central feature of the park. Then they made for McKinley summit.
Striking the Denali Glacier, they ascended it with a dog train to an
altitude of eleven thousand feet, where they made a base camp and went
on afoot, packing provisions and camp outfit on their backs. At one
place they ascended an incoming glacier over ice cascades, four thousand
feet high. From their last camp they cut steps in the ice for more than
three thousand feet of final ascent, and attained the top on July 1 in
the face of a blizzard. On the northeastern end of the level summit, and
only five minutes' walk from the little hillock which forms the supreme
summit, the blizzard completely blinded them. It was impossible to go
on, and to wait meant rapid death by freezing; with extreme difficulty
they returned to their camp. Two days later they made a second attempt,
but were again enveloped in an ice storm that rendered progress
impossible. Exhaustion of supplies forbade another try, and saved their
lives, for a few days later a violent earthquake shook McKinley to its
summit. Later on Mr. Browne identified this earthquake as concurrent
with the terrific explosive eruption which blew off the top of Mount
Katmai, on the south coast of Alaska.
The following spring the Stuck-Karstens party made the summit upon that
rarest of occasions with Mount McKinley, a perfect day. Archdeacon Stuck
describes the "actual summit" as "a little crater-like snow basin, sixty
or sixty-five feet long, and twenty to twenty-five feet wide, with a
hay-cock of snow at either end--the south one a little higher than the
north." Ignoring official and recognized nomenclature, and calling
McKinley and Foraker by their Kuskokwim Indian names, he writes of Mount
Foraker: "Denali's Wife does not appear at all save from the actual
summit of Denali, for she is completely hidden by his South Peak, until
the moment when his South Peak is surmounted. And never was nobler sight
displayed to man than that great isolated mountain spread out
completely, with all its spurs and ridges, its cliffs and its glaciers,
lofty and mighty, and yet far beneath us."
"Above us," he writes a few pages later, "the sky took on a blue so deep
that none of us had ever gazed upon a midday sky like it before. It was
deep, rich, lustrous, transparent blue, as dark as Prussian blue, but
intensely blue; a hue so strange, so increasingly impressive, that to
one at least it 'seemed like special news of God,' as a new poet sings.
We first noticed the darkening tint of the upper sky in the Grand Basin,
and it deepened as we rose. Tyndall observed and discussed this
phenomenon in the Alps, but it seems scarcely to have been mentioned
since."
A couple of months before the Parker-Browne party started for the top,
there was an ascent of the lower North Peak which, for sheer daring and
endurance must rank high in the history of adventure. Four prospectors
and miners from the Kantishna region organized by Tom Lloyd, took
advantage of the hard ice of May, and an idle dog team, to make for the
summit. Their motive seems to have been little more than to plant a pole
where it could be seen by telescope, as they thought, from Fairbanks;
that was why they chose the North Peak. They used no ropes, alpenstocks,
or scientific equipment of any sort, and carried only one camera, the
chance possession of McGonagall.
[Illustration: _From a photograph by G.B. Gordon_
MOUNT McKINLEY, LOOMING ABOVE THE GREAT ALASKAN RANGE]
[Illustration: _From a photograph by LaVoy_
ARCHDEACON STUCK'S PARTY HALF-WAY UP THE MOUNTAIN]
[Illustration: THE SUMMIT OF MOUNT McKINLEY]
They made their last camp at an altitude of eleven thousand feet. Here
Lloyd remained, while Anderson, Taylor, and McGonagall attempted the
summit in one day's supreme effort. Near the top McGonagall was overcome
by mountain sickness. Anderson and Taylor went on and planted their pole
near the North summit, where the Stuck-Karstens party saw it a year
later in their ascent of the South Peak.
So extraordinary a feat of strength and endurance will hardly be
accomplished again unless, perhaps, by hardy miners of the arctic
wilderness. "The North Pole's nothing to fellows like us," one of them
said later on; "once strike gold there, and we'll build a town on it in
a month."
