I am a little girl twelve years old, and live in a small town
thirty miles from Toronto. We are always very glad when your paper
comes. I love to read the letters in the Post-office Box. I like
"The Cruise of the Canoe Club." My father and four of my uncles are
in Montana, and my aunt and her children are going out there next
week. My uncle and his youngest brother belong to a surveying
party, and have been surveying in the Rocky Mountains and
Yellowstone Park all summer, and write home delightfully
interesting descriptions of the wonders to be seen there--about the
geysers and glass mountains, also soda mountains, and cañons. The
Grand Cañon is the deepest of all; it is several thousand feet
deep, and at the bottom is a rushing, roaring river. One of my
uncles descended into it. It is so deep that if you go down into it
and look upward, you can see the stars at three o'clock in the
afternoon. The geysers spout up water to a tremendous height. One
of them--I think it is called the Excelsior--throws water in which
are pieces of rock to a height of three hundred feet. Often the
eruptions are preceded by rumblings and shakings like an
earthquake. Once when the party were near one of the geyser basins,
suddenly the earth began to quake, and the water in the basin
spouted ever so high, and the sky was filled with water and pieces
of rock, and they had to run to get out of the way. Perhaps we will
go to Montana if father stays there; and if we do, mother says that
we may take an occasional trip to the Park, and then I will write
and tell you of some of the things we see there.