to their ghostly glory, the eager vehemence of their assaults upon the
sky, their joyful gush and roar, their insistence upon conscious
personality and power, the white majesty of their fluted columns at the
instant of fullest expansion, the supreme loveliness of their feathery
florescence at the level of poise between rise and fall, their
graciousness of form, their speedy airiness of action, their giant
convolutions of sun-flecked steam rolling aloft in ever-expanding volume
to rejoin the parent cloud?
Perhaps there have been greater geyser basins somewhere in the
prehistoric past. There may be greater still to come; one or two
promising possibilities are in Alaska. But for the lapse of geologic
time in which man has so far lived, Yellowstone has cornered the world's
geyser market. There are only two other places where one may enjoy the
spectacle of large geysers. One of these is New Zealand and the other
Iceland; but both displays combined cannot equal Yellowstone's either in
the number or the size of the geysers.
Yellowstone has dozens of geysers of many kinds. They range in size from
the little spring that spurts a few inches every minute to the monster
that hurls hundreds of tons of water three hundred feet in air every six
or eight weeks. Many spout at fairly regular intervals of minutes or
hours or days. Others are notably irregular, and these include most of
the largest. Old Faithful won its name and reputation by its regularity;
it is the only one of the group of monsters which lives up to its
time-table. Its period ranges from intervals of about fifty-five minutes
in seasons following winters of heavy snow to eighty or eighty-five
minutes in seasons following winters of light snow. Its eruptions are
announced in the Old Faithful Inn a few minutes in advance of action and
the population of the hotel walks out to see the spouting. At night a
searchlight is thrown upon the gushing flood.
After all, Old Faithful is the most satisfactory of geysers. Several are
more imposing. Sometimes enthusiasts remain in the neighborhood for
weeks waiting for the Giant to play and dare not venture far away for
fear of missing the spectacle; while Old Faithful, which is quite as
beautiful and nearly as large, performs hourly for the pleasure of
thousands. Even the most hurried visitor to the Upper Basin is sure,
between stages, of seeing several geysers in addition to one or more
performances of Old Faithful.
The greatest of known geysers ceased playing in 1888. I have found no
authentic measurements or other stated records concerning the famous
Excelsior. It hurled aloft an enormous volume of water, with a fury of
action described as appalling. Posterity is fortunate in the existence
of a striking photograph of this monster taken at the height of its play
by F. Jay Haynes, then official photographer of the park.
"The first photographs I made were in the fall of 1881," Mr. Haynes
writes me. "The eruptions continued during the winter at increasing
intervals from two hours, when the series began, to four hours when it
ceased operations before the tourist season of 1882. Not having the
modern photographic plates for instantaneous work in 1881, it was
impossible to secure instantaneous views then, but in the spring of
1888, I made the view which you write about. It was taken at the fulness
of its eruption.
"The explosion was preceded by a rapid filling of the crater and a great
overflow of water. The column was about fifty feet wide and came from
the centre of the crater. Pieces of formation were torn loose and were
thrown out during each eruption; large quantities eventually were
removed from the crater, thus enlarging it to its present size."
Here we have a witness's description of the process which clouds the
career of the Excelsior Geyser. The enlargement of the vent eventually
gave unrestrained passage to the imprisoned steam. The geyser ceased to
play. To-day the Excelsior Spring is one of the largest hot springs in
the Yellowstone and the world; its output of steaming water is constant
and voluminous. Thus again we find relationship between the hot spring
and the geyser; it is apparent that the same vent, except perhaps for
differences of internal shaping, might serve for both. It was the
removal of restraining walls which changed the Excelsior Geyser to the
Excelsior Spring.
For many years geyser action remained a mystery balanced among
conflicting theories, of which at last Bunsen's won general acceptance.
Spring waters, or surface waters seeping through porous lavas, gather
thousands of feet below the surface in some pocket located in strata
which internal pressures still keep hot. Boiling as they gather, the
waters rise till they fill the long vent-hole to the surface. Still the
steam keeps making in the deep pocket, where it is held down by the
weight of the water in the vent above. As it accumulates this steam
compresses more and more. The result is inevitable. There comes a moment
when the expansive power of the compressed steam overcomes the weight
above. Explosion follows. The steam, expanding now with violence, drives
the water up the vent and out; nor is it satisfied until the vent is
emptied.
