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OF the four national parks of
the West, the Yellowstone is far the largest. It is a big, wholesome
wilderness on the broad summit of the Rocky Mountains, favored with
abundance of rain and snow, - a place of fountains where the greatest of the
American rivers take their rise. The central portion is a densely forested
and comparatively level volcanic plateau with an average elevation of about
eight thousand feet above the sea, surrounded by an imposing host of
mountains belonging to the subordinate Gallatin, Wind River, Teton, Absaroka,
and snowy ranges. Unnumbered lakes shine in it, united by a famous band of
streams that rush up out of hot lava beds, or fall from the frosty peaks in
channels rocky and bare, mossy and bosky, to the main rivers, singing
cheerily on through every difficulty, cunningly dividing and finding their
way east and west to the two far-off seas.
Glacier meadows and beaver
meadows are outspread with charming effect along the banks of the streams,
parklike expanses in the woods, and innumerable small gardens in rocky
recesses of the mountains, some of them containing more petals than leaves,
while the whole wilderness is enlivened with happy animals.
Beside the treasures common
to most mountain regions that are wild and blessed with a kind climate, the
park is full of exciting wonders. The wildest geysers in the world, in
bright, triumphant bands, are dancing and singing in it amid thousands of
boiling springs, beautiful and awful, their basins arrayed in gorgeous
colors like gigantic flowers; and hot paint-pots, mud springs, mud
volcanoes, mush and broth caldrons whose contents are of every color and
consistency, plash and heave and roar in bewildering abundance. In the
adjacent mountains, beneath the living trees the edges of petrified forests
are exposed to view, like specimens on the shelves of a museum, standing on
ledges tier above tier where they grew, solemnly silent in rigid crystalline
beauty after swaying in the winds thousands of centuries ago, opening
marvelous views back into the years and climates and life of the past. Here,
too, are hills of sparkling crystals, hills of sulphur, hills of glass,
hills of cinders and ashes, mountains of every style of architecture, icy or
forested, mountains covered with honey-bloom sweet as Hymettus, mountains
boiled soft like potatoes and colored like a sunset sky. A' that and a'
that, and twice as muckle's a' that, Nature has on show in the Yellowstone
Park. Therefore it is called Wonderland, and thousands of tourists and
travelers stream into it every summer, and wander about in it enchanted.
Fortunately, almost as soon
as it was discovered it was dedicated and set apart for the benefit of the
people, a piece of legislation that shines benignly amid the common dust and
ashes history of the public domain, for which the world must thank Professor
Hayden above all others; for he led the first scientific exploring party
into it, described it, and with admirable enthusiasm urged Congress to
preserve it. As delineated in the year 1872, the park contained about 3344
square miles. On March 30, 1891, it was to all intents and purposes enlarged
by the Yellowstone National Park Timber Reserve, and in December, 1897, by
the Teton Forest Reserve; thus nearly doubling its original area, and
extending the southern boundary far enough to take in the sublime Teton
range and the famous pasture lands of the big Rocky Mountain game animals.
The withdrawal of this large tract from the public domain did no harm to any
one; for its height, six thousand to over thirteen thousand feet above the
sea, and its thick mantle of volcanic rocks, prevent its ever being
available for agriculture or mining, while on the other hand its
geographical position, reviving climate, and wonderful scenery combine to
make it a grand health, pleasure, and study resort, - a gathering-place for
travelers from all the world.
The national parks are not
only withdrawn from sale and entry like the forest reservations, but are
efficiently managed and guarded by small troops of United States cavalry,
directed by the Secretary of the Interior. Under this care the forests are
flourishing, protected from both axe and fire; and so, of course, are the
shaggy beds of underbrush and the herbaceous vegetation. The so-called
curiosities, also, are preserved, and the furred and feathered tribes, many
of which, in danger of extinction a short time ago, are now increasing in
numbers,- a refreshing thing to see amid the blind, ruthless destruction
that is going on. in the adjacent regions. In pleasing contrast to the
noisy, ever-changing management, or mismanagement, of blundering,
plundering, money-making vote-sellers who receive their places from boss
politicians as purchased goods, the soldiers do their duty so quietly that
the traveler is scarce aware of their presence.
This is the coolest and
highest of the parks. Frosts occur every month of the year. Nevertheless,
the tenderest tourist finds it warm enough in summer. The air is electric
and full of ozone, healing, reviving, exhilarating, kept pure by frost and
fire, while the scenery is wild enough to awaken the dead. It is a glorious
place to grow in and rest in; camping on the shores of the lakes, in the
warm openings of the woods golden with sunflowers, on the banks of the
streams, by the snowy waterfalls, beside the exciting wonders or away from
them in the scallops of the mountain walls sheltered from every wind, on
smooth silky lawns enameled with gentians, up in the fountain hollows of the
ancient glaciers between the peaks, where cool pools and brooks and gardens
of precious plants charmingly embowered are never wanting, and good rough
rocks with every variety of cliff and scaur are invitingly near for outlooks
and exercise.
From these lovely dens you
may make excursions whenever you like into the middle of the park, where the
geysers and hot springs are reeking and spouting in their beautiful basins,
displaying an exuberance of color and strange motion and energy admirably
calculated to surprise and frighten, charm and shake up the least sensitive
out of apathy into newness of life.
