“Captain Anderson--he’s the superintendent, you know--started to-day
for the south of the Park; some trouble, I believe, down there. A
scout thought the buffalo were being disturbed,” said Lieutenant
Lindsley to me at the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, near the entrance to
the Park.
“That’s unfortunate. Can I overtake him?”
“It’s nearly four o’clock, but as I am going down to our camp at the
Lower Geyser Basin, we can start now, and by travelling at night we
can catch him before he pulls out in the morning, I think,” said the
yellow-leg.
So putting our belongings into a double surry, we started hot-foot
through the Wonderland, leaving a band of Dakota chicken-shooters
standing on the steps waving their adieux. It verified all my
predictions--men who shoot chickens belong in a stage-coach--they are
a “scrubby wagon outfit,” as the cowboys say.
Posed on the trestled road, I looked back at the Golden Gate Pass. It
is one of those marvellous vistas of mountain scenery utterly beyond
the pen or brush of any man. Paint cannot touch it, and words are
wasted. War, storms at sea, and mountain scenery are bigger than any
expression little man has ever developed. Mr. Thomas Moran made a
famous stagger at this pass in his painting; and great as is the
painting, when I contemplated the pass itself I marvelled at the
courage of the man who dared the deed. But as the stages of the Park
Company run over this road, every tourist sees its grandeur, and
bangs away with his kodak.
As we pulled up in front of the tents of the rest camp, one of those
mountain thunder-storms set in, and it was as though the New York fire
department had concentrated its nozzles on the earth. The place was
presided over by a classic Irishman by the name of Larry, who speedily
got a roaring-hot beefsteak and some coffee on the table, and then
busied himself conducting growing pools of rain-water out of the tent.
Larry is justly famous on the road for his _bonhomie_ and Celtic wit.
At an early hour we arose and departed--the pale moon shining through
the mist of the valley, while around us rose the ghostly pines. We
cowered under our great-coats, chilled through, and saddened at
remembrances of the warm blankets which we had been compelled to roll
out of at this unseemly hour. At 7.30 we broke into one of those
beautiful natural parks, the Lower Geyser Basin, with the sun shining
on the river and the grass, and spotting the row of tents belonging to
D Troop, Sixth United States Cavalry. Captain Scott met us at the
door, a bluff old trooper in field rig and a welcoming smile. After
breakfast a soldier brought up Pat Rooney. Pat was a horse from the
ground up; he came from Missouri, but he was a true Irishman
nevertheless, as one could tell from his ragged hips, long drooping
quarters, and a liberal show of white in his eye, which seemed to say
to me, “Aisy, now, and I’m a dray-horse; but spare the brad, or I’ll
put ye on yer back in the bloomin’ dust, I will.” The saddle was put
on, and I waited, until presently along came the superintendent, with
his scout Burgess, three soldiers, and nine pack-mules with their
creaking _aparejos_, and their general air of malicious mischief.
Pointing to a range of formidable-looking hills, the captain said,
“We will pull in about there,” and we mounted and trotted off down the
road. What a man really needs when he does the back stretches of the
Yellowstone Park is a boat and a balloon, but cavalrymen ride horses
in deference to traditions. My mount, Pat, was as big as a stable
door, and as light as a puff-ball on his pins. As Mr. Buckram said,
“The ’eight of a ’oss as nothing to do with ’is size,” but Patrick was
a horse a man needed two legs for. Besides, he had a mouth like a
bull, as does every other animal that wears that impossible bit which
Uncle Sam gives his cavalry. We got along swimmingly, and, indeed, I
feel considerable gratitude to Pat for the two or three thousand times
he saved my life on the trip by his agility and sureness of foot.
[Illustration: BURGESS, NEARLY FORTY-FIVE YEARS A SCOUT]
Burgess, the scout, was a fine little piece of a man, who had served
the government with credit for over thirty years. He had breasted the
high divide in a dozen places, had Apache bullets whistle around and
through him, and withal was modest about it. He was a quiet person,
with his instinct of locality as well developed as an Indian’s, and
contented with life, since he only wanted one thing--a war. I think he
travelled by scent, since it would have been simple enough to have
gone over easier places; but Burgess despised ease, and where the
fallen timber was thickest and the slopes 60°, there you would find
Burgess and his tight little pony picking along.