Upon the surface, as the geyser lapses and dies, the people turn away to
the Inn and luncheon. Under the surface, again the waters gather and
boil in preparation for the next eruption. The interval till then will
depend upon the amount of water which reaches the deep pocket, the size
of the pocket, and the length and shape of the vent-hole. If conditions
permit the upward escape of steam as fast as it makes in the pocket, we
have a hot spring. If the steam makes faster than it can escape, we have
a geyser.
[Illustration: _From a photograph by Haynes_
THE EXCELSIOR GEYSER WHICH BLEW OUT IN 1888; YELLOWSTONE]
[Illustration: _From a photograph by Haynes_
ONE OF THE TERRACES AT MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS; YELLOWSTONE]
III
So interesting are the geysers and their kin that, with their splendid
wilderness setting, other glories seem superfluous. I have had my
moments of impatience with the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone for being
in the Yellowstone. Together, the canyon and the geysers are almost too
much for one place, even perhaps for one visit. One can only hold so
much, even of beauty, at once. Spectacles of this quality and quantity
need assimilation, and assimilation requires time. Nevertheless, once
enter into sympathetic relations with the canyon, once find its heart
and penetrate its secret, and the tables are quickly turned. Strangely,
it now becomes quite easy to view with comparative coolness the claims
of mere hot-water wonders.
The canyon cannot be considered apart from its river any more than a
geyser apart from its environment of hot spring and basin, and any
consideration of the Yellowstone River begins with its lake. As compared
with others of scenic celebrity, Yellowstone Lake is unremarkable. Its
shores are so low and the mountains of its southern border so flat and
unsuggestive that it curiously gives the impression of surface
altitude--curiously because it actually has the altitude; its surface is
more than seven thousand seven hundred feet above tide. If I have the
advertisement right, it is the highest water in the world that floats a
line of steamboats.
The lake is large, twenty miles north and south by fifteen miles east
and west; it is irregular with deep indentations. It is heavily wooded
to the water's edge. All its entering streams are small except the
Yellowstone River, which, from its source in the Absarokas just south of
the park boundary, enters the Southeast Arm through the lowland
wilderness home of the moose and the wild buffalo. The lake is the
popular resort of thousands of large white pelicans, its most
picturesque feature.
That part of the Yellowstone River which interests us emerges from the
lake at its most northerly point. It is here a broad swift stream of
some depth and great clarity, so swarming with trout that a half-dozen
or more usually may be seen upon its bottom at any glance from boat or
bridge. A number of boats usually are anchored above the bridge from
which anglers are successfully trailing artificial flies and spinners in
the fast current; and the bridge is usually lined with anglers who, in
spite of crude outfits, frequently hook good trout which they pull up by
main strength much as the phlegmatic patrons of excursion-steamers to
the Banks yank flopping cod from brine to basket on the top deck.
The last time I crossed the Fishing Bridge and paused to see the fun, a
woman whose face beamed with happiness held up a twenty-inch trout and
said:
"Just look! My husband caught this and he is seventy-six years old--last
month. It's the first fish he ever caught, for he was brought up in
Kansas, you know, where there isn't any fishing. My! but he's a proud
man! We're going to get the camp to cook it for us. He's gone now to
look for a board to draw its measurements to show the folks at home."
From here to the river's emergence from the park the fishing is not
crude. In fact, it taxes the most skilful angler's art to steer his
fighting trout through boiling rapids to the net. For very soon the
Yellowstone narrows and pitches down sharper slants to the climax of the
falls and the mighty canyon.
This intermediate stretch of river is beautiful in its quietude. The
forests often touch the water's edge. And ever it narrows and deepens
and splashes higher against the rocks which stem its current; forever it
is steepening to the plunge. Above the Upper Fall it pinches almost to a
mill-race, roars over low sills, swings eastward at right angles, and
plunges a hundred and nine feet. I know of no cataract which expresses
might in action so eloquently as the Upper Fall of the Yellowstone.