However orderly your
excursions or aimless, again and again amid the caImet, stillest scenery you
will be brought to a standstill hushed and awe-stricken before phenomena
wholly new to you. Boiling springs and huge deep pools of purest green and
azure water, thousands of them, are plashing and heaving in these high, cool
mountains as if a fierce furnace fire were burning beneath each one of them;
and a hundred geysers, white torrents of boiling water and steam, like
inverted waterfalls, are ever and anon rushing up out of the hot, black
underworld. Some of these ponderous geyser columns are as large as sequoias,
- five to sixty feet in diameter, one hundred and fifty to three hundred
feet high, - and are sustained at this great height with tremendous energy
for a few minutes, or perhaps nearly an hour, standing rigid and erect,
hissing, throbbing, booming, as if thunderstorms were raging beneath their
roots, their sides roughened or fluted like the furrowed boles of trees,
their tops dissolving in feathery branches, while the irised spray, like
misty bloom is at times blown aside, revealing the massive shafts shining
against a background of pine-covered hills. Some of them lean more or less,
as if storm-bent, and instead of being round are flat or fan-shaped, issuing
from irregular slits in silex pavements with radiate structure, the sunbeams
sifting through them in ravishing splendor. Some are broad and round-headed
like oaks; others are low and bunchy, branching near the ground like bushes;
and a few are hollow in the centre like big daisies or water-lilies. No
frost cools them, snow never covers them nor lodges in their branches;
winter and summer they welcome alike; all of them, of whatever form or size,
faithfully rising and sinking in fairy rhythmic dance night and day, in all
sorts of weather, at varying periods of minutes, hours, or weeks, growing up
rapidly, uncontrollable as fate, tossing their pearly branches in the wind,
bursting into bloom and vanishing like the frailest flowers, - plants of
which Nature raises hundreds or thousands of crops a year with no apparent
exhaustion of the fiery soil.
The so-called geyser basins,
in which this rare sort of vegetation is growing, are mostly open valleys on
the central plateau that were eroded by glaciers after the greater volcanic
fires had ceased to burn. Looking down over the forests as you approach them
from the surrounding heights, you see a multitude of white columns, broad,
reeking masses, and irregular jets and puffs of misty vapor ascending from
the bottom of the valley, or entangled like smoke among the neighboring
trees, suggesting the factories of some busy town or the camp-fires of an
army. These mark the position of each mush-pot, paint-pot, hot spring, and
geyser, or gusher, as the Icelandic words mean. And when you saunter into
the midst of them over the bright sinter pavements, and see how pure and
white and pearly gray they are in the shade of the mountains, and how
radiant in the sunshine, you are fairly enchanted. So numerous they are and
varied, Nature seems to have gathered them from all the world as specimens
of her rarest fountains, to show in one place what she can do. Over four
thousand hot springs have been counted in the park, and a hundred geysers;
how many more there are nobody knows.
These valleys at the heads of
the great rivers may be regarded as laboratories and kitchens, in which,
amid a thousand retorts and pots, we may see Nature at work as chemist or
cook, cunningly compounding an infinite variety of mineral messes; cooking
whole mountains; boiling and steaming flinty rocks to smooth paste and mush,
- yellow, brown, red, pink, lavender, gray, and creamy white, - making the
most beautiful mud in the world; and distilling the most ethereal essences.
Many of these pots and caldrons have been boiling thousands of years. Pots
of sulphurous mush, stringy and lumpy, and pots of broth as black as ink,
are tossed and stirred with constant care, and thin transparent essences,
too pure and fine to be called water, are kept simmering gently in beautiful
sinter cups and bowls that grow ever more beautiful the longer they are
used. In some of the spring basins, the waters, though still warm, are
perfectly calm, and shine blandly in a sod of overleaning grass and flowers,
as if they were thoroughly cooked at last, and set aside to settle and cool.
Others are wildly boiling over as if running to waste, thousands of tons of
the precious liquids being thrown into the air to fall in scalding floods on
the clean coral floor of the establishment, keeping onlookers at a distance.
Instead of holding limpid pale green or azure water, other pots and craters
are filled with scalding mud, which is tossed up from three or four feet to
thirty feet, in sticky, rank-smelling masses, with gasping, belching,
thudding sounds, plastering the branches of neighboring trees; every flask,
retort, hot spring, and geyser has something special in it, no two being the
same in temperature, color, or composition.
In these natural laboratories
one needs stout faith to feel at ease. The ground sounds hollow underfoot,
and the awful subterranean thunder shakes one's mind as the ground is
shaken, especially at night in the pale moonlight, or when the sky is
overcast with storm- clouds. In the solemn gloom, the geysers, dimly
visible, look like monstrous dancing ghosts, and their wild songs and the
earthquake thunder replying to the storms overhead seem doubly terrible, as
if divine government were at an end. But the trembling hills keep their
places. The sky clears, the rosy dawn is reassuring, and up comes the sun
like a god, pouring his faithful beams across the mountains and forest,
lighting each peak and tree and ghastly geyser alike, and shining into the
eyes of the reeking springs, clothing them with rainbow light, and
dissolving the seeming chaos of darkness into varied forms of harmony. The
ordinary work of the world goes on. Gladly we see the flies dancing in the
sunbeams, birds feeding their young, squirrels gathering nuts, and hear the
blessed ouzel singing confidingly in the shallows of the river, - most
faithful evangel, calming every fear, reducing everything to love.
