[Illustration]
OUR NATIONAL PARKS
by John Muir
Contents
PREFACE
Chapter I. The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West
Chapter II. The Yellowstone National Park
Chapter III. The Yosemite National Park
Chapter IV. The Forests of the Yosemite Park
Chapter V. The Wild Gardens of the Yosemite Park
Chapter VI. Among the Animals of the Yosemite
Chapter VII. Among the Birds of the Yosemite
Chapter VIII. The Fountains and Streams of the Yosemite National Park
Chapter IX. The Sequoia and General Grant National Parks
Chapter X. The American Forests
Appendix
Index
List of Illustrations
John Muir in Muir Woods (1909)
Map showing the National Forests, Parks, and Monuments of the United
States
Cassiope
Mt. Rainier and Alpine Firs (_Abies lasiocarpa_)
The Grand Cañon of Colorado
Minerva Terrace, Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone Park
Great Falls and Grand Cañon, Yellowstone Park
Looking South from the Summit of Mt. Washburn, Yellowstone Park
A Thunder-Storm in the Sierras
Glacier Monument (Fairview Dome)
Along the Crest of the High Sierras from the Summit of Mt. Lyell
(13,090 feet)
California Cones
Yellow Pine (Yosemite Valley Form)
A California Life-Oak
A Yosemite Cañon Cliff (El Capitan)
California Azaleas
Mariposa Tulips and the Snow Plant
Alpine Phlox and _Polemonium confertum_
A Cinnamon Bear
Deer Feeding in the Forest
A Mountain Woodchuck
A Trout Stream in the Sierra Nevada (King’s River)
Mono Desert from Mono Pass
Liberty Cap and Nevada Falls, Yosemite Valley
Water Ouzels in a Mountain Stream
“Fountain Snow” on the High Sierras (Mt. Lyell Group)
A Mountain Stream in June (Merced Creek and Vernal Falls, Yosemite)
A Sierra Cañon (King’s River Cañon from Lookout Peak)
A Giant Sequoia
Midsummer in the Sequoia Forest
“General Grant” Sequoia in General Grant National Park
In a Puget Sound Forest
Sugar Pine
All the illustrations are from photographs made for this book by
Herbert W. Gleason.
[Illustration: John Muir in Muir Woods (1909).]
TO
CHARLES SPRAGUE SARGENT
STEADFAST LOVER AND DEFENDER
OF OUR COUNTRY’S FORESTS
THIS LITTLE BOOK
Is Affectionately Dedicated
NOTE
For the tables of information concerning the National Parks and
National Monuments printed in the Appendix to this volume the reader is
indebted to Mr. ALLEN CHAMBERLAIN, who has been at much pains to
accumulate data not easily obtainable elsewhere. The map at the
beginning of the book has also been compiled by Mr. Chamberlain from
authoritative government sources.
PREFACE
In this book, made up of sketches first published in the Atlantic
Monthly, I have done the best I could to show forth the beauty,
grandeur, and all-embracing usefulness of our wild mountain forest
reservations and parks, with a view to inciting the people to come and
enjoy them, and get them into their hearts, that so at length their
preservation and right use might be made sure.
Martinez, California
_September_, 1901
[Illustration: Map showing the National Forests, Parks, and Monuments
of the United States.
INDEX TO THE MAP
(There are two National Forests in Florida and two in Michigan which
are included in the table on page 373 are not shown on the map.)
NATIONAL PARKS
(In black on map)
1. Yellowstone, Wyo., Mont., and Ida.
2. Hot Springs, Ark.
3. Sequoia, Cal.
4. Yosemite, Cal.
5. General Grant, Cal.
6. Casa Grande, Ariz.
7. Mt. Rainier, Wash.
8. Crater Lake, Ore.
9. Platt, Okla.
10. Wind Cave, S. D.
11. Sully’s Hill, N. D.
12. Mesa Verde, Colo.
13. Glacier (see pp. 368, 369), Mont.
NATIONAL MONUMENTS
(Cross-hatched)
14. Devil’s Tower, Wyo.
15. Petrified Forest, Ariz.
16. Montezuma Castle, Ariz.
17. El Morro, N. M.
18. Chaco Canyon, N. M.
19. Lassen Peak, Cal.
20. Cinder Cone, Cal.
21. Gila Cliff-Dwellings, N. M.
22. Tonto, Ariz.
23. Muir Woods, Cal.
24. Grand Canyon, Ariz.
25. Pinnacles, Cal.
26. Jewel Cave, S. D.
27. Natural Bridges, Utah
28. Lewis and Clark Cavern, Mont.
29. Tumacocori, Ariz.
30. Wheeler, Colo.
31. Mt. Olympus, Wash.
32. Navajo, Ariz.
33. Oregon Caves, Ore.
NATIONAL FORESTS
(Shaded)