Pressed as it is within narrow bounds, it seems to gush with other
motive power than merely gravity. Seen from above looking down, seen
sideways from below, or looked at straight on from the camp site on the
opposite rim, the water appears hurled from the brink.
Less than a mile south of the Upper Fall, the river again falls, this
time into the Grand Canyon.
Imposing as the Great Fall is, it must chiefly be considered as a part
of the Grand Canyon picture. The only separate view of it looks up from
the river's edge in front, a view which few get because of the difficult
climb; every other view poses it merely as an element in the canyon
composition. Compared with the Upper Fall, its more than double height
gives it the great superiority of majesty without detracting from the
Upper Fall's gushing personality. In fact, it is the King of Falls.
Comparison with Yosemite's falls is impossible, so different are the
elements and conditions. The Great Fall of the Yellowstone carries in
one body, perhaps, a greater bulk of water than all the Yosemite
Valley's falls combined.
And so we come to the canyon. In figures it is roughly a thousand feet
deep and twice as wide, more or less, at the rim. The supremely scenic
part reaches perhaps three miles below the Great Fall. Several rock
points extend far into the canyon, from which the gorgeous spectacle may
be viewed as from an aeroplane. Artists' Point, which is reached from
the east side, displays the Great Fall as the centre of a noble
composition. It was Moran's choice. Inspiration Point, which juts far in
from the west side, shows a deeper and more comprehensive view of the
canyon and only a glimpse of the Great Fall. Both views are essential to
any adequate conception. From Artists' Point the eye loses detail in the
overmastering glory of the whole. From Inspiration Point the canyon
reveals itself in all the intimacy of its sublime form and color. Both
views dazzle and astonish. Neither can be looked at very long at one
time.
[Illustration: _From a photograph copyright by Gifford_
YELLOWSTONE VALLEY FROM THE UPPER FALL TO THE LOWER FALL]
[Illustration: _From a photograph copyright by Gifford_
THE LOWER FALL AND THE GRAND CANYON OF THE YELLOWSTONE]
It will help comprehension of the picture quality of this remarkable
canyon to recall that it is carved out of the products of volcanism; its
promontories and pinnacles are the knobbed and gnarled decomposition
products of lava rocks left following erosion; its sides are gashed and
fluted lava cliffs flanked by long straight slopes of coarse volcanic
sand-like grains; its colors have the distinctness and occasional
luridness which seem natural to fused and oxidized disintegrations.
Geologically speaking, it is a young canyon. It is digging deeper all
the time.
Yellow, of course, is the prevailing color. Moran was right. His was the
general point of view, his message the dramatic ensemble. But, even from
Artists' Point, closer looking reveals great masses of reds and grays,
while Inspiration Point discloses a gorgeous palette daubed with most of
the colors and intermediate tints that imagination can suggest. I doubt
whether there is another such kaleidoscope in nature. There is
apparently every gray from purest white to dull black, every yellow from
lemon to deep orange, every red, pink, and brown. These tints dye the
rocks and sands in splashes and long transverse streaks which merge into
a single joyous exclamation in vivid color whose red and yellow accents
have something of the Oriental. Greens and blues are missing from the
dyes, but are otherwise supplied. The canyon is edged with lodge-pole
forests, and growths of lighter greens invade the sandy slants, at times
nearly to the frothing river; and the river is a chain of emeralds and
pearls. Blue completes the color gamut from the inverted bowl of sky.
No sketch of the canyon is complete without the story of the great
robbery. I am not referring to the several hold-ups of the old
stage-coach days, but to a robbery which occurred long before the coming
of man--the theft of the waters of Yellowstone Lake; for this splendid
river, these noble falls, this incomparable canyon, are the ill-gotten
products of the first of Yellowstone's hold-ups.
Originally Yellowstone Lake was a hundred and sixty feet higher and very
much larger than it is to-day. It extended from the headwaters of the
present Yellowstone River, far in the south, northward past the present
Great Fall and Inspiration Point. It included a large part of what is
now known as the Hayden Valley. At that time the Continental Divide,
which now cuts the southwest corner of the park, encircled the lake on
its north, and just across the low divide was a small flat-lying stream
which drained and still drains the volcanic slopes leading down from
Dunraven Peak and Mount Washburn.