The variously tinted sinter
and travertine formations, outspread like pavements over large areas of the
geyser valleys, lining the spring basins and throats of the craters, and
forming beautiful coral-like rims and curbs about them, always excite
admiring attention; so also does the play of the waters from which they are
deposited. The various minerals in them are rich in colors, and these are
greatly heightened by a smooth, silky growth of brilliantly colored confervm
which lines many of the pools and channels and terraces. No bed of
flower-bloom is more exquisite than these myriads of minute plants, visible
only in mass, growing in the hot waters. Most of the spring borders are low
and daintily scalloped, crenelated, and beaded with sinter pearls. Some of
the geyser craters are massive and picturesque, like ruined castles or old
burned-out sequoia stumps, and are adorned on a grand scale with outbulging,
cauliflower- like formations. From these as centers the silex pavements
slope gently away in thin, crusty, overlapping layers, slightly interrupted
in some places by low terraces. Or, as in the case of the Mammoth Hot
Springs, at the north end of the park, where the building waters issue from
the side of a steep hill, the deposits form a succession of higher and
broader terraces of white travertine tinged with purple, like the famous
Pink Terrace at Rotomahana, New Zealand, draped in front with clustering
stalactites, each terrace having a pool of indescribably beautiful water
upon it in a basin with a raised rim that glistens with confery, the whole,
when viewed at a distance of a mile or two, looking like a broad, massive
cascade pouring over shelving rocks in snowy purpled foam.
The stones of this divine
masonry, invisible particles of lime or silex, mined in quarries no eye has
seen, go to their appointed places in gentle, tinkling, transparent currents
or through the dashing turmoil of floods, as surely guided as the sap of
plants streaming into bole and branch, leaf and flower. And thus from
century to century this beauty-work has gone on and is going on.
Passing through many a mile
of pine and spruce woods, toward the center of the park you come to the
famous Yellowstone Lake. It is about twenty miles long and fifteen wide, and
lies at a height of nearly eight thousand feet above the level of the sea,
amid dense black forests and snowy mountains. Around its winding, wavering
shores, closely forested and picturesquely varied with promontories and
bays, the distance is more than one hundred miles. It is not very deep, only
from two hundred to three hundred feet, and contains less water than the
celebrated Lake Tahoe of the California Sierra, which is nearly the same
size, lies at a height of sixty-four hundred feet, and is over sixteen
hundred feet deep. But no other lake in North America of equal area lies so
high as the Yellowstone, or gives birth to so noble a river. The terraces
around its shores show that at the close of the glacial period its surface
was about one hundred and sixty feet higher than it is now, and its area
nearly twice as great.
It is full of trout, and a
vast multitude of birds -swans, pelicans, geese, ducks, cranes, herons,
curlews, plovers, snipe - feed in it and upon its shores; and many forest
animals come out of the woods, and wade a little way in shallow, sandy
places to drink and look about them, and cool themselves In the free flowing
breezes.
In calm weather it is a
magnificent mirror for the woods and mountains and sky, now pattered with
hail and rain, now roughened with sudden storms that send waves to fringe
the shores and wash its border of gravel and sand. The Absaroka Mountains
and the Wind River Plateau on the east and south pour their gathered waters
into it, and the river issues from the north side in a broad, smooth,
stately current, silently gliding with such serene majesty that one fancies
it knows the vast journey of four thousand miles that lies before it, and
the work it has to do. For the first twenty miles its course is in a level,
sunny valley lightly fringed with trees, through which it flows in silvery
reaches stirred into spangles here and there by ducks and leaping trout,
making no sound save a low whispering among the pebbles and the dipping
willows and sedges of its banks. Then suddenly, as if preparing for hard
work, it rushes eagerly, impetuously forward rejoicing in its strength,
breaks into foam-bloom, and goes thundering down into the Grand Caņon in two
magnificent falls, one hundred and three hundred feet high.
The caņon is so tremendously
wild and impressive that even these great falls cannot hold your attention.
It is about twenty miles long and a thousand feet deep, -a weird,
unearthly-looking gorge of jagged, fantastic architecture, and most
brilliantly colored. Here the Washburn range, forming the northern rim of
the Yellowstone basin, made up mostly of beds of rhyolite decomposed by the
action of thermal waters, has been cut through and laid open to view by the
river; and a famous section it has made. It is not the depth or the shape of
the can-on, nor the waterfall, nor the green and gray river chanting its
brave song as it goes foaming on its way, that most impresses the observer,
but the colors of the decomposed volcanic rocks. With few exceptions, the
traveler in strange lands finds that, however much the scenery and
vegetation in different countries may change, Mother Earth is ever familiar
and the same. But here the very ground is changed, as if belonging to some
other world. The walls of the caņon from top to bottom burn in a perfect
glory of color, confounding and dazzling when the sun is shining, - white,
yellow, green, blue, vermilion, and various other shades of red indefinitely
blending. All the earth hereabouts seems to be paint. Millions of tons of it
lie in sight, exposed to wind and weather as if of no account, yet
marvelously fresh and bright, fast colors not to be washed out or bleached
out by either sunshine or storms. The effect is so novel and awful, we
imagine that even a river might be afraid to enter such a place. But the
rich and gentle beauty of the vegetation is reassuring. The lovely Linnwa
borealis hangs her twin bells over the brink of the cliffs, forests and
gardens extend their treasures in smiling confidence on either side, nuts
and berries ripen well whatever may be going on below; blind fears vanish,
and the grand gorge seems a kindly, beautiful part of the general harmony,
full of peace and joy and good will.
The park is easy of access.