34. Absaroka, Mont.
35. Alamo, N. M.
36. Angeles, Cal.
37. Apache, Ariz.
38. Arapaho, Colo.
39. Arkansas, Ark.
40. Ashley, Utah and Wyo.
41. Battlement, Colo.
42. Beartooth, Mont.
43. Beaverhead, Ida. and Mont.
44. Bighorn, Wyo.
45. Bitterroot, Mont.
46. Blackfeet, Mont.
47. Black Hills, S. D.
48. Boise, Ida.
49. Bonneville, Wyo.
50. Cabinet, Mont.
51. Cache, Ida. and Utah
52. California, Cal.
53. Caribou, Ida. and Wyo.
54. Carson, N. M.
55. Cascade, Ore.
56. Challis, Ida.
57. Chelan, Wash.
58. Cheyenne, Wyo.
59. Chiricahua, Ariz. and N. M.
60. Clearwater, Ida.
61. Cleveland, Cal.
62. Cochetopa, Colo.
63. Coconino, Ariz.
64. Cœur d’Alene, Ida.
65. Columbia, Wash.
66. Colville, Wash.
67. Coronado, Ariz.
68. Crater, Cal. and Ore.
69. Crook, Ariz.
70. Custer, Mont.
71. Dakota, N. D.
72. Datil, N. M.
73. Deerlodge, Mont.
74. Deschutes, Ore.
75. Dixie, Ariz. and Utah
76. Fillmore, Utah
77. Fishlake, Utah
78. Flathead, Mont.
79. Fremont, Ore.
80. Gallatin, Mont.
81. Garces, Ariz.
82. Gila, N. M.
83. Gunnison, Colo.
84. Hayden, Wyo. and Colo.
85. Helena, Mont.
86. Holy Cross, Colo.
87. Humboldt, Nev.
88. Idaho, Ida.
89. Inyo, Cal. and Nev.
90. Jefferson, Mont.
91. Jemez, N. M.
92. Kaibab, Ariz.
93. Kaniksu, Ida. and Wash.
94. Kansas, Kan.
95. Klamath, Cal.
96. Kootenai, Mont.
97. La Sal, Utah and Colo.
98. Las Animas, Colo, and N. M.
99. Lassen, Cal.
100. Leadville, Colo.
101. Lemhi, Ida.
102. Lewis and Clark, Mont.
103. Lincoln, N. M.
104. Lolo, Mont.
105. Madison, Mont.
106. Malheur, Ore.
107. Manti, Utah
108. Manzano, N. M.
109. Medicine Bow, Colo.
110. Minidoka, Ida. and Utah
111. Minnesota, Minn.
112. Missoula, Mont.
113. Moapa, Nev.
114. Modoc, Cal.
115. Mono, Cal. and Nev.
116. Monterey, Cal.
117. Montezuma, Colo.
118. Nebo, Utah
119. Nebraska, Neb.
120. Nevada, Nev.
121. Nezperce, Ida.
122. Olympic, Wash.
123. Oregon, Ore.
124. Ozark, Ark.
125. Payette, Ida.
126. Pecos, N. M.
127. Pend d’Oreille, Ida.
128. Pike, Colo.
129. Plumas, Cal.
130. Pocatello, Ida. and Utah
131. Powell, Utah
132. Prescott, Ariz.
133. Rainier, Wash.
134. Rio Grande, Colo.
135. Routt, Colo.
136. Salmon, Ida.
137. San Isabel, Colo.
138. San Juan, Colo.
139. San Luis, Cal.
140. Santa Barbara, Cal.
141. Sawtooth, Ida.
142. Sequoia, Cal.
143. Sevier, Utah
144. Shasta, Cal.
145. Shoshone, Wyo.
146. Sierra, Cal.
147. Sioux, Mont, and S. D.
148. Siskiyou, Ore. and Cal.
149. Sitgreaves, Ariz.
150. Siuslaw, Ore.
151. Snoqualmie, Wash.
152. Sopris, Colo.
153. Stanislaus, Cal.
154. Sundance, Wyo.
155. Superior, Minn.
156. Tahoe, Cal. and Nev.
157. Targhee, Ida. and Wyo.
158. Teton, Wyo.
159. Toiyabe, Neb.
160. Tonto, Ariz.
161. Trinity, Cal.
162. Uinta, Utah
163. Umatilla, Ore.
164. Umpqua, Ore.
165. Uncompahgre, Colo.
166. Wallowa, Ore.
167. Wasatch, Utah
168. Washington, Wash.
169. Wenaha, Ore. and Wash.
170. Wenatchee, Wash.
171. Weiser, Ida.
172. White River, Colo.
173. Whitman, Ore.
174. Wichita, Okla.
175. Wyoming, Wyo.
176. Zuñi, Ariz. and N. M.
CHAPTER I
The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West
“Keep not standing fix’d and rooted,
Briskly venture, briskly roam;
Head and hand, where’er thou foot it,
And stout heart are still at home.
In each land the sun does visit
We are gay, whate’er betide:
To give room for wandering is it
That the world was made so wide.”
The tendency nowadays to wander in wildernesses is delightful to see.
Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning
to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is
a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not
only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of
life. Awakening from the stupefying effects of the vice of
over-industry and the deadly apathy of luxury, they are trying as best
they can to mix and enrich their own little ongoings with those of
Nature, and to get rid of rust and disease. Briskly venturing and
roaming, some are washing off sins and cobweb cares of the devil’s
spinning in all-day storms on mountains; sauntering in rosiny pinewoods
or in gentian meadows, brushing through chaparral, bending down and
parting sweet, flowery sprays; tracing rivers to their sources, getting
in touch with the nerves of Mother Earth; jumping from rock to rock,
feeling the life of them, learning the songs of them, panting in
whole-souled exercise, and rejoicing in deep, long-drawn breaths of
pure wildness. This is fine and natural and full of promise. So also is
the growing interest in the care and preservation of forests and wild
places in general, and in the half wild parks and gardens of towns.
Even the scenery habit in its most artificial forms, mixed with
spectacles, silliness, and kodaks; its devotees arrayed more gorgeously
than scarlet tanagers, frightening the wild game with red
umbrellas,—even this is encouraging, and may well be regarded as a
hopeful sign of the times.
All the Western mountains are still rich in wildness, and by means of
good roads are being brought nearer civilization every year. To the
sane and free it will hardly seem necessary to cross the continent in
search of wild beauty, however easy the way, for they find it in
abundance wherever they chance to be. Like Thoreau they see forests in
orchards and patches of huckleberry brush, and oceans in ponds and
drops of dew. Few in these hot, dim, strenuous times are quite sane or
free; choked with care like clocks full of dust, laboriously doing so
much good and making so much money,—or so little,—they are no longer
good for themselves.
When, like a merchant taking a list of his goods, we take stock of our
wildness, we are glad to see how much of even the most destructible
kind is still unspoiled. Looking at our continent as scenery when it
was all wild, lying between beautiful seas, the starry sky above it,
the starry rocks beneath it, to compare its sides, the East and the
West, would be like comparing the sides of a rainbow. But it is no
longer equally beautiful. The rainbows of to-day are, I suppose, as
bright as those that first spanned the sky; and some of our landscapes
are growing more beautiful from year to year, notwithstanding the
clearing, trampling work of civilization. New plants and animals are
enriching woods and gardens, and many landscapes wholly new, with
divine sculpture and architecture, are just now coming to the light of
day as the mantling folds of creative glaciers are being withdrawn, and
life in a thousand cheerful, beautiful forms is pushing into them, and
new-born rivers are beginning to sing and shine in them. The old
rivers, too, are growing longer, like healthy trees, gaining new
branches and lakes as the residual glaciers at their highest sources on
the mountains recede, while the rootlike branches in the flat deltas
are at same time spreading farther and wider into the seas and making
new lands.
