped up for some purpose by Indians, years and years before. Apparently Mayhew was not finding much encouragement in his search, for Dick could hear him muttering rather disconsolately to himself, though he did not seem disposed to give up entirely, being possessed of a stubborn nature. Soon Roger was rubbing his hands one over the other, which indicated that he felt the cold. Dick's mental figuring had produced results, and he believed a proposition he meant to offer would strike the others favorably. He was only waiting for Roger to open the subject. Presently Roger got up on his feet and commenced to thresh both arms back and forth. It has always been known as a good means for starting circulation when the blood is chilled from inaction; though Roger could not obtain the best results on account of having to refrain from making any more noise than was absolutely necessary. Dick thought the time had arrived to make his suggestion. The wind was blowing strongly by them, with every prospect of a still further increase in velocity. If it kept up throughout the night the dawn would turn out to be bitterly cold; and, unless they were able to find shelter, they might perish. "This is an exposed camp, don't you think, Roger?" he began. "Yes, and unless we can have a fire I hate to think what will happen to us before another day comes around," the other replied. "Then we must make a change," Dick told him. "That is easy to say, but where can we go that would be better?" "I know a place," came the confident reply, "so get ready to go with me, both of you." CHAPTER XV SHELTER FROM THE BITING NORTH WIND "I AM glad to hear you say that, Dick; you always have some good news when it gets bleak and black. And from the way I'm shivering I think the sooner we make a move the better." Mayhew had also heard the proposal with interest. Unfruitful though his own search had proved, the news that one of the boys had made some sort of discovery likely to benefit them sounded good to him. "Where are going, Dick?" asked Roger, after they had started. "Unless I'm mistaken we seem to be on the back trail." "Where else could I take you, except to some place I had seen before?" demanded the new guide. "But I know you must want to hear about it, so listen. As we came along I happened to notice what looked like the mouth of a cave. If it should turn out that way we can find shelter within. It might even be possible for us to light a fire there." "Caves are all right on a bad night, too," assented Roger. "We know, for haven't we made use of one when overtaken by a storm? I only hope it turns out to be something besides a little hole in the side of the hill." "I have hopes that it will prove to be much better than that." "Is it far away?" continued the other, a little uneasily, for after their late bitter experience, when the earth slide robbed them of their packs, Roger had come to eye their surroundings with considerable suspicion, and did not much fancy prowling around there in the darkness. "Only a few minutes' walk," Dick assured him. "I want to make sure that we do not pass it by, that is all." He devoted himself to the task of keeping track of the trail as they made their way along. Even Roger used his eyes the best he knew how, hoping that he might be of some assistance. "Here it is!" he was glad to hear Dick say, presently. Both the others surveyed the spot with considerable interest. The rock formation was peculiar in many ways. It looked as though at some remote period, when the continent was in process of formation, upheavals had forced numerous minor ridges of stone to assume the shape of "hogbacks," as Mayhew called them. It was toward one of these that Dick now pointed. Looking closely, Roger fancied he could just detect what looked like a dark spot near its base. He knew then that Dick must have noted some other land-mark in order to find the place. No doubt the habit of observation which the young pioneer cultivated, much as modern Boy Scouts are taught to do in these days, had come in handy again, as he had often known it to do in the past. They pushed closer. There was an opening without any doubt. Just what it led to, of course none of them could more than guess; but they had hopes. "One thing let us notice," ventured Roger. "Here is a dead tree, and if we find it possible to build a fire inside we know where to come for fuel." "Good for you, Roger," the other lad hastened to say. "And now to try and find out what awaits us here." Dick insisted on being the leader. The discovery had been all his, and it was therefore up to him to be the guide. On hands and knees Dick crept carefully into the hole. He held his gun in such a way that if it became necessary he could make quick use of it. So far as he knew there was no peril hanging over their heads; but it always pays to be ready. Their progress was very slow, because they had to grope their way along. Dick put out a hand and felt of the rock before trusting himself to advance. He had no desire to find himself whirling through space, after the manner of their lost packs, in case an unseen abyss yawned in front of him. This went on for several minutes. They had pushed some little distance into the gaping aperture, and so far as could be ascertained there was as yet no limit to the cave. Dick arrived at the conclusion that they had gone far enough to admit of a change in their method of procedure. "I am going to strike a light, so keep still, please, both of you," he announced. Dick was always prepared for anything like this. His tinder, flint and steel were handy, and he even had a small piece of tallow dip that hardly deserved the name of candle, but which had a wick, and would give out a faint glow if ignited. To the boy of to-day this awkward means of producing a light would have presented almost insurmountable difficulties, and ultimate success might well be hailed as a wonderful feat. To the pioneer lads it was of such daily occurrence that they thought nothing of accomplishing it. In a very brief period of time Dick had clipped his flint and steel together so as to send a shower of sparks into the tiny bit of inflammable tinder, which began to smolder. This was blown until it flamed up, when the wick of his tallow candle-end was thrust into the blaze. Looking around after they had obtained this sorry means of illumination, the intruders could see that they were in a good-sized cave. Ahead of them lay more dense gloom, which would seem to indicate that the aperture amidst the rocks extended for an unknown distance beyond. "Well, this is a pretty good place to put in the night, when it's getting cold enough out there to freeze your toes," said Roger. "It's really comfortable in here," agreed Mayhew. "That's because the rock is warm, if you have thought to notice it," Dick explained. "Now that you mention it," remarked Roger, as he again dropped on all fours to find out for himself, "I see it is a fact. Queer that I didn't seem to notice it before. We really need no fire here, except that this darkness could almost be cut with a knife." "No danger, that I can see, of the light being observed out there," Mayhew told them, thus proving that he, too, was much in favor of adding to their comfort, if it was to be accomplished at such a trifling expenditure of time and labor. "Shall I crawl out and fetch in some of that wood, Dick?" asked Roger, and there was such pleading in his voice and manner that Dick could not have refused him, even had he wanted to. Accordingly Roger crawled away. Since there was a dim light in the cave he did not find it so difficult to make his way toward the exit. Later on he came back, with his arms full of fuel. "You get the fire started where you think best, Dick, while I make another trip for a second lot. We could keep ten fires supplied, and not use half the supply outside." "Could you see our light out there?" asked Dick. "Not a thing," replied Roger. "The fact is, I had to do half of my crawling in the dark, and only got the first glimpse of the light after I was pretty well inside." That took away the last doubt Dick may have been entertaining with regard to the wisdom of having a fire. "It will be easier for you the next time, if I get things going," he told the fuel gatherer. Mayhew, as though feeling that he ought to have a share in the labor, this time followed the boy out of the cave, and also picked up a load of the scattered wood. The tree must have been struck by lightning at some time in the past, since the branches covered so much ground. Dick had the fire well started by the time the others returned. They could see the light plainly after passing the mouth of the cave, although there seemed so little chance of it betraying their presence that it was hardly worth considering. How different things looked, with that cheery blaze going! The gloom seemed much further removed than before. And, like the careful boy that he was, Dick had extinguished his precious candle-end as soon as its faint light was no longer needed. Time might yet make that worth its weight in gold to him, since its like could only be obtained in some settlement. An hour later Dick, wishing to find out how the wind-storm might be progressing, made his way to the opening and passed out. When he returned he reported that the stars were still shining, and it was getting very cold; as for the wind, it continued to roar across the open country furiously, now coming out of the north. "And let me tell you," he wound up by saying, "I builded better than I knew at the time I happened to notice this cave mouth. In here it is so comfortable one finds it hard to believe the cold is so intense outside." "For folks who have no blankets a cave is a very fine thing, I must say," was Roger's comment. Of course, almost all of their conversation was connected with the immediate past, and the hope they entertained concerning a successful termination of their hunt for Jasper Williams. "You did not see anything to tell you the Indians might be camped near here, I suppose, Dick?" Roger asked, as the other took his place once more near the fire. "No, although I looked in every direction," was the reply. "There is a strange light over toward the west. You can see it in the sky. I do not know how to describe it, except that once, when the forest was afire down on the Missouri, we saw the same reflection. It may be there is a prairie burning somewhere down that way. It would be a fearful sight, I should think." "And picture the buffalo, and the deer, and everything that runs, fleeing from the flames!" added Roger, who possessed a lively imagination. "I heard one of our men by the name of Fields tell about the time he was caught in such a fire when far out on the open prairie, hunting buffalo, and what a narrow escape he had." "Yes, I remember what a strange thing he did to escape being burned to death," Mayhew continued. "It seems that, as running was out of the question, and the wall of fire was rushing toward him, Fields discovered a little hollow in the surface of the prairie. Into that he crawled, first dragging the buffalo he had just slain so that it would cover his body, and serve as a shield against the passing fire." "And did he escape without being badly burned?" asked Dick, deeply interested, since it happened that he had never heard this story before. "Nothing worth mentioning, he told me," the guide continued. "Few men would have been so wise as to think of such a thing; but then Fields is as bright as a button. They say you can never catch a weasel asleep, and I expect that would apply to him just as well." This man, whom they were talking about, was one of those whose names have been inscribed in history on the roll of fame, along with those of Lewis and Clark, for he accompanied them on their wonderful journey through thousands of miles of utterly unknown country, to the far-distant Pacific, and return. "How can we find a soft place to lie down on, please tell me, Dick?" Roger asked, a little while later, as he ran his hand over the hard rock, and shook his head as though the prospect were not very alluring. Perhaps Dick meant to reply, even though he could hardly have suggested any amelioration of the conditions; but, he was not given the chance to open his mouth, as it happened, for just then an angry roar sounded close at hand that made Roger suspect one of those terrible water-spouts must be about to overwhelm them. He saw a bulky object come sweeping toward them from the unexplored interior of the cave, and then scatter the burning brands as it plowed through the little fire. CHAPTER XVI THE BATTLE IN THE CAVE INSTINCTIVELY all of them guessed what the character of the intruder must be. The terrible roar, and the glimpse they obtained of the great hairy body ere the fire was scattered right and left betrayed it. "A bear!" cried Roger, voicing the discovery of his companions as well as his own. All was confusion. Mayhew had been rather unfortunate, for he chanced to be partly in the way of the onrushing beast as it made straight for the fire, the presence of which in its den must have aroused its anger. He was just in the act of scrambling to his feet when he was struck by the beast's huge body, and was bowled over just as you may have seen a pin hit by a speeding ball in the alley. Dick had somehow managed to snatch up his gun when he gained his knees. The place was now almost in darkness, since the burning brands had been scattered far and wide. The body of the infuriated animal was so bulky, however, that he could not fail to discern its outlines against the wall, where a still flickering brand chanced to lie. The boy knew that it was no time for hesitation. No matter what had caused the animal to attack them, and even though the fire had been the first object of its rage, those who were responsible for the intrusion must come next on the list. He thrust the long-barreled gun straight out, and, without waiting to rest the butt against his shoulder, pulled the trigger as soon as he felt the muzzle strike something yielding. There was a muffled roar as the rifle was discharged. Dick, with the hunter instinct, instantly threw himself aside, anticipating that the wounded bear would turn upon him for revenge. His shot had apparently not been a fatal one, though it brought another of those dreadful roars from the occupant of the cave; and now, since it was impossible for him to reload his gun unless given time, he would have to cast it aside and resort to his hunting knife. Roger had not quite lost his senses, although the abruptness of the attack must have bewildered the boy. When he threw himself back out of the way he somehow missed connection with his gun. That it was ever in his mind was proved by the frantic way in which he instantly started to grope about on the bare rock near his feet, as though in expectation of finding it. After all, it was the brilliant flash accompanying the discharge of Dick's gun that showed Roger his own weapon. He quickly seized it, and then turned to deliver his fire. All this was taking place in much less time than it takes to read it. The bear was certainly in deadly earnest, and evidently meant to complete the job that had been undertaken with such fury. Roger saw his chance to shoot, and was not neglectful of it. One experience with a monster of this type had shown him the necessity for sending his bullet to some vital spot, for he knew that a wounded grizzly would never turn tail and run. A kind fortune must have guided the shot, for, beyond a doubt, had it failed in its mission, the fate of the boys would have been settled. Shut up there in a cave in contact with a savage bear, armed with claws an inch in length, and rendered wild with pain, they would have had but small chance of escape. With the muffled discharge of Roger's rifle the beast staggered, and then fell with a crash. Dick was trying to get a charge of powder into the barrel of his gun, though his hands trembled so that it was a next to impossible undertaking. It happened that just then his foot struck against some object, and, filled with a wild hope, he bent down to ascertain what it could be. When he found that he had come upon Mayhew's gun, Dick was ready to shout with joy, for he knew that, if Roger's shot had failed, there was still another chance. There was no need of further exertions, it proved. The two shots, delivered at such close range, had completed the work, for the monster lay still upon the floor of the cave. A smell of burning hair caused Dick to pluck one of the still blazing fagots away, which, with presence of mind, he immediately utilized for starting a fresh fire. (Note 4.) Mayhew was discovered, sitting up and looking somewhat dazed. He had a lump on his head where it had come in contact with the rock at the time the rush of the bear had thrown him aside; but, on the whole, they felt that they could congratulate themselves that things were no worse. Of course the first thing the boys did was to reload their weapons. If there was one bear in the cave there might be a mate, and it was certainly the part of wisdom for them to be in readiness to defend themselves to the utmost. After the fire had been revived, the guns placed in a condition for service, and Mayhew's injuries looked after in a way that, crude as it might be, satisfied him, they began to figure out how it all came about. "Then this is a bear's den, after all!" Roger commenced; "yet not one of us ever thought of such a thing, did we?" "I saw nothing that would tell it," admitted Mayhew, "and, if the beast was in the habit of coming in by way of the opening that we used we would have known it. A bear's den always has a smell that you will notice as soon as you enter; that has been my experience in all my hunting, and I've run across a few." "Then there must be another entrance more convenient to the hunting grounds of the bear," Dick observed. "The beast may not have been in its den when we arrived. Coming along, just a little while ago, our fire attracted attention, and then the discovery of human beings here rendered it furious." "It beats anything I ever met with," commented Mayhew. "No black bear would ever dash upon a fire unless first terribly wounded. But this beast was as wild as if we had been filling her hide with lead." "All we have been hearing from the Indians and the French trappers about these silver-tip bears of the mountains seems to be true," remarked Dick. "They are fearful enemies," said Roger. "We have been lucky to kill the two we have met; but, if a shot should fail, the hunter would never escape being torn into ribbons." He took up one of the immense paws of the dead beast as he spoke, and exhibited the claws that decorated it. They were terrible enough to send a shudder through the bravest heart, especially when one considered the titanic strength possessed by the steel muscles of the animal. "Well," ventured Dick, "it turns out that there is danger hovering over those who invade this strange country, even when they believe themselves securely quartered in a cave!" "But I hope this little adventure is not going to make us think of leaving here, to spend the night under the stars, and in the cold wind?" Roger hinted, a little fearful lest his comrade should consider this the wisest policy. Dick could plainly see what was worrying the other, and he hastened to set Roger's fears at rest. "If we have to choose between two evils," he said, "we might as well take the lesser. We know what we can expect out there. That wind is as keen as the edge of my buckhorn hunting knife, and would go through us long before morning. And, after all, there may be only one bear. How about that, Mayhew?" "If you asked my opinion, I would say here by all means," replied the wood ranger, immediately. "We can take watch and watch, and be on our guard through the night." Roger drew a breath of relief. "That would be much better than freezing half to death outside!" he exclaimed; "and you can count on me to take my regular turn. But, Dick, one thing is sure--we must not let our fire go out while we stay here." "That would be only the part of wisdom," Dick decided, "and, while we have the chance, perhaps we'd better fetch in plenty of wood now. The night is long, and a fire eats up a lot of fuel." This they set about doing without delay. Mayhew, feeling a little dizzy after his rough experience with the onrushing bear, was told to stand guard while the boys looked after the wood supply. It might have been noticed, however, that both of them slung their guns over their backs by means of the straps used for this purpose. Evidently they did not mean to be caught napping, and if by chance they encountered the mate of the slain bear while laying in a supply of fuel they wanted to be in condition to give him a warm reception. But nothing happened. If there was a second bear he must have been far away from his den on that night, for he failed to disturb the peace of the explorers' camp. The plan of keeping watch by turns worked splendidly, and there was not a single minute that one pair of eyes did not remain on the alert for danger, while two of the party slept. Hours crept on, and Dick, who had taken his turn for the second time, believed it must be drawing close to dawn outside. Roger and the borderman were sleeping by the fire. Hard though their beds may have been, they were accustomed to roughing it, and not a murmur had been heard. A piece of wood served for a pillow, and in that warm shelter they needed no covering. Creeping to the exit Dick took an observation. He found it was indeed daylight, and that the wind had died down with the coming of the sun, though the air still felt pretty cold to him, especially after having been in so snug a retreat for many hours. It was really time they were up and doing. The future did not look very promising. They would have to run the risk of firing their guns, so as to secure fresh meat, for they must eat to live. And somewhere within a radius of ten or twelve miles Jasper Williams might be found, either in a camp of his own, or as a prisoner of the hostile Indians. If ever Dick Armstrong had cause to call upon his resolute and hopeful heart it was when he faced such a dismal outlook. Never once did he falter. His lips were firmly pressed together, and on his sunburned face there rested a look of determination that no amount of difficulties could dissipate. He immediately awoke the others. "The dawn has come, and we must be on the move!" he announced. No one uttered a complaint. Roger had, before going to sleep, managed to remove the terrible claws of the dead grizzly. That would be the only token they could show as evidence of the truth of their story concerning the night attack, and the fight in the cave. So they issued forth, shivering at first when the cold air struck them. "Good-by, old cave," said Roger, waving his hand back toward the small black hole amidst the rocks, the discovery of which had added so much to their comfort; "we will never forget you as long as we live. A bear's den may be a queer place to spend a night in; but when it happens to be a bitter cold night it might be a whole lot worse." They took up the work in earnest, and as all of them were exceedingly hungry, their first duty was to secure food. Of course, they might have food for several days, if they cared to use the carcass of the dead grizzly, but the meat was so tough and coarse that, after one trial at making a breakfast of grizzly steak, they all agreed that they would rather rely on the chance of obtaining more palatable food. If they could only run across a deer it would supply them with all the meat they wanted for several days, and, although they realized the danger of discharging their guns while the hostile Blackfeet were in the vicinity, they were willing to run that risk. CHAPTER XVII THANKS TO THE WOLF PACK "WHAT have you on your mind now, Roger?" asked Dick, realizing how serious his companion had become. As a rule Roger was a light-hearted boy, so that the change was all the more noticeable whenever he devoted himself to evolving some idea that had occurred to him. "Oh, I was only thinking how easy it would be to get all the fresh meat we needed if only we could stay in one place," was his reply. "What sort of fresh meat do you mean?" continued the other. "Four different times now," explained Roger, "I have seen those big jack-rabbits jump out of some copse, or a crack in the rocks, and bound away. Each time, just from force of habit, my gun would fly to my shoulder, and I found myself covering the jumper; but of course I did not mean to pull the trigger." "No, because our ammunition is scanty, and, if we have to fire a shot, we should bag something larger than a rabbit. But, Roger, please go on and explain what you mean." "Only this," the other added; "we could easily make traps, and snare some of these fat rabbits if we were in camp. Keeping on as we do, that's out of the question. So, in the end, I suppose we must use our guns to bring down a deer, or a buffalo, if we have the good luck to run across one." Mayhew came to a full stop just then. "There is something coming this way!" he announced. "It sounds to me as though it was a pack of excited dogs, or wolves in chase of a breakfast," said Roger, after listening a moment. Dick nodded his head in a fashion that told that he was of the same opinion. Indeed, as the sounds were constantly growing louder, there could be little doubt concerning their origin. The snapping yelps of wolves in full cry, once heard, cannot again he easily mistaken. There is a thrilling import to the sound that goes through one like a galvanic shock. "They must he chasing a deer," Roger hazarded. "Yes, and heading straight this way!" added Mayhew. "Perhaps this is the chance we have been waiting for," ventured Roger, as he handled his gun eagerly. "No harm done in getting ready, that I can see," observed Dick, sagely. "Let us spread out just a little," suggested Mayhew, who, being a veteran hunter, knew all about the habits of wolves when in pursuit of their quarry. "Yes, I like that idea," agreed Dick, "for they may pass to the right or the left, and then the one on that side would get a fair shot. Remember, Roger, take your stand, and after that be sure not to move. If you did, you might cause the deer to sheer off, and us to lose our breakfast." Mayhew stood still, while Dick hurried off to the right, and Roger took to the left, though neither of them went more than a hundred feet. In fact the clamor was drawing so close now that at any minute they might expect to catch their first glimpse of the chase. All of them stood like statues, their eyes riveted on the quarter whence the wild yelps arose. They could hear the rush of something moving swiftly through the brush, and the sound grew constantly in volume. Suddenly a running animal came into view, a lordly elk, Dick instantly discovered, and a buck at that. From the manner in which he ran it was evident that either the elk was lame, or else had been chased so far that he was becoming exhausted. Close at his heels came four ferocious gray wolves. They were spinning along at top speed, their red tongues hanging from between their open jaws, where the white teeth gleamed cruelly. The boys had run across another species of wolf since leaving their old hunting grounds near the mouth of the Missouri. This was the smaller prairie wolf, an animal akin to the coyote. But they saw at a glance that these were the large, gray timber wolves, more to be feared than any other species, especially if they were half starved. The poor exhausted elk was apparently on his last legs. He seemed to realize this fact, too, for, as the boys waited impatiently for the chase to reach them, they saw him stumble, and fall to his knees, as he turned to face his foes. Instantly the pack leaped upon him. One was sent whirling through the air, torn by the sharp antlers of the buck; but the others quickly had the gallant elk down on the ground. "We must chase them off!" cried Dick, starting on the run toward the spot. Roger and the guide followed, so that the three of them were running as fast as they could in the direction of the tragedy. They knew how quickly wolves can tear the carcass of their quarry, and realized that, if they hoped to save a portion of the elk's best quarters, they would have to hasten. The wolves quickly discovered their presence; but they were also very loath to abandon their feast. Indeed, it seemed for a moment as though they meant to dispute the right of the newcomers to the game their cunning and ferocity had pulled down, for they crouched there, and growled, and bared their teeth as the trio approached. "Be ready to defend yourself, Roger!" called out Dick, "but do not shoot unless it is absolutely necessary!" The wolves realized that they must yield up their quarry unless they really meant to fight, which would be foreign to their crafty natures. Doubtless they knew that man was an enemy to be feared, even though he might only be an Indian brave, armed with his bow and flint-tipped arrows. [Illustration: "TURNING AROUND FROM TIME TO TIME AS THOUGH HALF INCLINED TO COME BACK"] They accordingly retreated, though turning around from time to time as though half inclined to come back and have it out with the spoilers of their well won feast. "We'll give you the leavings, never fear," laughed Roger, when he saw that there was a fair portion of the elk still untouched, from which they could undoubtedly obtain an ample supply of meat. They set to work with a will, and soon had obtained all they thought necessary. All this occurred while the hungry wolves remained in sight, skulking here and there, sniffing the air in a beseeching manner, and once in a while giving vent to a plaintive howl that sounded strange, indeed, heard in the broad daylight. No sooner did the three hunters start to leave the spot than the eager animals could be seen turning, their natural sense of caution serving to hold them back, while the pangs of hunger urged them on. "If there had been more of them," Dick commented, "the chances are we would not have been able to take their meat without a fight." "Even those four might have tried to scare us off if it was later in the season, when they are half starved," Mayhew told them. "Just now the wolves are fat after the fall, when hunting is good; that is, fat for their kind. But, when their flanks seem to almost meet, and they are gaunt with hunger, they make a terrible enemy to attack." The two lads exchanged glances. "Yes, we know, for we have been through just such an experience," said Roger, as he drew back the sleeve of his hunting tunic, to exhibit a long, red scar. "That is something I carry to remind me of the time. I sometimes dream of it, and can see the terrible mob of half-crazy wolves leaping up at my throat, while I did my best to beat them back." "If it hadn't been for the coming of some hunters with their dogs just in the nick of time," added Dick, "I think both of us would have been pulled down and killed by that pack. It was one of our narrowest escapes." "And we have had a good many," said Roger, smiling as his memory sped back to former scenes. As all of them were very hungry, their one thought now was to cook some of the happily-secured meat as soon as it could be arranged. "Here is as good a place as we can find," suggested Dick, "and, unless I am mistaken, we will be able to get what wood we want without going far for it." "The kind that will make next to no smoke, you mean!" Roger remarked, and the other nodded. There is a vast amount of difference in wood. Well-seasoned stuff of a certain variety will burn, and give off hardly any smoke; on the other hand, if the fuel is partly green, or obtained from a certain species of tree, it will send up a black column that can be seen a long way off. When hunters or Indians wish to communicate with each other, even though miles apart, they take this latter kind of wood for their fire; but, when they desire to do some cooking while in the enemy's country, with keen eyes on the watch around them, it is of course necessary to attract as little attention as possible, and on that account the kind of fuel that gives out no betraying smoke is chosen. Of course this was what Dick and his two companions now did; and also the fire was built in a depression among the rocks so that it might not be too prominent. Here they busied themselves cooking small pieces of the elk meat. Their method of doing it was exceedingly primitive, for it was thrust close to the fire by means of long splinters of wood, and turned around until well scorched, when it was devoured with much satisfaction. It requires a vigorous appetite to really enjoy cooking of this type. Many boys of to-day would turn up their noses at such food, and go hungry for a while, though in the end they might come around and ask for a portion. They spent half an hour about that small cooking-fire. At the end of this time all admitted that they were satisfied, and could not eat another bite. However, at Dick's suggestion, some more of the elk meat was cooked, to serve them for a "snack" in case circumstances should not allow them to light a fire later on. It was Dick who always thought of the future. Roger, with his happy-go-lucky ways, was, as a rule, content to consider only present necessities. When he had eaten, and felt satisfied, he did not know why any one should borrow trouble thinking of something far in the future. In fact, he generally took to heart that passage he had heard his father read from the Good Book at home, "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," and applied it to many ordinary occurrences. After leaving the place where they had enjoyed this good breakfast, of which all of them were in such need, they laid out a course that would take them to a section of the country that they had not as yet visited. All the time they could hear occasional strange roaring or hissing sounds that aroused the utmost curiosity, for they did not know at what moment they would come upon some new and startling mystery. This enchanted land was apparently the home of innumerable weird sights such as a white man had never before set eyes on; and, as they continued to advance, they were constantly reminded of this fact. So, when Roger, who was a trifle in the advance, called out that they were face to face with a gigantic "paint pot," the others held their breath as they pushed on to see with their own eyes what he could mean. CHAPTER XVIII THE GIANT PAINT POT IT was indeed a sight well calculated to make the boys stare, and rub their eyes in wonder, as though they half believed they must be dreaming. If these wonders of Yellowstone Park elicit cries of delight from tens of thousands of tourists in these modern times, imagine how remarkable they must have seemed to these pioneer lads more than a hundred years ago. "When you called it a paint pot, Roger, I think you hit the bull's-eye, for it does look like that, with all those colors boiling up in such a crazy fashion!" Dick presently remarked, breaking the spell that seemed to bind them. "But what is it made of, I'd like to know?" demanded the puzzled Roger. "Colored clay, in the shape of mud, that is boiling all the time. Be careful how you put your hand to it. See how the steam keeps on rising. It must be pretty hot stuff!" "But what makes it boil that way? There must be a fire of some kind deep down in the earth?" "Nothing else would make all these fountains of hot water, and even the rocks in some places feel warm," admitted the other lad, who was hardly less amazed than Roger himself. "It must be some sort of volcano," Roger continued, thoughtfully. "It has no visible cone, like most of them do, and so the heat escapes in this way through hundreds of little vents." That is about the nearest explanation any scientist has ever been able to give why this one region in all the world contains innumerable geysers, hot springs, boiling colored mud pots, and various other wonders of Nature. (Note 5.) "All I can say is that I don't blame any poor Injun for believing the place is Evil Ground," muttered Mayhew, as he stared at the strange spectacle of that blue and yellow and green mud boiling ceaselessly, and throwing off steam that had a peculiar odor, unlike anything they had ever smelled before. He looked around him, and shrugged his shoulders. So many remarkable things were to be seen, such as a frontiersman might well view with alarm, that it was no wonder Mayhew felt uneasy. Left to his own devices he would have turned his back on this enchanted region, and considered himself a lucky man if only he might get away with his life. "It strikes me," Dick observed, "that we need not hope to find Williams anywhere about here, if, as we fear, he has been taken prisoner by those Blackfoot Indians." "No, because they would never come to a place like this, unless their old medicine man was along to make a palaver with the Evil Spirit," Roger suggested. "That is what I heard a Mandan brave say, and I guess it must be about so. We will have to go further, and look for Jasper elsewhere." Mayhew seized upon this hint to make a start, and, noticing how anxious the scout seemed to be to shut out the strange spectacle of that ever boiling pool of gayly tinted mud, the boys followed at his heels. "I can hear other spouting fountains not far away!" declared Roger. "Sometimes it is like a giant snake hissing, and then again I seem to catch a distant but terrible roaring sound, reminding me of that fierce bear in the cave." "Even if the winter is coming on here, there are plenty of birds still to be met with," Dick remarked, as a flock of cawing crows started up from a tree-top near by, and flew away. "Yes, there are hawks also, and I am sure I saw a pair of great bald-headed eagles soaring away up in the sky, wheeling in circles as they rose. Besides, we have stirred up many of those brush fowl that are so much like our chickens at home, and make such fine eating." "It would be a great place for a hunter or a trapper to spend the winter," Mayhew commented, "if only he could get used to the awful things there are going on in this beautiful section of country. You see, the snow must soon melt where there is so much heat; and that keeps the grass green for the deer and the buffalo." "Hark!" exclaimed Roger, stopping suddenly. His face lighted up with eagerness, and Dick was filled with curiosity. "What did you think you heard?" he asked, presently. "The signal we want to catch more than anything else," came the confident reply. "Not the whistle Jasper Williams taught us to practice, Roger, and which he uses when he wants to communicate with friends?" "That, and nothing else, Dick. I am sure I caught it, coming from somewhere over to the right." "Then why not answer it?" Dick told him. "Do you think it would be wise?" asked the other. "We want to know if Jasper Williams is near by, and that is the best way to find it out. You can give the whistle, Roger, for I have heard you practice it many times." For answer Roger puckered up his lips, and emitted a peculiar little trill. Should any one not familiar with it hear this sound, he would naturally imagine some bird was calling to its mate. All of them stood there, eagerly waiting to discover if Roger's note called forth any response. Before ten seconds had passed there came a faint whistle, very like that which the boy had given. "There, did you hear it, Dick?" gasped Roger, turning a flushed face toward his cousin, while his eyes sparkled joyously. "I heard a sound that might be just such a whistle as Jasper taught us," replied cautious Dick; "but don't build too many castles in the air, Roger, or you may be disappointed. Try again!" Roger was only too willing to do so, and there was an immediate reply this time, that all of them heard plainly. "He's coming this way, I do believe, for that was closer than before. Shall I give him another call?" "Yes, it can do no harm, and we must know the truth, at any rate." When the next answer came back it was beyond all doubt nearer than any that had preceded it. "Oh! we shall soon see him!" cried Roger, fixing his eyes on the spot, as near as he could calculate, whence that last reply had come. "Now, keep watching, both of you, while I signal to him again that the coast is clear." He added one more tremulous trill to his notes; to his astonishment the answer was so plain and clear that it seemed to come straight out of a pine tree not more than twenty-five yards away. "Why, he must be back of that tree, I think!" stammered Roger, uneasily, for he realized that Jasper Williams could never have gained such a Position without some of their eyes detecting his advance. Just then a bird flew out of the pine and alighted in another at some distance away in another quarter. Dick himself instantly gave the signal whistle, and there came an immediate answer; but it was now from the quarter whither the bird had flown. Roger gave a cry of disgust, while Dick laughed softly. "Good-by to Jasper this time, I'm afraid, Roger!" he said. "How mean that was for a silly little bird to have the same whistle Jasper had made up as his signal," said Roger, looking downcast. "Come, there's no use in our staying here any longer. If that bird keeps on whistling I might feel like using my gun to bring it down, for I'd think it was mocking me." "The poor thing thought a mate was calling," Dick assured him; "or else some other male bird that wanted to fight it. I warrant you, it is just as upset as you can be over the mistake." They pushed on once more, and inside of two hours had come upon at least seven more geysers, some of which were spouting, while others were quiet at the time the three pilgrims happened to find the craters. Now and then the boys would converse in low tones, for Dick knew that this was the best way to keep his companion's spirits from drooping. When other things failed, Dick could always interest him by referring to the wonderful luck that had befallen them, in giving them a chance to stay all winter at the Mandan village with the exploring expedition, so as to go on into the Golden West when spring came around. The uncertainty that lay ahead seemed to appeal to the spirit of adventure that lay deep down in the hearts of the young pioneers. "When we break camp in the spring and leave here," Dick went on, as though he had mapped it out in his mind, "we will have to head into the Northwest, Captain Lewis told me." "Why go that way instead of straight into the West, or turn toward the Southwest?" Roger asked him, just as Dick knew he would be likely to do. "It seems that the two captains have been picking up all the information they can from every source," Dick explained; "and this, when boiled down, causes them to believe there is a better opening over the great Rocky Mountain chain up there than in any other quarter. Besides, I believe they have an idea there is a great river that flows to the sea, the headwaters of which start in the land of the Blackfeet." "He must have gotten some of that information from the Blackfoot prisoner the Mandans have in their strong lodge?" suggested Roger, quickly. "I believe he did," Dick told him. "I happen to know that both the captains and an interpreter spent many hours with the Blackfoot. And I also heard that they had promised to take the man back to his people with them in the spring; for they were giving the Mandans some presents to coax them to turn him over to them." "Oh! just to think, Dick, what it will mean to us, if we are with them when they first set eyes on the big water! Our parents came from the far East, where they knew the Atlantic Ocean; and, if we could only see the other, what a feather it would be in our caps when we got back home." Dick had accomplished his purpose, for his cousin showed his old-time enthusiasm again. So they continued to converse as they followed Mayhew, who strode along in advance, constantly on the alert for some new and startling sight, and not at all pleased with his surroundings. It was after noon had come and gone that he uttered a cry that the boys understood as a command to halt. Each clutched his gun in the manner of those who know the value of being ready. "Look away off yonder, up on the low ridge!" said the guide, eagerly. "Moving figures, and of men at that!" ejaculated Roger. "Indians, I take it," said Dick; "for I can see the feathers in their hair, and the sun seems to glisten from their painted bodies. They must be on the warpath, to have put the paint on, and the feathers, too." "But look, Dick, there is one of them who wears clothes like a white trapper or borderman!" declared the excited Roger. "Do you see what I mean, Dick?" "Yes, it certainly looks that way," answered the other boy, shading his eyes with his hand in order to see better. "It _is_ a white man, too, for he is wearing some kind of fur cap, and his hunting shirt is fringed like our own. There, he turned his face this way then, and he is no Indian, I am as certain as that my name is Dick Armstrong!" CHAPTER XIX A SUDDEN PERIL "NOW they have gone!" said Roger, as the figures, outlined against the sky, vanished behind some outcropping rock. "Yes, and they seemed to be starting down the side of the ridge toward us, as near as I could see," Dick declared, nor did the guide dispute the assertion. "Could that have been our friend Jasper Williams?" demanded Roger, voicing the vague hope that was pounding at his own heart door. "He was too far away for us to make sure, one way or another," admitted Dick. "But he seemed to be of about the same build; and, Dick, you could see nothing to prove that it was any one else, could you?" "No, only that he was in the company of Indians," and Dick shook his head in a way that spoke of considerable doubt. "But then," argued Roger, "they might be friendly Mandans, or Sioux, or even some of these Sheep-eaters we've heard about, who live in certain sections of the Wonderland in brush shacks." (Note 6.) "Yes, that might be true, for they were too far away for us to tell from the feathers in their scalp-locks what tribe they belonged to," the other boy admitted. "And the last thing we heard about Jasper, from Hardy and Mordaunt, was that he was being chased by Blackfoot Indians," Roger continued. "Well," Dick explained, "this white man was no prisoner, for I saw him point ahead at something, which would mean that his arms were not fastened." "We know that Williams is a remarkable man," mused Roger, "and, even if those braves were of the fierce Blackfoot tribe, he might have managed in some way to have made them his friends. I know it doesn't sound reasonable, but Jasper knows Indian character better than any white man we ever met." "If he could do that he would be a magician." "So he would," admitted the other boy, reluctantly; "but what are we going to do about it, Dick?" "There is nothing for us but to wait and see," came the reply. "They acted as though heading in this direction. If you asked me about our best move I'd say, hide and watch. If it turned out to be Jasper we could call out; on the other hand, if it were one of these French trappers, who are hand in glove with the Blackfoot Indians, we needn't let them know we are around." "But do you think they noticed us?" asked the other boy. "That is more than I can say. I saw nothing to indicate it; but these redskins are so tricky they would hide it, even if they knew, and were watching us out of the tail of their eyes." "Let us hide, and see!" Mayhew said just then, showing that he approved of Dick's scheme. Looking around, they quickly decided where it would be best to conceal themselves. The ground was so rough and uneven that there were plenty of places that had an inviting look. Mayhew selected a patch of bushes as a retreat, and in another minute they were crouching under this shelter. Although most of the leaves were off the bushes, they grew so densely that it would require something more than a casual glance in that direction to betray the fact that several figures lurked there. They heard many different sounds, for silence was hardly ever present in this land of the spouting wells, which roared and hissed and spluttered as they shot up their steaming fountains toward the heavens. There was almost constantly a fretful murmur in the air that might suddenly turn into a whining shriek or a dull roar. A low exclamation from Mayhew announced that his trained vision had detected some sort of movement, far or near. "What is it?" demanded Roger, on the right of the guide. "They are coming!" was the answer. "Tell us where, that we may see also," the other urged. "Then turn this way, and look between those two leaning trees," said the guide. "But be careful that you move slowly. It is the quick actions that catch the suspicious eye of an Injun." "Oh! now I can see them plainly," whispered Roger. "They are heading straight for us!" "Blackfoot warriors for a certainty!" Dick muttered. "Can you see the white man plainly, Dick?" asked Roger, impatiently. "Not just yet," came the reply. "He must be back among some of the Indians who hide him. But we will soon know what to expect. Keep watching." Almost immediately Roger himself gave a grunt. It sounded as though bitter chagrin was connected with the sound. "There, I saw him plainly, Dick," he whispered, "and it isn't Jasper Williams at all. The man is a Frenchman, unless my eyes deceive me, and I ought to know what one of them looks like." "I believe it is none other than our old enemy, François Lascelles!" Dick said in the ear of his cousin; a bit of information that must have given poor Roger a strange thrill, for he could not have imagined any more discouraging news. "Oh! what if he runs across us here?" "We would have to fight for our lives, I fear. That man hates all our family about as bitterly as I've heard my father say another Frenchman named Jacques Larue once did." "But see how many there are of the Indians; a full dozen or more. They look as fierce as any braves I ever saw. I hope they pass by, and fail to notice us." "Keep still, Roger, they are getting too close now for us to talk, even in whispers. Be ready for the worst, even while hoping for the best. That is the Armstrong motto, you know. 'Sh!" Roger fixed himself so that he could see everything that went on without making the slightest movement. He knew those keen eyes of the red sons of the forest were quick to detect a suspicious movement, no matter how slight, and that, if he so much as lifted his hand, discovery would follow. The Indians were coming forward in a string, or what the trappers of that day called "Indian file," one stepping in the footprints of the brave ahead of him. In this fashion it would be difficult for any enemy on finding their trail to know whether three or twenty had passed. It was a piece of Indian cunning, and a part of their nature, since it could hardly have been undertaken for any particular reason at this time. They were heading directly toward the copse, but, since it would offer a bar to their progress, they might turn aside when it was reached. The boys almost held their breath as they watched the approach of those fierce-looking Blackfeet. Up to then the brave who was held a prisoner in the Mandan village had been the only member of this noted tribe they had seen at close quarters. (Note 7.) They were all picked men, if one could judge from their appearance; they were lithe, active as cats, alert, and at the same time muscular. Those swelling bronzed arms could doubtless paddle a dugout or a skin canoe at tremendous speed. Among them there must be braves who had won an enviable reputation for speed at foot races; or, it might be, renown as long distance runners, capable of keeping on the trail at a dog-trot for days and nights at a time. It was therefore with considerable respect, and not a little anxiety as well, that Dick and Roger watched them coming nearer. Of course they took note of the white man, too. He was a bold-looking adventurer, such as most of those French traders of the early century were, dashing in appearance, and with a certain air of recklessness about him, such as might be expected in those who daily took their lives in their hands and faced unknown perils in a wilderness that was almost a complete mystery to white men of the day. François Lascelles had entered largely into the lives of these two boys, even though their opportunities to see the wily and unscrupulous French trader had been few, up to then, and mostly at their home, where he visited to talk business with their parents. If they had not liked his looks at that time he certainly presented a far less prepossessing appearance now that he was away from all the outposts of civilization and saw no need to repress the tiger element in his nature. To himself Dick was saying: "That man would stop at nothing in order to have his own way. If ever we had the bad luck to fall into his power we could not expect any mercy, I am sure. And, if Jasper Williams is now in his hands, nothing can save him, unless we are fortunate enough to be able to come to his rescue." This far Dick had arrived in his train of thought when he received a sudden and severe shock. Mayhew had managed to give his foot a slight kick, as though to call his attention to something that was going on out in the open. Dick hardly required this signal to pay attention, for he had already seen what was happening. The Indians were no longer pushing forward as before. The one in the lead had suddenly stopped up; and he must have given vent to some exclamation that acted like magic on the rest, for every one had halted as though controlled by a single wire. They seemed to be gathering around their leader, who was pointing excitedly to the ground, as though he had made an important discovery. Mayhew grunted very softly, but the sound lost none of its significance on account of being so gently emitted. As for Dick, he did not need to be told what it was the Blackfoot had found; for, like a flash, it came to him that he and his companions had headed toward the clump of bushes from that very spot. The sharp eyes of the leading brave had discovered their trail! It had been a fatal blunder, their neglecting to cover this up in some manner, although, at the time, it might have seemed as though there was not one chance in a thousand the hostiles would come that way. No one moved, even though they must have felt hot and cold by turns, as the terrible result of the discovery flashed before their minds. The Indians were jabbering together in excited tones, though what they were saying the boys could only guess, since they knew nothing of the Blackfoot tongue. The white trader was apparently as curious as any of the dusky braves in his company. He even dropped down on his hands and knees, the better to examine the footprints. Of course it would be patent to them that the tracks were made by white men. What would be the result? Would they surmise that the three daring invaders of the Evil Manitou's Wonderland, the forge where he made all his thunderbolts, must be secreted near by? Could they read that those tracks had just been made, since blades of brown grass were still springing up after being pressed down? Perhaps Lascelles even knew that Dick and Roger were searching for Jasper Williams! He seemed to be superhuman when it came to learning things that were supposed to be secret. And, if that were so, then it was indeed a gloomy outlook that faced the pioneer boys. Dick could only catch his breath and watch to see what would happen next; that, and grip his gun tighter in his hands as he crouched waiting for the explosion. He knew their presence in the copse was suspected, for the trader was even then pointing straight at the patch of bushes, and saying something to his red companions. CHAPTER XX PRISONERS OF THE BLACKFEET FLIGHT was out of the question, for the boys could hardly hope to excel those fleet-footed Indian braves, however successful Mayhew might have proved. Indeed, there was little time given to any of them to think of escape. When the wily French trader had conveyed his suspicions to some of the Blackfoot braves there was a concerted dash toward the clump of bushes. Some of the Indians started to circle around, evidently in the expectation that, if the whites were concealed, they would attempt flight, and the idea of these runners was to forestall any such dash. "We must hold them back or all is lost!" exclaimed Mayhew, who, being an experienced Indian fighter, doubtless knew the weak and strong points of the red men, no matter to what tribe they belonged. The report of his long-barreled rifle followed his words almost instantly. There could be no question but that his bullet found its billet, for Mayhew was a crack shot. Roger strained his eyes to discover the form of Lascelles among those rushing straight toward the bushes, but he looked in vain. The shrewd Frenchman must have suspected that he would be a shining mark for the concealed riflemen, and hence he had discreetly taken shelter behind a convenient tree trunk, from whence he could observe all that went on, and be ready to appear after the battle was over. Failing to see Lascelles, Roger took hasty aim at the nearest Indian and fired, but apparently missed. Dick had not thought about trying for the trader; indeed, it might have been the most foolish thing Roger could have done, since the Indians, if successful, would probably dispatch the boys without hesitation, unless there was a restraining hand put out to prevent it. The tricky warriors came leaping and dodging to the attack, so that it was not the easiest thing in the world to hit such an eccentric target. When Dick fired he felt sure he had not missed, and yet his intended victim failed to fall, though he did act as though wounded. The guns being now empty the boys drew their pistols. These of course were of the same construction, being furnished with flint locks. It required considerable knack to be able to discharge such a weapon. The powder had to be shaken afresh into the pan, or there would be no explosion after the flint and steel had come violently in contact. Then, unless the connection were assured through the minute hole, it would result only in a flash in the pan, instead of the weapon doing its full duty. Roger, always more careless than Dick, snapped his pistol in vain, for there was no report. Perhaps it was just as well, since, in the end, one enemy more or less would have made very little difference. By this time the Indians were upon them, and each one of the little party found himself in the midst of a whirling force that frustrated all their wild efforts to strike with knife or hatchet. From a point close at hand a shrill voice was screaming orders in the Indian tongue. François had come to life suddenly, after making sure that the whites could no longer cover him with their fire-arms. He was ordering his red minions not to finish the three palefaces, if they expected to obtain the reward he had promised them. All this the boys heard as in a dream. They were so furiously engaged at the time, it was little attention they paid to anything that was going on. To avoid the savage blows aimed at them by dusky hands that gripped stone tomahawks, was about as much as they could manage. It was only later on, when they had a chance to exchange views concerning the fight, that they reached such a conclusion. Such an unequal contest could not last long. Dick and Roger were pulled to the ground by the many hands that gripped them. Struggling to the bitter end, they expected that some one of their red antagonists would finish them with a fell sweep of those flourished tomahawks; indeed, Dick shut his eyes in anticipation of such a tragedy, and before his inward vision there flashed one glimpse of the dear ones in the far distant home on the bank of the Missouri. But the blow did not fall. He could hear the excited voice of Lascelles haranguing the braves, and, opening his eyes again, Dick found that the French trader had interposed his arm between the threatening weapons and the two boys. Just what François was saying to his allies Dick could not tell, since he knew little of Indian talk, and nothing at all of the Blackfoot language. He could, of course, guess that Lascelles, for some reason of his own, did not wish the boys slain. It could hardly have been pity that influenced the trader, for he was a cruel man. Dick became aware of several other things just then. One was that Roger was keeping up his vain struggling, despite the fact that a couple of brawny braves were sitting on him. "Keep still, Roger," commanded Dick, realizing that the impulsive lad was imperiling both of their lives by his senseless actions; "you can never break away, and by keeping up that fighting you may force them to knock us on the head. We are prisoners, and there is no help for it." Roger stopped his writhing and beating with his fists, though the fact that he had to yield to the inevitable forced a groan from his lips. "Where is Mayhew?" asked Dick, noting that the scout did not seem to be near. Before Roger could frame any sort of a reply they heard a series of yells from a little distance, followed by a shot. "He must have managed to break away, Dick," exclaimed Roger, when he could get rid of the dirt that impeded his speaking; "and some of the Indians have followed after him. Oh, I hope he has not been killed!" "That didn't sound like it," Dick told him. "There was a deal of baffled fury in those Indian yells. Mayhew may get clear away, after all. He has no equal as a runner among all the men of the expedition." There was no time to say more, nor were the conditions by which the two boys were surrounded of a nature to invite conversation. Lascelles had apparently convinced those of the Indians who seemed most bent on finishing the white boys that it would be more to their advantage to hold them as prisoners or hostages, for reluctantly they dropped their uplifted weapons. That more than one of them did this under protest could be seen from the manner in which they eyed the prisoners, and shook their feather bedecked heads. "Get up, you American swine!" said Lascelles, accompanying his remark with a kick from the toe of his moccasin. As there was no longer a weight on his chest Roger sprang to his feet as though he had been shot up by a gigantic spring. His face was white with anger, and he would have leaped straight at the throat of the insulting French trader, despite the fact of Lascelles holding a leveled pistol in front of him, only that Dick seized hold and held him back. "You are crazy to think of that, Roger! Have some sense. Think of those at home, and do nothing to force his hand!" It was a terrible task for the hot-blooded boy to subside. He gave Lascelles a look that spoke volumes, but which only caused the Frenchman to grin in pleasure, for he had no idea that these boys would ever be given the chance to turn the tables on him. Neither of the boys had been badly hurt in the fierce scrimmage, though scratches and minor cuts were in evidence, and they looked the worse for wear. Deprived of every weapon, they were helpless in the midst of that circle of hostile Blackfeet, and could only grit their teeth and give back look for look in a resolute fashion. Lascelles stood before them, with folded arms, and a sneer on his dark face. From a point still more remote there came again those yells of baffled rage to tell that the skillful Mayhew must still be eluding his pursuers. "So, zis is ze young Armstrongs zat I haf ze pleasure to entertain?" the trader started to say, as though he had a communication to make which he fancied would add still more to their wretchedness, and it was necessary to first of all "break the ice." "Yes, we are the Armstrong boys, and you are François Lascelles," replied Dick. "What business have you trying to make us prisoners? We are not interfering with these Indians in their hunting grounds. The last time we saw you it was at the cabin of our grandfather, David Armstrong. Why do you not order these warriors to set us free? We will go back to the camp from which we came, and they will not see us again." "Eet is not to be as you wish, but as I say," the Frenchman observed, with a pompous inflation of his chest, as became a victor. "I haf you in my power, and zat ees vat I am here for. Eef you evair return to ze home again eet vill not be until ze winter is gone. Zen eet vill be too late to take ze leetle paper to zose zat sit by ze fireside, and wait day by day for you to come back!" At hearing this Dick felt considerable relief. Perhaps, after all, the Frenchman was not quite so bad a man as he had believed. He spoke as though there might be a possibility of their being kept prisoners through the winter, and set free in the spring, when it was no longer possible for them to reach home before the time limit had expired, and their parents ousted from their property. That would mean that long months must elapse. They might even be taken to the Blackfoot village, leagues and leagues away, but there would always remain a chance for escape. Dick was a firm believer in the old motto that "while there's life there's hope." "You know why we are here in this strange land, then?" he remarked, chiefly to draw the other out, so that something might be learned concerning the whereabouts of Jasper Williams. "Yes, eet is all plain to me vy you come here," Lascelles assured him, nodding as he spoke. "I haf made sure zat ze paper you could nevaire secure. I haf already ze Williams a prisoner in anuzzer camp, vere my son Alexis and ze brave French comrades zay watch heem like ze weasel." "You mean that Jasper Williams is a prisoner, do you?" asked Dick, while Roger listened eagerly, trying to read the grinning countenance of Lascelles, and determine whether he was speaking the truth, or concocting a lie for some evil purpose. "Zat ees vat I am saying," continued Lascelles; "I haf arranged zat he may be taken to ze village of Black Otter, and adopted into ze tribe. Ze big chief haf long wished to haf ze white man show zem many things zat zey do not know. Williams nevaire come back from ze Blackfoot country. Eet is many days' journey into ze cold Northwest, and no white man has ever seen the wigwams of Black Otter." "But what will you do with us; I hope you will not send us with the Blackfeet also?" asked Dick, still seeking information. "I haf not yet made up my mind, but pouf! vat does it matter to me? So zat you may not send ze word down to ze town on zat Missouri I care not vat becomes of ze Armstrong vermin. I haf Williams, and now both ends zey are tied up. Zat ees well!" "You will have to prove it before I believe Williams is your prisoner!" said Dick. "Ah! zat ees easy," retorted the Frenchman; "you haf seen zis knife in hees possession, it may be. Do you not recognize eet? Williams think so much of zat knife he would not let it leave hees person. But I haf eet here. So you see zere ees ze proof zat he ees a prisoner in zat uzzer camp." CHAPTER XXI BINDING UP AN ENEMY'S WOUNDS "DO you believe him, Dick?" asked Roger, huskily, after the French trader had turned his back on them, and the Indians busied themselves binding the hands of their captives behind their backs, using deerskin thongs for the purpose. "I'm afraid it must be so," replied Dick. "I happen to know about that knife, and have heard Williams say he prized it above anything he possessed. It has saved his life more than once, I understand." "Then if you recognized the knife it would mean that he is a prisoner like ourselves," admitted Roger, with a long-drawn sigh. "We may be taken to where he is being kept," the other told him. "They say misery likes company." "Oh! you must never give in like that. I tell you it is bound to come out right in the end, though things may look dark just now. Such a bad man could not win out ultimately. Do as I am doing and refuse to allow yourself to think such a thing can happen." "I try to--honestly I do, Dick; but what hope have we now? Here we are in the power of that rascal, who means to see to it that we do not get free until spring, and even then he may leave us to our fate. And, as if that were not enough, Jasper Williams, the only one who can save our parents' homes, is a prisoner and will be sent into the wilderness, never to be seen again." Dick could understand what a weight rested on the mind of his cousin. Was he not himself fighting against the same depression, and conquering it only because he would not give in? "Listen, Roger," he said, impressively, "there is only one way for us to win this fight, and that is by making up our minds nothing can ever best us. Brace up, and shut your teeth together in the old way." "Forgive me for giving in so soon; you are curing me fast now. I already feel that things are never so dark but that they might be worse." "Much worse," Dick told him, resolutely. "Whenever you feel your knees beginning to get weak under you, just shut your eyes and see father, mother and little Mary sitting by the fireside at home. It will do wonders. I know, for I have often tried it myself." By this time the Indians had finished binding their arms behind them. Evidently they expected to go to some other place to camp. The day was not far from its close. Dick wondered whether they were to be taken to the place where Jasper Williams was being held prisoner. Lascelles had said it was a camp where his son Alexis and some other Frenchmen were in charge, showing that he must wield considerable influence over the warlike Blackfeet. There was nothing to indicate what the result of the pursuit of Mayhew had been, up to the time they started forth. This in itself gave the boys a faint hope the guide might have eluded his pursuers. They had considerable faith in Mayhew, and believed that he would not desert them. Still, what could one man do against such a legion of enemies, and especially when in almost as much fear of the wonders of that enchanted region as the superstitious Indians themselves? Some of the Indians walked ahead, while others brought up the rear, once they started. Dick was curious enough to take note of the course they pursued. He had a dogged faith to believe that sooner or later he would want to know something about this ground, for he hoped to tread it again on the return journey to the explorers' camp. It was, he found, a difficult task to keep track of their passage. This was chiefly caused by the meanderings of the Indians. Whenever they fancied they were approaching one of the spouting wells, with its steam column, and its roaring voice, they would sheer off to one side, and circle around it. All this made their course an eccentric one, and Dick found it beyond his power to figure it out. All he could do was to note the general direction in which they were heading, and store it away in his memory for future use. Roger was close enough to him to allow of an occasional interchange of remarks. Their captors seemed to pay no attention to what they were saying; and of course none of them understood a word of it, so the boys saw no need of restricting themselves when discussing their hopes and fears. "I believe they intend to camp before long," Dick said presently, as they continued to move along through the pine-clad side of the slope that rose to form a foothill to the mountain chain further away. "But the sun is only setting, and these Indians never get tired, so what makes you think they will halt?" Roger asked, himself very weary. "But Lascelles is not anxious to keep going when there is no need," explained the other prisoner. "I saw him point out a spot to the tall Indian at his side, who must be a sub-chief from the feathers in his scalp-lock, and the bears' claws he carries about his neck. The Indian shook his head, and pointed ahead, as if he meant that he knew of a much better place to spend the night." "I hope there's a bubbling spring there, and that it's ice-cold," ventured Roger, "for I'm dry as a bone, and somehow most of the water up here is luke-warm, when it isn't nearly boiling." "There was that one place we struck," Dick remarked, "where a cold stream ran so close to one of the hot pools that I really believe you could catch a trout in the one, give it a swing over your head, and drop it in the other so it would be cooked without being taken off the hook." "I can see what the folks at home will do and say when you tell that yarn," observed Roger, with a faint chuckle, as though for the moment he had forgotten their predicament. "Look, there are three other Indians waiting for us by that dead tree!" Dick suddenly exclaimed. "One of them is wounded in the shoulder, too!" remarked Roger. "Oh! Dick, can those be the men who pursued Mayhew?" "I was just thinking about that myself," returned the other; "and, now that you ask me, I must say I believe they are. That one certainly has been struck by a bullet. See how crudely they have bandaged the wound. If they would let me try my hand I could do a heap better." "Suppose you tell that to Lascelles," suggested Roger, quickly. "It might make us friends among the Indians, and goodness knows we need them. Besides, I never liked to see even an Indian suffer." "I remember hearing my father tell how, long years ago, when they were living up on the bank of the Ohio, they found a young Indian badly wounded, and took him into their camp to nurse. Some of the settlers, who believed that every Indian was a snake in the grass, wanted to put him to death, but father and uncle had their way, and Blue Jacket's life was spared." "Yes," added Roger, "and ever afterwards he was the best friend the settlers had. Why, he even followed our parents most of the way down to the Mississippi, when they descended the Ohio River on a flatboat. And then another time, you remember, they won the good will of the great Indian chief, Pontiac, by saving his life." "That is a fact, Roger; and he gave them a wampum belt that kept them from the fury of the Indian ever afterwards. Some people may not think it pays to befriend an Indian, but we have been taught differently." When the three Indians joined the main column Dick tried to ascertain whether they had been successful in their pursuit of Mayhew, or had met with failure. He knew it would be folly to try to obtain this information through the wily Frenchman, who, wishing to add to their distress, would very likely boast that the frontiersman had been brought down. Dick, however, quickly made up his mind that this could not be the case. The sullen manner of the three braves was enough in itself to tell the story of their having been outwitted by Mayhew. Then, besides, if they had slain the hunter they would be shouting of victory and holding up a freshly taken scalp in evidence. "Depend on it, our friend got away," Dick told Roger. "I was thinking that myself," returned the other, "for they look mad enough to bite a nail in two, if they knew what such a thing was." For some little time they marched along steadily. Then the important-looking Indian, who was walking alongside Lascelles, turned, and called out something in his own language. "Good! we are going to stop at last!" muttered Roger. "I can hear the tinkling of a running brook close by. I hope the water is good and cold, and that they let me drink my fill." There was no doubt about it, for the Indians no longer kept pushing forward. To make a camp, when far from home, was an easy matter for these hardy braves, accustomed, as they were, to enduring all manner of hardships with the stoicism that has always distinguished their race. There were no tents to erect, no packs to undo, and getting the meal was a most primitive operation, since it would probably consist of cooking some sort of meat by thrusting it in the flames at the end of long sticks of wood. When some of the braves started to fasten the prisoners to two trees that grew close together, Dick thought it about time to begin making friends. Accordingly he called to Lascelles to approach, as he had a communication to make that might strike him favorably. "I have had some success in binding up gun-shot wounds," Dick told him, "and if I was given a chance I believe I could do that poor fellow some good. He may bleed to death unless something is done." The wily Frenchman eyed him keenly. "Zat sounds very good, but how am I to know zat you vill not try to escape if ze bonds zey are remove?" he demanded suspiciously. "I will give you my promise not to attempt anything of the sort as long as my hands are free," Dick assured him. "Besides, it would be folly to try to run away when you have your gun, and they their bows and arrows handy. Come, loosen my hands and let me see what I can do." Lascelles made sure to get the consent of the chief before he would touch the thongs, but he finally did so. Some of the Indians, learning that the paleface boy was a medicine man among his people, watched with some interest to see how he treated the wound of their companion. Dick had in truth been unusually successful in handling this particular form of injury, and knew about how it should be treated. He had scant material with which to work, but his deft fingers made up in part for the want of other things. The salve which he produced from his ditty bag was home-made, for his mother knew all about medicinal herbs and their values. When, after completing the job, Dick looked up into the face of his "patient" and asked how it felt, while the brave may not have understood the exact words, at the same time he must have guessed the nature of the inquiry, for he nodded his head in the affirmative as though to admit that his condition had been made much more bearable. "Now you _have_ got a job on your hands!" sang out Roger, as he saw the other wounded warriors pressing forward, as though meaning to have their hurts looked after in the same fashion. Dick was satisfied that this was not an effort thrown away. If he could make the Blackfeet understand that white men were not the unfeeling monsters they had been painted by the French fur-traders it would be a good thing. Besides, they knew not what their future might be, and the time was likely to come when a friend in the Indian camp would prove a profitable investment. (Note 8.) "We ought to call this camp Armstrong Hospital, I think!" said Roger, after it was all finished, and Dick had been secured to his tree near by. "I hope my work wasn't wholly wasted," remarked Dick. "As they have built a fire it seems settled that we are to stay here to-night. Perhaps to-morrow they mean to take us to the other camp, where Lascelles said Williams is held a prisoner." "And on my part," added the other captive, "I hope they will give us some of the meat they've started to cook. When I can catch his eye I want to ask Lascelles to get me a drink of water. My tongue seems to be sticking to the roof of my mouth." "If we could make one of the wounded Indians understand, I think they would do a little thing like that for us; but the Frenchman seems to be scowling blackly at me just now. Perhaps, after all, he is sorry about letting me dress the wounds of the braves; he may suspect that I'm getting too popular, and that it may somehow hurt his game in the end." "Who knows how that may work out?" declared Roger. "One thing is sure, we must keep our wits about us, and try to figure out a way to get free." Dick seemed to be of the same mind, for he nodded his head, and said: "If we have half a chance we must try to escape to-night. That Canadian scout in the explorers' camp, Drewyer, knows considerable about these Blackfoot Indians, and he told me they are very treacherous, often killing their captives as they take a freak, or the medicine man of the tribe has a pretended message from Manitou that they must be put to death. So we dare not trust them, but must escape by any means." CHAPTER XXII IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT APPARENTLY it was not the design of Lascelles to starve his prisoners, for later on he had them untied, and gave them a chance to devour some of the crudely cooked buffalo meat. They were also permitted to drink their fill of the cold water in the brook. After all this had been done, with the trader watching them constantly, and holding his gun in readiness to frustrate any attempt at escape, the boys were once more tied with long thongs to the trees. They noticed, however, that the brave who fastened them was inclined to be much more gentle with them than on the first occasion. Dick believed the seed of kindness he had sown was commencing to take root. "It will be a night that we shall never forget, Dick," Roger remarked. "If it blows up windy and cold, as it was when we were in the cave, we will suffer terribly here." "Let us hope then that we may not be here all night long," Dick ventured; and somehow his manner, as well as his words, caused the blood of his companion to leap in his veins. "Do you really mean it?" Roger asked. "Is there a chance that we can break loose, tied up as we are? Are you depending on Mayhew to come to our rescue? Surely, you could not have had any signal from him?" "Nothing," replied the other. "But have you noticed where they put our guns and powder horns?" "I must say I hadn't thought much about that part of it," confessed Roger; "but, since you mention it, I think they are over against that tree. The Indians are afraid of firearms, you know. Perhaps the chief Lascelles spoke to us about, and whom he called Black Otter, hopes to force Williams into teaching him how to use 'the sticks that spit out fire and stinging things.'" "There is another thing that, perhaps, I ought to tell you," continued Dick, in a low tone. He saw the Frenchman looking over at them just then, as though wondering what they were finding to talk about, and debating whether it might not be safer to separate the pair. "If it's anything that will make me feel more cheerful, I hope you will lose no time in doing so," Roger hastened to say. "Please keep from showing so much in your face then," Dick told him; "or that man may be able to read the whole story from where he sits. Act as though we were without the first ray of hope. He is a suspicious sort of man. We must try to make him believe we mean to make the best of it." "Now tell me, Dick; I am looking as if I'd lost my last friend. What has happened? I am sure you have made some discovery." "Oh! not so very great," replied Dick; "only that I believe I can get my hands free with very little effort." "How does that happen?" wondered Roger; "mine are as tight as they can well be. Did that Indian favor you when he fastened us up the last time; or was it through an accident?" "Neither one nor the other, it happens," said the second prisoner, coolly. "I remembered to swell up my wrists in a way I can do, when he was putting the thongs around them. By reducing them to the utmost, my hands are almost free, and it will take but little effort for me to free them entirely." "And then you can set me loose, too, though I am afraid it will take you a long time to get those knots undone. It must be an Indian way of tying thongs, for I never saw its like before." "There is a better way than that," Dick assured him. "Don't turn your head just now to look, because Lascelles is watching us like a hawk; but some time later on, when his back is this way, cast your eyes to the right, and, sticking in the tree not more than five feet away, you will see my hunting knife!" "Oh! how came it there?" demanded Roger, watching the French trader, and ready to take advantage of the fact if Lascelles should happen to look away, even for a moment. "I saw a brave give it a jab into the tree when he was cutting some thongs from a strip of buckskin before we were tied up; and ever since I have watched to see if any one removed it. So far, it has remained there." The Indians had by this time settled down to take things as comfortably as conditions allowed. The fire was sending out considerable heat, and around the cheery blaze the red men squatted, each with his gaudy-colored blanket about his shoulders. Some of them were scantily clad for the wintry season, though doubtless it did not occur to them in that light, as they had become habituated to exposure. The two boys looked at the picture presented. They would, if they were fortunate enough to live through the experience, often recall it in future days, and, it was to be hoped, under happier skies. High the sparks soared from the fire, with the red tongues of flame jumping up as though in riotous sport. The bending tops of the neighboring pines seemed to be whispering together as though communicating the secrets of the wilderness. It was all so strange and wonderful, even after the remarkable sights they had looked on of late, that Roger asked himself whether it could be real, or only a dream. Several of the Blackfeet had produced red clay pipes and were smoking some weed that, for all the boys could tell, may have been tobacco, cured after their own tribal fashion. "I only wish I could put something in that stuff to make them sleep like logs until dawn," said Roger. "They are beginning to show signs of getting drowsy," Dick assured him. "Already several have curled up in their blankets, and seem to be fast asleep. Here comes the Frenchman to take a last look at us before he follows them into dreamland." "Oh! be careful that he may not learn of the trick you played with your bonds!" Roger whispered, in sudden alarm lest the crafty trader make a discovery that would destroy the hope they were hugging to their hearts. "Leave that to me, for I feel sure I can deceive him, even if he tries my bonds to see how secure they are," Dick assured him. Apparently Lascelles was very sleepy, for he yawned several times as he felt of the thongs, to see how they had been tied by the brave to whom the task had been delegated. "Eet is too bad zat you haf to stand all ze night," he told the boys; "but eet cannot be helped. Eet is ze fortune of war. Ven boys try to play ze part of men zey must take ze good wif ze bad. In ze morning, unless ze storm delay us, we vill hope to reach ze uzzer camp, and then you see heem." He walked away after delivering himself of these few remarks. The boys knew very well who was meant by "heem," for it could only refer to Jasper Williams. "That sounds as if he has Jasper, sure enough," remarked Roger, when they once more were by themselves. "Yes, and if we get away from here it must be our duty to free him. We did it once before, you remember; and what was next door to a miracle then can happen again."[5] When another half-hour had crept around, conditions in the Indian camp had undergone a decided change. There had been no sentry set that the boys observed, and Dick had counted the Indians many times to make sure that all were around the fire. They lay sprawled in such postures as their fancy dictated. Some had their backs against the trunks of trees, while others extended themselves at full length on the ground. One and all seemed to be sound asleep. Acting upon the advice of Dick, both of the boys had assumed an attitude calculated to deceive any one who might be sending an occasional glance in their direction, and make it appear as though they, too, had yielded to the demands of the slumber god. "Is it time yet, Dick?" whispered Roger for the third time, when it seemed as if his blood had almost stopped circulating on account of the tight bonds, and he doubted his ability to use his legs, even if set free. "Wait a little longer," he was told, in the same cautious tone, which, if heard at all, would be considered but the murmur of the cool night breeze in the nodding pine-tops. The half-hour lengthened to a full one; and even this was now growing, until it must soon measure a second hour. Roger could not stand it much longer. He felt as though something within him would burst unless he could make a move of some sort. "Listen," whispered Dick, just then, as if in answer to the silent plea, "I saw something move across on the other side of the camp. A hand seemed to gently wave to me, and it was not the hand of an Indian, either. I firmly believe Mayhew, Heaven bless him, has come back, taking his life in his hand, meaning to rescue us from the Indians." FOOTNOTE: [5] See "The Pioneer Boys of the Missouri." CHAPTER XXIII THE ESCAPE "THAT is good news, Dick!" whispered Roger. "There, did you see him that time?" the other asked, as cautiously as though he believed every sleeping Indian possessed such keen hearing that a very small sound would awaken him. "Yes, and I believe it must be Mayhew. Are you starting to work your hands free, Dick? Oh! lose no time, I beg!" "It is nearly done," came in a breath from the other; for all this time Dick had been working his hands as cleverly as he could, considering the fact that they had been tied behind him as he stood against the tree. A slight movement on his part a minute later told the anxious Roger that he had finally succeeded in accomplishing his task. His hands were free, and wrestling with the knots in the thongs that bound his body to the tree. When Roger presently saw his companion move, and then slowly sink down to the ground, he held his breath, for he knew that, so far as bonds were concerned, Dick was no longer a prisoner. His next move would be to reach after that convenient knife, thrust into the tree close by. Roger turned his eyes in the other direction. His greatest fear now was that one of the sleeping braves might wake up, and spoil all their plans. When he saw no sign of such a thing his heart beat a little less tumultuously, and he breathed freely once more. But it was a period of suspense Roger would never forget. Even the slight sound made by a passing breeze struck a note of deadly fear in the heart of the waiting lad; it seemed to be a crash of thunder that would surely arouse the whole camp. Yet no one so much as stirred. Dick had obtained the knife, it seemed. Roger could feel him at work. How it thrilled him to know that those painful bonds were about to fall away, leaving him free to stretch his arms, and his lower limbs, so dreadfully cramped during the hours that had passed since they tied him there. Dick, crouching behind the tree, had to work in the dark, and mostly through instinct, his sense of touch taking the place of sight. He was succeeding, at any rate, which must be reckoned the main thing. Roger knew when the stout deerskin rope that kept him rigid against the tree had been severed, for a hand instantly steadied him, lest he fall over. There now remained only the bonds about his wrists, and they were apt to prove the most troublesome of all. What if the steel blade did give him several scratches and slight cuts? He could stand almost anything while hope of liberty swelled within him. There, it was done at last! His hands fell limply at his sides, numb and almost useless, for they had been tied much tighter than in Dick's case. The friendly hand plucked at his sleeve. Dick meant this as a sign that they must be getting away without loss of time, since every second spent there meant additional risk of discovery. It appeared a simple matter for Roger to copy the example of his comrade and drop to the ground, in order to crawl away; and yet, when he came to do it, he found that his knees were almost rigid, and could only be bent after a violent effort. Dick must have planned everything beforehand. In times past he had shown himself to be a master hand at laying out plans to be pursued in emergencies, and while tied to the tree, observing all that went on in the Indian camp, he surely had had plenty of opportunities to note the conditions surrounding him. At least he did not seem to be confused but went about the task of leading his companion to safety as though it were all a part of a schedule. Dick had not quite understood the mute signals which Mayhew had made when moving his hand above the bushes; but it seemed as if he meant to let them know he was about to make his way to a point in their rear, where he might find a better opportunity to assist them. Dick hoped they would have the good fortune to run across the guide. Three would be much better than two, surrounded as they were by so many perils. When Roger became aware of the fact that his pilot had stopped abruptly, he felt a cold chill run over him, thinking it could only mean that the discovery they feared was upon them. Then he realized that Dick was softly laying hands on some objects that had rested against a tree-trunk. Like a flash it dawned on Roger that they must be their guns, for he recollected it was exactly in this quarter they had noted the weapons. What a wonderful fellow Dick was, apparently capable of remembering everything, no matter how minute the detail might be! Roger breathed easy again. He even managed to put out his hand and receive one of the guns from his comrade, accompanied by a low hiss of warning. Roger knew what was meant by this, and he was very careful that his gun should not come in violent contact with the tree-trunk or the ground. At that moment he chanced to look around, and what was his horror on discovering that one of the Indians had raised his head! He seemed to be looking straight at the two boys, and, as the flickering fire still gave a small amount of light, he must surely have seen them. Roger wanted to let Dick know, but his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not make a sound. Dick was now moving off again, creeping along more like a great cat than a human being, so there was nothing left for Roger to do but follow in his wake. Every moment he expected to hear a yell of alarm from the Indian who had been watching their movements. As each second passed, Roger was certain that the cry was bound to break forth with the coming of the next. His feet dragged like lead, because he believed the attempt to escape was bound to be useless, and that they could not possibly get away. He counted the passage of time by the throbs of his heart. Once a twig flew up and struck Roger on the knee. It was a blow as light as the falling of a leaf, yet to the boy it seemed as though a heavy hand had been suddenly laid upon him. But, strangely enough, nothing happened! No yell rang out; nor was there an uprising of those dusky forms that lay about the smoldering fire. Foot by foot the ground was passed over, and in a brief time they might hope to gain the shelter of the friendly bushes back of which Mayhew, it was hoped, would be found. Still Roger dared not believe the escape would be effected without an explosion of some sort. He knew that the pioneers classed all Indians with the cat tribe in regard to craftiness and cruelty. How many times had he, as a small lad, watched their pet cat catch a mouse, and then play with the doomed animal, letting it go just for the pleasure of pouncing on it afresh. The conviction that pressed so heavily on his heart now was that this brave was simply waiting until the escaping prisoners had gained a certain point, when he would give the cry that would send the red inmates of the camp after them in hot haste. But now they were at the fringe of bushes, and Dick had even commenced creeping around one end of the break, afraid to enter lest they cause a rustling that would imperil their safety. Roger summoned all his nerve and looked back. To his amazement he saw that the watchful brave still had his head partly raised, and was, to all appearances, looking after them. It was a mystery in the boy's mind that ranked with those strange things they had continued to discover ever since invading this Land of Wonders. That the warrior saw them making their escape, and still refrained from giving the alarm, was a fact beyond his comprehension. Dick was moving faster now, though still taking pains not to make any sound that could be possibly avoided. Then Roger caught the low, tremulous note of a bird, hardly more than a chirp. Was that Mayhew trying to let them know he was close by? Roger hoped so with all his heart. He could barely see Dick's bulk just ahead of him, and it was on it that he fastened his gaze. If the pilot suddenly came to a pause, Roger meant to be in a condition to instantly follow suit. Whispering caught his ear. Surely Dick was not talking to himself, but must have come in contact with the creeping guide. All seemed going well, and, so far, there had been no alarm from the camp. A minute later he knew that Dick was no longer on his hands and knees, but had gained his feet. This meant that the time had come when they might take more chances, and increase the swiftness of their flight. Roger noted, too, that there was another figure ahead of his cousin, which he knew could be no other than the guide, gallant Mayhew, who had scorned to seek safety for himself while his young friends were in peril. Far away could be heard the dismal howling of a wolf pack. An owl sent out a mournful hoot from the depths of the pine woods on the side of the mountain. But back there, where the dying camp fire flickered, and the red men slumbered, not a sound arose. Roger marveled more than ever. He knew that his eyes had not deceived him, and that the Indian had actually watched them making their escape. But what magic had rendered his tongue mute the boy could not guess. When half a mile had been placed between them and the hostile camp Dick broke the silence. "Do you think we are safe away, Mayhew?" he asked, cautiously. "It looks that way," replied the figure plodding ahead of the boys; "and I must say it beats all how you managed to get free from those deerskin thongs. There are other things that puzzle me, too; but all that can keep until later. "Oh! I am glad to hear you say you believe we are well out of that fix!" exclaimed Roger, who had looked back nervously over his shoulder many times, and even shuddered at hearing the slightest rustling sound, dreading lest the tricky Indians might be creeping after them, and suddenly awaken the echoes of the pine forest with their war-whoops. "It was one of the closest calls we ever had," admitted Dick. "And we have known a good many of them," added Roger, with a slight return of his old feeling of elation, for the reaction was beginning to set in, so that from the depths of despair he would soon find himself elevated to the heights of exultation. "One thing that none of us has thought to notice so far," commented Dick, "is that it has at last commenced to snow as though it meant business." When he brought this fact to their attention the others perceived that it was indeed so, for already the ground had begun to turn white. CHAPTER XXIV AN INDIAN'S GRATITUDE FOR some time the three fugitives plodded through the pine forest that lay along the side of the mountain ridge, enclosing the wide valley in which the camp of the Indians had been pitched. The snow was coming down in earnest now. It acted as though bent on making up for lost time; and, unless all signs failed, there would be an exceedingly heavy fall before they saw the sun again. One comfort they found in this coming of the white mantle--they could not be tracked by Lascelles and his allies when their escape was discovered. "Dick!" ventured Roger, after quite a long time had elapsed, and they found the snow getting constantly deeper underfoot. "Well?" "We have our guns, it is true, and that I count a fine thing, but of what use are they to us without our powder horns?" "That was our misfortune, Roger, but we can borrow from Mayhew here. By being prudent we ought to make his supply go around." Imagine the feelings of the two boys when the guide gave utterance to an exclamation of disgust and chagrin. "I hate to tell you, lads," he said, "but it must have happened during my flight. I had fired twice, and given the red hounds cause to be sorry they chased after me; and then I suddenly missed my powder horn. It must have been torn loose while I was passing through some dense bushes." "Did you go back and try to find it?" asked Dick, while Roger seemed mute with consternation. "Yes, but it was no use," replied the guide, "and I had to give it up." "Then we are in a bad way, without any ammunition for our guns," Dick continued, though he did not attempt to criticize Mayhew, for he realized that, after all, it had been an accident, liable to happen to any one, and he felt sure the frontiersman must be suffering in his mind on account of it. "I have the load in my gun, and one in my pistol," said Mayhew. "Besides that I found a little powder wrapped in a paper in one of my pockets, enough to charge one of your guns, and some left over for priming." "That was lucky, at any rate; how came you to have it with you?" asked Dick. "I remember that, some time before I left on that trip back to the Missouri and down to the outposts of civilization, I was cleaning out my powder horn, and the little it contained I placed in that paper, and then in my pocket. I forgot all about it when I filled the horn from the stores. Now, it may be, that one charge will stand between us and starvation." "Oh! I hope it will never get as bad as that, Mayhew," said Dick; and yet, deep down in his heart, he knew they were facing a desperate condition, so far away from the rest of the expedition, and surrounded by perils of every type. "Two charges in all!" summed up Roger, finding his voice. "That means that we must make each one tell. And, Dick, I want you to load your gun with that spare powder Mayhew has. You are a surer shot than I, and when we use that load it must bring returns." "We'll see about that later on," was all Dick replied. "But now that we can talk without running any danger," continued Roger, anxious to learn whether either of the others had noticed the same strange happening in the camp of Blackfeet, "I want to ask you why that Indian, who was watching us go away, failed to give the alarm?" Dick stopped short. He seemed to be astonished beyond measure at what the other had just said. "Do you mean to tell me, Roger, that you believe any such thing?" he asked. "I certainly do," came the response. "I looked back more times than I can tell you, and there he was, craning his neck and watching everything we did. To the very last I saw him still looking." "Yes, he is right!" declared Mayhew, breaking in upon the dialogue as though he, too, had been grappling with a mystery that he could not understand. "I saw the same thing. The Indian was watching you, I could swear to that. Once he dropped his head, only to raise it again. He seemed to be having some difficulty about holding himself up long, for he was bandaged about the shoulder." "Oh!" The way Dick said that one word told Roger that he must have seen a great light. But why should Dick show signs of satisfaction; for that was clearly expressed in his tone? "You have guessed the answer, Dick?" exclaimed Roger, hastily. "Please tell us what it is, because, for one, I am groping in the dark." "You heard what Mayhew just said, and how the man who looked was wounded in the shoulder? Stop and think, and you will remember that he must be the one who had chased after Mayhew, and came back with a bullet wound in the muscles of his shoulder." "Which you dressed as neatly as any doctor could have done it," said Roger. "At the time the brave gave little sign that he was grateful," continued Dick, as he figured things out; "but you know that all Indians practice hiding their real feelings. They think it weak to show signs of fear or anything like that. But, at the same time, an Indian can be grateful, and I believe that brave proved it." "He did, oh! he did!" exclaimed Roger, no longer groping