Locomotives drag you to its northern boundary at Cinnabar, and horses and
guides do the rest. From Cinnabar you will be whirled in coaches along the
foaming Gardiner River to Mammoth Hot Springs; thence through woods and
meadows, gulches and ravines along branches of the Upper Gallatin, Madison,
and Firehole rivers to the main geyser basins; thence over the Continental
Divide and back again, up and down through dense pine, spruce, and fir woods
to the magnificent Yellowstone Lake, along its northern shore to the outlet,
down the river to the falls and Grand Caņon, and thence back through the
woods to Mammoth Hot Springs and Cinnabar; stopping here and there at the
so-called points of interest among the geysers, springs, paint-pots, mud
volcanoes, etc., where you will be allowed a few minutes or hours to saunter
over the sinter pavements, watch the play of a few of the geysers, and peer
into some of the most beautiful and terrible of the craters and pools. These
wonders you will enjoy, and also the views of the mountains, especially the
Gallatin and Absaroka ranges, the long, willowy glacier and beaver meadows,
the beds of violets, gentians, phloxes, asters, phacelias, goldenrods,
eriogonums, and many other flowers, some species giving color to whole
meadows and hillsides. And you will enjoy your short views of the great lake
and river and caņon. No scalping Indians will you see. The Black- feet and
Bannocks that once roamed here are gone; so are the old beaver-catchers, the
Coulters and Bridgers, with all their attractive buckskin and romance. There
are several bands of buffaloes in the park, but you will not thus cheaply in
tourist fashion see them nor many of the other large animals hidden in the
wilderness. The song-birds, too, keep mostly out of sight of the rushing
tourist, though off the roads thrushes, warblers, orioles, grosbeaks, etc.,
keep the air sweet and merry. Perhaps in passing rapids and falls you may
catch glimpses of the water-ouzel, but in the whirling noise you will not
hear his song. Fortunately, no road noise frightens the Douglas squirrel,
and his merry play and gossip will amuse you all through the woods. Here and
there a deer may be seen crossing the road, or a bear. Most likely, however,
the only bears you will see are the half tame ones that go to the hotels
every night for dinner-table scraps, - yeast-powder biscuit, Chicago canned
stuff, mixed pickles, and beefsteaks that have proved too tough for the
tourists.
Among the gains of a coach
trip are the acquaintances made and the fresh views into human nature; for
the wilderness is a shrewd touchstone, even thus lightly approached, and
brings many a curious trait to view. Setting out, the driver cracks his
whip, and the four horses go off at half gallop, half trot, in trained,
showy style, until out of sight of the hotel. The coach is crowded, old and
young side by side, blooming and fading, full of hope and fun and care. Some
look at the scenery or the horses, and all ask questions, an odd mixed lot
of them: "Where is the umbrella? What is the name of that blue flower over
there? Are you sure the little bag is aboard? Is that hollow yonder a
crater? How is your throat this morning? How high did you say the geysers
spout? How does the elevation affect your head? Is that a geyser reeking
over there in the rocks, or only a hot spring?" A long ascent is made, the
solemn mountains come to view, small cares are quenched, and all become
natural and silent, save perhaps some unfortunate expounder who has been
reading guidebook geology, and rumbles forth foggy subsidences and upheavals
until he is in danger of being heaved overboard. The driver will give you
the names of the peaks and meadows and streams as you come to them, call
attention to the glass road, tell how hard it was to build, - how the
obsidian cliffs naturally pushed the surveyor's lines to the right, and the
industrious beavers, by flooding the valley in front of the cliff, pushed
them to the left.
Geysers, however, are the
main objects, and as soon as they come in sight other wonders are forgotten.
All gather around the crater of the one that is expected to play first.
During the eruptions of the smaller geysers, such as the Beehive and Old
Faithful, though a lit- tie frightened at first, all welcome the glorious
show with enthusiasm, and shout, "Oh, how wonderful, beautiful, splendid,
majestic!" Some venture near enough to stroke the column with a stick, as if
it were a stone pillar or a tree, so firm and substantial and permanent it
seems. 'While tourists wait around a large- geyser, such as the Castle or
the Giant, there is a chatter of small talk in anything but solemn mood; and
during the intervals between the preliminary splashes and upheavals some
adventurer occasionally looks down the throat of the crater, admiring the
silex formations and wondering whether Hades is as beautiful. But when, with
awful uproar as if avalanches were falling and storms thundering in the
depths, the tremendous outburst begins, all run away to a safe distance, and
look on, awe-stricken and silent, in devout, worshiping wonder.
The largest and one of the
most wonderfully beautiful of the springs is the Prismatic, which the guide
will be sure to show you. With a circumference of three hundred yards, it is
more like a lake than a spring. The water is pure deep blue in the center,
fading to green on the edges, and its basin and the slightly terraced
pavement about it are astonishingly bright and varied in color. This one of
the multitude of Yellowstone fountains is of itself object enough for a trip
across the continent. No wonder that so many fine myths have originated in
springs; that so many fountains were held sacred in the youth of the world,
and had miraculous virtues ascribed to them. Even in these cold, doubting,
questioning, scientific times many of the Yellowstone fountains seem able to
work miracles. Near the Prismatic Spring is the great Excelsior Geyser,
which is said to throw a column of boiling water sixty to seventy feet in
diameter to a height of from fifty to three hundred feet, at irregular
periods. This is the greatest of all the geysers yet discovered anywhere.
The Firehole River, which sweeps past it, is, at ordinary stages, a stream
about one hundred yards wide and three feet deep; but when the geyser is in
eruption, so great is the quantity of water discharged that the volume of
the river is doubled, and it is rendered too hot and rapid to be forded.
Geysers are found in many
other volcanic regions, -in Iceland, New Zealand, Japan, the Himalayas, the
Eastern Archipelago, South America, the Azores, and elsewhere; but only in
Iceland, New Zealand, and this Rocky Mountain park do they display their
grandest forms, and of these three famous regions the Yellowstone is easily
first, both in the number and in the size of its geysers. The greatest
height of the column of the Great Geyser of Iceland actually measured was
two hundred and twelve feet, and of the Strokhr one hundred and sixty-two
feet.