The published records of the Parker-Browne and Stuck-Karstens
expeditions emphasize the laborious nature of the climbing. The very
isolation which gives McKinley its spectacular elevation multiplies the
difficulties of ascent by lowering the snow line thousands of feet below
the snow line of the Himalayas and Andes with their loftier surrounding
valleys. Travel on the glaciers was trying in the extreme, for much of
the way had to be sounded for hidden crevasses, and, after the selection
of each new camping place, the extensive outfit must be returned for and
sledded or carried up. Frequent barriers, often of great height, had to
be surmounted by tortuous and exhausting detours over icy cliffs and
soft snow. And always special care must be taken against avalanches;
the roar of avalanches for much of the latter journey was almost
continuous.
Toward the end, the thermometer was rarely above zero, and at night far
below; but the heat and glare of the sun was stifling and blinding
during much of the day; often they perspired profusely under their
crushing burdens, with the thermometer nearly at zero. Snow fell daily,
and often several times a day.
It is probable that no other of the world's mountain giants presents
climbing conditions so strenuous. Farming is successfully carried on in
the Himalayas far above McKinley's level of perpetual snow, and Tucker
reports having climbed a twenty-thousand-foot peak in the Andes with
less exertion than it cost the Parker-Browne party, of which he had been
a member, to mount the first forty-five hundred feet of McKinley.
While McKinley will be climbed again and again in the future, the feat
will scarcely be one of the popular amusements of the national park.
Yet Mount McKinley is the northern landmark of an immense unexplored
mountain region south of the national park, which very far surpasses the
Alps in every feature that has made the Alps world-famous. Of this
region A.H. Brooks, Chief of the Alaska Division of the United States
Geological Survey, writes:
"Here lies a rugged highland area far greater in extent than all of
Switzerland, a virgin field for explorers and mountaineers. He who would
master unattained summits, explore unknown rivers, or traverse
untrodden glaciers in a region whose scenic beauties are hardly
equalled, has not to seek them in South America or Central Asia, for
generations will pass before the possibilities of the Alaskan Range are
exhausted. But this is not Switzerland, with its hotels, railways,
trained guides, and well-worn paths. It will appeal only to him who
prefers to strike out for himself, who can break his own trail through
trackless wilds, can throw the diamond hitch, and will take the chances
of life and limb so dear to the heart of the true explorer."
The hotels will come in time to the Mount McKinley National Park, and
perhaps they will come also to the Alaskan Alps. Perhaps it is not
straining the credulity of an age like ours to suggest that McKinley's
commanding summit may be attained some day by aeroplane, with many of
the joys and none of the distressing hardships endured by the weary
climber. When this time comes, if it does come, there will be added
merely another extraordinary experience to the very many unique and
pleasurable experiences of a visit to the Mount McKinley National Park.
VI
LAFAYETTE AND THE EAST
LAFAYETTE NATIONAL PARK, MAINE. AREA, 10,000 ACRES
It has been the policy of Congress to create national parks only from
public lands, the title to which costs nothing to acquire. It may be
many years before the nation awakes to the fact that areas distinguished
for supreme scenery, historical association, or extraordinary scientific
significance are worth conserving even if conservation involves their
purchase. The answer to the oft-asked question why the national parks
are all in the west is that the east passed into private possession
before the national park idea assumed importance in the national
consciousness.
The existence of the two national parks east of the Rocky Mountains
merely emphasizes the fact. The Hot Springs of Arkansas were set apart
in 1832 while the Ozark Mountains were still a wilderness. The Lafayette
National Park, in Maine, is made up of many small parcels of privately
owned land which a group of public-spirited citizens, because of the
impossibility of securing national appropriations, patiently acquired
during a series of laborious years, and presented, in 1916, to the
people of the United States.
While refusing to purchase land for national parks, Congress
nevertheless is buying large areas of eastern mountain land for
national forest, the purpose being not only to conserve water sources,
which national parks would accomplish quite as thoroughly, but
particularly to control lumbering operations in accord with principles
which will insure the lumber supply of the future. Here and there in
this reserve are limited areas of distinguished national park quality,
but whether they will be set aside as national parks is a question for
the people and the future to decide. Certainly the mountain topography
and the rich deciduous forests of the eastern United States should be
represented in the national parks system by several fine examples.