in darkness since Dick had thrown light on the mystery. "He knew we were escaping, but he could not find it in his heart to betray the one who had been so kind to him! I shall never believe so badly of Indians after this. My father was right when he told me they could be reached by kindness; and surely he and Uncle Bob ought to know." Somehow all of them fell silent for some time. No doubt they were thinking how strangely they had been favored by Providence. (Note 9.) Several hours had elapsed since the escape, and they were some distance away from the scene of the adventure. The snow was more than ankle deep, and coming down at a furious rate. Walking was difficult, especially since all of them were weary, and in great need of rest. Roger staggered at times, and once fell flat, though he hastened to assure the others, as he scrambled to his feet, that he had not suffered by his awkwardness. "We will have to seek shelter of some sort," declared Dick, finally. Apparently the frontiersman was only waiting to hear something like this; for, as a grown man, he did not fancy being the first to call quits, as long as those boys saw fit to keep on tramping. "It would not be a bad idea, I think," he now remarked. "If we could have a fire like we did that other night it would feel good to me," Roger told them. "We might try," said Dick. "And when morning comes, how about breakfast?" continued Roger. "What meat I had was taken away from me, and you must be in the same fix." "Yes, they thought it was useless to let me keep on carrying fresh elk meat when we all needed something to eat. But I am thankful they left me my ditty bag; and I have my knife too, you remember. How about you, Mayhew?" "I still have some meat with me; about enough for one meal around," replied the guide. "After that is gone we will have to shoot game of some sort, either elk or buffalo, so as to lay in a stock." "Here is a place that looks as though it would afford shelter from the storm among these fissures in the rock," announced Dick, which declaration brought cheer to the heart of Roger. A little investigation, the best that conditions allowed, showed them that they could enter one of the fissures and avoid the sweep of the rising wind that was now causing the snow to blow in sheets. Determined to do all in their power to obtain some comfort, they selected the best shelter, and then crept within. Roger was the first to discover some scattered bits of wood lying around, a tree that grew further up the abrupt face of the mountain having dropped some of its branches. Accordingly they obtained a light by means of the tinderbox and flint and steel. This enabled them to collect some of the fuel, and in the end they had a cheery fire. Sitting near this for an hour made them so sleepy that they were glad to roll over wherever they chanced to be, and give themselves up to slumber. The snow continued to fall heavily during the balance of the night. The wind howled through the adjacent trees in a mournful fashion, but within that fissure all was peaceful. Once or twice the old frontiersman would awaken on feeling cold, and toss more fuel on the smoldering embers of the fire, after which he would again lie down. So morning found them. They would not have known that the day had come if Dick had not made his way to the mouth of the fissure and looked out. Apparently some hunter instinct had warned him that sleeping time had passed. The snow was falling as thickly as ever. There was already a foot, and more, of it on the ground. Up on the mountain, where a previous fall had remained, it probably was twice as deep. To go out while the storm prevailed was hardly wise, much as the boys wanted to be on the move. Dick had taken note of certain things while the French trader was talking to them, and particularly of the fact that, when Lascelles spoke of the "other camp" in which Jasper Williams was held a prisoner, he had, possibly unconsciously, nodded toward the east. It was in that direction the great lake lay of which they had heard so much, and from one thing and another Dick came to the conclusion that the camp must be located on the border of this large body of water. Roger was looking anxiously at the meager stock of meat which Mayhew had produced from his pockets. There might be enough to satisfy their present hunger, but, once it was gone, the future did not seem very inviting. They cooked it as on the former occasion. "And it tastes much better than that the Indians gave us," Roger asserted, for the Blackfeet took little pains to keep the meat from scorching, and this had given it a taste not at all pleasant to the boys. All too soon was breakfast over, and the last scrap of meat devoured. Roger heaved a sigh of regret as he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "I wish I knew where we would get the next bite," he remarked. "It seems to me we eat in queer places on this trip. But I wouldn't mind that so much if I only felt sure there _would_ be another meal." After that they sat around and talked as they attended to the fire. Now and then one of them would get up to make another hunt for fuel, the stock of which was beginning to get low. It was far from a pleasant prospect staring them in the face. The wonder was how Dick could appear to be so cheerful through it all, and keep on saying he felt certain it would all come out right in the end. Roger at least had the good sense to keep his fears to himself. Whenever he felt that he could almost give a shout, such was the nervous tension under which he was laboring, he would jump up and busy himself in hunting wood. In action he managed to gain control over his nerves, so that he could resume his seat, and once more listen to what the others were debating. Plans were gravely discussed. To hear Dick laying these out one would never dream that they were based upon such a slender shred of hope. Two charges in their guns; many days' journey from the home camp; surrounded by mysterious workings of Nature calculated to make most men flee in terror; sought after by a revengeful French trader and his Indian allies; and now overtaken by a snowstorm that promised to make traveling additionally difficult--what a prospect for two half-grown lads and a single man to face! The last time Dick came back from making an investigation as to the conditions outside, he brought a little satisfactory news. The snow was falling in diminished volume, and there was a promise that by another hour it might cease entirely. Then they could issue forth, and begin to beat their way toward that section of the country where they believed the big lake to lie. Hardly had he imparted this information than they were startled by a deep roaring noise from without. It seemed as though the foundations of the mountain were shaken and, remembering what a strange country they were in, Roger could hardly be blamed for starting up with a cry of alarm. The light that came in through the mouth of the fissure suddenly gave way to darkness; only the flickering gleam of their fire remaining to show them which way to move. "Oh, what has happened now?" asked Roger, and as usual Dick seemed to know. "It is a snow avalanche," he told them, "and I am afraid it has blocked our only means of leaving here, so that we are once more prisoners!" CHAPTER XXV THE SNOW AVALANCHE "A SNOW avalanche!" echoed Roger. "Do you mean it has come down from the side of the mountain, and filled the opening we used to get in here?" "Yes," explained Dick, "that is what has happened, as near as I can tell. But, after all, it may not be so serious a thing. We will see what can be done about breaking through." "We have to get out some way or other, that's sure!" declared Roger, as he hurried along after his cousin, now heading for the place where the exit had been. This was now filled by a tightly-wedged mass of snow. When they thrust the butts of their guns against it they were amazed to discover how firmly it had become packed. "Why, it is like so much ice!" exclaimed Roger. "Almost," added the more conservative Dick, "though you can dig into it by working hard. If we only had shovels here we might do something." "But how long ought it take us to burrow through?" demanded Roger, with a note of dismay in his voice. "That depends on how thick the wedge turns out to be," replied Dick. "If it is five feet, we could make it in an hour or so. If deeper through than that, it would take us much longer." "And the worst of it is we haven't a scrap of food along with us," Roger complained. "If we were well supplied in that way I'd think it of less importance." "We must get out, one way or another," continued Dick, grimly, "and the first thing we ought to learn is where the weakest part of the blockade lies." "As it came down on the run," Roger figured, "it seems to me the greatest amount of snow would gather at the base. How about that, Dick?" "You are right, and it will pay us to attack the barrier as high up as we can get. There may be some sticks of wood left back yonder, which we can use to dig with. Let us take a look." A close search produced three fragments of branches that could be utilized as makeshift shovels; at least they would be able to dig after a fashion into the hard barrier, and then collect the loosened material by scooping it up in their hands to be thrown away. It promised to be slow and painful work, but none of them dreamed of complaining. There was so much at stake that even Roger had to forget his natural feelings and devote himself to vigorous work. First of all Dick climbed up the best way he could, and found out how they could secure a footing in order to attack the snow blockade higher up. When this had once been settled they began. Since all of them could not get at the small space marked out, they tried it in relays. While two dug the third one rested; and when one of the others gave out he took the vacant place. The fire dwindled away and finally seemed to go out entirely. They could spare no time in order to search for more fuel; besides, while devoting every energy to the task before them, none of them felt at all cold. "What are the prospects, Dick?" asked Roger, as he hastened to take the other's place in turn, having had a good rest. "It strikes me the snow is packed lighter than what we struck at first; what do you think about it, Mayhew?" The frontiersman was always willing to advance an opinion after it had been asked, though he would seldom speak first. So now he stopped to take in a few good breaths, and then made reply. "I was just thinking the same way myself, to tell you the truth. And it goes to show that we must be getting near the outside, where the pressure is much less." "Then we may break through at any time; is that it?" asked Dick. After a short time Roger gave utterance to a shout. "I'm through the layer of packed snow!" he exclaimed jubilantly. "See, here is a place where a stick cuts into it as easy as it would through a pear. We have won out, Dick; and in a little while we ought to see the outside world again." On investigation it was discovered that there was good reason for Roger's jubilation. They had bored through the bank of snow that filled the opening, thanks to the wisdom shown in attacking it at its weakest point. Five minutes afterwards a hole had been made sufficiently large to allow of their crawling through it to freedom. The snow had ceased falling, although there did not seem to be a break in the clouds overhead. It was much over a foot on the level, and in some places, where the wind had drifted it, they found it would pay them to go around rather than wade directly through. "That way leads to where we had our bitter experience last night," said Dick, as he pointed toward the southwest. "We do not want to see Lascelles and his red allies again, if we can help it, so we will not turn in that direction." "If we ever do have to meet him face to face," added Roger, "let us hope it will be when we have plenty of powder and bullets for our guns. If the cowardly rascal had not kept himself hidden behind that tree, while the fight was going on, I would have made sure that my lead found him. He is the worst enemy our families know, for he would rob them of their homes." "I felt the same way," confessed Dick; "but he was too smart for us. I think he must have guessed he would be the first target for our guns. Still, we must remember that even Lascelles is not as bad as he might be. He would not allow the Indians to kill us on the spot, for one thing, as some renegades would have done." "Well, after all," Roger continued, "it is a question in my mind whether he saved us because he had a streak of decency in him, or for some other reason. Perhaps he meant we should be carried off by those Blackfeet to their village, and adopted into the tribe." "It might be as you say," admitted Dick, "for he told us that was what he meant them to do with Jasper Williams. It would be getting well rid of troublesome enemies, because there would be little chance of our ever coming back." "Now that we have burrowed out of that trap, what is the next move, Dick?" "I think we have decided already that we will not start back to the camp. Badly off as we are, we have come a long way after Williams, and, now that we know he is not a great many miles away, we must find him!" "If what that trader said is true Jasper needs us, too," declared Roger. "If he is a prisoner we are bound to do all we can to rescue him," said the other boy, although it required no little fortitude to be able to decide in this way. In one direction lay comfort and safety; in the other direction they must expect to find danger in many shapes, privations such as hunger and exhaustion, and, for aught they knew, death itself might lie in wait. Yet, in spite of all this, neither Dick nor Roger hesitated. "Then it is on with us to the Frenchmen's camp!" said Roger. It was in that spirit they made their start. Just how far away the mysterious sheet of water lay they could not tell. It might be three miles, it might be twenty, for all they knew. Vague stories concerning it had drifted into the explorers' camp from various sources. Trappers who had caught a glimpse of it gave wonderful accounts concerning its vast extent. Indians recounted the most marvelous tales of its being the home of the mighty Evil Spirit that possessed the Enchanted Land. The boys were not free from a certain amount of superstitious awe; for human nature had not progressed as far along certain lines a hundred years ago as in these later days. But they possessed bold hearts, and, animated by that single purpose of serving those they loved, they were willing to dare anything rather than give up the quest. It was in this frame of mind, then, that they began heading into the east, trudging uncomplainingly through heaps of snow that often came to their waists, and keeping a constant lookout for either game or human enemies. CHAPTER XXVI TRACKING A BUFFALO "THEY are all snowed under, I fear, Dick!" Roger thus remarked after they had been struggling along for some time, without seeing a living thing save some crows that flew over the tree-tops, cawing at the three palefaces as though scornfully demanding to know what they were doing so far away from their kind. "If you mean the small animals, such as rabbits, foxes, mink and such," Dick answered, "I suppose it is so, though in time they must work their way through the snow or die. But elk can move around still. They are broad-chested and able to bound over or break through the drifts." "Then why have we failed to see a single elk, or a lone buffalo?" asked Roger, as though he took it as a personal grievance. "I can only give a guess at the answer." "And I'm sure it will be a good guess then, Dick, for you seem to study the habits of everything that moves, from a beaver building his dam to the antelope we coax up within gun-shot by waving a red piece of cloth. What do you think is the reason all big game is lacking about here?" "The animals must know of some places, more favored than others," Dick explained, "where the grass stays fairly green throughout the winter. Snows may come and melt, and the cold waves be tempered by hot springs every little while." "Then I wish we could run across another of those boiling springs before it gets dark, and find a herd of elk hanging around it," and Roger undoubtedly meant every word he spoke. As the day had been pretty well along when they managed to break out of their snow prison they could not hope, before night, to get any great distance on the way to the big lake. This being the case, it was really a matter of greater importance to Dick and his two companions that they succeed in their quest for food than that they cover any considerable distance before camping. The prospect of another long night, without a morsel of food to stay the pangs of hunger, appalled them. Dick himself felt badly about it, although he managed, as usual, to hide his growing disappointment better than Roger, partly for the sake of cheering the other up. "There is one thing none of us seem to have noticed," Dick observed, after another half hour had crept by; "the clouds have broken, and we may even see the sun before it sets." "That is certainly cheering news," Roger returned; "because if we had another fall of snow on top of this, winter would set in 'for keeps.' And we did hope to be safe back in camp before that." Before Dick could make any further remark an exclamation from Mayhew drew the attention of the two lads. The guide happened to be a little ahead of them at the time, and was now seen to be beckoning eagerly. "He must have struck the trail of an elk at last!" exclaimed Roger, showing all the signs of the eager hunter. "It looks that way," admitted his cousin, "because he seems to be pointing down at his feet, as though something he had discovered interested him." "Oh! I hope it turns out that way, and that if it is a trail it was not made by a file of reds, or some of those ugly French trappers." They were hurrying forward while exchanging these remarks, and speedily reached Mayhew's side. "What is it?" asked Roger, immediately. "A fresh trail!" came the answer, and, looking down, the boys could see for themselves where some large animal had pushed through the deep snow. "An elk?" Dick inquired. "No, a buffalo, I believe," came the reply. "One or the other, what do we care, so long as we can bag him?" commented Roger. "So let us be on the move. Every minute counts, with the sun so low in the western sky, and night coming on." There was indeed need of haste, for the short afternoon would soon be gone and, unless they had the good fortune to overtake the stray buffalo within half an hour or so, all their hopes would be dashed. They immediately started forward; but the depth of the snow in places retarded their progress, and Roger often drew long breaths that stood for impatience, for he dared not vent his feelings aloud. Dick, who was always observing little things, discovered that the breeze favored them. The buffalo was heading up into the quarter whence the wind came. This is the habit of most animals, since it allows them an opportunity to scent any lurking danger ahead, such as a panther stretched on a limb and waiting to spring upon them in passing. Mayhew, who was a first-class tracker, every now and then took a look at the trail as though to decide what chance they had of overtaking the struggling buffalo before night fell. He made no comment, but Dick, who watched his face, felt that the guide did not feel any too sanguine. Evidently from certain signs, well known to one of his broad experience, Mayhew knew that they were still some distance in the rear of the quarry and that, unless for some reason the lone buffalo chose to stop while on his way to a feeding ground, there was little likelihood of their coming up with him. Accordingly, Dick was already making up his mind to "grin and bear it," as Uncle Sandy was in the habit of saying when things could not be changed, and he had to stand for whatever came along. Roger kept a bright lookout ahead. He hoped to be the first to discover the huge animal outlined against the white snow. Perhaps Roger had even figured in his mind just how they would approach as near as they could, and then, when their presence was discovered, and the buffalo tried to escape, they would give chase. If the animal was tired after floundering so long through the deep drifts they would likely soon be able to come up with him, when a single shot might do the business. Roger did not forget that their ammunition was low, and that it would never do for them to be wasteful of powder and ball. The sun presently shone forth, but it was close down to the top of the ridge far to the west, and liable to dip out of sight at any time. "The sun has set!" said Roger, presently, in a tone of bitter disappointment. "And we will have to give up soon, I fear," Dick told him; "because, while meat would be a fine thing to have, we must first of all think of passing the night without being frozen to death." "It is going to be cold, that's a fact," admitted Roger, trying to show that he could grapple with the situation and not betray weakness. Mayhew took a last look at the tracks, while the boys awaited his decision with the deepest anxiety. When they saw the guide shake his head in the negative they knew luck had gone against them, and that this meant a supperless camp. "We have gained a heap on the critter," Mayhew declared, "but he was still going strong when he passed here." "How long ago?" asked Dick. "Nigh on half an hour, I should judge," came the answer. "Then we must call quits, and devote all our attention to finding a camp," Dick determined. "With a fire going we will not feel quite so badly as in the cold." "Then we mean to keep up a blaze all night, no matter what the risk?" demanded Roger. "Of course we can try to hide the fire some," explained the guide; "but on a cold night like this the reds are not apt to be moving, and the risk will be slight." "Well, if the rest can stand it, I ought to, so now let us begin in earnest to find a camping-ground," and Roger started looking to the right and left as though he did not want to lose a minute. Indeed, at that season of the year in this far northern clime, while the twilight might linger for an hour or more, once the sun had set they could not see well under the canopy of pines. These, in places, had kept much of the snow from reaching the ground, and there was a reasonable hope that they could run across some spot that offered shelter from the piercing night wind. Mayhew was so well versed in backwoods lore that he could be depended on to locate such a camp ground. If necessary they could build a windbreak out of branches, and behind this make their fire. Before long the guide gave them to understand that he had sighted what seemed to be an admirable spot for passing the night. "Over yonder you can see where I mean," he told them, pointing as he spoke; and even Roger was forced to admit that it offered advantages other places had lacked. Mayhew took his hatchet and cut several slabs from the bark of a tree. It was to be noticed that he did this on the side nearest their intended camp; but neither of the pioneer boys asked why this was done, because their hunter instinct told them Mayhew was only leaving his mark so that in the morning they would lose no time in picking up the trail of the lone buffalo. Once they arrived at the spot selected as their next camp all started to work. Dick and Mayhew began to erect a thick screen of brush on the windward side, while Roger collected fuel wherever he could find it. When he had made quite a pile of broken limbs, and splinters from a fallen pine tree, Roger got out his tinder-box and flints, and presently the rising smoke told that his fire was a success. As the night closed in around them it was a rather cheery scene that Roger looked upon, while engaged in gathering a further supply of wood, perhaps twenty or thirty paces away. His two companions were still engaged in adding the finishing touches to the barricade; the flames leaped up with a snap and a sparkle, and the glow of the fire seemed to give the surrounding snow a rosy tint that did much to take away its cold look. Roger sighed as he tightened his belt, drawing it up another notch, a familiar habit with hungry men. "I think we will have to call this Camp Starvation, Dick," he remarked, as he threw down the armful of fuel he had collected. "No, that would hardly be a proper name for it," the other told him immediately; "because we haven't reached that point yet. I mean to put it down in my memory as Camp Hope!" Roger must have been abashed by the gentle reproach in Dick's declaration, for he did not make any reply until several minutes had passed. Perhaps he may have been weighing in his mind the many reasons they had to be thankful, in spite of the dark clouds hanging over their heads, for when he did speak up it was to say: "Yes, we will call it Camp Hope, Dick." CHAPTER XXVII FIRE FANCIES PERHAPS they were taking some chances as they sat there by their fire that evening; but there was no help for it. Being without blankets or any furs to keep them warm when sleep overcame them, they dared not risk being frozen as the cold became more intense with the passing of the night. Roger meant to show as cheery a face as he could, but somehow he could not seem to think of anything but the delights of eating. It is doubtless so with all who have been deprived of their customary food for an unusual time. "Do you know, Dick," he said, as he sat hugging his knees and staring into the crackling flames, "I was just thinking how, many a night, when the wind would be whistling around the corners of our cabin, Sister Mary and myself used to sit and look into a roaring fire like this, one on either side of the big hearth. I can picture her sitting there to-night, with mother and father close by. And, Dick, perhaps they are talking about us, wondering whether they will ever see us again." Dick moved uneasily as he listened, for, to tell the truth, his thoughts had also gone roaming back to the dearly loved home, and in imagination he was following the forms of his mother, father and brother, as they moved to and fro in the well-remembered living room. Immediately afterwards Roger's plaint took another turn, induced no doubt by the feeling of emptiness that caused him such uneasiness. "Yes, and it seems to me I can even catch the fine odor of the stew that is cooking in the big black pot swinging over the fire, with the lid lifting to let out the clouds of steam. And oh! Dick, how splendid it used to smell, too! What wouldn't I give to be sitting down with a plate of it heaped up before me, some of mother's tea in a tin cup and a plate of her fried sweet-cakes to top off with." Once Roger got started on that strain he seemed to take especial delight in recollections of about every feast in which he had ever indulged. Dick let him talk on undisturbed. How vividly he himself could recall all those special occasions, when they had attended some country dance among the settlers' young folks at harvest home times. The faces of all the absent friends came clearly before him and, spurred on by Roger's graphic descriptions, it seemed almost possible to get a whiff of the fresh bread being taken from the big old Dutch oven in which, as a small child, Dick had so often hidden from his companions when they played games. Roger prattled on as the hour grew late. It seemed as though his recollections had no limit, judging from the way in which he kept calling up events of happy days. But finally Dick began to notice that he faltered now and then, and his eyes gave evidences of approaching drowsiness. The warmth of the fire was getting in its work and in the end Roger stretched out, "just to rest his back a bit," as he explained to his companions. He soon began to breathe regularly and Dick knew that he slept. For a time at least the hungry boy would forget his gnawing pains, though possibly his dreams would take on the joys of a feast, and the awakening be all the more bitter in consequence. "Poor Roger!" Dick said to himself, as he leaned over and gently drew the flap of the sleeper's tunic closer about his neck, "I wish I had it in my power to provide a substantial meal against your waking up; but where it is to come from, unless it rains down from above, I fail to see." It was just like the generous nature of Dick Armstrong to forget his own condition in feeling for another; Roger was as dear to him as his own brother could be, since they had shared each other's joys and sorrows ever since they were able to exchange confidences and fight each other's battles. That long night would never be forgotten, though they lived to an old age. Little sleep visited Dick's eyes. This came partly from his sense of hunger, but also on account of the serious condition that confronted them. Their long quest seemed to have been wrecked on the rocks, and that after success had appeared to crown their efforts, which made it all the harder to bear. Although Dick would not appear downcast while Roger could see his face, he had numerous doubts to wrestle with in the silence of the night, and secretly groaned in spirit many times. During his wakeful hours he often caught the distant howling of a wolf pack. This coming of the first deep snow of the winter would make their task of securing daily food the more difficult, and it seemed to the listener that there was an additional mournfulness to those long-drawn sounds. Once he also caught the scream of some other beast in the pine woods. Although it was not repeated, Dick believed it must have come from a panther seeking his prey amidst the snowy aisles of the forest. Mayhew, too, must have been wakeful, for several times when Dick happened to be dozing he arose and threw more wood on the fire. When the stars told Dick morning was at hand he felt as though a terrible load had been taken from his mind. With ten hours of daylight before them they must surely be able to obtain meat and satisfy their craving for food. While the other two were sitting cross-legged by the fire, and talking in low tones, Roger suddenly sat up. He stared hard at them, and dug his knuckles into his eyes, as though he could not believe what he saw. Dick knew from the indications that he must have been far away in his sleep, and that the disappointment struck him cruelly. "So, it was all a dream after all, and mother was not calling me to get up or the griddle cakes would be cold?" Roger remarked, dolefully. "Oh, how fine they used to taste, with that wild honey smeared over them! Do you remember the time when we brought in four heaping buckets of honey from that bee-tree up on Juniper Creek, and how my left eye was closed by a sting? But never was there such sweet stuff. And to think that we have to go without a bite of breakfast this cold morning!" "Just as soon as it gets a little lighter," said Dick, "we will be on the move." "Searching for something to eat, you mean, don't you?" "Yes, whether it is that stray buffalo, or an elk, we will not be very particular which," the other declared. "Why, I think I could eat a--a wolf, almost, I'm that caved in," declared Roger, and no doubt he meant it, too. The dawn was at hand. Eagerly they watched the pink flush spreading across the eastern sky. With a change in the wind they could hear a distinct muttering sound, and it was easy to picture some gushing geyser in action, perhaps miles away. Just as soon as they could see without trouble they turned their backs on Camp Hope, and were soon following the trail of the buffalo. "If I thought we would have any trouble about getting a supply of wood, so as to start a fire in a hurry after we get our meat," Roger observed before they abandoned the camp, "I'd be tempted to tote some of this good fuel on my back." "No need of doing anything like that," Dick assured him. "If there is anything that is plentiful around here it is fuel for a fire. I already have some small bits of choice stuff laid away for a time of need." The wind had shifted the surface of the dry snow to some extent, so that in places they found the tracks of the buffalo almost covered. But Mayhew was a born trailer, and found no difficulty in following the animal. "You see," he told the boys at one time, "this may be a good thing for us, because we can tell where the beast started fresh this morning." It was not twenty minutes after he made this remark when the scout joyously showed them where the buffalo had spent the night. They could plainly see the imprint of his hairy coat in the snow where he had lain down. The cold had no particular terror for such a rugged beast and, as he went on in about the same general direction as his previous trail, they believed they were right in assuming that the buffalo, through instinct, knew where forage was to be found, and was heading thither. All possible haste was now made by the three pursuers. It meant much to them that they presently overtake the quarry, or else run upon some other game. Roger was already feeling weak from lack of food. Only his will power enabled him to keep alongside the others in that hot chase. He strained his vision to the utmost, in the endeavor to be the first to discover signs of the welcome presence of the big animal with the shaggy mane, which it seemed was their only hope of staving off starvation. When crows again flew overhead and continued their scornful cawing, Roger several times aimed his empty gun up at them, as though he would have liked to give the impudent birds of ill omen something to remember him by. "I really believe they must know we have so little ammunition that nothing could tempt us to waste a grain of powder on them this day," he declared, angrily, when the clamor of crow scolding grew worse. "Oh! at another time you would hardly pay any attention to them," Dick told him. "Just now all of us feel a bit nervous, and ugly. Let them scold if it does them any good. We haven't yet reached the point where we could eat crow, even if we felt like wasting a shot on one." It was sensible advice, and, just as Dick prophesied, the noisy flock was soon left in their wake. "I've heard some queer stories about crows," Mayhew remarked, "and how they even hold a court to try some bird that has been bad. Once I found a crow hanging by the neck dead in a wild grape-vine. Of course I could never tell if it got there by accident, or was hanged by its mates; but lots of people I told the story to said it looked mighty suspicious." Dick laughed a little at that, but went on: "I've sat in the woods many a time, myself, and watched a gathering of crows. It seemed as though they came by squads from everywhere until there were hundreds fluttering about the trees. And such a terrible noise they kept up! It made me think of school when we have spelling bees, and everybody is trying to call out at the same time." "Yes," added Roger, trying to take some interest in things that would cause him to forget his misery for even a brief period of time, "and then they would fly off in a great cloud, dodging this way and that as though it might be an army going to attack the fort of an enemy. Yes, they are queer birds; but I don't like them to make fun of me when I'm sick for something to eat." "They acted to me as if they were warning us to go back!" suggested Mayhew, a little uneasily. "I wonder why, and if there's anything up this way that would give us trouble." "It's open country just here," said Roger, "and nothing terrible in sight. But I'd give a heap if we could only overtake that loping buffalo. You said a while ago, didn't you, Mayhew, that he could only be fifteen minutes or so ahead of us?" "That is what his tracks tell me," the guide assented, "and we are coming up on him all the while. If we fail to see him in the next half hour I will be a disappointed man." "Why, I must be getting weak on my pins, for it seems as if the ground was trembling under me!" declared Roger, showing signs of sudden alarm. Dick and the guide exchanged hasty glances. Apparently they were feeling something of a similar nature, but could not lay it to the same cause as Roger. "It is getting much worse now," cried Mayhew, "and I can hear a terrible grumbling down underneath me that I must say I don't like over much!" All of them were by this time aroused to a sense of their sudden peril; but it was Dick who voiced the alarming truth. "Run for your lives!" he shouted, "it must be a boiling fountain about to burst, and we are right on top of the crater!" CHAPTER XXVIII WITH HOPEFUL HEARTS FORGOTTEN at that minute were all their other troubles, as each made hurried efforts to get away from the spot. The trembling of the rocks told plainly enough that some convulsion of nature was about to take place; and Dick's words gave evidence that he himself had discovered where the yawning crater of the boiling spring lay amidst the half melted snow. Hardly had they gone back some thirty or forty feet when there burst forth a vast volume of spray and steaming water that ascended high into the air, reaching an altitude of possibly five score feet before it lost its velocity, and began to rain downward. Immediately the snow around the entire vicinity commenced to melt with the heat of the falling water. With the sunlight falling on the wonderful fountain the two boys thought they had never in all their lives seen anything so sublime. Mayhew was more alarmed than pleased by the spectacle. Its terror appealed more to his backwoods nature than any beauty connected with the display. Indeed, had he been there alone, the chances were Mayhew would have taken to his heels, not being desirous of such close acquaintance with things he could not comprehend. After staring at the magical fountain for a brief time Roger once more allowed his other nature to have sway. "We are losing precious minutes, Dick!" he called out, for the roar was so great that it was impossible to be heard unless the voice were elevated. "This may be all very fine, but it doesn't seem to satisfy the gnawing sensation inside me." When Dick gave the word, Mayhew only too gladly once more led off. "That buffalo must have known of this hot fountain, because he came straight up to where it is," Roger remarked, after they had left the spouting geyser behind them. "Yes, but it seems that it rises only at long intervals," Dick explained. "It may be that days pass without an outburst. That accounts for the snow around, which disappeared so fast once the flow of hot water began." Roger seemed content to accept this version of the strange happening. In fact it was now a past matter with him; his most urgent necessity did not concern wonderful fountains at all, but provender. He had a constant reminder with him that "nature abhors a vacuum," and that an empty stomach gives its owner no peace. "If we had stood where we were," said Dick, "the chances are some of us might have been well cooked. My heart seemed to jump up in my throat when you stumbled, Roger; but you managed to recover your balance and come on." "I confess that I was a bit worried myself about that time, Dick; but as a rule I'm not so clumsy. Just now my legs seem weak and wobbly. It must be that hunger is getting a good grip on me." "All's well that ends well, they say," ventured Mayhew, stealing a backward look over his shoulder at the still spouting geyser that filled him with such uneasiness. "When the buffalo found this place all covered with snow," continued Roger, "so he could get not a mouthful of grass or fodder, he started off again in the same general direction. Where do you reckon he is striking out for now, Dick?" "Oh, I suppose he knows of other places where he can feed, and is headed for one of them," was the answer Dick gave. "There, the noise is dying down back of us," Mayhew announced. "It seems as though the show is over for this time. Yes, the column of hot water and steam is only half as high, and getting less right along." "It may lie quiet for another spell, perhaps days, before it breaks out again," suggested Dick, which remark proved that he was arriving at some conclusion respecting these remarkable geysers, in that he believed they all had regular cycles for displaying their activities, some frequent, others at much longer intervals, but all working with clock-like fidelity. Roger had already quite forgotten all about the recent scare. Once more he was keeping his eyes on the alert for signs of that lone buffalo which would mean so much to them. He had pictured the animal so many times in his fancy that pretty soon the tortured boy began "seeing things" that did not really exist. "Look yonder, Dick," he would say huskily, "and tell me is that the old bull just alongside that rock? Seems as though I can make out his head as he stands there. Hadn't we better spread out, so as to surround him?" When Dick assured Roger that what he took to be the head of the buffalo was only an outcropping of the massive rock the other seemed deeply disappointed. "I was dead sure it must be our game, Dick, indeed I was. But now I see you are right, and it is a part of the rocky spur. How about that brush heap ahead there; I may have been mistaken, Dick, but I thought I could see something moving. It is too low down to hide a big buffalo, but Indians might be lying there, waiting to knock us over. I hope they have some pemmican along with them, for we could take it away, you see, Dick; and even dry pemmican would taste pretty good now." Dick began to feel a little worried about his cousin. It seemed to him as though Roger was getting light-headed on account of his privations. "Oh! if only we could catch up with that miserable buffalo bull," Dick muttered to himself as he tramped along. "Either that, or else run across an elk. Something has got to happen soon, or I'm afraid Roger will keel over, or perhaps go out of his mind." The situation was getting more desperate. Try as he would, Dick could discover no way in which it might be alleviated. They must keep on constantly and hope that before long they would come up with the animal they had been tracking with the pertinacity of wolves. He knew they were not making anything like the progress they could have had to their credit if they had partaken of their customary portion of food. Weakness had seized upon them, and, while the spirit was willing, the flesh seemed to be lacking in the power to obey as promptly as they would have liked. Roger continued to discover suspicious objects from time to time. Then his mood would change, and he could be heard laughing softly to himself, as though the whole thing was appearing to him now in the guise of a great joke. "Poor fellow!" muttered Dick, when one of these spasms had passed off, leaving Roger more morose than ever; "somehow he seems to feel it so much more than either of us. I've got to the last hole in my belt now, and I hope there may be no need of my making a fresh one." When he looked toward Mayhew he saw that the scout's face had begun to show signs of renewed eagerness. This gave Dick a thrill, as hope once more commenced to flutter in his breast. Certainly Mayhew would not look like that unless he had good reason to believe they were now close upon the heels of the roving buffalo. Then Mayhew raised a warning finger; at the same time he nodded his head toward the muttering Roger. Dick comprehended the action; it meant that some means should be taken to keep the other quiet, lest he warn their quarry of their coming long before there was any necessity of such a happening, and thus endanger the success of their stalking game. Accordingly Dick hastened to get alongside his cousin. He laid a hand on Roger's arm, and the other, raising his head, turned a pair of red eyes upon Dick. "Keep still, Roger!" hissed Dick, holding up a finger. "Mayhew says we are right on the heels of the game. You must not speak a single word above a whisper, or all may be ruined. Do you understand what I am saying?" "Of course I do, Dick," began the other, cautiously, as though aroused by the joyous news, and coming back to his senses again. "I hope you are not thinking me silly just because I've been complaining of feeling hungry?" "Never mind, now, it's going to be all right," said Dick, soothingly, for he was afraid Roger might want to argue the matter with him. "As you have an empty gun you must let us do the work." "Oh, never fear about me, I understand!" "Well, keep still now, Roger. Not another word, but hold yourself ready to start that fire soon. If you listen hard you may hear the horn blow for dinner like it does at home when we are out in the field. Silence now, Mayhew must think he sees our game." Indeed, the actions of the guide would give any one to understand something like that. He was moving along with his body bent over, and gripping his faithful rifle in both hands. Although both of the boys used their eyes to the best advantage they could not see anything to hearten them; but then the strain on their nerves, because of all that blinding snow, may have had something to do with this failure. Mayhew turned quickly toward them. He said not a word, but his lips moved, and he nodded his head in a manner that thrilled the boys. It had long ago been decided just what their tactics should be in case they were so fortunate as to come up with the quarry. Neither of them meant to fire until they had managed to get so close to the game that one shot alone would be necessary to bring the animal down. Of course, when their presence was discovered, the buffalo would start off at as brisk a pace as possible, in order to escape from his human enemies. They believed, however, the animal must be nearly tired out from breasting the deep drifts so long, and that its burst of speed could not last any great while. If it became absolutely necessary, they were prepared to risk everything on a long-distance shot, and the hope of wounding the animal. This would hasten its halting at least, when it could be dispatched at their pleasure, even though they used knife and hatchet to accomplish this. Roger must have been greatly impressed with what Dick had said to him, for he remained perfectly still after that, at least so far as giving voice to his feelings was concerned. Dick had pushed on ahead of his cousin, as he had announced he intended to do on account of holding one of the loaded guns. Side by side with Mayhew he now advanced along the fresh trail. Even a novice could see that some animal must have passed only a few minutes before, for there were places where snow actually fell over into the tracks, as though it had been balanced on the edge of the depression. The anxious waiting that almost made them sick at heart ended at last. Dick caught a scuffling sound that came from beyond the next line of bushes. Something was moving there, and he could easily imagine that the hungry buffalo, scenting some sort of grass under the snow, might be trying to get down to it. Bending lower still, they pushed on, with eyes glued on the spot where those significant sounds came from. In another minute they would be able to look over the tops of the bushes and see what lay beyond. Then, if all was well, a lucky shot would procure them the meat of which they were in such desperate need. No one made a sound so far as Dick could tell, so it could not have been that which gave warning to the suspicious buffalo. Perhaps a shift in the wind carried some taint of their presence to his sensitive nostrils and aroused his fears. However that might be, Dick heard a sudden snort, and then there came a shout of dismay from Roger, who, standing more erect than the rest, must have been able to see what was going on beyond the bushes. "He's on the run, Dick! Oh! hurry, and shoot, or he will get away from us!" As Dick and Mayhew cleared the bushes with great bounds they saw the buffalo plunging into a deep drift and scattering the snow in every direction. But what thrilled the two hunters was the fact that, in dashing headlong into the drift, the beast had entered a trap from which escape would not be easy. CHAPTER XXIX THE HUNTERS' FEAST "HEAD him off!" Roger called from the rear, while he made all haste to come up, even though he had an empty and useless gun, and could not be of any assistance to his comrades. The others had gauged the situation, and realized that their best move was to follow directly after the animal, thus causing him to push deeper into the trap. The heavy fall of snow, that they had grumbled at so many times when struggling along knee-deep, now promised to be their best ally. In this fashion they presently found themselves close upon the struggling bull. Floundering there he could not make much headway, and at last in desperation the animal started to turn upon his pursuers. They knew well what the result might be if they allowed the charge to be carried out. One of them would be struck down by those wicked black horns that adorned the shaggy head; and, worst of all, the animal was likely to escape, since Roger could do little or nothing to stay his flight over the back trail. [Illustration: "THE BUFFALO WAS JUST IN THE ACT OF TURNING WHEN THE FRONTIERSMAN FIRED"] It had been arranged that Mayhew was to take the first shot, and they hoped one would be sufficient, with the backing of knife and hatchet. The buffalo was just in the act of turning when the frontiersman fired, and in consequence Mayhew could hardly have asked for a better showing, since one flank was wholly exposed. At the time the marksman could not have been more than fifteen feet away, and a miss was out of the question. Mayhew had hunted these huge bison on numerous occasions, since he was one of those upon whom the exploring party depended for a regular supply of fresh meat. This being the case, he knew exactly where to place his bullet in order to get the best results. As a consequence no sooner had he discharged his gun, and drawn his hatchet in order to be prepared for the worst, than he saw the animal stagger and fall in his tracks. A vital spot must have been reached by the missile that was driven by that heavy charge of powder; for the long-barreled guns of the pioneers were powerful in their execution. When Roger saw the quarry struggling in the snow-drift his excitement became so great that he could not even shout, much as he felt like so doing. Hurrying toward the spot, he fastened his hungry eyes upon the animal whose efforts to rise were becoming more and more feeble. Presently Mayhew, watching his chance, stepped briskly forward and with one well-aimed blow from the back of his hatchet finished the business. "Hurrah!" gasped Roger, carried away by the importance of their well-earned victory. No doubt delightful visions immediately began to flit through his brain, as in imagination he saw himself seated by a fire, and devouring ration upon ration of savory buffalo meat. "Remember your part of the transaction, Roger!" warned Dick, as, knife in hand, he prepared to cut up the game. "That means a fire!" answered the other, excitedly. "Hand me over the fine stuff you said you had packed up, Dick. Oh! you can depend on me to get things going in a hurry. There's a spot close by where I saw plenty of wood. The snow was blown away somehow or other. Give me a little time, and you will see smoke rising!" Doubtless Roger had started scores, even hundreds, of fires in his time; but it is certain that he never entered into the task with a lighter heart than on this particular occasion. His very soul seemed to be singing with joy as he hastily gathered up some of the wood most easily obtained, and then, picking a good spot, proceeded to use flint and steel with hopes of speedy results. Finding that his very eagerness was delaying him, Roger called a halt, took himself to task, and after that settled down grimly to accomplishing his part of the proceedings without a hitch. In a short time smoke began to curl upwards from his small beginning. Blowing the feeble blaze he quickly had it taking hold in earnest. The crackle and snap of the burning wood was music to the ears of the almost delirious boy. "The fire is ready, Dick!" he called out. "Then come for some of the meat, and commence business," was the welcome answer. As there was nothing that Mayhew could do to assist in carving the dead buffalo, he also was given various "hunks" of the meat, and presently the two sat there by the fire, attending to a dozen or more sticks, on the ends of which their long-delayed meal was being slowly browned. Never in all his life had Roger felt so frantic upon smelling the odor of cooking meat. It would have been just the same had their fare consisted of venison, bear meat, or wild turkey; all he wanted was something to satisfy that terrible craving which was overpowering him. It must be confessed that Roger, unable to stand the suspense and temptation longer, snatched the first piece from its stick before it was half-cooked, and commenced to devour it like a savage. He seemed to enjoy it, too, which fact caused the guide to speedily follow his example and appropriate one of the sections for himself. Dick, coming up just then with a further supply, first of all filled the empty sticks with fresh portions, and then--well, Dick was just as hungry as either of his comrades, and there was really no sense in waiting any longer, so he made it unanimous! After they had taken the sharp edge off their ravenous hunger the pace was not quite so swift. They were willing to wait until the meat was fairly well cooked; and by degrees it was noticed that they even began to slacken in their attack. At length Dick laughed as he remarked: "I think I have reached my limit, and, as I hardly want to be called a glutton, I mean to quit." "One more piece will satisfy me--for a while at least," Roger confessed. The guide also admitted that he believed he could contain no more. Although possibly at another time Roger might have complained about the fresh meat being tough, no one heard him utter a single word against it on that occasion. It would be adding insult to injury to find fault with something that had really been the means of saving their lives. "While we have this fire," suggested Dick, "it would be a good idea to cook some more of the meat. We may not be able to start another blaze later on; the danger of being discovered and attacked might be too great. What do you think about it, Mayhew?" "It is a sensible idea, I must say," came the immediate reply. As that settled it, Dick went over and proceeded to do some more work with his keen-edged blade. They meant to take considerable of the meat along with them at any rate; that much had been decided on long before. With but another shot left between starvation and themselves, they could not afford to be wasteful when good luck had thrown a chance like this in their way. Roger was quite a different sort of fellow, now that he no longer experienced the tortures of an unappeased appetite. He could even look hopefully into the future, and see glorious opportunities for carrying out their plan of campaign. As Dick had truly said, what they had done once could be accomplished again. Favored by the protecting hand of Providence, they must surely be able to get the better of that cruel and scheming French trader. The big lake where the river had its source could not be many miles away from where they now stood. They would push steadily on, and, upon striking its shores, ascertain where the Frenchmen had their camp. "They must have a fire in such cold weather," Roger argued, and the others agreed with him, glad to find that he was looking at matters so cheerfully. "And fire makes some kind of smoke, so we ought to be able to tell where it is. Then, when the night comes, we can creep up and set Jasper free." How simple the program seemed now! The rocks heretofore appearing almost unsurmountable diminished in size, and no longer stood as a barrier that could not be scaled. A full stomach nearly always makes one see things in a rosy light. Finally it was decided they had cooked a sufficient supply of meat. The balance that they expected to carry with them was made up in small packages enclosed in portions of the buffalo hide and tied securely with thongs. As they were burdened with little save their guns, now almost useless to them, these packages would not prove troublesome. Roger was willing to load himself down with twice the amount, and bravely stagger under it all, rather than risk the chance of suffering again the misery he had endured. "You feel sure the lake lies to the east of us, Mayhew, do you not?" Roger asked the guide when they were ready to start, feeling ever so much stronger, and able to push through the drifts where they could not be skirted. "Yes, everything points that way," he was assured by Mayhew. "From the way that Frenchman pointed when he was talking to you both, Dick figured that the lake was off in that direction. And then the crows fly that way in the morning, and return again in the evening. That is a pretty good sign, I take it." Roger became interested at once. Here was something he had not thought of noticing, and consequently he wished for more information. "Tell me why that should be so," he asked, as they started. "These crows do not drift south in the winter time," explained the frontiersman. "They stay up here, and, as they must find feed when the earth is covered under many feet of snow, they have learned that along the shore of the big lake they can get what they need--dead fish and all sorts of other things cast up by the waves." "But what if the lake freezes over, as it may do in very hard winters?" Roger questioned. "Oh, they would still find things to eat on the ice," returned Mayhew. "Being an open stretch, the wind would keep the snow from settling there. But no matter, that is where they fly each morning; and you know what hunters say about a direct line being as 'straight as the crow flies.'" "Mayhew is right, Roger," said Dick, "and the chances are as ten to one that we are heading straight for the big lake right now." For some time they made steady progress. Possibly they covered as much as two miles when the guide was suddenly observed to come to a full stop. Both of the boys followed suit. They were not ten feet behind Mayhew, so it was possible for them to exchange words with him in low tones. Dick it was who found his voice first, for Roger grew so excited he became dumb for the time being. "What is it, Mayhew?" asked Dick, half-elevating his gun, which contained the only charge of powder and lead they possessed, and under such conditions might be looked on as their sole means of defense in case of threatening peril. "There are Injuns near by," came the answer. "I saw a feathered head rise above yonder bush; and, as I live, there are others on either side of us. It looks as though we were surrounded!" CHAPTER XXX ALLIES WITH COPPER-COLORED SKINS WHEN Mayhew made that dire announcement it sent a foreboding of coming trouble straight to the hearts of his young companions. If the wily red men had succeeded in surrounding them, so that there was no chance of escape, they might as well give up all hope of saving themselves from capture. Poor Roger, who had so recently been brimming over with confidence concerning the ultimate success of their expedition to the camp of the Frenchmen, now found himself sinking once more into a pit of despair. "What had we better do, Mayhew?" asked Dick, grimly. "That is for you to decide," replied the scout. "Each one will have to follow his own bent. As for myself, I know well that capture would mean death at the stake for me. So I shall fight to the last gasp, and, if the chance comes, try to make my escape as I did before. A man can die but once, and better in battle than by fire." Dick hardly knew what to say or do. He had a charge in his gun, it is true, and with ordinary luck that might account for a single Indian; but would it be the part of wisdom to enrage the savages by this rash act? He turned to the right and to the left. Yes, even as Mayhew had said, there were enemies concealed everywhere, for he could see feathered heads rising from behind various sheltering bushes. Flight seemed impossible, and, while the thought of surrender chilled his blood, it began to look as though there might be no other course. Then all at once Roger heard his cousin give a low cry. It was not alarm that rang in that utterance, but rather sudden surprise, even hope. Roger could not guess what it meant, but turning toward his comrade, he seized hold of his arm and stared in the other's face. To his amazement Roger saw what looked like an expanding smile beginning to appear there. He feared Dick must be going out of his mind when he could show signs of pleasure upon facing such a terrible condition as that by which they were now confronted. "Mayhew, look again!" cried Dick. "Pay closer attention to the feathers in their scalp-locks! Tell me if they are not different from the feathers the Blackfeet wear!" It was the frontiersman now who uttered a cry. "Yes, yes, you are right, boy! These are not Blackfoot braves!" "They are Sioux warriors, and, it may be, fresh from the village of our friend, the chief, Running Elk!" said Dick. Roger found his voice at hearing that glorious news. "Try them, Dick!" he exclaimed, excitedly. "Give them the sign the chief taught us! Let them know we are friends, and not enemies! Yes, I can tell the feathers are those of our friends, the Sioux. It is going to be all right after all!" Dick meanwhile took out a piece of white linen he had with him and started to wave it. At the same time he made certain gesticulations with his other hand that would have a meaning in the eyes of Sioux braves, if, as they hoped, these hidden red men proved to be such. At first no notice was taken of his signals. Perhaps the wily warriors suspected that it might be some sort of trap to catch them unawares; but, as Dick continued his motions, they presently met with a response. Several Indians cautiously arose to their feet, making responsive gestures. Then they started to advance toward the spot where the three palefaces stood. "Why," exploded Roger, "look at every bush giving up a brave! There must be twenty of them, all told. How lucky for us they are Sioux, and not Blackfeet, the allies of Lascelles." From every quarter the Indians now advanced, forming a complete cordon around Dick and his friends, who awaited their coming calmly, confident as to the result of the meeting. "Dick," said Roger, "I am sure I know that man in the lead, with the feathers of a chief in his long black hair, and the bears' claws around his neck." "Yes," the other remarked, "I was just going to say the same thing. He is a sub-chief by the name of Beaver Tail. Surely he should remember us, and what we did to make his chief our friend." "Will he remember us, do you think?" continued Roger, apprehensively. "Have no fear," Dick assured him; "all will be well. An Indian, once a friend, can be depended on forever. I am only too glad now I held my fire." As the first of the Indians came up, the boys waited anxiously to see whether they would be recognized by the sub-chief. To their satisfaction Beaver Tail immediately greeted them as friends, after the manner of his tribe. Others of the warriors must also have discovered that they had seen two of the palefaces among the lodges in their home village, for there were numerous grunts and friendly nods among them. "How can we let Beaver Tail know what we are here for, and beg him to help us save Williams from the Frenchmen?" Dick now asked. "The chances are that not one of the braves or the chief himself can speak a word of English. Shall we make signs in the snow, and tell him that way?" "Leave it to me, lad," Mayhew told him. "I have a little smattering of the Sioux tongue, for once upon a time I was a prisoner among their wigwams for months. With the aid of signs I shall be able to tell him the story of how we seek Williams, the man who was in your company at the time their chief set you free. And they will, I feel sure, help us carry out our plan." Both the pioneer boys watched Mayhew with intense eagerness as he faced Beaver Tail and commenced to speak to him in his own language. The chief looked astonished and pleased as well, for he had never dreamed that a paleface could talk in the Dacotah tongue. (Note 10.) While Mayhew was talking Dick watched the face of Beaver Tail. He could see that by degrees the chief was catching the drift of what the guide tried to explain. Of course this consisted in the main of their desire to overtake Williams, who had set off on a hunting trip, and more to the effect of how he had been unlucky enough to fall into the hands of the Blackfeet, who were acting in conjunction with certain French traders. It was a clever idea on the part of the guide to bring in the Blackfeet, because, as he very well knew, there was never-ending war between that tribe and the Sioux. This would make Beaver Tail all the more willing, even eager, to lend his aid in effecting the rescue of Williams. Step by step Mayhew advanced. When his limited stock of words failed him, the guide resorted to crude drawings on the snow, at which device he seemed to be quite adept, if the boys could judge from the chorus of "how-how" that broke from the crowd of braves after each effort in this line, and which they judged meant appreciation on the part of the interested onlookers. Finally the guide had reached the conclusion. He must have asked Beaver Tail to help the paleface friends of the great chief, Running Elk, to rescue their companion from the hated enemy, because the Indian was nodding his head as though the proposition struck him favorably. Then he commenced talking in return. When he saw from the puzzled expression on the face of Mayhew that the frontiersman failed to catch the idea he was trying to express, the chief turned to the sign language, upon which his race have always relied when communicating with each other, or to commemorate great events such as glorious victories. "What does he say, Mayhew?" asked Roger. "He knows where the Frenchmen have their camp, and it is, as we believed, over on the big water," replied the guide. "Good! And will he take us there, and help us rescue Jasper?" continued Roger. "He says he will," Mayhew announced, with a happy smile on his weatherbeaten face, for things had taken a decided turn in their favor, and he began to imagine himself back in the main camp, ready to make another attempt at taking that message down to the mouth of the Missouri River. "When?" continued the impatient Roger. "We can be heading over that way as soon as we feel like it," the guide explained. "The lake is about seven miles from here, as near as I can make him out from his sign drawing. Once we get close by we must wait for night to come. It is against Injun nature to ever make an attack in broad daylight, when it can be avoided." "So long as they do not injure Jasper it will not matter much," Roger admitted. "If they have not hurt him up to now I do not think anything is going to happen before night comes around," Dick told him. As there was nothing more to be arranged Mayhew managed to tell the chief that they gladly accepted his offer of assistance, and placed themselves wholly in his hands. Perhaps the artful frontiersman, knowing the nature of all Indians, managed to convey more or less flattery in his speech. At any rate Beaver Tail gave evidences of being greatly pleased by it, and even went around shaking hands with the three palefaces, in the same way he had seen the head chief, Running Elk, do on a former occasion. It was a fortunate thing for the exploring expedition that members of their party had been able to make friends with this tribe of the powerful Sioux nation so early in their invasion of the hunting grounds of these Western Indians. Dick and Roger had shot a savage panther that was about to leap from the limb of a tree upon an old Indian squaw and a little girl. Later on, when the boys found themselves prisoners of the Sioux, this squaw, who turned out to be a sister of the great chief, Running Elk, and the child Dove Eye his own daughter, saved their lives; and from that time on the Sioux, at least that particular tribe, were on friendly terms with the explorers. Accompanied by that host of fighting warriors, Dick and his party pushed on into the east for several hours, not trying to make any fast time, however, since they were in no particular hurry to arrive before evening. "If you have been taking notice of the fact, Dick," Mayhew remarked, as he drew alongside the others, "we have our backs full on the westering sun." "Yes," Dick returned, "I did take note of that, and it tells us you were right; the lake, and the camp of the Frenchmen as well, lie straight to the east." "Look up, Roger; what do you see?" demanded the guide. "Our old friends, the crows, flying in flocks, all in a straight line, and heading into the sun. Listen to them cawing; but somehow or other the sound doesn't 'rile' me as it did before. In fact, I rather like to hear it, because I can fancy they are saying: 'You are on the right track, the camp is only a little way ahead, and good luck to you!'" Dick laughed softly. "That is only because you are happy now, while before you had a heavy load on your mind. As none of us can understand crow talk we must let it go by. See how they rise in the air when they glimpse us. Wary old rascals that they are, they scent danger a mile off." "And, as we must be getting near the big water now," interposed Mayhew, "it may be just as well that we forego talking except in whispers. There can be no telling about those crafty Blackfeet; some of them may be roving around, on the lookout for meat, and spy us. Leave it all to the chief, and let us copy everything they do, so as to show Beaver Tail we have handed the whole job over to him." After that not a word passed between the three comrades above their breath, as they moved along in company with the dusky crew. CHAPTER XXXI THE CAMP ON THE BIG WATER "THERE is the big water, Dick!" said Roger, in the ear of his cousin, as he chanced to peer through a narrow opening in the dense woods beyond. "And the chief has called a halt, which looks as though we were not to go any further just now," Dick added. They could catch a glimpse of what looked like an inland sea. The wind was raising whitecaps on the tops of the waves, as they rolled past toward the south. As far as the eye could reach the same broad expanse of clear crystal water lay. The Indians did well to call it the "big water," though to-day it is marked on the map as Yellowstone Lake. A spy was sent out while the remainder of the party remained in hiding. This was about an hour from sundown. He came back as the last glow was fading in the western sky, and there was a consultation between the chief and his leading warriors. "Try to find out how the land lies, and what the plan of campaign will be," Dick told Mayhew. The guide returned presently with all the information they required. "As near as I can tell," he explained to the boys, "the spy brings in the news that the Blackfeet have mostly departed, and only the four Frenchmen are left in the camp." "But I hope they have left Jasper behind also," exclaimed Roger, taking fresh alarm. "You remember we were told by Lascelles that he meant to try to get the Indians to carry him far away to their village, and either adopt him into the tribe, or else burn him at the stake." "Make your mind easy on that score," Mayhew assured him. "Then he is still in the camp?" asked the boy. "Yes, the spy saw him there, tied to a tree," Mayhew continued. "One of the Frenchmen gave him a kick in passing, like the coward that he is. I used to believe the French were gentlemen, but my opinion has changed." "Oh! you must not judge all Frenchmen by these rascals," said Dick. "They are of the bad kind. Perhaps Jasper will be glad of a chance to return that kick with interest before sun-up." "And if he doesn't, I will!" asserted Roger, impulsively, for he hated a coward and a bully above all things. "What does Beaver Tail mean to do?" Dick asked. "I think his first act will be to send the spy back again, so as to keep track of what is going on in the French camp," Mayhew told him. "Then at a later hour all of us will creep over and surround the place. Any Blackfeet who may be found are apt to be given a short shrift, because they are the mortal foes of the Sioux; but I do not believe the traders will be harmed, unless they should be unwise enough to shoot one of Beaver Tail's warriors." Shortly afterwards Dick saw the same skillful scout go forth, and he knew that Mayhew had guessed the truth when he said a close watch was to be kept over the camp on the lake shore. In good time the signal would be given for the general advance. Until then, all of them must possess their souls in patience. As the cold of the night increased it was likely to prove no laughing matter, since they were unprovided with blankets, and dared not build a fire. Still, with success so close to their hands, the pioneer boys felt that they could put up with almost anything. How slowly the time passed, in spite of all these brave resolutions! Roger found it necessary several times to get up and, as noiselessly as possible, thresh his arms around him, so as to start his stagnant blood into renewed circulation. Had it not been for this expedient he believed he would be unable to respond when finally the signal was given to move on. When it appeared to Roger that many hours must have passed, he was elated to discover that the chief, Beaver Tail, had begun to show signs of life. He had been sitting like a block of stone, simply casting a look up at the stars occasionally, as though one of the heavenly bodies must reach a certain altitude before the time could be reckoned as up. This must have been a signal to the others, for immediately each warrior was on his moccasined feet, and on every side bows could be seen being strung in readiness for twanging, while quivers of arrows were fastened over the left shoulder of each soft-footed brave. Once the expedition was in motion, the chill soon left Roger's body. In its place he experienced a gratifying warmth that must have started through the increased pumping of his youthful heart due to excitement. The boys found as they advanced that the crafty Sioux chief had made as complete arrangements as any war captain could have done. He had divided his force into three sections of about equal numbers. One of these was sent ahead, and it was easy to surmise that the duty of these warriors was to proceed to the further extremity of the Frenchmen's camp, so as to cut off escape from that quarter. A second lot could come up from the rear, while those with whom the palefaces and Beaver Tail himself were associated advanced along the shore of the lake, and expected to reach the vicinity of the camp in that way. The boys had never gazed upon a body of water anything like the size of that lake, though accustomed to the big Missouri River in flood-time, when it was miles from shore to shore. Once they had cruised down to the Mississippi in company with Roger's father, Sandy Armstrong, who had built a big canoe and wanted to revisit the place where, as a lad, he had had a temporary home. Seen in the sheen of the starlight, the lake looked as though it might be an ocean in itself, for no further shore was visible. Roger wondered if this was what the sea resembled, and if he and Dick would really be permitted to continue on with the explorers, cross the rocky range of mountains, and finally bring up on the golden strand of the Pacific Ocean. But there was a glimmering light close by, which he surmised was a smoldering fire in the French traders' camp. Carefully they continued to creep forward. It gave Roger a thrill to realize that he was in the company of savages such as his father and grandfather had fought in the years gone by; but who were now their best of friends. What wonderful stories he and Dick would have to tell should they live through all these manifold perils to return safely home, and resume their old places at the domestic fireside. Both boys were secretly hoping that Lascelles and his compatriots would not be so foolhardy as to attempt to resist. Bad as these men were, the boys did not wish to see them butchered, as they undoubtedly would be should they fire on the Sioux, or even wound one of Beaver Tail's warriors. As for any stray Blackfeet who may have remained in camp while the main body was off somewhere, if they got in the way of the Sioux arrows or tomahawks that was their lookout; the boys could not be expected to include them in the scheme of general amnesty. The attack was not to be started until certain signals announced that all the detachments had reached the positions assigned to them by the chief. When he heard the howl of a wolf given with a certain little twist at the finish, and then also caught the cry of the screech-owl, he would feel assured that nothing remained to be done but order a concerted assault. Indians have always had a certain set plan for their surprises. No matter how slyly they crept up on blockhouse or camp or border fort, when a certain time arrived they felt it was absolutely necessary to break out in ferocious yells. No doubt this was done partly to give freedom to their pent-up feelings, and, at the same time, add to the alarm of those whom they were attacking. Dick and Roger knew this fact. They had had some little experience themselves in connection with Indians. Besides this, they had heard innumerable stories from Grandfather David concerning those days along the Ohio, when the tribes from the Great Lakes to the southern border of Kentucky were all on the warpath, and seeking day and night to destroy the hardy pioneers. This being the case, neither of the lads felt any surprise when there arose a series of the most dreadful yells. The warriors whom they accompanied added to the din with all their might, at the same time springing forward and running in the direction of the near by camp. From every quarter arose that deafening clamor. It must have struck terror to the hearts of the Frenchmen, even though they may have fancied that they were friendly with all the tribes of the far Northwest, because of their dealings in the matter of buying the stores of pelts collected by the red men. There was nothing for the boys to do but keep company with the braves as they thus closed in on the surrounded camp. Already they could see signs of tremendous excitement in that quarter, as the inmates, alarmed by the clamor of many tongues, turned this way and that, hardly knowing whether to run, or else raise up their hands in token of submission. Several dusky figures were discovered by the light of the fire darting into the thickets close to the camp. These must be the few Blackfoot braves who, for some reason, had been left behind. They knew there would be no mercy for them at the hands of their mortal foes, the Sioux, and on that account they preferred taking their chances in the brush and half-darkness. Had it not been for that horrid din, perhaps the boys might have caught the sharp twang of bowstrings; they might also have heard the death cries of those who met the flight of those swiftly-driven arrows, with their tips of jagged flint. Just then it mattered nothing to Dick and Roger whether any of the Blackfeet managed to run the gauntlet and escape or not; their thoughts were all taken up with the hope and expectation of finding that one for whom they had long sought, Jasper Williams, whose signature at the bottom of a new document would mean so much to the folks at home. As they entered the camp they saw a cluster of figures standing with fear-blanched faces. The flickering firelight showed the boys that Lascelles was there, and the smooth-faced young man, cowering at his side, must be his son, Alexis, whom accounts reported as being as great a rascal as his father. Besides, there were two more of the traders. At sight of the boys whom he had so greatly wronged Lascelles cried out something. Neither of them could exactly understand its nature; but Dick fancied the cowardly Frenchman must be pleading with them to have his life spared. "Hold up your hands, and they may not harm you; but under no conditions try to run away or you are dead men!" was what he flung out at them as he ran past. Roger was at his heels. The guide, with wonderful good sense, gave the fire a little kick in passing, which had the effect of starting up quite a bright blaze. By the aid of this light they could see what was going on. Already a number of the Sioux had entered the camp. Their appearance, with flourishing hatchets and knives, doubtless chilled the blood of the Frenchmen, knowing as they now did that these braves of Running Elk must be on the most friendly terms with Dick and Roger Armstrong. Dick looked further. It was, however, the keen-eyed Roger who chanced to be the first to discover what they were searching for. "This way, Dick; here he is, tied to this tree!" he cried. As Dick leaped after him he saw that there was indeed some one bound fast to a tree, a white man at that; and the firelight disclosed the fact that it was Jasper Williams. CHAPTER XXXII A WELL WON VICTORY--CONCLUSION THE astonishment of Jasper Williams was apparent as he saw Dick and Roger Armstrong before him. Up to that time he had supposed the attack to be simply one of those ordinary Indian surprises to be expected when white men are hunting on ground that the tribes of the Northwest claimed as their own territory. "Saving me seems to be getting quite a habit with you lads," he told them, as his bonds were hurriedly severed, and he could grasp a hand of each. "How did the news reach camp; and what made the captain allow you to start out almost alone into this heathen land in order to rescue me?" Dick quickly informed him concerning the reason for their presence. "We did not dream that you were in trouble," he said. "Mayhew, who was taking the document to our people down on the Missouri, was robbed of the paper. He came back to the camp to let us know; and we could see the fine hand of that French trader over there back of it." "François Lascelles!" cried the hunter, as a look of understanding crossed his rugged features. "Now I begin to see what it all means. He was afraid you would get another signature from me, and to block the game he had me taken prisoner by the Blackfeet. Why," he added, in a burst of anger, "they even threatened to carry me off to their village and make me teach their squaws how white women sew and bake bread, and all such civilized ways!" "We immediately started out to overtake you," continued Dick, "and Mayhew insisted on being one of our party. What strange adventures we have met with you shall hear about another time; for I take it that you do not mean after this to head any further into such a terrible country?" Williams shrugged his broad shoulders, and made a wry face. "I suppose, lads, I would be a fool to try it, since my comrades deserted me," he told them. "Yes," replied Roger, "we met them on the way, and both Hardy and Mordaunt vowed nothing could tempt them to go a step further. What with the working of the Evil Spirit, and the danger from hostile reds, they had had enough." "We are glad to hear you say such a sensible thing," Dick added, "because this does not seem like a white man's country. Only for our good luck in meeting these friendly Sioux, who come from the village of Running Elk, we might have had a much harder time in getting you free. But it is all right now!" "The sooner we start back to the camp the better I will be pleased," Williams admitted. "Then there's that document we ought to have on its way. What will you do with the Frenchmen?" "If we let them go free now," affirmed Roger, "no matter how they give us their solemn word of honor, I believe Lascelles would try to intercept our messenger again." "You are right about that, son," said Williams, warmly. "Better let the Indians knock them on the head, and have done with it. They surely deserve little mercy at your hands." Dick, however, could not agree to such a thing. "No," he said, firmly, "if Beaver Tail will agree to take them to camp with us, I believe Captain Lewis will hold them as hostages until Mayhew has had time to get so far along on his journey east that he can not be headed again. After that the Frenchmen might be turned loose." Between Williams and Mayhew this was explained to Beaver Tail, who agreed. Nothing was said about a reward, but Dick had already made up his mind that he would endeavor to induce the two captains in charge of the exploring party to deal generously with the Sioux in this respect. "It will not be thrown away, either," he told Williams, "because to have Running Elk and his tribe friendly with us might mean much for the success of our trip when spring comes." Naturally Lascelles and his comrades were very much concerned as to what their fate was going to be. When they heard what Dick had to say they seemed rather pleased, though the old trader frowned, and muttered to himself from time to time, as though he did not like the idea of being frustrated in his cherished scheme. There was apparently no help for it, unless he wished to try to escape, when the chances were he would be quickly hunted down and lose his scalp to the Sioux. Accordingly a start was made for the camp, the entire band of Indians accompanying the boys and the Frenchmen. During that weary march the old trader was given an opportunity of learning about the character of the two lads whom he had been pursuing so heartlessly, with the intention of robbing their parents of the property that he claimed through a flaw in the title. Whether this knowledge did him any good or not it would be impossible to say. He was too old to change his ways of life, and, while openly protesting to have seen a light, so that he would no longer try to injure the Armstrongs, Dick and Roger put little faith in his repentance. When finally the camp was reached the prisoners were handed over to the care of some of the soldiers accompanying the expedition, who were charged with the task of seeing that none of them escaped. Jasper Williams readily signed another document which Captain Lewis himself arranged, and both the leaders of the expedition put their names down as witnesses. Then Mayhew started once more for the lower Missouri. The other two messengers had agreed to wait at a certain place for him to join them; and he believed he still had ample time to arrive before the specified time would be up. When the two boys waved him farewell they felt that a great load had been taken from their shoulders. "This time there should be nothing to prevent him from reaching our homes and delivering the precious paper, besides our letters," said Dick. "Something seems to tell me he will do it," added Roger, "and so I have decided not to let it worry me any longer. We will keep Lascelles and his son here for some weeks, so that they will be powerless to catch up with Mayhew, even if they wished to try it. And Beaver Tail seemed greatly pleased with the generous way Captain Lewis treated him, too, so we have made good friends of the Sioux." "He gave the chief a gun and some ammunition," remarked Dick. "He was as pleased with it as a child would be with a new toy. And every brave also received something to show that we wanted them to be our friends. But the dinner we gave them did not seem to reach the right spot. I saw more than one slyly throw the tea away when they thought no one was looking." "They will stick to roast dog as a feast dish," laughed Roger. "I was afraid at one time there might be trouble between the Mandans and the Sioux, for they are old rivals of the chase and the warpath. But Captain Lewis managed to patch up a truce that may last while we are here, at any rate, even if the old warfare breaks out again afterwards." "It took a good deal of talk, though," suggested Roger, "to induce the Mandans to hide those old Sioux scalps they had swinging about their teepees. If the braves of Running Elk had glimpsed those nothing could have kept them from making trouble. But it is simply wonderful what power Captain Lewis has over men." "If we ever do set eyes on the great ocean that lies far beyond the range of rocky mountains," Dick affirmed, "it will be owing mostly to the cleverness of the President's private secretary." History has recorded the facts, and the young pioneer in stating his opinion was only saying what other men have conceded. A few days after Mayhew left the camp, well provisioned and armed for his dangerous trip over the back trail, winter set in in earnest. The boys were well satisfied to be so comfortably housed and among friends, instead of wandering amidst those strange scenes of which they never seemed to tire of talking, where the earth appeared to be on fire deep down under the outer crust, and continually spouted those colossal streams of steaming water. The four Frenchmen were kept prisoners until several weeks had elapsed, and then allowed to go. They had a _cache_ somewhere, they admitted, with an abundance of ammunition as well as other supplies, so there was little fear of their perishing in the severity of the winter weather. As the days and weeks drifted along Dick and Roger carried out many of their little plans. They hunted when the weather admitted, and accompanied Jasper Williams on trapping jaunts that covered several days. They also had intercourse with the peculiar Mandan Indians, and learned a multitude of interesting things connected with the tribe called the "White Indians," a race which has always been a mystery to historians. As the long winter drew near a close the boys began to feel their pulses thrill in anticipation of being once more on the move with their faces turned toward the magical setting sun. The talk around the fires was all of the wonders that still awaited them beyond the chain of mountains of which they heard so much. Every scrap of information was garnered and repeated. Captain Lewis lost no opportunity to learn new facts, or rumors concerning what they might expect to meet in their further advance into the country which up to then had never known the impression of a white man's foot. It can be easily understood, then, that as the snows began to melt with the gradual increase of the sun's warmth in the early spring, preparations were feverishly undertaken for a start. And in that camp there was none more deeply interested in the final outcome than were our two pioneer boys. "I think we'll see some wonderful sights," said Roger. "Perhaps," was the answer Dick made. How the forward march into the Great Unknown was resumed, and what adventures fell to the lot of our young heroes, will be related in the next volume of this series, to be called "The Pioneer Boys of the Columbia"; but, come what may, it is not likely that they will witness anything more wonderful than the marvels they encountered in the territory of the Yellowstone. THE END NOTES NOTE 1 (PAGE 7) When, in 1803, the new Republic purchased from France for fifteen million dollars what was then known as the territory of Louisiana, the United States extended its boundaries toward the unknown West where it was believed a mighty range of mountains divided the continent, while far beyond lay the Pacific Ocean. The territory included practically what is now covered by the States of Montana, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Indian Territory, and part of Colorado. President Jefferson wished to aid the settlers along the Mississippi, who wanted more room for expansion toward the setting sun, and accordingly, on his recommendation, Congress authorized the sending of an exploring expedition to ascertain what lay beyond the limits of the new land, and, if possible, to go all the way to the ocean. Captain Meriwether Lewis, the President's private secretary, together with Captain William Clark, was placed in charge of the expedition, which started from St. Louis early in 1804. It consisted of nine young Kentuckians, fourteen United States soldiers, two French voyageurs to serve as interpreters among the Indians whom they expected to encounter, and a black servant for Captain Clark. Some frontiersmen also joined them before they left the last trading post. On May 24th this little expedition left the mouth of the Missouri, and plunged into the then unknown wilderness, not knowing whether a single soul of the party would ever live to come back again with a record of the wonders they had seen, and the perils they had encountered. History tells us that they wintered at the Mandan village near the headwaters of the Missouri and that strange river which the Indians called Yellowstone, on account of the predominating color along its banks. The following spring the Lewis and Clark expedition continued on its way, reaching the Columbia River, and following it down until, at its mouth, they beheld the goal of all their hopes, the glorious ocean that lay bathed in the glow of the setting sun. NOTE 2 (PAGE 26) In those days, when the Indians of the Northwest did not have the Great White Father at Washington to supply them with rations and fresh beef, it was customary for the various tribes to participate in annual fall hunts, so that sufficient meat might be procured to last them through the long, cold winters. Sometimes they went after buffalo, which at that day were to be found in immense herds, and often the most wanton destruction was indulged in, traps being laid whereby the great animals were driven by hundreds over some precipice, so that the Indians hardly bothered taking anything but the tongues of their victims, which they cured by drying in the smoke of their fires. In spite of this slaughter the herds continued to increase until modern man, with his repeating rifle, made his appearance, at the time the first railroad was being built across the continent, when they quickly reached the point of practical extermination. More often the meat obtained in these fall hunts was venison. This the Indians cured by drying in the sun. Thus prepared, it would keep for any length of time, if not allowed to get wet. It is not the nicest food an epicure might select, being dark-looking, and often as hard as flint; but pemmican, as this dried venison is called, can be made into a palatable dish when properly cooked. When an Indian was sent on a trip of perhaps two hundred miles, to take a message to another tribe, he would simply carry along with him in his pouch a handful of this pemmican, which would serve him as a means of sustenance throughout his long journey, washed down with an occasional drink from some spring that he would discover on the trail. NOTE 3 (PAGE 128) Probably the giant geyser which performed such a splendid service for our two young heroes was the one known for many years as Old Faithful, from the fact that, while other geysers in Yellowstone Park may seem grander on occasion, they are often erratic in their flow, and not to be depended on. Old Faithful has often been described, and is an object of such general interest among the visitors to the National Park that a large hotel has been built so close that one can sit in an easy-chair within a few hundred yards, and view its spectacular upheaval. It seems to come every sixty-five minutes, to a dot, and the great white column rises with a roar from one to two hundred feet into the air, continuing for possibly the space of five minutes. New beauties are to be discovered with almost every eruption, according to the weather, and the hour of the day or night. Sunrise, sunset, moonlight sway the great steaming column into a thousand fantastic forms. When the geyser is quiet one may approach the crater, an oblong opening about two by six feet, with a quiet pool of crystal water. Some say the deposits around the crater indicate an age of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of years. When Columbus discovered America this great column played at regular intervals in the primal solitude; when Lief Erickson landed it was unspeakably old, but glorious as ever; when Christ was on earth its strange beauty fell on the eye of the infrequent savage who gazed on it with superstitious awe; long before the reputed date of creation it played and coruscated in the sunlight. No wonder, then, that those, who stop to think, gaze with wonder on Old Faithful and that the Indians, at the time the Lewis and Clark expedition crossed the continent, held it in awe and reverence. NOTE 4 (PAGE 162) The grizzly bear has never been found east of a certain line marked by spurs of the mighty Rocky Mountains. At the time the Lewis and Clark expedition penetrated the wilderness lying between the settlements along the lower Missouri and the far distant Coast Range of mountains, in what is now known as California, very little was known of this most terrible of all the wild animals native to North America; indeed, some big game hunters put the grizzly ahead of the African lion or the tiger of the Indian jungle so far as ferocity and toughness goes. Vague stories drifted to the ears of white hunters about a monster bear which terrified the red men of the West. They had even seen the claws strung around the neck of some chief who had won his high position after having killed one of these fearful creatures in a hand-to-hand fight. When the explorers finally returned to civilization they brought with them the most amazing stories of things they had seen; but undoubtedly nothing surpassed their descriptions of the grizzly bear's ten lives, and the fearful strength which the animal possessed. In these modern days of soft-nosed bullets, and the exploding kind that do such fearful execution upon striking the game, it may not be so difficult to bring down old "Eph," as Western men call the grizzly; but a score or more of years ago men declared that they had known such an animal to be hit with twenty shots, and yet seem to mind his wounds no more than if they were flea-bites. It can be seen, then, that, in slaying a grizzly, Dick and his cousin Roger were really accomplishing what in those days was a stupendous feat. Their success must be laid partly to good luck, and the fact that they were able to send their lead to a vital spot. Ordinary wounds will have little or no effect upon a tough grizzly, save to further enrage the beast, and make him more fierce than ever. Unless they are heavily armed, or can gain the shelter of a convenient tree, wise hunters usually let such a dangerous animal severely alone when coming unexpectedly upon him in the rocky canyons where he loves to prowl. NOTE 5 (PAGE 181) The first real intimation the world received concerning the wonders of what is now Yellowstone Park can be said to have come through the experiences of a trapper by the name of Colter. He was made prisoner by the hostile Blackfeet in the early part of the nineteenth century, and, after being tortured by them, managed to escape. When he afterwards reached civilization he had some marvelous tales to tell about a land of steaming pools; of springs of boiling water, that at intervals shot hundreds of feet into the air; of seething cauldrons of pitch; of strange lakes and rivers; as well as of rocks and clay that bore the diversified colors of the rainbow. Of course, his rough friends laughed at his stories, and gave them little credence. Indeed, it was believed that the sufferings of the trapper had made him somewhat light in the head. They treated his accounts with derision, and classed the tales with those of Gulliver and Munchausen. But, in later years, everything Colter had told was amply verified, showing that he had actually been in the region now known as Yellowstone Park. It was not until 1869 that a well-equipped prospecting party was sent out by private enterprise to ascertain the truth about this supposedly mythical region of awe-inspiring wonders. Thirty-six days were spent on the trip, and the party saw such amazing things that, as the account tells us, some of them "were unwilling on their return to risk their reputation for veracity by relating the wonders of that unequaled country." To-day, the tourist is taken into the Park and shown everything that is worth seeing with the least degree of discomfort. And there is nothing in the Old World that can at all compare with the natural wonders to be found on the great Government Reservation, the lake itself being the gem of them all, for it covers something like one hundred and fifty square miles, and is as clear as crystal. NOTE 6 (PAGE 191) As a rule the Indians of the Great Northwest seemed to avoid the region now known as Yellowstone Park, even though it abounded in game, because of superstitious fears connected with the mysterious working of the spouting geysers, which they believed to be the evidence of the Evil One opposed to the Good Manitou. Occasionally the Blackfeet or the Crows invaded the borders when in need of fresh meat. Some lodges of a fragment of the Snake Indians have been found, a miserable tribe known as Sheep-eaters; but the powerful Sioux, the Mandans, and the Nez Perces tribes avoided the district as though it were truly accursed. The most important Indian trail in the Park was that known as the Great Bannock Trail. It extended from Henry Lake across the Gallatin Range to Mammoth Hot Springs, where it was joined by another coming up the valley of the Gardiner. Thence it led across the Black-tail Deer plateau to the ford above Tower Falls; thence up the Lamor Valley, forking at Soda Butte, and reaching the Bighorn Valley by way of Clark's Falls and the Stinking-water River. The trail was certainly a very ancient and much traveled one. It had become a deep furrow in the grassy slopes, and is still distinctly visible in places, though unused for a quarter of a century. Arrows and spear heads have been discovered in considerable numbers. Some of the early explorers also found more recent and perishable evidence of the presence of Indians in the Park in the shape of rude wick-e-ups, brush enclosures, and similar contrivances of the Sheep-killers. NOTE 7 (PAGE 196) Of all the tribes west of the Mississippi, even including the warlike Sioux, none gave the venturesome paleface adventurers who wandered into that country more trouble than the Blackfoot Indians. Like the Flatheads, and some other tribes, they had their main villages far up amidst the pine-clad mountains where enemies could hardly reach them without long and dangerous journeys. From these eyries they were accustomed to sally forth, either on some grand hunt for a winter's supply of meat, or else to strike a sudden blow at some tribe with which they were at war. When game grew scarce in their customary hunting grounds, some of these bold braves were in the habit of taking longer hunts, and had frequently approached the border of the Land of Wonders. As a rule they avoided the country of the spouting geysers, because they believed an Evil Spirit dwelt there. The habits of these Indians differed from those of the Mandans, because they were by nature of a much wilder disposition, utterly untamable. To this day the remnants of the old Blackfoot tribe are not to be compared with other civilized aborigines who have taken to the plow and the cottage. The Mandans themselves suffered so severely from smallpox, introduced into the tribe through connection with the whites, that long years ago they became extinct. NOTE 8 (PAGE 221) The usual medicine man of all the Indian tribes of North America in the days of the pioneers was as big a humbug as could be imagined. He usually held his position through craftiness, and the ability to make the tribe believe that he was in direct communication with the Great Spirit or Manitou. It was therefore a matter of some moment for the native doctor to "make good" when he had promised that victory would crown the efforts of the warriors going forth to battle, or otherwise his life might pay the penalty. When it came to treating disease he seldom gave even the commonest herbs, rather trusting to incantations in order to frighten off the evil thing that had fastened on the sick person. Thus tomtoms were beaten, chants given, and the medicine man himself would perform a weird dance around the sick one, making music to accompany his gesticulations by rattling gourds in which stones had been slipped, jingling the metal ornaments on his apparel, and in every imaginable way trying to "conjure" the maker of the spell that had been laid upon the afflicted one. Sometimes the invalid got well in spite of everything, and great was the jubilation of the tribe; on the other hand if death came and took a victim it was easy for the medicine man to find some excuse. Perhaps the Blackfoot chief, Black Otter, may have seen white doctors cure their patients by giving them medicine; or else learned of it through intercourse with French traders, such as Lascelles. However that might be, it was not so very singular for some of his braves to have become afflicted with the same desire to be treated by a paleface medicine man. This, then, would account for the eagerness with which those who had received wounds in the affray between the Blackfeet and the invaders of the Enchanted Land agreed to let young Dick Armstrong attend to their hurts. Deep down in their hearts they must have realized that the way of the palefaces was much superior to the crude methods in vogue with their native medicine man. NOTE 9 (PAGE 246) This incident of an Indian's gratitude is not of an unusual character. The history of early pioneer days shows many such. The red men were savage and cruel fighters, crafty, and not to be trusted in many ways; but they possessed several noble characteristics that will always stand out boldly when the good and bad are contrasted. Many instances are on record which prove that the Indian could be grateful for benefits bestowed, though he might sooner choose to die than ask a favor. The brave whose wounded shoulder Dick had so skillfully treated evidently saw no reason why he should call out and alarm the camp when he discovered the paleface boys escaping. He probably had no special liking for the French trader, and it was Lascelles who seemed to be most concerned in the keeping of the two white lads. Perhaps, even, he had some reason to dislike the trader; or he may have felt, deep down in his heart, a secret admiration for the boys who could thus hoodwink a dozen Blackfoot braves. NOTE 10 (PAGE 308) The Sioux proper, known among themselves and by other Indian tribes as Dacotahs, were originally one of the most extensively diffused nations of the Great West. From the Upper Mississippi, where they mingled with the northern race of Chippewas, to the Missouri, and far in the Northwest toward the country of the Blackfeet, the tribes of this family occupied the boundless prairie. It was in the country of the Sioux, on a high ridge separating the head-waters of the St. Peter's from the Missouri, that the far-famed quarry of red pipestone lay. It was originally deemed a neutral ground where hostile tribes from far and near might resort to secure a supply of this all-essential want of the Indian, for all their pipes were made of this peculiar hard clay. To use the stone for any other purposes was to the Indians an act of sacrilege. They looked upon it as priceless _medicine_. At a meeting of chiefs which Mr. Catlin, the historical writer, attended near this quarry many years ago he heard some remarkable expressions used. "You see," said one chief, holding a pipe close to his arm, "this pipe is part of our own flesh." Another said: "If the white man takes away a piece of the red pipestone, it is a hole in our flesh, and the blood will always run." A third expressed his feelings in a still more remarkable way: "We love to go to the Pipe-Stone, and get a piece for our pipes; but we ask the Great Spirit first. If the white men go to it they will take it out, and not fill up the holes again and the Great Spirit will be offended." Besides the Sioux there were to be found at times in this region the Flatheads, the Ojibbeways, the Assinaboias, the Crows, the Blackfeet, and several lesser tribes. Among them there was almost constant warfare. While the Blackfeet and others had plenty of game in their own lands, they were now and then seized with a desire to dare the anger of the Sioux and hunt the buffalo over the territory claimed as their preserves by the latter. And many fierce battles took place because of this belligerency. 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Small quarto, cloth decorative, illustrated and decorated in colors $1.00 "Anything more interesting than the doings of the cats in this story, their humor, their wisdom, their patriotism, would be hard to imagine."--_Chicago Post._ =THE ROSES OF SAINT ELIZABETH= By JANE SCOTT WOODRUFF. Small quarto, cloth decorative, illustrated and decorated in colors by Adelaide Everhart $1.00 This is a charming little story of a child whose father was caretaker of the great castle of the Wartburg, where Saint Elizabeth once had her home. =GABRIEL AND THE HOUR BOOK= By EVALEEN STEIN. Small quarto, cloth decorative, illustrated and decorated in colors by Adelaide Everhart $1.00 Gabriel was a loving, patient, little French lad, who assisted the monks in the long ago days, when all the books were written and illuminated by hand, in the monasteries. =THE ENCHANTED AUTOMOBILE= Translated from the French by MARY J. SAFFORD. Small quarto, cloth decorative, illustrated and decorated in colors by Edna M. Sawyer $1.00 "An up-to-date French fairy-tale which fairly radiates the spirit of the hour,--unceasing diligence."--_Chicago Record-Herald._ =O-HEART-SAN= THE STORY OF A JAPANESE GIRL. By HELEN EGGLESTON HASKELL. Small quarto, cloth decorative, illustrated and decorated in colors by Frank P. Fairbanks $1.00 "The story comes straight from the heart of Japan. The shadow of Fujiyama lies across it and from every page breathes the fragrance of tea leaves, cherry blossoms and chrysanthemums."--_The Chicago Inter-Ocean._ =THE YOUNG SECTION-HAND:= OR, THE ADVENTURES OF ALLAN WEST. By BURTON E. STEVENSON. Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated $1.50 Mr. Stevenson's hero is a manly lad of sixteen, who is given a chance as a section-hand on a big Western railroad, and whose experiences are as real as they are thrilling. =THE YOUNG TRAIN DISPATCHER.= By BURTON E. STEVENSON. Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated $1.50 "A better book for boys has never left an American press."--_Springfield Union._ =THE YOUNG TRAIN MASTER.= By BURTON E. STEVENSON. Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated $1.50 "Nothing better in the way of a book of adventure for boys in which the actualities of life are set forth in a practical way could be devised or written."--_Boston Herald_. =CAPTAIN JACK LORIMER.= By WINN STANDISH. Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated $1.50 Jack is a fine example of the all-around American high-school boy. =JACK LORIMER'S CHAMPIONS:= OR, SPORTS ON LAND AND LAKE. By WINN STANDISH. Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated $1.50 "It is exactly the sort of book to give a boy interested in athletics, for it shows him what it means to always 'play fair.'"--_Chicago Tribune._ =JACK LORIMER'S HOLIDAYS:= OR, MILLVALE HIGH IN CAMP. By WINN STANDISH. Illustrated $1.50 Full of just the kind of fun, sports and adventure to excite the healthy minded youngster to emulation. =JACK LORIMER'S SUBSTITUTE:= OR, THE ACTING CAPTAIN OF THE TEAM. By WINN STANDISH. Illustrated $1.50 On the sporting side, this book takes up football, wrestling, tobogganing, but it is more of a _school_ story perhaps than any of its predecessors. =CAPTAIN JINKS:= THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A SHETLAND PONY. By FRANCES HODGES WHITE. Cloth decorative, illustrated $1.50 The story of Captain Jinks and his faithful dog friend Billy, their quaint conversations and their exciting adventures, will be eagerly read by thousands of boys and girls. The story is beautifully written and will take its place alongside of "Black Beauty" and "Beautiful Joe." =THE RED FEATHERS.= By THEODORE ROBERTS. Cloth decorative, illustrated $1.50 "The Red Feathers" tells of the remarkable adventures of an Indian boy who lived in the Stone Age, many years ago, when the world was young. =FLYING PLOVER.= By THEODORE ROBERTS. Cloth decorative. Illustrated by Charles Livingston Bull $1.00 Squat-By-The-Fire is a very old and wise Indian who lives alone with her grandson, "Flying Plover," to whom she tells the stories each evening. =THE WRECK OF THE OCEAN QUEEN.= By JAMES OTIS, author of "Larry Hudson's Ambition," etc. Cloth decorative, illustrated $1.50 "A stirring story of wreck and mutiny, which boys will find especially absorbing. The many young admirers of James Otis will not let this book escape them, for it fully equals its many predecessors in excitement and sustained interest."--_Chicago Evening Post._ =LITTLE WHITE INDIANS.= By FANNIE E. OSTRANDER. Cloth decorative, illustrated $1.25 "A bright, interesting story which will appeal strongly to the 'make-believe' instinct in children, and will give them a healthy, active interest in 'the simple life.'" =MARCHING WITH MORGAN.= HOW DONALD LOVELL BECAME A SOLDIER OF THE REVOLUTION. By JOHN L. VEASY. Cloth decorative, illustrated $1.50 This is a splendid boy's story of the expedition of Montgomery and Arnold against Quebec. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Punctuation errors repaired. Varied hyphenation retained as in hap-hazard and haphazard, fire-arms and firearms. Page 76, "whisped" changed to "whispered" ("Dick!" he whispered.) Page 118, "Mayhewy" changed to "Mayhew" (well as to allow Mayhew) 