In New Zealand, the Te Pueia
at Lake Taupo, the Waikite at Rotorna, and two others are said to lift their
waters occasionally to a height of one hundred feet, while the celebrated Te
Tarata at Rotomahana sometimes lifts a boiling column twenty feet in
diameter to a height of sixty feet. But all these are far surpassed by the
Excelsior. Few tourists, however, will see the Excelsior in action, or a
thousand other interesting features of the park that lie beyond the
wagon-roads and the hotels. The regular trips - from three to five days -
are too short. Nothing can be done well at a speed of forty miles a day. The
multitude of mixed, novel impressions rapidly piled on one another make only
a dreamy, bewildering, swirling blur, most of which is unrememberable. Far
more time should be taken. Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the
freedom of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grass and gentians of glacier
meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of Nature's darlings. Climb the
mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as
sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you,
and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but
Nature's sources never fail. Like a generous host, she offers here brimming
cups in endless variety, served in a grand hail, the sky its ceiling, the
mountains its walls, decorated with glorious paintings and enlivened with
bands of music ever playing. The petty discomforts that beset the awkward
guest, the unskilled camper, are quickly forgotten, while all that is
precious remains. Fears vanish as soon as one is fairly free in the
wilderness.
Most of the dangers that
haunt the unseasoned citizen are imaginary; the real ones are perhaps too
few rather than too many for his good. The bears that always seem to spring
up thick as trees, in fighting, devouring attitudes before the frightened
tourist whenever a camping trip is proposed, are gentle now, find- hag they
are no longer likely to be shot; and rattlesnakes, the other big irrational
dread of over-civilized people, are scarce here, for most of the park lies
above the snake-line. Poor creatures, loved only by their Maker, they are
timid and bashful, as mountaineers know; and though perhaps not possessed of
much of that charity that suffers long and is kind, seldom, either by
mistake or by mishaps, do harm to any one. Certainly they cause not the
hundredth part of the pain and death that follow the footsteps of the
admired Rocky Mountain trapper. Nevertheless, again and again, in season and
out of season, the question comes up, "What are rattlesnakes good for?" As
if nothing that does not obviously make for the benefit of man had any right
to exist; as if our ways were God's ways. Long ago, an Indian to whom a
French traveler put this old question replied that their tails were good for
toothache, and their heads for fever. Anyhow, they are all, head and tail,
good for themselves, and we need not begrudge them their share of life.
Fear nothing. No town park
you have been accustomed to saunter in is so free from danger as the
Yellowstone. It is a hard place to leave. Even its names in your guidebook
are attractive, and should draw you far from wagon- roads, - all save the
early ones, derived from the infernal regions: Hell Roaring River, Hell
Broth Springs, The Devil's Caldron, etc. Indeed, the whole region was at
first called Coulter's Hell, from the fiery brimstone stories told by
trapper Coulter, who left the Lewis and Clark expedition and wandered
through the park, in the year 1807, with a band of Bannock Indians. The
later names, many of which we owe to Mr. Arnold Hague of the U.S. Geological
Survey, are so telling and exhilarating that they set our pulses dancing and
make us begin to enjoy the pleasures of excursions ere they are commenced.
Three River Peak, Two Ocean Pass, Continental Divide, are capital
geographical descriptions, suggesting thousands of miles of rejoicing
streams and all that belongs to them. Big Horn Pass, Bison Peak, Big Game
Ridge, bring brave mountain animals to mind. Birch Hills, Garnet Hills,
Amethyst Mountain, Storm Peak, Electric Peak, Roaring Mountain, are bright,
bracing names. Wapiti, Beaver, Tern, and Swan lakes conjure up fine
pictures, and so also do Osprey and Ouzel falls. Antelope Creek, Otter,
Mink, and Grayling creeks, Geode, Jasper, Opal, Carnelian, and Chalcedony
creeks, are lively and sparkling names that help the streams to shine; and
Azalea, Stellaria, Arnica, Aster, and Phlox creeks, what pictures these
bring up! Violet, Morning Mist, Hygeia, Beryl, Vermilion, and Indigo
springs, and many beside, give us visions of fountains more beautifully
arrayed than Solomon in all his purple and golden glory. All these and a
host of others call you to camp. You may be a little cold some nights on
mountain tops above the timber-line, but you will see the stars, and by and
by you can sleep enough in your town bed, or at least in your grave. Keep
awake while you may in mountain mansions so rare.
If you are not very strong,
try to climb Electric Peak when a big bossy, well-charged thunder-cloud is
on it, to breathe the ozone set free, and get yourself kindly shaken and
shocked. You are sure to be lost in wonder and praise, and every hair of
your head will stand up and hum and sing like an enthusiastic congregation.
After this reviving
experience, you should take a look into a few of the tertiary volumes of the
grand geological library of the park, and see how God writes history. No
technical knowledge is required; only a calm day and a calm mind. Perhaps
nowhere else in the Rocky Mountains have the volcanic forces been so busy.
More than ten thousand square miles hereabouts have been covered to a depth
of at least five thousand feet with material spouted from chasms and craters
during the tertiary period, forming broad sheets of basalt, andesite,
rhyolite, etc., and marvelous masses of ashes, sand, cinders, and stones now
consolidated into conglomerates, charged with the remains of plants and
animals that lived in the calm, genial periods that separated the volcanic
outbursts.
Perhaps the most interesting
and telling of these rocks, to the hasty tourist, are those that make up the
mass of Amethyst Mountain. On its north side it presents a section two
thousand feet high of roughly stratified beds of sand, ashes, and
conglomerates coarse and fine, forming the untrimmed edges of a wonderful
set of volumes lying on their sides, - books a million years old, well
bound, miles in size, with full-page illustrations. On the ledges of this
one section we see trunks and stumps of fifteen or twenty ancient forests
ranged one above another, standing where they grew, or prostrate and broken
like the pillars of ruined temples in desert sands, -a forest fifteen or
twenty stories high, the roots of each spread above the tops of the next
beneath it, telling wonderful tales of the bygone centuries, with their
winters and summers, growth and death, fire, ice, and flood.