Under the control of the vast mysterious forces of the interior of the
earth all the continents and islands are slowly rising or sinking. Most
of the mountains are diminishing in size under the wearing action of
the weather, though a few are increasing in height and girth,
especially the volcanic ones, as fresh floods of molten rocks are piled
on their summits and spread in successive layers, like the wood-rings
of trees, on their sides. New mountains, also, are being created from
time to time as islands in lakes and seas, or as subordinate cones on
the slopes of old ones, thus in some measure balancing the waste of old
beauty with new. Man, too, is making many far-reaching changes. This
most influential half animal, half angel is rapidly multiplying and
spreading, covering the seas and lakes with ships, the land with huts,
hotels, cathedrals, and clustered city shops and homes, so that soon,
it would seem, we may have to go farther than Nansen to find a good
sound solitude. None of Nature’s landscapes are ugly so long as they
are wild; and much, we can say comfortingly, must always be in great
part wild, particularly the sea and the sky, the floods of light from
the stars, and the warm, unspoilable heart of the earth, infinitely
beautiful, though only dimly visible to the eye of imagination. The
geysers, too, spouting from the hot underworld; the steady,
long-lasting glaciers on the mountains, obedient only to the sun;
Yosemite domes and the tremendous grandeur of rocky cañons and
mountains in general,—these must always be wild, for man can change
them and mar them hardly more than can the butterflies that hover above
them. But the continent’s outer beauty is fast passing away, especially
the plant part of it, the most destructible and most universally
charming of all.
Only thirty years ago, the great Central Valley of California, five
hundred miles long and fifty miles wide, was one bed of golden and
purple flowers. Now it is ploughed and pastured out of existence, gone
forever,—scarce a memory of it left in fence corners and along the
bluffs of the streams. The gardens of the Sierra, also, and the noble
forests in both the reserved and unreserved portions are sadly hacked
and trampled, notwithstanding, the ruggedness of the topography,—all
excepting those of the parks guarded by a few soldiers. In the noblest
forests of the world, the ground, once divinely beautiful, is desolate
and repulsive, like a face ravaged by disease. This is true also of
many other Pacific Coast and Rocky Mountain valleys and forests. The
same fate, sooner or later, is awaiting them all, unless awakening
public opinion comes forward to stop it. Even the great deserts in
Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico, which offer so little to attract
settlers, and which a few years ago pioneers were afraid of, as places
of desolation and death, are now taken as pastures at the rate of one
or two square miles per cow, and of course their plant treasures are
passing away,—the delicate abronias, phloxes, gilias, etc. Only a few
of the bitter, thorny, unbitable shrubs are left, and the sturdy
cactuses that defend themselves with bayonets and spears.
Most of the wild plant wealth of the East also has vanished,—gone into
dusty history. Only vestiges of its glorious prairie and woodland
wealth remain to bless humanity in boggy, rocky, unploughable places.
Fortunately, some of these are purely wild, and go far to keep Nature’s
love visible. White water-lilies, with rootstocks deep and safe in mud,
still send up every summer a Milky Way of starry, fragrant flowers
around a thousand lakes, and many a tuft of wild grass waves its
panicles on mossy rocks, beyond reach of trampling feet, in company
with saxifrages, bluebells, and ferns. Even in the midst of farmers
fields, precious sphagnum bogs, too soft for the feet of cattle, are
preserved with their charming plants unchanged,—chiogenes, Andromeda,
Kalmia, Linnæa, Arethusa, etc. Calypso borealis still hides in the
arbor vitæ swamps of Canada, and away to the southward there are a few
unspoiled swamps, big ones, where miasma, snakes, and alligators, like
guardian angels, defend their treasures and keep them as pure as
paradise. And beside a’ that and a’ that, the East is blessed with good
winters and blossoming clouds that shed white flowers over all the
land, covering every scar and making the saddest landscape divine at
least once a year.
The most extensive, least spoiled, and most unspoilable of the gardens
of the continent are the vast tundras of Alaska. In summer they extend
smooth, even, undulating, continuous beds of flowers and leaves from
about lat. 62° to the shores of the Arctic Ocean; and in winter sheets
of snowflowers make all the country shine, one mass of white radiance
like a star. Nor are these Arctic plant people the pitiful
frost-pinched unfortunates they are guessed to be by those who have
never seen them. Though lowly in stature, keeping near the frozen
ground as if loving it, they are bright and cheery, and speak Nature’s
love as plainly as their big relatives of the South. Tenderly happed
and tucked in beneath downy snow to sleep through the long, white
winter, they make haste to bloom in the spring without trying to grow
tall, though some rise high enough to ripple and wave in the wind, and
display masses of color,—yellow, purple, and blue,—so rich that they
look like beds of rainbows, and are visible miles and miles away.
As early as June one may find the showy Geum glaciale in flower, and
the dwarf willows putting forth myriads of fuzzy catkins, to be
followed quickly, especially on the dryer ground, by mertensia,
eritrichium, polemonium, oxytropis, astragalus, lathyrus, lupinus,
myosotis, dodecatheon, arnica, chrysanthemum, nardosmia, saussurea,
senecio, erigeron, matrecaria, caltha, valeriana, stellaria, Tofieldia,
polygonum, papaver, phlox, lychnis, cheiranthus, Linnæa, and a host of
drabas, saxifrages, and heathworts, with bright stars and bells in
glorious profusion, particularly Cassiope, Andromeda, ledum, pyrola,
and vaccinium,—Cassiope the most abundant and beautiful of them all.
Many grasses also grow here, and wave fine purple spikes and panicles
over the other flowers,—poa, aira, calamagrostis, alopecurus, trisetum,
elymus, festuca, glyceria, etc. Even ferns are found thus far north,
carefully and comfortably unrolling their precious fronds,—aspidium,
cystopteris, and woodsia, all growing on a sumptuous bed of mosses and
lichens; not the scaly lichens seen on rails and trees and fallen logs
to the southward, but massive, roundheaded, finely colored plants like
corals, wonderfully beautiful, worth going round the world to see. I
should like to mention all the plant friends I found in a summer’s
wanderings in this cool reserve, but I fear few would care to read
their names, although everybody, I am sure, would love them could they
see them blooming and rejoicing at home.
[Illustration: Cassiope.]
On my last visit to the region about Kotzebue Sound, near the middle of
September, 1881, the weather was so fine and mellow that it suggested
the Indian summer of the Eastern States. The winds were hushed, the
tundra glowed in creamy golden sunshine, and the colors of the ripe
foliage of the heathworts, willows, and birch—red, purple, and yellow,
in pure bright tones—were enriched with those of berries which were
scattered everywhere, as if they had been showered from the clouds like
hail. When I was back a mile or two from the shore, reveling in this
color-glory, and thinking how fine it would be could I cut a square of
the tundra sod of conventional picture size, frame it, and hang it
among the paintings on my study walls at home, saying to myself, “Such
a Nature painting taken at random from any part of the thousand-mile
bog would make the other pictures look dim and coarse,” I heard merry
shouting, and, looking round, saw a band of Eskimos—men, women, and
children, loose and hairy like wild animals—running towards me. I could
not guess at first what they were seeking, for they seldom leave the
shore; but soon they told me, as they threw themselves down, sprawling
and laughing, on the mellow bog, and began to feast on the berries. A
lively picture they made, and a pleasant one, as they frightened the
whirring ptarmigans, and surprised their oily stomachs with the
beautiful acid berries of many kinds, and filled sealskin bags with
them to carry away for festive days in winter.