42112	----	Transcriber's Notes Text emphasis is denoted as _Text_ for italic and =Text= for bold. Whole and fractional parts are shown as 4-2/3. * * * * * [Illustration: Grand Falls of the Yellowstone and Old Faithful Geyser.] THE Yellowstone National Park HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE Illustrated with Maps, Views and Portraits BY Hiram Martin Chittenden Captain, Corps of Engineers, United States Army [Illustration] CINCINNATI THE ROBERT CLARKE COMPANY 1895 Copyright, 1895, By Hiram Martin Chittenden. Dedication. TO THE MEMORIES OF John Colter AND James Bridger, PIONEERS IN THE WONDERLAND OF THE Upper Yellowstone. PREFACE. Twenty-five years ago, this date, a company of gentlemen were encamped at the Forks of the Madison River in what is now the Yellowstone National Park. They had just finished the first complete tour of exploration ever made of that region. Fully realizing the importance of all they had seen, they asked what ought to be done to preserve so unique an assemblage of wonders to the uses for which Nature had evidently designed them. It required no argument to show that government protection alone was equal to the task, and it was agreed that a movement to secure such protection should be inaugurated at once. So rapidly did events develop along the line of this idea, that within the next eighteen months the "Act of Dedication" had become a law, and the Yellowstone National Park took its place in our country's history. The wide-spread interest which the discovery of this region created among civilized peoples has in no degree diminished with the lapse of time. In this country particularly the Park to-day stands on a firmer basis than ever before. The events of the past two years, in matters of legislation and administration, have increased many fold the assurances of its continued preservation, and have shown that even the petty local hostility, which has now and then menaced its existence, is yielding to a wiser spirit of patriotism. The time therefore seems opportune, in passing so important an epoch in the history of the Park, and while many of the actors in its earlier scenes are still among us, to collect the essential facts, historical and descriptive, relating to this region, and to place them in form for permanent preservation. The present literature of the Park, although broad in scope and exhaustive in detail, is unfortunately widely scattered, somewhat difficult of access, and in matters of early history, notably deficient. To supply a work which shall form a complete and connected treatment of the subject, is the purpose of the present volume. It deals first and principally with the history of the Upper Yellowstone from the days of Lewis and Clark to the present time. The main text is supplemented by a considerable amount of appendical matter, the most important features of which are a complete list of the geographical names of the Park, with their origin and signification; a few biographical sketches of the early explorers; and a bibliography of the literature pertaining to this region. The descriptive portion of the work contains a succinct, though comprehensive, treatment of the various scientific and popular features of the Park. While it is sufficient for all the requirements of ordinary information, it purposely refrains from a minute discussion of those details which have been, or are now being, exhaustively treated by the scientific departments of the government. In describing a region whose fame rests upon its natural wonders, the assistance of the illustrative art has naturally been resorted to. The various accompanying maps have all been prepared especially for this work and are intended to set forth not only present geography but historical features as well. The folded map embodies every thing to date from the latest geographical surveys. It will bear careful study, and this has been greatly simplified by a system of marginal references to be used with the list of names in Appendix A. The illustrations cover every variety of subject in the Park and represent the best results of photographic work in that region. They are mostly from the studio of Mr. F. J. Haynes, of St. Paul, the well-known Park photographer, who has done so much by his art to disseminate a knowledge of the wonders of the Yellowstone. A considerable number are from views taken during the Hayden surveys by Mr. William H. Jackson, now of Denver, Colorado. A few excellent subjects are from the amateur work of Captain C. M. Gandy, Assistant Surgeon, U. S. A., who was stationed for some years on duty in the Park. The portraits are restricted to the few early explorers who visited the Upper Yellowstone prior to the creation of the Park. To any one who is familiar with the recent history of the Park, a work like the present would seem incomplete without some reference to those influences which endanger its future existence. A brief discussion of this subject is accordingly presented, which, without considering particular schemes, exposes the dangerous tendencies underlying them all. In the course of a somewhat extended correspondence connected with the preparation of this work, the author has become indebted for much information that could not be found in the existing literature of the Park. He desires in this place to return his sincere acknowledgments to all who have assisted him, and to refer in a special manner. To the Hon. N. P. Langford, of St. Paul, whose long acquaintance with the Upper Yellowstone country has made him an authority upon its history. To Dr. Elliott Coues, of Washington, D. C., who has contributed, besides much general assistance, the essential facts relating to the name "Yellowstone." To Captain George S. Anderson, 6th U. S. Cavalry, Superintendent of the Park, for the use of his extensive collection of Park literature. To Prof. Arnold Hague, and others, of the U. S. Geological Survey, for many important favors. To Prof. J. D. Butler, of Madison, Wis., for biographical data relating to James Bridger. To Dr. R. Ellsworth Call, of Cincinnati, Ohio, for valuable assistance pertaining to the entire work. To the Hon. D. M. Browning, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for important data relating to the Indian tribes in the vicinity of the Yellowstone Park. To the officers of the War and Interior Departments, the U. S. Fish Commission, the U. S. Bureau of Ethnology, and of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, for public documents and other information of great value. To R. T. Durrett, LL.D., of Louisville, Ky.; Mr. J. G. Morrison, of the Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.; Mr. J. D. Losecamp, of Billings, Mont.; Mr. George Bird Grinnell, of _Forest and Stream_, New York City; Major James F. Gregory, Corps of Engineers, U. S. A.; Lieutenant Wm. H. Bean, Second Cavalry, U. S. A.; Hon. David E. Folsom, White Sulphur Springs, Mont.; Washington Mathews, Major and Surgeon, U. S. A.; Dr. A. C. Peale, of Philadelphia, Pa.; William Hallett Phillips, of Washington, D. C.; Dr. Lyman B. Sperry, of Bellevue, O.; Mrs. Matilda Cope Stevenson, of Washington, D. C.; Mrs. Sirena J. Washburn, of Greencastle, Ind.; Miss Isabel Jelke, of Cincinnati, O.; Mr. O. B. Wheeler, of St. Louis, Mo.; Mr. O. D. Wheeler, of St. Paul, Minn.; Mr. J. H. Baronett, of Livingston, Mont.; Mr. W. T. Hamilton, of Columbus, Mont.; Mr. Richard Leigh, of Wilford, Idaho; Mr. Edwin L. Berthoud, of Golden, Colo.; and Miss Laura S. Brown, of Columbus, O. H. M. C. Columbus, Ohio, _September 19, 1895_. CONTENTS. PART I.--HISTORICAL. Chapter I.--"Yellowstone" 1 Chapter II.--Indian Occupancy of the Upper Yellowstone 8 Chapter III.--John Colter 20 Chapter IV.--The Trader and Trapper 32 Chapter V.--Early knowledge of the Yellowstone 40 Chapter VI.--James Bridger 51 Chapter VII.--Raynolds Expedition 58 Chapter VIII.--Gold in Montana 65 Chapter IX.--Discovery 72 Chapter X.--The National Park Idea--Its Origin and Realization 87 Chapter XI.--Why So Long Unknown 98 Chapter XII.--Later Explorations 103 Chapter XIII.--An Indian Campaign through the National Park 111 Chapter XIV.--Administrative History of the Park 127 Chapter XV.--The National Park Protective Act 142 PART II.--DESCRIPTIVE. Chapter I.--Boundaries and Topography 148 Chapter II.--Geology of the Park 156 Chapter III.--Geysers 162 Chapter IV.--Hot Springs 172 Chapter V.--Fossil Forests of the Yellowstone 175 Chapter VI.--Fauna of the Yellowstone 181 Chapter VII.--Flora of the Yellowstone 187 Chapter VIII.--The Park as a Health Resort 193 Chapter IX.--The Park in Winter 198 Chapter X.--Roads, Hotels, and Transportation 201 Chapter XI.--Administration of the Park 206 Chapter XII.--A Tour of the Park--Preliminary 209 Chapter XIII.--A Tour of the Park--North Boundary to Mammoth Hot Springs 211 Chapter XIV.--A Tour of the Park--Mammoth Hot Springs to Norris Geyser Basin 217 Chapter XV.--A Tour of the Park--Norris Geyser Basin to Lower Geyser Basin 221 Chapter XVI.--A Tour of the Park--Lower Geyser Basin to Upper Geyser Basin 228 Chapter XVII.--A Tour of the Park--Upper Geyser Basin to Yellowstone Lake 237 Chapter XVIII.--A Tour of the Park--Yellowstone Lake to the Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone 248 Chapter XIX.--A Tour of the Park--Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone to Junction Valley 260 PART III.--THE FUTURE. Chapter I.--Hostility to the Park 267 Chapter II.--Railroad Encroachment and Change of Boundary 270 Chapter III.--Conclusion 281 APPENDIX A. Geographical Names in the Yellowstone National Park 285 I.--Introductory 285 II.--Mountain Peaks 289 III.--Streams 313 IV.--Water-falls 324 V.--Lakes 327 VI.--Miscellaneous Features 338 VII.--Geysers 342 APPENDIX B. Legislation and Regulations now in Force affecting the Yellowstone National Park 345 APPENDIX C. Appropriations on Account of the Yellowstone National Park 357 APPENDIX D. List of Superintendents of the Yellowstone National Park 359 APPENDIX E. Bibliography of the Yellowstone National Park 361 The Yellowstone National Park. PART I.--Historical. CHAPTER I. "YELLOWSTONE." Lewis and Clark passed the first winter of their famous trans-continental expedition among the Mandan Indians, on the Missouri River, sixty-six miles above the present capital of North Dakota. When about to resume their journey in the spring of 1805, they sent back to President Jefferson a report of progress and a map of the western country based upon information derived from the Indians. In this report and upon this map appear for the first time, in any official document, the words "Yellow Stone" as the name of the principal tributary of the Missouri. It seems, however, that Lewis and Clark were not the first actually to use the name. David Thompson, the celebrated explorer and geographer, prominently identified with the British fur trade in the North-west, was among the Mandan Indians on the Missouri River from December 29, 1797, to January 10, 1798. While there he secured data, mostly from the natives, from which he estimated the latitude and longitude of the source of the Yellowstone River. In his original manuscript journal and field note-books, containing the record of his determinations, the words "Yellow Stone" appear precisely as used by Lewis and Clark in 1805. This is, perhaps, the first use of the name in its Anglicised form, and it is certainly the first attempt to determine accurately the geographical location of the source of the stream.[A] [A] Thompson's estimate: Latitude, 43° 39' 45" north. Longitude, 109° 43' 17" west. Yount Peak, source of the Yellowstone (Hayden): Latitude, 43° 57' north. Longitude, 109° 52' west. Thompson's error: In latitude, 17' 15". In longitude, 8' 43", or about 21 miles. Neither Thompson nor Lewis and Clark were originators of the name. They gave us only the English translation of a name already long in use. "This river," say Lewis and Clark, in their journal for the day of their arrival at the mouth of the now noted stream, "had been known to the French as the _Roche Jaune_, or, as we have called it, the Yellow Stone." The French name was, in fact, already firmly established among the traders and trappers of the North-west Fur Company, when Lewis and Clark met them among the Mandans. Even by the members of the expedition it seems to have been more generally used than the new English form; and the spellings, "Rejone," "Rejhone," "Rochejone," "Rochejohn," and "Rochejhone," are among their various attempts to render orthographically the French pronunciation. Probably the name would have been adopted unchanged, as so many other French names in our geography have been, except for the recent cession of Louisiana to the United States. The policy which led the government promptly to explore, and take formal possession of, its extensive acquisition, led it also, as part of the process of rapid Americanization, to give English names to all of the more prominent geographical features. In the case of the name here under consideration, this was no easy matter. The French form had already obtained wide currency, and it was reluctantly set aside for its less familiar translation. As late as 1817, it still appeared in newly English-printed books,[B] while among the traders and trappers of the mountains, it survived to a much later period. [B] Bradbury's "Travels in the Interior of America." See Appendix E. By whom the name _Roche Jaune_, or its equivalent form _Pierre Jaune_, was first used, it would be extremely interesting to know; but it is impossible to determine at this late day. Like their successor, "Yellow Stone," these names were not originals, but only translations. The Indian tribes along the Yellowstone and upper Missouri rivers had names for the tributary stream signifying "yellow rock,"[C] and the French had doubtless adopted them long before any of their number saw the stream itself. [C] The name "Elk River" was also used among the Crow Indians. The first explorations of the country comprised within the present limits of the State of Montana are matters of great historic uncertainty. By one account it appears that, between the years 1738 and 1753, Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, the Sieur de la Verendrye, and his sons, particularly the Chevalier de la Verendrye, conducted parties of explorers westward, from Lake Superior to the Assinnaboine River, thence south to the Mandan country, and thence to the very sources of the Missouri. Even the date, January 12, 1743, is given for their first ascent of the Rocky Mountains. But such is the dearth of satisfactory evidence relating to these explorations, that positive inferences concerning them are impossible. The most that can be said is, that if De la Verendrye visited these regions, as is generally believed, to him doubtless belongs the honor of having adopted from original sources the name of the Yellowstone River. The goal of De la Verendrye's explorations was the Pacific Ocean; but the French and Indian war which robbed France of her dominion in America, prevented his ever reaching it. Following him, at the distance of nearly half a century, came the traders and trappers of the North-west Fur Company. As already noted, they were among the Mandans as early as 1797, and the name _Roche Jaune_ was in common use among them in 1804. They appear to have been wholly ignorant of the work of De la Verendrye, and it is quite certain that, prior to 1805, none of them had reached the Yellowstone River. Lewis and Clark particularly record the fact, while yet some distance below the junction of this river with the Missouri, that they had already passed the utmost limit of previous adventure by white men. Whatever, therefore, was at this time known of the Yellowstone could have come to these traders only from Indian sources.[D] [D] An interesting reference to the name "Yellowstone," in an entirely different quarter, occurs on Pike's map of the "Internal Provinces of Spain," published in 1810. It is a corrupt Spanish translation in the form of "_Rio de Piedro Amaretto del Missouri_," (intended of course to be _Rio de la Piedra Amarilla del Missouri_) river of the Yellow Stone of the Missouri. No clue has been discovered of the source from which Pike received this name; but the fact of its existence need occasion no surprise. The Spanish had long traded as far north as the Shoshone country, and had mingled with the French traders along the lower Missouri. Lewis and Clark found articles of their manufacture among the Shoshones in 1805. There is also limited evidence of early intercourse between them and the Crow nation. That the name of so important a stream as the Yellowstone should have become known to these traders is therefore not at all remarkable. There is, however, no reason to suppose that the Spanish translation antedates the French. It certainly plays no part in the descent of the name from the original to the English form, and it is of interest in this connection mainly as showing that, even at this early day, the name had found its way to the provinces of the south. We thus find that the name, which has now become so celebrated, descends to us, through two translations, from those native races whose immemorial dwelling-place had been along the stream which it describes. What it was that led them to use the name is easily discoverable. The Yellowstone River is pre-eminently a river with banks of yellow rock. Along its lower course "the flood plain is bordered by high bluffs of yellow sandstone." Near the mouth of the Bighorn River stands the noted landmark, Pompey's Pillar, "a high isolated rock" of the same material. Still further up, beyond the mouth of Clark's fork, is an extensive ridge of yellow rock, the "sheer, vertical sides" of which, according to one writer, "gleam in the sunlight like massive gold." All along the lower river, in fact, from its mouth to the Great Bend at Livingston, this characteristic is more or less strikingly present. Whether it forms a sufficiently prominent feature of the landscape to justify christening the river from it, may appear to be open to doubt. At any rate the various descriptions of this valley by early explorers rarely refer to the same locality as being conspicuous from the presence of yellow rock. Some mention it in one place, some in another. Nowhere does it seem to have been so striking as to attract the attention of all observers. For this reason we shall go further in search of the true origin of the name, to a locality about which there can be no doubt, no difference of opinion. Seventy-five miles below the ultimate source of the river lies the Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone, distinguished among the notable cañons of the globe by the marvelous coloring of its walls. Conspicuous among its innumerable tints is yellow. Every shade, from the brilliant plumage of the yellow bird to the rich saffron of the orange, greets the eye in bewildering profusion. There is indeed other color, unparalleled in variety and abundance, but the ever-present background of all is the beautiful fifth color of the spectrum. So prominent is this feature that it never fails to attract attention, and all descriptions of the Cañon abound in references to it. Lieutenant Doane (1870) notes the "brilliant yellow color" of the rocks. Captain Barlow and Doctor Hayden (1871) refer, in almost the same words, to the "yellow, nearly vertical walls." Raymond (1871) speaks of the "bright yellow of the sulphury clay." Captain Jones (1873) says that "about and in the Grand Cañon the rocks are nearly all tinged a brilliant yellow." These early impressions might be repeated from the writings of every subsequent visitor who has described the scenery of the Yellowstone. That a characteristic which so deeply moves the modern beholder should have made a profound impression on the mind of the Indian, need hardly be premised. This region was by no means unknown to him; and from the remote, although uncertain, period of his first acquaintance with it, the name of the river has undoubtedly descended. Going back, then, to this obscure fountain-head, the original designation is found to have been _Mi tsi a-da-zi_,[E] Rock Yellow River. And this, in the French tongue, became _Roche Jaune_ and _Pierre Jaune_; and in English, _Yellow Rock_ and _Yellow Stone_. Established usage now writes it _Yellowstone_. [E] Minnetaree, one of the Siouan family of languages. CHAPTER II. INDIAN OCCUPANCY OF THE UPPER YELLOWSTONE. It is a singular fact in the history of the Yellowstone National Park that no knowledge of that country seems to have been derived from the Indians. The explanation ordinarily advanced is that the Indians had a superstitious fear of the geyser regions and always avoided them. How far this theory is supported by the results of modern research is an interesting inquiry. Three great families of Indians, the Siouan, the Algonquian, and the Shoshonean, originally occupied the country around the sources of the Yellowstone. Of these three families the following tribes are alone of interest in this connection: The Crows (_Absaroka_) of the Siouan family; the Blackfeet (_Siksika_) of the Algonquian family; and the Bannocks (_Panai'hti_), the Eastern Shoshones, and the Sheepeaters (_Tukuarika_) of the Shoshonean family. The home of the Crows was in the Valley of the Yellowstone below the mountains where they have dwelt since the white man's earliest knowledge of them. Their territory extended to the mountains which bound the Yellowstone Park on the north and east; but they never occupied or claimed any of the country beyond. Their well-known tribal characteristics were an insatiable love of horse-stealing and a wandering and predatory habit which caused them to roam over all the West from the Black Hills to the Bitter Root Mountains and from the British Possessions to the Spanish Provinces. They were generally, although by no means always, friendly to the whites, but enemies of the neighboring Blackfeet and Shoshones. Physically, they were a stalwart, handsome race, fine horsemen and daring hunters. They were every-where encountered by the trapper and prospector who generally feared them more on account of their thievish habits than for reasons of personal safety. The Blackfeet dwelt in the country drained by the headwaters of the Missouri. Their territory was roughly defined by the Crow territory on the east and the Rocky Mountains on the west. Its southern limit was the range of mountains along the present north-west border of the Park and it extended thence to the British line. The distinguishing historic trait of these Indians was their settled hostility to their neighbors whether white or Indian. They were a tribe of perpetual fighters, justly characterized as the Ishmaelites of their race. From the day in 1806, when Captain Lewis slew one of their number, down to their final subjection by the advancing power of the whites, they never buried the hatchet. They were the terror of the trapper and miner, and hundreds of the pioneers perished at their hands. Like the Crows they were a well-developed race, good horsemen and great rovers, but, in fight, given to subterfuge and stratagem rather than to open boldness of action. In marked contrast with these warlike and wandering tribes were those of the great Shoshonean family who occupied the country around the southern, eastern, and western borders of the Park, including also that of the Park itself. The Shoshones as a family were an inferior race. They seem to have been the victims of some great misfortune which had driven them to precarious methods of subsistence and had made them the prey of their powerful and merciless neighbors. The names "Fish-eaters," "Root-diggers," and other opprobrious epithets, indicate the contempt in which they were commonly held. For the most part they had no horses, and obtained a livelihood only by the most abject means. Some of the tribes, however, rose above this degraded condition, owned horses, hunted buffalo, and met their enemies in open conflict. Such were the Bannocks and the Eastern Shoshones--tribes closely connected with the history of the Park, one occupying the country to the south-west near the Teton Mountains, and the other that to the south-east in the valley of Wind River. The Shoshones were generally friendly to the whites, and for this reason they figure less prominently in the books of early adventure than do the Crows and Blackfeet whose acts of "sanguinary violence" were a staple article for the Indian romancer. It was an humble branch of the Shoshonean family which alone is known to have permanently occupied what is now the Yellowstone Park. They were called _Tukuarika_, or, more commonly, Sheepeaters. They were found in the Park country at the time of its discovery and had doubtless long been there. These hermits of the mountains, whom the French trappers called "_les dignes de pitié_," have engaged the sympathy or contempt of explorers since our earliest knowledge of them. Utterly unfit for warlike contention, they seem to have sought immunity from their dangerous neighbors by dwelling among the inaccessible fastnesses of the mountains. They were destitute of even savage comforts. Their food, as their name indicates, was principally the flesh of the mountain sheep. Their clothing was composed of skins. They had no horses and were armed only with bows and arrows. They captured game by driving it into brush inclosures. Their rigorous existence left its mark on their physical nature. They were feeble in mind, diminutive in stature, and are always described as a "timid, harmless race." They may have been longer resident in this region than is commonly supposed, for there was a tradition among them, apparently connected with some remote period of geological disturbance, that most of their race were once destroyed by a terrible convulsion of nature. [Illustration: HISTORICAL CHART OF THE YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK _Opp. page 11._] Such were the Indian tribes who formerly dwelt within or near the country now embraced in the Yellowstone National Park. That the Sheepeaters actually occupied this country, and that wandering bands from other tribes occasionally visited it, there is abundant and conclusive proof. Indian trails,[F] though generally indistinct, were every-where found by the early explorers, mostly on lines since occupied by the tourist routes. One of these followed the Yellowstone Valley entirely across the Park from north to south. It divided at Yellowstone Lake, the principal branch following the east shore, crossing Two-Ocean-Pass, and intersecting a great trail which connected the Snake and Wind River Valleys. The other branch passed along the west shore of the lake and over the divide to the valleys of Snake River and Jackson Lake. This trail was intersected by an important one in the vicinity of Conant Creek leading from the Upper Snake Valley to that of Henry Fork. Other intersecting trails connected the Yellowstone River trail with the Madison and Firehole Basins on the west and with the Bighorn Valley on the east. [F] See historical chart, opposite. The most important Indian trail in the Park, however, was that known as the Great Bannock Trail. It extended from Henry Lake across the Gallatin Range to Mammoth Hot Springs, where it was joined by another coming up the valley of the Gardiner. Thence it led across the Black-tail Deer plateau to the ford above Tower Falls; and thence up the Lamar Valley, forking at Soda Butte, and reaching the Bighorn Valley by way of Clark's Fork and the Stinkingwater River. This trail was certainly a very ancient and much-traveled one. It had become a deep furrow in the grassy slopes, and it is still distinctly visible in places, though unused for a quarter of a century. Additional evidence in the same direction may be seen in the wide-spread distribution of implements peculiar to Indian use. Arrows and spear heads have been found in considerable numbers. Obsidian Cliff was an important quarry, and the open country near the outlet of Yellowstone Lake a favorite camping-ground. Certain implements, such as pipes, hammers, and stone vessels, indicating the former presence of a more civilized people, have been found to a limited extent; and some explorers have thought that a symmetrical mound in the valley of the Snake River, below the mouth of Hart River, is of artificial origin. Reference will later be made to the discovery of a rude granite structure near the top of the Grand Teton, which is unquestionably of very ancient date. Dr. A. C. Peale, prominently connected with the early geological explorations of this region, states that the Rustic Geyser in the Hart Lake Geyser Basin is "bordered by logs which are coated with a crystalline, semi-translucent deposit of geyserite. These logs were evidently placed around the geyser by either Indians or white men a number of years ago, as the coating is thick and the logs firmly attached to the surrounding deposit."[G] [G] Page 298, Twelfth Annual Report of Dr. Hayden. See Appendix E. It is more than probable that this was the work of trappers. More recent and perishable proofs of the presence of Indians in the Park were found by the early explorers in the rude wick-e-ups, brush inclosures, and similar contrivances of the lonely Sheepeaters; and it is not improbable that many of the arrow and spear heads were the work of these Indians. The real question of doubt in regard to Indian occupancy of, or visits to, the Park, is therefore not one of fact, but of degree. The Sheepeaters certainly dwelt there; but as to other tribes, their acquaintance with it seems to have been very limited. No word of information about the geyser regions ever fell from their lips, except that the surrounding country was known to them as the Burning Mountains. With one or two exceptions, the old trails were very indistinct, requiring an experienced eye to distinguish them from game trails. Their undeveloped condition indicated infrequent use. Old trappers who have known this region for fifty years say that the great majority of Indians never saw it. Able Indian guides in the surrounding country became lost when they entered the Park, and the Nez Percés were forced to impress a white man as guide when they crossed the Park in 1877. An unknown writer, to whom extended reference will be made in a later chapter, visited the Upper Geyser Basin in 1832, accompanied by two Pend d'Oreilles Indians. Neither of these Indians had ever seen or apparently heard of the geysers, and "were quite appalled" at the sight of them, believing them to be "supernatural" and the "production of the Evil Spirit." Lieutenant Doane, who commanded the military escort to the Yellowstone Expedition of 1870, says in his report:[H] "Appearances indicated that the basin [of the Yellowstone Lake] had been almost entirely abandoned by the sons of the forest. A few lodges of Sheepeaters, a branch remnant of the Snake tribe, wretched beasts who run from the sight of a white man, or from any other tribe of Indians, are said to inhabit the fastnesses of the mountains around the lakes, poorly armed and dismounted, obtaining a precarious subsistence, and in a defenseless condition. We saw, however, no recent traces of them. The larger tribes never enter the basin, restrained by superstitious ideas in connection with the thermal springs." [H] Page 26, "Yellowstone Expedition of 1870." See Appendix E. In 1880, Col. P. W. Norris, Second Superintendent of the Park, had a long interview on the shore of the Yellowstone Lake with We-Saw, "an old but remarkably intelligent Indian" of the Shoshone tribe, who was then acting as guide to an exploring party under Governor Hoyt, of Wyoming, and who had previously passed through the Park with the expedition of 1873 under Captain W. A. Jones, U. S. A. He had also been in the Park region on former occasions. Colonel Norris records the following facts from this Indian's conversation:[I] "We-Saw states that he had neither knowledge nor tradition of any permanent occupants of the Park save the timid Sheepeaters.... He said that his people (Shoshones) the Bannocks and the Crows, occasionally visited the Yellowstone Lake and River portions of the Park, but very seldom the geyser regions, which he declared were '_heap, heap, bad_,' and never wintered there, as white men sometimes did with horses." [I] Page 38, Annual Report of Superintendent of the Park for 1881. It seems that even the resident Sheepeaters knew little of the geyser basins. General Sheridan, who entered the Park from the south in 1882, makes this record in his report of the expedition:[J] "We had with us five Sheep Eating Indians as guides, and, strange to say, although these Indians had lived for years and years about Mounts Sheridan and Hancock, and the high mountains south-east of the Yellowstone Lake, they knew nothing about the Firehole Geyser Basin, and they exhibited more astonishment and wonder than any of us." [J] Page 11, Report on Explorations of Parts of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, 1882. See Appendix E. Evidence like the foregoing clearly indicates that this country was _terra incognita_ to the vast body of Indians who dwelt around it, and again this singular fact presents itself for explanation. Was it, as is generally supposed, a "superstitious fear" that kept them away? The incidents just related give some color to such a theory; but if it were really true we should expect to find well authenticated Indian traditions of so marvelous a country. Unfortunately history records none. It is not meant by this to imply that reputed traditions concerning the Yellowstone are unknown. For instance, it is related that the Crows always refused to tell the whites of the geysers because they believed that whoever visited them became endowed with supernatural powers, and they wished to retain a monopoly of this knowledge. But traditions of this sort, like most Indian curiosities now offered for sale, are evidently of spurious origin. Only in the names "Yellowstone" and "Burning Mountains" do we find any original evidence that this land of wonders appealed in the least degree to the native imagination. The real explanation of this remarkable ignorance appears to us to rest on grounds essentially practical. There was nothing to induce the Indians to visit the Park country. For three-fourths of the year that country is inaccessible on account of snow. It is covered with dense forests, which in most places are so filled with fallen timber and tangled underbrush as to be practically impassable. As a game country in those early days it could not compare with the lower surrounding valleys. As a highway of communication between the valleys of the Missouri, Snake, Yellowstone, and Bighorn Rivers, it was no thoroughfare. The great routes, except the Bannock trail already described, lay on the outside. All the conditions, therefore, which might attract the Indians to this region were wanting. Even those sentimental influences, such as a love of sublime scenery and a curiosity to see the strange freaks of nature, evidently had less weight with them than with their pale-face brethren. Summarizing the results of such knowledge, confessedly meager, as exists upon this subject, it appears: (1.) That the country now embraced in the Yellowstone National Park was occupied, at the time of its discovery, by small bands of Sheepeater Indians, probably not exceeding in number one hundred and fifty souls. They dwelt in the neighborhood of the Washburn and Absaroka Ranges, and among the mountains around the sources of the Snake. They were not familiar with the geyser regions. (2.) Wandering bands from other tribes occasionally visited this country, but generally along the line of the Yellowstone River or the Great Bannock Trail. Their knowledge of the geyser regions was extremely limited, and very few had ever seen or heard of them. It is probable that the Indians visited this country more frequently in earlier times than since the advent of the white man. (3.) The Indians avoided the region of the Upper Yellowstone from practical, rather than from sentimental, considerations. The legal processes by which the vast territory of these various tribes passed to the United States, are full of incongruities resulting from a general ignorance of the country in question. By the Treaty of Fort Laramie, dated September 17, 1851, between the United States on the one hand, and the Crows, Blackfeet and other northern tribes on the other, the Crows were given, as part of their territory, all that portion of the Park country which lies east of the Yellowstone River; and the Blackfeet, all that portion lying between the Yellowstone River and the Continental Divide. This was before any thing whatever was known of the country so given away. None of the Shoshone tribes were party to the treaty, and the rights of the Sheepeaters were utterly ignored. That neither the Blackfeet nor the Crows had any real claim to these extravagant grants is evidenced by their prompt relinquishment of them in the first subsequent treaties. Thus, by treaty of October 17, 1855, the Blackfeet agreed that all of their portion of the Park country, with much other territory, should be and remain a common hunting ground for certain designated tribes; and by treaty of May 17, 1868, the Crows relinquished all of their territory south of the Montana boundary line. That portion of the Park country drained by the Snake River was always considered Shoshone territory, although apparently never formally recognized in any public treaty. By an unratified treaty, dated September 24, 1868, the provisions of which seem to have been the basis of subsequent arrangements with the Shoshonean tribes, all this territory and much besides was ceded to the United States, and the tribes were located upon small reservations. It thus appears that at the time the Park was created, March 1, 1872, all the territory included in its limits had been ceded to the United States except the hunting ground above referred to, and the narrow strip of Crow territory east of the Yellowstone where the north boundary of the Park lies two or three miles north of the Montana line. The "hunting ground" arrangement was abrogated by statute of April 15, 1874, and the strip of Crow territory was purchased under an agreement with the Crows, dated June 12, 1880, and ratified by Congress, April 11, 1882, thus extinguishing the last remaining Indian title to any portion of the Yellowstone Park. CHAPTER III. JOHN COLTER. Lewis and Clark passed the second winter of their expedition at the mouth of the Columbia River. In the spring and summer of 1806 they accomplished their return to St. Louis. Upon their arrival at the site of their former winter quarters among the Mandans, an incident occurred which forms the initial point in the history of the Yellowstone National Park. It is thus recorded in the journal of the expedition under date of August 14 and 15, 1806:[K] "In the evening we were applied to by one of our men, Colter, who was desirous of joining the two trappers who had accompanied us, and who now proposed an expedition up the river, in which they were to find traps and give him a share of the profits. The offer was a very advantageous one, and, as he had always performed his duty, and his services might be dispensed with, we agreed that he might go provided none of the rest would ask or expect a similar indulgence. To this they cheerfully answered that they wished Colter every success and would not apply for liberty to separate before we reached St. Louis. We therefore supplied him, as did his comrades also, with powder, lead, and a variety of articles which might be useful to him, and he left us the next day." [K] Pages 1181-2, Coues' "Lewis and Clark." See Appendix E. To our explorers, just returning from a two years' sojourn in the wilderness, Colter's decision seemed too remarkable to be passed over in silence. The journal continues: "The example of this man shows us how easily men may be weaned from the habits of civilized life to the ruder but scarcely less fascinating manners of the woods. This hunter has now been absent for many years from the frontiers, and might naturally be presumed to have some anxiety, or some curiosity at least, to return to his friends and his country; yet just at the moment when he is approaching the frontiers, he is tempted by a hunting scheme to give up those delightful prospects, and go back without the least reluctance to the solitude of the woods." Colter seems to have stood well in the esteem of his officers. Besides the fair character given him in his discharge, the record of the expedition shows that he was frequently selected when one or two men were required for important special duty. That he had a good eye for topography may be inferred from the fact that Captain Clark, several years after the expedition was over, placed upon his map certain important information on the strength of Colter's statements, who alone had traversed the region in question. In another instance, when Bradbury, the English naturalist, was about to leave St. Louis to join the Astorians in the spring of 1811, Clark referred him to Colter, who had returned from the mountains, as a person who could conduct him to a certain natural curiosity on the Missouri some distance above St. Charles. Colter had not seen the place for six years. In the _Missouri Gazette_, for April 18, 1811, he is referred to as a "celebrated hunter and woodsman." These glimpses of his record, and a remarkable incident to be related further on, clearly indicate that he was a man of superior mettle to that of the average hunter and trapper. Colter's whereabouts during the three years following his discharge are difficult to fix upon. It may, however, be set down as certain that he and his companions ascended the Yellowstone River, not the Missouri. Captain Clark's return journey down the first-mentioned stream had made known to them that it was better beaver country than the Missouri, and Colter's subsequent wanderings clearly indicate that his base of operations was in the valley of the Yellowstone near the mouth of the Bighorn, Pryor's Fork, or other tributary stream. In the summer of 1807, he made an expedition, apparently alone, although probably in company with Indians, which has given him title to a place in the history of the Yellowstone Park, and which was destined in later years to assume an importance little enough suspected by him at the time. His route appears upon Lewis and Clark's map of 1814, and is there called "Colter's route in 1807." There is no note or explanation, and we are left to retrace, on the basis of a dotted line, a few names, and a date, one of those singular individual wanderings through the wilderness which now and then find a permanent place in history. The "route," as traced on the map, starts from a point on Pryor's Fork, the first considerable tributary of the Yellowstone above the mouth of the Bighorn. Colter's intention seems to have been to skirt the eastern base of the Absaroka Range until he should reach an accessible pass across the mountains of which the Indians had probably told him; then to cross over to the headwaters of Pacific or gulf-flowing streams; and then to return by way of the Upper Yellowstone. [Illustration: /* _Opp. page 22._ */ Colter's Route in 1807.] Accordingly, after he had passed through Pryor's Gap, he took a south-westerly direction as far as Clark's Fork, which stream he ascended for some distance, and then crossed over to the Stinkingwater. Here he discovered a large boiling spring, strongly impregnated with tar and sulphur, the odor of which, perceptible for a great distance around, has given the stream its "unhappy name." From this point Colter continued along the eastern flank of the Absaroka Range, fording the several tributaries of the Bighorn River which flow down from that range, and finally came to the upper course of the main stream now known as Wind River. He ascended this stream to its source, crossing the divide in the vicinity of Lincoln or Union Pass, and found himself upon the Pacific slope. The map clearly shows that at this point he had reached what the Indians called the "summit of the world" near by the sources of all great streams of the west. That he discovered one of the easy passes between Wind River and the Pacific slope, is evident from the reference in the _Missouri Gazette_ already alluded to and here reproduced for the first time. It is from the pen of a Mr. H. M. Brackenridge, a contemporary writer of note on topics of western adventure. It reads: "At the head of the Gallatin Fork, and of the Grosse Corne of the Yellowstone [the Bighorn River], from discoveries since the voyage of Lewis and Clark, it is found less difficult to cross than the Allegheny Mountains. Coulter, a celebrated hunter and woodsman, informed me that a loaded wagon would find no obstruction in passing." The "discoveries" are of course those of Colter, for no other white man at this time had been in those parts. From the summit of the mountains he descended to the westward; crossed the Snake River and Teton Pass to Pierre's Hole, and then turned north, recrossing the Teton Range by the Indian trail in the valley of what is now Conant Creek, just north of Jackson Lake.[L] Thence he continued his course until he reached Yellowstone Lake,[L] at some point along its south-western shore. He passed around the west shore to the northernmost point of the Thumb, and then resumed his northerly course over the hills arriving at the Yellowstone River in the valley of Alum Creek. He followed the left bank of the river to the ford just above Tower Falls, where the great Bannock Trail used to cross, and then followed this trail to its junction with his outward route on Clark's Fork. From this point he re-crossed to the Stinkingwater, possibly in order to re-visit the strange phenomena there, but more probably to explore new trapping territory on his way back. He descended the Stinkingwater until about south of Pryor's Gap, when he turned north and shortly after arrived at his starting point. [L] For the names given by Captain Clark to these bodies of water, see Appendix A, "Jackson Lake" and "Yellowstone Lake." The direction of Colter's progress, as here indicated, and the identification of certain geographical features noted by him, differ somewhat from the ordinary interpretation of that adventure. But, while it would be absurd to dogmatize upon so uncertain a subject, it is believed that the theory adopted is fairly well supported by the facts as now known. It must in the first place be assumed that Colter exercised ordinary common sense upon this journey and availed himself of all information that could facilitate his progress. It is probable that he was under the guidance of Indians who knew the country; but if not, he frequently stopped, like any traveler in an unknown region, to inquire his way. He sought the established trails, low mountain passes, and well-known fords, and did not, as the map suggests, take a direction that would carry him through the very roughest and most impassable mountain country on the continent. It is necessary to orient his map so as to make both his outgoing and return routes extend nearly due north and south, instead of north-east and south-west, in order to reconcile his geography at all with the modern maps. With these precautions some of the difficulty of the situation disappears. Colter, it is therefore assumed, followed the great trail along the Absarokas to the Wind River Valley, and crossed the divide by one of the easy passes at its head. His two crossings of the Teton range were along established trails. He evidently lost his bearings somewhat in the vicinity of the Yellowstone Lake, but as soon as he arrived at the river below the lake he kept along the trail until he reached the important crossing at Tower Falls. If he was in company with Indians who had ever been through that country before, he learned that it would be no advantage to cross at Mud Geyser, inasmuch as he would strike the great Bannock Trail at the next ford below. Moreover, the distance below the lake to the point where Colter touched the Yellowstone is clearly greater than that to the Mud Geyser Ford. The bend in the river at the Great Falls, and the close proximity of the Washburn Range to the river, are distinctly indicated. The locality noted on the map as "Hot Springs Brimstone" is evidently not that near the Mud Geyser, as generally assumed, but instead, that of the now world-renowned Mammoth Hot Springs. As will be seen from the map, it is nearer the Gallatin River than it is to the Yellowstone _where Colter crossed_. If Colter visited the Springs from Tower Falls, as is not unlikely, a clue is supplied to the otherwise perplexing reference to the Gallatin River in the above extract from the _Missouri Gazette_, for it would thus appear that he was near the sources of both the Grosse Corne and of the Gallatin. The essential difficulties in the way of this theory (and they exist with any possible theory that can be advanced) are the following: (1.) There is no stream on the map that can stand for the Snake River either above or below Jackson Lake, although Colter must have crossed it in each place. "Colter's River" comes nearest the first location, and may possibly be intended to represent that stream; but Clark's evident purpose to drain Jackson Lake into the Bighorn River doubtless led to a distortion of the map in this locality. (2.) The erroneous shape given to the Yellowstone Lake will be readily understood by any one who has visited its western shore. The jutting promontories to the eastward entirely conceal from view the great body of the lake and give it a form not unlike that upon Clark's map. (3.) The absence of the Great Falls from the map is not easily accounted for, although the location and trend of the Grand Cañon are shown with remarkable accuracy. (4.) The absence of the many hot springs districts, through which Colter passed, particularly that at the west end of the Yellowstone Lake, may be explained by the same spirit of incredulity which led to the rejection of all similar accounts for a period of more than sixty years. It is probable that Clark was not willing to recognize Colter's statements on this subject further than to note on his map the location of the most wonderful of the hot springs groups mentioned by him. The direction in which Colter traveled is a matter of no essential importance, and that here adopted is based solely upon the consideration that the doubling of the trail upon itself between Clark's Fork and the Stinkingwater River, and the erratic course of the route around Yellowstone Lake, can not be well accounted for on the contrary hypothesis.[M] [M] In adopting, as Colter's point of crossing the Yellowstone, the ford at Tower Creek, the author has followed the Hon. N. P. Langford, in his reprint of Folsom's "Valley of the Upper Yellowstone." (See Appendix E.) All other writers who have touched upon the subject have assumed the ford to be that near the Mud Geyser. Such, in the main, is "Colter's route in 1807." That he was the discoverer of Yellowstone Lake, and the foremost herald of the strange phenomena of that region, may be accepted as beyond question. He did not, as is generally supposed, see the Firehole Geyser Basins. But he saw too much for his reputation as a man of veracity. No author or map-maker would jeopardize the success of his work by incorporating in it such incredible material as Colter furnished. His stories were not believed; their author became the subject of jest and ridicule; and the region of his adventures was long derisively known as "Colter's Hell."[N] [N] This name early came to be restricted to the locality where Colter discovered the tar spring on the Stinkingwater, probably because few trappers ever saw the other similar localities visited by him. But Colter's descriptions, so well summed up by Irving in his "Captain Bonneville," undoubtedly refer in large part to what he saw in the Yellowstone and Snake River Valleys. The story of Colter's subsequent experience before he returned to St. Louis is thrilling in the extreme. Although it has no direct bearing upon this narrative, still, since it is part of the biography of the discoverer of the Upper Yellowstone, it can not be omitted. The detailed account we owe to the naturalist Bradbury, already referred to. He saw Colter above St. Louis in the spring of 1811, one year after his return from the mountains, and received the story directly from him. All other accounts are variations from Bradbury. Irving, who has made this story an Indian classic, borrows it _in toto_. Perhaps in all the records of Indian adventure there is not another instance of such a miraculous escape, in which the details are throughout so clearly within the range of possibility. It is a consistent narrative from beginning to end. In briefest outline it is as follows: When Colter returned from his expedition of 1807, he found Manuel Lisa, of the Missouri Fur Company, already in the country, where he had just arrived from St. Louis. With him was one Potts, believed to be the same person who had been a private in the party of Lewis and Clark. In the spring of 1808, Colter and his old companion in arms set out to the headwaters of the Missouri on a trapping expedition. It was on a branch of Jefferson Fork that they went to work, and here they met with their disastrous experience. One morning while they were in a canoe examining their traps they were surprised by a large party of Blackfeet Indians. Potts attempted resistance and was slain on the spot. Colter, with more presence of mind, gave himself up as the only possible chance of avoiding immediate death. The Indians then consulted as to how they should kill him in order to yield themselves the greatest amount of amusement. Colter, upon being questioned as to his fleetness of foot, sagaciously replied that he was a poor runner (though in fact very swift), and the Indians, believing that it would be a safe experiment, decided that he should run for his life. Accordingly he was stripped naked and was led by the chief to a point three or four hundred yards in advance of the main body of the Indians. Here he was told "_to save himself if he could_," and the race began--one man against five hundred. The Indians quickly saw how they had been outwitted, for Colter flew away from them as if upon the wings of the wind. But his speed cost him dear. The exertion caused the blood to stream from his mouth and nostrils, and run down over his naked form. The prickly pear and the rough ground lacerated his feet. Six miles away across a level plain was a fringe of cottonwood on the banks of the Jefferson River. Short of that lay not a shadow of chance of concealment. It was a long race, but life hung upon the issue. The Indians had not counted on such prodigious running. Gradually they fell off, and when Colter ventured for the first time to glance back, only a small number were in his wake. Encouragement was now added to hope, and he ran even faster than before. But there was one Indian who was too much for him. He was steadily shortening the distance between them, and at last had arrived within a spear's throw. Was Colter to be slain by a single Indian after having distanced five hundred? He would see. Suddenly whirling about, he confronted the Indian, who was astounded at the sudden move and at Colter's bloody appearance. He tried to hurl his spear but stumbled and broke it as he fell. Colter seized the pointed portion and pinned the Indian to the earth. Again he resumed his flight. He reached the Jefferson, and discovered, some distance below, a raft of driftwood against the head of an island. He dived under this raft and found a place where he could get his head above water. There, in painful suspense, he awaited developments. The Indians explored the island and examined the raft, but Colter's audacious spirit was beyond their comprehension. It did not occur to them that he was all the time surveying their movements from his hiding place under the timber, and they finally abandoned the search and withdrew. Colter had saved himself. When evening came he swam several miles down the river and then went ashore. For seven days he wandered naked and unarmed, over stones, cacti, and the prickly pear, scorched by the heat of noon and chilled by the frost of night, finding his sole subsistence in such roots as he might dig, until at last he reached Lisa's trading post on the Bighorn River. Even this terrible adventure could not dismay the dauntless Colter, and he remained still another year in the mountains. Finally, in the spring of 1810, he got into a canoe and dropped down the river, "three thousand miles in thirty days," reaching St. Louis, May 1st, after an absence of six years. Colter remained in St. Louis for a time giving Clark what information he could concerning the places he had seen, and evidently talking a great deal about his adventures. Finally he retired to the country some distance up the Missouri, and married. Here we again catch a glimpse of him when the Astorians were on their way up the river. As Colter saw the well appointed expedition setting out for the mountains, the old fever seized him again and he was upon the point of joining the party. But what the hardships of the wilderness and the pleasures of civilization could not dissuade him from doing, the charms of a newly-married wife easily accomplished. Colter remained behind; and here the curtain of oblivion falls upon the discoverer of the Yellowstone. It is not without genuine satisfaction that, having followed him through the incredible mazes of "Colter's Hell," we bid him adieu amid surroundings of so different a character. CHAPTER IV. THE TRADER AND TRAPPER. For sixty years after Lewis and Clark returned from their expedition, the headwaters of the Yellowstone remained unexplored except by the trader and trapper. The traffic in peltries it was that first induced extensive exploration of the west. Concerning the precious metals, the people seem to have had little faith in their abundant existence in the west, and no organized search for them was made in the earlier years of the century. But that country, even in its unsettled state, had other and important sources of wealth. Myriads of beaver inhabited the streams and innumerable buffalo roamed the valleys. The buffalo furnished the trapper with means of subsistence, and beaver furs were better than mines of gold. Far in advance of the tide of settlement the lonely trapper, and after him the trader, penetrated the unknown west. Gradually the enterprise of individuals crystallized around a few important nuclei and there grew up those great fur-trading companies which for many years exercised a kind of paternal sway over the Indians and the scarcely more civilized trappers. A brief resumé of the history of these companies will show how important a place they occupy in the early history of the Upper Yellowstone. The climax of the western fur business may be placed at about the year 1830. At that time three great companies operated in territories whose converging lines of separation centered in the region about Yellowstone Lake. The oldest and most important of them, and the one destined to outlive the others, was the world-renowned Hudson's Bay Company. It was at that time more than a century and a half old. Its earlier history was in marked contrast with that of later years. Secure in the monopoly which its extensive charter rights guaranteed, it had been content with substantial profits and had never pushed its business far into new territory nor managed it with aggressive vigor. It was not until forced to action by the encroachments of a dangerous rival, that it became the prodigious power of later times. This rival was the great North-west Fur Company of Montreal: It had grown up since the French and Indian War, partly as a result of that conflict, and finally took corporate form in 1787. It had none of the important territorial rights of the Hudson's Bay Company, but its lack of monopoly was more than made up by the enterprise of its promoters. With its bands of Canadian frontiersmen, it boldly penetrated the north-west and paid little respect to those territorial rights which its venerable rival was powerless to enforce. It rapidly extended its operations far into the unexplored interior. Lewis and Clark found its traders among the Mandans in 1804. In 1811 the Astorians saw its first party descend the Columbia to the sea. Two years later the American traders on the Pacific Coast were forced to succumb to their British rivals. A long and bitter strife now ensued between the two British companies. It even assumed the magnitude of civil war, and finally resulted in a frightful massacre of unoffending colonists. The British government interfered and forced the rivals into court, where they were brought to the verge of ruin by protracted litigation. A compromise was at last effected in 1821 by an amalgamation of the two companies under the name of the older rival. But in the meantime a large part of their best fur country had been lost. In 1815 the government of the United States excluded British traders from its territory east of the Rocky Mountains. To the west of this limit, however, the amalgamated company easily forced all its rivals from the field. No American fur company ever attained the splendid organization, nor the influence over the Indians, possessed by the Hudson's Bay Company. At the time of which we write it was master of the trade in the Columbia River valley, and the eastern limit of its operations within the territory of the United States was nearly coincident with the present western boundary of the Yellowstone Park. The second of the great companies to which reference has been made was the American Fur Company. It was the final outcome of John Jacob Astor's various attempts to control the fur trade of the United States. Although it was incorporated in 1809, it was for a time overshadowed by the more brilliant enterprises known as the Pacific Fur Company and the Southwest Fur Company. The history of Mr. Astor's Pacific Fur Company, the dismal experiences of the Astorians, and the deplorable failure of the whole undertaking, are matters familiar to all readers of Irving's "Astoria." The other project gave for a time more substantial promise of success. A British company of considerable importance, under the name of the Mackinaw Company, with headquarters at Michilimacinac, had for some time operated in the country about the headwaters of the Mississippi now included in the states of Wisconsin and Minnesota. Astor succeeded in forming a new company, partly with American and partly with Canadian capital. This company bought out the Mackinaw Company, and changed the name to South-west Fur Company. But scarcely had its promising career begun when it was cut short by the War of 1812. The failure of these two attempts caused Mr. Astor to turn to the old American Fur Company. The exclusion Act of 1815 enabled him to buy at his own price the North-west Fur Company's posts on the upper rivers, and the American Company rapidly extended its trade over all the country, from Lake Superior to the Rocky Mountains. Its posts multiplied in every direction, and at an early date steamboats began to do its business up the Missouri River from St. Louis. It gradually absorbed lesser concerns, such as the Missouri Fur Company, and the Columbia Fur Company, and in 1823 was reorganized under the name of The North American Fur Company. In 1834, Astor sold his interests to Chouteau, Valle and Company, of St. Louis, and retired from the business. At this time the general western limit of the territory operated in by this formidable company was the northern and eastern slope of the mountains which bound the Yellowstone Park on the north and east. Its line of operations was down the river to St. Louis, and its great trading posts were located at frequent intervals between. The third of the great rival companies was the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, which originated in St. Louis in 1822, and received its full organization in 1826 under the direction of Jedediah Smith, David Jackson and William Sublette. Among the leading spirits, who at one time or another guided its affairs, was the famous mountaineer James Bridger to whom frequent reference will be made. This company had its general center of operations on the head waters of Green River to the west of South Pass. Unlike the other companies, it had no navigable stream along which it could establish posts and conduct its operations. By the necessities of its exclusively mountain trade it developed a new feature of the fur business. The _voyageur_, with his canoe and oar, gave way to the mountaineer, with his saddle and rifle. The trading post was replaced by the annual rendezvous, which was in many points the forerunner of the later cattle "roundups" of the plains. These rendezvous were agreed upon each year at localities best suited for the convenience of the trade. Hither in the spring came from the east convoys of supplies for the season's use. Hither repaired also the various parties of hunters and trappers and such bands of Indians as roamed in the vicinity. These meetings were great occasions, both in the transaction of business and in the round of festivities that always prevailed. After the traffic of the occasion was over, and the plans for the ensuing year were agreed upon, the convoys returned to the States and the trappers to their retreats in the mountains. The field of operations of this company was very extensive and included about all of the West not controlled by the Hudson's Bay and American Fur Companies. Thus was the territory of the great West practically parceled out among these three companies.[O] It must not be supposed that there was any agreement, tacit or open, that each company should keep within certain limits. There were, indeed, a few temporary arrangements of this sort, but for the most part each company maintained the right to work in any territory it saw fit, and there was constant invasion by each of the proper territories of the other. But the practical necessities of the business kept them, broadly speaking, within the limits which we have noted. The roving bands of "free trappers" and "lone traders," and individual expeditions like those of Captain Bonneville and Nathaniel J. Wyeth, acknowledged allegiance to none of the great organizations, but wandered where they chose, dealing by turns with each of the companies. [O] A singular and striking coincidence at once discloses itself to any one who compares maps showing the territories operated in by these three companies, and those which belonged to the three great families of Indians mentioned in a preceding chapter. By far the larger part of the Hudson's Bay Company's territory, as far west as the main range of the Rocky Mountains, was Algonquian. The American Fur Company's territory was almost entirely Siouan, and that of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, Shoshonean. Nor did any company maintain an exclusive monopoly of its peculiar methods of conducting business. The American Fur Company frequently held rendezvous at points remote from its trading posts; and the Rocky Mountain Fur Company in later years resorted to the Missouri River as its line of supplies. In fact, the interests of the two companies finally became to such an extent dependent upon each other that a union was effected, in 1839, under the firm name of P. Chouteau, Jr. The records of those early days abound in references to the fierce competition in trade which existed between these great organizations. It led to every manner of device or subterfuge which might deceive a rival as to routes, conceal from him important trapping grounds, undermine the loyalty of his employes or excite the hostility of the Indians against him. It often led to deeds of violence, and made the presence of a rival band of trappers more dreaded than a war party of the implacable Blackfeet. The vigor and enterprise of these traders caused their business to penetrate the remotest and most inaccessible corners of the land. Silliman's Journal for January, 1834, declares that-- "The mountains and forests, from the Arctic Sea to the Gulf of Mexico, are threaded through every maze by the hunter. Every river and tributary stream, from the Columbia to the Rio del Norte, and from the Mackenzie to the Colorado of the West, from their head waters to their junctions, are searched and trapped for beaver." That a business of such all-pervading character should have left a region like our present Yellowstone Park unexplored would seem extremely doubtful. That region lay, a sort of neutral ground, between the territories of the rival fur companies. Its streams abounded with beaver; and, although hemmed in by vast mountains, and snow-bound most of the year, it could not have escaped discovery. In fact, every part of it was repeatedly visited by trappers. Rendezvous were held on every side of it, and once, it is believed, in Hayden Valley, just north of Yellowstone Lake. Had the fur business been more enduring, the geyser regions would have become known at least a generation sooner. But a business carried on with such relentless vigor naturally soon taxed the resources of nature beyond its capacity for reproduction. In regions under the control of a single organization, as in the vast domains of the Hudson's Bay Company, great care was taken to preserve the fur-bearing animals from extinction; but in United States territory, the exigencies of competition made any such provision impossible. The poor beaver, as at a later day the buffalo, quickly succumbed to his ubiquitous enemies. There was no spot remote enough for him to build his dam in peace, and the once innumerable multitude speedily dwindled away. The few years immediately preceding and following 1830 were the halcyon days of the fur trade in the United States. Thenceforward it rapidly declined, and by 1850 had shrunk to a mere shadow of its former greatness. With its disappearance the early knowledge of the Upper Yellowstone also disappeared. Subsequent events--the Mormon emigration, the war with Mexico, and the discovery of gold--drew attention, both private and official, in other directions; and the great wonderland became again almost as much unknown as in the days of Lewis and Clark. CHAPTER V. EARLY KNOWLEDGE OF THE YELLOWSTONE. On the west bank of the Yellowstone River, a quarter of a mile above the Upper Falls, in a ravine now crossed by a lofty wooden bridge, stands a pine tree, on which is the oldest record, except that of Colter, of the presence of white men within the present limits of the Park. It is an inscription, giving the initials of a name and the date when inscribed. It was discovered in 1880 by Col. P. W. Norris, then Superintendent of the Park. It is now practically illegible from overgrowth, although some of the characters can still be made out. Col. Norris, who saw it fifteen years ago, claims to have successfully deciphered it. He verified the date by counting the annual rings on another tree near by, which bore hatchet marks, presumably of the same date. The time that had elapsed since these cuts were made corresponded well with the inscribed date. The inscription was: J O R Aug 19 1819 Efforts have been made to trace this inscription to some of the early noted trappers, but the attempt can hardly succeed. Even if an identity of initials were established, the identity of individuals would still remain in doubt. Nothing short of some authentic record of such a visit as must have taken place can satisfy the requirements of the case. In the absence of any such record, the most that can be said is that the inscription is proof positive that the Park country was visited by white men, after Colter's time, fully fifty years before its final discovery. Col. Norris' researches disclosed other similar evidence, although in no other instance with so plain a clue as to date. Near Beaver Lake and Obsidian Cliff, he found, in 1878, a cache of marten traps of an old pattern used by the Hudson's Bay Company's trappers fifty years before. He also examined the ruins of an ancient block-house discovered by Frederick Bottler at the base of Mt. Washburn, near the Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone. Its decayed condition indicated great age. In other places, the stumps of trees, old logs used to cross streams, and many similar proofs, were brought to light by that inveterate ranger of the wilderness. The Washburn party, in 1870, discovered on the east bank of the Yellowstone, just above Mud Geyser, the remains of a pit, probably once used for concealment in shooting water fowl. In 1882, there was still living in Montana, at the advanced age of one hundred and two years, a Frenchman by the name of Baptiste Ducharne. This man spent the summers of 1824 and 1826 on the Upper Yellowstone River trapping for beaver. He saw the Grand Cañon and Falls of the Yellowstone and the Yellowstone Lake. He passed through the geyser regions, and could accurately describe them more than half a century after he had seen them. A book called "The River of the West,"[P] published in 1871, but copyrighted in 1869, before the publication of any modern account of the geyser regions, contains the record of an adventure in the Yellowstone three years after those of Ducharne. The book is a biography of one Joseph Meek, a trapper and pioneer of considerable note. The adventure to which reference is made took place in 1829, and was the result of a decision by the Rocky Mountain Fur Company to retire from competition with the Hudson's Bay Company in the Snake River Valley. In leaving the country, Captain William Sublette, the chief partner, led his party up Henry Fork, across the Madison and Gallatin Rivers, to the high ridge overlooking the Yellowstone, at some point near the present Cinnabar Mountain. Here the party was dispersed by a band of Blackfeet, and Meek, one of its members, became separated from his companions. He had lost his horse and most of his equipment and in this condition he wandered for several days, without food or shelter, until he was found by two of his companions. His route lay in a southerly direction, to the eastward of the Yellowstone, at some distance back from the river. On the morning of the fifth day he had the following experience: "Being desirous to learn something of the progress he had made, he ascended a low mountain in the neighborhood of his camp, and behold! the whole country beyond was smoking with vapor from boiling springs, and burning with gases issuing from small craters, each of which was emitting a sharp, whistling sound. When the first surprise of this astonishing scene had passed, Joe began to admire its effect from an artistic point of view. The morning being clear, with a sharp frost, he thought himself reminded of the City of Pittsburg, as he had beheld it on a winter morning, a couple of years before. This, however, related only to the rising smoke and vapor; for the extent of the volcanic region was immense, reaching far out of sight. The general face of the country was smooth and rolling, being a level plain, dotted with cone-shaped mounds. On the summit of these mounds were small craters from four to eight feet in diameter. Interspersed among these on the level plain were larger craters, some of them from four to six miles across. Out of these craters, issued blue flames and molten brimstone."[Q] [P] See Appendix E. [Q] Page 75, "River of the West." Making some allowance for the trapper's tendency to exaggeration, we recognize in this description the familiar picture of the hot springs districts. The precise location is difficult to determine; but Meek's previous wanderings, and the subsequent route of himself and his companions whom he met here, show conclusively that it was one of the numerous districts east of the Yellowstone, which were possibly then more active than now. This book affords much other evidence of early knowledge of the country immediately bordering the present Park. The Great Bend of the Yellowstone where Livingston now stands, was already a famous rendezvous. The Gardiner and Firehole Rivers were well known to trappers; and a much-used trail led from the Madison across the Gallatin Range to the Gardiner, and thence up the Yellowstone and East Fork across the mountains to the Bighorn Valley. In Vol. I, No. 17, August 13, 1842, of _The Wasp_, a Mormon paper published at Nauvoo, Ill., occurs the first, as it is by far the best, of all early accounts of the geyser regions prior to 1870. It is an extract from an unpublished work, entitled _Life in the Rocky Mountains_. Who was the author will probably never be known; but that he was a man of culture and education, altogether beyond the average trader, is evident from the passing glimpse which we have of his work. He apparently made his visit from some point in the valley of Henry Fork not far west of the Firehole River, for, at the utmost allowance, he traveled only about sixty or seventy miles to reach the geyser basins. The evidence is conclusive that the scene of this visit was the Upper Geyser Basin. It fits perfectly with the description, while numerous insuperable discrepancies render identification with the Lower Basin, which some have sought to establish, impossible. Following is this writer's narrative: "I had heard in the summer of 1833, while at rendezvous, that remarkable boiling springs had been discovered on the sources of the Madison, by a party of trappers, in their spring hunt; of which the accounts they gave, were so very astonishing, that I determined to examine them myself, before recording their description, though I had the united testimony of more than twenty men on the subject, who all declared they saw them, and that they really were as extensive and remarkable as they had been described. Having now an opportunity of paying them a visit, and as another or a better might not occur, I parted with the company after supper, and taking with me two Pend d'Oreilles (who were induced to take the excursion with me, by the promise of an extra present,) set out at a round pace, the night being clear and comfortable. We proceeded over the plain about twenty miles, and halted until daylight, on a fine spring, flowing into Camas Creek. Refreshed by a few hours' sleep, we started again after a hasty breakfast, and entered a very extensive forest, called the Pine Woods; (a continued succession of low mountains or hills, entirely covered with a dense growth of this species of timber;) which we passed through and reached the vicinity of the springs about dark, having seen several lakes or ponds on the sources of the Madison, and rode about forty miles; which was a hard day's ride, taking into consideration the rough irregularity of the country through which we traveled. "We regaled ourselves with a cup of coffee, the materials for making which we had brought with us, and immediately after supper, lay down to rest, sleepy and much fatigued. The continual roaring of the springs, however, (which was distinctly heard,) for some time prevented my going to sleep, and excited an impatient curiosity to examine them, which I was obliged to defer the gratification of until morning, and filled my slumbers with visions of waterspouts, cataracts, fountains, _jets d'eau_ of immense dimensions, etc., etc. "When I arose in the morning, clouds of vapor seemed like a dense fog to overhang the springs, from which frequent reports or explosions of different loudness, constantly assailed our ears. I immediately proceeded to inspect them, and might have exclaimed with the Queen of Sheba, when their full reality of dimensions and novelty burst upon my view, 'the half was not told me.' "From the surface of a rocky plain or table, burst forth columns of water, of various dimensions, projecting high in the air, accompanied by loud explosions, and sulphurous vapors, which were highly disagreeable to the smell. The rock from which these springs burst forth was calcareous, and probably extends some distance from them, beneath the soil. The largest of these beautiful fountains projects a column of boiling water several feet in diameter, to the height of more than one hundred and fifty feet, in my opinion; but the party of Alvarez, who discovered it, persist in declaring that it could not be less than four times that distance in height--accompanied with a tremendous noise. These explosions and discharges occur at intervals of about two hours. After having witnessed three of them, I ventured near enough, to put my hand into the waters of its basin, but withdrew it instantly, for the heat of the water in this immense cauldron was altogether too great for my comfort; and the agitation of the water, the disagreeable effluvium continually exuding, and the hollow unearthly rumbling under the rock on which I stood, so ill accorded with my notions of personal safety, that I retreated back precipitately to a respectful distance. The Indians, who were with me, were quite appalled, and could not by any means be induced to approach them. They seemed astonished at my presumption in advancing up to the large one, and when I safely returned, congratulated me upon my 'narrow escape.' They believed them to be supernatural and supposed them to be the production of the Evil Spirit. One of them remarked that hell, of which he had heard from the whites, must be in that vicinity. The diameter of the basin into which the waters of the largest jet principally fall, and from the center of which, through a hole in the rock, of about nine or ten feet in diameter, the water spouts up as above related, may be about thirty feet. There are many other smaller fountains, that did not throw their waters up so high, but occurred at shorter intervals. In some instances the volumes were projected obliquely upward, and fell into the neighboring fountains, or on the rock or prairie. But their ascent was generally perpendicular, falling in and about their own basins or apertures. "These wonderful productions of nature are situated near the center of a small valley, surrounded by pine-covered hills, through which a small fork of the Madison flows." Here we have a description, as from the pen of some earlier Doane or Langford, free from exaggeration and true to the facts. No one who has seen the Upper Geyser Basin will question its general correctness. The writer then goes on to relate what he has learned from others, but here exaggeration creeps in and this part of his narrative is less reliable. It continues: "From several trappers who had recently returned from the Yellow Stone, I received an account of boiling springs that differ from those seen on Salt River only in magnitude, being on a vastly larger scale; some of their cones are from twenty to thirty feet high, and forty to fifty paces in circumference. Those which have ceased to emit boiling, vapor, etc., of which there were several, are full of shelving cavities, even some fathoms in extent, which give them, inside, an appearance of honey-comb. The ground for several acres extent in vicinity of the springs is evidently hollow, and constantly exhales a hot steam or vapor of disagreeable odor, and a character entirely to prevent vegetation. They are situated in the valley at the head of that river near the lake, which constitutes its source. "A short distance from these springs, near the margin of the lake, there is one quite different from any yet described. It is of a circular form, several feet in diameter, clear, cold and pure; the bottom appears visible to the eye, and seems seven or eight feet below the surface of the earth or water, without meeting any resistance. What is most singular with respect to this fountain is the fact that at regular intervals of about two minutes, a body or column of water bursts up to the height of eight feet, with an explosion as loud as the report of a musket, and then falls back into it; for a few seconds the water is roily, but it speedily settles and becomes transparent as before the effusion. A slight tremulous motion of the water, and a low rumbling sound from the caverns beneath, precede each explosion. This spring was believed to be connected with the lake by some subterranean passage, but the cause of its periodical eruptions or discharges, is entirely unknown. I have never before heard of a cold spring, whose waters exhibit the phenomena of periodical explosive propulsion, in form of a jet. The geysers of Iceland, and the various other European springs, the waters of which are projected upwards, with violence and uniformity, as well as those seen on the head waters of the Madison, are invariably hot." The cold water geyser above described, although, apparently a myth, may not have been so after all. In many places along the west shore of the Yellowstone Lake there are visible protuberances in the water surface where boiling springs from beneath force the cold water upward. It is quite possible that this spring was so connected with the lake as to keep constantly filled with cold water to a considerable depth; and that the eruptive energy of the spring was expended in lifting the superincumbent mass without giving any visible indication of the thermal action below. The whole article forms the most interesting and authentic reference to the geyser regions published prior to 1870. It proves beyond question that a knowledge of this region existed among the early trappers, and confirms our previous deduction that the wide range of the fur business could not have left it unexplored. In a letter addressed by General Bonneville to the Montana Historical Society,[R] since the creation of the Yellowstone Park, he states that, at the time of his sojourn in the mountains, in 1831-4, the geyser regions were known to his men, although he had not personally seen them. He also remembered having seen the trader Alvarez, referred to in the above article. [R] See Appendix E, "Transactions Montana Historical Society." In 1844, a large party of trappers entered the Upper Yellowstone Valley from the south, passed around the west shore of the Yellowstone Lake to the outlet, where they had a severe battle with the Blackfeet Indians, in a broad open tract at that point. The remains of their old corral were still visible as late as 1870. There are numerous other interesting, though less definite, references to an early knowledge of the Yellowstone; but those we have given show their general character. The important fact to remember is that this knowledge was barren of result. For the most part it existed only in the minds of illiterate men, and perished with them. It never caught the public ear and did not in the least degree hasten the final discovery. Historically interesting these early adventures will always be; as are also the Norse voyages to America; but they are very far from being the Columbus voyage of discovery. CHAPTER VI. JAMES BRIDGER. Of the early characters whose names are closely linked with the history of the Yellowstone, the most distinguished is James Bridger, a sketch of whose life is given in Appendix A, under "Bridger Lake." That he had often been in the region of the Yellowstone Park, and was familiar with its unique features, is now well known. His first personal knowledge of them is believed to date from 1824, when he is supposed to have been upon the upper Yellowstone. It is certain that before 1840 he knew of the existence of the geysers in the Firehole Valley, although at that time he had probably not seen them himself. Between 1841 and 1844 Bridger was leader of a grand hunting and trapping expedition, which for upward of two years, wandered over the country from the Great Falls of the Missouri to Chihuahua, Mexico. At some time during this expedition he entered the region of the upper Yellowstone and saw most of its wonders. His descriptions of the geysers and other remarkable features of that locality can be traced back nearly to this period and present an accuracy of detail which could come only from personal observation. Among the records of these descriptions the earliest is that by Captain J. W. Gunnison, of the Corps of Topographical Engineers, who was associated with Captain Howard Stansbury, of the same corps, in the Salt Lake Expedition of 1849-50. The record is found in Gunnison's History of the Mormons,[S] and dates back to this expedition. It reads: "He [Bridger] gives a picture, most romantic and enticing, of the head waters of the Yellow Stone. A lake, sixty miles long, cold and pellucid, lies embosomed among high precipitous mountains. On the west side is a sloping plain, several miles wide, with clumps of trees and groves of pine. The ground resounds with the tread of horses. Geysers spout up seventy feet high, with a terrific, hissing noise, at regular intervals. Water-falls are sparkling, leaping and thundering down the precipices, and collect in the pool below. The river issues from this lake, and for fifteen miles roars through the perpendicular cañon at the outlet. In this section are the 'Great Springs,' so hot that meat is readily cooked in them, and as they descend on the successive terraces, afford at length delightful baths. On the other side is an acid spring, which gushes out in a river torrent; and below is a cave, which supplies 'vermillion' for the savages in abundance." [S] Page 151, Gunnison's History of the Mormons. See Appendix E. In this admirable summary we readily discover the Yellowstone Lake, the Grand Cañon, the Falls, the geyser basins, the Mammoth Hot Springs, and Cinnabar Mountain. Prior to 1860, Bridger had related these accounts to Captain Warren, Captain Raynolds, Doctor Hayden, and others, and although he seems to have convinced these gentlemen that there was something in his stories, they still attributed less to fact than to fancy. In his efforts to disseminate a knowledge of this region, Bridger was as determined as Colter had been before him, and with little better success. He tried to have his narratives published, but no periodical would lend itself to his service. The editor of the _Kansas City Journal_ stated editorially in 1879 that Bridger had told him of these wonders fully thirty years before. He prepared an article from Bridger's description, but suppressed it because his friends ridiculed the whole thing as incredible. He later publicly apologized to Bridger, who was then living at Westport, Missouri.[T] [T] Of interest in this connection is the following extract from a recent letter to the writer by the present managing editor of the _Kansas City Journal_: "The interview had with Bridger was in the year 1856. He told Col. R. T. Van Horn, Editor of the _Journal_, which was published at that time, the story of the Park with the geysers, and at the same time, drew with a piece of charcoal on a piece of wrapping paper an outline of the route necessary to be taken by a railroad should it ever cross the continent, which route is exactly on the line that is now crossed by the Union Pacific. In this conversation, he told the Colonel about the mud springs and the other wonders of that part of the country, or to use his own expression, 'it was a place where hell bubbled up.' The Colonel was much interested in the matter at the time and took notes of the account, but did not print it because a man who claimed to know Bridger, told him that he would be laughed out of town if he printed 'any of old Jim Bridger's lies.'" The persistent incredulity of his countrymen, and their ill-concealed suspicion of his honesty, to say nothing of his mental soundness, were long a cloud upon Bridger's life; but, more fortunate than his prototype, Colter, he lived to see himself triumphantly vindicated. Whether from disgust at this unmerited treatment, or because of his love of a good story, Bridger seems finally to have resolved that distrust of his word, if it must exist, should at least have some justification. He was in fact noted for "drawing the long bow to an unparalleled tension," and for never permitting troublesome scruples of conscience to interfere with the proper embellishment of his yarns. These were generally based upon fact, and diligent search will discover in them the "soul of truth" which, according to Herbert Spencer, always exists "in things erroneous." These anecdotes are current even yet among the inhabitants of the Yellowstone, and the tourist who remains long in the Park will not fail to hear them. When Bridger found that he could not make his hearers believe in the existence of a vast mass of volcanic glass, now known to all tourists as the interesting Obsidian Cliff, he supplied them with another glass mountain of a truly original sort. Its discovery was the result of one of his hunting trips and it happened in this wise. Coming one day in sight of a magnificent elk, he took careful aim at the unsuspecting animal and fired. To his great amazement, the elk not only was not wounded, but seemed not even to have heard the report of the rifle. Bridger drew considerably nearer and gave the elk the benefit of his most deliberate aim; but with the same result as before. A third and a fourth effort met with a similar fate. Utterly exasperated, he seized his rifle by the barrel, resolved to use it as a club since it had failed as a firearm. He rushed madly toward the elk, but suddenly crashed into an immovable vertical wall which proved to be a mountain of perfectly transparent glass, on the farther side of which, still in peaceful security, the elk was quietly grazing. Stranger still, the mountain was not only of pure glass, but was a perfect telescopic lens, and, whereas, the elk seemed but a few hundred yards off, it was in reality twenty-five miles away! Another of Bridger's discoveries was an ice-cold spring near the summit of a lofty mountain, the water from which flowed down over a long smooth slope, where it acquired such a velocity that it was boiling hot when it reached the bottom.