The Lafayette National Park differs from all other members of the
national parks system in several important respects. It is in the far
east; it combines seashore and mountain; it is clothed with a rich and
varied growth of deciduous trees and eastern conifers; it is intimately
associated with the very early history of America. Besides which, it is
a region of noble beauty, subtle charm and fascinating variety.
The Appalachian Mountain uplift, which, roughly speaking, embraces all
the ranges constituting the eastern rib of the continent, may be
considered to include also the very ancient peneplains of New England.
These tumbled hills and shallow valleys, accented here and there by
ranges and monadnocks, by which the geologist means solitary peaks, are
all that the frosts and rains of very many millions of years and the
glaciers of more recent geologic times have left of what once must have
been a towering mountain region crested in snow. The wrinkling of the
earth's surface which produced this range occurred during the Devonian
period when fishes were the predominant inhabitants of the earth, many
millions of years before birds or even reptiles appeared. Its rise was
accompanied by volcanic disturbances, whose evidences are abundant on
islands between the mouth of the Penobscot and Mount Desert Island,
though not within the park. The mind cannot conceive the lapse of time
which has reduced this range, at an erosional speed no greater than
to-day's, to its present level. During this process the coast line was
also slowly sinking, changing valleys into estuaries and land-encircled
bays. The coast of Maine is an eloquent chapter in the continent's
ancient history, and the Lafayette National Park is one of the most
dramatic paragraphs in the chapter.
Where the Penobscot River reaches the sea, and for forty miles east, the
sinking continental shore has deeply indented the coast line with a
network of broad, twisting bays, enclosing many islands. The largest and
finest of these is Mount Desert Island, for many years celebrated for
its romantic beauty. Upon its northeast shore, facing Frenchman's Bay,
is the resort town of Bar Harbor; other resorts dot its shores on every
side. The island has a large summer population drawn from all parts of
the country. Besides its hotels, there are many fine summer homes.
[Illustration: IN LAFAYETTE NATIONAL PARK
Echo Lake in the foreground, Sommes Harbor beyond Acadia]
[Illustration: SEA CAVES IN THE GRANITE
Thus does the ocean everlastingly undermine the foundations of the
mountains. Photograph taken at low tide; Lafayette National Park]
The feature which especially distinguishes Mount Desert Island from
other islands, in fact from the entire Atlantic coast, is a group of
granitic mountains which rise abruptly from the sea. They were once
towering monsters, perhaps only one, unquestionably the loftiest for
many miles around. They are the sole remainders upon the present coast
line of a great former range. They are composed almost wholly of
granite, worn down by the ages, but massive enough still to resist the
agencies which wiped away their comrades. They rise a thousand feet or
more, grim, rounded, cleft with winding valleys and deep passes, divided
in places by estuaries of the sea, holding in their hollows many
charming lakes.
Their abrupt flanks gnawed by the beating sea, their valleys grown with
splendid forests and brightened by wild flowers, their slopes and domes
sprinkled with conifers which struggle for foothold in the cracks which
the elements are widening and deepening in their granite surface, for
years they have been the resort of thousands of climbers, students of
nature and seekers of the beautiful; the views of sea, estuary, island,
plain, lake, and mountain from the heights have no counterpart
elsewhere.
All this mountain wilderness, free as it was to the public, was in
private ownership. Some of it was held by persons who had not seen it
for years. Some of it was locked up in estates. The time came when
owners began to plan fine summer homes high on the mountain slopes. A
few, however, believed that the region should belong to the whole
people, and out of this belief grew the movement, led by George B. Dorr
and Charles W. Eliot, to acquire title and present it to the nation
which would not buy it. They organized a holding association, to which
they gave their own properties; for years afterward Mr. Dorr devoted
most of his time to persuading others to contribute their holdings, and
to raising subscriptions for the purchase of plots which were tied up in
estates. In 1916 the association presented five thousand acres to the
Government, and President Wilson created it by proclamation the Sieur de
Monts National Monument. The gift has been greatly increased since. In
1918 Congress made appropriations for its upkeep and development. In
February, 1919, Congress changed its name and status; it then became the
Lafayette National Park.