Nowhere else on my travels have I seen so much warm-blooded, rejoicing
life as in this grand Arctic reservation, by so many regarded as
desolate. Not only are there whales in abundance along the shores, and
innumerable seals, walruses, and white bears, but on the tundras great
herds of fat reindeer and wild sheep, foxes, hares, mice, piping
marmots, and birds. Perhaps more birds are born here than in any other
region of equal extent on the continent. Not only do strong-winged
hawks, eagles, and water-fowl, to whom the length of the continent is
merely a pleasant excursion, come up here every summer in great
numbers, but also many short-winged warblers, thrushes, and finches,
repairing hither to rear their young in safety, reinforce the plant
bloom with their plumage, and sweeten the wilderness with song; flying
all the way, some of them, from Florida, Mexico, and Central America.
In coming north they are coming home, for they were born here, and they
go south only to spend the winter months, as New Englanders go to
Florida. Sweet-voiced troubadours, they sing in orange groves and
vine-clad magnolia woods in winter, in thickets of dwarf birch and
alder in summer, and sing and chatter more or less all the way back and
forth, keeping the whole country glad. Oftentimes, in New England, just
as the last snow-patches are melting and the sap in the maples begins
to flow, the blessed wanderers may be heard about orchards and the
edges of fields where they have stopped to glean a scanty meal, not
tarrying long, knowing they have far to go. Tracing the footsteps of
spring, they arrive in their tundra homes in June or July, and set out
on their return journey in September, or as soon as their families are
able to fly well.
This is Nature’s own reservation, and every lover of wildness will
rejoice with me that by kindly frost it is so well defended. The
discovery lately made that it is sprinkled with gold may cause some
alarm; for the strangely exciting stuff makes the timid bold enough for
anything, and the lazy destructively industrious. Thousands at least
half insane are now pushing their way into it, some by the southern
passes over the mountains, perchance the first mountains they have ever
seen,—sprawling, struggling, gasping for breath, as, laden with
awkward, merciless burdens of provisions and tools, they climb over
rough-angled boulders and cross thin miry bogs. Some are going by the
mountains and rivers to the eastward through Canada, tracing the old
romantic ways of the Hudson Bay traders; others by Bering Sea and the
Yukon, sailing all the way, getting glimpses perhaps of the famous
fur-seals, the ice-floes, and the innumerable islands and bars of the
great Alaska river. In spite of frowning hardships and the frozen
ground, the Klondike gold will increase the crusading crowds for years
to come, but comparatively little harm will be done. Holes will be
burned and dug into the hard ground here and there, and into the
quartz-ribbed mountains and hills; ragged towns like beaver and muskrat
villages will be built, and mills and locomotives will make rumbling,
screeching, disenchanting noises; but the miner’s pick will not be
followed far by the plough, at least not until Nature is ready to
unlock the frozen soil-beds with her slow-turning climate key. On the
other hand, the roads of the pioneer miners will lead many a lover of
wildness into the heart of the reserve, who without them would never
see it.
In the meantime, the wildest health and pleasure grounds accessible and
available to tourists seeking escape from care and dust and early death
are the parks and reservations of the West. There are four national
parks,[1] —the Yellowstone, Yosemite, General Grant, and Sequoia,—all
within easy reach, and thirty forest reservations, a magnificent realm
of woods, most of which, by railroads and trails and open ridges, is
also fairly accessible, not only to the determined traveler rejoicing
in difficulties, but to those (may their tribe increase) who, not
tired, not sick, just naturally take wing every summer in search of
wildness. The forty million acres of these reserves are in the main
unspoiled as yet, though sadly wasted and threatened on their more open
margins by the axe and fire of the lumberman and prospector, and by
hoofed locusts, which, like the winged ones, devour every leaf within
reach, while the shepherds and owners set fires with the intention of
making a blade of grass grow in the place of every tree, but with the
result of killing both the grass and the trees.
[1] There are now (1909) twelve parks and one hundred and fifty forest
reservations, besides twenty “national monuments.” See Appendix.
In the million acre Black Hills Reserve of South Dakota, the
easternmost of the great forest reserves, made for the sake of the
farmers and miners, there are delightful, reviving sauntering-grounds
in open parks of yellow pine, planted well apart, allowing plenty of
sunshine to warm the ground. This tree is one of the most variable and
most widely distributed of American pines. It grows sturdily on all
kinds of soil and rocks, and, protected by a mail of thick bark, defies
frost and fire and disease alike, daring every danger in firm, calm
beauty and strength. It occurs here mostly on the outer hills and
slopes where no other tree can grow. The ground beneath it is yellow
most of the summer with showy Wythia, arnica, applopappus, solidago,
and other sun-loving plants, which, though they form no heavy
entangling growth, yet give abundance of color and make all the woods a
garden. Beyond the yellow pine woods there lies a world of rocks of
wildest architecture, broken, splintery, and spiky, not very high, but
the strangest in form and style of grouping imaginable. Countless
towers and spires, pinnacles and slender domed columns, are crowded
together, and feathered with sharp-pointed Engelmann spruces, making
curiously mixed forests,—half trees, half rocks. Level gardens here and
there in the midst of them offer charming surprises, and so do the many
small lakes with lilies on their meadowy borders, and bluebells,
anemones, daises, castilleias, comandras, etc., together forming
landscapes delightfully novel, and made still wilder by many
interesting animals,—elk, deer, beavers, wolves, squirrels, and birds.
Not very long ago this was the richest of all the red man’s
hunting-grounds hereabout. After the season’s buffalo hunts were
over,—as described by Parkman, who, with a picturesque cavalcade of
Sioux savages, passed through these famous hills in 1846,—every winter
deficiency was here made good, and hunger was unknown until, in spite
of most determined, fighting, killing opposition, the white
gold-hunters entered the fat game reserve and spoiled it. The Indians
are dead now, and so are most of the hardly less striking free trappers
of the early romantic Rocky Mountain times. Arrows, bullets,
scalping-knives, need no longer be feared; and all the wilderness is
peacefully open.