[U] [U] This story, which is taken from the report of Captain W. F. Raynolds, was one of Bridger's favorites, and it is even said that he did not regard it as pleasantry at all, but as plain matter of fact. Mr. Langford, who often heard him relate it, says that he generally described the stream as flowing over the smooth surface of a rock, and reasoned that, as two sticks rubbed together produce heat by friction, so the water rubbing over the rock became hot. In proof, he cited an instance where the water was hot only in close proximity to the rock and not at the surface. Mr. Langford found a partial confirmation of the fact, but not of the theory, in fording the Firehole River in 1870. He passed over the smooth deposit of an active hot spring in the bed of the stream, and found that the stream bottom and the water in contact with it were hot. An account, in which the "soul of truth" is not so readily apparent, is that of a mining prospector of this region, who, in later times, met a unique and horrible fate. He had for days been traveling with a party toward a prodigious diamond set in the top of a mountain, where, even at noonday, it shone with a luster surpassing the sun. He arrived at length on the top of the mountain only to see the diamond on another summit apparently as far away as ever. Disheartened and weary, he thought to save the labor of descent by taking advantage of an extremely smooth face of the mountain, and accordingly sat down upon his shovel, as upon a toboggan, and let slide. There was a vacant place around the camp-fire that evening, and next day the rest of the party, passing along the base of the mountain, found an infusible clay pipe and the molten remains of a shovel. Warned by the fate of their comrade, the superstitious survivors forbore any further search for the diamond. To those who have visited the west shore of the Yellowstone Lake, and know how simple a matter it is to catch the lake trout and cook them in the boiling pools without taking them from the line, the ground work of the following description will be obvious enough. Somewhere along the shore an immense boiling spring discharges its overflow directly into the lake. The specific gravity of the water is less than that of the lake, owing probably to the expansive action of heat, and it floats in a stratum three or four feet thick upon the cold water underneath. When Bridger was in need of fish it was to this place that he went. Through the hot upper stratum he let fall his bait to the subjacent habitable zone, and having hooked his victim, cooked him _on the way out_! In like manner the visitor to the region of petrifactions on Specimen Ridge in the north-east corner of the Park, and to various points in the hot springs districts, will have no difficulty in discovering the base material out of which Bridger contrived the following picturesque yarn. According to his account there exists in the Park country a mountain which was once cursed by a great medicine man of the Crow nation. Every thing upon the mountain at the time of this dire event became instantly petrified and has remained so ever since. All forms of life are standing about in stone where they were suddenly caught by the petrifying influences, even as the inhabitants of ancient Pompeii were surprised by the ashes of Vesuvius. Sage brush, grass, prairie fowl, antelope, elk, and bears may there be seen as perfect as in actual life. Even flowers are blooming in colors of crystal, and birds soar with wings spread in motionless flight, while the air floats with music and perfumes siliceous, and the sun and the moon shine with petrified light! In this way Bridger avenged himself for the spirit of distrust so often shown for what he had related. The time presently came, however, when the public learned, not only how large a measure of truth there was in his stories, but also how ingenious a tale he could weave from very inadequate material. CHAPTER VII. RAYNOLDS' EXPEDITION. On the 13th of April, 1859, Captain W. F. Raynolds, of the Corps of Topographical Engineers, U. S. A., was ordered to explore "the region of country through which flow the principal tributaries of the Yellowstone River, and the mountains in which they, and the Gallatin and Madison Forks of the Missouri, have their source." This was the first government expedition[V] directed to the precise locality which is now embraced in the Yellowstone National Park. It is interesting to us, not for what it accomplished--for it fortunately failed to penetrate the Upper Yellowstone country--but because it gives an admirable _resumé_, in the form of a report and a map, of the geographical knowledge of that country down to the date of actual discovery. [V] Accompanying this expedition as geologist was Dr. F. V. Hayden, whose name is so intimately connected with the history of the Yellowstone Park. James Bridger was guide to the party. Captain Raynolds was in the field during the two seasons of 1859 and 1860; but it was only in the summer of 1860 that he directed his efforts toward the country in which we are particularly interested. In May of that year the expedition left its winter quarters at Deer Creek, Wyo., and marched to the junction of the Wind River and the Popo Agie where these streams unite under the name of Bighorn River. Here the party divided. One division under Captain Raynolds was to ascend the Wind River to its source and then cross to the head waters of the Yellowstone. This stream they were to follow down to the Great Bend, and then cross over to the Three Forks of the Missouri. The other party, under Lieutenant Maynadier, was to skirt the east and north flanks of the Absaroka Range and to join the first party at the Three Forks, if possible, not later than July 1st. Captain Raynolds was charged with other instructions than those mentioned in his order, which must be kept in mind in order properly to account for the final outcome of the expedition. A total eclipse of the sun was to occur on July 18th of that year, and its line of greatest occultation lay north of the British boundary. It was desired that Captain Raynolds should be present in that locality in time to observe the eclipse. This condition, rather than impassable mountains or unmelted snows, was the chief obstacle to a thorough exploration of the Upper Yellowstone. The two parties separated May 24th. Captain Raynolds, according to his programme, kept up the Wind River valley, and with much difficulty effected a crossing by way of Union Pass--which he named--to the western slope of the mountains. He then turned north seeking a passage to the head waters of the Yellowstone. When nearly opposite Two-Ocean Pass, he made a strenuous effort to force his way through, spending two days in the attempt. But it was still June and the snow lay deep on the mountains. It was a physical impossibility to get through at that point, and the risk of missing the eclipse forebade efforts elsewhere. The Captain was deeply disappointed at this result. He writes: "My fondly cherished schemes of this nature were all dissipated by the prospect before us; ... and I therefore very reluctantly decided to abandon the plan to which I had so steadily clung." It seems not a little singular that so experienced a guide as Bridger should not have conducted the party up the valley of the Snake River and thence over the low divide between that stream and the Yellowstone Lake--a route which was perfectly practicable even as early as June. But the plan does not appear to have been entertained, and the expedition passed around the Park region to the west, arriving at the Three Forks on the 29th of June. Lieutenant Maynadier wisely made no attempt to cross the Absaroka Range, which rose continuously on his left. Had he done so, the deep snow at that season would have rendered his efforts futile. He kept close to the flank of the mountains until he reached the valley of the Yellowstone north of the Park, and then hastened to join his commanding officer at the appointed rendezvous. He reached the Three Forks on the 3d day of July. The expedition had now completely encircled the region of the Upper Yellowstone. At one point Captain Raynolds had stood where his eye could range over all that country which has since become so famous; but this was the limit of his endeavor. The Yellowstone wonderland was spared the misfortune of being discovered at so early a day--a fact quite as fortunate as any in its history. It will be interesting now to survey this region as known at the time of the Raynolds Expedition. Nothing of importance occurred to increase public knowledge of it until 1870, and Captain Raynolds'[W] Report is therefore the latest authentic utterance concerning it prior to the date of actual discovery. In this report Captain Raynolds says: "Beyond these [the mountains south-east of the Park], is the valley of the Upper Yellowstone, which is as yet a _terra incognita_. My expedition passed entirely around, but could not penetrate it.... Although it was June, the immense body of snow baffled all our exertions, and we were compelled to content ourselves with listening to marvelous tales of burning plains, immense lakes, and boiling springs, without being able to verify these wonders. I know of but two men who claim to have ever visited this part of the Yellowstone Valley--James Bridger and Robert Meldrum. The narratives of both these men are very remarkable, and Bridger, in one of his recitals, described an immense boiling spring, that is a perfect counterpart of the geysers of Iceland. As he is uneducated, and had probably never heard of the existence of such natural wonders elsewhere, I have little doubt that he spoke of that which he had actually seen.... Bridger also insisted that immediately west[X] of the point at which we made our final effort to penetrate this singular valley, there is a stream of considerable size, which divides and flows down either side of the water-shed, thus discharging its waters into both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans." [W] See Bibliography. Appendix E, "Explorations of the Yellowstone," etc. [X] Actually north-east. The Captain concludes this particular part of his report as follows: "I can not doubt, therefore, that at no very distant day, the mysteries of this region will be fully revealed; and, although small in extent, I regard the valley of the Upper Yellowstone as the most interesting unexplored district in our widely expanded country." Lieutenant Maynadier also contributes a few interesting observations upon this region. The vast importance of that extensive mass of mountains, as a reservoir of waters for the country round about, impressed him deeply. He says, somewhat ostentatiously: "As my fancy warmed with the wealth of desolation before me, I found something to admire in the calm self-denial with which this region, content with barren magnificence, gives up its water and soil to more favored countries." Of the Yellowstone River, he was told that it had its source "in a lake in the impenetrable fastnesses of the Rocky Mountains;" and that for some distance below the lake it flowed through a narrow gorge, up which "no one has ever been able to travel." [Illustration: MAP OF THE SOURCES of the YELLOWSTONE AS KNOWN BETWEEN 1860 AND 1870 FROM THE MAP _OF_ RAYNOLDS EXPEDITION OF 1860 _Opp. page 62._] But it is the map prepared by Captain Raynolds that tells a more interesting story even than his written report. It reveals at once to the eye what was known as well as what was unknown of the Upper Yellowstone. Extending in a south-easterly and north-westerly direction, is a large elliptical space, within which geographical features are represented by dotted lines, indicating that they are put in by hearsay only. In the midst of a surrounding country, which is already mapped with great accuracy, there is a region wholly unknown to the geographer. A cordon of mountains encircles it, and shows the limit of official effort to gain a correct knowledge of it. Within this enchanted inclosure lies the region approximately defined by the 44th and 45th parallels of latitude and the 110th and 111th meridians of longitude, which now constitutes the Yellowstone National Park. There one may catch glimpses, through the uncertain haze of tradition, of the geysers, hot springs, Lake, Falls, Grand Cañon, Mammoth Hot Springs, and Two-Ocean Pass. This was the net result of fifty years' desultory wandering in and about and over this "mystic" region. Raynolds' report, it must be remembered, was the first official recognition in any form of the probable existence of extensive volcanic phenomena in the region of the Upper Yellowstone. Had it been published immediately after the expedition, and had not public attention been totally engrossed with other matters of overshadowing importance, this region must have become fully known in the early Sixties. But within a month after the return of Captain Raynolds to civilization there had taken place the national election which was the signal for attempted armed disruption of the Union. A year later found every officer of the Army called to new fields of duty. Western exploration entirely ceased until 1865, and was not vigorously resumed for some years thereafter. Captain Raynolds' report did not appear until 1868, although his map was published several years earlier in order to meet a demand for it by the new settlers in western Montana, Nothing transpired in the meantime to make the general public familiar with this region, and the picture here given is therefore substantially correct down to the date of the celebrated Washburn expedition. CHAPTER VIII. GOLD IN MONTANA. Perhaps the most fascinating pages of American history are those which recount the annals of the discoveries of gold and silver. No one can appreciate the magnitude of those various movements by a simple perusal of statistics of the mineral wealth which they disclosed. He must pass through the mining belts and note how almost every rod of ground, over vast tracts of country, is filled with prospect holes that attest the miner's former presence. If the trapper carried the tools of his trade to haunts remote and inaccessible, the miner, with his pick and shovel, certainly outdid him. One can readily understand that, as soon as such a movement should be directed toward the region of the Upper Yellowstone, the wonders of that region would speedily be revealed. The presence of gold in the mountains of Montana was first noticed as far back as 1852. Later, in 1858, the Stuart brothers, James and Granville, founders of Montana, discovered gold in the Deer Lodge Valley; but they were destitute of equipments, and so constantly exposed to the hostility of the Blackfeet, that they went to Fort Bridger in the south-west corner of Wyoming, and did not return until late in 1860. It was in 1860 and 1861 that the rich mines on the Salmon and Boisé rivers were discovered. In 1862 the tide of discovery swept across the mountains into Montana. The rich mines on Pioneer Creek, the Big Prickly Pear, the Big Hole River, North Boulder Creek, and at Bannock and other points, became known. Although there were scarcely a thousand people in Montana in the winter of 1862-3, the news of the great discoveries marshaled a host of immigrants ready to enter the territory in the following spring. These were largely re-enforced by adventurers from both the northern and southern states, who, with little credit to their courage or patriotism, sought in these remote regions exemption from the tributes and levies of war. The immigrants were welcomed in the spring of 1863 by the news of the discovery of Alder Gulch, the richest of all gold placers. The work of prospecting, already being pushed with vigor, was stimulated to an extraordinary degree by this magnificent discovery. Prospecting parties scoured the country in all directions, often with loss of life through the Indians, but rarely, after the first two or three years, with any substantial success. Some of these expeditions have a particular connection with our narrative because they passed across portions of what is now the Yellowstone Park. The most important of them occurred in August and September, 1863. It was led by Walter W. DeLacy, an engineer and surveyor of some distinction in the early history of Montana. The party at one time numbered forty-two men, although this number did not continue constant throughout the expedition. Its sole object was to "prospect" the country. Evidently nothing in the line of topographical reconnaissance was thought of, for Captain DeLacy says "there was not a telescope, and hardly a watch, in the whole party." The expedition left Virginia City, August 3d; passed south into Idaho until it struck the Snake River, and then ascended that stream to the region about Jackson Lake. Near the mouth of Buffalo Fork a halt was made, a corral was built to hold the stock, and a miners' meeting held at which rules were adopted to govern the miners in the contemplated examination of the country. The party then broke up into small groups and set out in different directions so as to cover as much ground as possible. The last four days of August were spent in this search, but with failure in every direction. This discouragement led to the abandonment of the expedition. Fifteen men set out for home by the way they had come, while DeLacy and twenty-seven men resolved to reach the Madison River and the settlements by going north. A day later this party entered the territory which is now the Yellowstone Park. The route lay up the Snake River to its junction with Lewis River where the hot springs of that locality were discovered. Here another separation occurred. About half the party went back down the river to re-examine a locality where they thought they had found some fair prospects. They soon returned, however, unsuccessful. The main party under DeLacy ascended the hills to the west of the river to seek a more practicable route. They soon reached the summit of the plateau where they discovered what are now Hering and Beula lakes, and noted their divergent drainage. Thence they passed north over Pitchstone Plateau until they struck the valley of Moose Creek. They descended this stream for a few miles and came to a large lake, which they supposed to be tributary to either the Madison or the Yellowstone Rivers. To their great surprise they found, upon rounding its southern point, that it drained _south_ into the Snake. This is what is now called Shoshone Lake. From the outlet of the lake, DeLacy sent a man down stream to examine the river. This reconnaissance resulted in the discovery of Lewis Lake and the hot springs basin there. When DeLacy resumed his route, he followed along the east shore of the lake to its northern extremity, and then ascended the beautiful open valley of DeLacy Creek. He crossed the Continental Divide at the head of the valley, and camped on the evening of September 8th some miles beyond the Divide toward the Firehole River. The next morning, September 9, 1863, he came upon the considerable stream of hot water which flows down a mountain ravine into the Lower Geyser Basin close by the Great Fountain Geyser. The reader will learn with some amazement that our party thought little enough of this wonderful locality to pass directly through it without halt or perceptible delay. Before the camping hour of the afternoon had arrived, they were many miles away at the junction of the Gibbon and Firehole rivers. The other section of the party, which had gone down the Snake from its junction with Lewis River, soon returned, followed up the river to Lewis and Shoshone lakes, passed around the western end of the latter lake discovering its extensive geyser basin, and thence crossed over to the Madison. This stream they descended through the geyser basins, and followed the main party to the settlements. DeLacy might have passed into history as the real discoverer of the Yellowstone wonderland, but for the fact that he failed to appreciate the true importance of what he saw. In that, however, he was no exception to the general rule of immigrants. The search for gold with them so far overshadowed all other matters, that it would have required something more than geysers to divert them, even momentarily, from its prosecution. Although DeLacy kept a daily journal of his expedition, and noted therein the various items of interest along his route, he did not publish it until 1876, long after public interest had been strongly attracted to the geyser regions. He did, however, publish a map of the country through which he passed, and on this map he correctly noted the drainage of Shoshone Lake--something which the Folsom, Washburn, and Hayden (1871), expeditions all failed to do. He also noted the various hot springs localities through which the party passed. In a letter published in Raymond's "Mineral Resources of the States and Territories West of the Rocky Mountains," in 1869, before the date of the Washburn Expedition, he called attention to the existence of geysers at the head of Shoshone Lake and on the Madison River. DeLacy's account, as finally published, is an interesting early view of this region, and is remarkable for its general correctness. That he failed to publish his discoveries must be regarded as fortunate so far as the Park is concerned, for the time had not yet come when it was desirable that the real character of this country should be made known. From 1863 to 1869 there were many other prospecting parties in the region of the Upper Yellowstone. In 1863 one of these parties, numbering thirty or forty men, ascended the Yellowstone and the East Fork to the mouth of Soda Butte Creek, and thence crossed an intervening ridge to the next northern tributary of the East Fork. Here all their horses were stolen by Indians. There were left only one or two mules on which was packed all the baggage they could carry, the rest being concealed in a cache. The party then separated into two portions and prospected the country for several days in the vicinity of Clark's Fork. They finally returned, emptied the cache, and descended to the Yellowstone where they found fair prospects near the present north boundary of the Park. The expedition has no permanent interest for this narrative except that it left the two geographical names, "Cache Creek" and "Bear Gulch." In 1864, a party of seventy-three men under James Stuart passed from Deer Lodge, Montana, to the Yellowstone Valley, and thence around the east base of the Absaroka Range into the valley of the Stinkingwater. The object of this expedition was to punish the Indians for outrages of the previous year, and also to prospect the country for gold. At the Stinkingwater, Stuart was compelled to return home. The party then separated into groups that gradually worked their way back to the Montana settlements. One of these small parties went as far south as the Sweetwater River, then crossed to the Green and Snake Rivers, and re-crossed the Continental Divide at Two-Ocean Pass. They descended the Yellowstone, past the Lake and Grand Cañon, and beyond the present limits of the Park. Norris found remnants of their camp debris seventeen years afterward. In 1866, a party under one George Huston left Virginia City, Montana, and ascended the Madison River to the geyser basins. Thence they crossed to the Yellowstone at Mud Geyser, ascended the river to the lake, passed completely around the latter, discovering Hart Lake on their way, and then descended the Yellowstone by the Falls and Cañon, to Emigrant Gulch. Here they were interviewed by a newspaper reporter, and an account of their travels was published in the _Omaha Herald_. They had seen about all there was to be seen in the whole region. At least two parties traversed the Park country in 1867. One of these gave names to Crevice, Hell-roaring and Slough Creeks. An account of the wanderings of the other party appeared in the _Montana Post_ of that year. Many other parties and individuals passed through this region during the Montana mining craze. Their accounts appeared now and then in the local papers, and were reprinted throughout the country. By 1869, probably very few of the reading public had not heard rumors of a strange volcanic region in the Far West. In Montana, particularly, repeated confirmation of the old trappers' tales was gradually arousing a deep interest, and the time was fast approaching when explorations for the specific purpose of verifying these rumors were to begin. CHAPTER IX. DISCOVERY. The discovery of the Yellowstone Wonderland--by which is here meant its full and final disclosure to the world--was the work of three parties who visited and explored it in the years 1869, 1870, and 1871, respectively. The first of these expeditions was purely a private enterprise. It consisted of three men, and was the first party to enter this country with the express purpose of verifying or refuting the floating rumors concerning it. The second expedition was of a mixed character, having semi-official sanction, but being organized and recruited by private individuals. This was the famous "Yellowstone Expedition of 1870"--the great starting point in the post-traditional history of the Park. The third expedition was strictly official, under the military and scientific departments of the government. It was a direct result of the explorations of 1870, and was intended to satisfy the public demand for accurate and official information concerning this new region of wonders. It was the final and necessary step in order that the government might act intelligently and promptly for the preservation of what was believed to be the most interesting collection of wonders to be found in the world.[Y] [Y] For diagram of routes, see Historical Chart, p. 11. THE EXPEDITION OF 1869. The question of setting definitely at rest the constantly multiplying rumors of wonderful volcanic phenomena around the sources of the Yellowstone, began to be seriously agitated among the people of Montana as early as 1867. An expedition was planned for that year but came to nothing. A like result attended a similar effort the following year. In 1869, the proposition came near materializing, but fell through at the last moment owing to the failure to obtain a military escort. There were three members of this proposed expedition, however, who refused to be frightened off by any dangers which the situation at that time promised. They had already provided themselves with an elaborate equipment, and were determined, with escort or without it, to undertake the trip. The names of these men were David E. Folsom, C. W. Cook, and William Peterson, the last named being a native of Denmark. Armed with "repeating rifles, Colt's six-shooters, and sheath-knives," with a "double-barreled shot gun for small game;" and equipped with a "good field-glass, pocket compass and thermometer," and utensils and provisions "for a six weeks' trip," they set out from Diamond City on the Missouri River, forty miles from Helena, September 6, 1869. The route lay up the Missouri to the Three Forks; thence _via_ Bozeman and Fort Ellis to the Yellowstone River; and thence up the Yellowstone to its junction with the East Fork inside the present limits of the Park. From this point they crossed to the east bank and followed up the river, passing through the many groups of hot springs to be found east of the Grand Cañon. On September 21st, they arrived at the Falls of the Yellowstone, where they remained an entire day. Some distance above the rapids they re-crossed to the west shore and then ascended the river past Sulphur Mountain and Mud Volcano to Yellowstone Lake. They then went to the extreme west shore of the lake and spent some time examining the surpassingly beautiful springs at that point. Thence they crossed the mountains to Shoshone Lake, which they took to be the head of the Madison, and from that point struck out to the north-west over a toilsome country until they reached the Lower Geyser Basin near Nez Percé Creek. Here they saw the Fountain Geyser in action and the many other phenomena in that locality. They ascended the Firehole River to Excelsior Geyser and Prismatic Lake, and then turned down the river on their way home. They were absent on the expedition thirty-six days. It is said that these explorers were so astonished at the marvels they had seen that "they were, on their return, unwilling to risk their reputations for veracity by a full recital of them to a small company whom their friends had assembled to hear the account of their explorations." But Mr. Folsom later prepared a most entertaining narrative of his journey which was published in the _Western Monthly_, of Chicago, in July, 1871.[Z] This article deserves a high rank in the literature of the Park. It is free from exaggeration and contains some descriptions unsurpassed by any subsequent writer. The article, and personal interviews with the author and his companions, had a strong influence in leading to the important expedition next to be described. [Z] It is only through the undiminished loyalty of Mr. N. P. Langford to every thing pertaining to the welfare of the Yellowstone National Park that this article has been saved from oblivion. The office of the _Western Monthly_ was destroyed by the great Chicago fire of 1871, and all the files of the magazine were lost. Mr. Folsom had lost or given away all copies in his possession. So far as is known there is but one remaining copy of this issue and that is owned by Mr. Langford. In 1894, Mr. Langford caused the article to be reprinted in handsome pamphlet form, with an interesting preface by himself, and it will now receive the recognition which it justly deserves. THE EXPEDITION OF 1870. The Yellowstone Expedition of 1870, more commonly known as the Washburn-Doane Expedition, was the culmination of the project of discovery to which frequent reference has already been made. At this time the subject was exciting a profound interest throughout Montana, and the leading citizens of the territory were active in organizing a grand expedition. General Sheridan, who passed through Helena just prior to his departure for the scene of the Franco-German War, spent some time in arranging for a military escort to accompany the party. The project did not assume definite shape until about the middle of August, and when the time for departure arrived, Indian alarms caused a majority of the party to repent their decision to join it. Finally, their were only nine persons who were willing to brave all dangers for the success of the undertaking. These nine were: General Henry D. Washburn, Surveyor-General of Montana, chief of the expedition, and author of a series of valuable "notes" describing it.[AA] [AA] See Appendix E. Hon. Nathaniel P. Langford, who published a series of articles in _Scribner's Magazine_,[AB] which gave general publicity to the news of discovery. He became first Superintendent of the Park. [AB] See Appendix E. Hon. Cornelius Hedges, who first proposed setting apart this region as a National Park. Hon. Truman C. Everts, ex-U. S. Assessor for Montana, whose experience upon the expedition forms the most painful and thrilling chapter in the annals of the Yellowstone. Hon. Samuel T. Hauser, President of the First National Bank of Helena, and later Governor of Montana. Walter Trumbull, son of the late Senator Trumbull. He published an account of the expedition in the _Overland Monthly_ for June, 1871.[AC] [AC] See Appendix E. Other civilian members of the expedition were Benjamin Stickney, Jr., Warren C. Gillette, and Jacob Smith. The personnel of this party is sufficient evidence of the wide-spread interest which was being taken at the time in the region of the Upper Yellowstone. The party proceeded from Helena to Fort Ellis, one hundred and twenty-five miles, where they were to receive a military escort promised by General Hancock, at that time commanding the department in which Fort Ellis was located. The post order detailing this escort is dated August 21, 1870, and directs Lieutenant Gustavus C. Doane, Second Cavalry, with one sergeant and four privates, "to escort the Surveyor-General of Montana to the falls and lakes of the Yellowstone and return." There is a significant absence in this order of any reference to geysers or hot springs; and the discreet post commander evidently did not intend to commit himself to a recognition of their existence on the strength of such knowledge as was then available. His incredulity was indeed largely shared by the members of the party themselves. Mr. Hedges subsequently said: "I think a more confirmed set of skeptics never went out into the wilderness than those who composed our party, and never was a party more completely surprised and captivated with the wonders of nature." Lieutenant Doane, than whom no member of the expedition holds a more honorable place in its history, has left on record a similar confession. The party as finally organized, including two packers and two colored cooks, numbered nineteen individuals. Thirty-five horses and mules, thoroughly equipped for a month's absence, completed the "outfit," and made altogether quite an imposing cavalcade. August 22, 1870, the expedition left Fort Ellis, crossed to the Yellowstone, and ascended that stream through the First and Second Cañons, past the "Devil's Slide" and Cinnabar Mountain, to the present north boundary line of the Park at the mouth of the Gardiner River. At this point they were within five miles of the celebrated Mammoth Hot Springs which are now the first attraction to meet the tourist's eye on entering the Park. But the party kept close to the Yellowstone, instead of taking the modern route up the Gardiner, and missed this wonder altogether. It was August 26th when the expedition entered the present territory of the Park. Lieutenant Doane and Mr. Everts, with one soldier and two hunters picked up on the way, rode in advance along the brink of the Third Cañon and across the high plateau between the Gardiner and Tower Creek, camping at nightfall upon the latter stream. In the broad open valley near the junction of the Yellowstone and East Fork, a small tepid sulphur spring gave them the first evidence of their approach to the regions of volcanic activity. Next day, the remainder of the party arrived. Two days were spent in examining the beautiful Tower Falls, and--to our tyros in geyser exploration--the wonderful hot spring formations to be seen at that point. Here they also had for the first time glimpses of the Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone. The party left Tower Creek on the 29th of August, and followed up the river over the east flank of Mount Washburn. As their progress lifted them rapidly above the surrounding country, a marvelously beautiful landscape unfolded itself to their view. Presently an interesting incident occurred, which shall stand here in Lieutenant Doane's own language: "Through the mountain gap formed by the cañon, and on the interior slopes some twenty [evidently a misprint] miles distant, an object now appeared which drew a simultaneous expression of wonder from every one of the party. A column of steam, rising from the dense woods to the height of several hundred feet, became distinctly visible. We had all heard fabulous stories of this region, and were somewhat skeptical of appearances. At first it was pronounced a fire in the woods, but presently some one noticed that the vapor rose in regular puffs, as if expelled with great force. Then conviction was forced upon us. It was indeed a great column of steam, puffing away on the lofty mountain side, escaping with a roaring sound audible at a long distance, even through the heavy forest. A hearty cheer rang out at this discovery, and we pressed onward with renewed enthusiasm." The party then ascended the lofty mountain to their right, now known as Mt. Washburn, and from its summit looked around upon the vast panorama which is now included in the Yellowstone National Park. Had old James Bridger been present at that moment, he would have received ample vindication for long-standing injustice at the hands of his incredulous countrymen. _There_ were the Cañon and Falls and Lake of the Yellowstone, with evidence enough of boiling springs and geysers! The enthusiasm of the party was unbounded, and Lieutenant Doane exultingly declares that they were "more than satisfied with the opening up of the campaign." The pack-train continued its course along the side of the mountain, and went into camp after a march of only twelve miles. That evening, Messrs. Washburn, Doane, and Hedges went on ahead of the main party, discovering the extensive mud springs at the southern base of the mountain, and finally reached the verge of a cliff beyond which yawned the stupendous cañon of the Yellowstone. It was the first real view from near by, but darkness prevented further examination. The next day saw the arrival of the party at the Falls of the Yellowstone, close by the mouth of Cascade Creek, which, with its Crystal Falls, received that day their present names. The remainder of this day, August 30th, and the next, were spent in exploring the cañon and measuring the heights of the falls. Messrs. Hauser and Stickney descended the sides of the cañon to the brink of the river about two miles below the falls; and Lieutenant Doane and Private McConnell accomplished the same difficult feat further down. It needs not to be said that the members of the party were profoundly impressed with the incomparable scenery of the Grand Cañon, although their descriptions of it are, perhaps, least satisfactory of any they have left us. From the Cañon the party ascended the now placid river amid ever-changing wonders. They passed Sulphur Mountain and the uncanny region around the Mud Volcano and Mud Geyser, then crossed to the east shore of the river, and finally went into camp, September 3d, on the shore of the Yellowstone Lake. Here our explorers were again in ecstacies, and not without cause; for, seen under favoring conditions, this "watery solitude" is one of the most beautiful objects in nature. After a day spent in this camp, the expedition continued by slow stages up the east shore of the lake. Messrs. Doane and Langford scaled the lofty Absaroka Range just east of the lake, being the first white men known to have accomplished this feat, and their names now designate two of its noblest summits. September 7th, the party forded the Upper Yellowstone and traversed the almost impassable labyrinths of fallen timber between the several projecting arms. on the south of the lake. It was on this portion of the route, September 9th, that Mr. Everts became separated from his party, lost his horse with all his accoutrements, and commenced those "thirty-seven days of peril," which so nearly cost him his life. This unfortunate affair cast a deep gloom over the little party and seriously interfered with the progress of the expedition. A week was spent in searching for the lost companion, without other result than the discovery of the hot springs basins at Hart Lake and on the west shore of the Yellowstone Lake. At length it was concluded that Mr. Everts had either been killed or had wandered back home; and it was resolved to wait no longer. The party were surfeited with sight-seeing, and believed that they had now covered the whole ground. They therefore determined to strike across the mountains to the Madison and follow that stream to the settlements. They set out on the morning of September 17th, over rugged hills and through fallen timber, crossing the Continental Divide twice, and camping that night in an open glade on a small branch of the Firehole. While passing the second time over the Divide, they caught a glimpse of Shoshone Lake and erroneously thought it to be the head of the Firehole River. At 9 A. M., September 18th, the march was resumed. The party soon reached the Firehole just above Kepler Cascade and thence followed down the course of the stream. Tourists who have visited the Park since 1891, when the new road from the Upper Basin to the Lake was opened, will remember that immediately after leaving "Old Faithful" they plunge into an unbroken pine forest and see no other evidences of geyser action until they reach the Lake. The situation of our homeward-bound explorers can thus be easily understood. They were traveling toward the geysers. The dense forest concealed every thing beyond the radius of a few hundred feet. In unsuspecting mood, bent only on getting home to tell their wonderful story, and perhaps to find their missing companion, they moved down the river, crossing it considerably below the site of the present bridge above the Upper Basin, and suddenly emerged from the timber into an open treeless valley. It was nearly noon of a clear, cool September day. Directly in front of them, scarcely two hundred yards away, a vertical column of water and steam was shooting upward a hundred and fifty feet into the air. The bright sunlight turned the clear water into a mass of glittering crystals, and a gentle breeze wafted the vast white curtain of steam far to the right across the valley. Thus it was that "Old Faithful," as if forewarned of the approach of her distinguished visitors, gave them her most graceful salutation; and thus she bowed out the era of tradition and fable, and ushered the civilized world into the untrodden empire of the Fire King. Little wonder that our astonished explorers "spurred their jaded horses," and "gathered around the wonderful phenomenon." The party spent only the remainder of the day and the following morning in the Upper Basin; but in that time saw seven of the principal geysers in action, and gave them their present names.[AD] They then passed down the river through the Middle and Lower Basins, but stopped to examine only such curiosities as were close by the river. Their rations were nearly gone, their lost companion was not found, and the desire to tell what they had already seen was greater than the desire to see more. They therefore made haste for home, and on the evening of September 19th encamped where the Firehole and Gibbon Rivers unite to form the Madison. From this point the party journeyed steadily homeward, conversing on the expedition of the past month, and planning how their great discovery might best be brought to the attention of the world. [AD] See list of geysers, Appendix A. The news of this expedition created intense and wide-spread interest throughout the country. Messrs. Washburn, Hedges, Trumbull, and others, prepared numerous descriptive articles for the local Montana papers, many of them among the best that have ever been written upon the Park, and these were reproduced in every important paper in the land. The _Helena Herald_, of October 27, 1870, only a month after the return of the party, refers to the extraordinary interest aroused by these articles, so unlike the sixty years' indifference which had marked the history of this region. These preliminary and hasty reports were followed by more studied efforts. Lieutenant Doane's masterly report was completed December 15, 1870. Besides its intrinsic merit, it has the distinction of being the first official report upon the Upper Yellowstone country. It passed through the customary military channels and was finally sent to Congress, February 24, 1871. Prof. S. F. Baird, of the Smithsonian Institution, also presented the information gathered by Lieutenant Doane to the Philosophical Society of Washington during the winter. Messrs. Langford and Trumbull prepared entertaining magazine articles, which, however, could not be gotten to press until the following May and June. But Mr. Langford in the meantime did effective work from the lecture stand. In Helena, Minneapolis, New York and Washington, he told the story of what he had seen. In Washington, the Hon. James G. Blaine, Speaker of the House, presided at the lecture, and in the audience was Dr. F. V. Hayden, who was destined to play a prominent part in the history of the Yellowstone Park. From whatever point of view considered, this expedition is one of the most remarkable in our annals. From Helena to the farthest point reached by the party, the route passed over was nearly three hundred miles long. The region of the Upper Yellowstone is perhaps the most difficult of access in the entire country. Even to-day, it is an almost certain place in which to get lost, if one is not thoroughly familiar with wilderness travel and happens to stray away from the beaten path. In 1870, moreover, the danger from hostile Indians was a constant and formidable menace, and the party was more than once reminded of it during the progress of the expedition. But in spite of all these difficulties, the success of the enterprise was so complete, its incidents were so full of romance, and its results were so far-reaching and important, that it well deserves the wide attention it has received. THE JOINT GOVERNMENT EXPEDITION OF 1871. The direct result of the expedition of 1870 was to cause the U. S. Geological Survey to change its programme for the season of 1871, so as to give attention to the new wonderland; and also to cause the military authorities to send a well-appointed engineer party to the same locality. These two expeditions, one under Dr. Hayden and the other under Captains Barlow and Heap, of the Engineer Corps of the Army, moved for the most part together, camping near each other, and accompanied by the same military escort. Particular attention will here be given only to such features of these expeditions as pertain to new discoveries. At the very outset of their journey, they branched off from the Washburn route at the mouth of the Gardiner River, and by ascending this stream, discovered the wonderful formations now known as the Mammoth Hot Springs. From this point, the parties traveled eastward to Tower Creek; thence over Mt. Washburn, and past the Cañon and Falls, to Sulphur Mountain, Mud Geyser, and the Lake; thence by a new route across the mountains to the Lower Geyser Basin; thence to the Upper Basin; thence east, across the mountains again, past Shoshone Lake to Yellowstone Lake; thence around the head of this body of water to its outlet; thence across the country, by separate routes, to the mouth of Soda Butte Creek; and thence down the East Fork to Baronett's Bridge (which had been built only a few months before), and out of the Park by way of Mammoth Hot Springs. The original work done by these parties, besides the discovery of the springs on the Gardiner, was the opening of a route between the Yellowstone River and the Lower Geyser Basin; the exploration of the Lower Basin; the mapping of the shore line of Yellowstone Lake, by Dr. Hayden; the mapping of the head waters of the Snake River, by Captain Barlow; and some hasty explorations in the valley of the East Fork of the Yellowstone, now called Lamar River. The chief value of these explorations, however, was not in the line of original discovery, but in the large collection of accurate data concerning the entire region. The photographs were of immense value. Description might exaggerate, but the camera told the truth; and in this case the truth was more remarkable than exaggeration. Unfortunately for Captain Barlow's collection, the great Chicago fire almost entirely destroyed it. The same cause delayed the appearance of his report until six weeks after the Park Bill was passed. An interesting and complete summary, however, appeared as a supplement in the _Chicago Journal_ for January 13, 1872. The report and collection of photographs and specimens by Dr. Hayden were therefore the principal results of this season's work, and they played a decisive part in the events of the winter of 1871-2. With the close of the expeditions of 1871, the discovery of the Yellowstone wonderland was made complete. It remained to see what Congress would do with so unique and valuable a possession. CHAPTER X. THE NATIONAL PARK IDEA--ITS ORIGIN AND REALIZATION. The first steamboat to ascend the Missouri River as far as to the mouth of the Yellowstone arrived at that point on the 26th of June, 1832. By a happy coincidence it bore the name _Yellowstone_. We are indebted for the conception of the National Park idea to a passenger upon this boat who was destined to become one of the most interesting characters America has produced. Every one bears in memory those pictures of Indian life which thrilled their youthful imagination with visions of camping-grounds, council fires, exciting buffalo hunts, and the wild and picturesque costumes of the red men. Very few, however, realize how largely all that is best in these pictures has flowed from a single source. The name of George Catlin is by no means familiar except to the specialist. His work reaches the public eye through so many different channels, and so often without any acknowledgment of its origin, that the origin itself is very generally lost to view. To no other individual does the Indian race owe so much for the perpetuity in history and art of its life and customs. From an early age he displayed an enthusiasm for every thing pertaining to the aboriginal races which can be adequately described only by the word worship. He abandoned the profession for which he had been educated, and enlisted his whole energy in the service of brush and pencil, apparently for the single purpose of indulging this passion of his life. He once wrote: "Unaided and unadvised, I resolved to use my art and so much of the labors of my future life as might be required in rescuing from oblivion the looks and customs of the vanishing races of native man in America, to which I plainly saw they were hastening before the approach and certain progress of civilization."[AE] [AE] Manners, Customs, etc., of the North American Indians. See Appendix E. This high purpose Catlin followed throughout the remainder of his life with unwavering fidelity. He visited almost every Indian tribe in North America, gathering sketches and making descriptive notes. He also visited South America, and afterward spent many years in Europe exhibiting his work. The result of his labors was a gallery of more than six hundred pictures, now happily forever safe under the protection of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, wherein he delineated the portraits of famous chiefs and the scenes and customs of Indian life. This work he supplemented with the scarcely less valuable work of his pen, leaving behind him probably the best popular description of the native races that has ever been written. His work is a perennial fountain to which students of Indian themes will ever resort. Valuable as it was considered in his lifetime, each passing year makes it more valuable still. Catlin's enthusiasm for every thing pertaining to Indian life, and the grief with which he beheld the certain fading away of it all before the rapid progress of civilization, suggested to him the idea which was to find partial fulfillment at the time to which our narrative has now been carried. In order to preserve, at least on a small scale, the native fauna of America, and a remnant of the Indian races, he proposed that the government should set apart, in some suitable locality of the West, a large tract of land, to be preserved forever as a "_Nation's Park_, containing man and beast, in all the wildness and freshness of their nature's beauty." With his natural enthusiasm and vigor, he unfolded his idea, concluding: "I would ask no other monument to my memory, nor any other enrollment of my name among the famous dead, than the reputation of having been the founder of such an institution." In the report of the late Prof. Joseph Henry to the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1871, it is stated that Catlin made a proposition to the government in 1832 "to reserve the country around these [the Yellowstone] geysers as a public park." While it is more than probable, considering the date, and the wide acquaintance of Mr. Catlin with the traders and Indians of the West, that he had heard of the geyser regions, still there is not sufficient evidence attainable to justify our acceptance of the above statement. But in every thing else except the particular locality, and the plan of providing a reservation for the Indians, Catlin's idea was the same as that finally adopted by Congress. Although the project of creating a vast National Park in the West originated with George Catlin, it is certain that Congress could never have been brought to act favorably upon it, except under the influence of some extraordinary motive. That motive was supplied when the innumerable unique and marvelous wonders of the Yellowstone were made known. Their preservation at once became a matter of high public duty, which could be accomplished only by reserving from settlement the region around them. Since the Park was created and has to such a marked degree received the approval of the people, numerous claimants have arisen for the honor of having first suggested the idea. In truth, no special credit for originality should attach to the matter. It was a natural, an unavoidable proposition. To those who first saw these wonders, and were not so absorbed with gold-seeking as to be incapable of appreciating their importance, it was clear that, within a few years, they must become objects of universal interest. It was equally clear that the land around them would soon be taken up by private parties, and that the beautiful formations would be carried off for mercenary purposes; in short, that the history of Niagara and of the Yosemite would repeat itself in the Yellowstone. To avoid such a calamity only one course was open, and that was for the government to retain control of the entire region. That the necessity of such a course should have been set forth independently by several different parties, as we find it to have been, is therefore not in the least surprising. But in as much as the development of the project must have started from some one source, it is of interest historically to determine what this source was. We find it to have been the Washburn Expedition of 1870.[AF] The subject was discussed by the party at the first camp after leaving the geyser regions near the junction of the Firehole and Gibbon Rivers. The date was September 19, 1870. The members of the party were sitting around the camp-fire after supper, conversing about what they had seen, and picturing to themselves the important pleasure resort which so wonderful a region must soon become. The natural impulse to turn the fruits of discovery to the personal profit of the discoverer made its appearance, and it was suggested that it would be a "profitable speculation" to take up land around the various objects of interest. The conversation had not proceeded far on these lines when one of the party, Cornelius Hedges, interposed and said that private ownership of that region, or any part of it, ought never to be countenanced; but that it ought to be set apart by the government and forever held to the unrestricted use of the people. This higher view of the subject found immediate acceptance with the other members of the party. It was agreed that the project should be at once set afoot and pushed vigorously to a finish. [AF] Mr. Folsom deserves mention in this connection. In the manuscript of his article in the _Western Monthly_ was a reference to the Park idea; but the publishers cut out a large part of his paper, giving only the descriptions of the natural wonders, and this reference was cut out with the rest. Mr. Folsom also suggested the idea to General Washburn, of which fact Mr. N. P. Langford is still a living witness. From Mr. Folsom's suggestion, however, as from Mr. Catlin's, no direct result can be traced. As soon as the party reached Helena, a series of articles appeared in the daily papers of that city describing the late expedition, and in one of these, written by Mr. Hedges and published in the _Helena Herald_ November 9, 1870, occurs what is believed to be the first public reference to the Park project. The next mention of the subject was in Mr. Langford's lecture, delivered, as already related, in Washington, January 19, 1871; in New York, January 21, 1871; and at a later date in Minneapolis. At each of these places he closed his lecture with a reference to the importance of setting apart this region as a National Park. The _New York Tribune_ of January 23, 1871, thus quotes Mr. Langford: "This is probably the most remarkable region of natural attractions in the world; and, while we already have our Niagara and Yosemite, this new field of wonders should be at once withdrawn from occupancy, and set apart as a public National Park for the enjoyment of the American people for all time." Such is the origin of the idea which has found realization in our present Yellowstone Park. The history of the Act of Dedication, by which the Park was created, may be briefly told. The general plan for a vigorous prosecution of the project was arranged in Helena, Montana, mainly by Nathaniel P. Langford, Cornelius Hedges, and William H. Clagett, who had just been elected delegate to Congress from Montana, and who had already himself independently urged the importance of converting this region into a public park. Mr. Langford went to Washington when Congress convened, and he and Mr. Clagett drew the Park Bill, except as to description of boundaries, which was furnished by Dr. Hayden. The bill was introduced in the House by Mr. Clagett, December 18, 1871. Senator Pomeroy, of Kansas, had expressed a desire to perform a like service in the Senate, and accordingly Mr. Clagett, as soon as he had presented the measure to the House, took a copy to the Senate chamber and gave it to Senator Pomeroy, who immediately introduced it. In each House it was referred to the Committee on Public Lands. In the Senate no formal report was prepared. In the House the Hon. Mark H. Dunnell, of Minnesota, chairman of the sub-committee having the bill in charge, addressed a letter under date of January 27, 1872, to the Secretary of the Interior, asking his opinion upon the proposed measure. The Secretary replied, under date of January 29th, fully indorsing the project, and submitting a brief report by Dr. Hayden, which forcibly presented all the main features of the case. The bill, being thus before Congress, was put through mainly by the efforts of three men, Dr. F. V. Hayden, N. P. Langford, and Delegate William H. Clagett. Dr. Hayden occupied a commanding position in this work, as representative of the government in the explorations of 1871. He was thoroughly familiar with the subject, and was equipped with an exhaustive collection of photographs and specimens gathered the previous summer. These were placed on exhibition, and were probably seen by all members of Congress. They did a work which no other agency could do, and doubtless convinced every one who saw them that the region where such wonders existed should be carefully preserved to the people forever. Dr. Hayden gave to the cause the energy of a genuine enthusiasm, and his work that winter will always hold a prominent place in the history of the Park. Mr. Langford, as already stated, had publicly advocated the measure in the previous winter. He had rendered service of the utmost importance, through his publications in _Scribner's Magazine_ in the preceding May and June. Four hundred copies of these magazines were brought and placed upon the desks of members of Congress on the days when the measure was to be brought to vote. During the entire winter, Mr. Langford devoted much of his time to the promotion of this work. The Hon. William H. Clagett, as delegate from the Territory most directly interested in the passage of the bill, took an active personal part in its advocacy from beginning to end. Through the efforts of these three gentlemen, and others less conspicuously identified with the work, this measure received perhaps the most thorough canvass of any bill that has ever passed Congress. All the members were personally visited and, with few exceptions, won to the cause. The result was a practical unanimity of opinion when the measure came to a vote. This first took place in the Senate, the bill being passed by that body January 30th. It was warmly supported upon its passage by several members and opposed by one, Senator Cole, of California; a fact the more remarkable because that Senator had in his own state--in the preemption by private parties of the Yosemite wonderland--the most convincing example possible of the wisdom of such a measure as that proposed. The Senate bill came up from the Speaker's table in the House of Representatives, February 27th. Mr. Dunnell stated that the Committee on Public Lands had instructed him to ask the House to pass the Senate bill. Hon. H. L. Dawes, of Massachusetts, warmly advocated the measure, which was then passed by a decisive vote.[AG] The bill received the President's signature March 1, 1872. [AG] No yea and nay vote was taken in the Senate. The vote in the House was--yeas, 115; nays, 65; not voting, 60. This subject has been treated somewhat in detail because there has long been a false impression among the people as to who it was that first put forward this important project. To no individual is the public more indebted for the creation of the Park than to Dr. F. V. Hayden, who was long prominently connected with the geological surveys of the government. But he did not, as is generally supposed, originate the idea. His statement in his report for 1878, Vol. II, p. xvii, that, "so far as is now known, the idea of setting apart a large tract about the sources of the Yellowstone River, as a National Park, originated with the writer," is entirely erroneous; and there is the less excuse for the error in that Dr. Hayden had himself heard the measure advocated by Mr. Langford in his Washington lecture. In fact, he is known to have said in later years, only a short time before his death, while residing in Philadelphia, that when the project was first talked of among the members of his party, in the summer of 1871, he personally disapproved it because he doubted the practicability of adequately guarding so vast a region; but that, upon further reflection, he became converted to the measure and was thereafter its most ardent advocate. But it is not so much actual facts, as what men believe these facts to be, that controls human action; and it is unquestionably true that the above quotation correctly expresses the views of the great majority of members of Congress when the Park measure was before that body. It is not too much to say that Dr. Hayden's influence, as the official representative of the government, was a controlling factor in the passage of that measure. Perhaps no act of our national Congress has received such general approbation at home or such profuse commendation from foreigners as that creating the Yellowstone National Park. The lapse of twenty years has only served to confirm and extend its importance; and to give additional force to the sentiment so well expressed by the Earl of Dunraven when he visited the Park in 1874: "All honor then to the United States for having bequeathed as a free gift to man the beauties and curiosities of 'Wonderland.' It was an act worthy of a great nation, and she will have her reward in the praise of the present army of tourists, no less than in the thanks of the generations of them yet to come."[AH] [AH] Page xi, "The Great Divide." See Appendix E. It was a notable act, not only on account of the transcendent importance of the territory it was designed to protect, but because it was a marked innovation in the traditional policy of governments. From time immemorial privileged classes have been protected by law in the withdrawal, for their exclusive enjoyment, of immense tracts for forests, parks and game preserves. But never before was a region of such vast extent as the Yellowstone Park set apart for the use of all the people without distinction of rank or wealth. The example thus set by the United States has been widely followed. We have now the Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks, and numerous parks upon the sites of great battle-fields. The State of New York has a Niagara Park and contemplates setting apart a portion of the Adirondack region. Minnesota has the Itasca State Park, including the sources of the Mississippi. Canada also has a public park at Niagara, and a large reservation in the midst of the finest scenery of the Rocky Mountains. New Zealand has set a part for public use the region of her hot springs and geysers. Finally the question is being mooted of reserving a vast tract of Africa wherein the large game of that continent may be kept from annihilation. CHAPTER XI. WHY SO LONG UNKNOWN? There is no more singular fact connected with the history of the Upper Yellowstone country than its long immunity from the presence of white men. From the date when Lewis and Clark first stood at the Three Forks of the Missouri, less than one hundred miles distant from this notable region, sixty-five years elapsed before it was fully known. In the meantime all the surrounding country had been thoroughly explored. Cities, villages, farms and highways had been established throughout the west. A railroad had been built across the continent. But around the head waters of the Yellowstone, the most attractive region of all, it was still _terra incognita_. A fact so remarkable requires adequate explanation. The most difficult feature of the question is the fact that no knowledge of this region appears ever to have been derived from the Indians. Lewis and Clark were told of the Great Falls of the Missouri, and of other notable geographical features, long before they saw them. But of the far more wonderful falls of the Yellowstone, of the great lake in the mountains, or of the marvelous volcanic phenomena in the same neighborhood, they received no hint. There is not a single instance on record, so far as we can discover, except in the meager facts noted in an earlier chapter, where rumors of this strange country appear to have fallen from the lips of Indians. And yet it was not a region unknown to them, for they had certainly passed back and forth across it for a long period in the past. Their deep silence concerning it is therefore no less remarkable than mysterious. But how was it that the long period of the fur trade should have passed without disclosing this country? To this question a more satisfactory answer may be returned. The Upper Yellowstone country was indeed, as we have seen, frequently visited in these early years. But it was never favorite territory. Old trappers say that, although it abounded in beaver, they were not so plentiful as in lower altitudes, while on the streams impregnated with mineral matter, the furs were not so good. The seasons also were unpropitious. The winter snows were so deep--they came so early and remained so late--that little could be done there except from the middle of June to the middle of September. But furs taken during the summer months are of inferior quality, and there was consequently no inducement to trap. Moreover it was generally at this time that the gatherings at posts and rendezvous took place, and after these were over but little time remained. Causes like these prevented extensive operations in this region, and doubtless only a comparatively small number of trappers ever saw it. Then, the interest of the trader was against the dissemination of any knowledge which might induce immigration and hasten the certain ruin of his occupation. The stress of competition also caused him to remain silent concerning the places he had seen, lest a rival should profit thereby. He took no pains to reveal the country, and the trappers were too illiterate to do so had they wished. With the one notable exception which has been mentioned in a previous chapter, no important press notice of these regions appeared during the entire sixty-five years. The fur business itself quickly ran its course, and with it disappeared all probability of an early discovery of the geyser regions from this cause. The war with Mexico followed, with the vast cession of territory which it secured. Then came the highly important discovery of gold in California. Already the Mormon emigration had taken place. These great events completely changed the character and purpose of western exploration. The whole west was forgotten excepting only California and the Salt Lake Valley, and the routes leading to them. None of these led close to the geyser regions. On the north were the British fur trader's route, and the Missouri River route, both of which led directly west to the Columbia. To the south was the great thoroughfare along the Platte River and though South Pass, leading to Utah, California and Oregon. Still further south were the long known routes near the border of Old Mexico. It was hopelessly improbable that gold seekers bound to the Pacific Coast along any of these routes would stray into the mountain fastnesses about the sources of the Yellowstone. Finally the whole energy of the government in the field of exploration was directed away from this region. In the period from 1804-6, the date of Lewis and Clark's expedition, to 1870, the date of the real discovery of the Park, there were no fewer than one hundred and ten explorations in the country west of the Mississippi, nearly all of which had government authority, and were conducted on a scientific basis. Of these, eighty-four were in the territory lately acquired from Mexico, and mostly in the far south and west. Nineteen were east of the Bighorn Mountains, five north of the Yellowstone, and only two in the region about the Upper Yellowstone. Of these two expeditions one was that of Lewis and Clark, and was in no wise intended to explore the Upper Yellowstone further than might be necessary to find a good route to the Pacific. This leaves but a single expedition of the whole number, that of Captain Raynolds, which was directed to this specific territory. How the purpose of this expedition was defeated by the heavy snow in the mountains and by the solar eclipse of 1860, has been elsewhere related. And so it came about that it was the gold-seeker who finally revealed the well-kept secret of the Yellowstone. Itself destitute of mineral wealth, this region could not escape the ubiquitous prospector. It was not, indeed, by him that it was publicly proclaimed to the world. He cared little for any country that was destitute of "color" or "pay." But the hints he dropped put others on the track and opened the door to real discovery. This fact of long delay in the discovery of the Upper Yellowstone is the most important in its history. Had it been known at an earlier date, its fate would have been deplorably different. The period of the fur traders was too early for the interest of the people to demand, or the power of the government to enforce, its protection. If Captain Raynolds had discovered it, all its most valuable tracts would have been preempted long before the government would have been able to give it attention. Fortunately, the discovery was delayed until there was a considerable population in the country near by, and the government was prepared actively to consider the matter. Before settlers could establish a permanent foothold, the Park was created, and all the vexatious obstacles, which might otherwise have defeated the project, were avoided. CHAPTER XII. LATER EXPLORATIONS. As soon as the remarkable character of the country about the sources of the Yellowstone became generally known, there was a rush of explorers to its borders. Every expedition that could possibly extend the field of its labors in that direction did so, and there was scarcely a summer during the next twenty years that the Park was not the scene of some official exploration or visit. By far the most important of these were the various expeditions under the United States Geological Survey. Dr. Hayden was again in the country with two parties in 1872, and very widely extended the range of observations of the previous year. In 1878, survey parties again entered the Park and resumed work there on a much more minute and extensive scale. The result of that year's explorations appeared in 1883 in the form of an elaborate report by Dr. Hayden and his co-workers, which entered with much detail into the more important subjects of scientific interest. It was embellished with a great number of engravings and colored plates, and with an exhaustive series of topographical and geological maps. The work was again taken up in 1883, and was continued for several years. All questions of scientific importance were investigated more thoroughly than ever before, and many valuable official reports and monographs, together with a superb map, have been the result. In 1872, General John Gibbon, U. S. A., with a considerable party, made a tour of the Park, passing by the usual route from Mammoth Hot Springs _via_ Mt. Washburn, the Grand Cañon, and the Lake, to the Firehole Geyser Basins. On his way home he attempted to ascend the north Fork of the Madison, following an old trail; but he abandoned the attempt after going a few miles. His name, which was given to the river, has also attached to many other features along that valley. In 1873, Captain William A. Jones, of the Corps of Engineers, passed through the Park as part of a more extended reconnaissance. He was the first to carry a party through the "impassable barrier" of the Absaroka Range. Jones Creek, just east of the northern portion of the Yellowstone Lake, shows where the party entered the Park. From the Lake the expedition passed down the east bank of the river to the valley of Junction Butte; thence west to Mammoth Hot Springs; thence back over the usual trail _via_ Tower Creek, Mt. Washburn, the Grand Cañon and Mud Geyser, to the Lower Geyser Basin; thence _via_ the Upper Basin to the west shore of the Yellowstone Lake; thence to the Upper Yellowstone River; thence through Two-Ocean Pass and Two-Gwo-Tee Pass to the valley of Wind River. The chief results of this expedition, in the line of original discovery, were the passage of the Absaroka Range, the verification of the traditional "Two-Ocean Water," between Atlantic and Pacific Creeks, in Two-Ocean Pass, and the discovery of the extremely easy pass (Two-Gwo-Tee[AI]) over the Continental Divide, between the Snake and Wind Rivers. Prof. Theodore B. Comstock accompanied the expedition as geologist. A valuable report of the reconnaissance appeared in 1875.[AJ] [AI] So named by Captain Jones for one of his Indian guides. [AJ] See Appendix E. In 1875, Captain William Ludlow, of the Corps of Engineers, made a reconnaissance from Carroll, Montana, on the Missouri River, to the Yellowstone Park and return. In the Park he followed the previously traveled routes and developed little in the line of original discovery. He succeeded, however, in obtaining a very accurate measurement of the height of the Yellowstone Falls, and his report[AK] forms one of the ablest brief descriptions of the Park extant. Among his civil assistants was George Bird Grinnell, now widely known as the editor of _Forest and Stream_, and as one of the most steadfast and watchful guardians the Park has ever had. [AK] See Appendix E. During the same season a distinguished party, consisting of the Secretary of War, Gen. W. W. Belknap, and several prominent officers and civilians, with Lieutenant G. C. Doane, of National Park fame, as guide, made a complete tour of the Park. An exceedingly interesting narrative[AL] of the trip was written by Gen. W. E. Strong, who was a member of the party. [AL] See Appendix E. In 1877, Gen. W. T. Sherman and staff made a tour of the Park. His letters on the subject to the Secretary of War, and the official report prepared by Gen. O. M. Poe of his staff, form a valuable contribution to the literature of the Park.[AM] [AM] See Appendix E. In the same year Gen. O. O. Howard crossed the reservation in pursuit of the Nez Percés Indians. In 1880, the Hon. Carl Schurz, Secretary of the Interior, accompanied by Gen. Crook with a large number of officers and soldiers, and an immense pack train, entered the Park from the valley of Henry Fork and made an extended tour. In 1881, Captain W. S. Stanton, of the Corps of Engineers, made a reconnaissance through the Park, entering by the way of Soda Butte Creek, and passing out by the Madison Valley. The most important result of his work in the Park was a more accurate table of distances over some of the routes than had previously been in use. In July and August of this year, the Hon. John W. Hoyt, Governor of Wyoming, with a military escort under command of Major Julius W. Mason, U. S. A., made an extended reconnaissance to discover a practicable wagon route to the Yellowstone Park from the south-east. He entered the Park by way of the Upper Yellowstone, passed through it by way of Yellowstone and Shoshone Lakes, the Firehole Geyser Basins, the Grand Cañon, the lower end of Yellowstone Lake, and left it along the route by which Captain Jones had entered in 1873. In the years 1881 and 1882, General Sheridan, with parties of considerable size, twice crossed the Park and visited its most important points. His expeditions were of great value to the Park from the forcible warning which he gave to the public concerning the demoralized condition of its civil administration. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Haynes, Photo., St. Paul._ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Presidential Party of 1883. 1. John Schuyler Crosby, Governor of Montana Territory; 2. Michael V. Sheridan, Lieutenant-Colonel and Military Secretary; 3. Philip H. Sheridan, Lieutenant-General, U. S. Army; 4. Anson Stager, Brigadier-General, U. S. Volunteers; 5. W. P. Clark, Captain Second Cavalry, U. S. Army; 6. Chester A. Arthur, President of the United States; 7. Dan. G. Rollins, Surrogate of New York; 8. James F. Gregory, Lieutenant-Colonel and Aide-de-camp; 9. Robert T. Lincoln, Secretary of War; 10. George G. Vest, United States Senator from Missouri.] The most elaborate expedition that ever passed through this region took place in August, 1883.[AN] It included among its members the President of the United States, the Secretary of War, the Lieutenant-General of the Army, a United States Senator, and several other distinguished officers and civilians. The interesting part of the journey lay between Fort Washakie, Wyo., and the Northern Pacific Railroad at Cinnabar, Mont. The party traveled entirely on horseback, accompanied by one of the most complete pack trains ever organized in this or any other country, and escorted by a full troop of cavalry. Couriers were stationed every twenty miles with fresh relays, and by this means communication was daily had with the outside world. The whole distance traveled was 350 miles, through some of the wildest, most rugged, and least settled portions of the west. No accident or drawback occurred to mar the pleasure of the expedition. The great pastime _en route_ was trout fishing, in which the President and Senator Vest were acknowledged leaders. The phenomenal "catches" of these distinguished sportsmen might pass into history as typical "fish stories," were they not vouched for by the sober record of official dispatches, and the unerring evidence of photographer Haynes' camera. The elaborate equipment of this expedition, the eminent character of its _personnel_, and the evident responsibility resting upon those who conducted it, attracted a great deal of attention at the time, and gave it a prominent place in the annals of Western Wyoming.[AO] [AN] The year 1883 seems to have been the banner year for distinguished visitors to the Park. The list of arrivals for that year includes the President of the United States and a member of his cabinet; the Chief-Justice and an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court; the General, Lieutenant-General, and a large number of other distinguished officers of the army; six United States Senators; one Territorial Governor; a prominent railroad president; the Ministers from Great Britain and Germany; the President of the Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice, England; three members of Parliament; and a considerable number of other eminent personages, both from this country and abroad. [AO] See Appendix E--"A Journey through the Y. N. P., etc." To these various expeditions must be added the extensive, though desultory, explorations of P. W. Norris during the five years that he was Superintendent of the Park. It has thus come about that the Yellowstone National Park, though remote, inaccessible, and of great extent, is about the most thoroughly explored section of the United States. Within the territory bounded by the 44th and 45th parallels of latitude, and the 110th and 111th meridians of longitude, there are nearly four hundred geographical names. The names of hot springs and geysers would probably double the number. To appreciate this fact, it must be remembered that there are no settlements in the Park, and that counties, townships, cities, and villages, which on ordinary maps form so large a proportion of the names, are here entirely absent. That region has indeed been a paradise for the explorer, the topographer, and the geologist; and its splendid opportunities have not gone unimproved. Although not strictly in the line of original exploration, the few winter journeys that have been made through the Park may nevertheless most appropriately be considered in this place, reserving for a later chapter a description of the difficult and hazardous nature of these undertakings. The first of these expeditions was in 1887, under the auspices of the _New York World_, and was led by Frederick Schwatka, the Arctic explorer. It was organized on a grand scale, "with Arctic 'sleeping bags,' the Norwegian 'ski,' the Canadian 'web' snow shoe, and toboggans to carry supplies, photographic equipment, and astronomical instruments." But the elaborate outfit proved fatal to the enterprise, which quickly resulted in a magnificent failure. The conditions were different from those in Arctic travel, and the recent fall of light snow negatived any attempt to move toboggans through it successfully. The party consumed three days in getting to Norris, a distance of twenty miles. Here Lieutenant Schwatka became ill and the expedition was abandoned. But Mr. F. J. Haynes, the well known Park photographer, who had accompanied the party, resolved to continue the tour in order to secure a collection of winter views. Three other members of the party joined him. They abandoned the toboggan and strapped the baggage on their backs. They went by way of the usual route to the Upper Geyser Basin, where they were snow-bound for five days in a fearful blizzard. Thence they went to the Grand Cañon, and from that point over Mount Washburn to Yancey's. On this part of the trip the party nearly lost their lives, wandering for three days in a blinding storm without food or shelter. The circuit covered about two hundred miles, and the temperature ranged from ten to fifty-two degrees below zero during the entire trip of twenty-nine days. In March, 1894, two very important winter expeditions were made in the Park. Mr. F. J. Haynes went through for the purpose of extending his line of winter views, and also of photographing the Park game. Accompanying him was Felix Burgess, government scout. Following this party by a few days, and joining it at the Grand Cañon, came another party with a staff correspondent of _Forest and Stream_. This gentleman, Mr. E. Hough, of Chicago, Ill., made the entire round of the Park, studying its game and other similar matters.[AP] His narrative, published in _Forest and Stream_, forms one of the most entertaining and valuable contributions yet made to the literature of the Park. These two expeditions played an important part in securing the enactment of the National Park Protective Act, in May, 1894. [AP] See Appendix E, "Yellowstone Park Game Exploration." CHAPTER XIII. AN INDIAN CAMPAIGN THROUGH THE YELLOWSTONE PARK. In a letter dated at Fort Ellis, Montana Territory, August 19, 1877, addressed to the Hon. George W. McCreary, Secretary of War, the writer, General W. T. Sherman, then on a tour of inspection of the "country north of the Union Pacific Railroad," tells of his recent visit to the Yellowstone National Park. This was about the period when our Indian wars in the Far West were at their height. Only a year had elapsed since the Custer massacre. It was the crisis of the Indian military question. There was at that time scarcely a spot in the whole Missouri and Yellowstone Valleys that was safe from Indian depredations. Naturally, therefore, General Sherman had his mind upon this subject when his small party, comparatively unprotected, were traveling through the wilds of the National Park. But he saw nothing there to excite his fears, and in the letter above referred to, says: "We saw no signs of Indians and felt at no moment more sense of danger than we do here." It will presently be seen how delusive was this fancied security, and by how narrow a margin it escaped resulting disastrously to the General's party. The tour from Fort Ellis to the Park and return had taken from August 4th to August 18th. On the latter date, the party met an ingoing company of tourists from Helena composed of the following persons: A. J. Weikert, Richard Dietrich, Frederick Pfister, Joseph Roberts, Charles Kenck, Jack Stewart, August Foller, Leslie Wilke, L. Duncan, and Benjamin Stone (colored cook). The party followed the usual route to the Grand Cañon and Falls of the Yellowstone, where they were in camp August 24th. As they were entering the territory of the Park, another party was on the point of leaving it after a tour of about two weeks. This party was composed of the following persons, most of whom were from Radersburg, Montana: George F. Cowan and wife, Frank and Ida Carpenter, brother and sister of Mrs. Cowan, Charles Mann, William Dingee, Albert Oldham, A. J. Arnold, and a Mr. Meyers. They had formed a permanent camp in the Lower Geyser Basin, where the Fountain Hotel now stands, and from that point had made daily short excursions to the various localities of interest. They all visited the geyser basins and some of the party crossed to the Lake and Cañon of the Yellowstone. They must have been seen by Sherman's party, for they were directly in his route. The party had completed their tour of the Park, August 23d, and had arranged to set out for home early on the following morning. In order to understand the unfortunate turn which the affairs of these two tourist parties were about to take, it will be necessary to explain, in briefest outline, the cause and previous incidents of one of the most remarkable Indian campaigns in our history. From the time of Lewis and Clark, the Nez Percé Indians had dwelt in what are now the States of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Their territory extended from the Salmon River on the south to the Pelouse River on the north, and from the Bitter Root Mountains westward into the present States of Idaho and Washington. In 1855, they ceded to the United States a part of their territory, and the principal chiefs located in the several portions of the remainder. In 1860, gold was discovered on the reservation and the usual gold rush followed. The danger of a conflict with the Indians became so great that a temporary arrangement, pending action by the government, was made between them and their Indian agent, opening a portion of the reservation "to the whites in common with the Indians for mining purposes." But the settlers did not stop with these concessions. In defiance of law, they built the town of Lewiston on the reservation, and gave other proofs of their project for permanent occupancy. It soon became necessary for the government to take some decisive step, and this was accomplished in 1863 by a new treaty in which the Indians relinquished three of their most important valleys, the Wallowa, the Alpowai, and the Salmon River. The treaty, however, was far from receiving the general assent of all the chiefs. A formidable faction, headed by Chiefs Joseph, Looking Glass, Big Thunder, White Bird, and others, refused to be bound by it, and were henceforth referred to in official reports as the "Non-treaty Nez Percés." For a time the authorities made no effort to enforce the new treaty, and the Indians were "tacitly permitted to roam" over their ancient hunting-grounds. This condition of affairs continued for thirteen years with various efforts in the meantime to arrive at some more satisfactory settlement. Finally, in 1876, a civil and military commission was appointed to visit the Nez Percé Indians, to examine into their grievances, and to determine what measures were necessary for a permanent settlement of the question. The report[AQ] of this Commission is interesting, both for the facts it relates in regard to the tribal life and characteristics of the Nez Percé Indians, and for the heroic treatment of the long-standing troubles which it recommends. [AQ] See Report of Secretary of the Interior, 1877, part 1, p. 607. See also Appendix E, "Nez Percé Indians," etc. These Indians were altogether a peculiar people. The early missionaries had converted them to the Christian faith, and, whether from that cause, or from natural proclivity, they were among the most religious of our Indian tribes. There is a general concensus of authorities that, despite certain grave defects of character, they were, mentally and morally, far above the average Indian. In later times, approaching the period covered by this sketch, they fell under the influence of a class of mystics called "dreamers," who taught a doctrine of land ownership which was the immediate cause of all their subsequent troubles. This doctrine was, in substance, that "the 'Creative Power,' when he made the earth, made no marks, no lines of division or separation, upon it, and that it should be allowed to remain as it is;" that it "should not be disturbed by man, and that any cultivation of the soil, or other improvements, any voluntary submission to the control of government," were incompatible with the true purpose for which it was made. At bottom it was the broad principle that no man or aggregation of men can take from other men the right to enjoy what nature has made free for all. Why the Commission should characterize this doctrine as "pernicious," unless a thing is pernicious whenever it is impracticable, is not easy to understand. From the point of view of the nomadic life of the redmen, it is hard to conceive a theory of land tenure, or the want of it, more nearly approaching a perfect ideal. Unfortunately for such a doctrine, at the point at which American history had now arrived, it was no longer possible of realization; and any attempt to put it in force could not result otherwise than in failure. So it was with Joseph and his followers. The government for a long time overlooked their infractions of the Treaty of 1863, but finally was compelled to interfere. The Commission recommended that the existing treaty be enforced, by military aid if necessary. The recommendation was approved, and to General O. O. Howard fell the task of putting the Indians on their proper reservation. For a time it seemed that they would be induced to submit without the employment of active force; but just as success was apparently assured, the Indians murdered some twenty white men, women, and children, in revenge for one of their number killed the previous year. Peaceful negotiations came at once to an end, and the military authorities assumed control of the situation. This was June 13, 1877. Between that date and July 12th, three battles were fought, in which both sides suffered severely, and the Indians displayed extraordinary fighting ability. They then left their country--as it proved, not to return--and set out across the mountains to their oft-visited "buffalo country," in the Judith Basin, far to the eastward of the Upper Missouri. But their route lay too close to the military post of Fort Missoula and to the towns in the more thickly settled portions of Montana. They bore off to the southward, through a country with whose people they were well acquainted, and with whom they had often traded in previous excursions to the buffalo country. Here they found friends and obtained the supplies they needed. In the meantime, General Gibbon, with a small force, which he had gathered from Forts Benton, Shaw, and Missoula, and from volunteers among Montana citizens, was in close pursuit. He overtook the Indians on the Big Hole River, in South-western Montana, where a desperate battle ensued, in which his own force was severely handled. The Indians then passed south into Idaho, with Howard in pursuit, swung around to the east, and re-crossed into Montana by way of Henry Lake. Near Camas Creek, they had an engagement with the pursuing troops. Howard arrived at Henry Lake at 8 A. M., August 23d, just as the Indians had left. The long marches compelled him to halt at this point for three or four days, to rest his men and replenish his supplies. This gave the Indians a considerable start, of which, however, they took only a leisurely advantage. Their route lay across the Yellowstone Park, which they entered by Targhee Pass, and on the night of August 23d they encamped on the Firehole River, in the Yellowstone National Park, a short distance from where we left the Radersburg tourists, and less than twenty miles from the camp of the Helena party. The interest of the campaign for the next week centers chiefly upon the fortunes of these unlucky excursionists. Before sunrise on the morning of August 24th, Arnold and Dingee, who had got up to prepare the camp fire, saw Indians approaching. The rest of the party were promptly aroused. The Indians at first professed to be friendly and little alarm was felt; but the party nevertheless had no appetite for breakfast, and immediately broke camp and started down the river toward home. But they were soon surrounded by the increasing number of Indians, who began to give indications that trouble was at hand. They were told that it would be unsafe to proceed down stream further, that the only course was to turn back with the Indians. This they were soon forced to do. After traveling some two miles up Nez Percé Creek, it became impossible to take the wagons further. The horses were unhitched and the ladies mounted upon them, and in this manner the march was resumed. At this point Mr. Frank Carpenter was induced to hasten to the front in search of Chief Looking Glass to see if he could not secure the party's release; but his suspicions becoming soon aroused, he refused to go further, and returned. In fact, it turned out later that Looking Glass was not in front at the time and that the pretense that he was, was a mere subterfuge to aid in scattering the party. The captives were now taken up the East Fork of the Firehole (Nez Percé Creek) to the foot of Mary Mountain, where a consultation with the chiefs was had. Mr. Cowan was spokesman for the whites, and Poker Joe, who knew English well, for the Indians. The party were here set at liberty, their horses, guns and ammunition were taken, they were given other horses instead, and, just as the Indians were about to resume their march, they were told to depart by the back trail. After proceeding some three-fourths of a mile, they were overtaken by some seventy-five young and war-painted bucks, and were compelled to countermarch. It was about this time that two of the party were given a hint by a friendly Indian and made their escape in the brush. The rest continued their way back to the point where they had been liberated and some distance beyond in the direction of Mary Lake. Just as they reached the first sharp ascent of the mountain about 2 P. M., in the midst of dense timber, the attack began. At the first fire Cowan was struck in the thigh and fell from his horse. His wife instantly rushed to his side, threw her arms around his neck, and strenuously resisted the Indians in their further attempts to kill him. But they partially pulled her away and an Indian shot Cowan again in the head. He was then left for dead. In the meantime, Carpenter had had a narrow escape. A young Indian had drawn his revolver upon him, when Carpenter, remembering his religion, quickly made a sign of the cross. He was then hid by the Indians in a clump of underbrush until the trouble was over, and was assured that the ladies should not be harmed.[AR] [AR] The Indians denied that Carpenter was saved because of making a sign of the cross although they remembered his making it. The chiefs had strictly enjoined their followers that the whites were not to be injured. When the few lawless bucks began the attack, some of the other Indians interfered. Poker Joe was sent back by the chiefs for the same purpose when they surmised what was going on. He succeeded in preventing further trouble, and Carpenter's escape was due to this cause. The other members of the party scattered promptly when the firing began. All of them escaped to the brush, but one of them was wounded in the attempt, and fell behind a log where he lay concealed until the Indians had gone. This left Carpenter and his two sisters captive. They were taken along with the Indians, each being lashed to a pony behind an Indian. The captives became separated and did not see each other until ten o'clock that night at the Indian camp near Mary Lake. The next day, August 25th, the march was resumed, and the party were taken across the Yellowstone at the ford near Mud Geyser. Here Carpenter's fate was put to a vote of the chiefs and by a majority of one he was given his life. In the afternoon, the ladies were given each a pony, and, with Carpenter, were escorted by Poker Joe back across the river. They were then taken a mile down stream and told to depart--instructions which they obeyed with no want of alacrity. Strange to say none of the party had been killed. Cowan, who had been twice shot, and stoned also by the Indians, when they saw lingering evidences of life, nevertheless survived. About five o'clock in the afternoon he recovered consciousness, and drew himself up by the bow of a tree, when lo! close behind him was another Indian with his rifle ready to fire. He tried to get away, but the Indian fired and the ball passed through his left hip. He now gave up hope as he fell again to the ground. The Indian, however, did not come up. After waiting until every one had apparently gone, Cowan crawled along till about mid-night, seeking a place of greater safety, and then waited for day. At daybreak he commenced crawling back toward the old camp, a distance of eight or ten miles. He passed the abandoned wagons on the way, where he found a dog belonging to the party. It took him four days to reach the old camp, but once there he found matches, coffee, and some other articles which helped him to keep alive. The day after his arrival, he was picked up by Howard's scouts. Arnold, who had escaped to the brush before Cowan was shot, and had wandered for four days until finally picked up by Howard's command near Henry Lake, came along with the troops on the 29th, and remained with Cowan until their arrival in Bozeman. They were taken by Howard to near Baronett's Bridge, and then sent down the river. Already Carpenter and his sisters had made their way down the river, passing close to the camp of the other party of tourists near the Falls--whom they might have saved had they chanced to see them--and were met by a party of soldiers under Lieutenant Schofield twelve miles from Mammoth Hot Springs. They were escorted to the springs, whence they went to Bottler's ranch, some distance below the Park, and a short time afterward returned to Radersburg. It was about two weeks before Mrs. Cowan learned that her husband was still alive. After all these miraculous escapes, it is interesting to know that Mr. Cowan and his wife survived to make another tour of the Park a few years later under better conditions. It will not be necessary to follow in detail the fortunes of the rest of the party. They all escaped, though with much suffering, in their wanderings through the wilderness. When the captive members of the party were being marched down the Yellowstone slope east of Mary Lake, they heard considerable firing in the timber to their right. This is thought to have been an attack upon two prospectors who were known to have been in the neighborhood at the time, and who have never since been heard of. The party of Helena tourists in camp near the Falls of the Yellowstone on the night of August 24th, were less fortunate than the Radersburg party. On the morning of the 25th, they started up the river toward the Mud Geyser. They had gone about a mile beyond Sulphur Mountain when they discovered moving bodies of men, part of whom were fording the river. Careful scrutiny showed them to be Indians, and the party rightly divined that they must be the hostile Nez Percés. They hastily retraced their steps and went into camp in the timber near the forks of Otter Creek, about a mile and a half above the Upper Falls of the Yellowstone. Here they remained undisturbed all day and the following night. On the morning of the 26th, Weikert and Wilkie set out to scout the country. They went as far as Sulphur Mountain, and finding every thing clear, started back to camp to report. When entering the timber just north of Alum Creek, they suddenly met a band of Indians who promptly opened fire on them. A flight and pursuit of considerable duration ended in the escape of both men; but not until Weikert had been wounded. This party of Indians had just attacked and dispersed the group in camp. They had stolen upon the camp as dinner was being prepared, and a volley of musketry was the first warning the tourists had of their presence. There was instant flight and most of the party managed to get away. But Kenck was soon overtaken and killed; and Stewart after being severely wounded, prevailed on the Indians to spare his life. Weikert and Wilkie, who had hastened back to camp after their own encounter, found every thing in confusion, and all the party gone. They soon fell in with several of them, and together they set out for Mammoth Hot Springs. And now began another series of wanderings through the trackless wilderness of the Park. Two of the party made their way by way of the Madison River, where they were given food by soldiers, to Virginia City and thence to Helena. The rest of the survivors after much hardship reached Mammoth Hot Springs, and soon after left the Park with the exception of Weikert, Dietrich, the colored cook, Stone, and a man named Stoner. On August 31st, Weikert and one McCartney, owner of the first hotel ever built in the Park, went to the Falls of the Yellowstone in order if possible to learn the fate of the missing members of the party. Shortly after their departure from the Springs a band of Indians prowled across the country from the Yellowstone to the Gardiner and went down the latter stream as far as Henderson's Ranch near the present town of Cinnabar. After a brief skirmish and a general pillage here, they went back to Mammoth Hot Springs. Stoner and the colored cook fled precipitately, but Dietrich, believing the Indians to be friendly scouts, remained behind and was shot dead in the door of the hotel. Stone made a lucky escape by climbing a tree, and his subsequent ludicrous recital of his experience became a standing jest among the inhabitants of the Yellowstone. Weikert and McCartney went back to the old camp on Otter Creek, where they buried Kenck's remains and gathered up whatever of value the Indians had left. On their way back, when on the head waters of Black Tail Deer Creek, they met the band of Indians who had just slain Dietrich at Mammoth Hot Springs. A lively skirmish ensued, in which Weikert lost his horse. The two men succeeded in finding refuge in some neighboring brushwood. Just as the Indians went into camp on the night of August 23d, their first day in the Park, they captured one Shively who was on his way to Montana from the Black Hills. As Shively professed to know the country, which the Nez Percés had never seen before, they impressed him into their service as guide. He was with them thirteen days and claims to have served them faithfully, as well as to have received fair treatment from them. At any rate he won their confidence by his behavior, and was watched so carelessly that he escaped one dark night just as the Indians were crossing the north-east boundary of the Park. As soon as the command at Henry Lake had become recuperated, the pursuit was vigorously resumed. Howard followed in the track of the Indians as far as to the ford of the Yellowstone; but instead of crossing at this point, he descended the river by the left bank to the site of Baronett's celebrated first bridge over the Yellowstone. From the Lower Geyser Basin to this bridge a road had to be opened for the wagons. It was a prodigious undertaking, but was performed with astonishing rapidity under the direction of Capt. W. F. Spurgin, Twenty-first Infantry. The bridge was found partially destroyed by the Indians and had to be repaired, after which the line of march was continued up the Lamar and Soda Butte Valleys, and across the divide to the valley of Clark's Fork. The authorities had been widely warned of the probable route of the Indians and were lying in wait to intercept them. Gen. Sturgis expected to do this as they emerged from the Absaroka Mountains; but unfortunately he stationed himself in the wrong pass and left the one which the Indians took unguarded. By this loss of time he fell in behind both the Indians and Howard, who was now in close pursuit. The Indians crossed the Yellowstone September 12th. Here Sturgis overtook them with a company of cavalry and a slight conflict ensued. The Indians then struck north, apparently for the British line. On September 23d they crossed the Missouri at Cow Island and resumed their march north. But they were intercepted by Gen. Miles in the Bear Paw Mountains and a severe fight followed, at the northern base of the range on Snake Creek, less than thirty miles from the boundary. The Indians were utterly defeated and Looking Glass was killed. Most of the survivors surrendered unconditionally and the rest escaped across the line. This was on October 5, 1877. Since the first outbreak, June 13th, three months and twenty-two days had elapsed. The flight and pursuit had extended over 1,500 miles. There had been no fewer than fifteen engagements. The whites had lost 6 officers and 121 soldiers and citizens killed, and 13 officers and 127 soldiers and citizens wounded. A large part of the Indian losses could never be ascertained, but their known losses were 151 killed, 88 wounded and 489 captured. This celebrated campaign is well intended to elicit the fullest sympathy for the unfortunate Nez Percés. A vast deal of sentiment has been wasted upon the cause of the red man. Opinions have ranged from the extreme views of Catlin, who could see no wrong in the Indian, to those of the rabid frontiersman whose creed was "no good Indian but a dead one." But, if there ever was a case where sympathy might well incline to the side of the Indian, it is the one under consideration. The Nez Percés had always been friendly to the whites, and it was their boast that they had never slain a white man. They were intelligent, brave, and humane. In this campaign they bought supplies which they might have confiscated; they saved property which they might have destroyed; they spared hundreds of lives which other Indians would have sacrificed. If some of the more lawless element committed various outrages, they might justly reply that the whites had fired into their tents where their women and children were sleeping. In short, their conduct in this campaign places them in all respects vastly nearer the standard of civilized people than any other of the native tribes of the continent. In estimating the causes that led to the war, history can not fail to establish that the Indians were in the right. It was a last desperate stand against the inevitable destiny which was robbing the Indian of his empire; a final protest against the intolerable encroachments of the pale face. In defense of this principle, the Nez Percés staked their all on a single throw. They lost, and were irretrievably ruined. They were transported to a distant territory, and the land of their fathers they saw no more.