The impulse to name the new national park after the French general who
came to our aid in time of need arose, of course, out of the war-time
warmth of feeling for our ally, France. The region had been identified
with early French exploration; the original monument had been named in
commemoration of this historical association. The first European
settlement in America north of the latitude of the Gulf of Mexico was
here. Henry of Navarre had sent two famous adventurers to the new world,
de Monts and Champlain. The first colony established by de Monts was at
the mouth of the St. Croix River, which forms the eastern boundary of
Maine, and the first land within the present United States which was
reached by Champlain was Mount Desert Island. This was in 1604. It was
Champlain who gave the island its present name, after the mountains
which rise so prominently from its rock-bound shore. To him, however,
the name had a different significance than it first suggests to us.
L'Isle des Monts Deserts meant to him the Island of the Lonely
Mountains, and lonely indeed they must have seemed above the flat shore
line. Thus named, the place became a landmark for future voyagers; among
others Winthrop records seeing the mountains on his way to the
Massachusetts colony in 1630. He anchored opposite and fished for two
hours, catching "sixty-seven great cod," one of which was "a yard
around."
"By a curious train of circumstances," writes George B. Dorr, "the
titles by which these mountains to the eastward of Somes Sound are held
go back to the early ownership of Mount Desert Island by the Crown of
France. For it was granted by Louis XIV, grandson of Henry IV, to
Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, an officer of noble family from
southwestern France, then serving in Acadia, who afterward became
successively the founder of Detroit and Governor of Louisiana--the
Mississippi Valley. Cadillac lost it later, through English occupation
of the region, ownership passing, first to the Province, then to the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. But presently the Commonwealth gave back
to his granddaughter--Madame de Gregoire--and her husband, French
refugees, the Island's eastern half, moved thereto by the part that
France had taken in the recent War of Independence and by letters they
had brought from Lafayette. And they came down and lived there."
And so it naturally followed that, under stress of war enthusiasm, this
reservation with its French associations should commemorate not only the
old Province of Acadia, which the French yielded to England only after
half a century of war, and England later on to us after another war, but
the great war also in which France, England, and the United States all
joined as allies in the cause of the world's freedom. In accord with
this idea, the highest mountain looking upon the sea has been named the
Flying Squadron, in honor of the service of the air, born of an American
invention, and carried to perfection by the three allies in common.
The park may be entered from any of the surrounding resorts, but the
main gateway is Bar Harbor, which is reached by train, automobile, and
steamboat. No resort may be reached more comfortably, and hotel
accommodations are ample.
The mountains rise within a mile of the town. They extend westward for
twelve miles, lying in two groups, separated by a fine salt-water fiord
known as Somes Sound. The park's boundary is exceedingly irregular, with
deep indentations of private property. It is enclosed, along the shore,
by an excellent automobile road; roads also cross it on both sides of
Somes Sound.
There are ten mountains in the eastern group; the three fronting Bar
Harbor have been renamed, for historic reasons, Cadillac Mountain, the
Flying Squadron, and Champlain Mountain. For the same reason mountains
upon Somes Sound have been renamed Acadia Mountain, St. Sauveur
Mountain, and Norumbega Mountain, the last an Indian name; similar
changes commemorating the early English occupation also have been made
in the nomenclature of the western group. Tablets and memorials are also
projected in emphasis of the historical associations of the place.
Both mountain groups are dotted with lakes; those of the western group
are the largest of the island.
The pleasures, then, of the Lafayette National Park cover a wide range
of human desire. Sea bathing, boating, yachting, salt-water and
fresh-water fishing, tramping, exploring the wilderness, hunting the
view spots--these are the summer occupations of many visitors, the
diversions of many others. The more thoughtful will find its historical
associations fascinating, its geological record one of the richest in
the continent, its forests well equipped schools for tree study, their
branches a museum of bird life.
To climb these low mountains, wandering by the hour in their hollows and
upon their sea-horizoned shoulders, is, for one interested in nature, to
get very close indeed to the secrets of her wonderful east. One may
stand upon Cadillac's rounded summit and let imagination realize for him
the day when this was a glaciered peak in a mighty range which forged
southward from the far north, shoulder upon shoulder, peak upon peak,
pushing ever higher as it approached the sea, and extending far beyond
the present ocean horizon; for these mountains of Mount Desert are by no
means the terminal of the original mighty range; the slow subsidence of
the coast has wholly submerged several, perhaps many, that once rose
south of them. The valley which now carries the St. Croix River drained
this once towering range's eastern slopes; the valley of the Penobscot
drained its western slopes.