The Rocky Mountain reserves are the Teton, Yellowstone, Lewis and
Clark, Bitter Root, Priest River and Flathead, comprehending more than
twelve million acres of mostly unclaimed, rough, forest-covered
mountains in which the great rivers of the country take their rise. The
commonest tree in most of them is the brave, indomitable, and
altogether admirable Pinus contorta, widely distributed in all kinds of
climate and soil, growing cheerily in frosty Alaska, breathing the damp
salt air of the sea as well as the dry biting blasts of the Arctic
interior, and making itself at home on the most dangerous flame-swept
slopes and bridges of the Rocky Mountains in immeasurable abundance and
variety of forms. Thousands of acres of this species are destroyed by
running fires nearly every summer, but a new growth springs quickly
from the ashes. It is generally small, and yields few sawlogs of
commercial value, but is of incalculable importance to the farmer and
miner; supplying fencing, mine timbers, and firewood, holding the
porous soil on steep slopes, preventing landslips and avalanches, and
giving kindly, nourishing shelter to animals and the widely outspread
sources of the life-giving rivers. The other trees are mostly spruce,
mountain pine, cedar, juniper, larch, and balsam fir; some of them,
especially on the western slopes of the mountains, attaining grand size
and furnishing abundance of fine timber.
Perhaps the least known of all this grand group of reserves is the
Bitter Root, of more than four million acres. It is the wildest,
shaggiest block of forest wildness in the Rocky Mountains, full of
happy, healthy, storm-loving trees, full of streams that dance and sing
in glorious array, and full of Nature’s animals,—elk, deer, wild sheep,
bears, cats, and innumerable smaller people.
In calm Indian summer, when the heavy winds are hushed, the vast
forests covering hill and dale, rising and falling over the rough
topography and vanishing in the distance, seem lifeless. No moving
thing is seen as we climb the peaks, and only the low, mellow murmur of
falling water is heard, which seems to thicken the silence.
Nevertheless, how many hearts with warm red blood in them are beating
under cover of the woods, and how many teeth and eyes are shining! A
multitude of animal people, intimately related to us, but of whose
lives we know almost nothing, are as busy about their own affairs as we
are about ours: beavers are building and mending dams and huts for
winter, and storing them with food; bears are studying winter quarters
as they stand thoughtful in open spaces, while the gentle breeze
ruffles the long hair on their backs; elk and deer, assembling on the
heights, are considering cold pastures where they will be farthest away
from the wolves; squirrels and marmots are busily laying up provisions
and lining their nests against coming frost and snow foreseen; and
countless thousands of birds are forming parties and gathering their
young about them for flight to the southlands; while butterflies and
bees, apparently with no thought of hard times to come, are hovering
above the late-blooming goldenrods, and, with countless other insect
folk, are dancing and humming right merrily in the sunbeams and shaking
all the air into music.
Wander here a whole summer, if you can. Thousands of God’s wild
blessings will search you and soak you as if you were sponge, and the
big days will go by uncounted. If you are business-tangled, and so
burdened with duty that only weeks can be got out of the heavy-laden
year, then go to the Flathead Reserve; for it is easily and quickly
reached by the Great Northern Railroad. Get off the track at Belton
Station, and in a few minutes you will find yourself in the midst of
what you are sure to say is the best care-killing scenery on the
continent,—beautiful lakes derived straight from glaciers, lofty
mountains steeped in lovely nemophila-blue skies and clad with forests
and glaciers, mossy, ferny waterfalls in their hollows, nameless and
numberless, and meadowy gardens abounding in the best of everything.
When you are calm enough for discriminating observation, you will find
the king of the larches, one of the best of the Western giants,
beautiful, picturesque, and regal in port, easily the grandest of all
the larches in the world. It grows to a height of one hundred and fifty
to two hundred feet, with a diameter at the ground of five to eight
feet, throwing out its branches into the light as no other tree does.
To those who before have seen only the European larch or the Lyall
species of the eastern Rocky Mountains, or the little tamarack or
hackmatack of the Eastern States and Canada, this Western king must be
a revelation.
Associated with this grand tree in the making of the Flathead forests
is the large and beautiful mountain pine, or Western white pine (Pinus
monticola), the invincible contorta or lodge-pole pine, and spruce and
cedar. The forest floor is covered with the richest beds of Linnæa
borealis I ever saw, thick fragrant carpets, enriched with shining
mosses here and there, and with Clintonia, pyrola, moneses, and
vaccinium, weaving hundred-mile beds of bloom that would have made
blessed old Linnæus weep for joy.
Lake McDonald, full of brisk trout, is in the heart of this forest, and
Avalanche Lake is ten miles above McDonald, at the feet of a group of
glacier-laden mountains. Give a month at least to this precious
reserve. The time will not be taken from the sum of your life. Instead
of shortening, it will indefinitely lengthen it and make you truly
immortal. Nevermore will time seem short or long, and cares will never
again fall heavily on you, but gently and kindly as gifts from heaven.
The vast Pacific Coast reserves in Washington and Oregon—the Cascade,
Washington, Mount Rainier, Olympic, Bull Run, and Ashland, named in
order of size—include more than 12,500,000 acres of magnificent forests
of beautiful and gigantic trees. They extend over the wild, unexplored
Olympic Mountains and both flanks of the Cascade Range, the wet and the
dry. On the east side of the Cascades the woods are sunny and open, and
contain principally yellow pine, of moderate size, but of great value
as a cover for the irrigating streams that flow into the dry interior,
where agriculture on a grand scale is being carried on. Along the
moist, balmy, foggy, west flank of the mountains, facing the sea, the
woods reach their highest development, and, excepting the California
redwoods, are the heaviest on the continent. They are made up mostly of
the Douglas spruce (Pseudotsuga taxifolia), with the giant arbor vitæ,
or cedar, and several species of fir and hemlock in varying abundance,
forming a forest kingdom unlike any other, in which limb meets limb,
touching and overlapping in bright, lively, triumphant exuberance, two
hundred and fifty, three hundred, and even four hundred feet above the
shady, mossy ground. Over all the other species the Douglas spruce
reigns supreme. It is not only a large tree, the tallest in America
next to the redwood, but a very beautiful one, with bright green
drooping foliage, handsome pendent cones, and a shaft exquisitely
straight and round and regular. Forming extensive forests by itself in
many places, it lifts its spiry tops into the sky close together with
as even a growth as a well-tilled field of grain. No ground has been
better tilled for wheat than these Cascade Mountains for trees: they
were ploughed by mighty glaciers, and harrowed and mellowed and
outspread by the broad streams that flowed from the ice-ploughs as they
were withdrawn at the close of the glacial period.