Both Captains Anderson and Scott have a pronounced weakness for
geysers, and were always stopping at every little steam-jet to examine
it. I suppose they feel a personal responsibility in having them go
regularly; one can almost imagine a telegram to “turn on more steam.”
They rode recklessly over the geyser formation, to my discomfort,
because it is very thin and hazardous, and to break through is to be
boiled. One instinctively objects to that form of cooking. The most
gorgeous colors are observed in this geyser formation; in fact, I have
never seen nature so generous in this respect elsewhere. I wondered
that the pack-mules did not walk into the sissing holes, but I suspect
a mule is a bit of a geologist in his way, and as most of them have
been in the government service for thirty or forty years, they have
learned how to conserve their well-being. There is a tradition that
one was considerably overdone once in a geyser-hole, so they may have
taken warning. Who can understand a mule? The packer leads the old
bell-mare off to a feeding-ground, and the whole bunch of mules go
racing after her, and chains wouldn’t hold them. The old bell-mare
takes across a nasty chasm or a dirty slough-hole, and as the tinkle
of the little cow-bell is losing itself in the timber beyond, one
after another they put their ears forward and follow on.
[Illustration: THE BELL-MARE OVER A BAD PLACE]
We passed up a cleft in the hills, and were swallowed up in the pine
and cedar forest. Presently the cleft ended, and nothing but good
honest climbing was in front. There began my first experience in
riding over the fallen timber, which obstructs all the northwestern
Rocky Mountains. Once up in British Columbia I did it, but had trails,
and I childishly imagined that there must also be trails wherever men
wanted to go. Crisscross and all about lay the great peeled logs, and
travel was slow, toilsome, and with anything but horses trained to it
would have been impossible.
A good horse or mule, once accustomed, makes little of it, but on the
steep down grades the situation is complicated by fallen logs, which
it is necessary to “bucket” over, and then stop dead on an incline of
50°, with a couple of miles of tumble if he fails. The timber grew
thicker, and when Burgess would get us in a hopeless sort of place,
Captain A. would sing out to Captain S., “Burgess is on the trail
now”; and when it was fairly good going, “Now he is off.” But nothing
could rattle Mr. Burgess, and he continued calmly on his journey, the
destination of which, it seemed, could be nothing short of the moon.
Finally we found ourselves seemingly so inextricably tangled up that
even Burgess had to scratch his head. One mule was hung up hopelessly,
while the rest crowded around us into the _chevaux-de-frise_ of logs,
and merrily wound through the labyrinth the old Sixth Cavalry “gag,”
“Here’s where we trot.”
To complete the effect of this passage it began to rain, and shortly
to pelt us with hailstones, so we stopped under some trees to let it
pass, and two people who should know better dismounted and got their
saddles wet, while another, more wise in his generation, sat tight,
and was rewarded later for his display of intelligence. By-and-by, wet
and tired of fallen timber, we came into the Little Fire-hole Basin,
and found buffalo signs in abundance. We were in great hopes of seeing
some of these animals, but I may as well add that only one was seen on
the trip, though there was fresh spoor, and they were undoubtedly
about. We found no pony tracks either, which was more to the soldiers’
liking, since they are intrusted with the protection of the Park
against poachers.
In this way squads are sent over the Park, and instructed not to
follow the regular trails, but to go to the most unfrequented places,
so that they may at any time happen on a malicious person, and perhaps
be able to do as one scout did--photograph the miscreant with his own
camera.
After a good day’s march we made camp by a little lake, and picketed
our horses, while the mules ran loose around the bell-mare. Our
appetites had been sharpened by a nine hours’ fast, when a soldier
called us to the “commissaries” which were spread out on a pack
canvas. It was the usual military “grub,” and no hungry man can find
fault with that.