[AS] [AS] After the surrender, Joseph and a few of his followers were sent to Fort Leavenworth, where they remained until July, 1878, when they were taken to the Indian Territory. After languishing here for seven years, they were established on the Colville Reservation in Washington. The campaign of 1877 was the only one in which tourists of the National Park were ever subjected to serious danger from the Indians. It has left its mark indelibly upon the Park. "Nez Percé Creek" will always remind the traveler of the terrible danger in which another party of tourists was once placed upon the borders of that stream. "Howard's Trail" will not soon be effaced from the forests and mountains where Captain Spurgin, with brilliant expedition, built the first passable highway through that tangled wilderness. * * * * * In 1878, there was a slight alarm in the Park caused by an ephemeral raid of the Bannock Indians; but, beyond the loss of a few horses, no damage was done. CHAPTER XIV. ADMINISTRATIVE HISTORY OF THE PARK. The Act of Dedication of the Yellowstone National Park indicates in clear terms the purposes for which it was created. These are: (1.) The preservation of its natural curiosities, its forests, and its game. (2.) The reservation of its territory from private occupancy so that it may remain in unrestricted freedom "for the benefit and enjoyment of the people." (3.) The granting of such leases and other privileges as may be necessary for the comfort and convenience of visitors. One grave omission in the original act, and the long-continued failure of Congress to remedy it by subsequent legislation, in a large degree nullified these important purposes. Strange as it may seem, for twenty-two years, or until the spring of 1894, there was no law defining offenses in the Park or providing a penalty for their commission. Wanton vandalism, destruction of game, or burning of forests, could be visited with no heavier punishment than ejection from the Park and confiscation of "outfit." In the reports of every Superintendent, for more than a score of years, this condition of affairs was brought to the attention of Congress. Meanwhile there were experienced all the evils of a license which at times was wholly unchecked and which has never until very recently been under proper control. This long-standing misfortune was aggravated by another scarcely less serious--the failure of Congress for several years to appropriate funds for the protection and improvement of the Park. For this failure, however, no one can justly be held faultily responsible. The promoters of the Park project had based extravagant expectations upon the results to be derived from leases. They believed that the revenue from this source would amply cover the expense of opening the necessary highways and providing a proper police force. They did not make due allowance, for the fact that there was at that time no railroad within 500 miles; that the new reservation was an almost impassable wilderness, and that the construction of roads and bridges must necessarily precede any profitable tourist business. Neither do they seem to have realized that these leases could not, in the nature of things, yield a revenue commensurate with the work of opening up so wild and extensive a country. The argument of self-support was a mistaken one. It did an important work, however, for it is doubtful if Congress would have created this reservation had it not believed that no additional public burden was to be incurred thereby. The subsequent results of this erroneous impression were in every way unfortunate. It was several years (1872 to 1878) before any money was appropriated for the Park, which, in the meanwhile, was left wholly without means for its improvement and protection. The Secretary of the Interior might indeed publish rules and regulations for its government, but they could avail but little so long as there was no authority to carry them into execution. In fact, the only valuable result of the creation of the Park during these years was the exclusion of settlers from its territory. Shortly after the Park was created, the Hon. N. P. Langford was appointed its first Superintendent. The selection was in every sense an admirable one. Mr. Langford had been a member of the famous Washburn Expedition, and an earnest worker in securing the Act of Dedication. He was intimately acquainted with all phases of western life, and was an enthusiast upon the subject of his new charge. But, from the first, his hands were completely tied. No money was ever allowed him for his services, nor for any other form of expenditure in the interests of the Park. He was, therefore, powerless to accomplish effective work. His office, which he held for about five years, was a source of great annoyance to him; for he was frequently, and most unjustly, charged in the public press with the responsibility for a condition of things for which he was in no sense to blame. In 1877, there appeared, as Mr. Langford's successor, one of the most unique and picturesque, as well as one of the most important, characters in the history of the Park. This was Philetus W. Norris, of Michigan. He was appointed immediately upon the advent of President Hayes' administration, and held office very nearly five years, or almost exactly the same length of time as his predecessor. Norris filled with varying capacity the rôles of explorer, path-finder, poet, and historian in the Park. He was a man of extraordinary energy, and, if not in the fullest sense a practical man, he had at least the invaluable quality of being able to produce results. He entered upon his new field of duty with a genuine enthusiasm, and he was fortunate in receiving from Congress substantial means with which to carry out his plans. The work of Norris' administration may be conveniently considered under three heads: his discoveries, his road building, and his reports. He was pre-eminently an explorer. He not only traveled repeatedly over all the known trails, but he penetrated the unknown sections of the Park in every direction. Though not the discoverer, he first made generally known the geyser basin that bears his name. He explored and reported upon the Hoodoo region, and first called prominent attention to the noble cañon of the Middle Gardiner. But the most important feature of his explorations was the study he made of the history and antiquities of the Park. We owe more to him than to any one else for evidence of the former presence of white men in that region. His discoveries also in the matter of prehistoric races and of early Indian history possess scientific value. In the rôle of road builder, Norris was a pioneer in the Park. Before his time, wagons could get up the Gardiner to Mammoth Hot Springs, and up the Madison to the Lower Geyser Basin. He opened the way direct from Mammoth Hot Springs to the Upper Geyser Basin, from the Lower Basin to the Yellowstone River, Lake, and Falls, and from Mammoth Hot Springs to Tower Creek. He thus shortened the old pack-train route by one-third, and foreshadowed the general road system which Lieutenant Kingman later formulated into a permanent project of improvement. As a road engineer, he was not a distinguished success. His work was ill-conceived and poorly executed, but at the same time it gave access to many places wholly inaccessible before. All the difference between poor roads and none at all may justly be placed to his credit. The third and most important feature of Norris' work was his official reports and other writings. As he was always doing something, although seldom in the best way, so he was always saying something, with the same constitutional defect. Nevertheless, he has left in his five annual reports a great deal of useful information, which he supplemented by a long series of articles in the _Norris Suburban_, a paper at that time largely read throughout the West. It is not too much to say that he was a prime mover in the strong awakening of public sentiment in regard to the Park which began to show itself toward the close of his administration. Norris' work in the Yellowstone Park can not be passed over without praise. It left its mark, as its author did his name, in every quarter. But one thing must be charged to his account--an almost total failure to _protect_ the Park. He did, indeed, by his public utterances, denounce the vandalism and game destruction that were then rampant; but he did little in a practical way to prevent them--no more, in fact, than his predecessor, although he was given the means. Norris was succeeded in February, 1882, by Patrick H. Conger, of Iowa. Of this Superintendent, it need only be said that his administration was throughout characterized by a weakness and inefficiency which brought the Park to the lowest ebb of its fortunes, and drew forth the severe condemnation of visitors and public officials alike. This administration is an important one, however, for it marks the period of change in public sentiment already referred to, and the commencement of reform in the government of the reservation. As if the unfortunate condition of affairs due to the lack of suitable laws for the reservation were not enough, there arose in the early part of Superintendent Conger's administration a new and even more formidable danger, under the euphemistic title of the Yellowstone Park Improvement Company. Previous to this time, there had been no regular leases in the Park. Several informal permits for occupancy had been granted, and a small number of inferior buildings had been erected. In 1880, there were nine of these buildings, nearly all of them being plain log-cabins, with earth roofs, of the common frontier pattern. Only two, the headquarters building at Mammoth Hot Springs and Marshall's Hotel in the Lower Geyser Basin, rose in dignity above the primitive type. No one as yet thought of remaining in the Park during the winter season. But it finally dawned upon certain sagacious individuals that here was a rare opportunity to exploit the government for their private emolument under the generous guise of improving the Park, and catering to the comfort of the tourist. A company was accordingly formed, and a valuable ally secured in the person of the Assistant Secretary of the Interior, who granted a lease of 4,400 acres in tracts of about a square mile at each of the great points of interest. It was urged in defense of this sweeping grant, that it was hoped in that way to secure the protection which had yet failed to be found by any other method. It was thought that, if responsible parties could be given exclusive control of these natural curiosities, they would, at least from motives of self-interest, preserve them. But such a monopolistic privilege was clearly opposed to the spirit of the Act of Dedication. Why set apart this region for the free and unrestricted enjoyment of the people, if the Secretary of the Interior could give to private parties absolute control of all its most important localities? Was this a proper interpretation of "small parcels of ground," as specified in the act? The danger involved in this action was indeed a grave one, and it at once aroused a storm of protest throughout the country. It was about this time also that there began to appear those various railroad and segregation projects which from that time to the present have been a formidable menace to the continued existence of the Park. A more extensive consideration of this particular subject is reserved for a later chapter. It thus became apparent as early as 1882, that immediate and radical measures must be adopted if the Park was to be preserved in its original condition. General Sheridan who passed through that region in 1881, 1882, and 1883, gave forcible warning of the impending danger, and urgently appealed to the public sentiment of the country in favor of some action which should avert it. The Governor of Montana made an earnest appeal to Congress. Other influential voices united in the same cause, and already it was broadly hinted that the only salvation of the Park lay in turning it over to the military. The whole matter was brought prominently before the next Congress, and in March, 1883, a clause in the Sundry Civil Bill containing the annual appropriation for the Park, forbade the granting of leases of more than ten acres to any single party, authorized the Secretary of the Interior to call upon the Secretary of War for troops to patrol the Park, and provided for the employment of ten assistant superintendents who were to constitute a police force. Thus was the bold scheme of the Improvement Company frustrated, and the foundation laid for the present administrative system. The Secretary of the Interior, however, seems not to have wished to avail himself of military assistance, and it was several years before this provision of the law was put into operation. It was in this same year that the killing of birds and animals in the Park, and the taking of fish by any other method than by hook and line, were absolutely prohibited. Previously, hunting had been allowed so far as was necessary to supply the wants of camping parties--a concession that practically operated as an unrestricted license. The failure of Congress to enact needed legislation at length became so nearly chronic that relief was sought in another direction. Nearly all the territory of the Park, and all its great attractions, were within the limits of Wyoming. Might it not therefore be within the province of territorial legislation to furnish the necessary legal protection? The subject was agitated, and in the winter of 1884, an act was passed, designed "to protect and preserve the timber, game, fish, and natural curiosities of the Park," and for other purposes. The act was very stringent in its provisions, and clearly indicated the deep-seated nature of the disease which it has designed to cure. But it totally failed of its purpose. The attempt at territorial control of what was really a national institution was in itself a grave blunder. Then, the officials chosen to execute the law seem to have been poorly qualified for the purpose, and to have displayed lamentable want of tact and moderation. Some of their arrests were so tyrannical and inexcusable, as to create universal protest. The spectacle of the assistant superintendents--federal officials--sharing, as informers, the fines levied by a territorial court, was not designed to create respect for the new authority. At length the unpopularity of the law became so extreme, that it was repealed March 10, 1886. Although so unwise a measure could not stand, the first effect of its repeal was to advertise the fact that the Park was practically without legal protection. Matters became even worse than before. The common verdict, as gathered from official reports and other sources, is that the body of police, styled assistant superintendents, were notoriously inefficient if not positively corrupt. They were, for the most part, creatures of political favoritism, and were totally unused to the service required of them. Commissioned as guardians of the rarest natural wonders on the globe, they not infrequently made merchandise of the treasures which they were appointed to preserve. Under their surveillance, vandalism was practically unchecked, and the slaughter of game was carried on for private profit almost in sight of the superintendent's quarters. Already some of the rarer species of animals had suffered a depletion in numbers from which they have never recovered; and the prediction of Prof. Comstock, in 1874, seemed on the point of realization, that "the zoological record of to-day" was about to "pass into the domain of the paleontologist." The difficulties that beset the administration of the Park seem to have been too great for Superintendent Conger to grapple with successfully, and he resigned, July 28, 1884. It may at least be said in his favor, that, weak as his management had been, no charge of corruption or dishonesty was ever brought against him. In his place was appointed, August 4, 1884, Robert E. Carpenter, of Iowa. Mr. Carpenter's views of the requirements of his office were clear and positive; and he promptly set about to carry them into execution. In his opinion, the Park was created to be an instrument of profit to those who were shrewd enough to grasp the opportunity. Its protection and improvement were matters of secondary consideration. Instead of remaining at his post during the winter season, he went to Washington, and there, in concert with a member of the Improvement Company, very nearly succeeded in carrying a measure through Congress by which important tracts upon the Reservation were to be thrown open to private occupancy. So confident of success were these conspirators that they even located claims upon the tracts in question, and their names appeared on claim notices posted to designate the localities. Fortunately the measure failed of passage, but the scandal of Superintendent Carpenter's conduct led to his prompt removal from office. On the day of his removal, May 29, 1885, Colonel David W. Wear, of Missouri, was appointed to the vacancy. Colonel Wear appears to have been admirably fitted for the place. He at once set out to reform the administration of the Park, and his intelligent and vigorous measures gave the highest encouragement to those who had been familiar with the previous condition of affairs. But, as has often happened before, and will often happen again, he was made to suffer for the sins of his predecessors. The bad repute into which the government of the Park had fallen was not easily removed, and Congress finally declined to appropriate money for a protection which did not protect. The Secretary of the Interior was thus compelled to call upon the Secretary of War for assistance. The régime of civilian superintendents passed away, and that of the military superintendents began. The change was bitterly opposed by the Secretary of the Interior and by all who held or hoped to hold places under the old order; but the sequel quickly proved the wisdom of this action of Congress. The old order necessarily felt the evil of our patronage system of office-holding; but no single act ever went so far to eliminate this fruitful source of misfortune as the assignment of the administrative control of the Park to the officers and soldiers of the army. August 20, 1886, marks the turning point in the administrative history of the Reservation. It was upon that day that Captain Moses Harris, First U. S. Cavalry, relieved the civilian Superintendent of his duties, and soldiers supplanted the so-called assistant Superintendents as a Park police. Henceforth an entirely new order was to obtain. It was to be seen how much could be accomplished, even in the absence of laws, toward a vigorous and healthful administration. Trespassers upon the Reservation were promptly removed. The regulations were revised and extended, printed upon cloth, and posted in all parts of the Park; and their violation was visited with summary punishment to the full extent of the Superintendent's authority. Abuses of leasehold rights were searchingly inquired into and reported to the department. As soon as this show of real authority was made manifest, and it became apparent that here was a man who meant what he said, a great part of the difficulty was over. Nothing in fact conduces so much to the infraction of law as a belief in the incompetency or dishonesty of those delegated to enforce it, and the removal of this cause was a long step in the right direction. The Park was particularly fortunate in its first military Superintendent. Captain Harris possessed in a marked degree the qualities required for that position. He was vigorous and uncompromising in suppressing lawlessness, just and impartial in his rulings, and untiring in his watchfulness for the public interest. Although his immediate superior, the Secretary of the Interior, had strenuously opposed the installation of the military in the Park, he never failed to pay a high tribute to the efficiency with which the new Superintendent performed his duties. In fact, this high opinion of Captain Harris' services was soon shared by all who were familiar with the situation. Even _Forest and Stream_, whose fidelity to the best interests of the Park has been a distinguishing feature of that journal for the past fifteen years, was fain to admit, although it had regarded the change as impolitic, that under Captain Harris' guardianship "the Park had been cared for as it never had been before." Captain Harris remained in charge for nearly three years, and was succeeded, June 1, 1889, by Captain F. A. Boutelle, First U. S. Cavalry. That the evil of political interference and private intriguing was not yet wholly eliminated from the affairs of the Park became manifest when Captain Boutelle undertook to enforce the regulations against a prominent employe of the hotel company. For causes not publicly understood, he was unexpectedly relieved from duty January 21, 1891, and Captain George S. Anderson, Sixth U. S. Cavalry, the present Superintendent, was assigned in his place. Going back now to the Yellowstone Park Improvement Company, the history of that erratic concern will be briefly traced. It is important first to state, however, that the conduct of private business in the Park has, until recent years, been most unsatisfactory. The Park was long unfortunate in the men who sought to carry on business within its borders, and even yet it is not wholly free from the evil of unscrupulous and dishonest schemers. The strife, backbiting, struggle to ruin each other, which seemed to be the chief purpose of those who at first sought government favors on the Reservation, can be understood only by those who have seen them, or have gone to the trouble to examine official correspondence. More than once has the government made these troubles the subject of special investigation, although generally with indifferent results. The new hotel company had a meteoric career, promising great things, but effecting no permanent improvement except the partial construction of the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel. Its fortunes early collapsed, and the opening of the tourist season of 1885 found the great building in the possession of unpaid workmen, who held it under a kind of military guard until their wages should be paid. This company, and other lesser concerns, gradually transferred their rights to a new company, called the Yellowstone Park Association, which is still in operation. It is largely identified with the Northern Pacific Railroad, and although it has a practical monopoly of the tourist business, it has never subjected itself to the charge of using that monopoly to the disadvantage of the public. From the old and unsatisfactory condition of things it has built up a hotel system which, though incomplete, is far ahead of what could be reasonably expected in a region so remote from the great centers of civilization. It was in the early part of Conger's administration that the government took up in earnest the question of road construction. For some years, the public, thoroughly weary of Norris' roads, had been urging the necessity of sending an engineer officer to take charge of that important matter. This agitation bore fruit in 1883 in the assignment of Lieutenant D. C. Kingman, of the Corps of Engineers, to the charge of this work. His tour of duty ran through three years, and resulted in the greatest improvement to the road system. He prepared the project which has served as a basis of all subsequent work, and he did much toward carrying it into execution. His reports were especially valuable, not only in matters connected with his particular work, but also those pertaining to the general welfare of the Reservation. He was among the first to lift a warning voice against the grave danger of railroad encroachment, and no one since his time has presented this matter in a more convincing light. The years 1894 and 1895 have brought a radical improvement to the administrative status of the Park. May 4, 1894, the long desired code of laws was enacted. On August 3d of the same year, an act was passed further regulating the question of leases and removing the most serious defects of previous legislation. In the autumn of the same year, the road work was taken from the charge of a non-resident engineer with headquarters in St. Paul, and placed in direct charge of the Superintendent, thus bringing the entire administrative control under a single head. These two years have also witnessed a decided check to the schemes of those who still persist in believing that the Park was created for their personal aggrandizement. Strong adverse reports have been submitted, practically for the first time, by Congressional Committees against the so-called Segregation project, the admission of railroads into the Park, and the construction of an electric railway therein. With the exception of the lack of a sufficient force of scouts properly to patrol that region, the condition of affairs on the Reservation is now eminently satisfactory--far more so than at any previous period. CHAPTER XV. THE NATIONAL PARK PROTECTIVE ACT. One of the most important milestones in the history of the Park has been so recently set that the public is as yet not fully conscious of its existence. It has already been stated that for more than twenty years the Park was wholly without adequate statutory protection; and that this long-standing defect was finally remedied by the enactment of a comprehensive measure in the spring of 1894. The circumstances attending the passage of this Act, and the prompt manner in which a great misfortune was changed into a lasting benefit, form one of those singular instances of good fortune which have so largely characterized the history of this region. Bills providing suitable protection for the Park were introduced at the First Session of the Fifty-third Congress, just as they have been for the past twenty years, and apparently with not much greater chance of success. The wanton recklessness of those who seek special privileges in the Park, and are unwilling that any measure for its welfare shall pass unless coupled with their own private schemes, threatened this time, as hitherto, to defeat Congressional action. But an unforeseen event, of such powerful bearing as practically to override all opposition, occurred in March, 1894, and quickly brought about the desired consummation. It is well known that the only herd of bison, now roaming in their native condition within the present limits of the United States, is in the Yellowstone National Park. There has always been a lively interest in the preservation of this herd, and its extinction would be regarded as a deplorable calamity. With proper protection, it will undoubtedly flourish, but there is no margin for carelessness or neglect. During the winter of 1894, Captain George S. Anderson, U. S. A., Superintendent of the Park, learned that snow-shoe tracks had been seen along Astringent Creek in the Pelican Valley east of the Yellowstone River, in territory ranged over by the buffalo in winter. The same tracks were seen near Soda Butte station pointing toward Cooke City. Inquiry proved them to have been made by one Howell, a well-known poacher and lawless character, who was evidently driving his trade in the winter buffalo country. It was apparent that he had left the Park for supplies and would soon return. Captain Anderson accordingly laid his plans for capture. There has been given a brief account of the winter expedition through the Park in the spring of 1894, of which Mr. F. J. Haynes and Scout Burgess were members. Burgess was instructed to examine the country east of the Yellowstone and obtain, if possible, a clue to Howell's whereabouts. Early on the morning of March 12th, he set out from the Lake hotel with a single companion, Private Troike, of the Sixth Cavalry, and before it was scarcely daylight struck a dim snow shoe trail in the valley of Astringent Creek. Soon after, he found the poacher's teepe and a number of buffalo heads hung up, by means of a pulley, to the limb of a tree so as to be out of the reach of wolves. Every thing indicated that the poacher was there for a business of some duration and magnitude. Leaving the teepe and following Howell's morning trail for some distance, Burgess' attention was soon arrested by six rifle reports. These six shots slew five buffalo. Burgess soon discovered Howell, engaged in skinning the head of one of the buffalo. His rifle was leaning against another some fifteen feet from him. A dog (but this Burgess did not know) was coiled up under the leg of a buffalo. Burgess thus had the dangerous duty to perform of crossing the intervening space of some four hundred yards, where there was no cover and where he might easily be seen by Howell or the dog. Considering the desperate character of these poachers, and the fact that Burgess was armed only with a revolver as against Howell's rifle, the peril involved in this capture may be easily appreciated. But fortune was on Burgess' side. A heavy storm was on, and the wind was blowing direct from Howell to Burgess. This prevented the dog from scenting approach, and Howell from hearing any noise, from the leeward. Burgess did not stop to reckon the chances of success, but promptly sallied forth upon his intended victim. On his way he ran upon an open ditch about ten feet wide. To make a snow shoe jump on level ground is a feat of much difficulty; but Burgess managed to accomplish it. By good fortune nothing happened to arouse Howell, and Burgess got within fifteen feet of him before he was aware that there was any one within as many miles. With Burgess' cocked revolver over him, he discreetly surrendered. Private Troike was summoned, the rifle and accoutrements were seized, and the party set out at once for the Lake hotel. But such are the difficulties of snow shoe travel in this region, that it was long after dark before they reached their destination. The Yellowstone Park Association keeps a solitary watchman at each of its hotels during winter, and has a telephone line connecting each with Mammoth Hot Springs. By virtue of this lucky fact, Howell's capture, though made some sixty miles from the nearest telegraph station, and in a region where winter travel is impossible except on snow shoes, was made known to the Superintendent before 9:30 P. M. that day. By another stroke of good fortune a representative of _Forest and Stream_ was at that moment present at Mammoth Hot Springs. He had arrived but two days before and remained a guest of the Superintendent prior to a tour of the Park, which began two days later. The news of Howell's capture was at once put on the wire, and in less that twenty-four hours, _Forest and Stream_ was represented in Washington with a new and powerful argument for the passage of the Offenses Bill. The imminent danger of the speedy and entire extinction of the only remaining herd of buffalo in the country produced the desired effect in Congress, and on May 7, 1894, the bill became a law. It was throughout a most fortunate combination of circumstances that made this consummation possible. A Superintendent thoroughly devoted to the care of his important charge, and fearless in the execution of his duty; a scout who had the nerve to make an arrest full of peril to himself; the existence of a winter telephone line to the heart of that inaccessible region; the presence at Mammoth Hot Springs of a representative of that journal which holds first rank among the protectors of the Park; and uncommon good, luck in minor details, caused this important event to cast its influence into the national councils almost before the echo of the poacher's rifle shots had died away among the mountains. Howell's act was a misfortune--a grievous misfortune--to the game interests of the Park; but its immediate result in legislation will prove a benefit of far greater consequence. Howell was brought to Mammoth Hot Springs and was there imprisoned in the Fort Yellowstone guardhouse, and his case reported to Washington. As there was no law for his trial and punishment, the Secretary of the Interior in due time ordered his release. He was accordingly put out of the Park and forbidden to return without permission. But with his habitual disregard of authority, he came back during the following summer and was discovered by the Superintendent in a barber's chair at Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel. He was promptly arrested and tried under the new law for violating the orders of the Superintendent in returning. He was convicted and sentenced to one month's imprisonment and fifty dollars fine. He thus became the Park Haman--first to be hanged upon the gallows of his own building. Howell appealed the case to the U. S. District Court sitting at Cheyenne, Wyoming, and was released upon the technical ground that, as the prohibition against returning to the Park was merely an order from the Superintendent, and not explicitly authorized by the regulations of the Secretary of the Interior, the offense did not come within the purview of the law. This defect in the regulations has since been remedied and the conviction of Howell, therefore, notwithstanding his final release, has all the force of precedent. PART II.--Descriptive. CHAPTER I. BOUNDARIES AND TOPOGRAPHY. At the time when the bill creating the Yellowstone Park was before Congress there had been no detailed survey of that region, and the boundaries, as specified in the bill, were to some extent random guesses. The exploring parties of 1870 and 1871 had seen all the more important points of interest. To include these in the proposed reservation, the framers of the bill passed two lines due east and west, one through the junction of the Yellowstone and Gardiner Rivers, and one through a point ten miles south of the most southerly point of the Yellowstone Lake; and two lines due north and south, one through a point ten miles east of the easternmost point of Yellowstone Lake, and one through a point fifteen miles west of the most westerly point of Shoshone (then called Madison) Lake. The nearly rectangular area thus resulting was found to lie mainly in the north-west corner of Wyoming, with narrow strips, two or three miles wide, overlapping into the Territories of Montana and Idaho. The mean dimensions of the Reservation were 61.8 miles by 53.6 miles, giving an area of 3312.5 square miles. By presidential proclamation, dated September 10, 1891, a large area to the east and south of the Park was set apart as a Forest Reserve, under the provisions of an Act of March 3, 1891, and was placed in charge of the Superintendent of the Park. By this action the area reserved from settlement around the sources of the Yellowstone was increased to about 5,000 square miles. It should be remembered, however, that this additional reserve is not a direct creation by Act of Congress, and it therefore does not stand upon the same substantial footing as the original Reservation. The chief topographical features of the Park are as follows: DRAINAGE AREAS. Three great rivers receive the waters of the Yellowstone Park--the Yellowstone, the Missouri, and the Snake. The first two rivers are on the Atlantic slope; the third is on the Pacific slope. The areas drained by them are approximately: By the Yellowstone. 1,900 square miles. By the Missouri, 730 square miles. By the Snake, 682 square miles. The Yellowstone River has its source in the snow drifts of Yount Peak, twenty-five miles south-east of the Park. It enters the Reservation six miles west of the south-east corner; crosses it in a direction somewhat west of north, and leaves it at a point about nineteen miles east of the north-west corner. Near the center of the Park it flows through the celebrated lake of the same name, and further north passes through two remarkable cañons before it leaves the Reservation. Its principal tributaries within the Park are the Lamar River (commonly called the East Fork), from the east, and Gardiner River from the west. The Lamar River rises nearly due east of the outlet of Yellowstone Lake and flows north-westerly, joining the main stream near Junction Butte. Its principal tributary is Soda Butte Creek, which rises just outside the north-east corner of the Park and joins the Lamar River near the extinct hot spring cone from which it derives its name. Gardiner River is the second largest tributary of the Yellowstone, and drains the extensive area between the Washburn and Gallatin Mountains. The low-water discharge of the Yellowstone River, as measured by the writer, in 1891, a little below the lake outlet, is 1,598 cubic feet per second; as measured by the United States Geological Survey, in 1886, 1,525 cubic feet. The discharge at the north boundary of the Park can not be less than 2,000 cubic feet. The Missouri River drainage flows into the Gallatin and Madison forks of that stream. The Gallatin drains only a small area in the extreme north-west corner of the Park. The Madison is formed by the junction of the Gibbon and Firehole Rivers, about twelve miles east of the west boundary of the Park. The Gibbon takes its rise a few miles west of the Falls of the Yellowstone, and flows in a south-west direction. The Firehole rises in Madison Lake, and flows north to its junction with the Gibbon. Its principal tributaries are the Little Firehole River and Iron Creek on the west, and Nez Percé Creek on the east. The Snake River drains the south-west portion of the Park. It rises about fifteen miles south of Yellowstone Lake, just outside the Park. It then takes a northerly circuit into the Park, receiving the waters of Hart and Lewis Rivers, and leaves the Reservation just north of Jackson Lake. Its principal tributary is the Lewis River, which drains Shoshone and Lewis Lakes. Several large streams, Bechler and Falls Rivers among them, cross the south-west boundary of the Park and join the main Snake further south. The line of separation between this water-shed and those of the Yellowstone and the Missouri, is the Continental Divide, the irregular course of which can be readily understood by consulting the map. In the entire Park there are about thirty-six named lakes with a total area of nearly 165 square miles. Of these lakes, twenty-one, with an area of 143 square miles, are on the Yellowstone slope; eight, with an area of perhaps two square miles, are on the Missouri slope; and seven, with an area of about twenty square miles, are on the Snake River slope. The four principal lakes--Yellowstone, Shoshone, Lewis, and Hart--are clustered near the Continental Divide at its lowest point, the first being on the Atlantic slope, and the others on the Pacific. There are upon the various streams of the Park no fewer than twenty-five interesting water-falls, where the streams descend from the Park plateau to the lower surrounding country. MOUNTAIN SYSTEM As the Yellowstone River is the most important stream in the Park, so the Absaroka Range, in which it has its source, is the most important mountain system. It extends north and south along the entire eastern border. To the south it is prolonged under the name of the Sierra Shoshone Mountains as far as the Wind River Valley, while north of Soda Butte Creek it extends to the Great Bend of the Yellowstone under the name Snowy Range. The various larger summits are remarkably uniform in elevation. From Index Peak on the north to Yount Peak on the south, there are more than thirty named mountains with an average altitude of 10,400 feet. The variation from this mean is slight. The range, throughout its length, is full of noble views, and, as seen from across the Yellowstone Lake, is one of the finest exhibitions of mountain scenery on the continent. The next most important range is the Gallatin, situated in the north-west corner of the Park, at the head of the Gallatin River. It has about seventeen named peaks, with an average altitude of 9,800 feet. The highest peak, Electric, is the loftiest mountain in the Park. The Washburn Range, a detached mountain system, originally known as the "Elephant's Back," is situated between the Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone and the Gardiner River. It has seven christened summits, with an average altitude of 9,800 feet. The most conspicuous peak of the range, as well as the most noted mountain of the Park, is Mt. Washburn. The Red Mountain Range is a small, detached group of mountains between Hart and Lewis Lakes. Its principal summit, Mt. Sheridan, affords probably the finest view to be had in that entire region. The Teton Range lies mainly outside the Park, its northern spurs barely touching the southern boundary. It extends north and south along the west shore of Jackson Lake, and is a very noted range of mountains. Its highest summit, the Grand Teton, has no competitor for altitude nearer than Fremont Peak, seventy-five miles distant. The Big Game Ridge lies along the south boundary of the Park, and is the source of the Snake River. It has six named peaks, with an average altitude of 9,800 feet. Besides these various groups of mountains, there are a few detached peaks worthy of note, which can not be conveniently classified with any of the principal ranges. PLATEAUS. A considerable portion of the Park area is composed of what may be termed plateaus, elevated tracts of land, not so high as the mountain ranges, but much higher than the valleys. Ordinarily, these are to be found along the divides between the larger streams. The more important are the Pitchstone Plateau, between the Snake River and the head waters of the Bechler and Fall Rivers, with a mean altitude of 8,500 feet; Highland Plateau, between the Yellowstone and the Madison Rivers, altitude 8,300 feet; Mirror Plateau, between the Yellowstone and the Lamar Rivers, altitude 9,000 feet; Mt. Everts Plateau, between the Yellowstone and the Gardiner, altitude 7,000 feet; and the Madison Plateau, west of the Lower Geyser Basin, altitude 8,300 feet. VALLEYS. These form an exceedingly important part of the Park topography. The largest is Junction Valley, including its branches along the Yellowstone and the Lamar Rivers. It is an extensive, grassy tract, stretching well back upon the mountain sides, and forming a fine pasturage for game. For scientific research, its fossil forests and other features make it an extremely interesting section. Hayden Valley is the next in size and importance, and occupies an important tract along the Yellowstone River, between the Lake and Falls, mostly on the west side, in the vicinity of Alum Creek. The Madison Valley, and its extensions up the Firehole and Gibbon Rivers, are chiefly noteworthy as being the locality of the three great geyser regions of the Park. The Swan Lake Flats, Willow Park, the Shoshone and Falls River Basins, are other important examples of typical mountain valleys. ALTITUDES. The lowest point in the Park is at the junction of the Yellowstone and the Gardiner Rivers, 5,360 feet above sea level; the highest is the summit of Electric Peak, six miles distant, 11,155 feet. To give a general idea of the altitudes of different points in the Park, particularly of those which the tourist visits, the following list is presented:[AT] Gardiner, Mont. 5,400 feet. Mammoth Hot Springs hotel 6,215 " Glen Creek Bridge above Golden Gate 7,245 " Indian Creek Bridge 7,275 " Beaver Lake 7,360 " Norris Road Junction 7,470 " Gibbon Meadows 7,315 " Gibbon and Firehole Rivers, junction of 6,780 " Lower Geyser Basin (mouth of Nez Percé Creek) 7,125 " Upper Geyser Basin (near Castle Geyser) 7,300 " Mouth of Spring Creek 7,600 " Isa Lake, Continental Divide 8,300 " Yellowstone Lake 7,741 " Road at Mud Volcano 7,705 " Cañon Hotel 7,850 " Junction Valley near Yancey's 6,150 " Divide between the Black-tail and Gardiner 6,550 " [AT] From profile of road system. For additional elevations, see list of names in Appendix A. SCENERY. The mountain scenery of the Park is not so imposing as that of Colorado and some other parts of the Rocky Mountain region; but it is more varied and beautiful. The eye is not wearied with the constant sight of vast and bare mountain cliffs, but finds relief in attractive lakes, streams, glades, parks, forests, and every combination of effects that helps to produce a beautiful landscape. CHAPTER II. Geology of the Park. Nature seems, from the first, to have designed this region for a mountain park. In geological chronology it was near the close of the Cretaceous Period, that the lifting of the great mountain systems of the West into their present positions was practically finished. In the formation of these mountains, the general outline of the Yellowstone Park was already marked out, probably in much more striking features than at present. A vast rim of mountains, visible now in the Absaroka, Snowy, Gallatin, Teton, and Snake River Ranges, hemmed in the extensive area which has since become so famous. Subsequent events have greatly modified its original form, but the grand outlines at first determined are still distinctly visible. In the Tertiary Period, which was next in order of time after the Cretaceous, changes of the greatest importance occurred, consisting principally in the outpouring of enormous masses of volcanic material. The origin of these lava flows has been traced to a few craters, one of which was near Mt. Washburn, another in the Red Mountain Range, and a third near the sources of the Lamar River. Mt. Washburn has long been recognized as part of the rim of an ancient volcano. Both it and Mt. Sheridan, the two mountains which bore the principal part in working out the present features of that country, still remain the most prominent peaks from which the modern visitor can contemplate the work they have performed. The outpourings at first consisted of andesitic lavas. They largely changed the appearance of the mountain ranges and to some extent filled up the interior basin. The flows were not continuous but were separated by long intervals of quiet, during which vegetation and the agencies of erosion were actively at work. After the cessation of the andesitic eruptions, a quiescent period of great length ensued. Then came the period of rhyolitic flows, the centers of volcanic activity being as before Mts. Washburn and Sheridan. These flows built up the present Park plateau, and constitute the great bulk of the rocks which the tourist now sees. Following the period of rhyolitic eruptions, orographic agencies were active in producing extensive faults or displacements, which in certain localities radically changed the relative positions of the rocks. The last exhibitions of volcanic energy were in the form of basaltic eruptions. These took place in part through ordinary volcanic craters, and in part through cracks or seams in the rocks, where they may still be seen forming extensive dykes. The basalt is of relatively limited extent, but its striking and picturesque forms wherever it appears make it more interesting to the tourist than any of the other rocks. The great variety of superficial appearances which these volcanic rocks have assumed makes the Park one of the best laboratories in the world for their study. The continuance of these various outpourings doubtless extended into Quaternary time. Then came the Glacial Epoch, the epoch of wide-spread ice-carving, which still further modified the surface of the country. The paths of the ancient glaciers have in several instances been made out and their transported material may readily be distinguished. One glacier flowed from the Gallatin Range eastward across Terrace Mountain, where it joined another moving westwardly from the Absaroka Range. The united streams continued down the Gardiner and Yellowstone Valleys, in which vast masses of drift still mark their ancient route. Glacial action and the common agents of denudation have given the Park country its present general aspect. These later modifications have indeed been extensive, and the great variety of form now seen in the valleys, cañons and hills is the result of their combined action. The Yellowstone Cañon is a marked example of erosion on a large scale. A direct result of its formation was the partial draining of Yellowstone Lake, which had previously existed at a much higher level than now, and spread over the entire area of the present Hayden Valley. Since the cessation of the basaltic lava flows there seem to have been no further lava outpourings in this region. The old volcanoes have been long extinct and their craters have been modified almost beyond recognition. But evidences of the power which once worked beneath them are still abundant, although no longer on so imposing a scale. It is the hot springs and geysers still in existence which partly render this region so widely celebrated. That this thermal action originates mainly in the same source of energy which once poured out the vast fields of lava, there is no reason to doubt. Many plausible explanations are advanced to account for the existence of subterranean heat, but whatever may be its real origin it is doubtless the same for both classes of phenomena. The action which is now observable has continued in an ever-decreasing degree since the close of the lava period. Over vast tracts of the Park plateau, the rocks are entirely decomposed to unknown depths by the ascending superheated vapors. Some idea of the extent of this action may be obtained at the Grand Cañon, which has cut its way a thousand feet downward into the decomposed volcanic rock without yet reaching its bottom. The infinite variety of chemic products resulting from this decomposition has given the Cañon its wonderful coloration. The same condition largely prevails over the Park plateau. Where now are dense forests and no superficial evidence of unusual conditions, there will frequently be found, by digging beneath the surface, the familiar proof that thermal activity once prevailed there. In constructing the tourist route from the Upper Geyser Basin to the Yellowstone Lake, where for nearly the whole distance there is a complete absence of hot springs, the evidences of former volcanic activity were found to be abundant. Facts like these clearly demonstrate that, from a geologic standpoint, thermal activity in the Park is gradually becoming extinct; and many persons, taking alarm at this evidence, imagine that the unique phenomena of the Yellowstone are of an evanescent character, and that the time is not far remote when they will be known only as matters of history. There is, however, no occasion for such misgiving. The present condition is the result of processes that run back probably for millions of years; certainly for periods of time compared with which recorded history is insignificant. The same rate of progress would produce no perceptible change in the lifetime of an individual. Some who have visited the geyser regions more than once assert that, after an interval of several years, they observe a marked diminution in thermal activity. But this is probably because a second visit ordinarily makes a less vivid impression than a first. The weight of reliable evidence is certainly the other way. Mr. David E. Folsom, leader of the Expedition of 1869, made a tour of the Park during the present season of 1895. He says: "I had a very vivid recollection of all I saw twenty-six years ago, and I note no important change." Professor Arnold Hague, probably the best living authority upon the scientific features of the Park, has compared the hot springs and geysers by means of authentic records covering intervals of several years, and he declares that he finds "no diminution in the intensity of action or in the amount of discharge from the springs and geysers, since they have been subject to careful observation." While it is certain that springs are constantly becoming inactive, it is no less certain that others replace them, and it may be confidently assumed that the progress toward ultimate extinction will be inappreciable in our time or for many generations to come. The distribution of thermal springs over the surface of the earth is probably more general than is commonly supposed. Only one extensive area is practically without them, and that is the Continent of Australia. Africa, also, has very few. But in other parts of the globe they are found almost without number, ranging from the Equator to the Arctic Circle, and from sea-level to the lofty table lands of Thibet. The three localities, however, in which they abound in such numbers and magnitude as to attract marked attention are, in the order of their discovery, Iceland, New Zealand, and the Yellowstone National Park. In extent, variety, and magnitude of accompanying phenomena, and in geologic age, the above order is reversed. Iceland has probably the most famous geyser in the world, principally because it was for a long time the only known geyser, and consequently received a great deal of scientific attention; but judging from published descriptions it is clearly inferior to several now known in the Firehole Geyser Basin. Three notable features of similarity in these geyser regions are the presence of volcanic rocks of remote or recent origin; proximity to the earth's surface of active sources of subterranean heat; and the presence of a great number of lakes. In all three cases, lava, heat and water are the characteristic geologic and physical accompaniments of those particular phenomena which will now be described more in detail. CHAPTER III. GEYSERS. The hot springs of the Yellowstone National Park may be roughly divided into two classes, eruptive and non-eruptive. To the first the term _geyser_ is applied, while the term _hot springs_ is restricted to the second. These two classes pass into each other by insensible gradations and the line of demarcation it is not possible to draw. The following description will pertain only to those examples about which there is no doubt, and which may be taken as types of their class. A geyser may be defined as a periodically eruptive hot spring. The name, as might be expected, is of Icelandic origin, and comes from the verb _geysa_, _to gush_. The general characteristics of a true geyser, as illustrated by the most perfect example known, Old Faithful in the Yellowstone Park, are the following: (1.) There is an irregular tube descending from the earth's surface to some interior source of heat. (2.) The mouth of this tube may be either a self-built mound or cone (as in the example), or simply an open pool. (3.) Into this tube meteoric water finds its way and is subjected to the action of heat. (4.) The result is an eruption and expulsion of the water from the tube with more or less violence. (5.) The eruption is generally preceded by slight preliminary upheavals leading gradually to the final outburst. (6.) After cessation of the eruption there is usually a considerable escape of steam. (7.) A quiescent period, generally of indeterminate duration, follows during which the conditions necessary for an eruption are reproduced. Geyser phenomena have attracted a great deal of scientific attention, and many theories have been advanced to explain them. Passing over for the present the various less important views, attention will first be given to Bunsen's theory, because it is, upon the whole, the most satisfactory explanation yet advanced. This theory was a direct deduction from observations upon the Great Geyser of Iceland, and has been experimentally illustrated by artificial examples. The fundamental principle upon which it is based is the well known fact that the temperature of the boiling point of water varies with the pressure to which the water is subjected. At the sea level, under the pressure of one atmosphere (fifteen pounds to the square inch), the boiling point is about 212 degrees Fahrenheit. Under a pressure of two atmospheres it is 250 degrees; of three, 275 degrees; of four, 293 degrees, and so on. At an altitude like that of the Park plateau, where the atmospheric pressure is much less than at sea level, the normal boiling point is about 198 degrees, but the law of variation due to pressure conditions applies exactly as in lower altitudes. If water, subjected to great pressure, be heated to a temperature considerably above that of its normal boiling point, and if then the pressure be suddenly relieved, it will almost instantaneously be converted into steam; a fact which always operates to enhance the danger from the explosion of steam boilers. Applying this principle to the case of an ordinary geyser, it will readily be seen that in the long irregular tube descending to great depths there are present the necessary conditions for subjecting the water to great pressure. At the surface the pressure is that of the weight of the atmosphere corresponding to the altitude; at a certain depth below (33 feet at the sea level, but less at higher altitudes) it is twice as great; at double this depth three times as great, and so on. Suppose, now, that there is an interior heat at some point along the geyser tube well below the surface. The boiling point of water in the vicinity of the heat supply will be higher than at the surface in definite relation to its distance down. If the tube be of large diameter and the circulation quite free, the water will never reach this point, for it will rise nearer the top, where the boiling point is lower and will pass off in steam. The spring will thus be simply a boiling or quiescent spring. But if the tube be comparatively small and if the circulation be in any way impeded, the temperature at the source of heat will rise until it reaches a boiling point corresponding to its depth. Steam will result, and will rise through the water, gradually increasing the temperature in the upper portions of the tube. After a time the water throughout the entire tube becomes heated nearly to the boiling point and can no longer condense the steam rising from below; which then rapidly accumulates until its expansive power is great enough to lift the column above and project some of the water from the basin or cone. This lessens the weight of the column and relieves the pressure at every point. In places where the water had been just below the boiling point, it is now above, and more steam is rapidly produced. This throws out more water, still further lightens the column, and causes the generation of more steam, until finally the whole contents of the tube are ejected with terrific violence. From this explanation it is apparent that any thing which impedes the circulation of water in the geyser tube will expedite the eruption. The well-known effect of "soaping geysers" may thus be accounted for. As oil thrown upon waves gives a viscosity to the surface, which greatly moderates their violence, so does the addition of soap or lye make the water of the geyser tube less free to circulate, and thus hasten the conditions precedent to an eruption. The apparently contrary process of violently agitating the water of the geyser, as by stirring it with a stick, sometimes produces the same effect; but this results from the sudden forcing upward of masses of superheated water, instead of allowing them to rise and gradually cool. That Bunsen's theory really explains the phenomena of geyser action there can be little doubt. It is true that in no single geyser does one find a perfect example of the theory. But it must be remembered that typical conditions probably never exist. The point of application of heat; the mode of application, whether from the heated surface of rocks or from superheated steam issuing into the tube; the diameter and regularity of the tube; the point of inflow of the cold water; are all matters which influence the eruption and determine its character. In the endless variety of conditions in nature one need not wonder at the varying results. He should rather wonder that in a single instance nature has produced a combination of such perfection as is found in Old Faithful, which, for thousands of years has performed its duty with the regularity of clock work. There are various other theories, each with some particular merit, which may be briefly referred to. Sir George Mackenzie, who visited Iceland in 1810-11, thought the geyser tube at some point beneath the surface curved to one side and then upward, communicating with a chamber in the immediate vicinity of the source of heat. The water in this chamber becomes heated above the boiling point, and, expanding, forces the water from the chamber into the tube until the chamber is finally emptied to the level of the mouth of the tube. Any further expulsion of water lessens the weight of the column of water above. Bunsen's theory comes into play, and with the accumulated pressure of the steam in the chamber, produces a violent eruption. Prof. Comstock, who visited the Park in 1873, thought that there were two chambers, the lower being in contact with the source of heat, and the upper acting as a sort of trap in the geyser tube. After a sufficient force of steam has accumulated in the lower chamber, it ejects the contents of the chamber above. S. Baring-Gould, who visited Iceland in 1863, observed that if a tube be bent into two arms of unequal length, the shorter of which is closed, and if the tube be filled with water and the shorter arm then heated, all the characteristic phenomena of geyser action result, the water being finally ejected, with explosive violence from the longer tube. Now, it is probable that in nature each of these theories may find illustration, but it must still be acknowledged that in all cases Bunsen's theory is the partial explanation, and in many the only adequate one. The most superficial examination of the geysers in the Park will disclose two widely different characteristics as regards their external appearance and mode of eruption. On this basis they may be divided into two classes--the fountain geysers and the cone geysers. In the fountain geyser there is no cone or mound, but in its place a considerable pool which in intervals of rest bears perfect resemblance to the larger quiescent springs. The eruption generally consists of a succession of prodigious impulses by which vast quantities of water are thrown up one after another. There is ordinarily no continuous jet. To geysers of this class, Mackenzie's and Comstock's theories would seem to find closer application than to any others. Noted examples are the Fountain, the Great Fountain, the Grand and the Giantess Geysers. The cone geysers, on the other hand, have no pool about the crater, and water is not generally visible in the tube. There is always a self-built cone or mound of greater or less prominence, ranging from a broad gently-sloping mound, like that of Old Faithful, to a huge cone like that of the Castle. The eruptions from these geysers usually take the form of a continuous jet, and are more in accordance with the theory of Bunsen. Prominent examples are the Giant, the Castle, Old Faithful, the Lone Star, and the Union. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories._ Cone of the Giant Geyser.] [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _First sketch ever made._[AU]--_Trumbull._ Cone of Giant Geyser.] [AU] This sketch and a similar one of the Castle Geyser cone and two of the Yellowstone Falls are the _very first_ ever made of these objects. They were made in 1870 by Walter Trumbull, a member of the Washburn Party, and by Private Charles Moore, one of the escort under Lieutenant Doane. Moore was a man of excellent education and considerable culture, and it was a matter of comment among the members of the Expedition that he should be content with the condition of a private soldier. His quaint sketches of the Falls forcibly remind one of the original picture of Niagara made by Father Hennepin in 1697. An interesting and singular fact pertaining to this region is that in most cases the springs and geysers have no underground connection with each other. Water in contiguous pools stands at different levels, and powerful geysers play with no apparent effect upon others near by. It is another interesting question to know whence comes the water for these geysers and hot springs. Into the hidden caverns of "Old Faithful" flow nearly a million of gallons per hour. This is a large stream, but it is a mere trifle compared with the entire outflow of hot water throughout the Park. The subterranean passages by which the necessary supply is furnished to all these thousands of springs, certainly constitute the most intricate and extensive system of water-works of which there is any knowledge. Not least wonderful of the features of the great geysers are the marvelous formations which surround them, more exquisitely beautiful than any production of art. They are really much handsomer than those to be found around the ordinary quiescent springs. The falling or the dashing of the hot water seems to be in some way essential to the finest results. To say that these rocky projections simulate cauliflower, sponge, fleeces of wool, flowers or bead-work, conveys but a feeble hint of their marvelous beauty. It is indeed a most interesting fact that nature here produces in stone, by the almost mechanical process of deposition from cooling water, the identical forms elsewhere produced by the very different processes of animal and vegetable life. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories._ Specimens of Geyserite.] These formations are all silica and are of flinty hardness. Bunsen, and Prof. Le Conte following him, assert it to be a rule that the presence of silica in the water is essential to the development of a geyser. In one sense this is true, and in another it is not. Should the heated waters find a ready-made tube, like a fissure in solid rock, this would serve for a geyser tube as well as any other. The Monarch Geyser, in Norris Geyser Basin, seems to have originated in this way. But in the general case, geyser tubes are built up, not found ready made. In such cases silica is an indispensable ingredient of the water. A calcareous deposit, like that at Mammoth Hot Springs, would lack strength to resist the violent strain of an eruption. So it is found to be a fact that silica is the chief mineral ingredient in the water of all important geysers. CHAPTER IV. HOT SPRINGS. Under this general head will be included all thermal phenomena of the Park, except the geysers. The term will cover the quiescent springs, the boiling springs, the mud springs, or "paint pots," and the steam vents and fumaroles. The quiescent spring seems to stand at the opposite pole from the geyser. The conditions are such that the water nowhere reaches a temperature sensibly above the boiling point. The surface therefore steams quietly away, unruffled except by the passing breeze. The great attraction of these springs is in the inimitable coloring of the water. It is not simply the beautiful green or blue of great depths of clear water. In no ordinary pool can one find all the colors of the spectrum, flitting about, as though seen through a revolving prism. Sometimes there is an iridescent effect similar to that of a film of oil upon water; but there is no oil here. There are doubtless many contributing causes that produce these remarkable effects. There is first a great depth of clear water which always presents a beautiful appearance. Then there are the mineral deposits on the sides of the crater, producing indefinite reflection, the effects of which are multiplied by the refractive power of the water. The mineral ingredients dissolved or suspended in the water doubtless add to the effect. The hot springs on the Gardiner River are wholly different in character from those in any other part of the Park. The water of these springs holds carbonate of lime in solution while most of the others contain silica. To this fact must be attributed the peculiar character of the formations at Mammoth Hot Springs. Wherever the deposits of springs are calcareous, the character of the formations is the same, and generally different from those produced by the deposit of silica. They rise in terraces one above another, and mold for themselves overhanging bowls of transcendent beauty in form and color. In the tints displayed by the water, however, these springs are not unlike others in the Park. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Haynes, Photo., St. Paul._ Cleopatra Terrace.] The rims about the quiescent springs are often very beautiful, and the observer is astonished to see how they stand up above the general surface of the ground so evenly built that the water has hardly a choice of route in flowing away. Tyndall, however, makes this puzzling phenomenon clear. He says: "Imagine the case of a simple thermal siliceous spring, whose waters trickle down a gentle incline; the water thus exposed evaporates speedily, and silica is deposited. This deposit gradually elevates the side over which the water passes, until finally the latter has to take another course. The same takes place here; the ground is elevated as before, and the spring has to move forward. Thus it is compelled to travel round and round, discharging its silica and deepening the shaft in which it dwells, until finally, in the course of ages, the simple spring has produced that wonderful apparatus which has so long puzzled and astonished both the traveler and the philosopher." The boiling spring is intermediate between the quiescent spring and the geyser. The circulation is sufficiently free to prevent a great rise of temperature in the lower depths of the tube, and nothing more than a surface ebullition, often extremely violent, results. These springs are generally objects of secondary interest. They are simply enormous caldrons; any kettle placed over a brisk fire simulates their action on a small scale. The mud springs, or Paint Pots, as they are now always called, are extremely curious phenomena. They are caused by the rising of steam through considerable depths of earthy material. The water is just sufficient in quantity to keep the material in a plastic condition, and the steam operates upon it precisely as it does upon a kettle of thick mush. Generally there are various mineral ingredients, mostly oxides of iron, which impart different colors to different parts of the group. As the steam puffs up here and there from the thick mass, it forms the mud into a variety of imitative figures, prominent among which is that of the lily. These figures immediately sink back into the general mass, only to be formed anew by other puffs of steam. The material is so fine as to be almost impalpable between the fingers. Lieutenant Doane, however, justly observes that "mortar might well be good after being constantly worked for perhaps ten thousand years." Other phenomena very common throughout the Park are steam vents or fumaroles in which there is no water or only a very small quantity. They are not ordinarily of much popular interest, although there are a few remarkable examples. Among these may be mentioned the Black Growler in the Norris Geyser Basin, and Steamboat Spring on the east shore of the Yellowstone Lake. The hot spring areas of the Park are both numerous and extensive. They abound throughout the valleys of the Yellowstone, the Madison, and the Snake Rivers, and the number of individual springs is several thousand. CHAPTER V. FOSSIL FORESTS OF THE YELLOWSTONE. A region of great popular and scientific interest in the Yellowstone Park, although as yet hardly known to the tourist, owing to the incomplete condition of the road system, is that of the Fossil Forests in the north-east corner of the Park. The facts which have been brought to light concerning the origin of these forests are worthy of particular consideration. The trees are found to occur in different planes or horizons of growth, one above another, until the whole series represents a thickness of many hundreds, and possibly thousands, of feet. Going back to the first of these growths, it is found to have been destroyed by an outpouring of volcanic material, which partially or wholly submerged it. After the flow had ceased, the ordinary atmospheric and aqueous agencies began work, eroding the surface in some places and depositing the products of erosion in others, while vegetation rapidly covered the newly-formed soil. A subsequent flow destroyed this second growth and gave a new horizon, on which the same process was repeated. This continued until there were at least nine, and probably twelve, of these consecutive growths. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories._ Section of Amethyst Mountains.] The lava flows in this particular section do not seem to have been characterized by great heat. They were composed of volcanic agglomerate, in which there was a large admixture of mud and water, with sufficient heat to destroy life, but not to char or consume its products. The percolation of siliceous waters gradually turned the arboreal vegetation into stone by the process of substitution, and thus preserved in these silent monuments a record of the events which once transpired there. When the last of the eruptions had ceased, there existed in this locality a vast depth of volcanic _ejectamenta_, composed of many layers, on each of which was standing, buried in the layer next above, the trunks of extinct forest growths. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Haynes, Photo., St. Paul._ Petrified Trees near Yancey's.] After the cessation of volcanic activity, the eroding agencies of the Quaternary Period carved out the valley of the Lamar River through these accumulated flows, and laid bare the remains of their vegetable growths. To-day the tourist may see upon the slopes of Specimen Ridge, side by side, the living and the dead, the little conifers of present growth and the gigantic trunks of unknown species which flourished there eons ago. Some of the petrifactions are very perfect. Roots, bark, parts showing incipient decay, worm holes, leaves--all are preserved with absolute fidelity. The rings of annual growth may be counted, and these indicate for the larger trees an age of not less than five hundred years. Some of the stumps are fully ten feet in diameter. Here and there the ponderous roots stand imbedded in the rock face of the cliff, where erosion has not yet undermined them. In one case, a large tree that had fallen before petrifaction lies partly exposed, both ends being still imbedded in the rock. Some hollow trees show interiors beautifully lined with holocrystalline quartz. How long it took each growth to reach maturity; how long it flourished afterward before destruction; and how long the several lava flows suspended vegetable growth; are matters largely conjectural. But at the very lowest estimate the time represented by these various accumulations can not be less than five thousand years. That these early trees were of a different species from those which now flourish there, need not excite surprise, for climatic and other conditions are wholly changed. But an equal difference seems also to have prevailed between the successive growths, the trees of which were not only unlike each other, but nearly all were of species hitherto unknown to science. Fortunately the rare perfection of some of the specimens, particularly of the leaves and bark, have greatly simplified their classification, and have given valuable clues to their geologic age. The products of these petrifactions in time strewed the surface of the ground with such an abundance of specimens as to give the locality its present name. Most of the lighter specimens, and some of the heavier, have been carried away. Besides the general interest of these old forests to the casual observer, they are of great value to science, for probably in no other part of the globe can a similar chapter of its history be found more clearly recorded. CHAPTER VI. FAUNA OF THE YELLOWSTONE. The universal curiosity of people to see what are popularly called wild animals, especially those larger species which never frequent the precincts of civilization, is a fact of which it is not easy to give a philosophical explanation. In this country the rapid disappearance, amounting almost to annihilation, of the large game is looked upon as a great misfortune; and in later years there has arisen a fixed purpose that protection shall be secured for the surviving remnants of those species which once with the red man held possession of the continent. The statutes of nearly every state give evidence of the universality of this sentiment. As a means of accomplishing such a purpose, no institution promises to be more effectual than the Yellowstone Park. It ought, in this respect, to be a complete realization of Catlin's dream. Its importance as a game preserve was recognized in the Act of Dedication, and has become more and more pronounced as acquaintance with it has increased. The Park is fortunately better adapted for this purpose than any other tract of similar extent in America. It offers very little to tempt the cupidity of man. Its mineral wealth is buried so deeply under the lava that no miner will ever reach it. Its altitude and climate unfit it for agriculture. Its forests, though excellent for shade, are of little value for lumber. But as a home for the native species of the continent, it possesses unrivaled advantages. These are admirably summed up in the following paragraph from the pen of Prof. Hague: [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Haynes, Photo., St. Paul._ Park Elk.] "The broad expanse of forest incloses sequestered nooks, and enticing grassy parks, with absolute seclusion in mountain recesses admirably adapted for the homes of wild animals. It is the great diversity of its physical features, offering within a restricted area. all the requirements for animal life, which fits it for the home of big game. Abundant food supply, shelter from wind and weather in winter, cool resorts on the uplands in summer, favorable localities for breeding purposes and the rearing of young, all are found here. The Park supplies what is really needed--a zoological reservation where big game may roam unmolested by the intrusion of man, rather than a zoological garden inclosed by fences, and the game fed or sustained more or less by artificial methods."[AV] [AV] "The Yellowstone National Park as a Game Preserve." See Appendix E. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Haynes, Photo., St. Paul._ Park Buffalo.] It is a matter of profound regret that the many years of lax administration in the Park to a great degree nullified its purposes as a game preserve. Killing of wild animals was not absolutely prohibited until 1883, and the restricted license previously in force was shamefully abused. Some of the larger species were greatly reduced in numbers, while in a few instances they were practically exterminated. In later years, the elk, antelope, deer, bear and beaver, have rapidly regained their former numbers, and there is no reason to apprehend their extinction. There are now no fewer than 30,000 elk in the Park. For the buffalo, mountain sheep, and a few other varieties, the prospect is good, though not so flattering. The number of buffalo does not probably exceed two hundred, and the possibility of their early extinction has led the Smithsonian Institution to allot a sum of money for the construction of a large inclosure in the Park, where at least a portion of the herd can be kept and be thus more carefully protected. Of the moose, mountain lion, wolverine, lynx, wild cat, marten, and otter the perpetuation is more doubtful. They were too much reduced in numbers during the game slaughtering era. The smaller species, such as porcupines, foxes, gophers, squirrels, woodchucks, and the like, flourish in great numbers. The tourist often feels a keen disappointment in passing through the Park in that he does not see more game, and he not infrequently expresses positive doubts of its existence. He should remember, however, that it is the nature of wild game to shun the haunts of man. If he will remain for some time in the Park and will frequent those regions remote from the tourists routes he will see game in plenty. In one important instance he rarely goes away disappointed. Bruin generally accommodates him. The fine instincts of that intelligent brute have shown him that it is much easier to get a living from the refuse about the hotels than to forage for it in the wilds of parsimonious nature. Nightfall, therefore, always brings him about to the great delight of the game-seeking tourist. The incidents of each season to which these bears unwittingly give rise are among the amusing features of tourist life in that region. The herbivorous game generally seek the seclusion of the hills in summer, but the deep snows of winter will not permit them to remain there. At that season they descend to the valleys, of which the most important are the Hayden, the Junction, and the Pelican Valleys, and those about the headwaters of the Snake River. The preservation of these tracts as a free winter pasturage is absolutely essential to the perpetuity of game in the Yellowstone Park. Although an ornithologist, in passing through the Park, would report a list of native birds so extensive as to lead one to think that they abound in great numbers, there is really a noticeable absence of the winged tribes. There are birds, of course, but in numbers, variety, and beauty not to be compared with those in lower altitudes. The only varieties that would attract attention from any but specialists are the larger birds, which are often quite plentiful about the lakes. There are great numbers of pelicans, gulls, fish-hawks, and cranes, with now and then a wild swan. Eagles are not uncommon, while hawks, woodpeckers, and robins are frequently seen. The sharp-tailed or willow grouse is common, and in the fall of the year astonishing numbers of wild geese and ducks frequent the marshes. There are many other varieties, conspicuous mainly for their paucity of numbers. Piscatorially speaking, the Yellowstone National Park has no rival as a paradise for the angler. The generous gift of nature and the admirable work of the United States Fish Commission, supplemented by the wise protection of the government, leave nothing to be desired by even the most devout follower of Isaak Walton. Not all the streams of the Park were originally stocked with fish. Where the waters leave the great volcanic plateau and fall to the underlying formations, the cataracts form impassable barriers to the ascent of fish. In the lower courses of all the streams there were native trout, but above the falls, with one exception, there were none. The exception of the Yellowstone River and Lake is a most interesting one. Why the Falls of the Yellowstone, the highest and most impassable of all, should apparently have proven no barrier, is at first a puzzling question. But the solution is to be found in Two-Ocean Pass. Across this remarkable divide fish may easily make their way, and the Yellowstone Lake is unquestionably stocked from this direction. We thus have an example, probably without parallel, of an extensive body of water on the Atlantic slope stocked by nature with fish from the Pacific. The trout of the Yellowstone Lake are to some extent infected with a disease which renders them unfit for eating. In earlier times particularly, this condition was generally prevalent. But more recently the disease seems to be disappearing, and in time it will probably die out altogether. In 1889 and 1890, the United States Fish Commission undertook to stock all the fishless streams in the Park, and planted about 83,000 yearling trout in the various streams and lakes. The varieties were Brook, Lake, Loch Leven, and Von Behr trout. Recent examination of these plants shows that all have taken decisive root, and that within a few years there will not be a hidden stream or lake in the Park which will be without its attractions for the sportsman. CHAPTER VII. FLORA OF THE YELLOWSTONE. The most conspicuous feature of the Park flora is the wide extent of forest growth which covers some eighty-four per cent of its area. This is the more noticeable because the surrounding country below the mountains is practically treeless. The Park forests consist almost exclusively of pine and fir. The trees are generally tall and slender and of little use for lumber. They are usually unattractive in appearance, although in some places among the mountains the spruce and fir attain a size, form and hue of foliage that are exceedingly beautiful. Among the several species may be noted the following: Black pine (_Pinus Murrayana_) so called from the dark hue of its foliage when seen in dense bodies. Red fir (_Pseudotsuga Douglasii_) the largest variety in the Park, sometimes attaining a diameter of five feet. Balsam (_Abies subalpina_). It flourishes near the snow fields and is the beauty of the forest. Spruce (_Pinus Engelmanni_). Like the preceding it flourishes at high altitudes. It is tall and slender, and is good for lumber. Red cedar (_Juniperus virginiana_) is found to a limited extent. Poplar or aspen (_Populus tremuloides_) flourishes among the sheltered foot-hills. Dwarf maple is occasionally found. Willow thickets abound in great abundance. Of these varieties the first is found more abundantly than all the others combined. In many places it has fallen down and strews the country to such an extent as to be absolutely impassable on horseback. There is very little timber of marketable value, and at first thought it would seem that nature has here lavished her energies in a most wasteful manner. But the great value of these forest growths, is their agency in the conservation of a water supply for the surrounding country. A glance at the map will show that the Park is in the midst of a vast arid region extending far into the surrounding states. The reclamation of these desert wastes, and their conversion into productive lands, can be accomplished by irrigation alone, and for this purpose the abundant streams which descend from the mountains are the indispensable water supply. From the summit of the Grand Teton, the range of vision covers probably the most remarkable group of river sources upon the earth. To the north rises the Missouri which flows three thousand miles through Montana, the Dakotas, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri. To the east rises the Yellowstone, which, after leaving the Park, flows four hundred miles through southern and eastern Montana until it unites with the Missouri. From the eastern foot-hills of the Absaroka and Shoshone Ranges flow the Wind and Big Horn Rivers through the extensive valleys of the same names in Wyoming and Montana. Southwardly, across the Wind River Range rises the Platte which flows eastward eight hundred miles through Wyoming and Nebraska. From the west flank of these mountains issue the tributaries of the Green River (afterward the Colorado) which flows through Wyoming, Utah and Arizona into the Gulf of California. Finally, interlaced with the sources of the Yellowstone, and the Missouri, are those of the Snake River which flows through Wyoming, Idaho and Washington into the Columbia, and thus reaches the Pacific. Not only do these streams rise in this limited area; they derive from it most of their waters. In the arid lowlands they receive but slight accessions, and often actually shrink under evaporation. It is therefore from a relatively small tract of country that the future water supply must come for portions of ten states in the great arid belt of the west. The conditions which nature has established around this remarkable fountain-head are admirably adapted for the creation and maintenance of an unlimited water supply. Over an area of more than 5,000 square miles there prevails an average altitude of perhaps 7,500 feet; sufficient to insure enormous annual snowfalls, but not so great as to prevent their complete melting in summer. But, that they may not melt too rapidly, the whole region is covered with a thick forest growth cutting off the intense rays of the summer sun, and covering the ground with a vegetable mold through which the surface waters filter but slowly. It is a conservative estimate, based upon observations in connection with road work in the Park, that these forests prolong the melting of the snows from four to six weeks. This condition greatly lessens the liability to sudden floods, and maintains a generous supply of water far into the summer. It has been estimated[AW] that from the Park alone, at low water, there flows per second 4,000 cubic feet of water. If the time ever comes when this supply is so far used as to threaten exhaustion, there will be found in the basin of Yellowstone Lake the most perfect facilities in the world for the construction of an artificial reservoir of almost limitless capacity at a comparatively insignificant cost. A dam could be thrown across the gorge at the first rapids in the Yellowstone below the Lake, and without injuring the natural condition of that region, could easily be made to quadruple the present capacity of the Lake. [AW] By Dr. William Hallock, United States Geological Survey. The Park with its contiguous area thus presents magnificent possibilities in the development of the surrounding country--possibilities of which its founders little dreamed, but which they unconsciously foreshadowed when they declared that this region should be forever set apart for the "benefit" as well as for the "enjoyment" of the people. Besides its wealth of trees, the Park produces other interesting flora. Interspersed among the forests and ornamenting the open glades are flowers and shrubs in endless profusion. We quote from the description of one of the early visitors: "The choke-cherry, the goose-berry, the buffalo-berry, and black and red currants, are found along the streams and in moist places of the middle and lower altitudes. The meadows and hill-sides are spangled with bright-colored flowers, among which may be noted the bee-larkspur, the columbine, the harebell, the lupine, the evening primrose, the aster, the painted cup, the gentian, and various kinds of euphorbia. It is not uncommon to find daises, buttercups, forget-me-nots, white-ground phlox, and other field flowers flourishing in profusion near the melting snow banks during the month of August. Scarcely a night throughout the year passes without frost, even though the temperature by day is over 80 F., so that all forms of vegetation in the Park grow and bloom under somewhat unusual conditions. Indeed, when ice forms in the water-pails of camping parties during the night, as often happens, and the petals of the flowers become crisp with frost; even then the blooms are not harmed, but thaw out bright and fresh when the hot sun touches them." The flowers form a most attractive feature of the Park, and give an interesting study of the way in which altitude and temperature affect well known varieties. It is only after a second look that one can trace in the mountain dandelion, huckleberry, and other species a resemblance to those of lower altitudes. The extreme shortness of the season causes vegetation to mature quickly, and before the flush of spring has disappeared from the leaves the palor of autumn makes its appearance. The mountain grasses are generally abundant in the open country and even in many places among the forests. The writer just quoted says: "The pasturage on the many open spaces is excellent, the mountain meadows being covered with a mat of nutritious grasses. The predominating variety is the bunch grass, upon which the horses of tourists generally subsist, keeping in good condition without the need of oats. Among other kinds, are the blue joint, fescue, and beard grasses, as well as Alpine timothy, all of which grow luxuriantly." The early autumns tinge the foliage of the willow parks and other groups of shrubbery with a wealth of color not often seen elsewhere. Even the frost on the grass upon sharp mornings seems to have a peculiar beauty, and one may trace terrestrial rainbows in all the perfection of those set in the sky. CHAPTER VIII. THE PARK IN WINTER. From the end of September to the end of May the Park is closed to the tourist; that is, the hotels do not receive guests, and camping is too precarious to be attempted. It is generally possible, however, to get into the Park as late as the middle or end of November, very rarely as late as Christmas. In May, the snowfalls are light, but the accumulations of the previous winter render traveling out of the question. With great difficulty the hotel company reaches its nearest hotels as early as May 16. Some of the roads remain impassable fully a month later. What the fall of snow is in the upper Park has never been determined; but at Mammoth Hot Springs, altitude 6,200 feet, an average for six years, from November to April inclusive, is ten feet per year, with a maximum of fifteen feet and a minimum of five. But on the Park Plateau, 1,000 to 1,500 feet higher, the fall is certainly much greater. No doubt its light depth aggregates twenty feet. The weight of this snow often destroys the railing of bridges and injures the buildings of the Park. The drifts accumulate in phenomenal magnitude. No matter how deep a ravine may be, the wind will pile the snow up in it until it is level with the surrounding country. Some of these drifts on the mountain sides are hundreds of feet deep and never entirely melt away. Even on the general plateau they last until the middle of July. The Cañon Hotel is almost buried every winter. The snow actually reaches the second story windows, and the drift behind the hotel would last throughout the summer were its melting not facilitated by cutting it in pieces with shovels. It verily seems that all the conditions of climate here conspire to make this region one of the snowiest in the world. Of course, general access to the Park under such conditions is wholly out of the question. Only on snow-shoes is it possible at all. The hotel company has a watchman at each of its buildings, who drags out a lonely existence through the two hundred days from November to May. He can talk over the telephone line with Mammoth Hot Springs, and at long intervals he receives a call, and perhaps mail, from "Telephone Pete," who travels the line to keep it in order. In some places, also, small squads of soldiers are stationed for the winter. The art of traveling by snow-shoe is a thoroughly interesting one, notwithstanding the fact that it is about the most difficult method of travel known and is rarely resorted to except from sheer necessity. The instrument used in the Park for this purpose is called a _ski_ (pronounced skee). It is a long slender strip of wood--ash, Norway pine, or hickory--some twelve feet long, four or five inches wide, and just thick enough to give needed strength. About midway of its length is a strap through which the toe is slipped and by which the foot pulls the _ski_ along. The bearing surface of the two _skis_ is about eight square feet, and holds the weight of the body even in soft snow without sinking more than a few inches. The bottom surface is polished smooth and then rubbed with a mixture of tallow and beeswax to make it free from friction. A pole is an important accompaniment, aiding to slide the traveler along and steady him on the _skis_. It also serves as a brake in descending steep hills, the traveler sitting astride it and bearing the rear end into the snow. Down hill work is indeed glorious. No express train can rival the _ski_ for speed. Its only drawback is danger of accident. On level country _ski_ traveling is simply walking on a board walk, except that the pedestrian carries the board with him, and makes and unmakes the road as fast as he goes. This is hard enough, especially if the snow is sticky, but when it comes to up hill traveling it is a truly laborious matter. If the hill is steep, there is danger of losing one's grip on the snow and sliding backward down the hill. Where the ascent is too steep to work up by direct forward movement, "corduroying" is resorted to. The traveler works up sidewise, stepping up a foot or so with the upper _ski_ and following with the lower. Generally this sidewise movement is combined with a slight forward movement, the _skis_ being pointed up hill at as steep an inclination as they will hold. The dress and equipment of the snow-shoe traveler are reduced to a minimum consistent with protection from the climate. This protection is really needed only at camping places, for the extraordinary exertion of traveling keeps the body in a continuous glow of warmth. Generally, warm woolen underwear, with canvas surface garments to keep out the wind and to shed snow, are the essential features of the dress. No overcoat is worn, but a tightly drawn belt takes its place. The feet are the weak point. "Natural wool socks, then a pair of Indian moccasins, then a pair of heavy gray army socks, then Arctic overshoes and leggings," is the description of an equipment actually used. A broad hat is frequently worn to keep snow out of the neck, and colored glasses are indispensable to prevent snow blindness. Baggage is limited to the strictest necessities, and is so packed that it will rest uniformly on the back from the shoulders to the hips. No eating of snow or drinking of water can be safely indulged in while _en route_. The traveler must go strictly "dry" between meals. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Haynes, Photo., St. Paul._ Geyser Basins in Winter.] Of course traveling of this sort is attended with much peril. A man must rely wholly on himself. No wagon or saddle is available if he is injured or sick. Heavy storms may blind him and cause him to lose his way. In short, a snow-shoe trip through the Park is an undertaking which requires a vigorous physique, a determined will, and a good fund of courage. Very few, except those whose duty has required it, have ever made the attempt. But it is the unanimous verdict of those who have, that, glorious as the Park is in summer, it is even more glorious in winter. One can readily understand this to be so. Evergreen forests never appear to better advantage than when laden with snow. Ice formations always enhance the beauty of water-falls.[AX] The rolling open valleys of the Park must be doubly beautiful when robed in drifted snow. It is a pity that this silvery landscape should forever remain excluded from the general view. [AX] For picture of Grand Cañon in winter, see p. 257. CHAPTER IX. THE PARK AS A HEALTH RESORT. The climate of the Yellowstone National Park, to any one with a fair reserve of health, is of the most beneficial kind. The general public will be interested in the subject only as it relates to that season when it is possible to visit the Park. For the six months beginning with May, the average temperature will not vary much from the following figures, Fahrenheit: Maximum. Minimum. Mean. May 77° 25° 49° June 87° 30° 55° July 91° 36° 64° August 90° 36° 61° September 85° 25° 54° October 72° 18° 41° These temperatures are for Mammoth Hot Springs. For the Park Plateau they should be diminished by not less than ten degrees. No month of the year in that region passes without ice-forming frosts. It will be seen that during June, July, August, and September, the thermometer makes excursions to the neighborhood of the nineties. This, however, is only in the middle of the day, and is due to the direct intensity of the sun's rays. No such heat pervades the general atmosphere. As soon as the sun is near setting, the temperature falls rapidly. The night temperature rarely gets above 55° or 60°, and averages scarcely half as much. The Park is noted for its delightful sleep-giving qualities, which constitute no small part of its claim as a health resort. Summer in the Park is comparatively short. It may not be strictly true that "the Park has only three seasons, July, August, and Winter," but it is true that July and August are the only two months free from the ordinary characteristics of winter. Snows are frequent in June and September, while May and October are well on the snowy side of the year. July and August are the Park summer. The weather is settled. The air is pure and bracing and not too cold. The long imprisoned vegetation bursts suddenly into full life and beauty, and in a short period take place all the changes which require months in lower altitudes. That there is life and health in that summer atmosphere, no one who has breathed it will deny. At the same time, as has already been hinted, it is healthful only for those who have some foundation to build upon. Persons suffering from any form of heart disease or advanced pulmonary trouble, or those greatly reduced in strength from any cause, would better stay away. The altitude and sharp air might prove too severe. A matter which has naturally attracted considerable inquiry is the therapeutic value of the mineral springs of the Park. The superstitious faith in the efficacy of mineral waters to restore health, which has characterized mankind in all ages, caused the physically afflicted to hail the discovery of that region as the promised fountain of new life. The first explorers to ascend the Gardiner in 1871 found "numbers of invalids" encamped on its banks, where the hot waters from Mammoth Hot Springs enter the stream; and it is recorded that "they were most emphatic in their favorable expressions in regard to their sanitary effects." But this impression was very evanescent. No one now goes to the Park because of its mineral waters. Nevertheless, it would be wholly premature to assume that there is no medicinal virtue in them. Certainly there is in the Park almost every variety of mineral spring; there are abundant and luxurious waters for bathing; and it is not at all improbable that the opportunities afforded in this region may yet be utilized to the great advantage of the public. But for health-giving qualities, the Park will never be dependent on its mineral waters. Its true value lies in other and more potent influences. The pure water of its snow-fed streams, the exhilarating atmosphere, the bracing effect of altitude, the wholesome fatigue of daily rambles over the rough, mountainous country, the fragrant odor of the pine boughs which every-where pervades the atmosphere, and, above all, the beautiful and varied scenery, which exalts the mind and diverts the attention from cares that are too often the real cause of physical ills--these are the true virtues of the Yellowstone Park as a health resort. CHAPTER X. ROADS, HOTELS, TRANSPORTATION. The Park, as is well known, is a very extensive tract of country, and its various points of interest are widely separated from each other. The question of ways and means for getting comfortably through it is an all-important one. If the roads are bad, the hotels ill-kept, or the transportation uncomfortable, no amount of grandeur of natural scenery can compensate for these defects. In making a tour of the Park, the visitor travels not less than 150 miles, sometimes considerably more, and remains in the Park about one week. He is thus quite at the mercy of those who have the management and control of those matters which form the subject of this chapter. The road system of the Park, when completed, will comprise a belt line, connecting the principal centers of interest; approaches, by which access may be had to the Park from different directions; side roads, leading from the main route to isolated points of interest; and trails, by which pack outfits can reach desired points to which regular roads will never be built. The belt line includes Mammoth Hot Springs, Norris Geyser Basin, Lower Geyser Basin, Upper Geyser Basin, the Yellowstone Lake, the Grand Cañon, and Junction Valley. A cross-road passes from Norris to the Grand Cañon. The approaches are not all yet selected, but in time there will be at least one on each side of the Park. Trails are important adjuncts of the Park road system. They were long ago selected and opened up, and they are of great importance in patroling the Park. They are also much used by those tourists who remain for a considerable time. The mileage of the completed road system will be about as follows: Belt line 163 miles. Approaches 105 " Side roads 22 " --- Total mileage of Park system, exclusive of trails 290 " In regard to construction, it is hardly necessary to say that nothing but the best macadamized roads should be built. The inherent difficulties of the work are great. The soil in many places is of the most wretched character. The country is exceedingly rough. The streams are almost without number. The snow lies on some of the roads until the middle of June. The mud in the wet season is bad, and the dust of the dry season is worse. The soft volcanic rocks, which so generally prevail, make poor road metal. But all these difficulties can be overcome, if Congress will but provide for a systematic completion of the project. At present, the annual allowance is too small to promise any thing like good work, and it will be many years before the hopes of the government engineers in the matter will be realized. The work itself is as attractive as ever falls to the lot of the road engineer, and it is doubtful if another opportunity exists to develop a road system which, if properly done, will reflect so much credit upon the government building it. It is used by visitors from all lands. It passes through every variety of scenery. It presents every known problem of road engineering. In short, it combines all the elements to make it, when complete, one of the noted highways of the world. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Gandy._ Kingman Pass. (Showing roadway along side of cliff.)] It is not impossible that the tourist may yet be carried by boat from the west shore of the Lake to near the head of the Falls, nor that a bridge worthy of its surroundings--an arch of the native rock so studied as to simulate a natural bridge--will span the river near the Upper Falls and give access to the many splendid views from the right bank of the Grand Cañon. The tourist transportation of the Park is done mostly by coach, ordinarily with four horses each. Surreys and saddle horses are also provided when desired. The present system is the result of long development, and is very satisfactory. With proper roads, it would be all that could be desired. Electric transportation in the Park has often been suggested, but there are certain grave objections, to be discussed in a later chapter, which will probably always prevent its introduction. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Haynes, Photo., St. Paul._ Yellowstone Park Coach.] When the hotel system of the Park is complete, there will be no fewer than seven good houses and three lunch stations along the belt line and approaches. The hotels will be at Mammoth Hot Springs, Norris Geyser Basin, Lower Geyser Basin, Upper Geyser Basin, Yellowstone Lake, Grand Cañon, and Junction Valley. The present management of the hotels has developed into a very efficient system. It is conducted by a single company whose business headquarters is at Mammoth Hot Springs, from which point all supplies are shipped. A telegraph line connects it with points in the interior and with the outside world. The manager of each hotel knows in advance the number of guests he must provide for, and the convenience of the tourist is thus carefully arranged beforehand. With a reasonable extension and development of the present system, the Park will be admirably equipped in this respect. Besides the regular tourists--those who make the usual trip, stopping at the hotels--there are hundreds who pass through the Park with camping outfits. During the months of July and August and early September, this is by no means an undesirable method. It is less comfortable, to be sure, than the ordinary method, but at the same time it is less expensive and more independent. In the latter part of August, the Park fairly swarms with these camping parties. They give the authorities plenty to do, for the danger of forest conflagrations from their camp fires is very great. CHAPTER XI. ADMINISTRATION OF THE PARK. The administration of the Park is assigned by law to the Secretary of the Interior, who delegates his authority to a local Superintendent. By statute, also, the Secretary of the Interior is authorized to call upon the Secretary of War for such details of troops as may be necessary to protect the Park. Owing to the failure of Congress to provide for a civilian Superintendent and police force, since 1886, the Secretary of the Interior has found it necessary to avail himself of this second statute, so that the present working of the Park administration is on this wise: An army officer, commanding the troops of the Park, is the representative of the Secretary of the Interior, and is called the Acting Superintendent of the Park, on the assumption that the old _régime_ of civilian Superintendents is only temporarily suspended. The Superintendent is charged with the enforcement of the rules and regulations provided for the government of the Park. As to all such matters, he receives his instructions direct from the Secretary of the Interior, and he annually submits to that official a report upon the condition of the Park. For a police force, he has two troops of cavalry, which he stations throughout the Park as necessity requires. He has also one civilian scout, paid for from the appropriation for the army, whose duty it is to patrol the 5,000 square miles, more or less, in the original reservation and the forest reserve![AY] [AY] A portion of the latest appropriation for the Park is authorized to be expended in the employment of additional scouts. This policy ought to be continued. The specific duties which form the burden of the Superintendent's work are: 1. To see that all leases and privileges granted by the Secretary of the Interior to private parties are strictly observed, and that all business conducted in the Park is in pursuance of government authority and in accordance with specific conditions and limitations. 2. The protection of the Park from vandalism. This is a very important matter. The pardonable desire to carry off specimens from the beautiful formations, and the unpardonable craze to cover them with individual names, would, if unrestrained, soon quite destroy what nature, through long ages, has so laboriously produced. 3. The protection of game. All around the Park are hordes of law-breakers, who let pass no opportunity to destroy the surviving species. To avert this calamity requires the utmost vigilance of the Park police. 4. The preservation of forests. This has always been the most onerous and trying duty of Park officials. The importance of the forests is so far-reaching that their destruction would be a public calamity. No exertion can be considered too great which may prevent it. 5. The construction of roads and bridges in the Park. Other functions which the Superintendent fills are the social duties of his position, which at certain seasons exact much of his attention. Official visitors depend upon him entirely for pilotage through the Park. Private parties bring letters soliciting favors, and on the whole he finds his time well occupied with these pleasant, though sometimes onerous, duties. The office building of the Superintendent, who is also commanding officer of Fort Yellowstone, is at Mammoth Hot Springs. A pretty little garrison is built upon the white formation opposite the hotel, and in winter, the whole military force, except small detachments in various places, is gathered at that point. At Mammoth Hot Springs are also located the post-office and jail, and at this point the judicial officers of the Park hold court to try offenses against the Park statutes and regulations. CHAPTER XII. A TOUR OF THE PARK. _Preliminary._ In the following description there will be mentioned in succinct outline all the notable features of interest in the Yellowstone National Park. For more detailed information, the reader is referred to the list of names in "Appendix A." The necessary limit of space forbids any thing like extended description, even if the inherent difficulties of such a task would permit. Captain Ludlow has well stated the nature of these difficulties: "The Park scenery, as a whole," he says, "is too grand, its scope too immense, its details too varied and minute, to admit of adequate description, save by some great writer, who, with mind and pen equally trained, can seize upon the salient points, and, with just discrimination, throw into proper relief the varied features of mingled grandeur, wonder, and beauty." Of the many who have attempted, with pen or pencil, to reproduce the wonders of the Yellowstone, no one has yet completely satisfied these important requirements. The writer, for his part, will modestly decline any such undertaking, and, like that pioneer explorer, Folsom, will confine his descriptions "to the bare facts." He will, however, occasionally call to aid those who have seen and written of these wonders. To the early explorers, in particular, who entered this region before it became generally known, its strange phenomena appealed with an imaginative force which the guide-book tourist of to-day can hardly realize. This may account for the fact that some of these explorers, who have never, before or since, put pen to paper with any literary purpose in view, have left in their narratives strokes of word painting which the most gifted writer would find it difficult to excel. The season selected for the tour will be the early days of July. The rain and snow and chilly air, not uncommon in June, are gone. The drought and smoke of August and September are still remote. Even mosquitoes, so amazingly plentiful at certain seasons (Langford found them on the very summit of the Grand Teton), have not yet made their appearance. It is late enough, however, to call forth in their richest glory the magnificent profusion of flowers which every-where abound in the Park. The air is at its best, full of life and energy, and so clear that it confounds distances and gives to objects, though far away, a distinctness quite unknown in lower altitudes. The skies, as they appear at this season, surpass the sunny skies of Italy, and the tourist will find in their empyreal depths a beauty and fascination forever lacking in the dingy air of civilization. In short, the open air stage trips through that rich mountain atmosphere will form one of the most attractive and invigorating features of the tour. Without further preliminary, the rôle of guide will now be assumed, and the tourist will be conducted through the wonders of this celebrated country, following, over most of the distance, the present general route. CHAPTER XIII. A TOUR OF THE PARK. _North Boundary to Mammoth Hot Springs._ [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Gandy._ Gardiner River.] Distance five miles. The road for most of the way lies in the valley of the Gardiner. The principal points of interest en route are: _The Junction of the Yellowstone and Gardiner Rivers_ which determines the north boundary of the Park. It lies in the State of Montana, the state line being two miles further south. The old prospector's route bore off at this point and kept up the valley of the Yellowstone. Folsom took this route in 1869; so did the Wasburn party in 1870. Hayden and Barlow in 1871 kept along the Gardiner and thus saw the Mammoth Hot Springs. _The Gardiner Cañon_ is a precipitous valley of loose gray walls suggestive of danger from falling rocks. The nests of fish-hawks here and there crown detached pinnacles. The most striking feature of the cañon is the river, a typical mountain torrent of such rapid fall over its rocky bed that it is a continuous succession of foaming cascades. Some four miles up the river, at the point where the road leaves it, the tourist gets his first sight of any indication of subterranean heat. This is a large stream of hot water, in early times called the _Boiling River_, issuing from an opening in the rocks and emptying directly into the river. It is formed of the collected waters of Mammoth Hot Springs which find their way to this point through underground passages. It was here that "numbers of invalids" were encamped when Hayden and Barlow saw the spot in 1871. From the last crossing of the Gardiner a winding road, which rises 600 feet in its length of one mile, brings the tourist to the world-renowned _Mammoth Hot Springs_, and to the administrative and business headquarters of the Park. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories._ Mammoth Hot Springs. Bunsen Peak in the distance.] [Illustration: _U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories._ Pulpit Terrace.] First in importance, among the many points of interest accessible from this locality, are the _Hot Springs Terraces_. These have been built one upon another until the present active portion constitutes a hill rising 300 feet above the site of the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel. The formation about these springs, it will be remembered, is calcareous, and to this fact is due its distinctive character, so different from the silica formations which prevail nearly every-where else in the Park. The overhanging bowls which these deposits build up are among the finest specimens of Nature's work in the world, while the water which fills them is of that peculiar beauty to be found only in thermal springs. Speaking of this feature Dr. Hayden says: "The wonderful transparency of the water surpasses any thing of the kind I have ever seen in any other portion of the world. The sky, with the smallest cloud that flits across it, is reflected in its clear depths, and the ultramarine colors, more vivid than the sea, are greatly heightened by constant, gentle vibrations. One can look down into the clear depths and see, with perfect distinctness, the minutest ornament on the inner sides of the basins; and the exquisite beauty of the coloring and the variety of forms baffle any attempt to portray them either with pen or pencil."[AZ] [AZ] Page 69 Hayden's Report for 1871. See Appendix E. _Cleopatra Spring_, _Jupiter Terrace_, _Pulpit Terrace_, _Minerva Terrace_, the _Narrow Gauge Terrace_--an incongruous name for a long fissure spring--the _White Elephant_, another fissure spring, and the _Orange Geyser_, a very pretty formation, dome-shaped, with a pulsating spring in the top, are among the most interesting of the active springs. _Liberty Cap_ is the cone of an extinct spring and stands forty-five feet high and twenty feet through at the base. _Bath Lake_ is a warm pool of considerable size, much used in bathing. Scattered over the formation in every direction are caves, springs, steam-vents, handsome deposits, and curiosities without number to attract and detain the visitor. Many of them, like _Cupid's Cave_, the _Devil's Kitchen_, and _McCartney's Cave_, are of much interest. In the last-mentioned cave, or, more properly, crater, an elk fell one winter when the crater was level full with light snow. His antlers caught between the sides of the crater, holding him in a suspended position until he perished. He was found the following spring by Mr. McCartney. Besides the hot springs features, there are other important objects of interest in this neighborhood. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Haynes, Photo., St. Paul._ Golden Gate.] [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Ingersoll._ Osprey Falls.] _Lookout Hill_ is a prominent rounded elevation opposite the hotel. Upon its summit is a block-house, built by Colonel Norris, in 1879, as a headquarters building for the Superintendent. The awkward and inconvenient location was selected for its defensible qualities. It will be remembered that the two previous years, 1877 and 1878, had witnessed the Nez Percé and Bannock incursions into the Park. _The Falls and Cañon of the Middle Gardiner_, distant four miles from the hotel, are the finest scenery of the kind in the Park, excepting only the Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone. _Bunsen Peak_ is a conspicuous summit located between the Middle and West Forks of the Gardiner. Its western face terminates in _Cathedral Rock_, a bold cliff that overhangs the valley of _Glen Creek_. _Golden Gate_ and _Kingman Pass_ are names applied to the picturesque cañon of Glen Creek. It is justly considered one of the gems of the Park scenery. The skillful engineering feat of carrying the tourist route through this difficult cañon was performed by Lieutenant D. C. Kingman, of the Corps of Engineers, U. S. A., in 1884-5. _Rustic Falls_ is a handsome cataract near the head of the pass. The best view in this vicinity is to be had from above the pass, looking through it toward Mt. Everts. Besides Bunsen Peak, the tourist will find _Terrace Mountain_, _Sepulcher Mountain_, and _Electric Peak_ ever ready to satisfy whatever ambition for mountain climbing he may possess. The _East Gardiner Cañon_ affords some fine views, and the falls and rapids at its head are extremely beautiful. It is through this cañon that access can most easily be had to the summit of _Mt. Everts_. This last name is given to a feature which bears almost no resemblance to the ordinary conception of a mountain. It is simply a broad table-land extending from the Yellowstone south and terminating in the lofty and conspicuous bluff just across the Gardiner from Mammoth Hot Springs. The mountain derives its chief popular interest from the Everts episode, which is described in the Appendix under "Mt. Everts." It is also of great interest to scientific inquirers. The view from the prominent point opposite the forks of the Gardiner is very fine. The whole Mammoth Hot Springs formation and the group of buildings near it; the cañons and falls of the three Gardiners; and the array of mountain peaks across the valley, form a rare and attractive landscape. Mt. Everts and the surrounding country are the home of the Park antelope and mountain sheep. As explained elsewhere, Mammoth Hot Springs is the official and business headquarters of the Park. The handsome garrison of Fort Yellowstone is built on the white formation, and with the hotel and transportation buildings, the post-office, and various other structures, gives the place a village appearance not to be seen in any other part of the Park. CHAPTER XIV. A TOUR OF THE PARK. _Mammoth Hot Springs to Norris Geyser Basin._ Distance, twenty miles. The first object of interest, after ascending the long hill above the Springs (four miles), is the _Gallatin Range_ of mountains, which bursts into full view upon emerging from Kingman Pass. Its various peaks--_Joseph_, _Gray_, _Bannock_, _Quadrant_, _the Dome_, _Mt. Holmes_, and others--still retain the heavy snow drifts of the previous winter. Some of these peaks remain in sight for thirty miles along the tourist route. _Swan Lake_ (4.5 miles) is a little pond on the right of the road. _Willow Park_ (8 miles) comprises the valley of the lower course of Obsidian Creek. It is a dense growth of willows, and forms an attractive sight, either in the fresh foliage of spring or in its autumnal coloring. _Apollinaris Spring_ (10 miles) is on the left of the roadway, in a pine forest. Tourists generally stop and try its water. _Obsidian Cliff_ (12 miles) is composed of a kind of volcanic glass, black as anthracite, which abounds at this point in enormous masses. The Indians once quarried implements of war and the chase here, and many fine arrowheads have been picked up by explorers. The building of the first road along the base of this cliff has some historic celebrity, owing to the novel method employed. It was done by Colonel Norris, who thus describes it: [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Haynes, Photo., St. Paul._ Obsidian Cliff and Beaver Lake.] "Obsidian there rises like basalt in vertical columns many hundreds of feet high, and countless huge masses had fallen from this utterly impassable mountain into the hissing hot spring margin of an equally impassable lake, without either Indian or game trail over the glistering fragments of Nature's glass, sure to severely lacerate. As this glass barricade sloped from some 200 or 300 feet high against the cliff at an angle of some 45° to the lake, we--with the slivered fragments of timber thrown from the heights--with huge fires, heated and expanded, and then men, well screened by blankets held by others, by dashing cold water, suddenly cooled and fractured the large masses. Then, with huge levers, steel bars, sledge, pick, and shovels, and severe laceration of at least the hands and faces of every member of the party, we rolled, slid, crushed, and shoveled one-fourth of a mile of good wagon road midway along the slope; it being, so far as I am aware, the only road of native glass upon the continent."[BA] [BA] Annual Report Superintendent of the Park, 1878. The reader may now be inclined to take issue with our judgment of Norris' practical turn for road building. He will at least readily indorse our opinion of the old mountaineer's literary ability. (See "Norris Peak," Appendix A.) _Beaver Lake_ has its outlet opposite the base of Obsidian Cliff. It is formed by ancient beaver dams, now entirely overgrown with vegetation. The old dam extends in a sinuous line entirely across the valley, and, although apparently less than a yard thick, is quite impervious to water. The lake is a great resort for water fowl later in the year. _Roaring Mountain_ (15.5 miles) is a high hill on the left of the road, with a powerful steam vent near the summit. Nothing which can now be heard from the road would suggest the name. _Twin Lakes_ (16 miles) are two exquisitely beautiful ponds, if only seen in a good sunlight and with a tranquil surface. The peculiar green of the water is perhaps to be seen nowhere except in the National Park. A most singular feature of these two lakes is that, although so close together, they never simultaneously exhibit the same colors. _The Frying Pan_ (17.75 miles) is a small basin of geyserite, on the right of the road, vigorously stewing away in a manner which reminds one of a kitchen spider in operation. After passing Obsidian Cliff evidences of hot spring action constantly increase, until they reach their climax in the _Norris Geyser Basin_. There are but few other places in the Park where the odor of sulphur is so general and offensive as on this portion of the tourist route. Norris Geyser Basin is clearly among the more recent volcanic developments of this region. Its rapid encroachment upon the forest growth, and the frequent appearance of new springs and the disappearance of others, indicate its relatively recent origin. Compared with the Firehole Geyser Basin it is of minor importance; but coming first to the notice of the tourist it receives a large amount of attention. It has only one prominent geyser, the _Monarch_, which throws a column about 100 feet high. The _Constant_ is visible from the roadway in the bottom of a large tract of geyserite which is unsafe for pedestrians. It makes up in frequency of action what it lacks in power. The most noteworthy feature of the basin has received the appropriate name _Hurricane_. It is a prodigious steam vent whose violent gusts bear a striking resemblance to the driving blasts of a tempest. It also discharges a large amount of water. The _Black Growler_, close by the road side, is a similar phenomenon. Among the less important features of this basin may be mentioned the _Congress_, _Constant_, _Arsenic_, _Echinus_, _Fearless_, _Pearl_, _Vixen_, _Minute Man_, and _Mew Crater_, all geysers; the _Emerald Pool_, a quiescent spring; and the _Locomotive_ and _Mud Geyser_, boiling springs. From the Norris Hotel a drive of three miles up the Gibbon River, on the cross road leading to the Grand Cañon, carries the tourist to _Virginia Cascade_, a unique and picturesque water-fall in a rocky cañon of considerable beauty. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Haynes, Photo., St. Paul._ Black Growler.] [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Haynes, Photo., St. Paul._ Gibbon Cañon.] CHAPTER XV. A TOUR OF THE PARK. _Norris Geyser Basin to Lower Geyser Basin._ Distance, 20 miles. The road follows the Gibbon River to within three miles of its mouth, then crosses a point of land to the Firehole, and ascends the right bank of the latter stream to the Lower Basin. _Gibbon Meadows_ (3 miles) is a broad open bottom, sometimes called Elk Park, just at the head of Gibbon Cañon. The _Gibbon Paint Pots_ (4 miles) are on the left of the road, near the head of the cañon, and one-fourth of a mile away. _Monument Geyser Basin_ (4.5 miles) is on the high hill just west of the upper end of Gibbon Cañon. It is an interesting spot, but rarely visited owing to its inaccessibility. It was discovered and named by Col. Norris. The _Gibbon Cañon_ (4.5 to 10.5 miles) affords the tourist one of the pleasantest rides in the Park. The mountains rise boldly from the river on either side, and present several particularly fine views. The road lies close to the river's edge, and the stream is an important adjunct to the scenery. _Beryl Spring_ (5 miles) is close to the road on the side opposite the river. It boils violently and discharges a large amount of water. The steam from it frequently obscures the roadway. The _Soda and Iron Spring_ (7.5 miles), like Apollinaris Spring already mentioned, is a frequent stopping-place for tourists. _Gibbon Falls_ (8 miles) is a water-fall of very irregular outline, but withal one of much beauty. The road hangs on the side of the cliff far above it, and affords a lovely view of the forest-covered valley below. About half way between the point where the road leaves the Gibbon River and that where it touches the Firehole, is the junction of the belt line with the western approach which enters the Park by way of Madison Cañon. A beautiful cascade, some distance from the tourist route, may be found on the Firehole River about a mile above its mouth. Just as the road (the old Norris Road) commences to descend from the high plateau between the Gibbon and the Firehole, a glimpse is had of the _Teton Mountains_. They are among the most striking in the entire Rocky Mountain Region. For half a century after the overland journey of the Astorians, they were the chief landmarks in that trackless wilderness, and long bore the name of Pilot Knobs. They are distinctly visible from every important peak in the Park, although they are themselves outside its limits. As seen from the point, at which we have arrived, they are fifty miles away. They rise precipitously from the west shore of _Jackson Lake_ (also outside of the Park) and with it form a scene of grandeur which ought to be included in the reservation. In 1872, Langford and Stevenson ascended the Grand Teton, being the first white men ever to reach the summit.[BB] [BB] Some doubt has been expressed in recent years as to the actual accomplishment of this feat. It probably arose from an erroneous statement by Doctor Hayden in his report for 1872 that the granite inclosure was found "on the top of the Grand Teton." As a matter of fact it was found on a point somewhat lower, and is clearly so stated by Mr. Langford both in an official report to Dr. Hayden (Hayden, 1872, p. 89) and in his "Ascent of Mt. Hayden" (Scribner's, June, 1873, p. 145). A subsequent explorer, who ascended the mountain to the site of this principal object of interest, came to the conclusion, doubtless as a result of the erroneous account given by Hayden, that this was what Langford and Stevenson called the summit. But the references above given, and a more detailed and circumstantial account furnished by Mr. Langford at the writer's request, effectually demolish this theory. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Haynes, Photo., St. Paul._ The Teton Range. The Grand Teton in the center.] They were astonished to find, on a point but little lower than the main summit, a rude shelter of granite slabs evidently put in place by human hands ages ago. _Nez Percé Creek_ (18 miles) is the largest branch of the Firehole, and is of historic interest from its connection with the Indian campaign of 1877. It forms the north boundary of the _Lower Geyser Basin_. Two miles beyond it is the _Fountain Hotel_. To attempt any thing like a detailed description of the Firehole Geyser regions would be intolerable alike to reader and author. Of the objects of interest, any one of which in other localities would attract marked attention, there are several thousand. In the present description, therefore, only the more important features will be noticed--those notable objects to see which is an indispensable part of any well ordered tour of the Park. The _Fountain Geyser_ is a typical example of the first class of geysers described in a previous chapter. Its proximity to the hotel (one-fourth mile) causes it to be much visited. _The Mammoth Paint Pots_, a little way east of the Fountain, are probably the most prominent example of this class of phenomena in the Park. The _Great Fountain Geyser_ lies a mile and a half south-east of the Fountain. It is the chief wonder of the Lower Basin, and, in some respects, the most remarkable geyser in the Park. Its formation is quite unlike that of any other. At first sight the visitor is tempted to believe that some one has here placed a vast pedestal upon which to erect a monument. It is a broad, circular table about two feet high, composed entirely of hard siliceous deposit. In its surface are numerous pools molded and ornamented in a manner quite unapproached, at least on so large a scale, in any other part of the Park. In the center of the pedestal, where the monument ought to stand, is a large irregular pool of great depth, full of hot water, forming, to all appearances, a lovely quiescent spring. At times of eruption, the contents of this spring are hurled bodily upward to a height sometimes reaching 100 feet. The torrent of water which follows the prodigious down-pouring upon the face of the pedestal, flows away in all directions over the white geyserite plain. No visitor to the Yellowstone can afford to miss the Great Fountain Geyser. In this vicinity are several of the handsomest springs in the Park. One in particular lies just across the hot stream which flows a little to the south of the Great Fountain. It is shaped like an egg set endwise in the ground with the upper part of the shell broken off. It is an exquisite trifle. In a small valley, extending to the north-east from the Great Fountain, are several objects worthy of notice. One of these is an immense hot lake, by far the largest in the Park. _Steady Geyser_ and _Young Hopeful_, near the head of the valley, are not remarkable in this land of geysers. The principal attraction of the locality is what has come to be called the _Firehole_. It is at the extreme upper end of the valley, difficult to find, and unsatisfactory to visit when the wind agitates the water surface. It is a large hot spring from the bottom of which, to all appearances, a light colored flame is constantly issuing, only to be extinguished in the water before it reaches the surface. At times it has a distinct ruddy tinge and it always flickers back and forth like the lambent flame of a torch. When seen under favorable conditions, the illusion is perfect, and the beholder is sure that he has at last caught a glimpse of the hidden fires which produce the weird phenomena of this region. But it is only illusion. Through a fissure in the rock gas or superheated steam escapes and divides the water, just as bubbles do on a smaller scale. The reflection from the surface thus formed accounts for the appearance, which is intensified by the black background formed by the sides and bottom of the pool. The Lower Geyser Basin has an area of thirty square miles. Conspicuous among its topographical features are the _Twin Buttes_, two prominent peaks west of the river which dominate the entire basin. A little way south of these is _Fairy Fall_, a pretty cascade 250 feet high. There will be included in this chapter, as more properly belonging to it than to the next, a description of the _Midway Geyser Basin_. Its principal interest lies in the stupendous character of its phenomena. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Haynes, Photo., St. Paul._ Excelsior Geyser.] _Excelsior Geyser_, as a dynamic agent, has no equal in the Park. It is really a water volcano, and its eruptions have nothing of the characteristic display of a genuine geyser. Its crater is a vast seething cauldron close by the brink of the Firehole River, into which, in non-eruptive periods even, it pours 4,000 gallons of water per minute. The shape of the crater is irregular. Its dimensions are about 330 by 200 feet, and 20 feet deep. It was not known to be a geyser until 1878, and did not really disclose its true character until the winter of 1881. During the remainder of that year and 1882, it gave continuous exhibitions of its power. Its water column was more than 50 feet in diameter, and at times rose to the enormous height of 250 feet. At such times, it doubled the volume of water in the Firehole River. Its eruptions were frequently accompanied by the ejection of large rocks. A second period of activity took place in 1888, since which time it has remained inactive. _Prismatic Lake_ is the most perfect spring of its kind in the world. It rests on the summit of a self-built mound, sloping very gently in all directions. Down this slope the overflow from the spring descends in tiny rivulets, every-where interlaced with each other. A map of the mound resembles a spider web, with the spider (the spring) in the center. The pool is 250 by 300 feet in size. Over the lake hangs an ever-present cloud of steam, which itself often bears a crimson tinge, reflected from the waters below. The steam unfortunately obscures the surface of the lake, and one involuntarily wishes for a row-boat, in which to explore its unseen portions. Wherever visible, there is a varied and wonderful play of colors, which fully justifies the name. _Turquoise Spring_ is another large pool, 100 feet in diameter, and rivals Prismatic Lake in the beauty of its coloring. The Midway Geyser Basin contains hundreds of other springs, some of them very beautiful, but the Basin is mainly noted for the three features just described. CHAPTER XVI. A TOUR OF THE PARK. _Lower Geyser Basin to Upper Geyser Basin._ Distance, nine miles. Road follows the Firehole River. Midway Geyser Basin, already described, is passed four miles out. No other object of interest is met until the visitor actually arrives at the _Upper Basin_. This locality is probably the most popular with the tourist of any in the Park. Its two rivals, the Grand Cañon and the Yellowstone Lake, are so unlike it as not to admit of any comparison. It is the home of the genus _geyser_, as seen in its highest development. There are fifteen examples of the first magnitude and scores of less important ones.[BC] The quiescent pools and springs are also numerous and of great beauty. [BC] For list of names of geysers, with heights of eruptions, see Appendix A, VII. The first important feature _en route_ is the _Biscuit Basin_, which is reached by a side road leading to the west bank of the Firehole River. It contains a fine geyser and several beautiful springs. The most interesting are the _Jewell Geyser_ and the _Sapphire Pool_. Near this locality is the _Mystic Falls_, a fine cascade, on the Little Firehole River. _Artemesia Geyser_ comes next to the attention of the tourist. It has been known as a geyser only since 1886. It is on the right of the roadway, at a considerably lower level. [Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF THE UPPER GEYSER BASIN _Opp. page 228._ ] The _Morning Glory_ is a little further up stream. In this beautiful object the quiescent pool is at its best. Its exquisite bordering and the deep cerulean hue of its transparent waters make it, and others like it, objects of ceaseless admiration. The _Fan Geyser_ is close by the Firehole on the east bank, not far above the Morning Glory. The _Riverside_ is also on the east bank at the point where the road crosses the river. It is an inconspicuous object when not in eruption, and one would scarcely suspect it of being a geyser. It spouts obliquely across the river, and not, like most geysers, vertically. [Illustration: _Gandy._ Grotto Geyser Cone.] Next in order, after crossing the river to the Westbank, is the _Grotto_, remarkable for its irregular and cavernous crater. A little further on, close to the river, stands the broken crater of one of the Park's greatest geysers, the _Giant_. Lieutenant Doane compared its crater to a "huge shattered horn." A few hundred feet further up stream, still close to the river, is the _Oblong_. Directly across the road, but a short distance away, is the _Splendid_, well worthy of its name; and near it, sometimes playing simultaneously, is the _Comet_. To the westward from the Firehole, nearly on the divide between it and Iron Creek, is a lovely spring, called the _Punch-bowl_. Across the divide in the _Iron Creek_ valley is the _Black Sand Basin_, a unique but beautiful pool. Near it is another attraction, _Specimen Lake_, so named from an abundance of specimens of partly petrified wood. The limit of curiosities in this direction is _Emerald Pool_, which competent judges pronounce to be the finest quiescent spring in the Park. Returning to the Firehole by a different route, we pass a large spring or geyser known as the _Three Crater Spring_. Its three craters are connected by narrow water ways, making one continuous pool, though fed from three sources. A thousand feet to the north, stands the most imposing crater in the Park, that of the _Castle_ geyser. It is frequently seen in moderate eruption, but rarely when doing its best. As ordinarily seen, it throws a column of water only 50 or 60 feet, but at times it plays as high as 150 or 200 feet. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Haynes, Photo., St. Paul._ Castle Geyser.] [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _First sketch ever made._[BD] Castle Geyser Cone.] [BD] See foot note, page 168. Crossing the river to its right bank, nearly opposite the Castle, there are found within a narrow compass three noted geysers, the _Sawmill_, _Turban_, and _Grand_. Of these, the last is by far the finest, and ranks among the very greatest geysers in the world. It was not seen by the Washburn Party, in 1870, but it seems to have been the first geyser to welcome to the Upper Basin the Hayden and Barlow parties in 1871. Captain Barlow says of its eruption:[BE] "This grand fountain continued to play for several minutes. When dying down, I approached to obtain a closer view of the aperture whence had issued such a powerful stream. A sudden gush of steam drove me away, following which the water was again impelled upward and upward, far above the steam, till it seemed to have lost the controlling force of gravity, and that it would never cease to rise. The roar was like the sound of a tornado, but there was no apparent effort; a steady stream, very graceful and perfectly vertical, except as a slight breeze may have waved it to and fro. Strong and smooth, it continued to ascend like the stream from a powerful steam fire-engine. We were all lost in astonishment at the sudden and marvelous spectacle. The proportions of the fountain were perfect. The enthusiasm of the party was manifested in shouts of delight. Under the excitement of the moment, it was estimated to be from three to five hundred feet in height." [BE] Page 25, "Reconnaissance of the Yellowstone River."--See Appendix E. Further up the river on the same side and at some distance back, are the _Lion_, _Lioness_ and the two _Cubs_, an interesting group, including one notable geyser. Half way up a high mound of geyserite which covers a large area on the north side of the river, is an exquisitely beautiful formation called, from its appearance, the _Sponge_. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Haynes, Photo., St. Paul._ The Bee Hive Geyser.] On the top of the mound is another of the great geysers, thought by the Washburn Party to be the greatest in the world, the _Giantess_. It belongs to the class of fountain geysers, and when not in action strongly resembles a quiescent spring. Its eruptions are infrequent and irregular, but when it does play it is a sight not to be forgotten. Mr. Langford thus describes the first eruption known to have been seen by white men:[BF] "We were standing on the side of the geyser nearest the sun, the gleams of which filled the sparkling columns of water and spray with myriad rainbows, whose arches were constantly changing--dipping and fluttering hither and thither, and disappearing only to be succeeded by others, again and again, amid the aqueous column, while the minute globules, into which the spent jets were diffused when falling, sparkled like a shower of diamonds, and around every shadow which the denser clouds of vapor, interrupting the sun's rays, cast upon the column, could be seen a luminous circle, radiant with all the colors of the prism, and resembling the halo of glory represented in paintings as encircling the head of Divinity. All that we had previously witnessed seemed tame in comparison with the perfect grandeur and beauty of this display." [BF] "The Wonders of the Yellowstone." See Appendix E. Between the Giantess and the river is the _Bee Hive_, also one of the most prominent geysers. The symmetry of its cone is only surpassed by the regularity of its water column. From an artistic point of view it is the most perfect geyser in the Park. Its slender jet attains a great height and is vertical and symmetrical throughout. Crossing again to the west bank of the stream and ascending to the very head of the basin, we come to the last and most important of the geysers, _Old Faithful_. Any other geyser, any five other geysers, could be erased from the list better than part with Old Faithful. The Giant, Giantess, Grand, Splendid, and Excelsior, have more powerful eruptions. The Bee Hive is more artistic. The Great Fountain has a more wonderful formation. But Old Faithful partakes in a high degree of all these characteristics, and, in addition, has the invaluable quality of uniform periodicity of action. It is in fact the most perfect of all known geysers. To it fell the honor of welcoming civilized man to this region. It was the first geyser named. It stands at the head of the basin and has been happily called "The Guardian of the Valley." It is located in the center of an oblong mound, 145 by 215 feet at the base, 20 by 54 feet at the summit, and about 12 feet high. The tube, which seems to have originated in a fissure in the rock, has an inside measurement of 2 by 6 feet. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories._ Castle Geyser. Geyser in action. Crater of Old Faithful. Upper Geyser Basin.] [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories._ Old Faithful.] The ornamentation about the crater, though limited in extent, is nowhere surpassed for beauty of form and color. In particular, the three small pools on the north side of the crater and very close to it are specimens of the most remarkable handiwork which Nature has lavished upon this region. A singular fact is that the waters in these three pools, although so close together as apparently to be subject to the same conditions, are of different colors. Speaking of these marvelous appearances, Lieutenant Doane says: [BG] "One instinctively touches the hot ledges with his hands, and sounds with a stick the depths of the cavities in the slope, in utter doubt of the evidence of his own eyes.... It is the most lovely inanimate object in existence." [BG] Page 29, "Yellowstone Expedition of 1870." See Appendix E. In its eruption this geyser is equally fascinating. It always gives ample warning, and visitors have time to station themselves where the view will be most perfect. The graceful column rises, at first with apparent effort, but later with evident ease, to a height of 150 feet. The noise is simply that of a jet of water from an ordinary hose, only in intensity corresponding to the greater flow. The steam, when carried laterally by a gentle breeze, unfurls itself like an enormous flag from its watery standard. The water is of crystal clearness and the myriad drops float in the air with all manner of brilliant effects. To quote Lieutenant Doane again: "Rainbows play around the tremendous fountain, the waters of which fall about the basin in showers of brilliants, and then rush steaming down the slopes to the river." The uniform periodicity of this geyser is its most wonderful and most useful characteristic. It never fails the tourist. With an average interval of sixty-five minutes, it varies but little either way. Night and day, winter and summer, seen or unseen, this "tremendous fountain" has been playing for untold ages. Only in thousands of years can its lifetime be reckoned; for the visible work it has wrought, and its present infinitely slow rate of progress, fairly appall the inquirer who seeks to learn its real age. It is worth while, however, to note the enormous work which this geyser daily performs. A conservative estimate, based upon an extended series of observations made in 1878 by the United States Geological Survey, shows that the outpour for an average eruption is not less 1,500,000 gallons, which gives 33,225,000 gallons per day. This would supply a city of 300,000 inhabitants. The combination of conditions by which the supply of heat and water, and the form of tube, are so perfectly adapted to their work, that even a chronometer is scarcely more regular in its action, is one of the miracles of nature. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories._ Kepler Cascade.] CHAPTER XVII. A TOUR OF THE PARK. _Upper Geyser Basin to the Yellowstone Lake._ Distance, nineteen miles. The route ascends the Firehole River to the mouth of Spring Creek, which stream it follows to the Continental Divide. For seven miles it then lies on the Pacific slope, after which it descends the mountains to the Yellowstone Lake. The drive is one of the most pleasant in the Park, and the scenery is unconventional and wild. _Kepler Cascade_ (1.25 miles) is a fascinating water-fall. Lieutenant Doane, who first wrote of it, says:[BH] "These pretty little falls, if located on an eastern stream, would be celebrated in history and song; here, amid objects so grand as to strain conception and stagger belief, they were passed without a halt." [BH] Page 27, "Yellowstone Expedition of 1870." See Appendix E. We counsel the tourist not to so pass them. Half a mile up the Firehole, above the mouth of Spring Creek, is the _Lone Star Geyser_ (4 miles). This geyser is conspicuous chiefly for its fine cone. It plays frequently to a height of 40 or 50 feet. _Madison Lake_, ten miles further up the valley, is the ultimate lake source of the Madison River. This lake, with possibly the exception of Red Rock Lake, the source of the Jefferson, is further from the sea by direct water-course than any other lake on the globe. Returning down the Firehole, we enter the mouth of _Spring Creek Cañon_ (3.5 miles), which the road traverses for a distance of two and one-half miles. This narrow, winding, rocky cañon, under the shadow of the Continental Divide, is full of picturesque turns and surprises. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Haynes, Photo., St. Paul._ Lone Star Geyser.] The first crossing of the _Continental Divide_ (8.5 miles) is through a narrow cañon, _Craig Pass_, hemmed in by precipitous cliffs, inclosing a lily-covered pond, _Isa Lake_, which rests squarely upon the doubtful ground between the two oceans. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Haynes, Photo., St. Paul._ Shoshone Lake.] _Shoshone Point_ (10.5 miles) is in the center of the large amphitheater-shaped tract which is drained by the branches of _De Lacy Creek_. It overlooks _Shoshone Lake_ and the broad basin surrounding it, and gives a second glimpse of the Teton Mountains. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ Isa Lake and Craig Pass.] Shoshone Lake is a lovely body of water, with an area of twelve square miles and a most picturesque shore line. On its west shore is a geyser basin, second in importance only to those on the Firehole. Among its many interesting features may be mentioned the _Union Geyser_, of which the middle crater plays to a height of 100 feet; and the _Bronze Geyser_, very striking because of the perfect metallic luster of its formation. From Shoshone Point, the road again ascends to the Continental Divide, and then drops down the Atlantic slope toward the Yellowstone Valley. _Lake View_ (18 miles) is at a point where a sudden turn in the forest road brings the tourist, quite without warning, in full view of one of the most striking water landscapes in the world. The whole vista of the _Yellowstone Lake_ is spread out before him, still 300 feet below where he is standing. Far to the right and left, along the distant eastern shore, extends the _Absaroka Range_ of mountains, many of its summits still capped with snow. Every-where the dark pine forests come down to the water's edge, in fine contrast with the silver surface of the lake. The sparkling of the waves, the passage of the cloud shadows, and, in sheltered coves, the tranquil mirror of the waters, all combine to make the picture one to be long remembered. The Yellowstone Lake is about 7,741 feet, nearly a mile and a half, above the level of the sea. It has a shore line of 100 miles, and an area of 139 square miles. Its maximum depth is 300 feet, and its average depth about 30 feet. It is fed almost entirely from the springs and snow drifts of the Absaroka Range. Its waters are icy cold, clear and transparent to great depths, and literally swarm with trout. It is subject to heavy south-west winds, and at times is lashed into tempestuous seas. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _U.S. Geological Survey of the Territories._ Yellowstone Lake.] The shape of the lake was compared by the early explorers to the form of the human hand. The resemblance is exceedingly remote, and one writer has well observed that only the hand of a base ball player who has stood for years behind the bat could satisfy the comparison. The "fingers" have now been generally dropped from the maps and replaced by the usual names; but "West Thumb" seems to have become a fixture. Surpassing the Yellowstone Lake both in area and altitude there are but few lakes in the world. Lake Titticaca, in Peru, and one or two others in the less explored regions of the Andes; and also a few lakes on the lofty table-land of Thibet, comprise the number. The Yellowstone Lake has been a theme of enthusiastic praise by all who have ever seen it; but what seems to us the most exquisite tribute it has ever received is to be found in the farewell words of Mr. Folsom, when, in 1869, he regretfully turned away from its western shore into the deep forests which surround it:[BI] "As we were about departing on our homeward trip, we ascended the summit of a neighboring hill and took a final look at Yellowstone Lake. Nestled among the forest-crowned hills which bounded our visions, lay this inland sea, its crystal waves dancing and sparkling in the sunlight as if laughing with joy for their wild freedom. It is a scene of transcendent beauty which has been viewed by but few white men, and we felt glad to have looked upon it before its primeval solitude should be broken by the crowds of pleasure seekers which at no distant day will throng its shores." [BI] Page 20, Langford's reprint of the "Valley of the Upper Yellowstone." See Appendix E. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Gandy._ Fishing Cone.] On the west shore of the lake is an extensive and important hot springs basin. The principal features are the _Paint Pots_, not inferior to those near the Fountain Hotel; two of the largest and most beautiful quiescent springs in the Park; the _Lake Shore_ Geyser, which plays frequently to a height of about 30 feet; an unnamed geyser of considerable power but of very infrequent action; and the celebrated _Fishing Cone_ where unfortunate trout find catching and cooking painfully near together. From the west shore of the lake a visit can be advantageously made to _Hart Lake_ and _Mount Sheridan_. The lake is probably the prettiest in the Park. Near it, on the tributary _Witch Creek_, is a small but important geyser basin. The principal features are the _Deluge_, _Spike_ and _Rustic_ geysers, and the _Fissure Group_ of springs. The Rustic Geyser is remarkable in having about it a cordon of logs, evidently placed there by the Indians or white men many years ago. The logs are completely incrusted with the deposits of the springs. Mt. Sheridan would rank with Mt. Washburn as a popular peak for mountain climbers were it only more accessible. No summit in the Park affords a finer prospect. From the west shore to the Lake Outlet the tourist may travel either by stage around the border of the lake, or by boat across it. If he does not want to miss one of the notable features of the tour he will not omit the boat ride. In fact, a steamboat ride, at an altitude more than a quarter of a mile greater than that of the summit of Mt. Washington is not an every day diversion. From near the center of the lake the view is surpassingly fine. To the south and south-west the long arms of the lake penetrate the dark forest-crowned hills, which are but stepping stones to the lofty mountains behind them. Far beyond these may again be seen for the third time the familiar peaks of the Tetons. All along the eastern shore stand the serried peaks of the Absaroka Range, the boundary which nature has so well established along the eastern border of the Park. A notable feature of this range is the profile of a human face formed by the superimposed contours of two mountains, one several miles behind the other. The best effect is had from points between _Stevenson Island_ and the _Lake Hotel_. The face is looking directly upward. A similar profile, noted by the early explorers from the summit of Mt. Washburn, and nearly in the same locality as this, although of course not the same feature, was called by them the "Giant's Face," or the "Old Man of the Mountain." [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Gandy._ Natural Bridge.] On the north-east shore of the lake are _Steamboat Spring_, and other thermal phenomena worth visiting. From _Bridge Bay_ at the north-west of the lake, a trip of a mile will take the tourist to an extremely interesting freak of nature in the form of a _Natural Bridge_ over a small tributary of Bridge Creek. The arch is forty-one feet high with a thirty foot span. As seen from the down stream side it is very regular and symmetrical. Some twenty miles above the head of the lake is the celebrated _Two-Ocean Pass_, long known to the early trappers. It is probably the most remarkable example of such a phenomenon in the world. Although the fact of its existence was asserted and stoutly maintained by Bridger for many years prior to the discovery of the Park region, it was generally disbelieved until Captain Jones crossed the pass in 1873. It has since been visited and described by Hayden in 1878, by Hague in 1884, and by Prof. Evermann of the United States Fish Commission in 1891. The following facts and map are taken from Prof. Evermann's report: [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ Sketch of Two-Ocean Pass.] The pass is in a nearly level grassy park hemmed in by the surrounding hills, and is 8,150 feet above the level of the sea. Its extreme length is about one mile and its extreme breadth about three-fourths of a mile. From the north a stream issues from a cañon, _a_, and divides at _b_, part flowing to Atlantic Creek and part to Pacific Creek. A similar stream, _c_, with a similar division, _d_, comes from the south. At extreme low water, these divisions may possibly disappear and all the water flow either one way or the other. But at ordinary and high stages the water flows both ways. These streams are by no means insignificant rivulets, but substantial water-courses capable of affording passage to fish of considerable size. Here, then, we have the very interesting phenomenon of a single stream upon the summit of the continent dividing and flowing part one way and part the other, and forming a continuous water connection between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans over a distance of nearly 6,000 miles. A most singular and interesting acoustic phenomenon of this region, although rarely noticed by tourists, is the occurrence of strange and indefinable overhead sounds. They have long been noted by explorers, but only in the vicinity of Shoshone and Yellowstone Lakes. They seem to occur in the morning, and to last only for a moment. They have an apparent motion through the air, the general direction noted by writers being from north to south. The following descriptions are from the pens of those who have given some study to these strange sounds. Prof. S. A. Forbes says: "It put me in mind of the vibrating clang of a harp lightly and rapidly touched high up above the tree tops, or the sound of many telegraph wires swinging regularly and rapidly in the wind, or, more rarely, of faintly heard voices answering each other overhead. It begins softly in the remote distance, draws rapidly near with louder and louder throbs of sound, and dies away in the opposite direction; or it may seem to wander irregularly about, the whole passage lasting from a few seconds to half a minute or more."[BJ] [BJ] "Overhead sounds in the vicinity of Yellowstone Lake." See Appendix E. Mr. Edwin Linton thus describes it: "It seemed to begin at a distance, grow louder overhead where it filled the upper air, and suggested a medley of wind in the tops of pine trees, and in telegraph wires, the echo of bells after being repeated several times, the humming of a swarm of bees, and two or three other less definite sources of sound, making in all a composite which was not loud, but easily recognized, and not at all likely to be mistaken for any other sound in these mountain solitudes."[BK] [BK] "Overhead sounds in the vicinity of Yellowstone Lake." See Appendix E. No rational explanation has ever been advanced for this remarkable phenomenon. Its weird character is in keeping with its strange surroundings. In other lands and times it would have been an object of superstitious reverence or dread, and would have found a permanent place in the traditions of the people. CHAPTER XVIII. A TOUR OF THE PARK. _The Yellowstone Lake to Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone._ Distance seventeen miles. The road follows the Yellowstone River along the west bank all the way. Just after the tourist leaves the Lake Hotel, he will see on the right of the roadway a small monument. It was placed there, in 1893, by the United States Corps of Engineers to mark a position accurately determined from astronomical observations by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1892. It is of value as a point of reference in surveys and other similar work.[BL] [BL] Latitude, 44° 33' 16.1" north. Longitude, 110° 23' 43.1" west. Magnetic variation about 19° east. _Mud Volcano_ (7.5 miles) is a weird, uncanny object, but, nevertheless, a very fascinating feature and one which the tourist should stop and examine. It is an immense funnel-shaped crater in the side of a considerable hill on the west bank of the river. The mud rises some distance above a large steam vent in the side of the crater next the hill, and chokes the vent until the steam has accumulated in sufficient force to lift the superincumbent mass. As the imprisoned steam bursts forth, it hurls the mud with great violence against the opposite side of the crater, making a heavy thud which is audible for half a mile. These outbursts take place every few seconds. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Haynes, Photo., St. Paul._ Yellowstone River, between Lake and Falls.] A striking example of the strange commingling of dissimilar features in the hot springs districts is found in the _Grotto_, a spring of perfectly clear water, not far from the Mud Volcano. It is acted upon by the steam in a manner precisely similar to that of the Mud Volcano, but its waters issue directly from the rock, and are entirely clear. _Mud Geyser_, now rarely seen in action, was an important geyser twenty years ago. As it became infrequent in its eruptions, and tourists rarely saw them, the name was unconsciously, but mistakenly, transferred to the Mud Volcano, which has none of the characteristics of a geyser. The locality where these objects are found has considerable historic interest. The ford just below the Mud Volcano was long used by the hunters and trappers who passed up and down the river. Folsom crossed it in 1869, and the Washburn party in 1870. The Nez Percés encamped here two days, in 1877, and here transpired a part of the episode elsewhere related. Hither came General Howard, in pursuit of the Indians, although he did not cross the river at this point. _Trout Creek_ (9.5 miles) has a most peculiar feature, where the tourist route crosses it, in the form of an extraordinary doubling of the channel upon itself. It was this stream which Mr. Hedges, in 1870, called "a lazy creek coiled up like a monster serpent under a sand bluff." _Sulphur Mountain_ (11.5 miles) is half a mile back from the main route. At its base is a remarkable _Sulphur Spring_, always in a state of violent ebullition, although discharging only a small amount of water. This is highly impregnated with sulphur, and leaves a yellow border along the rivulet which carries it away. The best time to visit Sulphur Mountain is on a clear sharp morning. The myriad little steam vents which cover the surface of the hill are then very noticeable. _Hayden Valley_ is a broad grassy expanse extending several miles along the river and far back from it on the west side. It was once a vast arm of the lake. It comprises some fifty square miles, and is an important winter range for the Park buffalo and elk. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Gandy._ Rapids Above Falls.] [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories._ Upper Fall of the Yellowstone. Distant view.] The river along the lower portion of this valley is the most tranquil and lovely stream imaginable--broad, deep, transparent, flowing peacefully around its graceful curves, disturbed only by the splashing trout which inhabit it. There is little here to suggest the mad turmoil into which it is soon to plunge. At a point fifteen miles below the lake, the river and road are forced by the narrowing valley close together. The stream becomes suddenly broken into turbulent cascades as it dashes violently between precipitous banks and among massive boulders. The road also becomes decidedly picturesque. Hung up on the almost vertical cliff overlooking the rapids, it forms a short drive unsurpassed for interest anywhere else in the Park. At one point it crosses a deep ravine over the highest bridge on the road system. Just to the left of this bridge, in the bottom of the ravine, still stands the tree upon which some white man carved his initials away back in 1819. Half a mile below the head of the rapids, the river suddenly contracts its width to less than fifty feet, turns abruptly to the right, and disappears. It is the _Upper Fall_ of the Yellowstone. In some respects, this cataract differs from almost any other. Although the ledge over which it falls is apparently perpendicular, the velocity of flow at the crest of the fall is so great that the water pours over as if on the surface of a wheel. Visitors at Niagara have noticed the difference in this respect between the almost vertical sheet of water on the American side and the well-rounded flow at the apex of the Horseshoe Fall. The height of the Upper Fall of the Yellowstone is 112 feet. From this point, the character of the scenery is wild and rugged. A ride of a few hundred yards brings the tourist to a sharp bend in the road, which at once unfolds to him the whole vista of the _Grand Cañon of_ _the Yellowstone_. The sight is so impressive and absorbing that the chances are he will cross the ravine of _Cascade Creek_ without even noticing the lovely _Crystal Falls_ almost beneath his feet. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ Original Sketch.[BM] [BM] See foot-note, page 168.] [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories._ Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone. Looking down--probably from Lookout Point.] [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Haynes, Photo., St. Paul._ Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone. From Inspiration Point--looking up stream. Lower Fall in the distance.] The _Cañon Hotel_ is half a mile beyond Cascade Creek, in an open park, a little way back from the brink of the Cañon. From its porch, the crest of the Upper Fall can be seen, and the roar of both cataracts is distinctly audible. This hotel and that at the lake are the most desirable in the Park for a protracted stay. The Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone is acknowledged by all beholders to stand without parallel among the natural wonders of the globe. Other cañons, the Yosemite, for example, have greater depths and more imposing walls; but there are none which, in the words of Captain Ludlow, "unite more potently the two requisites of majesty and beauty." The cañon itself is vast. A cross-section in the largest part measures 2,000 feet at the top, 200 feet at the bottom, and is 1,200 feet deep, giving an area of over three acres. But such a gorge in any other part of the world would not be what it is here. Its sides would soon be clothed with vegetation, and it would be simply an immense valley, beautiful, no doubt, but not what it is in the Yellowstone National Park. There are three distinct features which unite their peculiar glories to enhance the beauty of this cañon. These are the cañon itself, the water-fall at its head, and the river below. It is the volcanic rock through which the river has cut its way that gives the Grand Cañon its distinctive character. It is preëminently a cañon of color. The hue has no existence which can not be found there. "Hung up and let down and spread abroad are all the colors of the land, sea, and sky," says Talmage, without hyperbole. From the dark, forest-bordered brink, the sides descend for the most part with the natural slope of the loose rock, but frequently broken by vertical ledges and isolated pinnacles, which give a castellated and romantic air to the whole. Eagles build their nests here, and soar midway through the vast chasm, far below the beholder. The more prominent of the projecting ledges cause many turns in the general course of the cañon, and give numerous vantage places for sight-seeing. _Lookout Point_ is one of these, half a mile below the Lower Falls. _Inspiration Point_, some two miles farther down, is another. The gorgeous coloring of the cañon walls does not extend through its entire length of twenty miles. In the lower portion, the forests have crept well down to the water's edge. Still, it is every-where an extremely beautiful and impressive sight. Along the bottom of the cañon, numerous steam vents can be seen, one of which, it is said, exhibits geyseric action. In places, the cañon walls almost shut out the light of day from the extreme bottom. Lieutenant Doane, who made the dangerous descent several miles below the Falls, records that "it was about three o'clock P. M., and stars could be distinctly seen, so much of the sunlight was cut off from entering the chasm." The _Lower Fall_ of the Yellowstone must be placed in the front rank of similar phenomena. It carries not one-twentieth the water of Niagara, but Niagara is in no single part so beautiful. Its height is 310 feet. Its descent is very regular, slightly broken by a point of rock on the right bank. A third of the fall is hidden behind the vast cloud of spray which forever conceals the mad play of the waters beneath; but the mighty turmoil of that recess in the rocks may be judged from the deep-toned thunder which rises in ceaseless cadence and jars the air for miles around. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Haynes, Photo., St. Paul._ Lower Fall of the Yellowstone--from below.] [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ Original Sketch.[BN] [BN] See foot-note, page 168.] To many visitors the stream far down in the bottom of the cañon is the crowning beauty of the whole scene. It is so distant that its rapid course is diminished to the gentlest movement, and its continuous roar to the subdued murmur of the pine forests. Its winding, hide-and-seek course, its dark surface when the shadows cover it, its bright limpid green under the play of the sunlight, its ever recurring foam-white patches, and particularly its display of life where all around is silent and motionless, make it a thing of entrancing beauty to all who behold it. It is not strange that this cañon has been a theme for writer, painter, and photographer, from its discovery to the present time. But at first thought it is strange that all attempts to portray its beauties are less satisfactory than those pertaining to any other feature of the Park. The artist Moran acknowledged that "its beautiful tints were beyond the reach of human art;" and General Sherman said of this artist's celebrated effort: "The painting by Moran in the Capitol is good, but painting and words are unequal to the subject." In photography, the number of pictures by professional and amateur artists, that have been made of this cañon is prodigious. But photography can only reproduce the form, it is powerless in the presence of such an array of colors as here exists. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Haynes, Photo., St. Paul._ Lower Fall of the Yellowstone--from above.] [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _Haynes, Photo., St. Paul._ Grand Cañon in Winter. Probably from Lookout Point.] The pen itself is scarcely more effective than the pencil or camera. Folsom, who first wrote of the cañon, frankly owned that "language is entirely inadequate to convey a just conception of the awful grandeur and sublimity of this masterpiece of nature's handiwork." Time has shown this confession to be substantially true. From the clumsy work of the casual newspaper scribe, to the giddy flight of that eminent clergyman, who fancied he saw in this cañon a suitable hall for the great judgment, with the nations of the earth filing along the bottom upon waters "congealed and transfixed with the agitations of that day," all descriptions do injustice to their subject. They fall short of their mark or overreach it. They are not true to nature. We shall therefore pass them by, with one exception, and shall commend our readers to a study of this great wonderwork from the pine-clad verge of the Grand Cañon itself. The exception to which reference is made relates to the Grand Cañon in winter. It has been explained in another place why it is that the winter scenery of the Park must ever remain a sealed book except to those few hardy adventurers who are willing to brave the perils of winter travel in that region. It is a pleasure, therefore, to give at first hand what one of those intrepid spirits felt as he stood upon Lookout Point less than two years ago, and saw the famous cañon clad in its annual mantle of white. He says:[BO] "I suppose thousands have stood grasping the stem of that same sturdy, ragged tree, and have looked in silence as we did. They have seen the cañon in summer, and I wish they might all see it also in the depth of winter. Now the glorious colors of the walls were gone, but the peaks and crosses and pinnacles were there, free of all color, but done in clean, perfect white. It was "frozen music"--the diapason of nature's mightiest and most mysterious anthem all congealed in white, visible, palpable, authentic. No thinking man could stand there and not feel the exalted and compelling theme go thrilling to his heart." [BO] E. Hough, in _Forest and Stream_, June 30, 1894, p. 553. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _U. S. Geological Survey._ Granite Block, near Inspiration Point.] Back perhaps a quarter of a mile from Inspiration Point, but within fifty yards of the brink of the cañon, is a huge rectangular block of granite which rests alone in the woods, a most singular and striking object. It is evidently an intruder in unfamiliar territory, for there is not a particle of granite outcrop known to exist within twenty miles. It must have been transported to this place from some distant quarry by the powerful agencies of the Glacial Epoch. To the eastward from the Grand Cañon are several interesting hot springs districts, and there is one notable group at the southern base of Mount Washburn. CHAPTER XIX. A Tour of the Park. _The Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone to Junction Valley._ Distance twenty-two miles.[BP] From the Grand Cañon north lies the true scenic portion of the tourist route. Hitherto, the main attractions have been the geyser basins, the Yellowstone Lake, and the Grand Cañon. The tourist has probably frequently expressed his disappointment at not finding as much rugged mountain scenery as he had expected. But from this point on he will have no cause to complain. [BP] The distances given in this chapter are only approximate, the surveys for a wagon road from the cañon to Mammoth Hot Springs, via Mt. Washburn, not being yet completed. _Mt. Washburn_ (12 miles) is the most celebrated peak in the Park, and the first to receive its present name. Its prominence justifies its notoriety, but the real cause of it is the fact that for eight years the main tourist route lay across it. From its summit the Washburn party received the first definite confirmation of the truth of the rumors that led them into this region. All reports and magazine articles which first gave a knowledge of the Park to the world were written by persons who had crossed this mountain. As the view from its summit is comprehensive and grand, covering almost the entire Park, it of course figured prominently in all narratives. Tourists fell into the custom established by the first explorers, of leaving their cards in a receptacle for the purpose on the summit. Many eminent names are to be seen there. It is a matter for congratulation that the progress upon the road system will soon restore this mountain to its former place in the tourist route. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co._ _U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories._ Tower Falls.] _Tower Falls_ (20 miles) is perhaps the most graceful cataract in the Park, and should never be passed without a visit. It is on Tower Creek only a short distance back from the Yellowstone. Lieutenant Doane says in his report:[BQ] "Nothing can be more chastely beautiful than this lovely cascade, hidden away in the dim light of overshadowing rocks and woods, its very voice hushed to a low murmur, unheard at the distance of a few hundred yards. Thousands might pass by within a half mile and not dream of its existence; but once seen, it passes to the list of most pleasant memories." [BQ] Page 8, "Yellowstone Expedition of 1870." See Appendix E. Near this point on both banks of the river are numerous sulphur fumaroles, the last evidence of subterraneous fire which the tourist will encounter on his trip. A little way above the mouth of the stream is the old Bannock Ford, the same by which Colter crossed in 1807. It is the only practicable ford within twenty miles in either direction. _Junction Butte_ (22 miles) is on the right bank of the Yellowstone in the angle between that stream and the East Fork. It stands not only near one of the most important stream junctions in the Park, but also near a not less important road junction. It is a very striking object. Its summit is nearly flat, and its sides near the summit are perpendicular. Below this is a steep slope composed of enormous masses of finely broken stone disengaged from the cliff by the force of the elements. It is a fitting landmark for its important situation. [Illustration: _Terry Engr. Co_ _U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories._ First Bridge Over the Yellowstone.] _Baronett's Bridge_ crosses the river immediately opposite Junction Butte. It is the first and only bridge yet (1895) built across the Yellowstone within the limits of the Park. It was built by the well known mountaineer, J. H. Baronett, in the spring of 1871, for the convenience of Clark's Fork miners. It was partially destroyed by the Nez Percés in 1877, but was repaired by Howard's command, and still further repaired the following year by Baronett and Norris. In 1880, it was replaced by a more substantial structure. At present it enjoys the unique distinction of being a private toll bridge on a government reservation. _Junction Valley_,[BR] described elsewhere, is a name properly applicable to the valley inclosed by Crescent Hill, Mt. Washburn, Specimen Ridge, and the mountains north of Lamar River. This valley, and those of tributary streams, form the largest treeless tract in the Park. [BR] The popular name for this locality is "Yancey's," from John Yancey, who has long held a lease in the Valley of Lost Creek at the foot of Crescent Hill. He has kept a sort of hotel or stopping place for the convenience of travelers to Cooke City, as well as for tourists between the Grand Cañon and Mammoth Hot Springs by way of Mt. Washburn. _Amethyst Mountain_, _Specimen Ridge_, and the _Fossil Forests_ are names at once suggestive of the action of geological agencies which have been described in another chapter. Amethyst, limpid quartz, milky quartz, chalcedony, carnelian, prase, chrysoprase, banded agate, flint, jaspers of all colors, semi-opal, calcite, and many other varieties abound. The forest petrifactions present one of the most interesting scientific problems in the Park. The _Lamar River Cañon_ (7 miles above Junction Butte) is a gorge about half a mile long, the chief characteristic of which is the enormous number and size of boulders which have fallen into it. These are almost spherical in shape, and, in many instances, are as smooth as if from the hand of a stone glazier. They are piled up like billiard balls, to such a depth that the stream flows entirely out of sight beneath them.[BS] [BS] Above the head of this cañon are the remains of what seems to have once been a bridge, but no record concerning it has come to the writer's notice. _Soda Butte_ (15 miles above Junction Butte) and _Soda Butte Cañon_, extending from Soda Butte to Cooke City, are worthy of much attention. The cañon in particular is as wonderful a bit of scenery as any mountains afford. It is every-where rugged, majestic and imposing, and there is no point in its twelve miles length that does not present a landscape deserving of the tourist's careful study. Mr. W. H. Weed, who has done much work in the Park, and particularly in this section, says of this valley: "To the eastward Soda Butte Valley penetrates the heart of the rugged Sierra, whose high peaks rise in castellated forms. The visitor, disappointed perhaps in the mountain scenery of the Park, after traveling the usual route over the dusty roads of the Park plateau, will here find mountain views that are sure to fulfill his expectations, while the neighborhood is not lacking in curiosities that in another land would attract visitors from far and wide."[BT] [BT] Fossil Forests of the Yellowstone. See Appendix E. _Cooke City_ is a small mining camp just outside the north-east corner of the Park in the midst of the Clark's Fork mining district. It is of interest in this connection only on account of its notorious hostility to the Yellowstone National Park. _Death Gulch_, reputed to exist in the valley of Cache Creek, is like Bridger's Glass Mountain, mostly a product of the imagination. It seems that some animals were once poisoned there, and that later, certain explorers, finding them, attributed their death to an escape of carbonic acid gas from the earth. The name has found its way into maps and reports of highest authority, but the object itself has no existence. The _Hoodoo Region_ is near the head of Miller Creek just outside the original reservation, although within the Forest Reserve addition. This mysterious region furnishes probably the most striking example in existence of the effects of erosion and wind action upon masses of moderately soft rock. The region was discovered by miners in 1870, but was first explored and reported upon by Colonel Norris in 1880, who thus describes it:[BU] "Nearly every form, animate or inanimate, real or chimerical, ever actually seen or conjured by the imagination, may here be observed. Language does not suffice to properly describe these peculiar formations; sketches may probably do something, and photographs more, to convey a conception of their remarkable character, but actual observation is absolutely necessary to adequately impress the mind with the wild, unearthly appearance of these eroded Hoodoos of the Goblin Land. These monuments are from fifty to two or three hundred feet in height, with narrow, tortuous passages between them, which sometimes are tunnels through permanent snow or ice fields, where the big-horn sheep hide in safety; while the ceaseless but ever changing moans of the wild winds seem to chant fitting requiems to these gnome-like monuments of the legendary Indian gods." [BU] Page 8, Annual Report, Superintendent of the Park, for the year 1880. Returning to Junction Valley, and following down the Yellowstone, the tourist soon arrives at the _Third Cañon_ (the third above Livingston, the Grand Cañon being fourth), which extends from the eastern limit of Junction Valley to the north boundary of the Park. Located anywhere else, away from the overshadowing splendor of the Grand Cañon, it would become celebrated. Some of the views, particularly from the high ground north of Mt. Everts, overlooking by nearly 2,000 feet the vast chasm through which the turbulent river flows, are among the most impressive in the entire region. From the immediate vicinity of the Third Cañon, the road crosses the plateau of Black Tail Deer Creek to the valley of the East Gardiner. The tour terminates at Mammoth Hot Springs. PART III.--The Future. CHAPTER I. HOSTILITY TO THE PARK. From what has been thus far set forth the reader can not have failed to observe how fortunate have been the events, both in prehistoric and in recent times, which have made the Yellowstone National Park what it is to-day. In the course of long ages Nature developed this region into its present attractive form, and filled it with wonders which will never fail to command the admiration of men. She placed it upon the very apex of the continent, and made of it an inexhaustible reservoir of water for a perennial supply to the parched and rainless desert around it. She interspersed among its forests an abundance of parks and valleys, where the native fauna of the continent, elsewhere fast passing away, may find protection in all future time. With infinite foresight she made it unfit for the gainful occupations of men, so that every motive to appropriate it for private use is removed. For many years after the white man first looked within its borders, a rare combination of circumstances prevailed to keep it from becoming generally known until the time had arrived when the government could effectually reserve it from settlement. Finally, since its formal erection into a public park, the same good fortune has attended it, in spite of many adverse influences, until it has become thoroughly intrenched in the good opinion of the people. So fully has the experience of the past quarter century confirmed the wisdom of setting apart this region for public uses, that it ought no longer to be necessary to say a word in favor of its continued preservation. To most people it will seem impossible that there should be any one who would seek the mutilation or destruction of this important reservation. Unfortunately there are many such. No session of Congress for twenty years has been free from attempted legislation hostile to the Park. The schemes to convert it into an instrument of private greed have been many, and strange as it may seem, they are invariably put forward by those very communities to whom the Park is, and must ever remain, the chief glory of their section. It is a lamentable proof of the dearth of patriotic spirit that always betrays itself whenever the interests of individuals and of the public come into collision. Nevertheless it is a great satisfaction to know that this spirit of hostility is confined to an infinitesimal portion of the whole people. Excepting a few mine owners and their following, a handful of poachers, one or two railroad corporations, and a few greedy applicants for special franchises, the people of the country are a unit in favor of the strictest preservation of this great national pleasure ground. No better proof of this can be had than the fact that the Park has successfully withstood for so long a period every attack that has been made upon it. It will not do, however, to assume that, because these schemes have hitherto failed, they will always continue to fail. Since they have their origin in speculative ventures, they will be put forward so long as they offer the least pecuniary inducement. The certainty of this, and the danger of their ultimate success, justify the assignment of a brief space to a consideration of this subject. CHAPTER II. RAILROAD ENCROACHMENT AND CHANGE OF BOUNDARY. Nearly all of the enterprises that have been put forward in opposition to the true interests of the Reservation partake of the nature of railroad encroachment. Without entering into the merits of particular projects, it will be sufficient to explain in general terms the reasons why the government has always opposed them. Railroads in the Yellowstone Park are objectionable because: (1.) They will mar, and in places destroy, that natural condition which is one of its greatest charms. From the first it has been the wish of those who know any thing of the Yellowstone that it should remain as nature made it. The instructions of the Interior Department to the first Superintendent of the Park, two months after the Act of Dedication became a law, thus announced the policy of the government upon this subject: "It is not the desire of the Department that any attempts shall be made to beautify or adorn this reservation, but merely to preserve from injury or spoliation the timber, mineral deposits, and various curiosities of that region, so far as possible, in their natural condition." It requires no argument to show that nothing would so interfere with this natural condition as the construction of a railroad through that country; and the danger involved in these projects early became apparent to all who were well acquainted with the situation. As early as 1883, Lieutenant Kingman thus refers to this subject in his annual report, wherein he describes his proposed road system for the Park: "The plan for improvement which I have submitted is given in the earnest hope and upon the supposition that it [the Park] will be preserved as nearly as may be as the hand of nature left it--a source of pleasure to all who visit it, and a source of wealth to no one. If the Park ever becomes truly popular and national, it will be when the people come to know and appreciate its delightful summer climate, the wonderful efficiency of its baths and its mineral waters, as well as the natural wonders, beauties and curiosities to be seen there. Then, if there are numerous small, quiet hotels scattered here and there throughout the Park, where visitors can have plain and simple accommodations at moderate prices, the overworked and the sick, as well as the curious, will come here, not to be awed by the great falls and astounded by the geysers, and then to go away, but will come here and will remain for weeks and months, and will find what they seek, rest, recreation and health. But if it ever becomes the resort of fashion, if its forests are stripped to rear mammoth hotels, if the race-course, the drinking saloon and gambling-table invade it, if its valleys are scarred by railroads, and its hills pierced by tunnels, if its purity and quiet are destroyed and broken by the noise and smoke of the locomotive; ... then it will cease to belong to the whole people, and will interest only those that it helps to enrich, and will be unworthy the care and protection of the National Government." The history of the twelve years since the above was written confirms in every point this forcible presentation of the case. (2.) Railroads will unavoidably seriously cripple the present tourist routes. They must of necessity occupy the valleys. But it is through these that the tourist route passes, and it is frequently the case that they are not wide enough for both. In many cases the roadway would be forced back upon the hills, and in others its present location would have to be changed. It is certain that the admirable system of roads, which the government is slowly working out, would receive irreparable injury at the hands of any railroad which might be built through that region. (3.) Railroads would mean the inevitable destruction of the large game. The winter snows are too deep among the hills for game to subsist there. It is necessary to come down into the valleys, where there is more grass and less snow. But, as already stated, it is through these valleys that railroads must pass if at all. The trains would frighten the animals back into the hills, where starvation would await them. Moreover, the loss of game from poaching would be greatly aggravated by the increased facility of clandestine access to that region. (4.) Railroads would destroy the Park forests. During July, August, and September, there are always long periods of dry weather when the dense bodies of fallen timber, the impenetrable tangles of underbrush, and the luxuriant prairie grass are a mass of inflammable tinder. A spark converts it into a conflagration. A railroad winding its way through this country would render protection against fires, even now a matter of great difficulty, wholly out of the question. Referring to this subject in his annual report for 1894, the Superintendent of the Park says: "Six months from the entrance of the first locomotive within the limits of the Park, there will not be one acre of its magnificent forests left unburned." What such a catastrophe would mean to the future development of the surrounding country may be appreciated by a perusal of our chapter on the Flora of the Yellowstone. (5.) As a matter of public policy, the granting of a railway franchise in the Park is objectionable because it necessarily creates a perpetual monopoly of a public privilege. There is no practicable way to avoid it. It has been proposed to compel the railroad to share the advantage of this monopoly with the public, by paying a certain percentage of earnings on its Park business to constitute an improvement fund. With Union Pacific history fresh in the public mind, the government will not be likely to enter into a partnership of that precarious nature. From the foregoing exposition, it is clear that only the most cogent reasons should ever sanction the construction of railroads in the Yellowstone Park. These reasons, from the standpoint of the railroad companies, as set forth by the promoters of a recent bill before Congress, fall under two heads. In the first place, it is speciously urged that a railroad would render the Park more accessible, cheapen the cost of visiting it, and make it fulfill more perfectly its original design as a park for the people. To all this it may be replied that the people do not want the improvement at the price they must pay for it. By an almost unanimous voice they oppose it. It is true that the Park is not as accessible as one might wish it to be, or as it soon will be. But to make it easily accessible, it is by no means necessary that a railroad should pass through it. A line touching the southern boundary and communicating with the central portions of the country would answer every practical purpose. The pretext that a railroad across the Reservation will greatly aid the tourist is erroneous. The points of interest are so scattered about that a coach would be in any case a necessity, and all the railroad would really save to the tourist would be the distance from the boundary to the belt line. Neither will such a railroad materially lessen the cost of a visit, which has always been, and will always be, in the main, getting _to_ that region. The Reservation is 1,500 miles from the center of population of the country, and it is this remote location that makes visiting it cost. The outlay after getting there is trifling in comparison with that of coming and going. Whether a railroad pass though the Park, or simply touch its southern border, will not appreciably affect this principal item. In the second place, it is urged that the Park stands directly in the path of the railroads and so "acts as a blockade to the development of three large states." As this will always form the staple argument for granting a right-of-way for railroads across the Reservation, it will be well to scrutinize it somewhat carefully. It is not at all a question of whether the country about the Park is at present sufficiently supplied with railroads. The important question is: Will any portion of this territory be better served by a railroad that may be built across the Reservation than by one coming from another direction? The most superficial examination of the map, even by one not personally acquainted with the country, will answer this question in the negative. The Yellowstone Valley on the north, the Bighorn Valley on the east, the Jackson Lake country on the south, and the Madison and Henry Fork Valleys on the west, find their natural outlets by routes not passing through the Yellowstone Park. A railroad entering the Park on one side through a lofty wall of mountains, and leaving it on the other through a similar wall, after traversing the inclosed plateau for a distance of perhaps seventy-five or one hundred miles, would be almost as much lost to the country outside as if for this whole distance it were built through a tunnel. In fact, the true welfare both of the Park and of the surrounding country would be best served by a line passing through the Wind River Valley, across one of the easy passes into the Valley of the Snake, and thence along the southern border of the Park, past Jackson Lake and the northern spur of the Teton Range, into the valleys of Idaho and Montana. This would give the Park a needed southern approach, and would directly serve a vast tract of territory. Tributary either to this line, or to one north of the Park, or to both, another would soon be built along the extensive Valley of the Bighorn. No imaginable route across the National Park could so well subserve both local and public interests. From an engineering point of view, the Yellowstone Park is poor railroad country. It could be crossed, to be sure, but not easily, and not at all except by monopolizing portions of the tourist route. The long winter season of nearly seven months would interpose an almost insuperable obstacle to the successful operation of any line which might be built. We quote again from the report of the Park Superintendent for the year 1894: "The great amount of moisture furnished by the lake and its numerous tributaries gives a mantle of snow that will average fifteen feet in depth, and with the strong winds prevailing in this mountainous country no railroad could be kept running during the six months of winter without being entirely inclosed in snow sheds, which would prove destructive to the natural beauty of the Park." In short, it is certain that, were it not for the special inducements which a monopoly of Park travel offers, no railroad could afford to locate its line across that territory. Closely related to this general subject is that of building an electric line for tourist transportation within the Park. It is at once apparent that the objections to such a railroad are much less formidable than to one operated by steam locomotives. The danger of fire is eliminated. The unsightly character of an ordinary railway outfit is exchanged for attractive tourist cars. The power plant, being located in cañons and operated by water, would give no outward evidence of its existence. There being no long trains of cars, no smoke, no screeching of locomotives, the game would not be much more frightened by it than by the stage coaches. In winter, traffic would be suspended and the game would be undisturbed on the ranges. The line, by its greater speed, would be a convenience to tourists having but a short time at their disposal, and also to those, infirm in health, who find the long stage rides fatiguing. Such are the merits of an electric railway for tourist transportation in this country. If the people really desired it, and if it could be built and operated by the government, so as to exclude as far as possible all corporate management of Park business, there would be no serious objection to the project. Of course it should never be permitted, as some times proposed, to use the present wagon roads. These must not in any event be interfered with. The question then is, Do the people desire this kind of transportation? Fortunately we can answer this question with authority. In 1892, a vote upon it was obtained from the tourists of that season. The result was a majority of more than five to one against it. In giving their votes, tourists frequently went beyond the specific question at issue to express their emphatic disapproval of the construction of any kind of railroad in the Park. The whole result was a gratifying proof of the deep-seated interest of the people in this Reservation, and of their unalterable wish that it remain forever free from the handiwork of man. In fact, to almost every body in these days, a coaching tour like that through the Yellowstone, is a decided novelty. There is no other place in this country, probably not in the world, where one approaching it can be had. The people enjoy it. They would prefer to see it developed and perfected, rather than replaced by the noisy car, to get away from which they have come so far. In the long and fruitless struggle to secure rights-of-way for railroads, the promoters of these projects have resorted to various indirect methods the most noteworthy of which is a proposal to change the boundary line of the Park. We have elsewhere explained how this boundary was originally determined. For a random line, which of necessity it largely was, it was a most excellent one. No one would have been dissatisfied with it were it not that it was subsequently found to stand in the way of certain private enterprises. When it became apparent that the government would never consent to the construction of a railroad within the Park, it was sought to compass the same end by cutting off all that portion of the Reservation lying outside of, and including, the proposed right-of-way. In accordance with the proverbial policy of indirection which characterizes schemes of this sort, the real purpose of this proposition is always veiled under a beneficent guise, intended to make its promoters appear as zealous guardians of the Park, rather than what they really are--conspirators for its destruction. The proposed change of boundary is ostensibly based upon the alleged necessity of having a natural boundary--that is, a boundary along the courses of streams. The present line, it is urged, is unmarked and no one knows where it is. A stream is a definite, visible line, seen and known by every one.