In proportion to its weight when dry, Douglas spruce timber is perhaps
stronger than that of any other large conifer in the country, and being
tough, durable, and elastic, it is admirably suited for ship-building,
piles, and heavy timbers in general; but its hardness and liability to
warp when it is cut into boards render it unfit for fine work. In the
lumber markets of California it is called “Oregon pine.” When lumbering
is going on in the best Douglas woods, especially about Puget Sound,
many of the long, slender boles are saved for spars; and so superior is
their quality that they are called for in almost every shipyard in the
world, and it is interesting to follow their fortunes. Felled and
peeled and dragged to tide-water, they are raised again as yards and
masts for ships, given iron roots and canvas foliage, decorated with
flags, and sent to sea, where in glad motion they go cheerily over the
ocean prairie in every latitude and longitude, singing and bowing
responsive to the same winds that waved them when they were in the
woods. After standing in one place for centuries they thus go round the
world like tourists, meeting many a friend from the old home forest;
some traveling like themselves, some standing head downward in muddy
harbors, holding up the platforms of wharves, and others doing all
kinds of hard timber work, showy or hidden.
This wonderful tree also grows far northward in British Columbia, and
southward along the coast and middle regions of Oregon and California;
flourishing with the redwood wherever it can find an opening, and with
the sugar pine, yellow pine, and libocedrus in the Sierra. It extends
into the San Gabriel, San Bernardino, and San Jacinto Mountains of
southern California. It also grows well on the Wasatch Mountains, where
it is called “red pine,” and on many parts of the Rocky Mountains and
short interior ranges of the Great Basin. But though thus widely
distributed, only in Oregon, Washington, and some parts of British
Columbia does it reach perfect development.
To one who looks from some high standpoint over its vast breadth, the
forest on the west side of the Cascades seems all one dim, dark,
monotonous field, broken only by the white volcanic cones along the
summit of the range. Back in the untrodden wilderness a deep furred
carpet of brown and yellow mosses covers the ground like a garment,
pressing about the feet of the trees, and rising in rich bosses softly
and kindly over every rock and mouldering trunk, leaving no spot
uncared for; and dotting small prairies, and fringing the meadows and
the banks of streams not seen in general views, we find, besides the
great conifers, a considerable number of hard-wood trees,—oak, ash,
maple, alder, wild apple, cherry, arbutus, Nuttall’s flowering dogwood,
and in some places chestnuts. In a few favored spots the broad-leaved
maple grows to a height of a hundred feet in forests by itself, sending
out large limbs in magnificent interlacing arches covered with mosses
and ferns, thus forming lofty sky-gardens, and rendering the underwoods
delightfully cool. No finer forest ceiling is to be found than these
maple arches, while the floor, ornamented with tall ferns and rubus
vines, and cast into hillocks by the bulging, moss-covered roots of the
trees, matches it well.
Passing from beneath the heavy shadows of the woods, almost anywhere
one steps into lovely gardens of lilies, orchids, heathworts, and wild
roses. Along the lower slopes, especially in Oregon, where the woods
are less dense, there are miles of rhododendron, making glorious masses
of purple in the spring, while all about the streams and the lakes and
the beaver meadows there is a rich tangle of hazel, plum, cherry,
crab-apple, cornel, gaultheria, and rubus, with myriads of flowers and
abundance of other more delicate bloomers, such as erythronium,
brodiæa, fritillaria, calochortus, Clintonia, and the lovely hider of
the north, Calypso. Beside all these bloomers there are wonderful
ferneries about the many misty waterfalls, some of the fronds ten feet
high, others the most delicate of their tribe, the maidenhair fringing
the rocks within reach of the lightest dust of the spray, while the
shading trees on the cliffs above them, leaning over, look like eager
listeners anxious to catch every tone of the restless waters. In the
autumn berries of every color and flavor abound, enough for birds,
bears, and everybody, particularly about the stream-sides and meadows
where sunshine reaches the ground: huckleberries, red, blue, and black,
some growing close to the ground others on bushes ten feet high;
gaultheria berries, called “sal-al” by the Indians; salmon berries, an
inch in diameter, growing in dense prickly tangles, the flowers, like
wild roses, still more beautiful than the fruit; raspberries,
gooseberries, currants, blackberries, and strawberries. The underbrush
and meadow fringes are in great part made up of these berry bushes and
vines; but in the depths of the woods there is not much underbrush of
any kind,—only a thin growth of rubus, huckleberry, and vine-maple.
Notwithstanding the outcry against the reservations last winter in
Washington, that uncounted farms, towns, and villages were included in
them, and that all business was threatened or blocked, nearly all the
mountains in which the reserves lie are still covered with virgin
forests. Though lumbering has long been carried on with tremendous
energy along their boundaries, and home-seekers have explored the woods
for openings available for farms, however small, one may wander in the
heart of the reserves for weeks without meeting a human being, Indian
or white man, or any conspicuous trace of one. Indians used to ascend
the main streams on their way to the mountains for wild goats, whose
wool furnished them clothing. But with food in abundance on the coast
there was little to draw them into the woods, and the monuments they
have left there are scarcely more conspicuous than those of birds and
squirrels; far less so than those of the beavers, which have dammed
streams and made clearings that will endure for centuries. Nor is there
much in these woods to attract cattle-keepers. Some of the first
settlers made farms on the small bits of prairie and in the
comparatively open Cowlitz and Chehalis valleys of Washington; but
before the gold period most of the immigrants from the Eastern States
settled in the fertile and open Willamette Valley of Oregon. Even now,
when the search for tillable land is so keen, excepting the
bottom-lands of the rivers around Puget Sound, there are few cleared
spots in all western Washington. On every meadow or opening of any sort
some one will be found keeping cattle, raising hops, or cultivating
patches of grain, but these spots are few and far between. All the
larger spaces were taken long ago; therefore most of the newcomers
build their cabins where the beavers built theirs. They keep a few
cows, laboriously widen their little meadow openings by hacking,
girdling, and burning the rim of the close-pressing forest, and scratch
and plant among the huge blackened logs and stamps, girdling and
killing themselves in killing the trees.