There were giants in those
days. The largest of the standing opal and agate stumps and prostrate
sections of the trunks are from two or three to fifty feet in height or
length, and from five to ten feet in diameter; and so perfect is the
petrifaction that the annual rings and ducts are clearer and more easily
counted than those of living trees, centuries of burial having brightened
the records instead of blurring them. They show that the winters of the
tertiary period gave as decided a check to vegetable growth as do those of
the present time. Some trees favorably located grew rapidly, increasing
twenty inches in diameter in as many years, while others of the same
species, on poorer soil or overshadowed, increased only two or three inches
in the same time.
Among the roots and stumps on
the old forest floors we find the remains of ferns and bushes, and the seeds
and leaves of trees like those now growing on the southern Alleghanies, -
such as magnolia, sassafras, laurel, linden, persimmon, ash, alder, dogwood.
Studying the lowest of these forests, the soil it grew on and the deposits
it is buried in, we see that-it was rich in species, and flourished in a
genial, sunny climate. When its stately trees were in their glory, volcanic
fires broke forth from chasms and craters, like larger geysers, spouting
ashes, cinders, stones, and mud, which fell on the doomed forest like hail
and snow; sifting, hurtling through the leaves and branches, choking the
streams, covering the ground, crushing bushes and ferns, rapidly deepening,
packing around the trees and breaking them, rising higher until the topmost
boughs of the giants were buried, leaving not a leaf or twig in sight, so
complete was the desolation. At last the volcanic storm began to abate, the
fiery soil settled; mud floods and boulder floods passed over it, enriching
it, cooling it; rains fell and mellow sunshine, and it became fertile and
ready for another crop. Birds, and the winds, and roaming animals brought
seeds from more fortunate woods, and a new forest grew up on the top of the
buried one. Centuries of genial growing seasons passed. The seedling trees
became giants, and with strong outreaching branches spread a leafy canopy
over the gray land.
The sleeping subterranean
fires again awake and shake the mountains, and every leaf trembles. The old
craters, with perhaps new ones, are opened, and immense quantities of ashes,
pumice, and cinders are again thrown into the sky. The sun, shorn of his
beams, glows like a dull red ball, until hidden in sulphurous clouds.
Volcanic snow, hail, and floods fall on the new forest, burying it alive,
like the one beneath its roots. Then come another noisy band of mud floods
and boulder floods, mixing, settling, enriching the new ground, more seeds,
quickening sunshine and showers; and a third noble magnolia forest is
carefully raised on the top of the second. And so on. Forest was planted
above forest and destroyed, as if Nature were ever repenting, undoing the
work she had so industriously done, and burying it.
Of course this destruction
was creation, progress in the march of beauty through death. How quickly
these old monuments excite and hold the imagination! We see the old stone
stumps budding and blossoming and waving in the wind as magnificent trees,
standing shoulder to shoulder, branches interlacing in grand varied
round-headed forests; see the sunshine of morning and evening gilding their
mossy trunks, and at high noon spangling on the thick glossy leaves of the
magnolia, filtering through translucent canopies of linden and ash, and
falling in mellow patches on the ferny floor; see the shining after rain,
breathe the exhaling fragrance, and hear the winds and birds and the murmur
of brooks and insects. We watch them from season to season; see the swelling
buds when the sap begins to flow in the spring, the opening leaves and
blossoms, the ripening of summer fruits, the colors of autumn, and the maze
of leafless branches and sprays in winter; and we see the sudden on- come of
the storms that overwhelmed them.
One calm morning at sunrise I
saw the oaks and pines in Yosemite Valley shaken by an earthquake, their
tops swishing back and forth, and every branch and needle shuddering as if
in distress like the frightened screaming birds. One many imagine the
trembling, rocking, tumultuous waving of those ancient Yellowstone woods,
and the terror of their inhabitants when the first foreboding shocks were
felt, the sky grew dark, and rock-laden floods began to roar. But though
they were close pressed and buried, cut off from sun and wind, all their
happy leaf-fluttering and waving done, other currents coursed through them,
fondling and thrilling every fibre, and beautiful wood was replaced by
beautiful stone. Now their rocky sepulchres are partly open, and show forth
the natural beauty of death.
After the forest times and
fire times had passed away, and the volcanic furnaces were banked and held
in abeyance, another great change occurred. The glacial winter came on. The
sky was again darkened, not with dust and ashes, but with snow which fell in
glorious abundance, piling deeper, deeper, slipping from the overladen
heights in booming avalanches, compacting into glaciers, that flowed over
all the landscape, wiping off forests, grinding, sculpturing, fashioning the
comparatively featureless lava beds into the beautiful rhythm of hill and
dale and ranges of mountains we behold to-day; forming basins for lakes,
channels for streams, new soils for forests, gardens, and meadows. While
this ice- work was going on, the slumbering volcanic fires were boiling the
subterranean waters, and with curious chemistry decomposing the rocks,
making beauty in the darkness; these forces, seemingly antagonistic, working
harmoniously together. How wild their meetings on the surface were we may
imagine. When the glacier period began, geysers and hot springs were playing
in grander volume, it may be, than those of to-day. The glaciers flowed over
them while they spouted and thundered, carrying away their fine sinter and
travertine structures, and shortening their mysterious channels.
The soils made in the
down-grinding required to bring the present features of the landscape into
relief are possibly no better than were some of the old volcanic soils that
were carried away, and which, as we have seen, nourished magnificent
forests, but the glacial landscapes are incomparably more beautiful than the
old volcanic ones were. The glacial winter has passed away, like the ancient
summers and fire periods, though in the chronology of the geologist all
these times are recent. Only small residual glaciers on the cool northern
slopes of the highest mountains are left of the vast all-embracing
ice-mantle, as solfataras and geysers are all that are left of the ancient
volcanoes.
