The Yellowstone National Park
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 out-spread 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 not harm to any one; for its height, 6000 to over
13,000 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
calmest, 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 sun-beams,
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 confervæ 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 centres 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 confervæ,—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.
[Illustration: Minerva Terrace, Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone Park.]
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 centre
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 8000 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 100 miles. It is not very deep, only from 200 to 300 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 6400 feet,
and is over 1600 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 160 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 Cañon in two magnificent falls, one hundred and
three hundred feet high.
The cañon 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 cañon 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 cañon 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 Linnæa 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 varnish, and the
grand gorge seems a kindly, beautiful part of the general harmony, full
of peace and joy and good will.
[Illustration: Great Falls and Grand Cañon, Yellowstone Park.]
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 Cañon, 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 cañon. No scalping Indians will you see. The
Blackfeet 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 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 little
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 300 yards, it is more like a lake than a spring. The
water is pure deep blue in the centre, 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 60 to 70 feet in diameter to a height of from 50 to 300 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 states, a stream about 100 yards wide and 3 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 212 feet,
and of the Strokhr 162 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
100 feet, while the celebrated Te Tarata at Rotomahana sometimes lifts
a boiling column 20 feet in diameter to a height of 60 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 hall, 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, finding 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 mishap, 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 some 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, and 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 oncome 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 may 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, few 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.
[Illustration: Looking South from the Summit of Mt. Washburn,
Yellowstone Park.]
Over all the central plateau, which from here seems level, and over the
foothills and lower slopes of the mountains, the forests 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, Engelmann 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 flexilis
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, 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 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 out-bursts 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 Cañon 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 to 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, he 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 out-spread 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 angles.
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.