[BV] [BV] It is of course unnecessary to point out that an artificial line can easily be marked so that there shall be no uncertainty about its location. The hollowness of purpose on the part of those who propose this argument is disclosed by the fact that, of the 280 miles, more or less, in the proposed boundary, they provide a natural line for only about 50 miles--or along that precise portion where they want to build a railroad. All the rest of the way an artificial line is good enough! The pernicious fallacy that lurks in this argument is plainly visible if we look a little beneath the surface. _Never permit the boundaries of the Yellowstone Park to be brought down into the valleys._ Nature has indeed built the proper boundaries; but they are mountain ranges, not valleys. A thousand Chinese walls heaped together would not form a barrier like the Absarokas on the east, the Snowy Range on the north, the Gallatin Range on the west, and the Tetons and the Big Game Ridge on the south. Along the present boundary line there are very few places where it is possible to build human habitations. No poacher or law breaker can there fix his stealthy abode ready at a favorable opportunity to dash across it. But if it were in the bottom of the valleys, a whole colony of these dangerous individuals would soon infest every border of the Park. Police surveillance, in any case extremely difficult, would then be well-nigh impossible. No! Whatever changes may be made in the boundary of the Park, let it always be kept among the mountain tops. What the success of any of these projects to cut off, or segregate, portions of the Park would mean, may be judged from a single instance--that, namely, of the north-east corner of the Park. In this strip of territory are some of the finest scenery and most interesting scientific curiosities to be found upon the Reservation. It is the great winter grazing ground for the elk, and by estimate based upon actual count no fewer than 20,000 of these noble animals find their winter subsistence here. That all of this game would be almost instantly annihilated by the segregation of this strip goes without saying. More than this, the admission to the very heart of the Park of that class of reckless characters, who even now are its greatest source of danger, would vastly enhance the difficulty of protecting the remaining portions. It is well to emphasize by repetition the few important facts pertaining to this question: (1.) There are no private interests on the borders of the Park whose development is jeopardized by the refusal of the government to give access to them by a railroad across the Reservation. They can all be reached from the outside without encountering greater obstacles than have been overcome in scores of other places throughout the West. (2.) There is no need of a railroad in the Park so far as the comfort or advantage of the tourists is concerned. A line along the southern border would answer quite as well, and would serve the surrounding country better. (3.) There is no occasion to construct an electric line in the Park. Nearly all of those who visit that region oppose it. (4.) There is no necessity for changing the present boundaries of the Reservation. CHAPTER III. CONCLUSION. It is in respect of the foregoing matters that the Yellowstone National Park has most to fear. The general public, although always in favor of its preservation, knows nothing of the merit of these various projects. A bill is introduced in Congress in the interest of some private enterprise. It is supported by representations and statistics gotten up for the occasion. There may be no one at hand to refute them, and they are the only information upon which Congress can act. More than once these bills have been reported favorably from committee, when every essential statement in the committee's report was contrary to fact. Unless some friend of the Park is present, ready and willing to devote time, and perhaps money, to its defense, there is only too much danger that these measures will eventually prove successful. Thus far, the Park has never been lacking in such friends; and there is no more encouraging fact in its history than this, that some one has always been on guard against any thing which might work to its injury. Men like Senator Vest in official position, or William Hallett Phillips in private life, and journals like _Forest and Stream_, have stood for years, in a purely public-spirited manner, without remunerative inducement of any sort, and often in face of the bitterest vituperation and abuse, against the designs of selfish and unscrupulous schemers. In like manner, government officials connected with the Park have always, with one or two exceptions, earnestly opposed these dangerous projects. It is plain to any one who is familiar with its inside history, that, but for the agencies just mentioned, there would not be to-day any Yellowstone Park at all. It is equally plain, that so long as friends like these are forthcoming, the Park has little to fear from its enemies. In still another respect, the Park has been unfortunate where it had a right to expect better things. Prior to the admission of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho into the Union of States, its interests were looked after in Congress, particularly in the Senate, by a few members who took great pride in promoting its welfare. But when the above territories were admitted to the Union, these gentlemen very naturally turned over the charge, which they had voluntarily assumed, to the members from the new States, as being thereafter its proper guardians. It was, of course, believed that in them, if in any one, the Park would find needed championship and protection. It is a matter of great regret that these very reasonable expectations have not been realized. A glance at the list of bills pertaining to the Yellowstone National Park, which have been presented to Congress in the past six years, will show that nearly every objectionable measure has been fathered by the very men whose first duty would seem to have been to oppose them. In a speech opposing the Segregation Project, delivered in the Senate in the winter of 1892-3, Senator Vest referred to this subject with justifiable indignation. He said: "When those States [Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho] were territories, and not represented in the Senate, I considered it the duty of every Senator, as this Park belonged to all the people of the United States, ... to defend its integrity, and to keep it for the purposes for which it was originally designed. Since Senators have come from those States, who, of course, must be supposed to know more about that Park than those of us who live at a distance, and since they have manifested a disposition to mutilate it, I must confess that my interest in it has rather flagged, and I feel very much disposed, in plain language, to wash my hands of the whole business. If the constituencies, who are more benefited than any others can possibly be in the Park, are willing to see it cut off, the best disposition of the matter would be to turn it open to the public, let the full greed and avarice of the country have their scope, let the geysers be divided out and taken for the purpose of washing clothes, ... let the water of that splendid water-fall in the Yellowstone River be used to turn machinery, let the timber be cut off; in other words, destroy the Park, and make it a sacrifice to the greed of this advanced age in which we live." It is only fair to say that generally these members do not personally favor the measures to which they lend official countenance and comfort. One can find a practical, if not a morally justifiable, excuse for their course in the exigencies of political life which too often constrain men to official action not in accordance with their private judgment. Unquestionably, a majority of the people of these young and enterprising states are immovably opposed to any thing which may tend to mutilate or destroy this important reservation; and it is not believed that their broader patriotism will ever be overridden by the narrow and perverted wishes of a few straggling constituencies.[BW] [BW] The almost prophetic warning of Captain Harris in his last report as Superintendent of the Park has a peculiar force in this connection: "In my experience in connection with this National Park, I have been very forcibly impressed with the danger to which it is subjected by the greed of private enterprise. All local influence centers in schemes whereby the Park can be used for pecuniary advantage. In the unsurpassed grandeur of its natural condition, it is the pride and glory of the nation; but if, under the guise of improvement, selfish interests are permitted to make merchandise of its wonders and beauties, it will inevitably become a by-word and a reproach." Finally, the effect of a single evil precedent upon the future of the Park must be kept constantly in mind. The door once opened, though by never so small a degree, can not again be closed; but will sooner or later be thrown wide open. A privilege granted to one can not be denied to another. If one corner of the Park is cut off, other portions will share the same fate. If one railroad is granted a right of way across the reservation, another can not be refused. The only way to avoid these dangers is to keep the door entirely closed. There is now but little real need of further positive legislation. Some provision should of course be made for an adequate police force, and ample means should be provided to perfect the system of roads. Happily this duty involves no appreciable burden. It requires no continuing outlay to "beautify and adorn." And when it is done, the further policy of the government toward the Park should be strictly negative, designed solely to preserve it unimpaired, as its founders intended, for the "benefit and enjoyment" of succeeding generations. APPENDIX A. GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES IN THE YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK. I. INTRODUCTORY. In common experience, the importance of geographical names lies in their use as a means of identification. To describe an object there must be a name, and for this purpose one name is as good as another. But if the reason be sought why a particular name happened to be selected, it will generally be found to arise, not from this practical necessity, but from some primary fact or tradition, or from some distinguished character, in the annals of the community where it occurs. In its mountains and valleys, its lakes and streams, and in its civil divisions, the cradle history of a country may always be found recorded. In newly-discovered countries, the naming of geographical features is the dearest prerogative of the explorer, as it is also the one most liable to abuse from personal vanity or egotism. The desire to attach his name, or those of his personal friends, to the prominent landmarks of the globe, where the eye of posterity may never escape them, is a weakness from which no discoverer has yet shown himself free. In a region like the Yellowstone National Park, destined for all time to be a resort for the lovers of science and pleasure, this temptation was quite irresistible; so much so, that, when the expeditions of 1870 and 1871 left the field, they left little worth naming behind them. And yet the honor thus gained has not, we venture to say, been all that its votaries desired. Small is the number of tourists who stop to inquire for whom Mary Lake, DeLacy Creek, or Stevenson Island was named. Fewer still are aware that Mt. Everts was _not_ christened in honor of a distinguished American statesman of similar name, but in commemoration of one of the most thrilling individual experiences in American history. So with all these personal names. The lively satisfaction with which they were given finds no counterpart in the languid indifference with which the modern visitor mechanically repeats them. In as much as it fell to the lot of the United States Geological Survey to originate a great many of the names in our western geography, it is interesting to know from official sources the principles which governed in this important work. Writing upon this point, Dr. Hayden says:[BX] "In attaching names to the many mountain peaks, new streams, and other geographical localities, the discovery of which falls to the pleasant lot of the explorer in the untrodden wilds of the West, I have followed the rigid law of priority, and given the one by which they have been generally known among the people of the country, whether whites or Indians; but if, as is often the case, no suitable descriptive name can be secured from the surroundings, a personal one may then be attached, and the names of eminent men who have identified themselves with the great cause, either in the fields of science or legislation, naturally rise first in the mind." [BX] Page 8, Fifth Annual Report of Dr. Hayden. In the more recent and thorough survey of the Park by the United States Geological Survey, it became necessary to provide names for those subordinate features which, in a less restricted field, the early explorers had thought unworthy of notice. Professor Arnold Hague, upon whom this work has principally fallen, thus states the rule which he has followed:[BY] "In consultation with Mr. Henry Gannett, geologist in charge of geography, it was agreed that the necessary new names to designate the unnamed mountains, valleys, and streams should be mainly selected from the beasts, birds, fishes, trees, flowers, and minerals found within the Park or the adjacent country." [BY] Page 152, Part I, Annual Report United States Geological Survey for year ending June 30, 1887. The christening of the hot springs and geysers of the Park has been singularly fortunate. The names are in all cases characteristic. They are not studied efforts, but are simply the spontaneous utterances from first impressions by those who had never seen, and had heard but little of, similar phenomena. It is doubtful if the most careful study could improve them, and tourists will agree with General Poe who referred as follows to this subject when he visited the Park in 1877:[BZ] "The region of these geysers has been rightly named Fire Hole, and one almost wonders that in this country, where the tendency is to name natural objects after men who have a temporary prominence, this interesting place and its assemblage of wonders should have so completely escaped, and in general and in particular received names so very appropriate." [BZ] Page 79, "Inspection made in the Summer of 1877, etc." See Appendix E. In the race for the geographical honors of the Park, the prize fell neither to the United States Geological Survey nor even to Colonel Norris, though each was a close competitor. It was won by that mythical potentate of whose sulphurous empire this region is thought by some to be simply an outlying province. Starting with "Colter's Hell," the list grew until it contained "Hell Roaring Creek," "Hell Broth Springs," "Hell's Half Acre," "Satan's Arbor," and the Devil's "Den," "Workshop," "Kitchen," "Stairway," "Slide," "Caldron," "Punch Bowl," "Frying Pan," "Well," "Elbow," "Thumb," "Inkstand," etc., etc. It is some satisfaction to know that this rude and fiery nomenclature is gradually falling into disuse. In a measure from sympathy with the purpose of the early name-givers, and to help those who take an interest in such matters to know when, by whom, and why the geographical names of the Park were given, a complete list of these names, with a few from adjacent territory, has been prepared. The letters and numbers immediately after the names (except those in parentheses) give marginal references on the map to facilitate identification. The date of christening and the name of the christening party next follow. When these can not now be determined with precision, the work is credited to the authors of the map upon which they first appear. Next comes whatever account is discoverable of the origin of the names, authority being quoted, as far as possible, from the writings of whoever bestowed them. Wherever an object was named from some natural characteristic, as its form, color, composition, or other peculiarity, or from the birds, beasts, fishes, insects, trees, flowers, shrubs or minerals of the Park, the single word "characteristic" denotes the fact. The abbreviation "U. S. G. S." is for "United States Geological Survey." APPENDIX A. II. MOUNTAIN RANGES, PEAKS, BUTTES, RIDGES, HILLS. [The numbers in parentheses denote elevations. These are taken from the latest map by the United States Geological Survey, and are the same as that of the one hundred foot contour nearest the summit. The true elevation of the ultimate peak is in each case slightly greater, lying somewhere between the figure given and an altitude one hundred feet higher.] _Abiathar Peak_ (10,800)--C: 14--1885--U. S. G. S.--For Charles _Abiathar_ White, Paleontologist, U. S. Geological Survey. _Absaroka Range_, A-X: 12-16--1885--U. S. G. S.--This range of mountains has had an unfortunate christening history. It was first known as the Yellowstone Range, from its close relation to the Yellowstone River, of which it is the source. The original name dates from as far back as 1863, and was adopted by the first explorers of the Park country. It was officially recognized in 1871, by both the Corps of Engineers and the United States Geological Survey. When the Park was created this range became its real eastern boundary, and many of its peaks were named for those who had borne prominent parts in its history. The name had thus an added claim to perpetuity. It passed into general use, and appears in all the writings of the United States Geological Survey down to 1883. In 1873, Captain W. A. Jones, of the Corps of Engineers, led an expedition through these mountains--the first that ever crossed them. He gave them a new name, "Sierra Shoshone." Except for the fact that he was violating the rule of priority, his action in giving this name, as well as his judgment in its selection, were of unquestionable propriety. It was a tribe of the Shoshonean family who alone dwelt in the Park, or among these mountains, and it was entirely fitting to commemorate this fact in a distinct and permanent manner. The name passed rapidly into public use, and by 1880 had practically supplanted the original name. For reasons that can hardly be made to appear satisfactory, the United States Geological Survey, in 1883, or soon after, rejected both these names and adopted in their place Absaroka, "the Indian name of the Crow nation" (Hague). Of course this action can have no pretense of justification from the standpoint of the "rigid law of priority." There are very few instances in American geography of a similar disregard for the rights of previous explorers. Unfortunately, not even the argument of appropriateness can be urged in its defense. These mountains, except that portion north of the Park, were never properly Crow territory, and the name is thus distinctly an importation. Its future use is now unhappily assured, on account of its formal adoption (for reasons wholly inadequate, it is true,) by the United States Board on Geographical Names. Against the influence of the government, with its extensive series of publications, even though committed to the perpetuation of an error, it is idle to contend; but it is greatly to be deplored that a feature of the Park scenery of such commanding prominence should not bear a name at least remotely suggestive of some natural or historical association. _Amethyst Mountain_ (9,423)--F: 11--1872--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Antler Peak_ (10,200)--E: 4--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Atkins Peak_ (10,900)--N: 14--1885--U. S. G. S.--For John D. C. Atkins, Indian Commissioner, 1885-1888. _Avalanche Peak_ (10,500)--L: 13--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Bannock Peak_ (10,400)--D: 4--1885--U. S. G. S.--From the name of a tribe of Indians who inhabited the country to the south-west of the Park, and were finally settled on a reservation in southern Idaho. What is known as the Great Bannock Trail, passed along the valley of Indian Creek, some distance south of this mountain. The spelling here given is that which custom seems finally to have settled upon; but Bannack would more nearly express the original pronunciation. The various spellings, some sixteen in number, come from the original _Panai'hti_, or _Bannai'hti_, meaning southern people. _Barlow Peak_ (9,500)--Q: 10--1895--U. S. G. S.--For Captain (now Colonel) J. W. Barlow, Corps of Engineers, U. S. A., leader of the military expedition which entered the Park region in 1871. His name was first applied to the upper course of the Snake River, but was recently transferred to a neighboring mountain peak. [Illustration: COLONEL J. W. BARLOW.] _Baronett Peak_ (10,300)--C: 13--1878--U. S. G. S.--For C. J. Baronett, "Yellowstone Jack," a famous scout and guide, closely connected with the history of the National Park, and builder of the first bridge across the Yellowstone River. Baronett's career was adventurous beyond the average man of his class. He was born in Glencoe, Scotland, in 1829. His father was in the British naval service, and he early began to follow the sea. In his multitudinous wanderings we find him on the coast of Mexico during the Mexican War; on the Chinese coast in 1850, where he deserted his ship and fled to San Francisco; in 1852, in Australia after gold; the next year in Africa, still on a gold hunt; then in Australia again and in San Francisco; next in the Arctic seas as second mate on a whaling vessel; back in California in 1855; courier for Albert Sidney Johnston in the Mormon War; later in Colorado and California searching for gold; scout in the Confederate service until 1863; then in Mexico with the French under Maximilian, who made him a captain; back in California in 1864, and in Montana in September of the same year, where he at once set out on a prospecting trip which took him entirely through the region of the Yellowstone Park; later in the service of Gen. Custer as scout in the Indian territory; then in Mexico and finally back in Montana in 1870; finder of the lost Everts; builder of his celebrated bridge in 1871; in the Black Hills in 1875, where he slew a local editor who had unjustly reflected upon him in his paper; scout in the Sioux, Nez Percé, and Bannock Wars, 1876-8; Indian trader for many years; engaged in innumerable prospecting ventures; and still, at the age of sixty-six, searching with his old time ardor for the elusive yellow metal. [Illustration: C. J. BARONETT.] _Big Game Ridge_--Q-T: 9-11--1895--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Birch Mils_ (7,300)--R: 4--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Bison Peak_ (8,800)--D: 12--1878--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Bobcat Ridge_ (9,500)--T: 9--1895--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Bunsen Peak_ (9,100)--D: 6--1872--U. S. G. S.--For the eminent chemist and physicist, Robert Wilhelm Bunsen; inventor of the Bunsen electric cell and of the Bunsen Gas Burner; co-discoverer with Kirchoff of the principle of Spectrum Analysis; and the first thorough investigator of the phenomena of geyser action. (See Chapter III, Part II.) _Cathedral Peak_ (10,600)--J: 13--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Chittenden, Mt._ (10,100)--K: 12--1878--U. S. G. S.--"Of the prominent peaks of this [the Absaroka] range may be mentioned Mount Chittenden, named for Mr. George B. Chittenden, whose name has long been identified with this survey."--Gannett.[CA] [CA] Page 482, Twelfth Annual Report of Dr. Hayden. _Cinnabar Mountain_ (7,000)--A: 5--Named prior to 1870.--"So named from the color of its rocks, which have been mistaken for Cinnabar, although the red color is due to iron."--Hayden. The Devil's Slide (also named before 1870) is on this mountain. _Colter Peak_ (10,500)--O: 13--1885--U. S. G. S.--For John Colter. (See Part I, Chapter III.) _Crags, The_ (9,000)--E: 3--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Crescent Hill_ (7,900)--D: 9--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Crow Foot Ridge_ (9,700)--D-E: 3--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Doane, Mt._ (10,500)--M: 13--1870--Washburn Party--For Lieutenant Gustavus C. Doane, 2d Cavalry, U. S. Army, commander of the military escort to the celebrated Wasburn Expedition of 1870. Lieutenant Doane was born in Illinois, May 29, 1840, and died in Bozeman, Mont., May 5, 1892. At the age of five he went with his parents, in wake of an ox team, to Oregon. In 1849 his family went to California at the outbreak of the gold excitement. He remained there ten years, in the meanwhile working his way through school. In 1862 he entered the Union service, went east with the California Hundred, and then joined a Massachusetts cavalry regiment. He was mustered out in 1865 as a First Lieutenant. He joined the Carpet-baggers and is said to have become mayor of Yazoo City, Mississippi. He was appointed a Second Lieutenant in the Regular Army in 1868, and continued in the service until his death, attaining the rank of Captain. [Illustration: CAPTAIN GUSTAVUS C. DOANE.] Doane's whole career was actuated by a love of adventure. He had at various times planned a voyage to the Polar regions, or an expedition of discovery into Africa. But fate assigned him a middle ground, and he became prominently connected with the discovery of the Upper Yellowstone country. His part in the Expedition of 1870 is second to none. He made the first official report upon the wonders of the Yellowstone, and his fine descriptions have never been surpassed by any subsequent writer. Although suffering intense physical torture during the greater portion of the trip, it did not extinguish in him the truly poetic ardor with which those strange phenomena seem to have inspired him. Dr. Hayden says of this report: "I venture to state, as my opinion, that for graphic description and thrilling interest it has not been surpassed by any official report made to our government since the times of Lewis and Clark."[CB] [CB] Page 8, Fifth Annual Report of Dr. Hayden. Lieutenant Doane and Mr. Langford were the first white men known to have ascended any of the higher peaks of the Absaroka Range. From the summit of the mountain so ascended, Mr. Langford made the first known authentic sketch of Yellowstone Lake. This sketch was used soon after by General Washburn in compiling an official map of that section of country, and he was so much pleased with it that he named the mountain from which it was taken, Mt. Langford. At Mr. Langford's request, he named a neighboring peak, Mt. Doane. _Dome, The_ (9,900)--E: 4--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Druid Peak_ (9,600)--D: 12--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Dunraven Peak_ (9,700)--F: 9--1878--U. S. G. S.--"This I have named Dunraven Peak in honor of the Earl of Dunraven, whose travels and writings have done so much toward making this region known to our cousins across the water."--Gannett.[CC] [CC] Page 478, Twelfth Annual Report of Dr. Hayden. Dunraven visited the Park in 1874. In 1876, he published his "Great Divide," describing his travels in the West. The irrepressible Colonel Norris named this peak after himself, and coupled it with Mt. Washburn in a characteristic poem. But the United States Geological Survey decided otherwise, and transferred the colonel's name to the north-east corner of the Park. (See "Mt. Norris.") _Eagle Peak_ (10,800)--O: 14--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Echo Peak_ (9,600)--E: 4--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Electric Peak_ (11,155)--B: 4-5--1872--U. S. G. S.--From the following circumstance, described by Mr. Henry Gannett, who ascended the mountain with surveying instruments, July 26, 1872:[CD] "A thunder-shower was approaching as we neared the summit of the mountain. I was above the others of the party, and, when about fifty feet below the summit, the electric current began to pass through my body. At first I felt nothing, but heard a crackling noise, similar to a rapid discharge of sparks from a friction machine. Immediately after, I began to feel a tingling or pricking sensation in my head and the ends of my fingers, which, as well as the noise, increased rapidly, until, when I reached the top, the noise, which had not changed its character, was deafening, and my hair stood completely on end, while the tingling, pricking sensation was absolutely painful. Taking off my hat partially relieved it. I started down again, and met the others twenty-five or thirty feet below the summit. They were affected similarly, but in a less degree. One of them attempted to go to the top, but had proceeded but a few feet when he received quite a severe shock, which felled him as if he had stumbled. We then returned down the mountain about three hundred feet, and to this point we still heard and felt the electricity." [CD] Page 807, Sixth Annual Report of Dr. Hayden. _Elephant Back_ (8,600)--J: 9--1871--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. "On account of the almost vertical sides of this mountain, and the rounded form of the summit, it has received the name of the Elephant's Back."--Hayden.[CE] [CE] Page 98, Fifth Annual Report of Dr. Hayden. This name, as now applied, refers to a different feature from that originally designated by it. Many years before the Park was discovered, it was used to denote the long ridge of which Mt. Washburn is the commanding summit, and which was distinctly visible from beyond the present limits of the Park, both north and south. It so appears upon Raynolds' map of 1860, and was so used by the Washburn Expedition (1870), by Captain Barlow (1871), and by Captain Jones (1873). The United States Geological Survey, however, in 1871, transferred the name to an inconspicuous ridge more than a thousand feet lower than the surrounding mountains. Whether the change was made by accident or design does not appear. Captain Ludlow, as late as 1875, refers to it and deplores the fact that it had taken place. _Everts, Mt._ (7,900)--C: 7--1870--Washburn Party.--For Hon. Truman C. Everts, member of the Expedition of 1870, whose terrible experience is elsewhere alluded to. The following succinct account is from the pen of Lieutenant Doane, and is in the main correct:[CF] "On the first day of his absence, he had left his horse standing unfastened, with all his arms and equipments strapped upon his saddle; the animal became frightened, ran away into the woods, and he was left without even a pocket knife as a means of defense. Being very near-sighted, and totally unused to traveling in a wild country without guides, he became completely bewildered. He wandered down to the Snake River Lake [Hart Lake], where he remained twelve days, sleeping near the hot springs to keep from freezing at night, and climbing to the summits each day in the endeavor to trace out his proper course. Here he subsisted on thistle-roots, boiled in the springs, and was kept up a tree the greater part of one night by a California lion. After gathering and cooking a supply of thistle-roots, he managed to strike the south-west point of the [Yellowstone] Lake, and followed around the north side to the Yellowstone [River], finally reaching our [old] camp opposite the Grand Cañon. He was twelve days out before he thought to kindle a fire by using the lenses of his field-glass, but afterward carried a burning brand with him in all his wanderings. Herds of game passed by him during the night, on many occasions when he was on the verge of starvation. In addition to a tolerable supply of thistle-roots, he had nothing for over thirty days but a handful of minnows and a couple of snow-birds. Twice he went five days without food, and three days without water, in that country which is a net-work of streams and springs. He was found on the verge of the great plateau, above the mouth of Gardiner's River. A heavy snow-storm had extinguished his fire; his supply of thistle-roots was exhausted; he was partially deranged, and perishing with cold. A large lion was killed near him, on the trail, which he said had followed him at a short distance for several days previously. It was a miraculous escape, considering the utter helplessness of the man, lost in a forest wilderness, and with the storms of winter at hand." [CF] Page 37, "Yellowstone Expedition of 1870." See Appendix E. On the thirty-seventh day of his wanderings (September 9th to October 16th), he was discovered by Jack Baronett and George A. Pritchett, near the great trail on a high mountain a few miles west of Yancey's. Baronett threw up a mound of stones to mark the spot. He carried Everts in his arms the rest of that day, and passed the night on a small tributary of Black-tail Deer Creek. The next day he was taken on a saddle to near the mouth of the Gardiner. The commemoration of this adventure in the naming of Mt. Everts was an awkward mischance. The mountain which should bear the name is Mt. Sheridan. It was named for Everts by the Washburn Party the night before he was lost, in recognition of his having been the first white man (except Mr. Hedges, who was with him) known to have visited its summit. In the writings of the Washburn Party after their return, it is so used; one very interesting article, by Mr. Hedges, with this name as a title, being published in the _Helena Herald_ before it was known that Mr. Everts had been found. But the name, Mt. Everts, was finally given to the broad plateau between the Gardiner and the Yellowstone, a feature which is not a mountain at all, and which is ten miles from where Everts was found. The actual locality of the finding was erroneously supposed to be near "Rescue Creek." In 1871, Captain Barlow ascended the mountain which should have borne the name of Everts, and called it Mt. Sheridan, in ignorance of its former christening. _Factory Hill_ (9,500)--O: 8--1885--U. S. G. S.--The term "factory" has at various times been applied to several different localities in the Park, because of their striking resemblance on frosty mornings to an active factory town. The resemblance was noted as far back as 1829. The name has now become fixed, as above indicated. _Flat Mountain_ (9,000)--N: 9--1871--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic.--This mountain had already been named by the Washburn Party Yellow Mountain, from its color. _Folsom Peak_ (9,300)--E: 8--1895--U. S. G. S.--For David E. Folsom, leader of the Expedition of 1869, and author of the first general description of the valley of the Upper Yellowstone. [Illustration: DAVID E. FOLSOM.] _Forellen Peak_ (9,700)--T: 5--1885--U. S. G. S.--From the German name for Trout. _Gallatin Range_--A-F: 1-4--Name in use prior to 1870. Raynolds has "Mt. Gallatin" on his map. Gallatin River (see name) rises in this range. _Garnet Hill_ (7,000)--C: 9--1878--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Giant Castle_ (10,000)--K: 14-15--1873--Jones--Characteristic. _Gibbon Hill_ (8,600)--H: 6--1885--U. S. G. S.--From the Gibbon River. _Gravel Peak_ (9,600)--T: 11--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Gray Peak_ (10,300)--C-D: 4--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Grizzly Peak_ (9,700)--L: 12--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Hancock, Mt._ (10,100)--R: 10--1871--Barlow--For General W. S. Hancock, U. S. Army, who, as commanding officer of the Department of Dakota, had lent his active aid in the prosecution of the Yellowstone Explorations. _Hawk's Rest_ (9,800)--R: 14--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Hedges Peak_ (9,500)--G: 9--1895--U. S. G. S.--For Cornelius Hedges, a prominent member of the Washburn Expedition, author of a series of descriptive articles upon the trip, and first to advance and publicly advocate the idea of setting apart that region as a National Park. _Holmes, Mt._ (10,300)--F: 4--1878--U. S. G. S.--For W. H. Holmes, Geologist, U. S. Geological Survey. This peak had been previously called Mt. Madison. _Horseshoe Hill_ (8,200)--E: 6--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Hoyt, Mt._ (10,400)--L: 13--1881--Norris--For the Hon. John W. Hoyt, then Governor of Wyoming. _Huckleberry Mountain_ (9,700)--S: 7--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Humphreys, Mt._ (11,000)--N: 14--1871--Barlow--For General A. A. Humphreys, then Chief of Engineers, U. S. A. _Index Peak_ (11,740)--C: 16--This mountain, and Pilot Knob near it, received their names from unknown sources prior to 1870. "One of them [the peaks] derives its name from its shape, like a closed hand with the index-finger extending upward, while the other is visible from so great a distance on every side that it forms an excellent landmark for the wandering miner, and thus its appropriate name of Pilot Knob."--Hayden.[CG] [CG] Page 48, Sixth Annual Report of Dr. Hayden. _Joseph Peak_ (10,300)--C: 4--1885--U. S. G. S.--For Chief Joseph, the famous Nez Percé leader in the war of 1877. He deservedly ranks among the most noted of the North American Indians. His remarkable conduct of the campaign of 1877 and his uniform abstinence from those barbarous practices which have always characterized Indian warfare, were a marvel to all who were familiar with the facts. No Indian chief ever commanded to such a degree the respect and even friendship of his enemies. _Junction Butte_ (6,500)--D: 10--When or by whom given not known. The name arose, of course, from the fact that this butte stands at the junction of the two important streams, the Yellowstone and Lamar Rivers. Barlow records that the Butte was known as "Square Butte" at the time of his visit in 1871. _Lake Butte_ (8,600)--K: 11--1878--Characteristic. _Landmark, The_ (8,800)--F: 6--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Langford, Mt._ (10,600)--M: 13--1870--Washburn Party--For the Hon. Nathaniel Pitt Langford, first Superintendent of the Yellowstone National Park. Mr. Langford was born August 9, 1832, in Westmoreland, Oneida County, New York. His early life was spent on his father's farm, and his education was obtained by winter attendance at district school. At nineteen, he became clerk in the Oneida Bank of Utica. In 1854, he went to St. Paul, where we find him, in 1855, cashier of the banking house of Marshall & Co., and in 1858, cashier of the Bank of the State of Minnesota. In 1862, he went to Montana as second in command of the Northern Overland Expedition, consisting of 130 men and 53 wagons drawn by oxen. In 1864, he was made Collector of Internal Revenue for the new territory. In 1868, he was appointed by President Johnson Governor of Montana, but as this was after the Senate's imbroglio with the President and its refusal to confirm any more presidential appointments, he did not reach this office. He was one of the famous Montana Vigilantes, a member of the Yellowstone Expedition of 1870, and first Superintendent of the newly created Park. In 1872, he was appointed National Bank Examiner for the Pacific States and Territories, and held the office for thirteen years. He now resides in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is author of a series of articles in _Scribner's_ for 1871, describing the newly-discovered wonders of the Yellowstone, and of the important work, "Vigilante Days and Ways," the most complete history in existence of that critical period in Montana history. [Illustration: NATHANIEL PITT LANGFORD.] The notable part which Mr. Langford bore in the discovery of the Upper Yellowstone country, and in the creation of the Yellowstone National Park, has been fully set forth elsewhere. He has always been its ardent friend, and his enthusiasm upon the subject in the earlier days of its history drew upon him the mild raillery of his friends, who were wont to call him, "National Park" Langford--a soubriquet to which the initials of his real name readily lent themselves. For the circumstance of naming Mt. Langford, see "Mt. Doane." _Mary Mountain_ (8,500)--J: 7--Probably so named by tourists from Mary Lake, which rests on the summit. _Moran, Mt._ (12,800)--W: 5--1872--U. S. G. S.--For the artist, Thomas Moran, who produced the picture of the Grand Cañon now in the Capitol at Washington. _Needles, The_ (9,600)--E: 14--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Norris, Mt._ (9,900)--E: 13--1878--U. S. G. S.--For Philetus W. Norris, second Superintendent of the Park, and the most conspicuous figure in its history. [Illustration: PHILETUS W. NORRIS.] He was born at Palmyra, New York, August 17, 1821. At the age of eight, he was tourist guide at Portage Falls on the Genesee River, New York, and at seventeen he was in Manitoba in the service of British fur traders. In 1842, he settled in Williams County, Ohio, where he founded the village of Pioneer. Between 1850 and 1860 he visited the Far West. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he entered the army and served a short time as spy and captain of scouts. He was then placed in charge of Rebel prisoners on Johnson's Island. He next entered politics as member of the Ohio House of Representatives, but being later defeated for the State Senate, he joined the United States Sanitary Commission and went again to the front. He soon returned and became trustee of certain landed property near the City of Detroit belonging to officers and soldiers of both armies. These lands he reclaimed at great expense from their original swampy condition, and built thereon the village of Norris, now part of Detroit. In 1770, he went west again and undertook to enter the Park region in June of that year, but permitted the swollen condition of the streams to defeat his project. He thus missed the honor which a few months later fell to the Washburn Party--a misfortune which he never ceased to deplore. In 1875, he again visited the Park, and in 1877, became its second Superintendent. In 1882, he returned to Detroit, after which he was employed by the government to explore old Indian mounds, forts, villages, and tombs, and to collect relics for the National Museum. He died at Rocky Hill, Kentucky, January 14, 1885. He is author of the following works: Five Annual Reports as Superintendent of the Park; "The Calumet of the Coteau," a volume of verse, with much additional matter relating to the Park; and a long series of articles on "The Great West," published in the _Norris Suburban_ in 1876-8. The above sketch sufficiently discloses the salient characteristic of Norris' career. His life was that of the pioneer, and was spent in dealing first blows in the subjugation of a primeval wilderness. He was "blazing trails," literally and figuratively, all his days, leaving to others the building of the finished highway. It is therefore not surprising that his work lacks the element of completeness, which comes only from patient attention to details. Nowhere is this defect more apparent than in his writings. A distinct literary talent, and something of the poet's inspiration, were, to use his own words, "well nigh strangled" by the "stern realities of border life." His prose abounds in aggregations of more than one hundred words between periods, so ill arranged and barbarously punctuated as utterly to bewilder the reader. His verse--we have searched in vain for a single quatrain that would justify reproduction. Nevertheless, his writings, like his works, were always to some good purpose. They contained much useful information, and, being widely read throughout the West, had a large and beneficial influence. Perhaps no better or more generous estimate of his character can be found than in the following words of Mr. Langford who knew him well: "He was a good man, a true man, faithful to his friends, of very kind heart, grateful for kindnesses, of more than ordinary personal courage, rather vain of his poetical genius, and fond of perpetuating his name in prominent features of scenery." Concerning which last characteristic it may be noted that three mountain peaks, one geyser basin, one pass, and an uncertain number of other features of the Park, were thought by Colonel Norris deserving of this distinction. With inimitable fidelity to this trait of his character, he had even selected as his final resting-place the beautiful open glade on the south side of the Grand Cañon, just below the Lower Falls. _Observation Peak_ (9,300)--G: 8--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Obsidian Cliff_ (7,800)--F: 6--1878--Norris--Characteristic. _Paint Pot Hill_ (7,900)--H: 6--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Pelican Cone_ (9,580)--I: 12--1885--U. S. G. S.--Near source of Pelican Creek. _Pilot Knob_ (11,977)--C: 16--See "Index Peak." _Piñon Peak_ (9,600)--S: 10--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Prospect Peak_ (9,300)--D-E: 8--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Pyramid Peak_ (10,300)--J: 14--1895--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Quadrant Mountain_ (10,200)--D: 4--1878--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Red Mountain Range_--P: 7-8--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Reservation Peak_ (10,600)--M: 14--1895--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Roaring Mountain_ (8,000)--F: 6--1885--U. S. G. S.--"It takes its name from the shrill, penetrating sound of the steam constantly escaping from one or more vents near the summit."--Hague. _Saddle Mountain_ (11,100)--H: 15--1880--Norris--Characteristic. _Schurz Mt._ (10,900)--N: 14--1885--U. S. G. S.--For Carl Schurz, Secretary of the Interior during President Hayes' administration. This name was first given by Colonel Norris to the prominent ridge on the west side of the Gibbon Cañon. _Sepulcher Mountain_ (9,500)--B-C: 5-6--The origin of this name is unknown. The following remarks concerning it are from the pen of Prof. Wm. H. Holmes:[CH] "Why this mountain received such a melancholy appellation I have not been able to discover. So far as I know, the most important thing buried beneath its dark mass is the secret of its structure. It is possible that the form suggested the name." [CH] Page 15, Twelfth Annual Report of Dr. Hayden. _Sheepeater Cliffs_ (7,500)--D: 7--1879--Norris--From the name of a tribe of Indians, the only known aboriginal occupants of what is now the Yellowstone Park. (See Chapter II, Part II.) It was upon one of the "ancient and but recently deserted, secluded, unknown haunts" of these Indians, that Colonel Norris, "in rapt astonishment," stumbled one day, and was so impressed by what he saw, that he gave the neighboring cliff its present name. He thus describes this retreat:[CI] "It is mainly carpeted with soft grass, dotted, fringed, and overhung with small pines, firs and cedars, and, with the subdued and mingled murmur of the rapids and cataracts above and below it, and the laughing ripple of the gliding stream, is truly an enchanting dell--a wind and storm sheltered refuge for the feeble remnant of a fading race." [CI] Page 10, Annual Report Superintendent of the Park for 1879. _Sheridan Mt._ (10,250)--P: 8--1871--Barlow--For Gen. P. H. Sheridan, who actively forwarded all the early exploring expeditions in this region, and, at a later day, twice visited the Park. His public warnings at this time of the danger to which the Park was exposed from vandals, poachers, and railroad promoters, and his vigorous appeal for its protection, had great influence in bringing about a more efficient and enlightened policy in regard to that reservation. (See "Mt. Everts.") _Signal Hills_ (9,500)--M: 12--1871--U. S. G. S.--A ridge extending back from Signal Point on the Yellowstone Lake. _Silver Tip Peak_ (10,400)--K: 13--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Specimen Ridge_ (8,700)--E: 11--Name known prior to 1870.--Characteristic. (See Chapter V, Part II.) _Stevenson, Mt._ (10,300)--M: 13--1871--U. S. G. S.--For James Stevenson, long prominently connected with the U. S. Geological Survey. "In honor of his great services not only during the past season, but for over twelve years of unremitting toil as my assistant, oftentimes without pecuniary reward, and with but little of the scientific recognition that usually comes to the original explorer, I have desired that one of the principal islands of the lake and one of the noble peaks reflected in its clear waters should bear his name forever."--Hayden.[CJ] [CJ] Page 5, Fifth Annual Report of Dr. Hayden. Mr. Stevenson was born in Maysville, Ky., December 24, 1840. He early displayed a taste for exploration and natural history, and such reading as his limited education permitted was devoted to books treating of these subjects. At the age of thirteen he ran away from home and joined a party of Hudson's Bay Fur Company's traders, bound up the Missouri River. On the same boat was Dr. F. V. Hayden, then on his way to explore the fossiliferous region of the Upper Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers. Noticing Stevenson's taste for natural history he invited him to join him in his work. Stevenson accepted; and thus began a relation which lasted for more than a quarter of a century, and which gave direction to the rest of his life. [Illustration: JAMES STEVENSON.] He was engaged in several explorations between 1850 and 1860, connected with the Pacific railroad surveys, and with others under Lieutenants G. K. Warren and W. F. Raynolds. In 1861 he entered the Union service as a private soldier, and left it in 1865 with an officer's commission. After the war he resumed his connection with Dr. Hayden. He was mainly instrumental in the organization of the United States Geological Survey of the Territories in 1867, and during the next twelve years he was constantly engaged in promoting its welfare. When the consolidation of the various geographical and geological surveys took place in 1879, under the name of the United States Geological Survey, he became associated with the United States Bureau of Ethnology. He had always shown a taste for ethnological investigations and his scientific work during the rest of his life was in this direction, principally among the races of New Mexico and Arizona. He died in New York City July 25, 1888. In the paragraph quoted above from Dr. Hayden there is more than any but the few who are familiar with the early history of the geological surveys will understand. It rarely happens that a master is so far indebted to a servant for his success, as was true of the relation of Dr. Hayden and James Stevenson. Stevenson's great talent lay in the organization and management of men. His administrative ability in the field was invaluable to the Survey of which Hayden was chief, and his extraordinary influence with Congressmen was a vital element in its early growth. His part in the Yellowstone Explorations of 1871 and 1872 is second to none in importance. It will not be forgotten that he was the first to build and launch a boat upon the Yellowstone Lake, nor that he, and Mr. Langford who was with him, were the first white men to reach the summit of the Grand Teton. _Storm Peak_ (9,500)--E: 8--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Survey Peak_ (9,200)--T: 4--1885--U. S. G. S. This mountain was a prominent signaling point for the Indians. It was first named Monument Peak by Richard Leigh who built a stone mound on its summit. _Table Mountain_ (10,800)--O: 14--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Terrace Mountain_ (8,100)--C: 6--1878--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Teton, Grand_ (13,691)--Not on Map.--This mountain has borne its present name for upward of four score years. Through more than half a century it was a cynosure to the wandering trapper, miner and explorer. The name has passed into all the literature of that period, which will ever remain one of the most fascinating in our western history. Indeed, it has become the classic designation of the most interesting historic summit of the Rocky Mountains. That it should always retain this designation in memory of the nameless pioneers who have been guided by it across the wilderness, and thousands of whom have perished beneath its shadow, would seem to be a self-evident proposition. Individual merit, no matter how great, can never justify the usurpation of its place by any personal name whatever. An attempt to do this was made in 1872 by the United States Geological Survey who rechristened it Mt. Hayden. The new name has never gained any local standing, and although it has crept into many maps its continued use ought to be discouraged. It is greatly to the credit of Dr. Hayden that he personally disapproved the change, so far at least, as very rarely, if ever, to refer to the mountain by its new name. _Three Rivers Peak_ (9,900)--E: 4--1885--U. S. G. S.--Branches of the Madison, Gallatin and Gardiner Rivers take their rise from its slopes. _Thunderer, The_ (10,400)--D: 14--1885--U. S. G. S.--Seemingly a great focus for thunder storms. _Top Notch Peak_ (10,000)--L: 13--1895--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Trident, The_ (10,000)--Q-R: 14--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Trilobite Point_ (9,900)--F: 4--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Turret Mountain_ (10,400)--P: 14--1878--Characteristic.--Called by Captain Jones "Round-head or Watch Tower." _Twin Buttes_ (8,400)--K: 14--1870--Washburn Party.--Characteristic. _Washburn, Mt._ (10,000)--F: 9--1870--Washburn Party.--For General Henry Dana Washburn, chief of the Yellowstone Expedition of 1870. General Washburn was born in Windsor, Vt., March 28, 1832. His parents moved to Ohio during his infancy. He received a common school education and at fourteen began teaching school. He entered Oberlin College, but did not complete his course. At eighteen he went to Indiana where he resumed school-teaching. At twenty-one he entered the New York State and National Law School, from which he graduated. At twenty-three he was elected auditor of Vermilion county, Indiana. His war record was a highly honorable one. He entered the army as private in 1861 and left it as brevet brigadier-general in 1865. His service was mainly identified with the Eighteenth Indiana, of which he became colonel. He was in several of the western campaigns, notably in that of Vicksburg, in which he bore a prominent part. In the last year of the war he was with Sherman's army, and for a short time after its close was in command of a military district in southern Georgia. In 1864, he was elected to Congress over the Hon. Daniel W. Voorhees, and again, in 1866, over the Hon. Solomon W. Claypool. At the expiration of his second term he was appointed by President Grant, surveyor-general of Montana, which office he held until his death. [Illustration: GEN. HENRY DANA WASHBURN.] It was during his residence in Montana that the famous Yellowstone Expedition of 1870 took place. His part in that important work is perhaps the most notable feature of his career. As leader of the expedition he won the admiration and affection of its members. He was the first to send to Washington specimens from the geyser formations. He ardently espoused the project of setting apart this region as a public park and was on his way to Washington in its interest when his career was cut short by death. The hardship and exposure of the expedition had precipitated the catastrophe to which he had long been tending. He left Helena in November, 1870, and died of consumption at his home in Clinton, Indiana, January 26, 1871. General Washburn's name was given to this mountain by a unanimous vote of the party on the evening of August 28, 1870, as a result of the following incident related by Mr. Langford: "Our first Sunday in camp was at Tower Creek. The forest around us was very dense, and we were somewhat at a loss in deciding what course we needed to follow in order to reach Yellowstone Lake. We had that day crossed a _fresh_ Indian trail, a circumstance which admonished us of the necessity of watchfulness so as to avoid disaster. While we were resting in camp, General Washburn, without our knowledge, and unattended, made his way to the mountain, from the summit of which, overlooking the dense forest which environed us, he saw Yellowstone Lake, our objective point, and carefully noted its direction from our camp. This intelligence was most joyfully received by us, for it relieved our minds of all anxiety concerning our course of travel, and dispelled the fears of some of our party lest we should become inextricably involved in that wooded labyrinth." _White Peaks_ (9,800)--F : 4--1895--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Wild Cat Peak_ (9,800)--T : 8--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Yount Peak_ (Hayden, 11,700; Hague, 12,250)--Not on map.--1878--U. S. G. S.--Source of the Yellowstone.--Named for an old trapper and guide of that region. APPENDIX A. III. STREAMS. [Map locations refer only to outlets, or to points where streams pass off the limits of the map. Altitudes refer to the same points, but are given only in the most important cases.] _Agate Creek_--E : 10--1878--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Alum Creek_--H : 9--Name known prior to 1870--Characteristic. _Amethyst Greek_--E : 12--1878--U. S. G. S.--Flows from Amethyst Mountain. _Amphitheater Creek_--D : 13--1885--U. S. G. S.--From form of valley near its mouth. _Antelope Creek_--E : 10--1870--Washburn Party--Characteristic.--This name is often applied locally to a tributary of the Yellowstone just above Trout Creek. _Arnica Creek_--L : 8--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Aster Creek_--P : 7--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Astrigent Creek_--J : 12--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Atlantic Creek_--S : 13--1873--Jones--Flows from Two-Ocean-Pass down the Atlantic slope. _Badger Creek_--P : 13--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Basin Creek_--Q : 9--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Bear Creek_--B : 7--1863--Party of prospectors under one Austin. On the way they found fair prospects in a creek on the east side of the Yellowstone, and finding also a hairless cub, called the gulch "Bear."--Topping. _Bear Creek_--K : 11--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Beaver Creek_--O : 9--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Beaver Dam Creek_--O : 12--1871--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Bechler River_--R : 1--1872--U. S. G. S.--For Gustavus R. Bechler, topographer on the Snake River Division of the Hayden Expedition of 1872. _Berry Creek_--U : 6--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Black-tail Deer Creek_--B : 8--Named prior to 1870--Characteristic. _Bluff Creek_--H : 10--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Bog Creek_--H : 10--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Boone Creek_--T : 1--Named prior to 1870--For Robert Withrow, an eccentric pioneer of Irish descent, who used to call himself "Daniel Boone the Second." _Bridge Creek_--K : 9--1871--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. "At one point, soon after leaving camp, we found a most singular natural bridge of the trachyte, which gives passage to a small stream, which we called Bridge Creek."--Hayden. "Natural Bridge" is really over a branch of Bridge Creek. _Broad Creek_--F : 10--1871--Barlow--Characteristic. _Buffalo Creek_--D : 11--Prior to 1870--Naming party unknown--Characteristic. _Burnt Creek_--E : 10--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Cache Creek_--F : 13--1863--Prospecting party under one Austin were in camp on this stream when they were surprised by Indians, and all their stock stolen except one or two mules. Being unable to carry all their baggage from this point, they _cached_ what they could not place on the mules, or could not themselves carry. From this circumstance arose the name. _Calfee Creek_--F : 13--1880--Norris--For H. B. Calfee, a photographer of note. "Some seven miles above Cache Creek we passed the mouth of another stream in a deep, narrow, timbered valley, which we named Calfee Creek, after the famous photographer of the Park. Five miles further on, we reached the creek which Miller recognized as the one he descended in retreating from the Indians in 1870, and which, on this account, we called Miller's Creek."--Norris.[CK] [CK] Page 7, Annual Report Superintendent of the Park for 1880. _Cañon Creek_--1 : 5--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Carnelian Creek_--E : 9--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Cascade Creek_--G : 8--1870--Washburn Party--Characteristic. _Chalcedony Creek_--E : 12--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Chipmunk Creek_--O : 11--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Clear Creek_--L : 11--1878--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Cliff Creek_--Q : 13--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Clover Creek_--G : 13--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Cold Creek_--H : 14--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Columbine Creek_--M : 11--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Conant Creek_--T : 1--Prior to 1870--By Richard Leigh for one All Conant, who went to the mountains in 1865, and who came near losing his life on this stream. _Cotton Grass Creek_--H : 9--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Cougar Creek_--G : 2--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Coulter Creek_--R : 8--1885--U. S. G. S.--For John M. Coulter, botanist in the Hayden Expedition of 1872. _Crawfish Creek_--R : 6--1885--U. S. G. S--Characteristic. _Crevice Creek_--C : 7--1867--Prospecting party under one Lou Anderson. "They found gold in a crevice at the mouth of the first Stream above Bear, and named it, in consequence, Crevice Gulch. Hubbel went ahead the next day for a hunt, and upon his return he was asked what kind of a stream the next creek was. "It's a hell roarer," was his reply, and Hell Roaring is its name to this day. The second day after this, he was again ahead, and, the same question being asked him, he said: "'Twas but a slough." When the party came to it, they found a rushing torrent, and, in crossing, a pack horse and his load were swept away, but the name of Slough Creek remains."--Topping. _Crooked Creek_--R : 10--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Crow Creek_--K : 15--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Crystal Creek_--D : 11--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Cub Creek_--L : 11--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Deep Creek_--E : 10--1873--Jones--Characteristic. _De Lacy Creek_--M : 6--1880--Norris--For Walter W. De Lacy, first white man known to have passed along the valley. (See "Shoshone Lake.") First named Madison Creek by the Hayden party in 1871. _Duck Creek_--G : 3--1895--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Elk Creek_--D : 9--Named prior to 1870--Characteristic. _Elk Tongue Creek_--C : 12--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Escarpment Creek_--Q : 13--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Fairy Creek_--J : 4--1871--Barlow--From "Fairy Falls," which see. _Falcon Creek_--R : 13--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Falls River_--S : 1--1872--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Fan Creek_--C : 2--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Fawn Creek_--C : 5--1878--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Firehole River_--I : 4--This name and "Burnt Hole" have been used to designate the geyser basins and the stream flowing through them since at least as far back as 1830. Captain Bonneville says it was well known to his men. The term "Hole" is a relic of the early days when the open valleys or parks among the mountains were called "holes." The descriptive "fire, naturally arose from the peculiar character of that region." _Firehole, Little_--L : 4--1878--U. S. G. S.--From main stream. _Flint Creek_--F : 13--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Forest Creek_--Q : 7--1885--U. S. G. S--Characteristic. _Fox Creek_--R : 11--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Gallatin River_--A : 1--1805--Lewis and Clark--For Albert Gallatin, Secretary of War under President Jefferson. _Gardiner River_ (5360)--B : 6--This name, which, after "Yellowstone," is the most familiar and important name in the Park, is the most difficult to account for. The first authentic use of the name occurs in 1870, in the writings of the Washburn party. In Mr. Langford's journal, kept during the expedition, is the following entry for August 25, 1870: "At nineteen miles from our morning camp we came to Gardiner River, at the mouth of which we camped." As the party did not originate the name, and as they make no special reference to it in any of their writings, it seems clear that it must already have been known to them at the time of their arrival at the stream. None of the surviving members has the least recollection concerning it. The stream had been known to prospectors during the preceding few years as Warm Spring Creek, and the many "old timers" consulted on the subject erroneously think that the present name was given by the Washburn Party or by the Hayden Party of 1871. What is its real origin is therefore a good deal of a mystery. The only clue, and that not a satisfactory one, which has come under our observation, is to be found in the book "River of the West," already quoted. Reference is there made to a trapper by the name of Gardiner, who lived in the Upper Yellowstone country as far back as 1830, and was at one time a companion of Joseph Meek, the hero of the book. In another place it is stated that in 1838, Meek started alone from Missouri Lake (probably Red Rock Lake) "for the Gallatin Fork of the Missouri, trapping in a mountain basin called Gardiner's Hole.... On his return, in another basin called Burnt Hole, he found a buffalo skull, etc." As is well known, the sources of the Gallatin and Gardiner are interlaced with each other, and this reference strongly points to the present Gardiner Valley as "Gardiner's Hole." The route across the Gallatin Range to Mammoth Hot Springs, and thence back by way of the Firehole Basin, was doubtless a natural one then as it is now. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that this name came from an old hunter in the early years of the century, and that the Washburn Party received it from some surviving descendant of those times. _Geode Creek_--C : 8--1878--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Geyser Creek_--H : 6--1878--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Gibbon River_--I : 4--1872--U. S. G. S.--For Gen. John Gibbon, U. S. A., who first explored it. "We have named this stream in honor of Gen. John Gibbon, United States Army, who has been in military command of Montana for some years, and has, on many occasions, rendered the survey most important services."--Hayden.[CL] [CL] Page 55, Sixth Annual Report of Dr. Hayden. _Glade Creek_--S : 6--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Glen Creek_--C : 6--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Gneiss Creek_--G : 1--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Gravel Creek_--U : 10--1895--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Grayling Creek_--F : 1--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Grouse Creek_--O : 10--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Harebell Creek_--R : 8--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Hart River_--Q : 9--1872--U. S. G. S.--From Hart Lake, of which it is the outlet. (See "Hart Lake.") _Hell Roaring Creek_--C : 9--1867--"See Crevice Creek." _Indian Creek_--E : 6--1878--U. S. G. S.--See "Bannock Peak." _Iron Creek_--L : 4--1871--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Jasper Creek_--D : 11--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Jay Creek_--S : 13--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Jones Creek_--K : 15--1880--Norris--For Captain (now Lieutenant-Colonel) W. A. Jones, Corps of Engineers, U. S. A., who first explored it. Captain Jones was leader of an important expedition through the Park in 1873, and has since been largely identified with the development of the Park road system. _Jumper Creek_--J : 6--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Lamar River_ (5,970)--D : 10--1885--U. S. G. S.--For the Hon. L. Q. C. Lamar, Secretary of the Interior during the first administration of President Cleveland. The stream is locally known only by its original designation, the "East Fork of the Yellowstone." _Lava Creek_--D : 7--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Lewis River_--R : 7--1872--U. S. G. S.--From "Lewis Lake," which see. _Lizard Creek_--U : 6--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Lost Creek_--D : 9--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Lupine Creek_--D : 7--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Lynx Creek_--Q : 13--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Madison River_--G : 1--1805--Lewis and Clark--For James Madison, Secretary of State to Thomas Jefferson. _Magpie Creek_--J : 6--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Maple Creek_--G : 2--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Mason Creek_--L : 16--1881--Norris--For Major Julius W. Mason, U. S. A., commander of escort to Gov. Hoyt, of Wyoming, on the latter's reconnaissance for a wagon road to the Park in 1881. _Meadow Creek_--M : 11--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Middle Creek_--L : 15--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Miller Creek_--G : 13--1880--Norris--For a mountaineer named Miller. See "Calfee Creek." _Mink Creek_--T : 11--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Mist Creek_--I : 14--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Moose Creek_--N : 6--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Moss Creek_--G : 10--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Mountain Creek_--P : 13--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Mountain Ash Creek_--R : 3--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Nez Percé Creek_ (7,237)--J : 4--1878--U. S. G. S.--The Nez Percé Indians passed up this stream on their raid through the Park in 1877. It had previously been called "East Fork of the Firehole." Prof. Bradley, of the U. S. Geological Survey, christened it Hayden's Fork in 1872. (See Chapter XIII, Part I.) _Obsidian Creek_--E : 6--1879--Norris--Characteristic. _Opal Creek_--E : 12--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Otter Creek_--H : 8--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Outlet Creek_--P : 9--1895--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Owl Creek_--T : 5--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Pacific Creek_--W : 11--1873--Jones--Flows from Two-Ocean Pass down the Pacific slope. _Panther Creek_--D : 5--1878--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Pebble Creek_--D : 13--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Pelican Creek_--K : 10--Probably named by the Washburn Party in 1870. Hayden and Barlow, in 1871, use the name as though it were already a fixture. Mr. Hedges says of this stream: "About the mouth of the little stream that we had just crossed were numerous shallows and bars, which were covered by the acre with ducks, geese, huge white-breasted cranes, and long-beaked pelicans, while the solitary albatross, or sea-gull, circled above our heads with a saucy look that drew many a random shot, and cost one, at least, its life." _Phlox Creek_--Q : 13--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Plateau Creek_--C : 12--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Polecat Creek_--S : 6--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Quartz Creek_--E : 10--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Rabbit Creek_--K : 4--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Raven Creek_--J: 12--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Red Creek_--Q: 8--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Rescue Creek_--C: 7--1878--U. S. G. S.--Where Everts was not found. (See "Mt. Everts.") _Rocky Creek_--O: 12--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Rose Creek_--D: 12--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Sedge Creek_--K: 11--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Senecio Creek_--S: 13--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Sentinel Creek_--J: 4--1872--U. S. G. S.--"The two central ones [geyser mounds] are the highest, and appear so much as if they were guarding the Upper Valley, that this stream was called Sentinel Branch." Bradley. _Shallow Creek_--F: 11--1895--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Sickle Creek_--Q: 10--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Slough Creek_--D: 10--1867--See "Crevice Creek." _Snake River_ (6,808)--W: 8--1805--Lewis and Clark--From the Snake or Shoshone Indians, who dwelt in its valley. _Soda Butte Creek_--E: 12--Probably named by miners prior to 1870. From an extinct geyser or hot spring cone near the mouth of the stream. _Solfatara Creek_--G: 6--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Solution Creek_--M: 8--1885--U. S. G. S.--The outlet of Riddle Lake. _Sour Creek_--H: 9--1871--Barlow--Characteristic. _Spirea Creek_--R: 6--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Spring Creek_--M: 5--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Spruce Creek_--J: 6--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Squirrel Creek_--N: 5--1878--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Stellaria Creek_--C: 3--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Stinkingwater River_--L: 16--1807--John Colter--From an offensive hot spring near the junction of the principal forks of the stream. A most interesting fact, to which attention was first publicly called by Prof. Arnold Hague, is the occurrence on the map, which Lewis and Clark sent to President Jefferson in the spring of 1805, of the name "Stinking Cabin Creek," very nearly in the locality of the river Stinkingwater. Prof. Hague, who published an interesting paper concerning this map in _Science_ for November 4, 1877, thinks that possibly some trapper had penetrated this region even before 1804. But with Lewis and Clark's repeated statements that no white man had reached the Yellowstone prior to 1805, it seems more likely that the name was derived from the Indians. _Straight Creek_--E: 5--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Sulphur Creek_--G: 9--1878--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic.--Locally this name is applied to a stream which flows from the hot springs at the base of Sulphur Mountain. _Surface Creek_--G: 9--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Surprise Creek_--P: 9--1885--U. S. G. S.--Its course, as made known by recent explorations, was surprisingly different from that which earlier explorations had indicated. _Tangled Creek_--J: 4--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic.--A hot water stream which flows in numberless interlaced channels. _Thistle Creek_--J: 10--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Thoroughfare Creek_--R: 13--1885--U. S. G. S.--Its valley forms part of a very practicable route across the Yellowstone Range. _Timothy Creek_--G: 13--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Tower Creek_--D: 10--1870--Washburn Party--From "Tower Falls," which see. _Trail Creek_--O: 12--1873--Jones--From an elk trail along it. _Trappers' Creek_--P: 13--1885--U. S. G. S.--A great beaver resort. _Trout Greek_--I: 9--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Violet Creek_--I: 8--1872--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic.--"We named the small stream Violet Creek, from the profusion of violets growing upon its banks." Peale. _Weasel Creek_--K: 9--1895--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Willow Creek_--H: 14--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Winter Creek_--E: 6--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Witch Creek_--O: 8--1878--U. S. G. S.--Probably from the prevalence of hot springs phenomena along its entire course. _Wolverine Creek_--R: 8--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Yellowstone River_ (8,100 and 5,360)--U: 16 (enters map); A: 5 (leaves map).--See Part I, Chapter I. APPENDIX A. IV. WATER-FALLS. [Figures in parentheses indicate approximate heights of falls in feet. These in most cases are not to be relied upon as strictly accurate, there having been no published record of actual measurements, except in the case of the Yellowstone Falls.] _Collonade Falls_--F: 3--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Crystal Falls_ (129)--G: 8--1870--Washburn Party.--Characteristic.--The total fall includes three cascades. _Fairy Fall_ (250)--K: 4--1871--Barlow.--Characteristic. _Firehole Falls_ (60)--I: 4--Takes name from river. _Gibbon Falls_ (80)--I: 5--Takes name from river. _Iris Falls_--P: 3--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Kepler Cascade_ (80)--L: 5--1881--Norris.--For the son of Hon. John W. Hoyt, Ex-Governor of Wyoming, who accompanied his father on a reconnaissance for a wagon road to the Park in 1881. Norris speaks of him as "an intrepid twelve-year old" boy who "unflinchingly shared in all the hardships, privations, and dangers of the explorations of his father," which included many hundred miles of travel on horseback through that difficult country; and in admiration for the lad's pluck, he named this cascade in his honor. _Lewis Falls, Upper_ (80)--P: 7--Takes name from river. _Lewis Falls, Lower_ (50)--Q: 7--Takes name from river. _Moose Falls_--R: 6--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Mystic Falls_--L: 4--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Osprey Falls_ (150)--D: 6--1885--U. S. G. S. _Ouzel Falls_--P: 3--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Rainbow Falls_ (140)--R: 4--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic.--Height includes total of three falls. _Rustic Falls_ (70)--D: 6--1878--Norris--Characteristic. _Silver Cord Cascade_--G: 9--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Terraced Falls_--R: 4--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Tower Falls_ (132)--D: 10--1870--Washburn Party--Characteristic. "By a vote of a majority of the party this fall was called Tower Fall."--Washburn. "At the crest of the fall the stream has cut its way through amygdaloid masses, leaving tall spires of rock from 50 to 100 feet in height, and worn in every conceivable shape.... Several of them stand like sentinels on the very brink of the fall."--Doane. _Undine Falls_ (60)--D: 7--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Union Falls_--Q: 4--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Virginia Cascade_ (60)--H: 7--1886--By E. Lamartine, at that time foreman in charge of government work in Park.--For the wife of the Hon. Chas. Gibson, President of the Yellowstone Park Association. _Wraith Falls_ (100)--D: 7--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Yellowstone Falls_ (Upper 112; Lower 310)--H: 9--From the river which flows over them.[CM] [CM] Record of the various measurements of the Upper and Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River. Folsom (1869) Upper Fall, 115 feet. Method not stated. Lower Fall, 350 feet. Method not stated. Doane (1870) Upper Fall, 115 feet. Line. Langford (1870) Lower Fall, 350 feet. Line stretched on an incline. Moore's Sketch (1870) Lower Fall, 365 feet. Method not stated. Hayden (1871) Upper Fall, 140 feet. Method not stated. Lower Fall, 350 feet. Method not stated. Gannett (1872) Upper Fall, 140 feet. Barometer. Lower Fall, 395 feet. Comparison of angles subtended by Falls and by a tree of known height. Jones (1873) Upper Fall, 150 feet. Barometer. Lower Fall, 329 feet. Barometer. Ludlow (1875) Upper Fall, 110 feet. Line. Lower Fall, 310 feet. Line. Gannett (1878) Upper Fall, 112 feet. Line. Lower Fall, 297 feet. Line stretched on an incline. U. S. G. S. (Recent) Upper Fall, 109 feet. Method not stated. Lower Fall, 308 feet. Method not stated. Chittenden (1892) Upper Fall, 112 feet between point of first descent and level of pool below. Measured by means of a transit instrument. Width of gorge at brink of fall, and a few feet above water surface, 48 feet. APPENDIX A. V. LAKES. [Figures in parentheses denote elevations.] _Beach Lake_ (8,150)--K: 8--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Beaver Lake_ (7,415)--F: 6--1879--Norris--Characteristic. _Beula Lake_ (7,530)--R: 5--1872--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. [Illustration: JAMES BRIDGER.] _Bridger Lake_ (7,900)--R: 13--Name a fixture prior to 1870.--For James Bridger, the Daniel Boone of the Rockies, and one of the most remarkable products of the trapping and gold-seeking eras. He was born in Richmond, Va., in March, 1804, and died in Washington, Jackson Co., Mo., July 17, 1881. He must have gone west at a very early age for he is known to have been in the mountains in 1820. _Niles Register_ for 1822 speaks of him as associated with Fitzpatrick in the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. Another record of this period reveals him as leader of a band of whites sent to retake stolen horses from the hostile Bannocks. In 1832, he had become a resident partner in the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. That he was a recognized leader among the early mountaineers while yet in his minority seems beyond question. He became "The Old Man of the Mountains" before he was thirty years of age. Among the more prominent achievements of Bridger's life may be noted the following: He was long a leading spirit in the great Rocky Mountain Fur Company. He discovered Great Salt Lake and the noted Pass that bears his name. He built Fort Bridger in the lovely valley of Black Fork of Green River, where transpired many thrilling events connected with the history of the Mormons and "Forty-niners." He had explored, and could accurately describe, the wonders of the Yellowstone fully a quarter of a century before their final discovery. In person he was tall and spare, straight and agile, eyes gray, hair brown and long, and abundant even in old age; expression mild, and manners agreeable. He was hospitable and generous, and was always trusted and respected. He possessed to a high degree the confidence of the Indians, one of whom, a Shoshone woman, he made his wife. Unquestionably Bridger's chief claim to remembrance by posterity rests upon the extraordinary part he bore in the exploration of the West. The common verdict of his many employers, from Robert Campbell down to Captain Raynolds, is that as a guide he was without an equal. He was a born topographer. The whole West was mapped out in his mind as in an exhaustive atlas. Such was his instinctive sense of locality and direction that it used to be said that he could "smell his way" where he could not see it. He was not only a good topographer in the field, but he could reproduce his impressions in sketches. "With a buffalo skin and a piece of charcoal," says Captain Gunnison, "he will map out any portion of this immense region, and delineate mountains, streams, and the circular valleys, called 'holes,' with wonderful accuracy." His ability in this line caused him always to be in demand as guide to exploring parties, and his name is connected with scores of prominent government and private expeditions. His lifetime measures that period of our history during which the West was changed from a trackless wilderness to a settled and civilized country. He was among the first who went to the mountains, and he lived to see all that had made a life like his possible swept away forever. His name survives in many a feature of our western geography, but in none with greater honor than in this little lake among the mountains that he knew so well; and near the source of that majestic stream with which so much of his eventful life was identified. _Delusion Lake_ (7,850)--M: 9--1878--U. S. G. S.--This lake was long supposed to be an arm of the Yellowstone Lake, and, in the fanciful comparison of the main lake to the form of the human hand, occupied the position of the index finger. The delusion consisted in this mistaken notion of a permanent connection between the two lakes. _Dryad Lake_ (8,250)--K: 8--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Duck Lake_ (7,850)--M: 7--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Fern Lake_ (8,150)--H: 11--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Frost Lake_--(7,350)--I: 14--Unknown-Characteristic. _Gallatin Lake_ (9,000)--E: 4--1885--U. S. G. S.--Source of the Gallatin River. _Goose Lake_ (7,100)--K: 4--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Grassy Lake_ (7,150)--R: 5--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Grebe Lake_ (7,950)--G: 8--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Grizzly Lake_ (7,490)--F: 5--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Hart Lake_ (7,469)--P: 9--According to Hayden, "long known to the hunters of the region as Heart Lake." Named prior to 1870 for an old hunter by the name of Hart Hunney who in early times plied his trade in this vicinity. He was possibly one of Bonneville's men, for he seems to have known the General well and to have been familiar with his operations. He was killed by a war party of Crows in 1852. The spelling, _Heart_, dates from the expeditions of 1871. The notion that the name arose from the shape of the lake seems to have originated with Captain Barlow. It has generally been accepted although there is really no similarity between the form of the lake and that of a heart. Lewis Lake is the only heart-shaped lake in that locality. Everts named Hart Lake, Bessie Lake, after his daughter. _Henry Lake_ (6,443)--A noted lake outside the limits of the Park passed by tourists entering the park from the west. It is named for a celebrated fur trader, Andrew Henry, who built a trading post in that vicinity in 1809. _Hering Lake_ (7,530)--R: 5--1878--U. S. G. S.--For Rudolph Hering, Topographer on the Snake River Division of the Hayden Survey for 1872. _Indian Pond_--J: 11--1880--Norris.--An ancient, much-used camping-ground of Indians. "My favorite camp on the Yellowstone Lake (and it evidently has been a favorite one for the Indian) has ever been upon the grove-dotted bluff, elevated thirty or forty feet above the lake, directly fronting Indian Pond."--Norris. _Isa Lake_ (8,250)--L: 6--1893--N. P. R. R.--For Miss Isabel Jelke, of Cincinnati. _Jackson Lake_ (6,000)--U-W: 6--Date unknown.--For David Jackson, a noted mountaineer and fur trader, and one of the first three partners of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. This lake was discovered by John Colter and was named by Clark _Lake Biddle_, in honor of Nicholas Biddle, who first gave to the world an authentic edition of the journal of the celebrated Lewis and Clark Expedition. _Jenny Lake_--South of Leigh Lake and off the map.--1872--U. S. G. S.--For the wife of Richard Leigh. She was a Shoshone Indian. _Leigh Lake_--W: 5--1872--U. S. G. S.--For Richard Leigh ("Beaver Dick"), a noted hunter, trapper, and guide in the country around the Teton Mountains. The nickname "Beaver Dick" arose, not from the fact that Leigh was an expert beaver trapper, but on account of the striking resemblance of two abnormally large front teeth in his upper jaw to the teeth of a beaver. The Indians called him "The Beaver." _Lewis Lake_ (7,720)--O: 7--1872--U. S. G. S.--For Captain Lewis of "Lewis and Clark" fame. "As it had no name, so far as we could ascertain, we decided to call it Lewis Lake, in memory of that gallant explorer Captain Meriwether Lewis. The south fork of the Columbia, which was to have perpetuated his name, has reverted to its Indian title Shoshone, and is commonly known by that name, or its translation, Snake River. As this lake lies near the head of one of the principal forks of that stream, it may not be inappropriately called Lewis Lake."--Bradley.[CN] [CN] Page 249, Sixth Annual Report of Dr. Hayden. _Loon Lake_ (6,400)--R: 3--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Lost Lake_ (8,500)--M: 7--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic.--This is probably Norris' Two-Ocean-Pond, and is doubtless also the lake referred to by Hayden in the following paragraph from his report for 1871: "We camped at night on the shore of a lake which seemed to have no outlet. It is simply a depression which receives the drainage of the surrounding hills. It is marshy around the shores, and the surface is covered thickly with the leaves and flowers of a large yellow lily."--Hayden. _Madison Lake_ (8,250)--N: 4--1872--U. S. G. S.--Head of the Madison River. "A small lake, covering perhaps sixty acres, occupies the southern end of the [Firehole] valley, where it bends to the eastward; and as the ultimate lake source of the Madison River, is the only proper possessor of the name 'Madison Lake.'"--Bradley.[CO] [CO] Page 243, Sixth Annual Report of Dr. Hayden. _Mallard Lake_ (8,000)--L: 5--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Mary Lake_ (8,100)--J: 7--1873--Tourist Party.--Circumstance recorded by Rev. E. J. Stanley, one of the party, and author of the book "Rambles in Wonderland," describing the tour. The following extract is from his book: "We passed along the bank of a lovely little lakelet, sleeping in seclusion in the shade of towering evergreens, by which it is sheltered from the roaring tempests. It is near the divide, and on its pebbly shore some members of our party unfurled the Stars and Stripes, and christened it Mary's Lake, in honor of Miss Clark, a young lady belonging to our party." This lake appears on Jones' map for the same year as Summit Lake. Everts is said to have passed it in his wanderings, but there is no reliable evidence to that effect. _Mirror Lake_ (8,700)--G: 12--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Obsidian Lake_ (7,650)--E: 6--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Riddle Lake_ (7,950)--N: 8--1872--U. S. G. S.-- "'Lake Riddle' is a fugitive name, which has been located at several places, but nowhere permanently. It is supposed to have been used originally to designate the mythical lake, among the mountains, whence, according to the hunters, water flowed to both oceans. I have agreed to Mr. Hering's proposal to attach the name to this lake, which is directly upon the divide at a point where the waters of the two oceans start so nearly together, and thus to solve the unsolved 'riddle' of the 'two-ocean-water.'"--Bradley.[CP] This was a year before Captain Jones verified the existence of Two-Ocean-Pass. [CP] Page 250, Sixth Annual Report of Dr. Hayden. _Shoshone Lake_ (7,740)--M-N: 5-6--1872--U. S. G. S.--From Shoshone, or Snake River, which here finds its source. This lake was first named De Lacy Lake, after its discoverer. The Washburn Party (1870) appear to have named it after their leader. In 1871, Doctor Hayden, failing to identify its location, and believing it to be tributary to the Madison River, renamed it Madison Lake. It is this name which appears on the first map of the Park and in the Act of Dedication, where the west boundary of the Park is described as being "fifteen miles west of the most western point of Madison Lake." In 1872, when the correct drainage of the lake was discovered, the name "Madison Lake" was transferred to its present location (See "Madison Lake"), and its place supplied by "Shoshone Lake." The Act of Dedication is therefore misleading, and it is necessary to know that "Madison Lake" of the Act, is "Shoshone Lake" now, in order to understand the true location of the west boundary of the Park. In changing the name from "De Lacy" to "Shoshone," Prof. F. H. Bradley, of the United States Geological Survey, took occasion to reflect severely and unjustifiably upon De Lacy's work in mapping the country.[CQ] [CQ] Page 24, Sixth Annual Report of Dr. Hayden. De Lacy felt deeply wronged by this action, and Dr. Hayden promised him that he would set the matter right; but nothing was done. At a later day, Colonel Norris endeavored to do De Lacy tardy justice by placing his name on the stream which enters the lake from the north and drains the beautiful valley now crossed by the tourist route. This name remained for several year's, when it also was removed by the United States Geological Survey, and its place filled by "Heron Creek." During the past year, however, the name "De Lacy Creek" has been restored. _Summit Lake_ (8,450)--M: 3--1885--U. S. G. S.--Near Continental Divide. _Swan Lake_ (7,200)--D: 6--1879--Norris--Characteristic. _Sylvan Lake_ (8,300)--L: 13--1878--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Tern Lake_ (8,150)--I: 11--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Trout Lake_ (6,850)--D: 13--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Turbid Lake_ (7,800)--K: 11--1878--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Twin Lakes_ (7,450)--G: 6--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Wapiti Lake_ (8,500)--H: 11--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _White Lake_ (8,150)--I: 11--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Woods, Lake of the_ (7,550)--F: 6--1885--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Yellowstone Lake_ (7,741)--K--0: 8--12--From the river which flows through it. This lake was named, on the map showing "Colter's Route in 1807," Lake Eustis, in honor of William Eustis, Secretary of War to President Madison, 1809 to 1812. Later it appears as Sublette Lake, in honor of the noted fur trader, William Sublette. It is even said at one time to have borne the "fugitive name," Riddle Lake. But it early became known by its present name. * * * * * The islands of this lake are seven in number. They seem to have all been named by the United States Geological Survey largely for the employes of the survey. They are: _Carrington Island._ For Campbell Carrington, zoologist. _Dot Island._ A mere dot on the map. _Frank Island._ For the brother of Henry W. Elliott, a member of the Hayden Expedition of 1871. This Island was renamed Belknap Island in 1875 by the members of Secretary Belknap's party, who passed through the Park in that year. The name, however, never came into use. _Molly Island._--For the wife of Mr. Henry Gannett. _Peale Island._--For Dr. A. C. Peale, author of the elaborate report on thermal springs which appears in Hayden's report for 1878. _Pelican Roost._--Characteristic. _Stevenson Island._--For James Stevenson. See "Mt. Stevenson." * * * * * The bays are also seven in number, of which only the following merit notice: _Mary Bay._--Named by Henry W. Elliott for Miss Mary Force. _Thumb._--From the old fancy that the form of the lake resembled that of the human hand. _Bridge Bay._--From Bridge Creek. See "Bridge Creek." The capes are thirteen in number. We need notice only Signal Point, which was much used in signaling by the early explorers; Steamboat Point, named from the Steamboat Springs near by; and Storm Point, so named because it receives the full force of the prevailing south-west winds from across the lake. "_The Annie._"--The first boat on the Yellowstone Lake was a small canvass craft 12 feet long by 3-1/2 feet wide. Dr. Hayden records that, it was, christened _The Annie_, "by Mr. Stevenson, in compliment to Miss Anna L. Dawes, the amiable daughter of Hon. H. L. Dawes." [Illustration: "The Annie."] The boat was extemporized by Mr. James Stevenson from such materials as could be picked up. In the classic picture of this historic craft, the persons in the boat are James Stevenson and Henry W. Elliott. An original photograph of the boat now adorns the cabin of the _Zillah_, the small steamboat which conveys tourists about the Lake. APPENDIX A. VI. MISCELLANEOUS FEATURES. [Numbers in parentheses indicate altitudes.] _Craig Pass_ (8,300)--L: 6--1891--From the maiden name of Mrs. Ida Craig Wilcox, the first tourist to cross the pass. [Illustration: FERDINAND VANDIVEER HAYDEN] _Hayden Valley_ (7,800)--H-J: 8-10-1878--U.S.G.S. For the eminent American geologist, Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden, M.D., LL. D., whose important part in the history of the Yellowstone National Park has been fully set forth in previous pages. The following condensed sketch of his life is from the pen of Dr. A. C. Peale:[CR] [CR] Bulletin Philosophical Society of Washington, Vol. VI, pp. 476-478. ... "He was born at Westfield, Mass., September 7, 1829.... His father died when he was about ten years of age, and about two years later he went to live with an uncle at Rochester, in Lorain County, Ohio, where he remained for six years. He taught in the country district schools of the neighborhood during his sixteenth and seventeenth years, and at the age of eighteen went to Oberlin College, where he was graduated in 1850.... "He studied medicine with Dr. J. S. Newberry, at Cleveland, and at Albany was graduated Doctor of Medicine in the early part of 1853. After his graduation, he was sent by Prof. James Hall, of New York, to the Bad Lands of White River, in Dakota. The years 1854 and 1855 he spent exploring and collecting fossils in the Upper Missouri country, mainly at his own expense. From 1856 until 1859, he was connected as geologist with the expeditious of Lieutenant Warren, engaged in explorations in Nebraska and Dakota. From 1859 until 1862, he was surgeon, naturalist, and geologist with Captain W. F. Raynolds, in the exploration of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers. In October, 1862, he was appointed acting assistant surgeon and assistant medical inspector until June, 1865, when he resigned, and was brevetted lieutenant-colonel for meritorious services during the war. He then resumed his scientific work, and in 1866 made another trip to the Bad Lands of Dakota, this time in the interest of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. In 1865, he was elected professor of mineralogy and geology in the University of Pennsylvania, which position he resigned in 1872. From 1867 to 1879, his history is that of the organization of which he had charge, which began as a geological survey of Nebraska, and became finally the Geological Survey of the Territories.... From 1879 until December, 1886, he was connected with the United States Geological Survey as geologist. His health began to fail soon after his connection with this organization, and gradually became worse, and he lived only a year after his resignation. "In 1876, the degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him by the University of Rochester, and in June, 1886, he received the same degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He was a member of seventeen scientific societies in the United States, among them the National Academy of Sciences, and was honorary and corresponding member of some seventy foreign societies. A bibliography of his writings includes 158 titles. "... The gentleness and diffidence, approaching even timidity, which impressed his fellow-students at Oberlin, characterized Dr. Hayden throughout his life, and rendered it somewhat difficult for those who did not know him intimately to understand the reasons for his success, which was undoubtedly due to his energy and perseverance, qualities which were equally characteristic of him as a boy and student and in later life. His desire to forward the cause of science was sincere and enthusiastic, and he was always ready to modify his views upon the presentation of evidence. He was intensely nervous, frequently impulsive, but ever generous, and his honesty and integrity undoubted. The greater part of his work for the government and for science was a labor of love." _Jones Pass_ (9,450)--K: 12--1880--Norris--For its discoverer, Captain W. A. Jones, Corps of Engineers, U. S. A., who passed through it in 1873. _Kingman Pass_ (7,230)--D: 6--1883--U. S. G. S.