Most of the farm lands of Washington and Oregon, excepting the valleys
of the Willamette and Rogue rivers, lie on the east side of the
mountains. The forests on the eastern slopes of the Cascades fail
altogether ere the foot of the range is reached, stayed by drought as
suddenly as on the west side they are stopped by the sea; showing
strikingly how dependent are these forest giants on the generous rains
and fogs so often complained of in the coast climate. The lower
portions of the reserves are solemnly soaked and poulticed in rain and
fog during the winter months, and there is a sad dearth of sunshine,
but with a little knowledge of woodcraft any one may enjoy an excursion
into these woods even in the rainy season. The big, gray days are
exhilarating, and the colors of leaf and branch and mossy bole are then
at their best. The mighty trees getting their food are seen to be
wide-awake, every needle thrilling in the welcome nourishing storms,
chanting and bowing low in glorious harmony, while every raindrop and
snowflake is seen as a beneficent messenger from the sky. The snow that
falls on the lower woods is mostly soft, coming through the trees in
downy tufts, loading their branches, and bending them down against the
trunks until they look like arrows, while a strange muffled silence
prevails, making everything impressively solemn. But these lowland
snowstorms and their effects quickly vanish. The snow melts in a day or
two, sometimes in a few hours, the bent branches spring up again, and
all the forest work is left to the fog and the rain. At the same time,
dry snow is falling on the upper forests and mountain tops. Day after
day, often for weeks, the big clouds give their flowers without
ceasing, as if knowing how important is the work they have to do. The
glinting, swirling swarms thicken the blast, and the trees and rocks
are covered to a depth of ten to twenty feet. Then the mountaineer,
snug in a grove with bread and fire, has nothing to do but gaze and
listen and enjoy. Ever and anon the deep, low roar of the storm is
broken by the booming of avalanches, as the snow slips from the
overladen heights and crushes down the long white slopes to fill the
fountain hollows. All the smaller streams are crushed and buried, and
the young groves of spruce and fir near the edge of the timber-line are
gently bowed to the ground and put to sleep, not again to see the light
of day or stir branch or leaf until the spring.
These grand reservations should draw thousands of admiring visitors at
least in summer, yet they are neglected as if of no account, and
spoilers are allowed to ruin them as fast as they like.[2] A few peeled
spars cut here were set up in London, Philadelphia, and Chicago, where
they excited wondering attention; but the countless hosts of living
trees rejoicing at home on the mountains are scarce considered at all.
Most travelers here are content with what they can see from car windows
or the verandas of hotels, and in going from place to place cling to
their precious trains and stages like wrecked sailors to rafts. When an
excursion into the woods is proposed, all sorts of dangers are
imagined,—snakes, bears, Indians. Yet it is far safer to wander in
God’s woods than to travel on black highways or to stay at home. The
snake danger is so slight it is hardly worth mentioning. Bears are a
peaceable people, and mind their own business, instead of going about
like the devil seeking whom they may devour. Poor fellows, they have
been poisoned, trapped, and shot at until they have lost confidence in
brother man, and it is not now easy to make their acquaintance. As to
Indians, most of them are dead or civilized into useless innocence. No
American wilderness that I know of is so dangerous as a city home “with
all the modern improvements.” One should go to the woods for safety, if
for nothing else. Lewis and Clark, in their famous trip across the
continent in 1804-1805, did not lose a single man by Indians or
animals, though all the West was then wild. Captain Clark was bitten on
the hand as he lay asleep. That was one bite among more than a hundred
men while traveling nine thousand sand miles. Loggers are far more
likely to be met than Indians or bears in the reserves or about their
boundaries, brown weather-tanned men with faces furrowed like bark,
tired-looking, moving slowly, swaying like the trees they chop. A
little of everything in the woods is fastened to their clothing, rosiny
and smeared with balsam, and rubbed into it, so that their scanty outer
garments grow thicker with use and never wear out. Many a forest giant
have these old woodmen felled, but, round-shouldered and stooping, they
too are leaning over and tottering to their fall. Others, however,
stand ready to take their places, stout young fellows, erect as
saplings; and always the foes of trees outnumber their friends. Far up
the white peaks one can hardly fail to meet the wild goat, or American
chamois,—an admirable mountaineer, familiar with woods and glaciers as
well as rocks,—and in leafy thickets deer will be found; while gliding
about unseen there are many sleek furred animals enjoying their
beautiful lives, and birds also, notwithstanding few are noticed in
hasty walks. The ousel sweetens the glens and gorges where the streams
flow fastest, and every grove has its singers, however silent it
seems,—thrushes, linnets, warblers; humming-birds glint about the
fringing bloom of the meadows and peaks, and the lakes are stirred into
lively pictures by water-fowl.
[2] The outlook over forest affairs is now encouraging. Popular
interest, more practical than sentimental in whatever touches the
welfare of the country’s forests, is growing rapidly, and a hopeful
beginning has been made by the Government in real protection for the
reservations as well as for the parks. From July 1, 1900, there have
been 9 superintendents, 39 supervisors, and from 330 to 445 rangers of
reservations.
The Mount Rainier Forest Reserve should be made a national park and
guarded while yet its bloom is on;[3] for if in the making of the West
Nature had what we call parks in mind,—places for rest, inspiration,
and prayers,—this Rainier region must surely be one of them. In the
centre of it there is a lonely mountain capped with ice; from the
ice-cap glaciers radiate in every direction, and young rivers from the
glaciers; while its flanks, sweeping down in beautiful curves, are clad
with forests and gardens, and filled with birds and animals. Specimens
of the best of Nature’s treasures have been lovingly gathered here and
arranged in simple symmetrical beauty within regular bounds.
[3] This was done shortly after the above was written. “One of the
most important measures taken during the past year in connection with
forest reservations was the action of Congress in withdrawing from the
Mount Rainier Forest Reserve a portion of the region immediately
surrounding Mount Rainier and setting it apart as a national park.”
(_Report of Commissioner of General Land Office_, for the year ended
June, 1899.) But the park as it now stands is far too small.
Of all the fire-mountains which, like beacons, once blazed along the
Pacific Coast, Mount Rainier is the noblest in form, has the most
interesting forest cover, and, with perhaps the exception of Shasta, is
the highest and most flowery. Its massive white dome rises out of its
forests, like a world by itself, to a height of fourteen thousand to
fifteen thousand feet. The forests reach to a height of a little over
six thousand feet, and above the forests there is a zone of the
loveliest flowers, fifty miles in circuit and nearly two miles wide, so
closely planted and luxuriant that it seems as if Nature, glad to make
an open space between woods so dense and ice so deep, were economizing
the precious ground, and trying to see how many of her darlings she can
get together in one mountain wreath,—daisies, anemones, geraniums,
columbines, erythroniums, larkspurs, etc., among which we wade
knee-deep and waist-deep, the bright corollas in myriads touching petal
to petal. Picturesque detached groups of the spiry Abies lasiocarpa
stand like islands along the lower margin of the garden zone, while on
the upper margin there are extensive beds of bryanthus, Cassiope,
Kalmia, and other heathworts, and higher still saxifrages and drabas,
more and more lowly, reach up to the edge of the ice. Altogether this
is the richest subalpine garden I ever found, a perfect floral elysium.