The rocks beneath his feet disclose not only this vision of the geologic
past; besides that, in their slow decay, in the chiselling of the
trickling waters, in the cleavage of masses by winter's ice, in the
peeling of the surface by alternate freezing and melting, in the
dissolution and disintegration everywhere by the chemicals imprisoned in
air and water, all of which he sees beneath his feet, they disclose to
him the processes by which Nature has wrought this splendid ruin. And
if, captivated by this vision, he studies intimately the page of history
written in these rocks, he will find it full of fascinating detail.
The region also offers an absorbing introduction to the study of our
eastern flora. The exposed bogs and headlands support several hundred
species of plants typical of the arctic, sub-arctic, and Hudsonian
zones, together with practically all of the common plants of the
Canadian zone, and many of the southern coasts. So with the trees.
Essentially coastal, it is the land of conifers, the southern limit of
some which are common in the great regions of the north, yet exhibiting
in nearly full variety the species for many miles south; yet it is also,
in its sheltered valleys, remarkably representative of the deciduous
growths of the entire Appalachian region.
[Illustration: FRENCHMAN'S BAY FROM THE EAST CLIFF OF CHAMPLAIN
MOUNTAIN
Lafayette National Park]
The bird life is full and varied. The food supply attracts migratory
birds, and aquatic birds find here the conditions which make for
increase. Deer are returning in some numbers from the mainland.
In brief, the Lafayette National Park, small though it is, is one of the
most important members of the national parks system. For the pleasure
seeker no other provides so wide and varied an opportunity. To the
student, no other offers a more readable or more distinctive volume; it
is the only national museum of the fascinating geology of the east, and
I can think of no other place in the east where classes can find so
varied and so significant an exhibit. To the artist, the poet, and the
dreamer it presents vistas of ocean, inlet, fiord, shore, wave-lashed
promontory, bog, meadow, forest, and mountain--an answer to every mood.
If this nation, as now appears, must long lack national parks
representative of the range of its splendid east, let us be thankful
that this one small park is so complete and so distinguished.
THE VOLCANIC NATIONAL PARKS
ON THE VOLCANO IN SCENERY
The volcanic national parks are Lassen Volcanic, Crater Lake, Mount
Rainier, Yellowstone, and Hawaii. Though several of them exhibit
extremely high mountains, their scenic ensemble differs in almost all
respects from that of the granite parks. The landscape tends to broad
elevated surfaces and rolling hills, from which rise sharp towering
cones or massive mountains whose irregular bulging knobs were formed by
outbreaks of lava upon the sides of original central vents.
The Cascade Mountains in Washington, Oregon, and northern California are
one of the best examples of such a landscape; from its low swelling
summits rise at intervals the powerful master cones of Shasta, Rainier,
Adams, Hood, Baker, and others. Fujiyama, the celebrated mountain of
Japan, may be cited as a familiar example of the basic mountain form,
the single-cone volcanic peak. Vesuvius is a familiar example of simple
complication, the double-cone volcano, while Mauna Loa in Hawaii,
including Kilauea of the pit of fire, a neighbor volcano which it has
almost engulfed in its swollen bulk, well illustrates the volcano built
up by outpourings of lava from vents broken through its sides. Flat and
rolling Yellowstone with its geyser fields, is one of the best possible
examples of a dead and much eroded volcanic region.
The scenic detail of the volcanic landscape is interesting and different
from any other. Centuries and the elements create from lava a soil of
great fertility. No forests and wild flowers excel those growing on the
lavas of the Cascades, and the fertility of the Hawaiian Islands, which
are entirely volcanic, is world-famous. Streams cut deep and often
highly colored canyons in these broad lava lands, and wind and rain,
while eroding valleys, often leave ornately modelled edifices of harder
rock, and tall thin needles pointing to the zenith.