“Any man who can’t eat bacon can’t fight,” as Captain Scott said; so
if any reader wants to be a soldier he must have a mania for bacon, it
seems. “This is the stuff that makes soldiers brave,” he added, as the
coffee-pot came around, and we fell to, and left a dreary waste of
empty tins for the cook to pick up. We lighted our pipes after the
banquet on the grass, and walked down to the shore of the beautiful
pond, which seemed so strangely situated up there on the very crest of
the continental divide. There are only three seasons in these
altitudes, which the boys divide into July, August, and Winter, and
the nights are always chilly. An inch or two of snow may fall even in
mid-summer. In winter the snow covers the ground to a great depth, as
we can tell by the trees. Nothing grows but rather stunted fir and
pine and a little grass of the most hardy variety. The rounds of the
Park are then made by mounting the cavalry on the _ski_, or Norwegian
snow-shoe, and with its aid men travel the desolate snow-clad
wilderness from one “shack” to another. Small squads of three or four
men are quartered in these remote recesses of the savage mountains,
and remain for eight months on a stretch. The camps are provisioned
for the arctic siege, and what is stranger yet is that soldiers rather
like it, and freely apply for this detached service. There is little
of the “pomp and vanity” in this soldiering, and it shows good spirit
on the part of the enlisted men. They are dressed in fur caps,
California blanket coats, leggings, and moccasins--a strange uniform
for a cavalryman, and also quite a commentary on what are commonly
called the vicissitudes of the service.
[Illustration: DOWN THE MOUNTAIN]
[Illustration: GETTING GRUB]
In the early morning our tent was pulled down, and our bedding packed
off almost before we had disentangled ourselves from its sheltering
folds. The well-trained troopers went about their task of breaking
camp with method and address. Burgess and a young soldier pulled a
reluctant strawberry-blond mule out of the line of pack-animals, and
throwing a blind over his face, proceeded to lay the blanket and
adjust the _aparejo_. With a heave the _cincha_ is hauled tight, and
the load laid on, while the expert throws the “diamond hitch,” and the
mule and pack are integral parts. This packing of nine mules was
accomplished with great rapidity, and laying our saddles carefully, we
mounted and followed the scouts off down the trail in single file on a
toilsome march which would probably not end until three or four
o’clock in the afternoon. We wound around the spurs of hills, and then
across a marsh, with its yielding treacherous bottom, where the horses
floundered, and one mule went down and made the mud and water fly in
his struggles, while my apprehensions rose to fever-pitch as I
recognized my grip-sack on his load, and not likely to be benefited by
the operation. At the head-waters of these rivers--and it may be said
that this little purling brook is really the source of the Missouri
itself, although not so described--there is abundance of soggy marsh,
which makes travel extremely difficult. In one place Captain
Anderson’s horse went belly-deep on a concealed quag made by a stream
coming out of the side of the hill, and rolling back, fell heavily on
the captain, and for a time it was rather a question whether the horse
would get out or not; but by dint of exertion he regained firm ground.
When a big strong horse gets into a slough the dorsal action is
terrific, and it is often necessary to dismount quickly to aid him
out. We crossed the great divide of the continent at a place where the
slope was astonishingly steep and the fallen timber thickly strewn. It
was as thoroughly experimental travelling as I have ever seen,
unless possibly over a lava-rock formation which I essayed last winter
on the western slope of the Sierra Madre, in Chihuahua; and yet there
is a fascination about being balanced on those balloonlike heights,
where a misstep means the end of horse and rider. I was glad enough,
though, when we struck the parklike levels of the Pitchstone plateau
as the scene of our further progression. If one has never travelled
horseback over the Rocky Mountains there is a new and distinct
sensation before him quite as vigorous as his first six-barred gate,
or his first yacht-race with the quarter-rail awash.
[Illustration: WORKING UP THE DIVIDE]
All through the Park were seen hundreds of wild-geese, so tame that
they would hardly fly from us. It was a great temptation to shoot, but
the doughty captain said he would run me off the reservation at a
turkey-trot if I did shoot, and since I believed him I could restrain
myself. The streams and marshes were full of beaver-dams, and the
little mud-and-stick houses rose from the pools, while here and there
we saw the purl of the quiet water as they glided about. This part is
exactly as primitive as when the lonely trapper Coulter made his
famous journey through it, and one cannot but wonder what must have
been his astonishment at the unnatural steaming and boiling of the
geysers, which made the Park known from his descriptions as “Coulter’s
Hell.”