This small stream, known as Sulphur Creek, has the honor, or the
dishonor if you choose, of being the first desperado of the Yellowstone,
but one so much greater than its two petty imitators of human times that
there is no comparison of misdeeds. Sulphur Creek stole the lake from
the Snake River and used it to create the Yellowstone River, which in
turn created the wonderful canyon. Here at last is a crime in which all
will agree that the end justified the means.
How this piracy was accomplished is written on the rocks; even the
former lake outlet into the Snake River is plainly discernible to-day.
At the lake's north end, where the seeping waters of Sulphur Creek and
the edge of the lake nearly met on opposite sides of what was then the
low flat divide, it only required some slight disturbance indirectly
volcanic, some unaccustomed rising of lake levels, perhaps merely some
special stress of flood or storm to make the connection. Perhaps the
creek itself, sapping back in the soft lava soils, unaided found the
lake. Connection once made, the mighty body of lake water speedily
deepened a channel northward and Sulphur Creek became sure of its
posterity.
At that time, hidden under the lake's surface, two rhyolite dikes, or
upright walls of harder rock, extended crosswise through the lake more
than half a mile apart. As the lake-level fell, the nearer of these
dikes emerged and divided the waters into two lakes, the upper of which
emptied over the dike into the lower. This was the beginning of the
Great Fall. And presently, as the Great Fall cut its breach deeper and
deeper into the restraining dike, it lowered the upper-lake level until
presently the other rhyolite dike emerged from the surface carrying
another cataract. And thus began the Upper Fall.
Meantime the stream below kept digging deeper the canyon of Sulphur
Creek, and there came a time when the lower lake drained wholly away.
In its place was left a bottom-land which is now a part of the Hayden
Valley, and, running through it, a river. Forthwith this river began
scooping, from the Great Fall to Inspiration Point, the scenic ditch
which is world-celebrated to-day as the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.
IV
Now imagine this whole superlative wilderness heavily populated with
wild animals in a state of normal living. Imagine thirty thousand elk,
for instance, roaming about in bands of half a dozen to half a thousand.
Imagine them not friendly, perhaps, but fearless, with that entire
indifference which most animals show to creatures which neither help nor
harm them--as indifferent, say, as the rabbits in your pasture or the
squirrels in your oak woods. Imagine all the wild animals, except the
sneaking, predatory kind, proportionally plentiful and similarly
fearless--bear, antelope, mountain-sheep, deer, bison, even moose in the
fastnesses, to say nothing of the innumerable smaller beasts. There has
been no hunting of harmless animals in the Yellowstone since 1894, and
this is one result.
It is true that comparatively few visitors see many animals, but that is
the fault of their haste or their temperament or their inexperience of
nature. One must seek in sympathy to find. Tearing over the wilderness
roads in noisy motors smelling of gasolene is not the best way to find
them, although the elk and deer became indifferent to automobiles as
soon as they discovered them harmless. One may see them not infrequently
from automobiles and often from horse-drawn wagons; and one may see them
often and intimately who walks or rides horseback on the trails.
The admission of the automobile to Yellowstone roads changed seeing
conditions materially. In five days of quiet driving in 1914 with
Colonel L.M. Brett, then superintendent of the park, in a direction
opposite to the stages, I saw more animals from my wagon-seat than I had
expected to see wild in all my life. We saw bear half a dozen times, elk
in numbers, black-tailed and white-tailed deer so frequently that count
was lost the second morning, four bands of antelope, buffalo, foxes,
coyotes, and even a bull moose. Once we stopped so as not to hurry a
large bear and two cubs which were leisurely crossing the road. Deer
watched us pass within a hundred yards. Elk grazed at close quarters,
and our one bull moose obligingly ambled ahead of us along the road.
There was never fear, never excitement (except my own), not even haste.
Even the accustomed horses no more than cocked an ear or two while
waiting for three wild bears to get out of the middle of the road.
