Excerpts From
Letters Written on a Western
Journey
BY
Cyrenus Cole
[Illustration]
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
The Torch Press
Nineteen Hundred Eight
_To Mrs. N. D. Pope
of Lake Charles, Louisiana,_
_These excerpts from letters written for the Cedar Rapids Republican
and Evening Times are dedicated, because she made all the ways pleasant
ones and all the places happy ones for three men--one of whom is her
husband_
I
Yellowstone National Park, Mammoth Springs Hotel, August 14, 1908: We
have reached the first hotel station on the tour of the Yellowstone
National Park, which, according to the legend on the arch over the
entrance, has been set aside “For the benefit and enjoyment of the
people.” We left Minneapolis on the night train and found ourselves
the next morning in the wheat country, on the state lines of Minnesota
and North Dakota. In the wheat country there is nothing impressive,
except the magnificent distances. As far as the eye can reach, and
that is very far, one sees a level expanse, covered with wheat, some
in the shock and some still on the stalk. The towns, also, lack
impressiveness. Most of them are mere wheat stations. Fargo and
Bismarck and Mandan are, however, not without commercial and historic
interest.
At Bismarck, I recalled what Mr. Bryce wrote in “The American
Commonwealth.” He was present, in 1883, when the corner stone of the
state house was laid, with imposing ceremonies, General U. S. Grant
and “Sitting Bull” being among the honored guests. Mr. Bryce records
that one of the orators upon that occasion remarked that Bismarck was
destined to “be the metropolitan hearth of the world’s civilization.”
Mr. Bryce says he asked why the state house was “not in the city,” but
“a mile off, on the top of a hill in the brown and dusty prairie,” and
he was told, by the enthusiastic spirits of the place, that in a few
years that hill would be the center of the city that was to be. But the
state house still stands out of town. Many hopes in real estate are
unrealized, but let us hope they have only been deferred. A hundred
years from now all the open country may be teeming with populations. In
much of the wheat country there are no country homes, only places in
which the wheat growers live long enough to plant and to gather their
crops. The wheat fields end in the Bad Lands, and these would not be
so interesting, were they not so dreary. On the Little Missouri one
begins to see patches of alfalfa. It was on this river that Theodore
Roosevelt ranched, equipped with a college diploma and his indomitable
spirit. One ascends gradually into the mountains, up the Yellowstone
River, to Livingston, where they break the transcontinental journey
for the Yellowstone National Park trip. It is fifty-five miles from
Livingston to Gardner and five or six miles from Gardner to the Mammoth
Springs Hotel, the last five miles being covered by stages.
The hotel is crowded. People are coming and going. They jostle each
other and rush about frantically, looking for baggage and worried about
many things. Those who have “done” the Park are anxious to get away,
and those who are about to “do it” are as anxious to be on their way.
All sorts and conditions of people are here, the aged and the young,
the rich and the poor, women always predominating in numbers and in
activity. The postal card fad is at its height here. The postage that
is paid on these trifles ought to pay the government a dividend on the
money it has invested in the Park.