Now the post-glacial agents
are at work on the grand old palimpsest of the park region, inscribing new
characters; but still in its main telling features it remains distinctly
glacial. The moraine soils are being leveled, sorted, refined, re-formed,
and covered with vegetation; the polished pavements and scoring and other
superficial glacial inscriptions on the crumbling lavas are being rapidly
obliterated; gorges are being cut in the decomposed rhyolites and loose
conglomerates, and turrets and pinnacles seem to be springing up like
growing trees; while the geysers are depositing miles of sinter and
travertine. Nevertheless, the ice- work is scarce blurred as yet. These
later effects are only spots and wrinkles on the grand glacial countenance
of the park.
Perhaps you have already said
that you have seen enough for a lifetime. But before you go away you should
spend at least one day and a night on a mountain top, for a last general,
calming, settling view. Mount Washburn is a good one for the purpose,
because it stands in the middle of the park, is unencumbered with other
peaks, and is so easy of access that the climb to its summit is only a
saunter. First your eye goes roving around the mountain rim amid the
hundreds of peaks: some with plain flowing skirts, others abruptly
precipitous and defended by sheer battlemented escarpments; flat-topped or
round; heaving like sea-waves or spired and turreted like Gothic cathedrals;
streaked with snow in the ravines, and darkened with files of adventurous
trees climbing the ridges. The nearer peaks are perchance clad in sapphire
blue, others far off in creamy white. In the broad glare of noon they seem
to shrink and crouch to less than half their real stature, and grow dull and
uncommunicative, - mere dead, draggled heaps of waste ashes and stone,
giving no hint of the multitude of animals enjoying life in their
fastnesses, or of the bright bloom-bordered streams and lakes. But when
storms blow they awake and arise, wearing robes of cloud and mist in
majestic speaking attitudes like gods. In the color glory of morning and
evening they become still more impressive; steeped in the divine light of
the alpenglow their earthiness disappears, and, blending with the heavens,
they seem neither high nor low.
Over all the central plateau,
which from here seems level, and over the foothills and lower slopes of the
mountains, the forest extends like a black uniform bed of weeds, interrupted
only by lakes and meadows and small burned spots called parks, - all of
them, except the Yellowstone Lake, being mere dots and spangles in general
views, made conspicuous by their color and brightness. About eighty-five per
cent of the entire area of the park is covered with trees, mostly the
indomitable lodge-pole pine (Pinus contorta, var. Murrayana), with a few
patches and sprinklings of Douglas spruce, Engehnann spruce, silver fir (Abies
lasiocarpa), Pinus flexilis, and a few alders, aspens, and birches. The
Douglas spruce is found only on the lowest portions, the silver fir on the
highest, and the Engelmann spruce on the dampest places, best defended from
fire. Some fine specimens of the fiexilis pine are growing on the margins of
openings, - wide-branching, sturdy trees, as broad as high, with trunks five
feet in diameter, leafy and shady, laden with purple cones and rose-colored
flowers. The Engelmann spruce and sub-alpine silver fir are beautiful and
notable trees, - tall, spiry, hardy, frost and snow defying, and widely
distributed over the West, wherever there is a mountain to climb or a cold
moraine slope to cover. But neither of these is a good firefighter. With
rather thin bark, and scattering their seeds every year as soon as they are
ripe, they are quickly driven out of fire-swept regions. When the glaciers
were melting, these hardy mountaineering trees were probably among the first
to arrive on the new moraine soil beds; but as the plateau became drier and
fires began to run, they were driven up the mountains, and into the wet
spots and islands where we now find them, leaving nearly all the park to the
lodge-pole pine, which though as thin-skinned as they and as easily killed
by fire, takes pains to store up its seeds in firmly closed cones, and holds
them from three to nine years, so that, let the fire come when it may, it is
ready to die and ready to live again in a new generation. For when the
killing fires have devoured the leaves and thin resinous bark, many of the
cones, only scorched, open as soon as the smoke clears away; the hoarded
store of seeds is sown broadcast on the cleared ground, and a new growth
immediately springs up triumphant out of the ashes. Therefore, this tree not
only holds its ground, but extends its conquests farther after every fire.
Thus the evenness and closeness of its growth are accounted for. In one part
of the forest that I examined, the growth was about as close as a
cane-brake. The trees were from four to eight inches in diameter, one
hundred feet high, and one hundred and seventy-five years old. The lower
limbs die young and drop off for want of light. Life with these
close-planted trees is a race for light, more light, and so they push
straight for the sky. Mowing off ten feet from the top of the forest would
make it look like a crowded mass of telegraph-poles; for only the sunny tops
are leafy. A sapling ten years old, growing in the sunshine, has as many
leaves as a crowded tree one or two hundred years old. As fires are
multiplied and the mountains become drier, this wonderful lodge-pole pine
bids fair to obtain possession of nearly all the forest ground in the West.
How still the woods seem from
here, yet how lively a stir the hidden animals are making; digging, gnawing,
biting, eyes shining, at work and play, getting food, rearing young, roving
through the underbrush, climbing the rocks, wading solitary marshes, tracing
the banks of the lakes and streams! Insect swarms are dancing in the
sunbeams, burrowing in the ground, diving, swimming, -a cloud of witnesses
telling Nature's joy. The plants are as busy as the animals, every cell in a
swirl of enjoyment, humming like a hive, singing the old new song of
creation. A few columns and puffs of steam are seen rising above the
treetops, some near, but most of them far off, indicating geysers and hot
springs, gentle-looking and noiseless as downy clouds, softly hinting the
reaction going on between the surface and the hot interior. From here you
see them better than when you are standing beside them, frightened and
confused, regarding them as lawless cataclysms. The shocks and outbursts of
earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, storms, the pounding of waves, the uprush
of sap in plants, each and all tell the orderly love-beats of Nature's
heart.