Of course scenic completeness is enough in itself to justify the
existence of these animals in the marvellous wilderness of the
Yellowstone. Their presence in normal abundance and their calm
at-homeness perfects nature's spectacle. In this respect, also,
Yellowstone's unique place among the national parks is secure.
The lessons of the Yellowstone are plain. It is now too late to restore
elsewhere the great natural possession which the thoughtless savagery of
a former generation destroyed in careless ruth, but, thanks to this
early impulse of conservation, a fine example still remains in the
Yellowstone. But it is not too late to obliterate wholly certain
misconceptions by which that savagery was then justified. It is not too
late to look upon wild animals as fellow heritors of the earth,
possessing certain natural rights which men are glad rather than bound
to respect. It is not too late to consider them, with birds and forests,
lakes, rivers, seas, and skies, a part of nature's glorious gift for
man's manifold satisfaction, a gift to carefully conserve for the study
and enjoyment of to-day, and to develop for the uses of larger and more
appreciative generations to come.
Of course if this be brought to universal accomplishment (and the
impulse has been advancing fast of late), it must be Yellowstone's part
to furnish the exhibit, for we have no other.
To many the most surprising part of Yellowstone's wild-animal message is
man's immunity from hatred and harm by predatory beasts. To know that
wild bears if kindly treated are not only harmless but friendly, that
grizzlies will not attack except in self-defense, and that wolves, wild
cats, and mountain-lions fly with that instinctive dread which is man's
dependable protection, may destroy certain romantic illusions of youth
and discredit the observation if not the conscious verity of many an
honest hunter; but it imparts a modern scientific fact which sets the
whole wild-animal question in a new light. In every case of assault by
bears where complete evidence has been obtainable, the United States
Biological Survey, after fullest investigation, has exonerated the bear;
he has always been attacked or has had reason to believe himself
attacked. In more than thirty summers of field-work Vernon Bailey, Chief
Field-Naturalist of the Biological Survey, has slept on the ground
without fires or other protection, and frequently in the morning found
tracks of investigating predatory beasts. There are reports but no
records of human beings killed by wolves or mountain-lions in America.
Yet, for years, all reports susceptible of proof have been officially
investigated.
One of Yellowstone's several manifest destinies is to become the
well-patronized American school of wild-life study. Already, from its
abundance, it is supplying wild animals to help in the long and
difficult task of restoring here and there, to national parks and other
favorable localities, stocks which existed before the great slaughter.
V
Thirty miles south of this rolling volcanic interlude the pristine
Rockies, as if in shame of their moment of gorgeous softness, rear in
contrast their sharpest and most heroic monument of bristling granite.
Scarcely over the park's southern boundary, the foothills of the Teton
Mountains swell gently toward their Gothic climax. The country opens and
roughens. The excellent road, which makes Jackson's Hole a practical
part of the Yellowstone pleasure-ground, winds through a rolling, partly
wooded grazing-ground of elk and deer. The time was when these wild
herds made living possible for the nation's hunted desperadoes, for
Jackson's Hole was the last refuge to yield to law and order.
At the climax of this sudden granite protest, the Grand Teton rises
7,014 feet in seeming sheerness from Jackson Lake to its total altitude
of 13,747 feet. To its right is Mount Moran, a monster only less. The
others, clustering around them, have no names.
All together, they are few and grouped like the units of some fabulous
barbaric stronghold. Fitted by size and majesty to be the climax of a
mighty range, the Tetons concentrate their all in this one giant group.
Quickly, north and south, they subside and pass. They are a granite
island in a sea of plain.
Seen across the lake a dozen miles which seem but three, these clustered
steepled temples rise sheer from the water. Their flanks are
snow-streaked still in August, their shoulders hung with glaciers, their
spires bare and shining. A greater contrast to the land from which we
came and to which we presently return cannot be imagined. Geologically,
the two have nothing in common. Scenically, the Tetons set off and
complete the spectacle of the Yellowstone.
[Illustration: _From a photograph by Charles D. Walcott_
THE TETON MOUNTAIN FROM JACKSON HOLE, SOUTH OF YELLOWSTONE]
[Illustration: _From a photograph by Haynes_