From the breast of the mountains overlooking the great Shoshonee Lake
there opened up the most tremendous sight as the waters stretched away
in their blue placidity to the timbered hills. The way down to the
shores was the steepest place I have ever seen horses and mules
attempt. In one place, where the two steep sides of the cañon dipped
together, it was cut by a nasty seam some six feet deep, which we had
to “bucket over” and maintain a footing on the other side. After
finding myself safely over, I watched the shower of pack-mules come
sliding down and take the jump. One mule was so far overbalanced that
for a moment I thought he would lose his centre of gravity, which had
been in his front feet, but he sprang across to the opposite slope and
was safe. Horses trained to this work do marvels, and old Pat was a
“topper” at the business. I gave him his head, and he justified my
trust by negotiating all the details without a miss. On a sandy
“siding” he spread his feet and slid with an avalanche of detached
hill-side. Old Pat’s ears stuck out in front in an anxious way, as if
to say, “If we hit anything solid, I’ll stop”; while from behind came
the cheery voice of Captain Scott, “Here’s where we trot.”
On the shores of the Shoshonee we camped, and walked over to the
famous Union Geysers, which began to boil and sputter, apparently for
our especial benefit. In a few minutes two jets of boiling water shot
a hundred feet in air, and came down in rain on the other side, while
a rainbow formed across it. The roar of the great geysers was
awe-inspiring; it was like the exhaust of a thousand locomotives, and
Mr. Burgess nudged me and remarked, “Hell’s right under here.”
Near the geysers, hidden away in a depression, we found a pool of
water of a beautiful and curious green, while not twenty feet from it
was one of a sulphur yellow. There was a big elk track in the soft mud
leading into it, but no counter track coming out. There had been a
woodland tragedy there.
The utility of a geyser-hole is not its least attraction to a
traveller who has a day’s accumulation of dust and sweat on him. I
found one near the camp which ran into a little mountain stream, and
made a tepid bath, of which I availed myself, and also got a cup of
hot water, by the aid of which I “policed my face,” as the soldiers
call shaving.
[Illustration: BURGESS FINDING A FORD]
The next day we encountered one of those great spongy mountain
meadows, which we were forced to skirt on the rocky timber-strewn
hill-sides, until finally we ventured into it. We curved and zigzagged
through its treacherous mazes, fording and recrossing the stream in
search of solid ground. Burgess’s little gray pony put his foot
forward in a gingerly way, and when satisfied, plunged in and
floundered through. The pony had a positive genius for morasses. We
followed him into the mud, or plunged off the steep sides into the
roaring river, and, to my intense satisfaction, at last struck a good
pony trail. “Now Burgess is off the trail!” we cried, whereat the
modest little scout grinned cheerfully. From here on it was “fair and
easy,” until we came to the regular stage-road, to travel on which it
seemed to us a luxury.
This expedition is typical of the manner of policing the Park, and it
is generally monotonous, toilsome, and uneventful work; and the
usefulness of such a _chevau-chée_ is that it leaves the track of the
cavalry horse-shoe in the most remote parts of the preserve, where the
poacher or interloper can see it, and become apprehensive in
consequence of the dangers which attend his operations. That an old
trapper might work quietly there for a long time I do not doubt, if he
only visited his line of traps in the early morning or late evening
and was careful of his trail, but such damage as he could do would be
trivial. Two regiments could not entirely prevent poaching in the
mountain wastes of the great reservation, but two troops are
successful enough at the task. It is a great game-preserve and
breeding-ground, and, if not disturbed, must always give an overflow
into Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, which will make big game shooting
there for years to come. The unreasoning antipathy or malicious
disregard of the American pioneer for game-laws and game-preservation
is somewhat excusable, but the lines of the pioneer are now cast in
new places, and his days of lawless _abandon_ are done. The regulation
for the punishment of Park offenders is inadequate, and should be made
more severe. The Park is also full of beasts of prey, the bear being
very numerous. A fine grizzly was trapped by some of the
superintendent’s men and shipped to the Smithsonian Institution while
I was there. Near the Fountain Hotel one evening a young army surgeon
and myself walked up to within one hundred and fifty yards of a big
grizzly, who was not disposed to run off. Being unarmed, we concluded
that our point of view was close enough, and as the bear seemed to
feel the same way about it, we parted.
Americans have a national treasure in the Yellowstone Park, and they
should guard it jealously. Nature has made her wildest patterns here,
has brought the boiling waters from her greatest depths to the peaks
which bear eternal snow, and set her masterpiece with pools like
jewels. Let us respect her moods, and let the beasts she nurtures in
her bosom live, and when the man from Oshkosh writes his name with a
blue pencil on her sacred face, let him spend six months where the
scenery is circumscribed and entirely artificial.