--The pass of which Golden Gate is the northern entrance. For Lieutenant D. C. Kingman, Corps of Engineers, U. S. A., who built the road through the pass. _Norris Geyser Basin_ (7,527)--G-H: 6--For P. W. Norris, who first explored and described it, and opened it up to tourists. It was, however, discovered in 1872 by E. S. Topping and Dwight Woodruff, who were led in that direction by noticing from the summit of Bunsen Peak a vast column of steam ascending to the southward. The day after this discovery, a tourist party, including a Mr. and Mrs. H. H. Stone, of Bozeman, Montana, visited it from Mammoth Hot Springs, and then continued their course, by way of the general line of the present route, to the Firehole Geyser Basin. Mrs. Stone was the first white woman to visit the Park. _Norris Pass_ (8,260)--M : 6--1879--Norris--For its discoverer. _Raynolds Pass_ (6,911)--Not on map.--Crosses the Continental Divide to the northward of Henry Lake, and connects the valley of Henry Fork with that of the Madison. Named for Captain W. F. Raynolds, who led his expedition through it in 1860. _Sylvan Pass_ (8,650)--L : 13--1895--U. S. G. S.--Characteristic. _Targhee Pass_ (7,063)--Not on map.--Crosses the Continental Divide to the eastward of Henry Lake, and leads from the valley of Henry Fork to that of the Madison. The origin and orthography of this name are uncertain. In Hayden's Report for 1872, occur three spellings, Targhee, Tyghee, and Tahgee. The weight of evidence is in favor of the form here adopted. There was an impression among the Hayden Survey people, in 1872, that the name was given in honor of some distinguished Indian Chief; but that there was no definite information on the point is evident from the following statements, taken from Hayden's Report for 1872. On page 56, it is stated that _Tahgee_ Pass "was named years ago for the head chief of the Bannocks." On page 227, it is said that _Tyghee_ Pass "was named for an old Shoshone chief who was wont to use it." The real origin is thus left somewhat obscure, but it is probable that the notion that the pass was named for an Indian chief may have some foundation in fact. There was living among the Bannocks within the present memory of white men a chief whose name was pronounced _Ti-gee_. APPENDIX A. VII. LIST OF THE PROMINENT GEYSERS. The numbers in the third column are the highest recorded eruptions. The numbers in the fourth and fifth columns are not to be taken as indicating the correct duration or periodicity of eruptions. The prevalent notion that geysers exhibit uniform periodicity of action, is erroneous. There is only one geyser of importance in the Park that can be depended on, and that is Old Faithful. The figures for the other geysers are merely rough averages, true, perhaps, as the mean of a year's observations, but not at all to be relied upon in predicting particular eruptions. The following abbreviations are used: "M. H. S.," for Mammoth Hot Springs; "N. G. B.," "L. G. B.," "M. G. B.," "U. G. B.," "S. G. B.," and "H. G. B.," for the Norris, Lower, Middle, Upper, Shoshone, and Hart Lake, Geyser Basins respectively; "E. S. Y." and "W. S. Y." for the East and West Shores respectively of the Yellowstone Lake; "s." for second; "m." for minute; "h." for hour; and "d." for day. -------------+-----------+---------------------------+----------------- | | Eruptions. | Name. | Location. +---------+--------+--------+ Authors of | | Height. | Dura- | Inter- | Names. | | | tion. | val. | Remarks. -------------+-----------+---------+--------+--------+----------------- | | | | | Arsenic | N. G. B. | -- | -- | -- | U. S. G. S. Artemesia | U. G. B. | 150 ft. | 10 m. | 2 d. | U. S. G. S. Atomizer | U. G. B. | 20 ft. | 10 m. | -- | Unknown. Bead | L. G. B. | -- | -- | -- | Has a | | | | | "beautifully | | | | | beaded tube." | | | | | --Comstock. Bee Hive | U. G. B. | 220 ft. | 8 m. | 20 h. | Washburn Party. Bijou | U. G. B. | -- | -- | -- | U. S. G. S. Bulger | U. G. B. | 5 ft. | -- | -- | U. S. G. S. Castle | U. G. B. | 100 ft. | 25 m. | 24 h. | Washburn Party. | | | | | "From a | | | | | distance it | | | | | strongly | | | | | resembles an | | | | | old feudal | | | | | castle partially | | | | | in ruins." | | | | | --Doane. Catfish | L. G. B. | -- | -- | -- | U. S. G. S. Chinaman | U. G. B. | -- | -- | -- | U. S. G. S. Really | | | | | a quiescent | | | | | spring. Sometimes | | | | | called a geyser | | | | | from the | | | | | circumstance | | | | | that a Chinaman | | | | | who had used it | | | | | for a wash-tub | | | | | caused an | | | | | eruption by the | | | | | soap put in the | | | | | spring, thus | | | | | initiating the | | | | | practice of | | | | | "soaping | | | | | geysers." Clepsydra | L. G. B. | 50 ft. | 10 s. | 3 m. | "Like the ancient | | | | | water-clock of | | | | | that name, it | | | | | marks the passage | | | | | of time by the | | | | | discharge of | | | | | water."--Comstock | | | | | (1873). Comet | U. G. B. | 60 ft. | 1 m. | -- | U. S. G. S. Congress | N. G. B. | -- | -- | -- | Came into | | | | | existence in the | | | | | winter of 1893. | | | | | Like the | | | | | memorable 53d | | | | | Congress, for | | | | | which it is | | | | | named, its | | | | | performance | | | | | is sadly | | | | | incommensurate | | | | | with its | | | | | promises. Constant | N. G. B. | 40 ft. | 10 s. | 1 m. | Norris. Cubs | U. G. B. | -- | -- | -- | See "Lion." Deluge | H. G. B. | 15 ft. | -- | -- | U. S. G. S. Echinus | N. G. B. | 20 ft. | -- | -- | U. S. G. S. Economic | U. G. B. | -- | -- | -- | No water lost in | | | | | eruption; all | | | | | falls back into | | | | | crater. Excelsior | M. G. B. | 300 ft. | -- | 1 to 4 | "A geyser so | | | | h. | immeasurably | | | | | excelling any | | | | | other ancient or | | | | | modern known | | | | | to history | | | | | that I find but | | | | | one name fitting, | | | | | and herein | | | | | christen it the | | | | | Excelsior." | | | | | --Norris. The | | | | | Sheridan parties | | | | | in 1881 and 1882 | | | | | called it the | | | | | Sheridan Geyser. Fan | U. G. B. | 60 ft. | 10 m. | 8 h. | Washburn Party. Fearless | N. G. B. | -- | -- | -- | Norris. Fissure | N. G. B. | 100 ft. | 20 m. | 2 h. | U. S. G. S. Fitful | L. G. B. | 3 ft. | -- | -- | Comstock. Fountain | L. G. B. | 60 ft. | 15 m. | 4 h. | U. S. G. S. Giant | U. G. B. | 200 ft. | 90 m. | 6 d. | Washburn Party. Giantess | U. G. B. | 250 ft. | 12 h. | 14 d. | Washburn Party. Grand | U. G. B. | 200 ft. | 20 m. | 20 h. | U. S. G. S. Gray Bulger | L. G. B. | 1 ft. | 30 s. | 1 m. | U. S. G. S. Great | L. G. B. | 100 ft. | -- | -- | U. S. G. S. Fountain | | | | | --Called | | | | | Architectural | | | | | Fountain in | | | | | 1871. Grotto | U. G. B. | 40 ft. | 30 m. | 4 h. | Washburn Party. Jet | L. G. B. | 15 ft. | -- | -- | U. S. G. S. Jewell | U. G. B. | 50 ft. | 1 m. | 50 m. | U. S. G. S. Lion | U. G. B. | 60 ft. | 8 m. | 24 h. | With Lioness and | | | | | Cubs, called | | | | | "The Chimneys" | | | | | by Barlow in | | | | | 1871; renamed | | | | | "Trinity" | | | | | Geysers by | | | | | Comstock | | | | | in 1873; most | | | | | isolated cone | | | | | called "Niobe" by | | | | | U. S. G. S. in | | | | | 1878; present | | | | | name given by | | | | | Norris in 1881. Lioness | U. G. B. | 80 ft. | 10 m. | 24 h. | See "Lion." Lone Star | M : 5. | 60 ft. | 10 m. | 40 m. | Unknown. First | | | | | called "The | | | | | Solitary" by the | | | | | U. S. G. S. in | | | | | 1872. Minute | N. G. B. | 40 ft. | 20 s. | 90 s. | Norris. Model | U. G. B. | -- | -- | -- | Geyser on a small | | | | | scale. Monarch | N. G. B. | 125 ft. | 20 m. | 12 h. | Norris. Mortar | N. G. B. | 60 ft. | 6 m. | 8 h. | "Resembles in its | | | | | eruption the | | | | | particular piece | | | | | of ordnance from | | | | | which it derives | | | | | its name." Haynes | | | | | Guide Book. Mud Geyser | N. G. B. | 10 ft. | 5 m. | 20 m. | Norris. Mud Geyser | I : 9 | 30 ft. | 20 m. | 3 h. | Washburn Party. Oblong | U. G. B. | 40 ft. | 4 m. | 8 h. | U. S. G. S. Old Faithful | U. G. B. | 150 ft. |4-1/2 m.| 65 m. | Washburn Party. Pearl | N. G. B. | -- | -- | -- | U. S. G. S. Pebble | N. G. B. | 50 ft. | -- | 75 m. | U. S. G. S. Pink Cone | L. G. B. | -- | -- | -- | U. S. G. S. Restless | U. G. B. | -- | -- | -- | U. S. G. S. Riverside | U. G. B. | 80 ft. | 15 m. | 8 h. | U. S. G. S. Rosette | L. G. B. | 30 ft. | -- | -- | U. S. G. S. Rustic | H. G. B. | 47 ft. | 4 m. | 15 m. | U. S. G. S. Sawmill | U. G. B. | 35 ft. | -- | -- | U. S. G. S. Sentinel | U. G. B. | 20 ft. | -- | -- | Barlow. Shield | S. G. B. | -- | -- | -- | U. S. G. S. Spasmodic | U. G. B. | 5 ft. | -- | -- | U. S. G. S. Spike | H. G. B. | -- | -- | -- | U. S. G. S. Splendid | U. G. B. | 200 ft. | 10 m. | 3 h. | Norris. Sponge | U. G. B. | -- | -- | -- | From appearance of | | | | | its crater. Steady | L. G. B. | 30 ft. | -- | -- | U. S. G. S. Surprise | U. G. B. | 100 ft. | 2 m. | -- | Turban | U. G. B. | 20 ft. | 25 m. | -- | U. S. G. S. "From | | | | | the fancied | | | | | appearance of | | | | | some of the large | | | | | globular masses | | | | | in its basin to | | | | | a Turkish | | | | | head-dress." | | | | | --Peale. Union (1) | S. G. B. | 114 ft. | 60 m. | 5 h. | U. S. G. S. in (2) | -- | 66 ft | -- | -- | 1872. (3) | -- | 3 ft. | -- | -- | So named "because | | | | | of its | | | | | combination | | | | | of the various | | | | | forms of geyseric | | | | | action."--Peale. | | | | | No. 1 is North | | | | | Cone; No. 2 | | | | | Middle Cone; | | | | | and No. 3 South | | | | | Cone. Vixen | N. G. B. | -- | -- | -- | Norris. White Dome | L. G. B. | 12 ft. | -- | -- | U. S. G. S. Young | U. G. B. | 20 ft. | -- | -- | Earl of Dunraven. Faithful | | | | | Young | L. G. B. | 20 ft. | -- | -- | U. S. G. S. Hopeful | | | | | APPENDIX B. LEGISLATION AND REGULATIONS NOW IN FORCE AFFECTING THE YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK. THE ACT OF DEDICATION. An Act to set apart a certain tract of land lying near the headwaters of the Yellowstone River as a public park. _Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled_, That the tract of land in the Territories of Montana and Wyoming lying near the headwaters of the Yellowstone River, and described as follows, to wit: commencing at the junction of Gardiner's River with the Yellowstone River and running east of the meridian, passing ten miles to the eastward of the most eastern point of Yellowstone Lake; thence south along the said meridian to the parallel of latitude, passing ten miles south of the most southern point of Yellowstone Lake; thence west along said parallel to the meridian, passing fifteen miles west of the most western point of Madison Lake; thence north along said meridian to the latitude of the junction of the Yellowstone and Gardiner's Rivers; thence east to the place of beginning, is hereby reserved and withdrawn from settlement, occupancy, or sale under the laws of the United States, and dedicated and set apart as a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people; and all persons who shall locate, or settle upon, or occupy the same or any part thereof, except as hereinafter provided, shall be considered trespassers and removed therefrom. Sec. 2. That said public park shall be under the exclusive control of the Secretary of the Interior, whose duty it shall be as soon as practicable, to make and publish such rules and regulations as he may deem necessary or proper for the care and management of the same. Such regulations shall provide for the preservation from injury or spoliation of all timber, mineral deposits, natural curiosities, or wonders within said park, and their retention in their natural condition. The Secretary may, in his discretion, grant leases for building purposes, for terms not exceeding ten years, of small parcels of ground, at such places in said park as shall require the erection of buildings for the accommodation of visitors; all of the proceeds of said leases, and all other revenues that may be derived from any source connected with said park, to be expended under his direction in the management of the same and the construction of roads and bridle-paths therein. He shall provide against the wanton destruction of the fish and game found within said park and against their capture or destruction for the purposes of merchandise or profit. He shall also cause all persons trespassing upon the same after the passage of this act to be removed therefrom, and generally shall be authorized to take all such measures as shall be necessary or proper to fully carry out the objects and purposes of this act. _Approved March 1, 1872._ Signed by: James G. Blaine, Speaker of the House. Schuyler Colfax, Vice-President of the United States and President of the Senate. Ulysses S. Grant, President of the United States. MILITARY ASSISTANCE AUTHORIZED FOR PROTECTING THE PARK SUNDRY CIVIL BILL FOR 1883. ... The Secretary of War, upon the request of the Secretary of the Interior, is hereby authorized and directed to make the necessary details of troops to prevent trespassers or intruders from entering the park for the purpose of destroying the game or objects of curiosity therein, or for any other purpose prohibited by law, and to remove such persons from the park if found therein.... _Approved, March 3, 1883._ * * * * * ADMISSION OF THE STATE OF WYOMING. Sec. 2. ... _Provided_, That nothing in this act contained shall repeal or affect any act of Congress relating to the Yellowstone National Park, or the reservation of the park as now defined, or as may be hereafter defined or extended, or the power of the United States over it; and nothing contained in this act shall interfere with the right and ownership of the United States in said park and reservation as it now is or may hereafter be defined or extended by law: but exclusive legislation, in all cases whatsoever, shall be exercised by the United States, which shall have exclusive control and jurisdiction over the same; but nothing in this proviso contained shall be construed to prevent the service within said park of civil and criminal process lawfully issued by the authority of said state; and the said state shall not be entitled to select indemnity school lands for the sixteenth and thirty-sixth sections that may be in said park reservation, as the same is now defined or may be hereafter defined.... _Approved, July 10, 1890._ THE NATIONAL PARK PROTECTIVE ACT. An Act to protect the birds and animals in Yellowstone National Park, and to punish crimes in said park, and for other purposes. _Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled_, That the Yellowstone National Park, as its boundaries now are defined, or as they may be hereafter defined or extended, shall be under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States; and that all the laws applicable to places under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States shall have force and effect in said park; provided, however, that nothing in this Act shall be construed to forbid the service in the park of any civil or criminal process of any court having jurisdiction in the States of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. All fugitives from justice taking refuge in said park shall be subject to the same laws as refugees from justice found in the State of Wyoming. Sec. 2. That said park, for all the purposes of this Act, shall constitute a part of the United States judicial district of Wyoming and the District and Circuit Courts of the United States in and for said district shall have jurisdiction of all offenses committed within said park. Sec. 3. That if any offense shall be committed in said Yellowstone National Park, which offense is not prohibited or the punishment is not specially provided for by any law of the United States or by any regulation of the Secretary of the Interior, the offender shall be subject to the same punishment as the laws of the State of Wyoming in force at the time of the commission of the offense may provide for a like offense in the said State; and no subsequent repeal of any such law of the State of Wyoming shall affect any prosecution for said offense committed within said park. Sec. 4. That all hunting, or the killing, wounding, or capturing at any time of any bird or wild animal, except dangerous animals, when it is necessary to prevent them from destroying human life or inflicting an injury, is prohibited within the limits of said park; nor shall any fish be taken out of the waters of the park by means of seines, nets, traps, or by the use of drugs or any explosive substances or compounds, or in any other way than by hook and line, and then only at such seasons and in such times and manner as may be directed by the Secretary of the Interior. That the Secretary of the Interior shall make and publish such rules and regulations as he may deem necessary and proper for the management and care of the park and for the protection of the property therein, especially for the preservation from injury or spoliation of all timber, mineral deposits, natural curiosities, or wonderful objects within said park; and for the protection of the animals and birds in the park, from capture or destruction, or to prevent their being frightened or driven from the park; and he shall make rules and regulations governing the taking of fish from the streams or lakes in the park. Possession within the said park of the dead bodies, or any part thereof, of any wild bird or animal shall be _prima facie_ evidence that the person or persons having the same are guilty of violating this Act. Any person or persons, or stage or express company or railway company, receiving for transportation any of the said animals, birds or fish so killed, taken or caught, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall be fined for every such offense, not exceeding three hundred dollars. Any person found guilty of violating any of the provisions of this Act or any rule or regulation that may be promulgated by the Secretary of the Interior with reference to the management and care of the park, or for the protection of the property therein, for the preservation from injury or spoliation of timber, mineral deposits, natural curiosities or wonderful objects within said park, or for the protection of the animals, birds and fish in the said park, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall be subjected to a fine of not more than one thousand dollars or imprisonment not exceeding two years, or both, and be adjudged to pay all costs of the proceedings. That all guns, traps, teams, horses, or means of transportation of every nature or description used by any person or persons within said park limits when engaged in killing, trapping, ensnaring, or capturing such wild beasts, birds, or wild animals shall be forfeited to the United States, and may be seized by the officers in said park and held pending the prosecution of any person or persons arrested under charge of violating the provisions of this Act, and upon conviction under this Act of such person or persons using said guns, traps, teams, horses, or other means of transportation, such forfeiture shall be adjudicated as a penalty in addition to the other punishment provided in this Act. Such forfeited property shall be disposed and accounted for by and under the authority of the Secretary of the Interior. Sec. 5. That the United States Circuit Court in said district shall appoint a commissioner, who shall reside in the park, who shall have jurisdiction to hear and act upon all complaints made, of any and all violations of the law, or of the rules and regulations made by the Secretary of the Interior for the government of the park, and for the protection of the animals, birds, and fish and objects of interest therein, and for other purposes authorized by this Act. Such commissioner shall have power, upon sworn information, to issue process in the name of the United States for the arrest of any person charged with the commission of any misdemeanor, or charged with the violation of the rules and regulations, or with the violation of any provision of this Act prescribed for the government of said park, and for the protection of the animals, birds, and fish in the said park, and to try the person so charged, and, if found guilty, to impose the punishment and adjudge the forfeiture prescribed. In all cases of conviction, an appeal shall lie from the judgment of said commissioner to the United States District Court for the district of Wyoming, said appeal to be governed by the laws of the State of Wyoming providing for appeals in cases of misdemeanor from justices of the peace to the District Court of said State; but the United States Circuit Court in said district may prescribe rules of procedure and practice for said commissioner in the trial of cases, and for appeal to said United States District Court. Said commissioner shall also have power to issue process as hereinbefore provided for the arrest of any person charged with the commission of any felony within the park, and to summarily hear the evidence introduced, and, if he shall determine that probable cause is shown for holding the person so charged for trial, shall cause such person to be safely conveyed to a secure place for confinement, within the jurisdiction of the United States District Court in said State of Wyoming, and shall certify a transcript of the record of his proceedings and the testimony in the case to the said court, which court shall have jurisdiction of the case; provided, that the said commissioner shall grant bail in all cases bailable under the laws of the United States or of said State. All process issued by the commissioner shall be directed to the marshal of the United States for the district of Wyoming; but nothing herein contained shall be construed as preventing the arrest by any officer of the government or employe of the United States in the park, without process, of any person taken in the act of violating the law or any regulation of the Secretary of the Interior; provided, that the said commissioner shall only exercise such authority and powers as are conferred by this Act. Sec. 6. That the marshal of the United States for the district of Wyoming may appoint one or more deputy marshals for said park, who shall reside in said park, and the said United States District and Circuit Courts shall hold one session of said courts annually at the town of Sheridan, in the State of Wyoming, and may also hold other sessions at any other place in said State of Wyoming, or in said National Park, at such dates as the said courts may order. Sec. 7. That the commissioner provided for in this Act shall, in addition to the fees allowed by law to commissioners of the Circuit Courts of the United States, be paid an annual salary of one thousand dollars, payable quarterly, and the marshal of the United States, and his deputies, and the attorney of the United States and his assistants in said district, shall be paid the same compensation and fees as are now provided by law for like services in said district. Sec. 8. That all costs and expenses arising in cases under this Act, and properly chargeable to the United States, shall be certified, approved, and paid as like costs and expenses in the courts of the United States are certified, approved, and paid under the laws of the United States. Sec. 9. That the Secretary of the Interior shall cause to be erected in the park a suitable building to be used as a jail, and also having in said building an office for the use of the commissioner, the cost of such building not to exceed five thousand dollars, to be paid out of any moneys in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, upon the certificate of the Secretary as a voucher therefor. Sec. 10. That this act shall not be construed to repeal existing laws conferring upon the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of War certain powers with reference to the protection, improvement, and control of the said Yellowstone National Park. _Approved, May 7, 1894._ LEASES IN THE YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK. An act concerning leases in the Yellowstone National Park. _Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled_, That the Secretary of the Interior is hereby authorized and empowered to lease to any person, corporation, or company, for a period not exceeding ten years, at such annual rental as the Secretary of the Interior may determine, parcels of land in the Yellowstone National Park, of not more than ten acres in extent for each tract, and not in excess of twenty acres in all to any one person, corporation, or company, on which maybe erected hotels and necessary out-buildings; provided, that such lease or leases shall not include any of the geysers or other objects of curiosity or interest in said park, or exclude the public from free and convenient approach thereto, or include any ground within one-eighth of a mile of any of the geysers or the Yellowstone Falls, the Grand Cañon, or the Yellowstone River, Mammoth Hot Springs, or any object of curiosity in the park; and provided, further, that such leases shall not convey, either expressly or by implication, any exclusive privilege within the park except upon the premises held thereunder and for the time therein granted. Every lease hereafter made for any property in said park shall require the lessee to observe and obey each and every provision in any Act of Congress, and every rule, order, or regulation made, or which may hereafter be made and published by the Secretary of the Interior concerning the use, care, management, or government of the park, or any object or property therein, under penalty of forfeiture of such lease, and every such lease shall be subject to the right of revocation and forfeiture, which shall therein be reserved by the Secretary of the Interior; and provided, further, that persons or corporations now holding leases of ground in the park may, upon the surrender thereof, be granted new leases hereunder, and upon the terms and stipulations contained in their present leases, with such modifications, restrictions, and reservations as the Secretary of the Interior may prescribe. This Act, however, is not to be construed as mandatory upon the Secretary of the Interior, but the authority herein given is to be exercised in his sound discretion. That so much of that portion of the Act of March third, eighteen hundred and eighty-three, relating to the Yellowstone Park, as conflicts with this Act, be, and the same is hereby, repealed. _Approved, August 3, 1894._ RULES AND REGULATIONS FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF THE YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK. 1895. [Promulgated by the Secretary of the Interior.] RULES AND REGULATIONS OF THE YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK. 1. It is forbidden to remove or injure the sediments or incrustations around the geysers, hot springs, or steam vents; or to deface the same by written inscription or otherwise; or to throw any substance into the springs or geyser vents; or to injure or disturb, in any manner, or to carry off any of the mineral deposits, specimens, natural curiosities, or wonders within the park. 2. It is forbidden to ride or drive upon any of the geyser or hot spring formations, or to turn loose stock to graze in their vicinity. 3. It is forbidden to cut or injure any growing timber. Camping parties will be allowed to use dead or fallen timber for fuel. 4. Fires shall be lighted only when necessary, and completely extinguished when not longer required. The utmost care should be exercised at all times to avoid setting fire to the timber and grass, and any one failing to comply therewith shall be peremptorily removed from the park. 5. Hunting or killing, wounding, or capturing of any bird or wild animal, except dangerous animals, when necessary to prevent them from destroying life or inflicting an injury, is prohibited. The outfits, including guns, traps, teams, horses, or means of transportation used by persons engaged in hunting, killing, trapping, ensnaring, or capturing such birds or wild animals, or in possession of game killed in the park under other circumstances than prescribed above, will be forfeited to the United States, except in cases where it is shown by satisfactory evidence that the outfit is not the property of the person or persons violating this regulation, and the actual owner thereof was not a party to such violation. Firearms will only be permitted in the park on the written permission of the Superintendent thereof. On arrival at the first station of the park guard, parties having firearms will turn them over to the sergeant in charge of the station, taking his receipt for them. They will be returned to the owners on leaving the park. 6. Fishing with nets, seines, traps, or by use of drugs or explosives, or in any other way than with hook and line, is prohibited. Fishing for purposes of merchandise or profit is forbidden by law. Fishing may be prohibited by order of the Superintendent of the park in any of the waters of the park, or limited therein to any specified season of the year, until otherwise ordered by the Secretary of the Interior. 7. No person will be permitted to reside permanently or to engage in any business in the park without permission, in writing, from the Department of the Interior. The Superintendent may grant authority to competent persons to act as guides, and revoke the same in his discretion, and no pack trains shall be allowed in the park unless in charge of a duly registered guide. 8. The herding or grazing of loose stock or cattle of any kind within the park, as well as the driving of such stock or cattle over the roads of the park, is strictly forbidden, except in such cases where authority therefor is granted by the Secretary of the Interior. 9. No drinking saloon or bar-room will be permitted within the limits of the park. 10. Private notices or advertisements shall not be posted or displayed within the park, except such as may be necessary for the convenience and guidance of the public, upon buildings on leased ground. 11. Persons who render themselves obnoxious by disorderly conduct or bad behavior, or who violate any of the foregoing rules, will be summarily removed from the park, and will not be allowed to return without permission in writing from the Secretary of the Interior or the Superintendent of the Park. Any person who violates any of the foregoing regulations will be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and be subjected to a fine, as provided by the Act of Congress, approved May 7, 1894, "to protect the birds and animals in Yellowstone National Park, and to punish crimes in said park, and for other purposes," of not more than one thousand dollars or imprisonment not exceeding two years, or both, and be adjudged to pay all costs of the proceedings. Hoke Smith, _Secretary of the Interior_. APPENDIX C. APPROPRIATIONS FOR THE YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK. Act June 20, 1878. To protect, preserve, and improve the Park $10,000 00 " Mar. 3, 1879. To protect, preserve, and improve the Park 10,000 00 " June 16, 1880. To protect, preserve, and improve the Park 15,000 00 " Mar. 3, 1881. To protect, preserve, and improve the Park 15,000 00 " Mar. 3, 1881. Deficiency for 1880 89 76 " Aug. 5, 1882. " " 1881 155 00 " Aug. 7, 1882. For protection and improvement of Park 15,000 00 " Aug. 7, 1882. To reimburse P. W. Norris for salary and expenses, April 18, 1877, to June 30, 1878 3,180 41 " Mar. 3, 1883. For protection and improvement of Park 40,000 00 " July 7, 1884. For protection and improvement of Park 40,000 00 " Mar. 3, 1885. For protection and improvement of Park 40,000 00 Joint Resolution of July 1 and July 15, 1886 Compensation of Superintendent and employes for month of July, 1886 934 25 Act Aug. 4, 1886. For construction of roads and bridges 20,000 00 " Mar. 3, 1887. For construction of roads and bridges 20,000 00 Act Oct. 2, 1888. For construction of roads and bridges 25,000 00 " Mar. 2, 1889. For construction of roads and bridges 50,000 00 " Aug. 30, 1890. For construction of roads and bridges 75,000 00 " Sept. 30, 1890. Reimbursement of Superintendent Conger 169 37 " Mar. 3, 1891. For construction of roads and bridges 75,000 00 " Aug. 5, 1892. For construction of roads and bridges 45,000 00 " Mar. 3, 1893. For construction of roads and bridges 30,000 00 " May 4, 1894. For erection of court-house and jail 5,000 00 " Aug. 18, 1894. For construction of roads and bridges 30,000 00 " Aug. 18, 1894. For salary of Commissioner provided by Act of May 4, 1894 1,000 00 " Mar. 2, 1895. For construction of roads and bridges 30,000 00 " Mar. 2, 1895. For salary of Commissioner 1,000 00 " Mar. 2, 1895. For reimbursement of John W. Meldrum 385 75 ----------- Total $596,914 54 Receipts from leases $8,358 94 Expenditures from same 4,053 45 Balance 4,305 49 ----------- Outlay for 23 years $592,609 05 Average annual outlay less than 25,000 00 APPENDIX D. LIST OF SUPERINTENDENTS OF THE YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK. _Name._ _Length of Service._ _Compensation._ Nathaniel P. Langford Appointed May 10, 1872; removed April 18, 1877 No compensation. Philetus W. Norris Appointed April 18, 1877 Do. Commissioned July 5, 1878; removed February 2, 1882 $1,500 per annum. Patrick H. Conger Commissioned February 2, 1882; resigned July 28, 1884 $2,000 per annum. Robert E. Carpenter Commissioned August 4, 1884; removed May 29, 1885 Do. David W. Wear Commissioned May 29, 1885. Congress failed to appropriate for office from August 1, 1886 Do. Capt. Moses Harris Acting Superintendent of Park. August 10, 1886, detailed by Secretary of War, in pursuance of Act March 3, 1883 (22 Statutes, 627). Relieved from duty June 1, 1889 No compensation other than army pay. Capt. F. A. Boutelle Acting Superintendent of Park; assigned June 1, 1889, relieving Capt. Moses Harris No compensation other than army pay. Capt. Geo. S. Anderson. Acting Superintendent of Park; assigned January 21, 1891, relieving Capt. F. A. Boutelle Do. APPENDIX E. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LITERATURE OF THE YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK. The following bibliography is intended to contain the names of such books and magazine articles in the English language as treat in whole or in part of the Yellowstone National Park. It does not include references in encyclopedias or school textbooks, nor, with few exceptions, articles from the daily or weekly journals. Those who desire to consult the more general literature relating to the geysers and hot springs of the world are referred to the excellent work of Dr. A. C. Peale, published in 1883, in the Twelfth Annual Report of Dr. Hayden, pp. 427-449. The present list is carefully indexed under the more prominent words of the titles and under the names of the authors; but the full title of each work is given only once. To pass from any other reference to the corresponding full title, note the number following the reference and look for the title which is preceded by the same number. The abbreviation "Y. N. P." is for "Yellowstone National Park." 1. Action of Geysers. _Westminster Review_, vol. lxvii, p. 207. Allen, C. J., 6. 2. American Big Game Hunting. The Book of the Boone and Crockett Club, vol. i. Editors, Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell. New York. Forest and Stream Publishing Company. 1893. Contains numerous references to the Y. N. P. and an article entitled "The Yellowstone Park as a Game Preserve," by Arnold Hague. 3. Among the Geysers of the Yellowstone. E. Roberts. In his _Shoshone_. New York. Harper Brothers. 1888. pp. 202-245. 4. Analyses of some Geyser Deposits. By Henry Leffmann. _Chemical News._ London, vol. xliii, p. 124. 5. Analyses of the Waters of the Y. N. P. By Frank A. Gooch and James E. Whitfield, Bulletin No. 47, U. S. Geological Survey, Washington: Government Printing Office. 1888. Anderson, G. S., 8, 24, 61. 6. Annual Reports of Officers of the Corps of Engineers in charge of the Construction of Roads and Bridges. Including, to the present time, reports by Lieutenant (now Captain) D. C. Kingman, Captain (now Major) C. B. Sears, Major Charles J. Allen, Lieutenant W. E. Craighill, Major (now Lieutenant-Colonel) W. A. Jones, and Lieutenant (now Captain) H. M. Chittenden. Washington: Government Printing Office. 7. Annual Reports of Secretaries of the Interior, from 1871 to the present time. Washington: Government Printing Office. 8. Annual Reports of Superintendents of the Park. Including, to the present time, reports by N. P. Langford, P. W. Norris, P. H. Conger, D. W. Wear, Captain (now Major, retired) Moses Harris, Captain F. A. Boutelle, and Captain George S. Anderson. Washington: Government Printing Office. 9. Annual Report (Fifth: 1871) of the U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories. By Dr. F. V. Hayden, with sub-reports by A. C. Peale, Joseph Leidy and T. C. Porter, Washington: Government Printing Office. 1872. 10. Annual Report (Sixth: 1872) of the U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories. By Dr. F. V. Hayden, with sub-reports by Dr. A. C. Peale, F. H. Bradley, C. H. Merriam, Henry Gannett, J. M. Coulter and N. P. Langford. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1873. 11. Annual Report (Twelfth: 1878) of the U. S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories. By Dr. F. V. Hayden, with sub-reports by W. H. Holmes, Dr. A. C. Peale and Henry Gannett. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1883. This report contains Dr. Peale's exhaustive treatise upon the thermal phenomena of the park; his general treatise on the hot springs and geysers of the world, and his elaborate bibliography pertaining to these subjects. 12. Annual Reports of the United States Geological Survey. The serial numbers of these reports begin with June 30, 1880, the first report being for the year ending at that time. Nearly all these reports contain valuable references to the Park, most of them being from the pen of Prof. Arnold Hague. One article of great importance, by Walter Harvey Weed (Ninth Annual Report, 1888, pp. 613-676), on the formation of hot springs deposits through the agency of vegetable growth, deserves particular notice. Washington: Government Printing Office. 13. Aquatic Invertebrate Fauna of the Y. N. P., Preliminary Report upon. S. A. Forbes. Bulletin United States Fish Commission for 1891, p. 215. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1893. Arthur, Chester A., 66. 14. Ascent of Mt. Hayden. N. P. Langford. _Scribner's_ (Old) _Monthly_, vol. vi, p. 129. 15. Astoria.--Washington Irving.--Chapter xv contains a reference to John Colter. Attractions of the Y. N. P., 96. 16. Attractions of the Y. N. P. _Kansas City Review._ April 1880, p. 743. 17. Autumn in the Yellowstone Park. L. Rutgers. In his _On and off the Saddle_. New York: Putnam, 1894, pp. 1-19. Barlow, Captain J. W., 94. 18. Battle of the Big Hole. G. O. Shields. Chicago and New York: Rand, McNally & Company. 1889. Contains an account of the Nez Percé Campaign. Beam, Wm., 21. 19. Bicycle Tour of the Y. N. P. First. W. O. Owen. _Outing_, vol. xviii p. 191. 20. Black Hills, The, and American Wonderland. H. N. Maguire. _The Lakeside Library_, vol. iv, p. 298. 21. Bonneville, Captain, The Adventures of. Washington Irving. Chapter xxiii contains a reference to John Colter, the Stinkingwater River, and to "Colter's Hell." 22. Botanical Observations in Western Wyoming. C. C. Parry. _American Naturalist_, vol. viii, pp. 9, 102, 175, 211. Boutelle, Capt. F. A., 8. Brackett, W. S., 63. Bradbury, J., 115. Bradley, F. H., 10. Brockett, G. P., 152 Brown, R., 125. Bunce, O. B., 83. Butler, J. D., 65. 23. Calumet of the Coteau. P. W. Norris. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1883. 24. Camping in the Y. N. P. Captain Geo. S. Anderson. _Youth's Companion_, October 17, 1895, p. 488. Gives exhaustive directions for those desiring to camp through the Park. Catlin, George, 62. Chittenden, H. M., 6, 98. 25. Chronicles of the Yellowstone. E. S. Topping. St. Paul: Pioneer Press Company. 1883. Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries, Report of, 91. Comstock, T. B., 45, 90, 118, 141. Conger, P. H., 8. 26. Congressional Reports (only the more important): To accompany House Bill 764 (Act of Dedication), 42d Cong., 2d Session. Report of a Special Committee of the House of Representatives appointed by the Speaker on the 4th day of March, 1885, to investigate, among other things, the Y. N. P. House Report No. 1,076, 49th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 245-270. Report of the Committee on Public Lands on the administration of the Y. N. P. in compliance with House resolution of April 8, 1892. House Report No. 1,956, 52d Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 295. Adverse Report on the admission of steam railways within the Park. House Report No. 1,386, 53d Cong., 2d Sess. Adverse Report on the admission of electric railways within the Park. House Report No. 1,387, 53d Cong., 2d Sess. Adverse Report on Segregation project and change of boundaries. House Report No. 1,763, 53d Cong., 3d Sess. 27. Contributions to the Geological Chemistry of the Y. N. P. Henry Leffmann and Wm. Beam. _American Journal of Science._ 3d series, vol. xxv, p. 104. 28. Cooke City _versus_ the National Park. New York: _Forest and Stream_, December 8, 1892, p. 16. Cope, E. D., 145. Corps of Engineers, Officers of, Annual Reports of, 6. Coues, Elliott, 57. Coulter, J. M., 10. Craighill, W. E., 6. Dana, E. S., 89. De Lacy, W., 72, 114. De Vallibus, 132. Donne, G. C., 136. Donaldson, T., 87. Driscoll, C. F., 142. Dudley, W. H., 159. Dunraven, Earl of, 53. 29. Earth, The, and its Inhabitants. Élisée Reclus. Vol. iii. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1893. Contains numerous references to the Y. N. P. Eccles, James, 70, 99. Eldridge, G. H., 44. 30. Elk Hunt, An, at Two-Ocean Pass. Theodore Roosevelt. _The Century_, vol. xliv, p. 713. Ellsworth, Spencer, 86. 31. Enchanted Land, The, or an October Ramble among the Geysers, etc., of the Y. N. P. Illustrated. 8vo. pp. 48. Paper. R. E. Strahorn. Omaha. 1881. Evermann, B. W., 91. Everts, T. C., 110. 32. Expedition through the Big Horn Mountains, Y. N. P., etc., in 1881. Report by Lieutenant-General P. H. Sheridan, with sub-reports by Lieutenant-Colonel J. F. Gregory, A. D. C., Surgeon W. H. Forwood, U. S. A., and Captain S. C. Kellogg, U. S. A. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1882. 33. Expedition to the Yellowstone. _Analectic Magazine_, vol. xv, pp. 293, 347. 34. Exploration of Parts of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana, in 1882. Report by Lieutenant-General P. H. Sheridan, with sub-reports by Lieutenant-Colonel J. F. Gregory, A. D. C., and Surgeon W. H. Forwood, U. S. A. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1882. 35. Exploration of the Yellowstone and the Country drained by that River. W. F. Raynolds, Brevet Brigadier-General U. S. A. Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 77, 40th Cong., 1st Sess. On page 10 is a reference to the geyser regions. 36. Falls of the Yellowstone. Howard O'Neil. _Southern Magazine_, vol. ix., p. 219. 37. Falls of the Yellowstone. Moses Thatcher. _The Contributor._ Salt Lake City. Vol. v, p. 140. Ferris, G. T., 84. 38. Fifth Avenue to Alaska. Edward Pierrepont. New York: G. P. Putnam Sons, 1884, p. 237. Printed for private circulation only. Folsom, D. E., 119. Forbes, S. A., 13. Forest Reservation, The Y. N. P. as a, 157. Forwood, W. H., 32, 34. 39. Fossil Forests of the Volcanic Tertiary Formations of the Y. N. P. W. H. Holmes. Bulletin United States Geological Survey, vol. v, p. 125. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1879. 40. Fossil Forests of the Yellowstone. Walter Harvey Weed. _School of Mines Quarterly_, vol. xiii, no. 3. 41. Fossil Forests of the Yellowstone. Prof. Samuel E. Tillman. United States Military Academy. _Popular Science Monthly_, vol. xliii, p. 301, July, 1893. 42. Fossil Forests of the Yellowstone. Prof. Frank H. Knowlton, P. H. D. _The Epoch_, vol. i, no. 1, p. 18. April, 1895. Francis, E., 49. Frankland, E., 143. Game Exploration, Y. N. P., 158. Game Preserve, The Y. N. P. as a, 2. Gannett, H., 10, 11, 153. Geike, A., 48. Geological Chemistry of the Y. N. P. Contributions to the, 27. 43. Geological History of the Y. N. P. Arnold Hague. _Transactions American Institute of Mining Engineers_, vol. xvi, 1888. Also in Smithsonian Report for 1892, p. 133. 44. Geological Reconnaissance in North-western Wyoming. George Homans Eldridge. Bulletin 119, United States Geological Survey. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1894. 45. Geology of Western Wyoming. Theo. B. Comstock. _American Journal of Science._ 3d series, vol. vi, p. 426. Geyser Deposits, Analyses of, 4. Geyserland, Pilgrimage to, 86. Geysers, Action of, 1. 46. Geysers and how they are explained. Joseph Le Conte. _Popular Science Monthly_, vol. xii, p. 407. 47. Geysers, Comparisons of. A. C. Peale. _Science_, vol. ii, p. 101. 48. Geysers of the Yellowstone. Archibald Geike. _Macmillan_, vol. xliv, p. 421. Same article, _Appleton's Journal_, vol. xxvi, p. 538; and _Eclectic Magazine_, vol. xcviii, p. 124. 49. Geysers of the Yellowstone. E. Francis. _Nineteenth Century_, vol. xi, p. 369. Same article in Living Age, vol. cliii, p. 31, and _Eclectic Magazine_, vol. xcviii, p. 598. Geysers of the Yellowstone, Among the, 3. Geyser Regions, The World's, 134. Geysers, Soaping, 102, 103, 104. 50. Gigantic "Pleasuring Ground," A. _Nature_, vol. vi, pp. 397, 437. 51. Glacial Phenomena in the Y. N. P. W. H. Holmes. _American Naturalist_, vol. xv, p. 203. 52. Gold Hunt on the Yellowstone, A. Edward B. Nealley. _Lippincott's_, vol. ix, p. 204. Gooch, F. A., 5. 53. Great Divide, The. Earl of Dunraven. London: Chatto and Windus. 1876. 54. Great West, The. A Journal of Rambles over Mountain and Plain. P. W. Norris. A long series of articles under the above title appeared in the _Norris Suburban_ in 1876, '7, '8. They deal largely with the Y. N. P., and contain much of historic value. Norris subsequently rearranged and extended these articles with a view to publication in book form; but death interrupted his purpose. The manuscript is now in the possession of William Hallett Phillips, of Washington, D. C. Gregory, J. F., 32, 34, 66. Grinnell, G. B., 2, 61, 89. 55. Grotto Geyser, The. F. V. Hayden. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1876. 56. Guide Books of the Y. N. P. The guide books of the Park are numerous; but as they are all similar in character, and generally supplanted by the latest issue, it seems unnecessary to give a full list of them. Among those who have prepared guides or manuals of the Park, of practical value to the tourist, may be mentioned H. J. Norton, P. W. Norris, Henry J. Winser, G. L. Henderson, W. W. & S. K. Wiley, W. C. Riley, F. J. Haynes, A. B. Guptill, and the Northern Pacific and Union Pacific Railway Companies. The leading authorities at the present time are Haynes' (St. Paul) Guide Book and O. D. Wheeler's (N. P. R. R.) "Wonderland" Series. See "Wonderland Series." Gunnison, J. W., 77. Guptill, A. B., 56, 148. Hague, Arnold, 2, 12, 43, 67, 102, 154, 156, 157. Harris, Moses, 8. Harrison, Carter, 107. Hayden, F. V., 9, 10, 11, 55, 59, 60, 117, 127, 128, 140, 160. Hayden, Mt., Ascent of, 14. Haynes, F. J., 56, 66, 162. Heap, D. P., 94. Hedges, C., 137. Henderson, G. L., 56, 161. Heizman, C. L., 90, 108. 57. History of the Expeditions under the Command of Lewis and Clark, to the Sources of the Missouri River, thence across the Rocky Mountains and down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean. Performed during the Years 1804-5-6, by Order of the Government of the United States. Elliott Coues. 4 vols. New York: Francis P. Harper. 1893. Pages 283, 1153, 1154, 1181, and 1182 contain references to the Y. N. P. Holmes, W. H., 11, 39, 51, 82. 58. Horseback Rides through the Y. N. P. H. J. Norton. Virginia City, Mont. 1874. The first real guide book of the Park. 59. Hot Springs and Geysers of the Yellowstone and Firehole Rivers. F. V. Hayden. _American Journal of Science_, vol. ciii, pp. 105, 161. 60. Hot Springs of the Y. N. P. F. V. Hayden. In _The Great West_, Philadelphia: Franklin Publishing Co. 1880. Hough, E., 158. Howard, O. O., 79, 81. Hoyt, J. W., 93. 61. Hunting in Many Lands. Book of the Boone and Crockett Club. Vol. ii. Editors, Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell. New York: Forest and Stream Publishing Company. 1895. Contains an article by Captain G. S. Anderson, 6th U. S. Cavalry, on "Protection in the Y. N. P.", and one by the Editors on "The Yellowstone Park Protective Act." Iddings, J. P., 156. 62. Illustrations of the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians. George Catlin. 2 vols. London: Henry G. Bohn. 1857. Pages 261-2 contain reference to Catlin's Park project. Published also in New York. 1841. 63. Indian Remains on the Upper Yellowstone. William S. Brackett. Smithsonian Institute Report for 1892, p. 577. 64. Inspection Made in the Summer of 1877 by Generals P. H. Sheridan and W. T. Sherman. Contains letters from General Sherman to the Secretary of War, and reports by General Sheridan, Colonel O. M. Poe, and other officers. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1878. Irving, Washington, 15, 21. 65. John Colter. Professor J. D. Butler. _Magazine American History_, vol. xii, no. 1, p. 83. Jones, W. A., 6, 90. Jones, W. P., 153. Jordan, D. S., 92, 150. Joseph, Nez Percé, 81. 66. Journey through the Yellowstone National Park and North-western Wyoming. 1883. Photographs of Party and Scenery along the Route Traveled, and Copies of the Associated Press Dispatches sent whilst En Route. Washington: Government Printing Office. This book, of which only twelve copies were ever made, is the record of the journey of President Arthur through the Park as the guest of Lieutenant-General Sheridan in 1883. The dispatches were mostly written by Lieutenant-Colonel M. V. Sheridan, Military Secretary, and by Lieutenant-Colonel James F. Gregory, Aide-de-Camp; but at least one dispatch was written by each of the other members of the party, except the President. All the dispatches were read to and approved by the President before being sent. No newspaper correspondent accompanied the expedition. The photographs, which form an important feature of the book, were taken by F. J. Haynes, who accompanied the party. Kellogg, S. C., 32. Kingman, D. C., 6. Knowlton, F. H., 42. Koch, Peter, 144. Langford, N. P., 8, 10, 14, 119, 120, 129, 137. Le Conte, Joseph, 46. Leffmann, Henry, 4, 27. Leidy, Joseph, 9. Lewis and Clark, 57. Liederkranz Expedition to the Y. N. P., 159. Linton, Edwin, 85. Ludlow, William, 89. Maguire, H. N., 20. 67. Map of the North-west, An Early. Arnold Hague. _Science_, vol. x, p. 217. 68. Map of the Y. N. P. _Science_, vol. xi, p. 255. 69. Marvels of the Yellowstone. _Leisure Hour_, vol. xxi, p. 134. Merriam, C. H., 10. 70. Microscopical Character of Vitreous Rocks of Montana. Frank Rutley and James Eccles. _Quarterly Journal Geological Society_, London, vol. xxxvii, p. 391. 71. Military Road from Fort Walla Walla to Fort Benton, Report on Construction of. Captain John Mullan, U. S. A. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1863. Pages 19 and 53 refer to geysers and hot springs near the Upper Yellowstone. 72. Mineral Resources of the States and Territories. Rossiter W. Raymond. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1869. Page 142 quotes W. W. De Lacy in regard to hot springs on the Firehole and Snake Rivers. 73. Mineral Springs of the United States. A. C. Peale. Bulletin No. 32, United States Geological Survey. Washington: Government Printing Office. 74. Mineral Springs of the United States. A. C. Peale. _Popular Science Monthly_, vol. xxx, p. 711. 75. Mineral Springs of the United States and Canada. G. E. Walton. _Popular Science Monthly_, vol. iii, p. 515. 76. Mineral Waters of the Y. N. P. A. C. Peale. _Science_, vol. xvii, p. 36. Mitchell, S. W., 112. Montana Historical Society, Transactions of, 114. 77. Mormons or Latter Day Saints, A History of. Captain J. W. Gunnison, U. S. A. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co. 1852. Also Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1856. Page 151 contains a reference to Bridger's knowledge of the geyser regions. Mullan, John, 71. National Park, Our Great, 83. Nealley, E. B., 52. 78. New North-west, The. _The Century_, vol. xxiv, p. 504. 79. Nez Percé Campaign, The, Reports of General Howard and other officers upon. Vol. i, Reports of Secretary of War for 1877. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1877. Nez Percé Campaign, The, 18, 79, 80, 81. 80. Nez Percé Indians, Report of Civil and Military Commission to inquire into Grievances of. Vol. i, Report of Secretary of the Interior for 1877, p. 607. Nez Percé War described on pp. 405-409, same volume. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1877. 81. Nez Percé Joseph. History of the Nez Percé Campaign of 1877. General O. O. Howard. Boston. Lee and Shepard. 1881. Norris, P. W., 8, 23, 54, 56. Northern Pacific Railway Co., 56, 126. Norton, H. J., 56, 58. 82. Notes on an Extensive Deposit of Obsidian in the Y. N. P. W. H. Holmes. _American Naturalist_, vol. xiii, p. 247. Obsidian in the Y. N. P., 82. O'Neil, H., 36. 83. Our Great National Park. O. B. Bunce. In _Picturesque America; or, the Land we Live in_, vol. i, p. 292. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1872. 84. Our Native Land, or Glances at American Scenery and Places. George T. Ferris. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1886, pp. 148-178. Overhead Sounds in the Vicinity of the Yellowstone Lake. S. A. Forbes. Page 215, _Preliminary Report on Aquatic Invertebrate Fauna, in the Y. N. P._, 13. 85. Overhead Sounds in the Vicinity of the Yellowstone Lake. Edwin Linton. _Science_, vol. xxii, No. 561, p. 244. Owen, W. O., 19. Parry, C. C., 22, 90. Peale, A. C., 9, 10, 11, 47, 73, 74, 76, 109, 134. Peck, J. K., 155. Pierrepont, Edward, 38. 86. Pilgrimage to Geyserland. Spencer Ellsworth. Lacon, Ill. 1883. Poe, O. M., 64. Porter, R. P., 153. Porter, T. C., 9. Protection in the Y. N. P., 61. Protective Act, Y. N. P., 61. 87. Public Domain, The. Its History with Statistics. Thomas Donaldson. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1884, p. 1294. 88. Rambles in Wonderland. Edwin J. Stanley. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1873. Raymond, R. W., 72, 104, 105, 106, 130. Raynolds, W. F., 35. Reclus, Élisée, 29. 89. Reconnaissance from Carroll, Montana, to the Y. N. P. Captain (now Lieutenant-Colonel) Wm. Ludlow, Corps of Engineers, U. S. A., with sub-reports by George Bird Grinnell and Edward S. Dana. Appendix N N, Chief of Engineers' Report for 1876. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1876. Also published separately in quarto, 155 pages. 1876. 90. Reconnaissance of North-western Wyoming, including the Y. N. P., made in the summer of 1873. Captain W. A. Jones, of the Corps of Engineers, with sub-reports by Prof. Theo. B. Comstock, Dr. C. L. Heizman, U. S. A., and Dr. C. C. Parry. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1875. 91. Reconnaissance of the Streams and Lakes of Western Montana and North-western Wyoming. Barton W. Evermann. In Report of the United States Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1892, pp. 1-58. 92. Reconnaissance of the Streams and Lakes of the Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, in the interests of the United States Fish Commission. David Starr Jordan. Bulletin United States Fish Commission, vol. ix, pp. 41-63. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1890. 93. Reconnaissance for a Wagon Road to the National Park. Gov. John W. Hoyt, of Wyoming. In Annual Report of Secretary of the Interior, 1881. Vol. ii, p. 1074. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1881. 94. Reconnaissance of the Yellowstone River in 1871. Captains Barlow and Heap, of the United States Corps of Engineers. Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 66, 42d Cong., 2d Sess. 95. Report upon United States Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian. Captain George M. Wheeler, Corps of Engineers, U. S. A. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1889. Vol. i contains a memoir upon the Voyages, Explorations, and Surveys pertaining to that portion of the United States west of the Mississippi River from the year 1500 to 1880, including an epitome of a Memoir by Lieutenant G. K. Warren, covering the period from 1800 to 1857. 96. Resources of Montana Territory and Attractions of the Y. N. P. R. E. Strahorn. Helena, Montana: Montana Legislative Assembly. 1879. Richardson, James, 131. Riley, W. C., 56. 97. River of the West, The. Frances Fuller Victor. Hartford, Conn.: Columbian Book Company. 1871. Pages 75 and 76 contain a description of some of the hot springs districts of the Park as seen in 1829. 98. Roads in the Y. N. P. Lieutenant H. M. Chittenden, U. S. A. _Good Roads_, vol. v, no. 1, p. 1. Roberts, E., 3, 146. 99. Rocky Mountain Region of Wyoming and Idaho. James Eccles. _Alpine Journal_, London. Vol. ix, p. 241. Rollins, A. W., 111. Roosevelt, Theodore, 2, 30, 61. Rutgers, L., 17. Rutley, F., 70. Saltus, J. S., 123. Sanitarium, A Winter, 124. Sargent, C. S., 149. 100. Scorodite from the Y. N. P. J. Edward Whitfield. Bulletin U. S. G. S., No. 55. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1889. Sears, C. B., 6. Secretaries of the Interior, Annual Reports of, 7, 80, 93. Sessions, F. C., 147. Sheridan, M. V., 66. Sheridan, P. H., 32, 34, 64, 66. Sherman, W. T., 64. Shields, G. O., 18. 101. Siliceous Pebbles from the Geyser of the Yellowstone Cañon. A. P. Townsend. _American Chemist_, vol. iii, p. 288. Siliceous Sinter, Formation of, 12. 102. Soaping Geysers. Arnold Hague. _Science_, vol. xiii, p. 382. Also in Smithsonian Report for 1892, p. 153. 103. Soaping Geysers. _Popular Science Monthly_, vol. xxxvii, p. 139. 104. Soaping Geysers. R. W. Raymond. Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, Buffalo Meeting, October, 1888. Stanley, E. J., 88. 105. Statistics of Mines and Mining. Rossiter W. Raymond. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1870. Page 312 contains references to the geysers of the Yellowstone. 106. Statistics of Mines and Mining. Rossiter W. Raymond. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1872. Pages 213-216 contain a reference to the geysers from the pen of General Washburn. Strahorn, R. E., 31, 96. Strong, W. E., 116. 107. Summer's Outing, A, or, The Old Man's Story. Carter Harrison. Chicago: Dibble Publishing Company. 1891. Superintendents of the Y. N. P., Annual Reports of, 8. Tetons, The Three, 111. Thatcher, M., 37. 108. Therapeutical Value of the Springs in the Y. N. P. Dr. C. L. Heizmann, U. S. A. Philadelphia. _Medical Times_, vol. vi, p. 409. 109. Thermal Springs of the Y. N. P., Report on. A. C. Peale. _Popular Science Monthly_, vol. xxiii, p. 515. 110. Thirty-seven Days of Peril. Truman C. Everts. _Scribner's Monthly_, vol. iii, p. 1. 111. Three Tetons, The. Alice Wellington Rollins. _Harper's_, vol. lxxiv, p. 869. 112. Through the Yellowstone Park to Fort Custer. Dr. S. Weir Mitchell. _Lippincott's_, vol. xxvi, p. 29. 113. Through the Yellowstone Park on Horseback. G. W. Wingate. New York: Orange Judd. Co. 1886. Tillman, S. E., 41. Topping, E. S., 25. Townsend, A. P., 101. 114. Transactions Montana Historical Society, vol. i. Helena, Montana: Rocky Mountain Publishing Company. 1876. Contains numerous references to the Upper Yellowstone, the most important of which is an article entitled "Trip up the South Snake River," by Walter W. De Lacy. 115. Travels in the Interior of America in the years 1808-10-11. John Bradbury. Liverpool: 1817. Travertine, Formation of, 12. Trip up the South Snake River in 1863. Walter W. De Lacy, 114. 116. Trip to the Y. N. P., in July, August and September, 1875. Gen. W. E. Strong. Washington. 1876. Trumbull, Walter, 121, 137. 117. Two-Ocean Pass, The So-called. Dr. F. V. Hayden. Vol. v, Bulletins United States Geological Survey of the Territories, p. 223. Two-Ocean Pass, 30, 91, 117. 118. Unexplained Phenomena of the Geyser Basins of the Y. N. P. Theodore B. Comstock. _Popular Science Monthly_, vol. xii, p. 372. Union Pacific Railroad Company, 56. United States Geological Survey, Annual Reports of, 9 to 12. 119. Valley of the Upper Yellowstone. David E. Folsom. _Western Monthly_, vol. iv, p. 60, July, 1870. Reprinted by Mr. N. P. Langford, with an interesting preface by himself. St. Paul, Minn. 1894. Vegetation of Hot Waters, 12. Victor, F. F., 97. 120. Vigilante Days and Ways. N. P. Langford. St. Paul: D. D. Merrill & Co. 1893. Contains numerous references to the Park. Walton, G. E., 75. Warren, G. K., 95. Washburn, H. D., 106, 137. 121. Washburn Yellowstone Expedition, The. Walter Trumbull. _Overland Monthly_, vol. vi, pp. 431, 489. 122. _Wasp, The._ Vol. i, No. 17, August 13, 1842. Contains the article quoted on pp. 44-49, stated to have been an extract from an unpublished work entitled "Life in the Rocky Mountains." Author unknown. _The Wasp_ was a Mormon paper, published at Nauvoo, Ill. Wear, D. W., 8. Weed, W. H., 12, 40, 156. 123. Week in the Yellowstone, A. J. Sanford Saltus. New York: Knickerbocker Press. 1895. Printed for private circulation. Wheeler, G. M., 95. Wheeler, O. D., 56, 126. Whitfield, J. E., 5, 100. Wiley, W. W. and S. K., 56. Wilson, S. A., 135. Wingate, G. W., 113. Winser, H. J., 56. 124. Winter Sanitarium for the American Continent. _Popular Science Monthly_, vol. xxvii, p. 290. 125. Wonderland of America. Robert Brown. In the _Countries of the World_, vol. iv. London, Paris, and New York. Wonderland, American, The Black Hills and, 20. Wonderland, Rambles in, 88. 126. Wonderland Series. O. D. Wheeler. Annual Publication of Northern Pacific Railroad Company, describing the country along the line of that railroad. These books all contain valuable articles on the Park. They include "6,000 Miles through Wonderland," 1893, "Indianland and Wonderland," 1894, and "Sketches of Wonderland," 1895. 127. Wonders of the Rocky Mountains. The Y. N. P. How to reach it. F. V. Hayden. In _Williams' Illustrated Guide to the Pacific Railroad, California_, etc. New York. 1876. 128. Wonders of the West. More about the Yellowstone. F. V. Hayden. _Scribner's Monthly_, vol. iii, No. 4, p. 388. 129. Wonders of the Yellowstone, The. N. P. Langford. _Scribner's Monthly_, vol. ii, pp. 1, 113. 130. Wonders of the Yellowstone, The. Rossiter W. Raymond. In his _Camp and Cabin_. New York: Fords, Howard & Hulburt. 1880. 131. Wonders of the Yellowstone, The. James Richardson. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1872. 132. Wonders of the Yellowstone, The. De Vallibus. _Contributor_, Salt Lake City, vol. v, pp. 5, 47, 86. 133. Wonders of the Yellowstone Region. _Chambers' Journal_, vol. li, p. 315. 134. World's Geyser Regions, The. A. C. Peale. _Popular Science Monthly_, vol. xxvii, p. 494. Wright, G. M., 156. Yellowstone, Chronicles of the, 25. Yellowstone Expedition, 121. 135. Yellowstone Expedition of 1863. S. A. Wilson. _Magazine Western History_, vol. xiii, pp. 448, 668. 136. Yellowstone Expedition of 1870, Report upon. Lieutenant Gustavus C. Doane. Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 51, 41st Cong., 3d Sess. 137. Yellowstone Expedition of 1870. A Series of Articles in Montana Papers, describing the Expedition. These consisted of articles by Mr. Langford in the _Helena Herald_; "Notes" by General Washburn in the same paper; a series of articles, including "Sulphur Mountain and Mud Volcano," "Hell-broth Springs," "Yellowstone Lake," "Mt. Everts," and others, by Mr. Hedges, published in the _Herald_; and a similar series in the _Helena Gazette_ by Walter Trumbull. These articles appeared between September 26, 1870, immediately after the return of the Expedition, and November 12th, the date of the banquet given to Mr. Everts after his miraculous escape from his terrible adventure. Yellowstone, Expedition to the, 33. Yellowstone, Exploration of the, 35. Yellowstone, Falls of the, 36, 37. Yellowstone, Fossil Forests of the, 39, 40, 41, 42. Yellowstone, Geysers and Hot Springs of the, 3, 31, 48, 49, 59, 60. Yellowstone, Gold Hunt on the, 52. Yellowstone, Indian Remains on the, 63. Yellowstone Lake, Overhead Sounds in the Vicinity of, 13, 85. Yellowstone, Marvels of the, 69. 138. Yellowstone National Park. _Scribner's Monthly_, vol. iv, p. 120. 139. Yellowstone National Park. _Manhattan Illustrated Monthly_, vol. iv, No. 2, p. 129, August, 1884. 140. Yellowstone National Park. F. V. Hayden. _American Journal of Science_, vol. ciii, p. 294. 141. Yellowstone National Park. Theo. B. Comstock. _American Naturalist_, vol. viii, pp. 65, 155. 142. Yellowstone National Park. Charles F. Driscoll. _American Architect_, vol. xiii, p. 130. 143. Yellowstone National Park. E. Frankland. _Popular Science Monthly_, vol. xxvii, p. 289. 144. Yellowstone National Park. Peter Koch. _Magazine American History_, vol. xi, p. 497. 145. Yellowstone National Park. E. D. Cope. _American Naturalist_, vol. xix, p. 1017. 146. Yellowstone National Park. E. Roberts. _Art Journal_, vol. xl, pp. 193, 325. 147. Yellowstone National Park. F. C. Sessions. _Magazine Western History_, vol. vi, p. 433. 148. Yellowstone National Park. A. B. Guptill. _Outing_, vol. xvi, p. 256. 149. Yellowstone National Park. C. G. Sargent. _Garden and Forest_, vol. vii, p. 131. 150. Yellowstone National Park. D. S. Jordan. _Around the World_, vol. i, p. 148. 151. Yellowstone National Park. (Anon.) _Nature_, vol. v, p. 403; vi, pp. 397, 437. 152. Yellowstone National Park. G. P. Brockett. In _Our Western Empire_, chap. xxii. Philadelphia, 1881. 153. Yellowstone National Park. Robert P. Porter, Henry Gannett, and W. P. Jones. In _The West from the Census of 1880_. Chicago: Rand, McNally & Co. 1882. 154. Yellowstone National Park. Arnold Hague. Extract from the proceedings of the Fifth Session of the International Congress of Geologists. Washington, 1891. 155. Yellowstone National Park. J. K. Peck. In his _Seven Wonders of the World_. New York: Hunt and Eaton, p. 71. Yellowstone National Park, Analyses of Waters of, 5. Yellowstone National Park, Aquatic Invertebrate Fauna of, 13. Yellowstone National Park, Attractions of, 16, 96. Yellowstone National Park, Autumn in, 17. Yellowstone National Park, Camping in, 24. Yellowstone National Park, Cooke City _versus_, 28. Yellowstone National Park, Expeditions to or through, 32, 34. Yellowstone National Park, First Bicycle Tour of, 19. 156. Yellowstone National Park Folio. (In preparation.) A publication by the United States Geological Survey, consisting of four geological and four topographical maps; a descriptive text by Prof. Arnold Hague, of the United States Geological Survey; and a geological text by Prof. Hague as Geologist in Charge, assisted by Messrs. J. P. Iddings, W. H. Weed, and G. M. Wright. It is understood that this Folio is presently to be followed by an exhaustive Monograph upon the Park. 157. Yellowstone National Park as a Forest Reservation. Arnold Hague. _Nation_, vol. xlvi, p. 9. 158. Yellowstone National Park Game Exploration. E. Hough. Under the above title a series of thirteen articles appeared in _Forest and Stream_ in the summer of 1894, the first article appearing in the issue of May 5, and the last in that of August 25 of that year. These articles are of great interest and value as forming probably the most complete discussion of the game question in the Park that has yet appeared. Their descriptions of snow-shoe traveling and of the winter scenery of that region are well worthy of perusal. The graphic narrative of the arrest of the poacher, Howell, is an important feature. Yellowstone National Park as a Game Preserve, 2. Yellowstone National Park, Geological Chemistry of, 27. Yellowstone National Park, Geological History of, 43. Yellowstone National Park, Glacial Phenomena in, 51. Yellowstone National Park, Guide Books of, 56. Yellowstone National Park, Horseback Rides through, 58. Yellowstone National Park, Hot Springs and Geysers of, 3, 31, 48, 49, 59, 60. Yellowstone National Park. How to reach it, 127. 159. Yellowstone National Park from the Hurricane Deck of a Cayuse; or, The Liederkranz Expedition to Geyserland. W. H. Dudley. Butte City, Montana. 1886. Yellowstone National Park, Journey through, 66. Yellowstone National Park, Map of, 68. Yellowstone National Park, Mineral Waters of, 76. 160. Yellowstone National Park and the Mountain Regions of Portions of Idaho, Nevada, Colorado, and Utah. F. V. Hayden. Boston. 1876. Large folio. Yellowstone National Park, Obsidian in, 82. 161. Yellowstone National Park, Past, Present, and Future. Facts for the Consideration of the Committee on Territories for 1891, and Future Committees. G. L. Henderson. Washington: Gibson Brothers. 1891. 162. Yellowstone National Park in Photogravure. F. J. Haynes. Fargo, North Dakota. 1887. Yellowstone National Park, Protection in, 61. Yellowstone National Park, Protective Act, 61. Yellowstone National Park, Reconnaissance to, 89, 90. Yellowstone National Park, Reconnaissance of Streams and Lakes of, 91, 92. Yellowstone National Park, Reconnaissance for a Wagon Road to, 93. Yellowstone National Park, Roads in, 98. Yellowstone National Park, Scorodite in, 100. Yellowstone National Park, Therapeutical Value of Springs of, 108. Yellowstone National Park, Thermal Springs of, 109. Yellowstone National Park, Through the, to Fort Custer, 112. Yellowstone National Park, Through the, on Horseback, 113. Yellowstone National Park, A Trip to, 116. Yellowstone National Park, Unexplained Phenomena of, 118. Yellowstone River, Reconnaissance of, 94. Yellowstone, Valley of the Upper, 119. Yellowstone, A Week in the, 123. Yellowstone, Wonders of the, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133. INDEX. [Appendices A and E being carefully arranged alphabetically, names found in them are not included in this index unless they also occur in the main body of the work. The few abbreviations used are self-explanatory.] Absaroka, Indian name for Crow Tribe, 8. Absaroka Range, name considered, 289. described, 152, 240. first ascent of, 80, 295. first crossed, 104. profile of human face in, 243. Act of Dedication becomes a law, 95. comments upon, 96, 97. history of, 92-5. provisions of, 127. text of, 345. vote on, 95. Act of 1883, Military Assistance in protecting Park, 134, 347. Act of 1890, admitting Wyoming, 347. Act of 1894, National Park Protective Act, 141, 145, 348. Act of 1894, regulating leases, 141, 352. Adirondacks, proposal for reservation in, 97. Administration of the Park, 206-8. Administrative History of the Y. N. P., 127-141. Adverse reports on railroad projects, etc., 141. Africa, preserve for big game in, 97. thermal springs of, 161. Alder Gulch, discovery of gold in, 66. Algonquian family of Indians, 8. territory, 37. Altitudes in the Y. N. P., 154. Alvarez, Spanish trader, 46, 49. American Fur Company, historical sketch of, 34-5, 38. American Fur Company, territory of, 35, 37. Amethyst Mountain, 263. Anderson, Captain G. S., eighth superintendent Y. N. P., 139. plans capture of Howell, 143. quoted, 273, 276. Andesitic lava flows in Y. N. P., 157. "Annie," first boat on Y. Lake, 336. Antelope, habitat of, in Y. N. P., 216. Apollinaris Spring, 217. Appropriations for the Y. N. P., 357. Area of the Y. N. P., 148. Arnold, A. J., member of Helena tourist party, 112, 120. Arsenic Geyser, 220. Artemesia Geyser, 228. Arthur, Chester A., visits Y. N. P., 107, 371. Assistant Superintendents, Y. N. P., 135. Astor, John Jacob, and the American fur trade, 34. Astorians, The, 21, 23. departure of, for Pacific coast, 31 surrender to N. W. Fur Co., 33. Astringent Creek, 143. Atlantic Creek, 246. Atmosphere of the Y. N. P., 199, 210. Australia, thermal springs of, 161. Autumn foliage in the Y. N. P., 192. Baird, S. F., presents Lieutenant Doane's report to Phil. Soc. of Washington, 83. Bannock Indians, 8, 10. incursion of, into Y. N. P., 126, 215. territory of, 10. Bannock Peak, 217. Bannock Trail, 17, 24, 43. Baring-Gould's theory of geyser action, 166. Barlow, Captain J. W., expedition of, 85-6, 291. quoted, 6, 231, 344. report of, 86. Baronett, C. J., biographical sketch, 292. Baronett's Bridge burned, 124. history of, 261. Basaltic lava flows in Y. N. P., 157. Bath Lake, 214. Battle of trappers and Indians near Y. Lake, 49. Battle of the Big Hole, 116. Bays of the Y. Lake, 335. Bears and tourists, 184. Bear Creek, 70. Beaver Lake, 219. Bechler River, 151. Bee Hive Geyser, 234. Belknap, W. W., visits Y. N. P., 105. Beryl Spring, 221. Bibliography of the Y. N. P., 361. Biddle Lake, first name for Jackson Lake, 331. Big Game Ridge, 153. Big Hole, Battle of the, 116. Bighorn River, Lisa's fort on, 29, 31. source of, 188. Big Thunder, Nez Percé chief, 113. Birds in the Y. N. P., 185. Biscuit Basin, 228. Blackfeet Indians, 8, 9. territory of, 8, 9, 18. treaties with, 18, 19. Black Growler, 175, 220. Black Sand Basin, 230. Blaine, J. G., introduces Langford at Washington lecture, 84. signs Act of Dedication, 346. Block house, ancient, in Y. N. P., 41. Boat, first on Y. Lake, 337. Boat ride on Y. Lake, 243. Boiling River, 212. Boiling Springs in Y. N. P., 174. Bonneville, Captain, 37. refers to Firehole River, 49, 316. Bottler's Ranch, 120. Boundaries of the Y. N. P., 148, 278-280, 333. Boutelle, Captain F. A., Seventh Superintendent of the Park, 139. Bradbury, John, 3, 21. Bradbury, John, interviews Colter, 28. Bradley, F. H., quoted, 321, 331, 332, 333. Bridge, Baronett. See _Baronett's Bridge_. Bridge Creek, 244. Bridge, Natural, 244. Bridge over the Y. River, 203. Bridger, James, ability of as guide, 328. biographical sketch, 327. acquaintance of with Park country, 51, 52, 61. disbelieved by the public, 53, 57. guide to Captain Raynolds, 59. his stories, 54-56. partner in Rocky Mountain Fur Company, 36. and Two-Ocean Pass, 61, 245. British Fur Companies, strife between, 34. British Fur Traders excluded from U. S. Territory, 34. Bronze Geyser, 240. Buffalo of Y. N. P., 143, 184. Buildings at Mammoth Hot Springs, 209, 216. Buildings in Y. N. P. in 1880, 132. Bunsen Peak, 215. Bunsen's theory of geyser action, 163-5. Burgess, Felix, government scout, 110. arrests Howell, 143, 144. "Burning Mountains," 13, 16. Cache Creek, name of, 70. Calcareous Springs in the Y. N. P., 173. California, discovery of gold in, 39, 100. Camas Creek, Battle of, 116. Camping in the Y. N. P., 205. Canadian National Park, 97. Canadian Niagara Park, 97. Cañon Hotel, 253. Capes of the Y. Lake, 336. Carpenter, Frank and Ida, members of Radersburg tourist party, 112. experiences of, with Nez Percés, 117-19. Carpenter, R. E., Fourth Superintendent Y. N. P., 136. removed from office, 136. Cascade Creek, 180, 253. Castle Geyser, 167, 230. Cathedral Rock, 215. Catlin, George, biographical sketch of, 87-8. Indian Gallery of, 88. originates Park idea, 89. quoted, 88-9. Chittenden, Lieutenant, H. M., measures height of Upper Fall, 326. Chouteau, Valle & Co. buy out Astor, 35. Clagett W. H., his work for Park bill, 92, 94. Claimants for credit of originating Park idea, 90. Clark's Fork Mining District, 264. Clark, Wm., gives names to Y. Lake and Jackson Lake, 24. mentioned, 5, 21, 22. receives information from Colter, 27, 31. Cleopatra Spring, 214. Climate of the Y. N. P., 189, 198. Coast and Geodetic Survey, monument of, near Y. Lake, 248. Cold-water geyser, 48. Cole, Senator, remarks of, on Park bill, 94. Colfax, Schuyler, signs Act of Dedication, 346. Color of rock in Grand Cañon, 253. water in Hot Springs, 172, 213. Colter, John, adventure of, with the Blackfeet, 28-31. character of, 21. declines to join the Astorians, 31. discovers Grand Cañon of the Y., 27. discovers Jackson Lake, 24. discovers Mammoth Hot Springs, 26. discovers Tar Spring on the Stinkingwater, 23. discovers Y. Lake, 24, 27. gives Clark information, 31. marries, 31. receives discharge from Lewis and Clark, 20. returns to St. Louis, 31. whereabouts of, in winter of 1806-7, 22. "Colter's Hell," 28, 31. "Colter's River," 26. "Colter's Route in 1807," 25-7. Comet Geyser, 230. Commission to examine into grievances of Nez Percé Indians, 114, 115. Comstock, T. B., member of Captain Jones' party in 1873, 105. Comstock, T. B., his theory of geyser action, 166. quoted 342, 343, 344. Conant Creek, trail along, 12, 24. Cone Geysers, 167. Conger, P. H., Third Superintendent of Y. N. P., 131. resigns, 136. Congress abolishes civilian police force in Park, 137. Congress Geyser, 220. Congressional Reports on Y. N. P., 141. Constant Geyser, 220. Continental Divide, 151, 238. Cook, C. W., Member of Folsom Party in 1869, 73. Cooke City, 264. "Corduroying" on snow-shoes, 195. Cost of visiting Y. N. P., 274. Cowan, Mr. and Mrs. George F., members Radersburg tourist party, 112. experiences of, with Nez Percés, 118-120. re-visit Park, 120. Craig Pass, 238, 338. Cretaceous Period in Y. N. P., 156. Crevice Creek, 71. Crook, General George, visits Park, 106. Crosby, Schuyler, appeals to Congress for protection to Y. N. P., 133. member of presidential party, 1883, 107. Crow Indians, territory of, 8, 18. treaties with, 18, 19. tribal characteristics, 8. Crystal Falls, 80, 253. Cubs, The, 232. Cupid's Cave, 214. Danger to future existence of Y. N. P., 281. Dawes, Hon. H. L., 94, 336. Dawes, Miss Anna L., 336. Death Gulch, 264. De Lacy Creek, 239. De Lacy, W. W., discovers Lower Geyser Basin, 68. discovers Shoshone Lake, 68. history of his expedition, 67-69. Deluge Geyser, 243. Denudation and erosion, work of, in Y. N. P., 158. "Devil," frequency of name in Y. N. P., 287, 388. Devil's Kitchen, 214. Diamond, The, Bridger's story of, 35. Dietrich, Richard, member of Helena tourist party, 111. killed by Nez Percés, 122. Dingee, William, member of Helena tourist party, 112. Discovery of gold, 65, 66. Discovery of the Y., 72. long delay in, 101. Doane, Lieutenant G. C., ascends Absaroka Range, 80, 295. biographical sketch, 294. commands escort to Washburn Expedition, 14, 76. descends Grand Cañon, 80. guide to General Belknap, 105. measures height of Upper Falls, 325. quoted, 6, 14, 78, 175, 235, 237, 254, 261, 297, 325, 343. report of, upon Washburn Expedition, 83. Dome, The, 217. Drainage areas of Y. N. P., 149. "Dreamers" among the Nez Percés, 114. Du Charne, Baptiste, upon the Upper Y. in 1824, 41. Duncan, L., member of Helena tourist party, 1877, 111. Dunnell, M. H., and Park bill, 93. Dunraven, Earl of, 9. publishes "Great Divide," 295. quoted, 96. visits Y. N. P., 295. Early knowledge of the Y., 50, 60. East Gardiner Cañon and Falls, 215. Echinus Geyser, 220. Elephant Back, original name for Washburn Range, 152, 296. Electric Peak, 152, 215. Electric railways in Y. N. P., 204, 276, 277, 280, 365. Elk in Y. N. P., 184, 280. Elliott, H. W., 336, 337. Emerald Pool (Norris Geyser Basin), 220. (Upper Geyser Basin), 230. Equipment for snow-shoe traveling, 195. Erosion, work of, in Y. N. P., 158. Eustis Lake, first name for Y. Lake, 335. Eustis, William, 334. Evermann, B. W., describes Two-Ocean Pass, 245. Everts, Mt., 153, 215, 216. Everts, T. C., experience of, in 1870, 81, 297. member of Washburn Party, 76. Excelsior Geyser, 226. Expedition of 1869. See _Folsom Expedition_. of 1870. See _Washburn Expedition_. Explorations by U. S. Government, relation of to Y. N. P., 100. Explorers, rush of, to Y. N. P., 103. Face, profile of in Absaroka Range, 293. Fairy Fall, 226. Falls River, 151. Basin, 154. Falls of the Yellowstone described, 251, 254. measurement of, 80, 105, 325-6. not on Colter's map, 27. Fan Geyser, 229. Fauna of the Y. N. P., 181. Fearless Geyser, 220. Firehole Cascade, 222. Spring, 225. River, 43, 150. Fish Commission U. S., work of, in Y. N. P., 186. Fishes of the Y. N. P., 185, 186. Fishing Cone, story of, 56. Fishing Cone, west shore Y. Lake, 242. Fishless streams of the Y. N. P., 186. Flora of the Y. N. P., 187. Flow of water from Y. N. P., 190. Flowers of the Y. N. P., 190. Foller, August, member of Helena tourist party, 112. Folsom, D. E., 73. article by, in _Western Monthly_, 74. measures Falls of the Y., 325. quoted, 160, 241, 256. suggests Park idea, 91. Folsom Expedition, 72-4. Forbes, S. A., quoted, 246. Ford of the Y. River at Mud Geyser, 26, 249. at Tower Creek, 261. _Forest and Stream_, 145, 281, 383. Forest Reserve, 148. Forests of the Y. N. P., economic value of, 188. effect of railroads upon, 272. extent of, 187. preservation of, 207. Formations about geysers, 169. Fort Yellowstone, 208, 216. Fossil Forests of the Y., 177-180, 263. Fountain Geyser, 167, 223. Fountain geysers, 167. Fountain Hotel, 223. "Free trappers," 37. French name for Y. River, 2, 7. French and Indian War, 4. Friends of the Y. N. P., 281. Frying Pan, 219. Funds for the Y. N. P.; lack of, 128. Fur companies, growth and history, 32-36. territory controlled by, 37. Fur trade, climax in, 32, 39. competition in, 38. decline of, 39, 100. in its relation to western exploration, 32, 99, 100. Gallatin Range, 152. Gallatin River, 26, 150. Game preserve, the Y. N. P. as a, 181. Game in the Y. N. P., destruction of, 183. killing of, prohibited, 134. present condition of, 184, 383. protection of, 181, 207. tourists and, 184. Gandy, Captain C. M., photographic work of, in Y. N. P., vii. Gannett, Henry, measures heights of Falls, 326. quoted, 293, 295, 296. Gardiner's Hole, 317. Gardiner River, 150, 212. early known to trappers, 43, 318. Geographical names, importance of, 285. policy of the U. S. G. S. in regard to, 286. in the Y. N. P., 108, 285-6. Geologic activity diminishing, 159. Geology of the Y. N. P., 156-161. Geyser action, theories concerning, 163-6. "Geyser," etymology of, 162. Geyser regions of the world, 160-161. Geysers, description of, 162. formations about, 169. Soaping, 165. underground connection, 169. water supply for, 169. Giant Geyser, 167, 230. Giantess Geyser, 167, 232. "Giant's Face," 244. Gibbon Cañon, 221. Gibbon Falls, 222. Gibbon, John, 104. battle of, with Nez Percés, 116. Gibbon Meadows, 221. Gibbon Paintpots, 221. Gibbon River, 104, 150, 221. Gillette, W. C., member of Washburn Party, 76. Glacial Epoch in Y. N. P., 158. Glaciers, channels of, 158. Glass Mountain, Bridger's story, 54. Gold, discovery of, 65. in California, 39, 100. in Idaho, 65. in Montana, 65, 66. in the Nez Percé Reservation, 113. Golden Gate, 215. Gold-seekers on the Yellowstone, 101. Government officials and protection of Y. N. P., 282. Grand Cañon of the Y., colors in, 6, 254. Colter discovers the, 27. description of, 253-8. in winter, 257. Grand Geyser, 167, 231. Grand Teton, 153. ascent of, 222, 309. granite blocks near summit, 12, 222, 223. name considered, 323. Granite Block near Grand Cañon, 258. Granite Blocks near summit of Grand Teton, 12, 222, 223. Grant, U. S., signs Act of Dedication, 346. Gray Peak, 217. Great Bend of the Y., 6, 43. Great Fountain Geyser, 167, 224. Green River, 188. Grinnell, G. B., 105. Grotto Geyser, 229. Grotto Spring, 249. Gunnison, Captain J. W., and James Bridger, 52. quoted, 52, 329. Hague, Arnold, quoted, 160, 182, 286, 290, 306, 321. referred to, 245, 322. Hancock, Gen. W. S., 76, 300. Harris, Captain Moses, quoted, 284. Sixth Superintendent Y. N. P., 138. Hart Lake, 151, 242 Geyser Basin, 243. Hauser, S. T., descends Grand Cañon, 80. member of Washburn Party, 76. Hayden and Barlow discover Mammoth Hot Springs, 85. route of, 85, 86. Hayden Expedition of 1871, 85, 86. results, 86. Hayden Expeditions of 1872 and 1878, 103. Hayden, F. V., biographical sketch, 338-340. connection of, with Park bill, 86, 92, 93, 95. explorations of, in Y. N. P., 85, 103. geologist to Captain Raynolds, 59. quoted, 6, 95, 213, 286, 293, 294, 296, 301, 307, 314, 317, 330, 332, 341. referred to, 245. Hayden Valley, 154, 250. Haynes, F. J., accompanies Presidential party, 107, 371. winter tours of Y. N. P., 109. work of, in Y. N. P., vii. Health resort, Y. N. P. as a, 199. Heap, Captain D. P., with Captain Barlow, 1871, 85. Hedges, Cornelius, member of Washburn Party, 76, 83. quoted, 32, 76, 249, 320. originates National Park project, 91. _Helena Herald_, and Washburn Expedition, 83. Helena tourists, 1877, 111. experiences of, with Nez Percés, 121, 122. Hell Roaring Creek, 71, 287. Henry, Andrew, fur trader, 330. Henry, Joseph, quoted, 89. Henry Lake, 330. Howard's command at, 116. Highland Plateau, 153. Holmes, Mount, 217. Holmes, Wm. H., quoted, 306. Hoodoo Region, 265. Hostility to the Y. N. P., vi., 267-9. Hotel system of Y. N. P., 204. Hot Spring, color of water in, 172, 213. Hot Springs of the Y. N. P., 162, 172-5. Hot Springs and Geysers, water supply for, 169. Hot Springs in Grand Cañon, 254. Hough, E., connection of, with the Howell episode, 145, 383. quoted, 258. winter tour of, through Y. N. P., 110, 145. Howard, General O. O., and Nez Percé campaign, 106, 115, 116, 123. "Howard's Trail," 126. Howell the Poacher, capture and conviction of, 144-6. Hoyt, J. W., expedition of, 15, 106. Hudson's Bay Fur Company, historical sketch 33-5. territory of, 34, 37. Hurricane, The, 220. Huston, George, crosses Park country, 71. Iceland, thermal springs of, 161. Idaho, admission of, to Union, 282. Indians and name Yellowstone, 3, 7, 16. implements of, in Y. N. P., 12. knowledge of, concerning the geyser regions, 8, 13-17, 98. title of, to Y. N. P., 19. traditions of, concerning Y. N. P., 16. trails of, in Y. N. P., 11, 12, 13. treaties with, 18, 19. tribes of, near Y. N. P., 8. visits of, to Park country, 17. Inscription on pine tree near Grand Cañon, 40, 251. Inspiration Point, 254. Invalids at Mammoth Hot Springs in 1871, 200, 212. Irving, Washington, quotes Bradbury, 28. Isa Lake, 238. Islands of Y. Lake, 335. Itasca State Park, 97. Jackson, David, fur trader, 36. Jackson Lake, first named by Wm. Clark, 24, 331. discovered, 24. mentioned, 152, 222. Jackson, W. H., photographer in Y. N. P., vii. Jefferson Fork, scene of Colter's adventure, 29. Jefferson, Thomas, 1. Jewel Geyser, 228. Jones Creek, 104. Jones, Captain W. A., discovers and names Two-Gwo-Tee Pass, 105. discovers Two-Ocean Pass, 104, 245. expedition of, 15, 104. first to cross Absaroka Range, 104. measures Y. Falls, 326. names mountains east of Park, 289. quoted, 6. Joseph, Non-treaty Nez Percé chief, 113, 126. estimate of his character, 301. Joseph Peak, 217. Junction Butte, 261. Junction Valley, 154, 263. Jupiter Terrace, 214. _Kansas City Journal_, editor of, rejects Bridger's statements, 53. Kenck, Charles, member Helena Tourist Party, 112. killed by Nez Percés, 122. Kepler Cascade, 237. Killing of game in Y. N. P. prohibited, 134. Kingman, Lieutenant D. C., prepares project for Park road system, 140. quoted, 271. reports of, 140. Kingman Pass, 215. Lake Shore Geyser, 242. Lake View, 240. Lakes of the Y. N. P., 151. Lamar River, 150. Cañon of, 263. Langford, N. P., 27, 55. advocates Park project, 92. ascends Absaroka Range, 80, 295. ascends Grand Teton, 222, 309. biographical sketch of, 302. first Superintendent Y. N. P., 129. lectures on the Washburn Expedition, 84. measures height of Lower Fall, 325. member of the Washburn Expedition, 75. publishes articles on Washburn Expedition, 84. quoted, 92, 232, 305, 312, 317. reprints Folsom's article, 74. work of, for Park Bill, 92-3. Laws for Y. N. P., lack of, 127. Leases, Act of 1894 regulating, 141, 352. of land to Y. N. P. Improvement Co., 132. and privileges in Y. N. P., 132, 207. revenue from, 128. Lewis and Clark among the Mandans, 1. expedition of, 101. give Colter his discharge, 20. and North-west Fur Co., traders, 33. use name "Yellow Stone," 1, 2. quoted, 20. return journey of, 20. send report to President Jefferson, 1. Lewis Lake, 151. Lewis, Meriwether, kills a Blackfoot Indian, 9. Lewis River, 151. Liberty Cap, 214. "Life in the Rocky Mountains," referred to, 44. quoted from, 44, 48. Lincoln Pass, 23. Linton, Edwin, quoted, 247. Lion Geyser, 232. Lioness Geyser, 232. Lisa, Manuel, at mouth of Bighorn River, 29. Locomotive Spring, 220. Lone Star Geyser, 167, 237. "Lone Traders," 37. Looking Glass, Nez Percé chief, 113. Lookout Hill, 214. Lookout Point, 254. Louisiana, cession of to U. S., 3. Lower Fall of the Y., described, 254. recorded measurements of, 325-6 Lower Geyser Basin, 223. Ludlow, Captain William, explorations of, 105. measures Falls of Y., 105, 326. quoted, 209, 253, 297. report of, 105. Mackenzie, theory of geyser action, 166. Madison Lake, 237, 333. Madison Plateau, 153. Madison River, 150. Madison Valley, 154. Mammoth Hot Springs, buildings at, 209, 216. described, 173, 212. discovery of, 26, 85. Mandan Indians, 1, 2, 4. Mann, Charles, member of Radersburg Tourist party, 112. Map of Y. N. P., vii. Map, Raynolds', 63. Marten traps, discovery of cache of, 41. Mason, Major J. W., commands escort to Governor Hoyt, 106. Maynadier, Lieutenant, commands detachment of Raynolds Party, 59, 60. quoted, 62. McCartney, C. J., attacked by Nez Percés, 123. McCartney Cave, 214. Meek, Joseph, adventures of, 42. Members of Congress from States near Park, 282-3. Mexico, war with, 39, 100. Middle Gardiner Falls and Cañon, 215. Midway Geyser Basin, 226. Mileage of Park Road System, 202. Miles, General N. A., intercepts and captures Nez Percés, 124. Mineral Springs of the Y. N. P., therapeutic value of, 199 Minerva Terrace, 214. Minnetaree, Indian dialect, 7. Minute Man, 220. Mirror Plateau, 153. Missouri Fur Co., 29, 35. _Missouri Gazette_, extract from, 21, 23. Missouri River, 1, 4, 150, 188. Missouri River, fur trade along, 35. _Mi tsi a-da-zi_, Indian name for Yellowstone, 7. Monarch Geyser, 220. Montana Territory, becomes a state, 288. early explorations in, 3. emigration to, 66. population of, in 1862, 66. Monument Geyser Basin, 221. Monument, survey, 248. Moore, Charles, sketches by, 168. records height of Falls, 326. Moran, Thomas, painting by, 256. quoted, 256. Mormon emigration, 39, 100. Morning Glory, 229. Mound, artificial in Y. N. P., 12. Mountain sheep of Y. N. P., 216. Mountain stream of hot water, Bridger's story, 55. Mountain Systems of the West, formation of, 156. of the Y. N. P., 151, 152. Mud Geyser, Norris Geyser Basin, 220. Y. River, 249, Mud Volcano, 248. Mystic Fall, 228. Names of Hot Springs and Geysers, 287. Narrow Gauge Terrace, 214. National Park project, origin of, 87-92. National Park Protective Act, 110, 141-5, 348. National Parks on sites of battle-fields, 97. Natural Bridge, 244. Navigation of Y. Lake and River, 203. New Crater Geyser, 220. _New York Tribune_ quotes Langford on Park project, 92. New Zealand, thermal springs of, 97, 161. Nez Percé Creek, 126, 150, 223. Nez Percé Indians attack Y. N. P. tourists, 118, 121. cede territory to U. S., 113. characteristics of, 114. fate of, 126. impress white man as guide, 14. incursion of, into Y. N. P., 117-123, 215. surrender to Miles, 124. territory of, 112. treaties with, 113. Nez Percé War, beginning of, 115. causes of, 112, 115. criticism upon, 125. statistics of, 125. Niagara Falls compared with the Falls of the Y., 251, 254. original sketch of, 168. Niagara Park, Canadian, 97. New York State, 97. Non-treaty Nez Percés, 113. Norris, P. W., biographical sketch of, 303. builds road of volcanic glass, 218. criticism of his work, 131. discoveries of, 40, 41, 108, 130. names Dunraven Peak after himself, 295. quoted, 15, 218, 265, 307, 314, 324, 331, 343. road work of, 130. second Superintendent Y. N. P., 14, 129, 130. writings of, 131. Norris Geyser Basin, 220, 340. discovery of, 340. North-west Fur Company and name "Yellowstone," 4. sketch of, 33. Oblong Geyser, 230. Obsidian Cliff, 217. first road past, 218. Indian quarry at, 12, 217. Old Faithful, 167, 234-6. discovery of, 82. Oldham, Albert, member Radersburg tourist party, 112. "Old Man of the Mountains," 244. Orange Geyser, 214. Original sketches of Park scenery, 168, 169. Orographic agencies, work of, in Park, 157. Overhead sounds near Y. Lake, 246. Pacific Creek, 246. Pacific Fur Co., 34. Paintpots described, 174. on west shore Y. Lake, 242. Peale, A. C., quoted, 13, 323, 344. work of, in Y. N. P., 361, 363. Pearl Geyser, 220. Pend d'Oreilles Indians in geyser basins, 14, 45. Peterson, W., member of Folsom party, 73. Petrifactions in Y. N. P., Bridger's story, 56. perfection of, 179. Pfister, Frederick, member of Helena tourist party, 112. Phillips, W. H., connection of, with Y. N. P., 281. Photography of Grand Cañon, 256. _Pierre Janne._ See _Roche Janne_. Pierre's Hole, 24. Pike, Z. M., gives Spanish translation of _Pierre Janne_, 5. Pine, prevalence of, in Y. N. P., 188. Pine tree inscribed with date 1819, 40, 251. Pitchstone Plateau, 153. Plateaus of the Y. N. P., 153. Platte River, 188. Poe, General O. M., 105. quoted, 287. Pompey's Pillar, 5. Potts, companion of Colter, 29. Precedent, effect of, upon future of Y. N. P, 284. Presidential Party of 1883, 107, 371. Prismatic Lake, 227. Private interests and Y. N. P., 280. Prospecting expeditions in the Upper Y., 7, 66-71. Prospectors, unknown, slain by Nez Percés, 121. Protection of game, 181, 207. Protective Act, Y. N. P., 110, 141. Public business in Y. N. P., 139. Pulpit Terrace, 214. Punch bowl, 230. Pryor's Fork, 22. Pryor's Gap, 23, 24. Quadrant Mountain, 217. Quiescent Springs, 172-3. Radersburg tourist party, 1877, 112. experiences of, with Nez Percés, 117-120. Railroads and the Y. N. P., 133, 270-6, 280, 365. Rapids of the Y. River, 251. Raymond, R. W., quoted, 6. Raynolds, Captain W. F., expedition of, 58, 59, 101. map of, 62. quoted, 60, 61, 62. report of, 63. Red Mountain Range, 152. Rendezvous in the fur trade, 36. Reservoir, Y. Lake as a, 190. Rhyolitic rocks in Y. N. P., 157. "River of the West," 42. quoted from, 42, 317. River sources in and near Y. N. P., 188. Riverside Geyser, 229. Road system of the Y. N. P., 140, 201-7. Roberts, Joseph, member of Helena tourist party, 112. _Roche Janne_, French name for Y. River, 2, 3, 7. Rocky Mountains ascended by De La Verendrye, 4. Rocky Mountain Fur Company sketch, of, 36, 38. territory of, 36, 37. Routes from the east to the Pacific Coast, 100. Rules and Regulations for the Y. N. P., 354. Rustic Falls, 215. Rustic Geyser, old logs around, 13, 243. Sapphire Pool, 228. Scenery of the Y. N, P., 155, 209. in winter, 197. Scenic portion of tourist route, 260. Schemes to destroy the Y. N. P., 268. Schofield, Lieutenant, meets Radersburg tourists, 120. Schurz, Carl, visits Park, 106. Schwatka, Frederick, attempts winter journey through Y. N. P., 108. Seasons in the Y. N. P., 193, 199 Secretary of the Interior applies for military aid, 137. instruction of, to first superintendent, 270. Segregation projects, 133, 278, 280, 365. Sepulcher Mountain, 215. Sequoia National Park, 97. Sheepeater Indians, 8, 18, 306. characteristics of, 10, 11. ignorant of geyser regions, 15. number of, 17. original occupants of park country, 10, 11, 13, 14, 17. relics of, 13. Sheridan Mt., 15, 152, 242. an extinct volcano, 156. Sheridan, General P. H., aids exploration and discovery, 75. gives public warning of dangers to Park, 106, 133. quoted, 15. visits Park, 106, 107. Sherman, General W. T., quoted, 111, 256. visits Park, 105. Shively, Nez Percé guide, 123. Shoshonean family of Indians, 8. territory, 37. Shoshone Indians, 8, 18. characteristics of, 9, 10. Spanish articles among, 5. treaty with, 18. Shoshone Geyser Basin, 239. Shoshone Lake, 151, 239, 333. Shoshone Point, 239. Sierra Shoshone Range, 152. Silica, its function in geyser formation, 170. Siouan family of Indians, 8. territory, 37. _Ski_, Norwegian snow-shoe, 194. Slough Creek, 71. Smith, Jacob, member of Washburn Party, 76. Smith, Jedediah, fur trader, 36. Snake Creek, battle of, 124. Snake River, 26, 150. Snowfall in Y. N. P., 193. Snow-shoe traveling in Y. N. P., 194, 195, 196. Snowy Range, 152. Soaping Geysers, 165, 343. Soda Butte, 264. Cañon, 264. Creek, 150. Soda Spring, 221. Solar eclipse of 1860, 59. South-west Fur Co., 35. Spanish traders and name "Yellowstone," 5. Specimen Ridge, 179, 180, 263. Spike Geyser, 243. Splendid Geyser, 230. Sponge, The, 232. Spring Creek Cañon, 238. Spurgin, Captain W. F., builds road for Howard across Y. N. P., 124, 126. Stage rides in Y. N. P., 277. Stanley, E. J., quoted, 322. Stanton, Captain W. S., makes reconnaissance through Y. N. P., 106. Steady Geyser, 225. Steamboat, first to reach mouth of Y. River, 87. Steamboat Spring, 175, 244. Steam vents, 175. Stevenson, James, ascends Grand Teton, 222, 309. biographical sketch, 307-308. builds first boat on Y. Lake, 337. Stewart, J., member of Helena party of tourists, 112. Stickney, Benj., member of Washburn party, 76. descends to bottom of Grand Cañon, 80. Stinking Cabin Creek, 322. Stone, Benj., experience of with Nez Percés, 123. member Helena party of tourists, 112. Stone, Mrs. H. H., first white woman to visit Park, 340. Streams of Y. N. P., fish in, 186. Strong, Gen. W. E., accompanies Secretary Belknap to Y. N. P., 105. Stuart, James, 65, 70. Sturgis, General S. D., attacks Nez Percés, 124. fails to intercept Nez Percés, 124. Sublette Lake, early name for Y. Lake, 335. Sublette, William, fur trader, 36. Subterranean heat, origin of, 158. Sulphur Mountain, 249. Spring, 250. Superintendents of the Park, duties of, 206, 207. list of, 359. Swan Lake, 217. Flats, 154. Talmage, T. DeWitt, quoted, 253, 257. Temperatures in Y. N. P., 198. Terraces, formation of, 173, 212. Terrace Mountain, 215. Tertiary Period in Y. N. P., 156. Teton, Grand. See _Grand Teton_. Teton Pass, 24. Teton Range, 152, 222, 243. Therapeutic value of springs in Y. N. P., 199. Thermal activity in Y. N. P. not diminishing, 160. Thermal springs, geographical distribution of, 160. Third Cañon of the Y., 266. Thompson, David, and name "Yellowstone," 1, 2. and source of Y. River, 2. Thumb of Y. Lake, 241, 335. Topping, E. S., quoted, 313, 315. Tour of the Y. N. P., best season for, 210. Tourists and wild animals in Y. N. P., 184. Tourists' season in Y. N. P., 193. Tower Falls, 261. discovered, 78. Transportation in the Y. N. P., 204. Trappers ignorant of geyser regions, 99. Treaties with Indians, 18, 19. Tree inscribed with date 1819, 40, 251. Trees of Y. N. P., 187. Trout Creek, serpentine course of, 249. Trout in Y. Lake, 186. Trumbull, Walter, member Washburn Party, 76. publications by, 83, 84. sketches by, 169. _Tukuarika_, native name for Sheepeater Indians, 8, 10. Turban Geyser, 230. Turquoise Spring, 227. Twin Buttes, 225. Twin Lakes, 219. Two-Gwo-Tee Pass, 105. Two-Ocean Pass, 59, 105, 245, 333. crossed by fish, 186. discovered, 104, 245. Tyndall, John, quoted, 174. Union Geyser, 167, 239. Pass, 23, 59. U. S. Geological Survey, explorations under, 103. measurements by, of height of Falls, 326. names by, in Y. N. P., 286. Unknown visitor to geyser basins in 1833, 14, 44. Upper Fall of the Y., 251. Upper Geyser Basin, 228. discovery of, 82. visited in 1833, 44. Valleys of the Y. N. P., 153. Vandalism in the Y. N. P., 207. Verendrye, Chevalier de la, explorations of, 4. Vest, Senator G. C., connection of with Y. N. P., 281. member Presidential party, 1883, 107. quoted, 282. Virginia Cascade, 220. Visitors to Y. N. P. in 1883, 107. Vixen Geyser, 220. Volcanic rocks in Y. N. P., 157. War of Rebellion, 63. War with Mexico, 100. Washburn Expedition of 1870, history of, 75-84. organization of, 75-7. results of, 84. revives Park idea, 90. Washburn, General H. D., biographical sketch, 311. chief of Washburn Expedition, 75. "notes" of, upon Washburn Expedition, 83. quoted, 325. Washburn, Mt., 152, 260. an extinct volcano, 156. Washburn Range, 17,152. original name of, 152. on Colter's map, 26. _Wasp_, The, 48. Watchmen at Park hotels in winter, 194. Water-falls of Y. N. P., 151, 324. Wear, D. W., Fifth Superintendent Y. N. P., 137. Weed, W. H., quoted, 264. Weikert, A. J., member of Helena tourist party, 111. experience of, with Nez Percés, 123-6. We-Saw, Shoshone Indian, 15. West Shore geyser basin, 242. White Bird, Nez Percé chief, 113. White Elephant, 214. Wilkie, Leslie, member Helena tourist party, 112. Willow Park, 154, 217. Wingate, G. W., quoted, 190. Winter journeys through the Y. N. P., 108. Winter in the Y. N. P., 197, 198. Witch Creek, 243. Wyeth, Nathaniel J., 37. Wyoming, admission of, to Union, 282,347. Wyoming Territory attempts to protect Park, 134, 135. "Yancey's," 263. "Yellowstone," origin of name, 1-7. Spanish translation of, 5, note. _Yellowstone_, first steamboat at mouth of Y. River, 87. Yellowstone, discovery of the, 72. early knowledge of the, 40, 50, 60. fossil forests of the, 177-180, 263. gold-seekers on the, 101. Grand Cañon of, colors in, 6, 254. Third Cañon of the, 266. Upper, prospecting expeditions on the, 66-71. Upper, why so long unknown, 99, 101. Yellowstone Falls, compared with Niagara, 251, 254. Lower, 251, 254. measurement of heights, 80, 325-6. Upper, 261. Yellowstone Lake, 151, 240, 241. bays of, 333. boat ride on, 243. capes of, 336. compared with other lakes, 241. discovered, 24, 27, 80. first boat on, 337. form of, 240. islands of, 335. monument on shore of, 248. names of, 334. navigation of, 203. overhead sounds near, 246. reservoir possibilities of, 190. thumb, of, 241. trout of, 186. Yellowstone National Park, administration of, 206. administrative history of, 127-148. altitudes in, 154. area of, 148. Assistant Superintendents of, 135. atmosphere of, 210. autumn foliage of, 192. basaltic lava flows in, 157. birds, 185. boundaries of, 148, 278-280. buffalo of, 143, 184. buildings of, in 1880, 132. calcareous springs of, 173. camping in, 205. climate of, 189, 198. Congressional Reports on, 141. cost of visiting, 274. Cretaceous Period in, 156. danger to future existence of, 281. drainage areas of, 149. economic importance of, 190. electric railways in, 204, 276-280. elk in, 280. exploration of, 103, 108. fauna of, 181. fishes of, 185-6. flora of, 187. flow of water from, 190. flowers of, 190. forests of, 187, 188. fossil forests of, 177-180, 263. friends of, 281. funds for, 128. game in, 134, 181-4, 207. geographical names in, 108, 285-6. geology of, 156. Glacial Epoch in, 158. healthfulness of, 199. hostility to, vi, 267, 269. hotel system of, 204. hot springs of, 172-5. Indian knowledge of. See "_Indian_." lakes of the, 151. laws for, 127. leases in, 141, 207. mineral springs of, 199. mountain systems of, 151-2. nature of country in, 16, 17. Nez Percé incursion into, 117, 123, 215. petrifactions in, 56, 179. plateaus of, 153. private interests and, 280. Protective Act, 110, 141. public business in, 139. railroads and. See _Railroads_. rhyolitic rocks in, 157. road system of, 201. rules and regulations for, 354. scenery of, 155, 197, 209, 260. schemes to destroy, 268. season for tour of, 210. seasons of, 199. snow in, 193. snow-shoe traveling in, 194-6. source of great rivers near, 188. stage rides through the, 277. Superintendents of, 206-7, 359. Tertiary Period in, 156. thermal springs of, 161. tour of, 210, _et seq._ tourist transportation in, 204. trees of, 187. valleys of, 153. vandalism in, 207. visitors to, in 1883, 107. volcanic rocks in, 157. water falls of, 324. winter in, 193, 197, 198. winter journeys through, 108. Yellowstone Park Association, 140. Yellowstone Park Improvement Company, 132, 139, 140. Yellowstone River, 149, 250, 256. bridge over, 203. color of banks, 5, 6. flow of, 150. fords, 26, 249, 261. Great Bend of, 6, 43. junction of, with Gardiner, 211. navigation of, 203. source of, 2, 188. Yosemite Wonderland, 90, 94, 97, 253. Young Hopeful, 225. Yount Peak, source of the Y. River, 2, 149. _Zillah, The_, tourist boat on Y. Lake, 336. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes Small captioned text was not converted to ALL CAPS. The images were moved so that they would not split paragraphs.