The icy dome needs none of man’s care, but unless the reserve is
guarded the flower bloom will soon be killed, and nothing of the
forests will be left but black stump monuments.
[Illustration: Mt. Rainier and Alpine Firs (_Abies lasiocarpa_).]
The Sierra of California is the most openly beautiful and useful of all
the forest reserves, and the largest excepting the Cascade Reserve of
Oregon and the Bitter Root of Montana and Idaho. It embraces over four
million acres of the grandest scenery and grandest trees on the
continent, and its forests are planted just where they do the most
good, not only for beauty, but for farming in the great San Joaquin
Valley beneath them. It extends southward from the Yosemite National
Park to the end of the range, a distance of nearly two hundred miles.
No other coniferous forest in the world contains so many species or so
many large and beautiful trees,—Sequoia gigantea, king of conifers,
“the noblest of a noble race,” as Sir Joseph Hooker well says; the
sugar pine, king of all the world’s pines, living or extinct; the
yellow pine, next in rank, which here reaches most perfect development,
forming noble towers of verdure two hundred feet high; the mountain
pine, which braves the coldest blasts far up the mountains on grim,
rocky slopes; and five others, flourishing each in its place, making
eight species of pine in one forest, which is still further enriched by
the great Douglas spruce, libocedrus, two species of silver fir, large
trees and exquisitely beautiful, the Paton hemlock, the most graceful
of evergreens, the curious tumion, oaks of many species, maples,
alders, poplars, and flowering dogwood, all fringed with flowery
underbrush, manzanita, ceanothus, wild rose, cherry, chestnut, and
rhododendron. Wandering at random through these friendly, approachable
woods, one comes here and there to the loveliest lily gardens, some of
the lilies ten feet high, and the smoothest gentian meadows, and
Yosemite valleys known only to mountaineers. Once I spent a night by a
camp-fire on Mount Shasta with Asa Gray and Sir Joseph Hooker, and,
knowing that they were acquainted with all the great forests of the
world, I asked whether they knew any coniferous forest that rivaled
that of the Sierra. They unhesitatingly said: “No. In the beauty and
grandeur of individual trees, and in number and variety of species, the
Sierra forests surpass all others.”
This Sierra Reserve, proclaimed by the President of the United States
in September, 1893, is worth the most thoughtful care of the government
for its own sake, without considering its value as the fountain of the
rivers on which the fertility of the great San Joaquin Valley depends.
Yet it gets no care at all. In the fog of tariff, silver, and
annexation politics it is left wholly unguarded, though the management
of the adjacent national parks by a few soldiers shows how well and how
easily it can be preserved. In the meantime, lumbermen are allowed to
spoil it at their will, and sheep in uncountable ravenous hordes to
trample it and devour every green leaf within reach; while the
shepherds, like destroying angels, set innumerable fires, which burn
not only the undergrowth of seedlings on which the permanence of the
forest depends, but countless thousands of the venerable giants. If
every citizen could take one walk through this reserve, there would be
no more trouble about its care; for only in darkness does vandalism
flourish.[4] The reserves of southern California,—the San Gabriel, San
Bernardino, San Jacinto, and Trabuco,—though not large, only about two
million acres together, are perhaps the best appreciated. Their slopes
are covered with a close, almost impenetrable growth of flowery bushes,
beginning on the sides of the fertile coast valleys and the dry
interior plains. Their higher ridges, however, and mountains are open,
and fairly well forested with sugar pine, yellow pine, Douglas spruce,
libocedrus, and white fir. As timber fountains they amount to little,
but as bird and bee pastures, cover for the precious streams that
irrigate the lowlands, and quickly available retreats from dust and
heat and care, their value is incalculable. Good roads have been graded
into them, by which in a few hours lowlanders can get well up into the
sky and find refuge in hospitable camps and club-houses, where, while
breathing reviving ozone, they may absorb the beauty about them, and
look comfortably down on the busy towns and the most beautiful orange
groves ever planted since gardening began.
[4] See footnote 2.
The Grand Cañon Reserve of Arizona, of nearly two million acres, or the
most interesting part of it, as well as the Rainier region, should be
made into a national park, on account of their supreme grandeur and
beauty. Setting out from Flagstaff, a station on the Atchison, Topeka,
and Santa Fé Railroad, on the way to the cañon you pass through
beautiful forests of yellow pine,—like those of the Black Hills, but
more extensive,—and curious dwarf forests of nut pine and juniper, the
spaces between the miniature trees planted with many interesting
species of eriogonum, yucca, and cactus. After riding or walking
seventy-five miles through these pleasure-grounds, the San Francisco
and other mountains, abounding in flowery parklike openings and smooth
shallow valleys with long vistas which in fineness of finish and
arrangement suggest the work of a consummate landscape artist, watching
you all the way, you come to the most tremendous cañon in the world. It
is abruptly countersunk in the forest plateau, so that you see nothing
of it until you are suddenly stopped on its brink, with its
immeasurable wealth of divinely colored and sculptured buildings before
you and beneath you. No matter how far you have wandered hitherto, or
how many famous gorges and valleys you have seen, this one, the Grand
Cañon of the Colorado, will seem as novel to you, as unearthly in the
color and grandeur and quantity of its architecture, as if you had
found it after death, on some other star; so incomparably lovely and
grand and supreme is it above all the other cañons in our fire-moulded,
earthquake-shaken, rain-washed, wave-washed, river and glacier
sculptured world. It is about six thousand feet deep where you first
see it, and from rim to rim ten to fifteen miles wide. Instead of being
dependent for interest upon waterfalls, depth, wall sculpture, and
beauty of parklike floor, like most other great cañons, it has not
waterfalls in sight, and no appreciable floor spaces. The big river has
just room enough to flow and roar obscurely, here and there groping its
way as best it can, like a weary, murmuring, overladen traveler trying
to escape from the tremendous, bewildering labyrinthic abyss, while its
roar serves only to deepen the silence. Instead of being filled with
air, the vast space between the walls is crowded with Nature’s grandest
buildings,—a sublime city of them, painted in every color, and adorned
with richly fretted cornice and battlement spire and tower in endless
variety of style and architecture. Every architectural invention of man
has been anticipated, and far more, in this grandest of God’s
terrestrial cities.
[Illustration: The Grand Cañon of Colorado.]