Turning to the eastward, you
have the Grand Caņon and reaches of the river in full view; and yonder to
the southward lies the great lake, the largest and most important of all the
high fountains of the Missouri-Mississippi, and the last td be discovered.
In the year 1541, when De
Soto, with a romantic band of adventurers, was seeking gold and glory and
the fountain of youth, be found the Mississippi a few hundred miles above
its mouth, and made his grave beneath its floods. La Salle, in 1682, after
discovering the Ohio, one of the largest and most beautiful branches of the
Mississippi, traced the latter to the sea from the mouth of the Illinois,
through adventures and privations not easily realized now. About the same
time Joliet and Father Marquette reached the "Father of Waters" by way of
the Wisconsin, but more than a century passed ere its highest sources in
these mountains were seen. The advancing stream of civilization has ever
followed its guidance toward the west, but none of the thousand tribes of
Indians living on its banks could tell the explorer whence it came. From
those romantic De Soto and La Salle days to these times of locomotives and
tourists, how much has the great river seen and done! Great as it now is,
and still growing longer through the ground of its delta and the basins of
receding glaciers at its head, it was immensely broader toward the close of
the glacial period, when the ice-mantle of the mountains was melting: then
with its three hundred thousand miles of branches outspread over the plains
and valleys of the continent, laden with fertile mud, it made the biggest
and most generous bed of soil in the world.
Think of this mighty stream
springing in the first place in vapor from the sea, flying on the wind,
alighting on the mountains in hail and snow and rain, lingering in many a
fountain feeding the trees and grass; then gathering its scattered waters,
gliding from its noble lake, and going back home to the sea, singing all the
way! On it sweeps, through the gates of the mountains, across the vast
prairies and plains, through many a wild, gloomy forest, cane-brake, and
sunny savanna; from glaciers and snowbanks and pine woods to warm groves of
magnolia and palm; geysers dancing at its head keeping time with the
sea-waves at its mouth; roaring and gray in rapids, booming in broad, bossy
falls, murmuring, gleaming in long, silvery reaches, swaying now hither, now
thither, whirling, bending in huge doubling, eddying folds, serene,
majestic, ungovernable, overflowing all its metes and bounds, frightening
the dwellers upon its banks; building, wasting, uprooting, planting;
engulfing old islands and making new ones, taking away fields and towns as
if in sport, carrying canoes and ships of commerce in the midst of its
spoils and drift, fertilizing the continent as one vast farm. Then, its work
done, it gladly vanishes in its ocean home, welcomed by the waiting waves.
Thus naturally, standing here
in the midst of its fountains, we trace the fortunes of the great river. And
how much more comes to mind as we overlook this wonderful wilderness!
Fountains of the Columbia and Colorado lie before us, interlaced with those
of the Yellowstone and Missouri, and fine it would be to go with them to the
Pacific; but the sun is already in the west, and soon our day will be done.
Yonder is Amethyst Mountain,
and other mountains hardly less rich in old forests, which now seem to
spring up again in their glory; and you see the storms that buried them -
the ashes and torrents laden with boulders and mud, the centuries of
sunshine, and the dark, lurid nights. You see again the vast floods of lava,
red-hot and white-hot, pouring out from gigantic geysers, usurping the
basins of lakes and streams, absorbing or driving away their hissing,
screaming waters, flowing around. hills and ridges, submerging every
subordinate feature. Then you see the snow and glaciers taking possession of
the land, making new landscapes. How admirable it is that, after passing
through so many vicissitudes of frost and fire and flood, the physiognomy
and even the complexion of the landscape should still be so divinely fine!
Thus reviewing the eventful
past, we see Nature working with enthusiasm like a man, blowing her volcanic
forges like a blacksmith blowing his smithy fires, shoving glaciers over the
landscapes like a carpenter shoving his planes, clearing, ploughing,
harrowing, irrigating, planting, and sowing broadcast like a farmer and
gardener, doing rough work and fine work, planting sequoias and pines,
rosebushes and daisies; working in gems, filling every crack and hollow with
them; distilling fine essences; painting plants and shells, clouds,
mountains, all the earth and heavens, like an artist, - ever working toward
beauty higher and higher. Where may the mind find more stimulating,
quickening pasturage? A thousand Yellowstone wonders are calling, "Look up
and down and round about you!" And a multitude of still, small voices may be
heard directing you to look through all this transient, shifting show of
things called "substantial" into the truly substantial spiritual world whose
forms flesh and wood, rock and water, air and sunshine, only veil and
conceal, and to learn that here is heaven and the dwelling- place of the
angels.
The sun is setting; long,
violet shadows are growing out over the woods from the mountains along the
western rim of the park; the Absaroka range is baptized in the divine light
of the alpenglow, and its rocks and trees are transfigured. Next to the
light of the dawn on high mountain tops, the alpenglow is the most
impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God.
Now comes the gloaming. The
alpenglow is fading into earthy, murky gloom, but do not let your town
habits draw you away to the hotel. Stay on this good fire-mountain and spend
the night among the stars. Watch their glorious bloom until the dawn, and
get one more baptism of light. Then, with fresh heart, go down to your work,
and whatever your fate, under whatever ignorance or knowledge you may
afterward chance to suffer, you will remember these fine, wild views, and
look back with joy to your wanderings in the blessed old Yellowstone
Wonderland. |
